The Meriwether Murder

by Malcolm Shuman

  “This Neelly sounds pretty shady,” Pepper said. “All that business about having to round up horses that strayed. Wasn’t he supposed to stick with Lewis and guard him?”

  “Yes, he was. And there are some very strange things about Neelly. Shall we drive over to the grave?”

  We got back into the Blazer and followed the Mazda two hundred yards along a circular drive to the big obelisk. Dorcas stopped her car and got out again.

  “The sign here gives the details of the inscription,” she explained, pointing to a metal sign in front of us. I strained to read the inscription in the gloom:

  MERIWETHER LEWIS

  1774–1809

  Beneath this monument erected under legislative Act by the state of Tennessee, A.D. 1848, reposes the dust of Meriwether Lewis, a captain in the United States Army, private secretary to President Jefferson, senior commander of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and governor of the Territory of Louisiana.

  In the Grinder house, the ruins of which are still discernible, 230 yards from this spot, his life of romantic endeavor and lasting achievement came tragically to its close on the night of Oct 11, 1809.

  Great care was taken to identify the grave. George Nixon, Esq., an old surveyor, had become very early acquainted with the locality. He pointed out the place; but to make doubly sure, the grave was reopened and the upper portion of the skeleton examined and such evidence found as to leave no doubt of the place of interment.

  “It’s from the report by the Tennessee legislature’s committee, which was commissioned to investigate and establish the monument,” Dorcas said. “They didn’t even get the date right: The governor died the morning of the eleventh, not that night.”

  “How was the skeleton identified?” I asked.

  “He was buried in his Army uniform, which he must have had in his pack. They found a brass button from his uniform coat,” she said. “There was a hole in the back of the skull, although the skull itself was said to be in a state of decay. And the blacksmith who made the nails for the coffin identified them.”

  “So there was time to make a coffin?” Pepper asked.

  “Oh, yes. The blacksmith lived fifteen miles away, and the accounts say a coffin was made from an oak tree on the Grinder place, so there was obviously a period of several days before the governor was put into the ground. Time for the tree to be hewn into planks, time for nails to be made, and time for the justice of the peace to assemble a jury for the inquest.”

  I looked up at the obelisk. The twenty-foot-high plinth, set on a square granite base, had been broken off near the top, giving the impression of something unfinished.

  “It symbolizes the governor’s life,” Dorcas explained. “That’s why the sculptor, Lemuel Kirby, truncated the obelisk.”

  “What about the inquest?” Pepper said. “Are the records in the courthouse?”

  Dorcas shook her head. “In the early days of Maury County, coroner’s juries didn’t record their findings with the county clerk. The records of this case would have been kept in the private docket book of the jury foreman, Samuel White-sides. They probably still exist.”

  “You’ve seen them?” Pepper asked.

  Dorcas looked away. “Not personally. They’re valuable family heirlooms. I’m not sure which member of the family has them now. But I can assure you, they say nothing surprising. The jury was unable to come to any certain conclusion, given the circumstances.”

  I walked forward, across the closely mowed grass and halted in surprise.

  “There are other graves here,” I said, staring down at the little square of granite under my foot.

  “Of course,” Dorcas said, as if I should have known. “Fifty or sixty. Including the grave of the post rider, Robert Smith, though his is one of those marked UNKNOWN.”

  I looked closely at the ground and, true enough, several of the little squares in the grass had the word UNKNOWN in place of a name. None, however, bore a date.

  “Why aren’t there any upright stones, with dates and inscriptions?” I asked.

  Dorcas snorted.

  “Ask the Park Service. They took them all down a few years ago and stored them in the equipment shed.” She jerked her head toward the entrance to the park. “One more example of our glorious federal bureaucracy that knows better than anybody else how to deal with history.”

  It was my turn to smile. I was starting to like the little woman.

  “Just look,” she cried indignantly. “The American flag: It’s pitch-dark now, or close to it, and the flag is still up. They don’t even send anybody here to take it down. And the ranger isn’t on duty but half a day. At the grave of one of Americas’s greatest heroes!”

  “Must be money,” I mumbled.

  “Money? They have plenty for a whole corps of archaeologists to sit on their dignity over in Atlanta. I’ve talked to other researchers. The National Park Service is a top-heavy disgrace, in my opinion.”

  I was beginning to love the little lady.

  “Then I suppose,” Pepper ventured, “the governor would feel right at home.”

  Dorcas shot her an angry look and then realized what she was saying and nodded.

  “You are right, my dear. He suffered in his lifetime due to bureaucratic government bungling. It’s just a pity it has to continue after his death.”

  “These graves,” I began, “do they all postdate the Lewis burial?”

  Dorcas shrugged. “So far as I know. The place was pretty much deserted until the 1840s. Then there developed some sentiment to properly commemorate the governor’s life and an attempt was made to relocate his resting place and erect a suitable monument.”

  I stared up again at the lonely granite finger. “But I guess by that time most of the old-timers who remembered the event were gone.”

  “Yes, mostly,” she said. “Plus, there was a move to take land away from Maury County and create a new county and name it after the governor—as if we in Maury hadn’t done enough.”

  “So this isn’t Maury anymore,” Pepper said.

  “That is correct,” Dorcas said. “It is now Lewis County, which was formed in 1843. We have all the original courthouse records in Columbia. But in Lewis County, they’d like to think they have a monopoly on any investigation of the governor’s death. You should have seen them last year when they held that silly inquest in the county seat.”

  “A new inquest?” Pepper and I said together.

  Dorcas Drew gave a little laugh.

  “Of course. Did you think you were the only people interested in the way the governor died?”

  As if in confirmation, a single white car emerged from the direction of the parkway and sat, motor running, in front of the replica cabin.

  “You can find the story in the Lewis County newspaper,” she said vaguely. “It’s in the Hohenwald Library. That’s the county seat. It’s only about eight miles from here, on Highway 20.”

  “Do you remember what prompted this?” I asked.

  “The usual,” she said. “Someone from the outside who wanted publicity.”

  Pepper and I looked at each other.

  “Pringle,” I said and Pepper nodded.

  “I think that was the name,” Dorcas confirmed. “You know him?”

  “He’s a retired dentist who runs around exhuming famous people,” Pepper told her. “He gets a lot of press attention.”

  “This one fizzled,” Dorcas said. “The Park Service wasn’t interested.”

  She checked her wristwatch. “Well, it’s dark now …”

  “Yes, we appreciate your time,” I said. “Just a couple more questions before you go.”

  The little woman cocked her head. “Yes?”

  “What do you think about Lewis’s state of mind when he reached Grinder’s? Was he mentally unstable or was there some organic cause?”

  Dorcas Drew stared at me for a second, as if trying to decide her answer, and her brows went up a fraction of an inch.

  “So many people have writte
n about that I’m sure I couldn’t say. Thomas Jefferson later claimed that he had detected a moodiness in the governor as a young man, but this was entirely after the fact, and we simply must distrust Mr. Jefferson’s motives. And even if the governor was moody, so what?”

  We waited and Dorcas sighed.

  “There are a number of theories. Some say the governor was driven to drink by his problems with the War Department. They use the fact that he was court-martialed while in the Army on a charge of berating a superior officer while he was drank. They seldom remind us that he was acquitted, or that even his worst enemy, Frederick Bates, never accused him of insobriety. On the other hand, Captain Russell, at Fort Pickering, mentions that he restricted the governor to wine and later accuses Neelly of encouraging him to drink hard liquor on the trail.”

  “Well,” Pepper said, “there are lots of organic conditions that could cause a person to drink to get relief.”

  “Precisely,” Dorcas said. “And here’s where the trail grows murky.”

  “There are a lot of contenders for a likely illness,” I surmised.

  Dorcas nodded. “Too many, and he would quite likely have drank alcohol to relieve the symptoms of any one of them.”

  I had my notebook out then, but in the darkness the page was a white blur.

  “One theory is that he suffered from malaria,” Dorcas began. “An eminent physician has traced his symptoms and declared that the culprit. Well, a lot of people suffered from malaria back then and he did have bouts of chills and fever. I can only say it’s plausible.”

  “Next candidate?” I asked.

  “Less flattering, I’m afraid. A second medical expert declares it was the last stage of syphilis, and he even points to the night the governor allegedly contracted the disease. It was in August of 1805, in the Rocky Mountains, from a Shoshone woman.”

  “Really,” Pepper said. “You mean there’s proof?”

  “Of the entirely negative type,” Dorcas sniffed. “We know the men of the expedition made free with the Indian women, because the captains noted it. But the captains never indicated in their journals that they themselves indulged.”

  “Well, they wouldn’t, would they?” Pepper ventured.

  “Negative evidence,” Dorcas huffed. “Our expert’s sole proof is that the governor was away from his men with some Indians and thus had an opportunity to become infected. I hardly think it would stand in a court of law.”

  “Other theories?” I asked.

  “Mercury,” Dorcas offered. “It was one of the standard treatments for syphilis in those days. Ingestion of too much mercury produces symptoms of mental derangement. The governor and Lieutenant Clark routinely treated their infected men with mercury. Presumably, if the governor was infected, he might have treated himself. Or he might have ingested the chemical accidentally, from handling it.”

  I scribbled Mercury across my pad and hoped I’d be able to read it when I transcribed my notes.

  “And then there’re all the various poisons,” Dorcas said airily. “If some enemy in St. Louis was trying to kill him, they might have put something in his food.”

  “Like his servant Pernier?” Pepper said.

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “What happened to Pernier afterward?” Pepper asked.

  “Nobody knows,” Dorcas said. “He visited Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, presumably to collect some money Lewis owed him, and then he drops out of history. Some members of the Lewis family claimed that he went to see the governor’s mother and she accused him of killing her son, and that Pernier cut his own throat afterward, but there’s no proof.”

  “Tell me,” Pepper asked, “what did this legislative committee think about his death? They were a lot closer to it than we were.”

  “Oh, they thought he was murdered. But they didn’t know by whom. As you are aware, there’s no shortage of candidates. But around here …” she leaned closer, as if the stones might overhear, “people have always thought it was a local and that the motive was robbery.”

  “Somebody like Grinder?” Pepper asked.

  “He was a prime suspect. It was so convenient for him not to have been there when it happened. Or so his wife claimed. He had a bad reputation.”

  “I still like Neelly,” Pepper said.

  “Yes, a good many people do. After the burial, he took the governor’s pistols and rifle and tomahawk, and the governor’s brother had to made a special trip down a year later to reclaim them from Neelly’s wife. Neelly was fired as Indian agent the next year. But we’ll never know the truth.” She sighed again. “ The governor will remain buried beneath this stone and his spirit will never rest.”

  The white car by the cabin hadn’t moved for five minutes and I could still hear the low hum of its engine.

  “Because,” she went on, turning on me like an angry bird protecting its nest, “there is not the slightest possibility that the governor survived Grinder’s Stand and made his way downriver to Baton Rouge. So if that’s why you’re here, you’re both wasting your time. I told Shelby that yesterday and I told that other man the same thing when he called before, asking all those questions about Robert Grinder and whether the body buried here was the governor’s.”

  “This other man,” I said. “Do you remember anything about him?”

  “No,” she snapped. “It’s been five years or more. I suppose he gave his name, but I didn’t pay any attention. He said he was from Louisiana and he was interested in the Grinder family records. He had some far-fetched notion such as the one Shelby mentioned, about the governor not being buried here. I told him he was quite mistaken.”

  “That’s all?”

  “He said he wanted to come look through the courthouse records and private genealogical records some of the members of the historical society have. I told him that would be fine. But I never heard from him again.”

  “Did he say anything about himself?” I persisted. “Maybe that he was on a faculty, or what city he was from?”

  “All I remember is that he said he was calling from Louisiana and suggested the governor was buried near Baton Rouge. It was so absurd I didn’t pay much attention after that.”

  “I see.” I turned to Pepper to see if she had anything else to ask, but she only shrugged.

  “Miss Drew,” I asked, “do you think there’s any chance at all you can find the docket book with the inquest records?”

  For an instant I thought she was going to launch into a tirade, but instead her brows just arched up a fraction.

  “I can try. But even if I find it I don’t think there’ll be anything in it that surprises anyone.”

  “Thank you,” I said, handing her one of my cards. “You can call me collect.”

  “How far is it to Columbia?” Pepper asked then.

  “Half an hour,” Dorcas said. “But if you’re looking for a motel, there’s a place, the Deerfield, in Hohenwald. That’s only eight miles.”

  “We appreciate your help,” I told her. “Would you like us to follow you back? It’s dark and you’re alone and—”

  “I’m not alone,” Dorcas said, unzipping her fanny pack and revealing the butt of a revolver. “Believe me.”

  We started back toward our cars and as we walked I saw the white vehicle by the cabin back slowly into the road and then start slowly away, out of the park area. Only when it was almost to the main road did I see its lights go on.

  “You know it’s a crime, don’t you?” Dorcas asked, wheeling on us as she reached her Mazda.

  “Pardon?”

  “The way the government has treated him. Hounding the poor man to death, and then leaving this place in such a disgraceful state.”

  I looked at the outline of the monolith, a milky shape against the night.

  “He made the greatest exploration in American history, and thanks to some clerks in the War Department he died a virtual pauper.”

  She sighed.

  “It seems like somebody could have done someth
ing,” Pepper offered.

  “Oh, they did,” Dorcas said. “Three years after he died all his vouchers were approved and the government paid. Generous of them, don’t you think?”

  Fifteen minutes later, after a ride down a narrow blacktop that threaded its way through the valley, we reached the motel. I thought how cozy a single warm room would be but settled for two, adjoining.

  Once I heard Pepper’s shower running in the next room I called Esme and, surprisingly, got her.

  “Alan, how wonderful to hear your voice. You’re in …”

  “Hohenwald, Tennessee,” I told her and then recounted our conversation with Dorcas Drew. “She doesn’t have much time for our theory,” I said.

  “Yes, well, it wouldn’t be quite as nice to have the place where Meriwether Lewis was almost buried, would it?”

  “So how is Shelby?”

  “That old reprobate. He checked out of the hospital an hour after you left this morning. I pleaded and threatened, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said he had a documents expert to meet at the airport.”

  “So you got permission from the university?”

  “With my legendary charm. The examiner is making a preliminary examination of the will tomorrow. I got the physics department to agree to let him use some of their facilities. Then, if necessary, he’ll take it somewhere else for the other tests.”

  “Where is Shelby?” I asked.

  There was a silence. “He really wasn’t fit to go back to his house by himself.”

  “You mean …”

  “I was a nurse a long time ago. At least, I took a first-aid course.”

  “He’s staying with you.”

  “Alan, it isn’t like it’s something immoral.”

  “Not at all. I’m very happy for you both.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  I gave her the motel’s telephone number and my room.

  “We’ll probably be back tomorrow night,” I said.

  When I’d finished with Esme I called Marilyn at home.

  “Any disasters?” I asked. “And has Digger been fed?”

  “I fed him,” Marilyn reported in her usual clipped tones. “As for disasters, I’ve handled them all. That television woman called and wanted a comment from you about our being fired by Nick DeLage. She wanted to know if the police had talked to you any more about that killing across the river: Seems like they haven’t made any progress. Anyway, I hung up on her.”