Black Cat Weekly #18

THE GHOST WHO READ THE NEWSPAPER, by Vicki Weisfeld-2

I hoped to see his face, which remained indistinct, or some other feature that would lead us to know who he was and why he was there. Alas, although his clothing appeared well-made, it was not distinctive. He wore no signet ring, and when he took out his pocket watch it was of an ordinary type on a fine chain. I feared that checking the time might presage his departure, so I returned to my cot and lay down. Though gradually suffused with sleep, I watched him through half-closed eyes and woke to a room bright with sunshine. Mr. Dulcey was already awake and dressed.

“You’re late abed, my boy,” he said. “Sleep well?”

“The ghost—” I stammered. “I saw him. The Old Gentleman.”

“Did you now,” he said, not prepared to believe I’d done more than dream. “And why is your night dress on backward?”

I told him the whole story, and, before the others came down for breakfast, we had a whispered conversation with the landlord. They required me to recite my experience down to every detail. It was clear the man’s uncertain features and unremarkable dress would shed little light on the mystery. However, I possessed an element of information I had totally disregarded: the newspaper.

I mentioned that the newspaper’s masthead was the Hartford Daily Courant.

“Interesting,” said Mr. Dulcey. He tried to mask his excitement, probably to keep from scattering my vague memories. “Did you happen to notice any headlines?”

“Yes, I did! A long story about the Battle of Gettysburg took up almost the whole front page. Not President Lincoln’s speech, but the battle itself. The headline was something like ‘Turning Point of War!! Lee Routed!’”

Mr. Dulcey addressed Mr. Meese. “Could your shade have stopped here for the night on his way from Hartford to Boston and brought the newspaper with him? Or did you supply newspapers in the lounge?”

“Either one, I suppose,” the landlord said, scratching his head.

“This may narrow down the time of his visit,” Mr. Dulcey said. “You wouldn’t have records from that era, I suppose? It was nearly sixty years ago.”

“Surely we do. Back to the beginning of the inn’s existence. They’re in the attic along with unclaimed luggage, broken chairs, and a farrago of stuff my wife and I haven’t bothered to sort through.”

“Well, would you mind... ?”

A clatter of children’s feet on the stairs led the innkeeper to say, “Certainly, right after breakfast.”

We then sat down to the longest meal in the history of mankind.

* * * *

Mrs. Meese fretted that we planned to root around in the attic. Probably she worried we’d kick up a lot of dust and make a mess and, if that was her concern, it was well founded, as that is exactly what happened.

“What is it you’re looking for?” she asked before we even got started.

“Clues, my dear,” her husband said.

“Clues to the murders?” She crossed her arms, frowning.

This took Mr. Dulcey and me quite by surprise, and Mr. Meese reddened. “We haven’t discussed that, Sarah,” he said.

Mr. Dulcey would not be satisfied without the whole story now, though getting it might take some time. He mollified Mrs. Meese by saying we would happily stay another night at least, enjoying her hospitality. True, we didn’t have a choice, as the reports on road conditions that we received during breakfast suggested our departure would be delayed a day at least. Several parties who’d arrived in horse-drawn carriages or on horseback were planning to leave, however, and later that morning did so.

At last we climbed the three set of stairs that led us to a low-ceiling space. Even I could barely stand and only under the center beam. Through tiny windows at floor level, beams of sunlight shot across the floor, the effect dizzying in its alternating bands of darkness and light. We crept around like Victor Hugo’s hunchback and finally perched on several abandoned portmanteaux.

Mr. Dulcey cleared his throat. “Now, Meese, what’s this about murders? And are they connected to our Old Gentleman?” His tone clearly would not brook evasion.

“I apologize for not telling you the whole story at the outset. I didn’t want to alarm you. You see, not only is the room you’re occupying the place where the Old Gentleman appears, it also has been the scene of two mysterious deaths. Mrs. Meese rather exaggerated in calling them ‘murders,’ as murder was never proven.”

Mr. Dulcey waited, his gaze fixed on the landlord, who stood up, wanting to pace, perhaps, bumped his head, and sat down again. “As I said, the room you occupy is not often used, perhaps only one or two nights each month. That apparently was the practice of the previous owners as well. Although every report of the ghost that I know of paints him as a nonthreatening character, both these mysterious deaths occurred after sightings of the ghost began.”

“And when was that?”

“Right in the middle of the Civil War, when the whole country was full of upset.” He combed his mustache with his fingers.

“Perhaps around 1863?” I asked. “That would correspond to the date of the newspaper I saw.”

He nodded. “Of course, he may have appeared even earlier, if the occupants of the room were sound sleepers, or thought they had a strange dream, or for some reason didn’t report it.”

“And the deaths?” Mr. Dulcey pressed.

“The first was of a gentlewoman who was a guest here for several nights in January 1875. She was a Custis and some relation to the Custis family of Virginia—Robert E. Lee’s in-laws, you know. She left a half-finished letter on the desk in that room. I was told the letter was full of pro-Confederacy rhetoric and virulent comments about ‘the damned Yankees.’” He shook his head.

“How did she die?”

“As I say, that was a mystery. The doctor who examined the body apparently came to no conclusion. Her body was unmarked, he found no weapon or evidence of poison, and the other guests and staff heard or saw nothing amiss. There were no police investigators way out here in those days. Just the coroner’s jury, and those worthies deemed Miss Custis’s demise as ‘death by misadventure.’ That was the end of it.”

I puzzled over this scanty information. “Is it possible she was in the middle of writing this anti-Union letter, saw the ghost who looked like President Lincoln, and died of fright?”

“A nice theory, my boy,” Mr. Dulcey said. “Of course we’ll never know, unless her ghost comes back too and tells us!” He guffawed. “And the other death?”

“That one was nearer our time. In 1892, Mr. Jasper Samm from Baltimore occupied the room—a bit of a rarity by then, after all that had occurred. But the inn was full, and the innkeeper gave him the room. He barely spoke to the other guests and made little impression on them. When he did not appear for breakfast—I heard this secondhand, you understand—the innkeeper was full of foreboding as she approached the door. She found Mr. Samm lying on his back, his face livid, hands clutching his throat, eyes wide open, as if—”

“As if he had just seen a ghost?” I asked.

Mr. Meese pondered this a moment. “Perhaps. Except that the coroner found wedged in his throat his own watch chain. The watch was on the table next to the bed.”

“How in the world?” Mr. Dulcey asked.

“You know how some people attach small trinkets to the chain—masonic emblems or the like? Hung on Mr. Samm’s chain was a gold-and-enamel replica of the Stars and Bars, the Confederate battle flag. He choked on it.”

Mr. Dulcey looked shocked, and I’m sure I did too. “And what was the coroner’s verdict?” he asked.

“Suicide, though I’m told everyone involved thought it a highly unsatisfactory outcome. Yet it was equally hard to conceive how such a tragedy could have come about by accident.”

“Was he a Confederate?” Mr. Dulcey asked. (Meanwhile, I was triply grateful for my grandfather’s service in the Massachusetts Volunteers Second Battalion of Cavalry.)

“It turns out he was. His family had his body shipped back to them in Charleston. You can bet use of the room stopped altogether after that.”

Mr. Dulcey’s eyebrows asked the next question. “I know, I know,” said Meese. “Though, in a storm like the one yesterday, we would have made up pallets on the floor of the lounge if we needed to. And, until the young man saw the ghost last night, no one had seen the Old Gentleman in quite a while, and... ”

“Don’t apologize!” Mr. Dulcey said. “We are delighted to be part of your adventure! I believe my young friend is correct, and what scanty evidence we have regarding the ghost’s identity points to a connection with the Civil War.”

“And the Union,” I said.

“Let’s suppose, for argument’s sake, that he’s reading a newspaper from near the time he was a guest here. Do you have the inn’s records from July 1863, to coincide with the Gettysburg battle? Of course, newspapers covering such a momentous event might have been kept a while, but it seems a good starting point.”

After a great deal of looking and pawing and coughing over dusty old volumes, Mr. Meese came up with the guest register from July 1863, and we crowded around, a beam of sunlight offering ample illumination. Perhaps it was the fault of the war, but trade at the Old Blackwood Inn was surprisingly thin that month. Before long, we found several entries we thought promising, including “Calvin Jefferson Haekelmann, Capitol Avenue, Hartford.” A penciled annotation read “tailor.”

“Unusual name,” Mr. Dulcey commented. “And a tailor.”

“That could explain the manner of his dress,” I said. “Good quality, but sober. Nothing flashy.” Meese and Mr. Dulcey frowned at me. “As far as I could tell. In the dark,” I amended, realizing I was speaking about a being who had been almost transparent.

From another box, Mr. Meese withdrew a set of ledgers, examining their flyleaves before selecting one. “Now that we have a few candidates, this will tell us what they paid for their rooms.” He turned a few pages, and we reviewed the details about the likely guests, none of them noteworthy.

“Look-a-here! Haekelmann arrived July first and, yes, indeed, he was given room number three. He apparently kept it several days, but there’s no record of payment.” He pointed to the lone blank on that page in the “amount tendered” column.

“How could that happen?” Mr. Dulcey asked.

“I suppose someone could have neglected to note the settling of his account,” Mr. Meese said, tipping the ledger toward the light, “though these entries were written by Charity Farthington, the inn’s previous owner back one. She was a stickler.”

“If he died here, would not his bill have been—I don’t know the term—voided?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” Mr. Meese said, “especially since the register indicates he was alone. And if Charity couldn’t ask the family to settle the debt... ” He turned over the sheet. “Oh. Here is a note, again in her script: ‘Died July 7, 1863. Balance due assigned to Bad Debt.’ I’d wager that pained her.”

“Was there a coroner’s inquest?”

“I never heard about one. Haekelmann’s death may have been attributed to what we call ‘natural causes.’”

“Does your record say whether anyone claimed the body?” Mr. Dulcey asked.

Meese frowned over the page. “No, but Charity’s diaries are around somewhere. Perhaps she recorded it.” Again a dusty search ensued. When we found the correct diary, Mr. Meese read out a lengthy note describing her unsuccessful efforts to locate family or any business partner, and, it being summer, the urgency of concluding the business. Before too many days passed, for lack of an alternative, Mr. Haekelmann was buried in the cemetery of the nearest town.