All In Good Time

By Jeff Newman

John Upham is happily living his bachelor life as a lawyer in a small New England city when a friend pulls him into a treasure hunt. Barley Overshot is a wealthy playboy and one of John’s clients. He is obsessed with finding the long lost Mayflower Compact, the first American governing document. It is a national treasure that has been missing for a long time and he has a theory to help them find it. But finding a document that has been missing for two and a half centuries is never easy. If they are going to succeed they will need to confront ghosts from the past and ghosts within their own lives.
The Mayflower Compact was signed on board the Mayflower by the Plymouth families. It was an agreement by all about how they would live together as a settlement. It was copied several times before being lost. Barley has done his research and believes that the Compact was smuggled out of Boston during the Revolutionary War by a secret agent and hidden in a particular tavern in New Hampshire. If the story holds, they still don’t know how it was hidden, or where. The old building that they focus on is haunted by more than old remedies. John and Barley have to find out if an ancient force is trying to guide them and why. Along the way, John finds more than he expected to find at the beginning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeff Newman
• Release date: Jun 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370876402

Jeff Newman

Jeff Newman is an illustrator and attorney. He graduated from the Northfield-Mount Hermon School, Dartmouth College and the Vermont Law School. He is a former Army officer and teacher. He now lives with his family in an old New Hampshire farmhouse.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

It snowed on the first day of November. That wasn’t unusual for this place. The snow did not cling to the remaining leaves, nor did it blow white. In fact, it looked like a fat rain falling. But it was just a wet snow that melted as soon as it hit the ground. It seemed to him as if the very earth resented its premature arrival.

John Upham noticed the snow only because it made wide splotches on his truck’s windshield as he drove back to Concord on the interstate. Otherwise, you would have thought it was rain. John was tired from a day’s research up at the college library in Hanover, but he knew snow when he saw it.

A client had hired him to do some research and since he had gone to Dartmouth, he remembered that its library had a huge collection of old books and papers on New Hampshire in the period after the Revolutionary War. John needed to see that collection because his client was on a treasure hunt. He’d let himself be talked into joining the hunt. He smiled to himself when he thought about the idea of playing treasure hunt at his age.

His truck slid on a corner as he came down a long hill outside of New London. At this temperature, the rain was starting to freeze on the overpasses. He cursed to himself and slowed down, resigning his tired mind to a longer ride. That’s the price for thinking you’re still a boy.

This whole adventure started when John heard a story told by Barley Overshot in a bar in Concord the week before. As an older bachelor, John spent a certain amount of his free time in bars. It kept his life from being too monastic and he liked beer. Barley had started telling the tale between sips of his single malt scotch. Barley wasn’t his whole name. It was, in fact, Leonidas Bartholomew Overshot IV, which is quite a name for anyone to have. But John and most everyone else in town or the State House knew him as Barley.

He was an old friend with John. Barley was a fun guy that you could sit next to in a bar and never get tired of, because he had an endless supply of stories. Some of the stories were tall tales. Others were adventure stories that included his favorite subject, women. Barley was a lady’s man. John, who was not, listened to the stories so that he would not have to admit that his lifestyle was, after all, monastic and chaste. But he and Barley took adventures together. They both fly fished. The two men had taken fishing trips together to Argentina, Russia, Scotland and Iceland. He was also the sort to spontaneously blurt out something profound.

I wonder whatever became of that damned compact.

My compact? John asked. I sold it to buy the truck. That’s what I drove here.

Barley turned his face to look at John with a disgusted frown. He was a tall man, broad in the shoulders, a thick middle and a lumber jack’s powerful arms. He had spent his younger days running a family owned multinational timber company in the North Country, it had made him rich. He was very rich. He now owned rental properties. He looked at John with his steel blue eyes suddenly smiling. His white hair was thick, hard to comb, tending to stand away from his head, which made him look like an upright lion considering dinner. His smile always made Jack feel a little like a slow gazelle.

When I said ‘compact’, I meant The Mayflower Compact. I heard about it from Bob Higgins. You remember him. He represented Pittsfield for a while.

John recalled a thick waisted man who had died last year from complications with diabetes. He’d been a legislator and was a conspiracy enthusiast. He was always talking about the Trilateral Commission plans for the world or the truths about the Bavarian Illuminati. Bob said that the Compact, which was signed in Plymouth in 1620 and later put on display in Faneuil Hall, had disappeared when the British evacuated Boston in March of 1776.

What happened to it?

No one knows. That’s why it’s called a mystery. But if it were found, it would be priceless. A significant early American document like that could fetch twenty million or more at auction.

He was right about that, too. It would be priceless. John thought about that day when it was set out on a table inside the old boat. It was November 11, 1620, on board the Mayflower. Forty-one adult men sign the Compact, which was an agreement that established the Plymouth Colony and more importantly, established it with a government selected by the people. It was the first step in a path leading to the Constitution. Even John’s ancestor, John Billington, had signed it, although that didn’t stop the other surviving signers from seeing him hanged for murder in 1630. Copies were made and a printed version appeared, but the original copy disappeared into the mists of time.

What makes you think it was still in existence in 1776?

Barley started a fresh glass of scotch. They used to hang up all sorts of important documents on display. The Declaration of Independence, for instance. I read the diary of Waitstill Smollett. He was the building manager of Faneuil Hall. He wrote that it was hanging there the day before Knox put Washington’s guns on Dorchester Heights. When that happened, the British began their evacuation, tout-suite. Smollett was old and loved the building more than his King, so he remained behind. When the dust settled, he went in and lo and behold, the framed original was gone.

John ordered another beer. Where did the British go when they left Boston?

First the evacuees went to Nova Scotia. Some stayed there, hoping to wait out the rebellion and go back to New England. The rest went home to England. But the Compact never reached England.

Before John could ask an obvious question, Barley waved him down. We know it never reached there because it was an important document relating to the colonies. It would have been valuable propaganda against the rebels, and at least archived. But it never was. If it was in a soldier’s backpack, sooner or later, someone would have noticed its value and sold it. But it never hit the market.

So, one could assume it’s somewhere in Nova Scotia.

Yes, but I went up there each of the past three summers. You’d like Halifax, Jack, lots of lovely lasses, good beer and they put out enough food for breakfast to carry you all day. Barley called him Jack and was the only one who had Jack privileges as far as John Upham was concerned. He said that every man needs to have one friend named Jack or Jake, and he was the Jack.

Besides counting threads on bed sheets and ceiling tiles, what did you find?

Enough to tell me that it was no longer in Halifax, but that it might have been taken away by a man named Thomas Maynard and his accomplice, Josiah Carter. The diary of Captain Horace Whipple, who was dying during the evacuation, notes that he charged them to remove the Compact and pack it with his belongings. Maynard and Carter were two burglars known to Whipple, who himself had been something of a policeman in Boston during the siege. Whipple, Carter and Maynard sailed out together and arrived in Halifax, but Whipple only lived another month. He was too sick to survive a passage to England, so he chose to die on dry ground. I found his grave up there. I felt like I was looking at the trail, only it had grown cold. Carter and Maynard were suspected of various robberies, but hid behind Whipple. When the good Captain died within two days of arrival, they disappeared, along with his valuables.

Did they go on to England?

Alas, no. The affidavit of Sergeant Henry Makepeace, who was another policeman type, relates that he was charged by the magistrate with a warrant to seize Maynard and Carter, together with personal effects removed from Whipple, and return them to court in Halifax. Now Maynard and Carter knew that if they were caught, they were as good as hanged, so they lit off in a little ship, with a hired crew that was running black market goods into New England. Makepeace tracked them as far as Portsmouth Harbor, but even in plain clothes, he dared not pursue them alone, and could not count on the help of the locals to round them up, what with the rebellion and all.

So those two came to New Hampshire.

Yes, they reached Portsmouth in May of 1776, and settled in. Before long, they had run out of rum money, and started to sell off Whipple’s goods, until they got to the last piece of treasure, the Compact. They tried to sell it to the rebels in Boston. Maynard wrote a letter and posted it off to the new Governor in Boston. But what with the war being on, it was a while before a reply came back. By then, Carter and Maynard were committing burglaries to make ends meet. They almost got caught, and ran off again. This time, they hit the house of Michael Worthington on the way out of town and stole a purse of gold. Worthington got a posse and chased them, but the trail grew cold in Loudon. That was in August, 1776.

They reached Merrimack County? Jack asked.

Technically, and geographically speaking, yes, but that was part of Rockingham County at that time. They went to ground somewhere around here. They had a falling out between themselves the next year, and Carter took off. He was found later in Boston, up to his old tricks again. They identified him, sent him to Portsmouth, where he was tried, convicted and hanged in October, 1776.

What about Maynard?

I believe he changed his name to Timothy Manners, and moved up to Warren, where he became a small time farmer and local squire. He died in the early 1800s.

What about the Compact?

The funny thing is, the records in Boston show that Carter was asked about the letter that Maynard sent, trying to sell the Compact back. He denied knowing about it until he was sent to Portsmouth. He sent a letter to the Committee of Safety, which was running the state, but they paid him never no mind.

Did you see the letter?

I was over at the State Archives today, looking at it. The Secretary of State was very interested, so he gave me access and I was able to make copies of it. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded photocopy of the document. I watched him put on his little reading glasses.

It says I, Josiah Carter, et cetera, innocent, didn’t do it, et cetera. Here it is, ‘I am aware that ye seekest the Mayflower Compact. Know ye well that I am possesseth of certaine knowledge as to its whereabouts and might afford thee that knowledge in return for clemency.’ See what was added at the bottom?

John looked at the copy. ‘I know verily that this man is a renowned thief and mountebank. He deserves no clemency, and if convicted, should be immediately hanged, for he will receive no mercy on this earth. Let him earnestly pray for his forgiveness in the fires of Hell. –MW’

Meseach Weare is the MW. He was our first governor.

That’s a great mystery, Barley, but what does this have to do with me? He knew the answer to that without asking. He was about to be sucked into Barley’s treasure hunt and there was no stopping it. The Compact was now the old man’s white whale and he would be the dutiful crew.

Did you see that he called him a mountebank? That was a great word that has been lost. Well, Jack, are you busy right now?

Upham had a humble practice in real estate law, condominium law and zoning.

Do you have anything urgent at the moment?

A couple of closings tomorrow.

What about the day after tomorrow?

I’m clear on Monday, why? Once again, John already knew the answer to that question before he asked it.

I’m retaining your services at full rate. Barley reached into his jacket, removed a packet of fifty hundred dollar bills, handing it to John.

John waved him off. Take it, Jack, I need to retain you for research. You investigate titles all the time. This is right up your alley. Find out everything you can about the late Timothy Manners of Warren, alias Thomas Maynard of Boston.

John took the money and scribbled out a receipt for the cash retainer. A week later, he made a trip to North Haverhill for the county land records and Hanover, to read the early histories of Warren, which led into late Monday afternoon’s snowstorm and icy highway.

CHAPTER TWO

Barley met John in his office. It was a quiet place in an old building with an even older receptionist who was shared by two other lawyers. John had a folder ready, with documents broken down into manila folders. He opened a fresh bottle of scotch, poured a glass for Barley picking up his own coffee mug.

John was a lean man, standing just over six feet tall, graying hair parted down the middle, a bushy mustache and a wise look in his eyes suggesting he was a willing listener. He preferred tweed jackets and bowties, which gave him a look of an earlier era.

Timothy Manners bought a small farm in Warren in September, 1776. He was a lousy farmer. This is not unexpected, as his land was too poor for farming. In mid-1777, he disappeared for a time. According to William Travers, a local historian writing in 1887, Manners probably went through the lines to Philadelphia. He might have been trying to sell the Compact, although Travers wasn’t aware of that. He returned with a pile of money.

So do you think that he sold the Compact in Philadelphia? To whom?

Not necessarily. I think he couldn’t get a good price, so he held on to it. He might have reverted to his old ways, conducted a series of profitable burglaries, escaped through the lines again returning home, richer and still holding the Compact.

If he had it, why didn’t he try to sell it later, to Massachusetts?

I suspect that he might have been afraid they would link him to Carter’s criminal history and hang him as well. If he couldn’t sell it, he was stuck with the old rag.

Parchment. It’s on parchment. Barley noted, wagging a finger at John from the hand holding the tumbler of scotch.

Okay, stuck with the old skin.

So what happened next?

He bought a new house near the square in Warren and opened it as a tavern and a roadhouse for the stages. That means a carriage house with a barn for a change of horse. The tavern would have tables on the first floor, with food and drink for travelers and bunk rooms upstairs. He made a good living, maybe picking pockets now and then, until he died in 1817. Then again, maybe he didn’t pick pockets and was just making good money by hard work. He was able to marry a local woman and raise a family, so he was probably honest enough. His oldest son, Solomon Manners, inherited the business. John pulled a folder, opened it and read from his notes.

"Solomon Manners ran the tavern until 1842, when he turned it over to Edward Merrifield, his son in law. Young Merrifield ran it until 1873, when he sold the house to a cousin and