The Linda Wolfe Collection

by Linda Wolfe

  Many of the neighbors knew by now that the speech doctor was desperately ill—Lucretia had asked the members of her congregation to pray for him—and at around ten P.M. Boutcher, the closest neighbor, decided that he ought to volunteer his services to the afflicted family. Entering the house unannounced, he clambered upstairs to the sickroom, where he saw Dr. Phillips hovering over William. He saw the boarder, too. Lino was holding a pocket-watch and taking the sick man’s pulse.

  “Fifty-five beats in the minute,” Boutcher heard him announce. to Dr. Phillips. Then, a few moments later, “Now it’s forty-five.”

  The poultry farmer was surprised that the Mexican knew how to take a pulse and told him so. “I studied medicine for two years,” Lino informed him huffily.

  Ignoring the man’s prickliness, Boutcher looked down at the anguished face of his neighbor and whispered that he didn’t think William was going to live until sunrise.

  Lino started to cry. Or at least he seemed to be crying. His shoulders shook and sobbing sounds issued from his throat. But there were no tears in his eyes, Boutcher noticed. None at all.

  Around midnight Dr. Knight stopped by again, and Dr. Phillips and Lucretia retired. By dawn, William was dead. Phillips gave Lucretia the news and commiserated with her over the terrible case of cholera morbus, the worst he’d ever seen, that had taken away her husband.

  It didn’t occur to him that William might have died unnaturally, might have been poisoned with arsenic. But even if such a thought had crossed Phillips’s mind, there would have been no way for him to be certain, not even if he had autopsied the body, for even upon postmortem examination, arsenic poisoning could not be conclusively detected. Not then. Not for another five years, when in 1836 an English chemist named James Marsh published a method of converting arsenic in body tissues into a poisonous gas that could be turned back into solid arsenic. Before that, arsenic was the preferred choice of poisoners, for unlike other lethal substances, it was altogether tasteless and thus didn’t arouse suspicion in prospective victims when sprinkled into their food or drink. In ancient Rome it had been widely employed for assassinating political enemies, and in early nineteenth-century France it had proved so useful for dispatching rich relatives that it had been dubbed poudre de succession—inheritance powder. But one of its most common uses, throughout the world and throughout history, was getting rid of an unwanted spouse—particularly a male spouse, or so the public believed, on the theory that women were the primary handlers of food.

  Before Marsh’s accomplishment, there were numerous criminal trials in both England and America of women suspected of flavoring their husbands’ meals with arsenic. Some were accused of administering the poison in small doses over a long period of time, causing the men to die after a few years of prolonged stomach discomfort. Some were accused of administering it in a large dose or two, bringing their spouses to a swift and harrowing end. But these women were rarely convicted, for although physicians and chemists tried doggedly to find a means of identifying arsenic in victims’ organs and occasionally even gave evidence asserting they had done so, their efforts and testimony were at best inconclusive and at times ludicrous. Juries, having little to go on but circumstantial evidence, were prone to accept that victims had died of gastroenteritis—albeit a gastroenteritis accompanied by certain peculiar signs: nerve pain, loss of reflexes, and a rash or skin discoloration.

  Dr. Phillips would have been familiar with some of these cases, most probably with that of Joanna Clue, the Bucks County woman who had been acquitted of poisoning her husband the very week Lino had arrived at the Chapmans’. But, consoling Lucretia and telling her to prepare her husband for burial, he wrote down cholera morbus as the cause of William’s death.

  Lucretia said farewell to William the following day in the dandelion-strewn graveyard of All Saints Church. There were quite a few Chapmans already buried in the yard. One was William’s brother John—William had had a falling out with John’s family and hadn’t wanted them to know he was sick. There were also Chapmans from other families. Anne Chapman, dead since 1790. John Barrett Chapman, dead since 1796. Esther, dead since 1815. So many dead Chapmans. And now her husband. Lucretia, dressed all in black, stood at his gravesite and listened somberly to the prayers of the Reverend Scheetz.

  She was standing alongside Dr. Knight. He’d been the one to escort her from her carriage to the grave. She’d wanted Lino to do it. But her friend Sarah Palethorpe had come by the night before to take the boarding students away, and when Lucretia mentioned having Lino walk alongside her at the funeral, Sarah said he wouldn’t do.

  “Why would Don Lino not do?” Lucretia had asked. Upstairs, William’s body was being washed by his devoted student John Bishop, but the house was permeated with his odor.

  “Because he’s a stranger,” Sarah, a handkerchief pressed to her nose, had said. “A stranger, and undersized.”

  Was he really so short? Lucretia rarely thought about Lino’s height. Only about that other great difference between them—their ages—and how he was closer in years to her daughter Mary, who was standing next to him now.

  She’d asked Sarah if that was all right, if Lino could be Mary’s escort—she’d wanted him at the funeral, even if he couldn’t stand beside her—and Sarah had said, “Yes. I see no impropriety in that.”

  Impropriety—as if Sarah knew something about her and Lino. Or suspected something. But no, if she did, she’d have withdrawn her daughter from the school.

  Reverend Scheetz had finished speaking. The coffin was being lowered into the newly dug grave. A very deep grave. Scheetz had scolded the sexton for digging his graves too shallow, and he’d gone to the opposite extreme this time. Dug right through the loamy clay to the sandy soil beneath. Lucretia heard terrible sounds, the harsh grating of ropes as the coffin descended deeper and deeper, the hard smack of earth on the wooden lid as the grave was closed up. Back home in New England it had all been so different. In the graveyards they put straw on the coffin lids. You didn’t have to hear the smash of soil on wood. In the houses they covered the mirrors with white cloth. You didn’t have to see yourself in mourning. She missed New England. She missed her mother. She even missed Lino, standing so far away from her.

  She didn’t miss William.

  Six

  Betrayal

  July 1831

  TN THE MONTHS TO come Lucretia’s friends and neighbors would obsessively ask themselves if the schoolmistress knew that William had been poisoned and even whether it was possible that she herself had poisoned him. But on the day of William’s funeral they had no idea that the man they called Dr. Chapman had been murdered, let alone any suspicions of his widow. Those who had been at the graveside ceremony returned to Lucretia’s home, where a big funeral supper was laid out, and consoled her in the most affectionate terms. Later, more friends and neighbors arrived, and a few, occupying the beds that had been emptied by the departure of the boarding school students, stayed on for several days to comfort the grieving woman. For her part, she continued to dress in black, albeit topping her outfits with her lilac-trimmed white turban, and at times stared disconsolately out the parlor windows and remarked that even the sun looked gloomy to her.

  Seven days passed. Eight. And then abruptly, covertly, nine days after the funeral, she married Lino. It was a startling thing to do, for it was exceedingly rare to marry so soon after a spouse’s death.

  According to Lucretia, it was Lino who proposed, telling her that William on his deathbed had suggested the boarder marry his widow so that he could die knowing his family would be looked after. Lino had told Lucretia this, then offered marriage in return for her past charity to him. “Lino never forgets a favor,” he’d said. “If you will marry me, I will take you to Mexico. And my mother will never forget what you have done. She has gold mines there, and you shall share a part of them.” Still, those words and the glittering promise they held hadn’t persuaded her. At least not at first. She’d rebuffed Lino, said to him,
“Would it not be more proper for you to marry my daughter Mary?” But he’d declared, “No, it is you, Mrs. Chapman, that I wish to possess—it was you that took me in your door, not knowing who I was.” And when she’d continued to resist, pointing out the impropriety of her marrying anyone so soon after her husband’s death, he’d brushed away her reluctance by saying, “It would be thought nothing of in Mexico.”

  According to Lino, it was Lucretia who proposed, saying simply but demandingly, “Lino, I want you to marry me.” He’d demurred and replied, “Not till I ask my father.” But she hadn’t wanted to wait, and she’d wheedled, “I love you so much” and hugged and kissed him so fervidly that finally, moved by her ardor, he’d agreed.

  Whichever of the two did the importuning, on July 5, 1831, they were married in New York City in a secret ceremony performed by an Episcopalian bishop and witnessed by two strangers. Then, oddly, they parted. Lino took a steamboat south to Pennsylvania. Lucretia took one north to upstate New York. She was heading for the Syracuse home of her sister, Mercy Winslow Green, hoping to persuade Mercy to return with her to Andalusia and run the school while she and Lino made a wedding trip to Mexico to claim his riches.

  She was deeply in love with Lino at the time. That very night, just after arriving in Albany and just before boarding an overnight mail coach that would take her from Albany to Syracuse, she wrote him a breathless letter, one of many passionate communications she would eventually send him. “My Dear Lino,” she wrote, “Very pleasant are the sensations which vibrate through my soul, when thus addressing you (‘My dear Leno [sic]’) for the first time to call you mine! and till death shall separate us! how pleasing, how delightful! And you, dearest Lino, so young, so fond, so noble, and so truly grateful to your Lucretia! My soul would gladly dwell upon you till the time for writing would pass away.

  “The stage is to be ready to leave here at half past ten this evening, so I have but half an hour to say all I wish to my dearest dear as it was nearly 10 o’clock when the boat arrived at Albany.… I would rest myself here for the night, but I recollect your particular request, to return as quick as possible, which I cheerfully comply with, and for this reason have requested to leave here tonight, or else I should not be with my sister tomorrow; I shall make a short stay with her; but will write to you again while with her.

  “I felt very lonesome on board the boat after you left me though I was surrounded by hundreds. The stage has come, and I must bid you goodbye, though very unwillingly; kiss all my dear children for me.

  “I remain yours truly, and for the first time have the pleasure to subscribe myself,

  Lucretia Esposimina”

  The letter written, Lucretia handed it to the driver of a southbound mail coach and stepped into her northbound coach. It was a crude conveyance, its body suspended on heavy leather straps and its interior reeking from the strong odor of the four horses the driver was whipping to their maximum pace—five miles an hour. She could hardly bear to breathe, and worse, the roads the coach was traversing were altogether miserable, mere twists of irregular-shaped logs. As the vehicle bumped along the logs’ rough surface, she quickly became nauseated. So did her fellow passengers. A few said they couldn’t possibly continue the trip and when the coach stopped at a roadside tavern to change horses, they descended to rest up and wait for later transportation. But Lucretia was determined not to coddle herself, not to give in to the motion sickness that was plaguing her. Had she not taken a long and difficult stagecoach ride before, when she had come from Massachusetts to Philadelphia? Of course, she’d been young then, stronger than she was now, less used to comfort. But she had done it, and she could do it again. If she remained in the coach, she should be in Syracuse in twenty-four hours.

  She stayed put, sitting up all night and dozing off as best she could. In the morning she was awakened by ominous thunder. The driver put on a slick rubbery garment, a coat of a waterproof material that a Scottish chemist named Macintosh had recently invented, and Lucretia, her traveling dress rumpled and damp, peered out the window and saw that the sky was darkening again.

  By afternoon torrents of rain were descending, the roads were thick with mud, and the horses were barely able to lift their hooves. Lucretia gazed forlornly at mile after creeping mile of dripping hemlock and pines.

  The rain went on and on, and in the evening the coach was still a good fifty miles from Syracuse. He wouldn’t reach the city that night after all, the driver informed her. He wouldn’t reach it by morning, either. With luck, he’d get there by mid-afternoon.

  She hadn’t eaten since midday. A few hours earlier the driver had given her and the remaining few passengers a chance to get some supper, but she’d been too sick to her stomach to eat. Now she was hungry. But there would be no more stops till morning. Tired and in need of sustenance, she closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep despite the lurching coach and her rumbling stomach.

  The mud-spattered vehicle finally arrived in Syracuse at about one o’clock the next afternoon, and Lucretia was deposited, just in time for the midday meal, at a large hotel called Comstock’s, a grand four-story establishment with balustraded porches and a flag-bedecked cupola. The manager pointed out the inviting dining room, its windows shaded with colorful wallpaper remnants and its tables set with white linen, where waiters were laying out a buffet of oyster pies, smoked hams, roasted pheasants, and canvasback ducks. But although she was starved, instead of entering the dining room Lucretia sat down in the lobby and wrote another letter to Lino. “I have not lain down one minute either night or day, since I took leave of you in New York,” she wrote, “nor have I taken but one meal a day … the bell is now ringing for dinner, and I am politely invited into the dining room; but I refuse to dine, or even call upon my sister, till I have taken the pleasure of writing a brief letter to my fond, to my very dear companion for life.” Then, indulging in the fantasy of how much better shielded from hardship she would have been had Lino accompanied her on her trip, she assured him, “I very well know that if my dear Lino had been with me, he would not have permitted his Lucretia to have rode a second night, all night, without resting on her bed.” His Lucretia. It pleased her to think of herself that way.

  It pleased her, too, to think how soon she could be back home with him if she didn’t dawdle, didn’t take the time to eat a big meal. Asking the manager to get her just a glass of lemonade and a few crackers, she requested that he post her letter with the driver of the next southbound coach, then set out at once to see her sister.

  Lino was long back in Pennsylvania by the time Lucretia left Comstock’s. His trip downriver to Philadelphia had taken him only about eight hours. He’d spent a couple of nights in town—the Cuestas had invited him to be their guest, he’d told Lucretia before they parted—and then, fresh and well-rested, he’d returned to the water, boarded another steamboat, and proceeded to Bucks County.

  Descending from the boat and standing at the Andalusia wharf, that very wharf where just two months earlier he’d been thrown ashore tattered and virtually penniless, he felt pleased with himself. He was no longer shabby. He was wearing a brown suit, one of Watkinson’s modish outfits. He’d been over to the tailor’s during his stay in Philadelphia, been there to order a light-colored lightweight summer suit. But Watkinson had advised against the purchase, saying he might have to charge as much as forty dollars to make a suit from the fabric Lino wanted. Lino had told him scornfully that the price didn’t worry him, that he’d often paid fifty for a suit in that fabric. But the snooty tailor had refused to make the garment. No matter. The brown suit was splendid enough.

  Leaving the river, Lino strolled up the hill and headed toward the Chapman house. When he glimpsed it, that very mansion to which, with a snapping dog at his ankles, he’d come begging for a room, he felt a surge of pride. He was no longer a destitute supplicant. The house was his now. So was the land on which it sat. So, too, for that matter, was Lucretia’s piano, her beds and sofas, her carpets, her horse a
nd carriage, even her jewelry and clothes.

  All these things were Lino’s because in 1831 all that a married woman possessed—her earnings, her real estate, her inheritances, and her personal effects—belonged to her husband. Moreover, if she had been married previously and died without making a will, the children of her previous union could not inherit their father’s property, for that, too, belonged to the man to whom she was wed at the time of her death. Early feminists like the charismatic lecturer Frances Wright were already denouncing such laws as encouraging robbery and possibly even murder. Lino, standing in the road and gazing at the physical manifestations of his good fortune, the graceful mansion, the tree-shaded lawn, the vast play yard that circled down to the road, was about to reap the benefits of those laws. Soon after traversing the play yard and entering the house, he made an inventory of all of Lucretia’s household possessions. A day later he invited two men to the house, introduced them to the servants as the Spanish minister and his secretary, and gave them a large leather trunk to cart away. Inside it were many of William’s expensive morocco-bound books, as well as Lucretia’s ornate silver spoons.

  Up in Syracuse, Lucretia was having trouble locating her sister, for Mercy and her family were no longer at the address she had for them. “They’ve moved from Syracuse,” she was informed by friends of theirs, General and Mrs. Mann. “They’ve moved ten or fifteen miles into the country.”

  Lucretia was bitterly distressed.

  “Spend the night with us,” Mrs. Mann urged her.

  But in her hurry to return to Lino’s arms, Lucretia wouldn’t hear of it. “I should not be able to sleep,” she wailed.

  Mrs. Mann heard the frenzy in her voice and directed her to the home of Mercy’s eldest daughter, a young woman who had married a Syracuse man and was living in town with him.

  Lucretia set out in the direction of her niece’s house at once, walking rapidly despite her fatigue. When she reached her destination, she begged her niece for the indulgence due to an aunt and asked the young woman to drive her to her mother’s place immediately. Mercy’s daughter didn’t own a carriage, but she borrowed one, and by late afternoon aunt and niece were sitting in it and heading for the farmlands outside the city.