The Meriwether Murder

by Malcolm Shuman

  Then there was the woman. She said she was alone here, with her children, but how could he be certain? What if the general had sent a rider, paid off her husband? What if the husband was waiting in the woods, had his rifle leveled at this very moment?

  The man wiped his forehead with an arm. The fever was coming back. He was getting the sweats. God, how could he fight this battle if he was going to be sick?

  A sound on the trail caught his attention and he put his hand on one of the pistols in his belt.

  Who …?

  The bushes parted and a pair of riders emerged. Which way had they come from? Why hadn’t he noticed?

  He rose, swaying, and drew both pieces.

  The men took one look at him, turned their mounts, and spurred away.

  “Is something wrong?” the woman called from behind him.

  “No, madam.” He stuck the pistols back into his belt and sat down again. “There’s nothing wrong.”

  “Do you want some supper?”

  He didn’t answer and a few minutes later she handed him a plate with some corn gruel. He looked down at it.

  What if she’s poisoned it? It would be so easy to put something in it.

  Don’t be insane: You drank her spirits.

  Maybe you were lucky. Don’t take another chance.

  He set the gruel aside.

  “Someone else is coming,” she said from behind him.

  He looked up, reached for his pistols, and kept his hands on their butts as the sound of riders echoed across the clearing.

  It was Pernier and Neelly’s servant.

  He stood up unsteadily and watched the men plod toward the house.

  “Are you alone?” he hailed.

  “Yes, sir,” Pernier replied. “The major hasn’t come.”

  “Do you have powder?” he asked, thinking it would be as well to be prepared.

  “Yes, sir.” Pernier looked perplexed.

  The woman came forward and directed the young Negro boy to take the horses.

  “They can stay in the stable,” she said, and the traveler nodded. Safer for him to be alone. People had been shot in their beds.

  Then he had second thoughts: If the woman was a part of it, she could be trying to isolate him.

  But he was tired. His eyes were closing and he was already trembling from the fever. What could he do?

  He followed her into the single room of the cabin.

  “I’ll fix your bed,” she offered.

  “Madam, I’m used to the floor,” he said, nodding at the split-board flooring. “Have my man bring my bearskin.”

  Pernier handed in the skin.

  “Governor Lewis, do you want me to stay with you?”

  “No, sir, I do not.”

  “Governor—”

  “Good night to you.”

  He closed the door, spread his bearskin, put his pistols on the floor beside him, and lay down.

  God, how he craved sleep, and yet his mind would not be still. Instead, the speech he had so carefully prepared for the Secretary of War raced through his thoughts. He got up. Maybe if he paced a bit, practiced the speech, it would fatigue him enough to make him sleep.

  He rose and began to articulate the words he’d prepared.

  “Mr. Secretary, if my ruination were able to save the nation I would gladly give all that I own. But you must know that there is a grave danger…”

  “Sir, are you well?”

  It was the woman’s voice, calling from outside the door. With a start he realized he’d been enunciating the speech aloud.

  “I am well, madam.”

  He lay down again and this time, when the door opened slowly in the early hours of the chill morning, he was asleep.

  The man Pernier awoke with a start: A gun had been fired outside. As he rose from his blanket another shot exploded nearby. He threw on his trousers, grabbed his pistol, and ran out into the chill mist. The woman was screaming now and there was a sound of struggle near the cabin where the governor was staying. When Pernier reached the cabin the door burst open and two men fell out onto the ground, their bodies locked together. One rose, a dagger in his hand, but Pernier knocked it away. The man swore, pulled a small pistol from his waistband, but Pernier fired at the man’s head. The man coughed and fell onto the ground, writhing, his face a mass of blood and torn flesh.

  Pernier looked down at the man’s victim. Even in the grayness he could make out the face of Governor Lewis.

  He leaned down, put his ear over the governor’s mouth, and felt Lewis’s breath. Ragged but present. The governor was still alive. But he was badly wounded, his head a mass of blood.

  The woman came up then, holding a candle.

  “In the name of God, what is it?” she cried, holding her shawl closed with a trembling hand.

  Pernier seized the candle and held it near the dead man’s face.

  A stranger.

  “Do you know him?” he demanded.

  “No.”

  “Madam, do not lie.”

  “I swear by the Almighty.”

  “Then he was sent here.”

  “By whom?”

  “Never mind. Madam, this is what we must do: We must undress this man and put his clothes on the man who still lives.”

  “Are you insane?”

  But Pernier was already dragging the dead man around the end of the cabin.

  A rush of footsteps announced Neelly’s Negro servant, but Pernier blocked the man with his body.

  “There has been a tragedy. You must ride back along the trail and find Major Neelly.”

  “A tragedy? But what?”

  Pernier pointed at the fallen Lewis. “The governor is dead.”

  “Good Lord.”

  “Go!” Pernier commanded, and only when the man had saddled and ridden away did he turn back to the trembling Mrs. Grinder.

  “Now listen to me. What I am telling you must be between us and your husband. The life of a great man depends on it.”

  The Grinder children and the Negro slave boy and girl were staring from the door of the other cabin now, and Pernier lifted Lewis under the shoulders and carried him to a spot away from their gaze.

  “Help me change their clothes.”

  “But this makes no sense. The law—”

  “I will represent the law. I promise you, madam, that I answer to people who can do you infinite good or harm. The man on the ground before you is the governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory. I was sent to protect him and I have failed. But I swear to God I shall not fail again. Where is your man?”

  “On Swan River, twenty miles off. He sleeps there during harvest.”

  “Send the black boy for him. In the meantime, you and the girl must take this man to a safe place in the woods. When your husband comes, tell him what happened. Tell him that the government will pay a reward for his attentions. But this man must not die, nor must it be known that he has survived, else other assassins will be sent after him—and you.”

  “Before God, sir—”

  “Madam, do as I say.”

  They unclothed both men and then dressed each in the other’s garments. When they were done, Pernier asked for a shovel and, in a clearing a hundred yards from the cabins, dug a shallow grave.

  It all hinged on Neelly, of course. The man was a drunkard and a coward. He had clearly dawdled in recovering the lost horses because he didn’t want to be here when the deed was done.

  It was on his cowardice that Pernier placed all his hopes.

  Now all Pernier could do was wait.

  Neelly came just after dawn, unsteady in his saddle, leading the two pack animals, with his servant chattering away excitedly as they entered the clearing. Pernier got up and went to meet them.

  “Pernier, what the devil’s happened?” Neelly asked, slurring his words slightly.

  Pernier assumed his servant’s attitude.

  “A terrible tragedy, Major, sir. The governor is dead.”

  “Dead? By God, man, how
did it happen?”

  There was a bit too much bluster in Neelly’s tone, but Pernier could tell that it masked fear, and that was good.

  “From all I can tell, sir, he destroyed himself.

  “What?” The idea seemed to hit Neelly like a cannonball. “You mean…?”

  “I heard a terrible row, and shots, and we found the governor dying on the ground. His pistols had been discharged. He begged us to put an end to his pain.”

  “And he did this to himself?”

  “It would appear so.”

  Neelly swayed and for an instant Pernier thought he was about to topple from the saddle.

  “Did the woman see this?”

  “Yes, sir. She says that he was talking to himself, that he all but admitted it after the shots, as he lay wounded.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Gone for her husband.”

  Neelly looked over at his own servant, but the man only shrugged.

  “Where is the body?” the major asked.

  “Buried,” Pernier declared. “It seemed indecent to leave him exposed. I can show you the grave.”

  He walked ahead of Neelly’s horse to the place where he’d dug the shallow grave and, reaching down, began to scrape away the dirt and stones with his hands.

  Dear God, let him be too drunk to care. Let him be afraid. Let him be anything but a conscientious man …

  His hands came to the body’s clothing and he cleared away enough dirt to expose the leather coat the governor had been wearing, but which was now on the body of the man who had tried to kill him.

  “Shall I go further?” he asked, and began to clear away the neck area, and then the head. The face, with its awful, disfiguring wound, had just been uncovered when Neelly cried out from his horse, “Stop. Enough. Cover him back up.”

  They returned to the cabins and Neelly dismounted, wavering in the morning sun.

  “I’ll have to make a report. I am the representative of the government here. Suicide, eh?”

  Pernier went into the cookhouse, now deserted by the Grinder children, who had been herded away by their mother, and found a jug. He brought it out to the major.

  “Something to drink, sir?”

  Neelly grunted and yanked it out of the other man’s hand.

  It was easy to tell what he was thinking: The governor had been acting in a deranged fashion, had even talked about killing himself, so suicide would be a believable verdict. If the real murderer had gotten away, so much the better. There would be no outcry, no demand to punish the guilty. Yes, this would work out very well, and Neelly would collect his fee.

  By midmorning Neelly was gone, on the way to Nashville with the news, and the woman had returned with her husband, a rough-looking man with a scowl.

  “Keep the governor out of sight,” Pernier ordered. “You will be paid. When he has recovered, an escort will be sent for him.”

  “And his things?” the man asked.

  “The major took them on the packhorses. His personal belongings are to stay with him. I know of nothing of any importance.”

  “There’s some land I’m looking to buy,” the man Grinder said.

  “Handle this and you’ll buy it,” Pernier promised. “But mind you this: When the inquest is held, you are to swear to the story I told you. The man in the grave is Governor Lewis. Show him to the justice of the peace, and then rebury him. But there must be no hint that Lewis lives.”

  Grinder, who did not look like a man who would be bothered by false swearing, nodded.

  “I’ll take him to the Chickasaws when he gets better. He was awake when I stopped to look at him.”

  “But saying crazy things,” the woman said. “His head wound is terrible. I’m afraid it may have knocked all the sense out of him.”

  “Then take care of him until he regains it,” Pernier said. “But I have a journey to complete.”

  And more mountains and forests and rivers to traverse, until he came to the hills of Virginia and the great white hall of Monticello and the man who waited inside for his report. He wondered what that man would say.

  EPILOGUE

  It was the next day and I’d insisted on leaving the hospital. I was stiff, and there was a gauze bandage on my left arm where I’d been singed, but I was on the mend and it was fall, my favorite season, when the nip in the air made me feel alive and even young.

  Pepper and I had driven over to Désirée and climbed the mound to stand by the old tombs. Nick DeLage had drawn in his claws and, I heard, was sulking in his office, now that it seemed likely that his aunt would have her ancestral property restored. Kech had backed off in the face of a potential embarrassment and was saying nothing, though I had already received what I considered an unconscionably large bill from Dogbite. Marvin Ghecko had come to visit me in the hospital and actually brought me a box of candy. Even La Bombast seemed reasonably mollified, though she made it clear that murders and near murders were no excuse for not meeting Corps deadlines.

  I gazed down at the disheveled old brick crypts and the names that had started it all: Charles Franklin Hardin, John Clay Hardin, Sarah Elizabeth Hardin, Louis …

  “You think Pernier was really working for Jefferson, then,” she said.

  “It’s one scenario,” I told her. “It could have happened a lot of ways. I just think Lewis survived Grinder’s Stand and was hidden with the Indians, whoever arranged things.”

  “But Jefferson would have known.”

  “Probably.”

  “And he never did anything. Why?”

  “For the same reason he protected Wilkinson,” I said. “It would have opened a can of worms. Jefferson was a politician. He decided to let sleeping dogs lie. The country was on the verge of another war with England, Spain was hovering in the west … He opted for the lesser evil.”

  “What a terrible decision to have to make. But why would Lewis have left the Chickasaws?”

  “We can’t know. Maybe he was found out and somebody else tried to kill him. Remember the story about Pernier killing himself?”

  She nodded.

  “Maybe they chased down Pernier and killed him and then did some digging into the facts around the case and decided to make sure Lewis was really dead.”

  “Or maybe Jefferson started the rumor about Pernier’s dying to help him disappear and get away from them,” she suggested.

  “Could be.” I looked out at the brown waters. “I like to think Lewis, even with amnesia, had some kind of memory of the documents he buried at Pickering and set out to get them.”

  “And lost his way?”

  “Something like that. Or he may have fallen in with a crowd that left him in Natchez, instead of his taking the trail north to Pickering. The important thing is he ended up on the river and, eventually, in it. Maybe courtesy of another one of Wilkinson’s friends.”

  “Alan …” There was alarm on her face. “What if he wasn’t amnesic at all?”

  “You mean what if he and Pernier cooked up the whole business?”

  “Yes. What if it was a way to protect Lewis until he could escape from his enemies? What if, when he realized Jefferson wasn’t going to help him, he just gave up?”

  I nodded. It was the one scenario I’d tried to put out of my mind.

  “He belongs here,” I said. “It’s where he ended up spending most of his life. But I guess there’ll be a push to disinter him now.”

  “Not exactly,” Pepper said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We did some preliminary examinations yesterday—myself, David, and Marvin Ghecko—just to see what we could see …”

  “And?”

  “There aren’t any bones in there.”

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “You know how these old tombs are. The bricks fall out, the concrete crumbles, and animals go to work.”

  “An animal got the remains?”

  “Or someone else took them.”

  “Like Flowers?”

 
Another shrug. “I don’t know. I just know they aren’t there.”

  “Jesus. And that means the only way to really prove it would be to disinter the remains at the national monument in Tennessee, and the Park Service isn’t about to allow that.”

  “No. They have a vested interest in ignorance.”

  I sighed. “That’s a hell of a thing.”

  “A hell of a thing,” she repeated. “Alan …”

  She half turned to face me, but I was still staring at the broken bricks.

  “Hey, do you know what day this is?” I asked.

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “The tenth of October,” I said. “The day he came to Grinder’s. A hundred and eighty-nine years ago exactly.”

  “Alan …”

  Her hand found mine and squeezed and I raised my head to look into her eyes.

  “There’s something I have to say.”

  A little chill ran through me. It had been too good to be true.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Alan, sometimes people hurt other people when they aren’t honest. But they aren’t honest sometimes because they don’t want to hurt people. Does that make sense to you?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Like Shelby: He told us somebody ran him off the road on the way to Tennessee. But he admitted to Esme yesterday that he really had been drinking. The first time since he went on the wagon. It was because he was scared of seeing Dorcas again. He felt too much for Esme and yet he didn’t know what seeing Dorcas would bring back. So unconsciously he figured a way to keep from having to see her. And lied because he didn’t want to hurt anybody that cared about him.”

  “I wondered about that,” I said. “But he seems okay now.”

  “That’s not what I’m trying to say. Alan, I haven’t been completely honest with you about something, either.”

  She’d waited for me to get out of the hospital to lower the boom …

  “Pepper …”

  She put a hand on my arm. “I blew you off when you asked how I found you at Rosemary’s. I thought maybe I could keep from having to answer. But if I lied it would just complicate things.”