Caviar, chopped eggs and onions, fresh salmon, eleven different kinds of cheese and crackers, sliced carrots, snow peas stuffed with cream cheese, crisp cauliflower, and endive with bacon grease dribbled over it completed the warm-ups, as Mim called them. Lunch dazzled everyone. Mim found a divine recipe for lobster ravioli which proved so enticing, no one even mentioned her diet. Arugula salad and a sliver of melon balanced the palate. Those wishing megacalorie desserts gorged on a raspberry cobbler with a vanilla cream sauce or good old devil’s food cake for the chocolate lovers.
Mim had the fruits flown down from New York City, as she kept an account there with a posh food emporium. Finally, everyone’s mood elevated to the stratosphere. Should anyone require a revitalizing liquid after luncheon, a vast array of spirits awaited them.
Susan chose a dry sherry. She declared that the raw wind cut into her very bones. She knew perfectly well that someone had to stampede for the crystal decanters on the silver trays. Lucinda would die before she’d take the first drink, so Susan figured she’d be the one to save Lulu’s life. Miranda declined alcohol, as did Harry and Ellie Wood, a septuagenarian in splendid health.
“I always feel prosperous on a full stomach.” Mrs. Hogendobber accepted a cup of piping coffee from the maid dressed in black with a starched white apron and cap.
“Mim, you’ve outdone yourself. Hear! Hear!” Lulu held up her glass as the other ladies and Kimball did likewise or tapped their spoons to china cups from Cartier.
“A trifle.” Mim acknowledged the praise. It might have been a trifle to her, but it damn near killed the cook. It wasn’t a trifle to Mim either, but by making light of her accomplishments she added to her formidable reputation. She knew not one lady in the room could have pulled off a luncheon like that, much less at the last minute.
“You know Ansley is comatose with grief.” Port, another dear friend of Mim’s, paused as the maid handed her a brandy the color of dark topaz.
“Really?” Ellie Wood leaned forward. “I had no idea she was that fond of Wesley. I thought they were usually at sixes and sevens.”
“They were,” Port crisply agreed. “She’s comatose with grief because she had to stay home. She made me swear that I would call her the instant we finished and tell her everything, including, of course, what we wore.”
“Oh, dear,” Harry blurted out honestly.
“You have youth, Harry, and youth needs no adornment.” Miranda came to her rescue. Harry lacked all clothes sense. If she had an important date, Susan and Miranda would force her into something suitable. Harry’s idea of dressing up was ironing a crease in her Levi 501s.
“I don’t know.” Susan kidded her schoolmate. “We’re thirty-something, you know.”
“Babies.” Port kicked off one shoe.
“Time to have some.” Mim glared at her daughter. Little Marilyn evaded her mother’s demand.
Kimball rubbed his hands together. “Ladies, once again we are indebted to Mrs. Sanburne. I do believe she’s the glue that holds us together. I knew we couldn’t proceed at Mulberry Row without her leadership in the community.”
“Hear. Hear.” More toasts and teaspoons on china cups.
Kimball continued. “I’m not sure what Mim has told you. I called needing her wisdom once again and she has provided me with you. I must ask your indulgence as I review the facts. The body of a man was found facedown in Cabin Four. The back of his skull bore testimony to one mighty blow with a heavy, sharp object like an ax but probably not an ax, or else the bone fragment would have been differently smashed—or so Sheriff Shaw believes. The victim wore expensive clothes, a large gold ring, and his pockets were full of money. I counted out the coins and he had about fifty dollars in his pockets. In today’s money that would be about five hundred. The remains are in Washington now. We will know when he died, his age, his race, and possibly even something about his health. It’s amazing what they can tell these days. He was found under the hearth—two feet under. And that is all we know. Oh, yes, the cabin was inhabited by Medley Orion, a woman in her early twenties. Her birth year isn’t clearly recorded. The first mention of her is as a child, so we can speculate. But she was young. A seamstress. Now, I want you to cast your minds back, back to 1803, since our victim was killed then or shortly thereafter. The most recent coin in his pocket was 1803. What happened?”
This stark question created a heavy silence.
Lucinda spoke first. “Kimball, we didn’t know that a man was murdered. The papers said only a skeleton was unearthed. This is quite a shock. I mean, people speculated but . . .”
“He was killed by a ferocious blow to the head.” Kimball directed his gaze toward Lucinda. “Naturally, Oliver didn’t, and won’t, want to attest to the fact that the person was murdered until the report comes back from Washington. It will give all of us at Monticello a bit more time to prepare.”
“I see.” Lucinda cupped her chin in her hand. In her late forties, she was handsome rather than beautiful, stately rather than sweet.
Ellie Wood, a logical soul, speculated. “If he was hit hard, the person would have had to be strong. Was the wound in the front of the skull or the back?”
“The back,” Kimball replied.
“Then whoever did it wanted no struggle. No noise either.” Ellie Wood quickly grasped the possibilities.
“Might this man have been killed by Medley’s lover?” Port inquired. “Do you know if she had a lover?”
“No. I don’t. I do know she bore a child in August of 1803, but that doesn’t mean she had a lover as we understand the concept.” Kimball crossed his arms over his chest.
“Surely you don’t think Thomas Jefferson instituted a breeding program?” Lucinda was shocked.
“No, no.” Kimball reached for the brandy. “He tried not to break up families, but I haven’t found any records to indicate Medley ever had a permanent partner.”
“Did she bear more children?” Little Marilyn finally joined in the conversation.
“Apparently not,” he said.
“That’s very odd.” Puzzlement shone over Susan’s face. “Birth control consisted of next to nothing.”
“Sheepskin. A primitive form of condom.” Kimball sipped the brandy, the best he had ever tasted. “However, the chance of a slave having access to anything that sophisticated is out of the question.”
“Who said her partner was a slave?” Harry threw down the joker.
Mim, not wanting to appear old-fashioned, picked it up. “Was she beautiful, Kimball? If she was, then her partners may indeed have had access to sheep membrane.” Mim implied that Medley therefore would have attracted the white men.
“By what few accounts I can find, yes, she was beautiful.”
Lucinda scowled. “Oh, I hope we can just slide by this. I think we’re opening a can of worms.”
“We are, but somebody’s got to open it.” Mim stood her ground. “We’ve swept this sort of thing under the rug for centuries. Not that I enjoy the process, I don’t, but miscegenation may be a motive for murder.”
“I don’t think a black woman would have killed a man merely because he was white,” Ellie Wood said. “But if she had a black lover, he might be driven to it out of jealousy if nothing else.”
“But what if it was Medley herself?” Kimball’s voice rose with suppressed excitement. “What would drive a slave to kill a rich white man? What would drive a woman of any color to kill a man? I think you all know far better than I.”
Catching his enthusiasm, Port jumped up. “Love. Love can run anyone crazy.”
“Okay, say she loved the victim. Not that I think too many slaves loved the white men who snuck into their cabins.” Harry grew bold. “Even at her most irrational, would she kill him because he walked out on her? How could she? White men walked out on black women every morning. They just turned their backs and poof, they were gone. Wouldn’t she have been used to it? Wouldn’t an older slave have prepared her and said something like, ‘This is your
lot in life’?”
“Probably would have said ‘This is your cross to bear.’ ” Miranda furrowed her brow.
Unsettled as Lucinda was by Samson’s infidelity, and she was getting closer and closer to the real truth, she recognized as the afternoon continued that her unhappiness at least had a front door. She could walk out. Medley Orion couldn’t. “Perhaps he humiliated her in some secret place, some deep way, and she snapped.”
“Not humiliated, threatened.” Susan’s eyes lit up. “She was a slave. She’d learned to mask her feelings. Don’t we all, ladies?” This idea rippled across the room. “Whoever this was, he had a hold on her. He was going to do something terrible to her or to someone she loved, and she fought back. My God, where did she get the courage?”
“I don’t know if I can agree.” Miranda folded her hands together. “Does it take courage to kill? God forbids us to take another human life.”
“That’s it!” Mim spoke up. “He must have threatened to take someone else’s life—or hers. What if he threatened to kill Mr. Jefferson—not my stalker theory, mind you, but an explosive rage on the dead man’s part—something erratic?”
“I doubt she’d kill to save her master,” Little Marilyn countered her mother. “Jefferson was an extraordinary human being, but he was still the master.”
“Some slaves loved their masters.” Lucinda backed up Mim.
“Not as many as white folks want to believe.” Harry laughed. She couldn’t help but laugh. While bonds of affection surely existed, it was difficult for her to grasp that the oppressed could love the oppressor.
“Well, then what?” Ellie Wood’s patience, never her strong point, ebbed.
“She killed to protect her true lover.” Port savored her brandy.
“Or her child,” Susan quietly added.
An electric current shot around the room. Was there a mother anywhere in the world who wouldn’t kill for her child?
“The child was born in August 1803.” Kimball twirled the crystal glass. “If the victim were killed after August, he might have known the child.”
“But he might have known the child even before it was born.” Mim’s eyes narrowed.
“What?” Kimball seemed temporarily befuddled.
“What if it were his?” Mim’s voice rang out.
A silence followed this.
Harry then said, “Most men, or perhaps I should say some men, who have enjoyed the favors of a woman who becomes pregnant declare they don’t know if the baby is theirs. Of course they can’t get away with that now thanks to this DNA testing stuff. They sure could get away with it then.”
“Good point, Harry. I say the child was born before he was killed.” Susan held them spellbound. “The child was born and it looked like him.”
“Good God, Susan, I hope you’re wrong.” Lucinda blinked. “How could a man kill his own child to—to save his face?”
“People do terrible things,” Port flatly stated, for she didn’t understand it either, but then, she didn’t refute it.
“Well, he paid for his intentions, if that’s what they were.” Ellie Wood felt rough justice had been done. “If that’s true, he paid for it, and done is done.”
“‘Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand and their doom comes swiftly.’ Deuteronomy 32:35,” Miranda intoned.
But done was not done. The past was coming undone, and the day of calamity was at hand.
24
“I thought it would take some of the burden off you. You don’t need people at you right now.” Ansley Randolph leaned on the white fence and watched the horses breeze through their morning workout around the track—the Fibar and sand mix kept the footing good year-round. “Not that anything will make you feel better, for a time.”
Pain creased the lines around Warren’s eyes. “Honey, I’ve no doubt that you thought you were doing the right thing, but number one, I am tired of being whipped into shape by Mim Sanburne. Number two, my family’s diaries, maps, and genealogies stay right here at Eagle’s Rest. Some are so old I keep them in the safe. Number three, I don’t think anything of mine will interest Kimball Haynes, and number four, I’m exhausted. I don’t want to argue with anyone. I don’t even want to explain myself to anyone. No is no, and you’ll have to tell Mim.”
Ansley, while not in love with Warren, liked him sometimes. This was one of those times. “You’re right. I should have kept my mouth shut. I suppose I wanted to curry favor with Mim. She gives you business.”
Warren clasped his hands over the top rail of the fence. “Mim keeps a small army of lawyers busy. If I lose her business, I don’t think it will hurt either one of us, and it won’t hurt you socially either. All you have to do is tell Mim that I’m down and I can’t have anything on my mind right now. I need to rest and repair—that’s no lie.”
“Warren, don’t take this the wrong way, but I never knew you loved your father this much.”
He sighed. “I didn’t either.” He studied his boot tips for a second. “It’s not just Poppa. Now I’m the oldest living male of the line, a line that extends back to 1632. Until our sons are out of prep school and college, the burden of that falls entirely on me. Now I must manage the portfolio—”
“You have good help.”
“Yes, but Poppa always checked over the results of our investments. Truth be told, darling, my law degree benefitted Poppa, not me. I read over those transactions that needed a legal check, but I never really paid attention to the investments and the land holdings in an aggressive sense. Poppa liked to keep his cards close to his chest. Well, I’d better learn fast. We’ve been losing money on the market.”
“Who hasn’t? Warren, don’t worry so much.”
“Well, I might have to delay running for the state Senate.”
“Why?” Ansley wanted Warren in Richmond as much as possible. She intended to work nonstop for his election.
“Might look bad.”
“No, it won’t. You tell the voters you’re dedicating this campaign to your father, a man who believed in self-determination.”
Admiring her shrewdness, he said, “Poppa would have liked that. You know, it’s occurred to me these last few days that I’m raising my sons the way Poppa raised me. I was packed off to St. Clement’s, worked here for the summers, and then it was off to Vanderbilt. Maybe the boys should be different—maybe something wild for them like”—he thought—“Berkeley. Now that I’m the head of this family, I want to give my sons more freedom.”
“If they want to attend another college, fine, but let’s not push them into it. Vanderbilt has served this family well for a long time.” Ansley loved her sons although she despised the music they blasted throughout the house. No amount of yelling convinced them they’d go deaf. She was sure she was half deaf already.
“Did you really like my father?”
“Why do you ask me that now, after eighteen years of marriage?” She was genuinely surprised.
“Because I don’t know you. Not really.” He gazed at the horses on the far side of the track, for he couldn’t look at her.
“I thought that’s the way your people did things. I didn’t think you wanted to be close.”
“Maybe I don’t know how.”
Too late now, she thought to herself. “Well, Warren, one step at a time. I got along with Wesley, but it was his way or no way.”
“Yep.”
“I did like what he printed on his checks.” She recited verbatim: “These funds were generated under the free enterprise system despite government’s flagrant abuse of the income tax, bureaucratic hostilities, and irresponsible controls.”
Warren’s eyes misted. “He was tough duty, but he was clear about what he thought.”
“We’ll know even more about that at the reading of the will.”
25
The reading of the will hit Warren like a two-by-four. Wesley had prepared his will through the old prestigi
ous firm of Maki, Kleiser, and Maki. Not that Warren minded. It would be indelicate to have your son prepare your will. Still, he wasn’t prepared for this.
A clause in his father’s will read that no money could ever be inherited by any Randolph of any succeeding generation who married a person who was even one-twentieth African.
Ansley laughed. How absurd. Her sons weren’t going to marry women from Uganda. Her sons weren’t even going to marry African Americans, quadroons, octoroons, no way. Those boys weren’t sent to St. Clements to be liberals and certainly not to mix with the races—the calendar be damned.
Warren, ashen when he heard the clause, sputtered, “That’s illegal. Under today’s laws that’s illegal.”
Old George Kleiser neatly stacked his papers. “Maybe. Maybe not. This will could be contested, but who would do that? Let it stand. Those were your father’s express wishes.” Apparently George thought the proviso prudent, or perhaps he subscribed to the let-sleeping-dogs-lie theory.
“Warren, you aren’t going to do anything about this? I mean, why would you?”
As if in a trance, Warren shook his head. “No—but, Ansley, if this gets out, there go my chances for the state Senate.”
George’s stentorian voice filled the room. “Word of this, uh, consideration will never leave this room.”
“What about the person who physically prepared the will?” Warren put his foot in it.
George, irritated, glided over that remark as he made allowances for Warren’s recent loss. He’d known Warren since infancy, so he knew the middle-aged man in front of him was unprepared to take the helm of the family’s great, though dwindling, fortune. “Our staff is accustomed to sensitive issues, Warren. Issues of life and death.”
“Of course, of course, George—I’m just flabbergasted. Poppa never once spoke of anything like this to me.”
“He was a genteel racist instead of an overt one.” Ansley wanted to put the subject out of her mind and couldn’t see why Warren was so upset.
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