“This isn’t your politics, Harvey. Don’t monkey around. Let’s get Lalie engaged and married.”
If that was how Bess felt about it, Harvey Fenstermacher was not going to oppose her. She was pretty sharp in some things, and if Lalie was ready to get married, let her mother take the full responsibility. In a way he had said goodbye to Lalie when she was fifteen. Or twelve. He did not really know this female woman who said she was in love with this Lockwood boy. Let her marry and go away, and then bring him some grandchildren. It would be nice to have some grandchildren. Cute little buggers they’d be.
So it rested until the day of George Lockwood’s formal request for Lalie’s hand. Harvey Fenstermacher tried to be agreeable, tried his best, but Lockwood rubbed him the wrong way. The fellow did not talk like a Pennsylvanian, he dressed too old for a college senior, he had artificial manners. He was like one of those out-of-town lawyers that came into Harvey Fenstermacher’s court for Iron Company cases. They were over-prepared, insolently polite, and if they lost they always appealed. They treated his court like a way-station on the Fort Penn, Richterville & Lantenengo. Lawyer in his court or suitor in his home, George Lockwood rubbed Harvey Fenstermacher the wrong way, and the quarrel which happened to be over son David and the club situation at Princeton was inevitable; they might just as easily have quarreled over something else, and honestly admitting this to himself, Harvey Fenstermacher was troubled.
He had pretended all was well, but he felt hypocritical, miserable. If it was possible to justify what he was about to do, he would justify it, but justified or not, he was determined to keep Lockwood from marrying Lalie.
Within two weeks from the time of the Sunday quarrel Harvey Fenstermacher had all the justification he needed, and there was sweet triumph over Bess to make the justification more than complete. Ironically, she had furnished him with one of his leads; conveniently, right in Lebanon.
On the way home from the court house Harvey Fenstermacher always passed Vic Hoffner’s ice cream parlor-candy store, occasionally stopping to pick up a brick of ice cream or a box of candy. Vic was a prosperous merchant, a good Mason, a Godfearing member of the Reformed Church, although not ever a visitor to the Fenstermacher residence.
“Afternoon, Vic.”
“Afternoon, Judge. Half a pound of Jordan almonds, pound of chocolate nougats. A day early this week. Must of had company Sunday, say?”
“Uh-huh. Company. If you got a half a minute, Vic?” said Harvey Fenstermacher. It was not unusual for the two men to Speak in private on lodge and church matters. They seated themselves on bent-wire chairs in the rear of the establishment.
“All right, we’re private,” said Hoffner.
“You’re related to a family named Lockwood over in Lantenengo County,” said Fenstermacher.
“Distantly. Only distantly. I know the family you mean. That’s the young fellow come in here with Lalie. Well, his mother was a Richterville Hoffner, and me and her father are first cousins. She was, uh, uh, Adelaide Hoffner and married this Abraham Lockwood. I was to the wedding. They’s married back, oh, I don’t know, twenty-five-so years ago.”
“Tell me all you can.”
“Well, you mean about the Lockwood side? Swedish Haven is their town. Very well-to-do. I heard he was a millionaire, Abraham Lockwood, and I wouldn’t doubt it. You want everything, Harvey?”
“All you can tell me.”
“Well, Levi Hoffner, my cousin, he had these six daughters and he was well-off, too. But I don’t remember him being too pleased with Adelaide marrying Lockwood, rich or no rich. Now I have to think a minute . . . Ah, yes. Abraham Lockwood had a father, and where he come from I’m not reliable. I did know, but I forgot. Anyhow, the father of Abraham Lockwood murdered a fellow in broad daylight.”
“Murdered a fellow?”
“Well, he shot him dead and he stood trial for it. They must have the records of it in Gibbsville. Isn’t Gibbsville the county seat over in Lantenengo?”
“Yes, and it doesn’t surprise me, anything that happens over there.”
“Me either. Some of those mining villages, they have a murder every payday. Irish Mollie Maguires, they call them.”
“Oh, sure. I remember them very well.”
“Well, Lockwood got off free, but then he killed another fellow. No! No, it was the other way around. He killed one fellow first, and they couldn’t prove it. I think that was what Levi said. Then the second time he killed a fellow, they hauled him into court. But he went free.”
“This was the father of Abraham Lockwood? The grandfather of the young fellow that’s been in here with Lalie?”
“You have right. But there’s more yet. This they didn’t find out till Adelaide was married. Now let me think a little . . . Ah, yes. Lockwood, Abraham, was all right in the head, but his mother not and his sisters not. The sisters they had to put away. Oh, yes! Now I remember! The one sister was in the crazy-house and the other they didn’t put her in till the wedding was over.”
“And the mother?”
“You’ll have to ask, Harvey. Here my memory is not so good on. But she was wheely. You know, going around in her head the wheels. Slang.”
Harvey Fenstermacher nodded. “Does your wife know all this?”
“No. I wasn’t a married man then and I never said nothing to her about any Lockwood.”
“Well, she got this far without hearing it. . .”
“I’m not a talker, Harvey. Don’t you worry.”
To obtain court records from Lantenengo County would take some time, and Harvey Fenstermacher was not even sure that he liked having his confidential law clerk acquire so much information about a prospective son-in-law. And what was the use? He did not want legal documentation; what he had got from Vic Hoffner was enough for his purpose. He took the train to Reading and from there to Swedish Haven.
Abraham Lockwood’s offices were in a small one-story brick building in the business district of Swedish Haven. There was a brass plate on the front door, and there were dark green curtains on rings that slid on a brass rail, shutting off pedestrians’ view of the interior. The legend on the brass plate was Lockwood & Company, Est. 1835. It was a substantial-looking place, and just inside the door there was a polished walnut fence as a reminder to visitors that they were not free to proceed unannounced.
“I wish to see Mr. Abraham Lockwood,” said Harvey Fenstermacher. “Here is my card.”
A middle-aged woman in a shirtwaist and skirt, wearing a fleur-de-lis watch and oilcloth sleeve covers, said: “Judge Harvey Fenstermacher, Lebanon, Pennsylvania. So? Will you kindly take a seat, Judge?”
“I’d rather stand, thank you.”
The woman went back to a private office, and Harvey Fenstermacher saw a man at a roll-top desk take the card, look up, and look out toward the visitor. The man signaled to Harvey Fenstermacher to come back to his office.
“Good morning, Judge Fenstermacher,” said Abraham Lockwood. He was a tall thin fellow and a bit of a dude; the cut of his suit was not unusual, but it was light grey and had satin facing on the lapels, and he wore a gold question mark as a stickpin in his Ascot. He had a Greek-letter fraternity pin on his waistcoat. Lockwood kept a hand on the doorknob and waved Fenstermacher to a chair with the other hand. Accidentally or by design he was not offering to shake hands.
“Good morning to you, sir,” said Fenstermacher. He waited for Lockwood to sit down, observing the manner in which Lockwood flicked aside the skirt of his coat.
“Offer you a cigar, Judge?”
“Not this early in the day, thank you.”
“In town for the day? Of course I’ve heard about you from my son George.”