He needed to get back to Jackson, Tennessee, where his wife and two children had taken up temporary lodging.
In a brief letter written to his wife just four days before his murder, Inspector Lamberth lamented that he would be delayed in Gadsden, Alabama, for a few days longer than expected. “I am here and am unable to say how long I will be here. Got my case before grand jury but the prisoner is not here yet. So guess I’ll be here for another day at least.” Unbeknown to Inspector Lamberth, he was delaying a meeting with a man who would take his life. By August 15, his grand jury testimony completed, Inspector Lamberth headed for Stantonville. He arrived early on the afternoon of August 16, calculating he could finish his investigation with only one more night’s lodging away from home. He needed to get back to Jackson, Tennessee, where his wife and two children had taken up temporary lodging. In the days before paved roads and rapid travel times, Inspectors on assignments lasting as briefly as two weeks and as close as 50 miles from home often found temporary quarters for their entire family. Inspector Lamberth routinely took his wife and children with him on such assignments. As evening fell upon Stantonville, Inspector Lamberth checked into the Elam Hotel, just across the street and two lots east of the town’s Post Office, which was situated in a small general store called, “The Mercantile.” Postmaster Harkins, a burly man with a questionable reputation in the community, was also the store’s proprietor. In a morbid twist of irony, advertisements in the small Post Office and store boasted a “complete line of coffins and caskets.” His neighbors, William C.