Murder at Monticello

by Rita Mae Brown

  “And aren’t you?” Warren fired back.

  “Not as long as we don’t intermarry. I don’t believe in mixing the races. Other than that, people are people.” Ansley shook off Warren’s barb.

  “Ansley, you must promise me never, never, no matter how angry you may become with me or the boys—after all, people do rub one another’s nerves—but you must never repeat what you’ve heard in this room today. I don’t want to lose my chance because Poppa had this thing about racial purity.”

  Ansley promised never to tell.

  26

  But she did. She told Samson.

  The early afternoon sun slanted across Blair Bainbridge’s large oak kitchen table. Tulips swayed outside the long windows, and the hyacinths would open in a few days if this welcome warmth continued.

  “I’m not surprised,” Samson told Ansley. “The old man made a lifetime study of bloodlines, and to him it would be like crossing a donkey with a Thoroughbred.” Then he smirked. “Of course, who is the donkey and who is the Thoroughbred?”

  She held his hand as she sipped her hot chocolate. “It seems so—extreme.”

  Samson shrugged. The contents of Wesley’s will held scant interest for him. Another twenty minutes and he would have to hit the road. His stomach knotted up each time he left Ansley. “Say, I’ve got people coming in from California to look at Midale. Think I’ll show them some properties in Orange County too. Awful pretty up there and not so developed. If I can sell Midale, I’ll have some good money.” He pressed his other hand on top of hers. “Then you can leave Warren.”

  Ansley stiffened. “Not while he’s in mourning for his father.”

  “After that. Six months is a reasonable period of time. I can set my house in order and you can do the same.”

  “Honey”—she petted his hand—“let’s leave well enough alone—for now. Lulu will skin you alive and in public. There’s got to be a way around her, but I haven’t found it yet. I keep hoping she’ll find someone, she’ll make life easier—but she has too much invested in being the wronged woman. And that scene at Big Daddy’s funeral. My God.”

  Samson coughed. The knot in his stomach grew tighter. “Just one of those things. She leaned over to whisper in my ear and said she smelled another woman’s perfume. I don’t know what got into her.”

  “She knows my perfume, Diva. Anyway, when we’re together I don’t wear any perfume.”

  “Natural perfume.” He kissed her hand in his.

  She kissed him on the cheek. “Samson, you are the sweetest man.”

  “Not to hear my wife tell it.” He sighed and bowed his head. “I don’t know how much longer I can stand it. I’m living such a lie. I don’t love Lulu. I’m tired of keeping up with the Joneses, who can’t keep up with themselves. I’m tired of being trapped in my car all day with strangers and no matter what they tell you they want to buy, they really want the opposite. I swear it. Buyers are liars, as my first broker used to say. I don’t know how long I can hold out.”

  “Just a little longer, precious.” She nibbled on his ear. “Was there another woman’s perfume on your neck?”

  He sputtered, “Absolutely not. I don’t even know where she came up with that. You know I don’t even look at other women, Ansley.” He kissed her passionately.

  As she drew back from the kiss she murmured, “Well, she knows, she just doesn’t know it’s me. Funny, I like Lulu. I call her most every morning. I guess she’s my best friend, but I don’t like her as your wife and I never did. I couldn’t get it, know what I mean? You can sometimes see a couple and know why they’re together. Like Harry and Fair when they were together. Or Susan and Ned—that’s a good pair—but I never felt the heat, I guess you’d say, between Lulu and you. I don’t really feel like I’m betraying her. I feel like I’m liberating her. She deserves the heat. She needs the right man for her—you’re the right man for me.”

  He kissed her again and wished the clock weren’t ticking so loudly. “Ansley, I can’t live without you. You know that. I’ll never be as rich as Warren, but I’m not poor. I work hard.”

  Her voice low, she brushed his cheek with her lips as she said, “And I want to make sure you don’t join the ranks of the nouveau pauvre. I don’t want your wife to take you to the cleaners. Give me a little time. I’ll think of something or someone.” She leapt out of her chair. “Oh, no!”

  “What?” He hurried to her side.

  Ansley pointed out the kitchen window. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker merrily raced to the stable. “Harry can’t be far behind, and she’s no dummy.”

  “Damn!” Samson ran his hands through his thick hair.

  “If you slip out the front door I’ll go out to the stable and head her off. Hurry!” She kissed him quickly. She could hear the heels of his shoes as he strode across the hardwood floors to the front door. Ansley headed for the back screen door.

  Harry, much slower than her four-footed companions, had just reached the family cemetery on the hill. Ansley made it to the stable before Harry saw her.

  “What’s she doing in Blair’s house?” Tucker asked.

  Mrs. Murphy paused to observe Ansley. “High color. She’s het up about something and we know she’s not stealing the silver. She’s got too much of her own.”

  “What if she’s a kleptomaniac?” Tucker cocked her head as Ansley walked toward them.

  “Nah. But give her a sniff anyway.”

  “Hi there, Mrs. Murphy. You too, Tucker,” Ansley called to the animals.

  “Ansley, what are you up to?” Tucker asked as she poked her nose toward Ansley’s ankles.

  Ansley waved at Harry, who waved back. She reached down to scratch Tucker’s big ears.

  “Hi, how nice to find you here.” Harry diplomatically smiled.

  “Warren sent me over to look at Blair’s spider-wheel tedder. Says he wants one and maybe Blair will sell it.”

  A spider-wheel tedder turns hay for drying and can row up two swathes into one for baling. Three or four small metal wheels that resemble spiderwebs are pulled by a tractor.

  “Thought you all rolled up your hay.”

  “Warren says he’s tired of looking at huge rolls of shredded wheat in the fields and the middle of them is always wasted. He wants to go back to baling.”

  “Be a while.” Harry noted the season.

  Ansley lowered her voice. “He’s already planning Thanksgiving dinner for the family. I think it’s how the grief is taking him. You know, if he plans everything, then nothing can go wrong, he can control reality—although you’d think he would have had enough of that with his father.”

  “It will take time.” Harry knew. She had lost both her parents some years before.

  Mrs. Murphy, on her haunches, got up and trotted off toward the house. “She’s lying.”

  “Got that right.” The dog followed, her ears sweeping back for a moment. “Let’s nose around.”

  The two animals reached the back door. Tucker, nose straight to the ground, sniffed intently. Mrs. Murphy relied on her eyes as much as her nose.

  Tucker picked up the scent easily. “Samson Coles.”

  “So that’s it.” Mrs. Murphy walked between the tulips. She loved feeling the stems brush against her fur. “She must really be bored.”

  27

  The quiet at Eagle’s Rest proved unnerving. Ansley regretted saying how much she loathed the loud music the boys played. Although cacophonous, it was preferable to silence.

  Seven in the evening usually meant each son was in his room studying. How Breton and Stuart could study with that wall of reverberating sound fascinated her. They used to compete in decibel levels with the various bands. Finally she settled that by declaring that during the first hour of study time, from six to seven, Stuart could play his music. Breton’s choice won out between seven and eight.

  Both she and Warren policed what they called study hall. Breton and Stuart made good grades, but Ansley felt they needed to know how important their schoolwork wa
s to their parents, hence the policing. She told them frequently, “We have our jobs to do, you have your schoolwork.”

  Unable, at last, to bear the silence, Ansley climbed the curving stairway to the upstairs hall. She peeked in Breton’s room. She walked down to Stuart’s. Her older son sat at his desk. Breton, cross-legged, perched on Stuart’s bed. Breton’s eyes were red. Ansley knew not to call attention to that.

  “Hey, guys.”

  “Hi, Mom.” They replied in unison.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing.” Again in unison.

  “Oh.” She paused. “Kind of funny not to have Big Daddy yelling about your music, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Stuart agreed.

  “He’s never coming back.” Breton had a catch in his breath. “I can’t believe he’s never coming back. At first it was like he was on vacation, you know?”

  “I know,” Ansley commiserated.

  Stuart sat upright, a change from his normal slouch. “Remember the times we used to recite our heritage?” He imitated his grandfather’s voice. “The first Randolph to set foot in the New World was a crony of Sir Walter Raleigh’s. He returned to the old country. His son, emboldened by stories of the New World, came over in 1632, and thus our line began on this side of the Atlantic. He brought his bride, Jemima Hessletine. Their firstborn, Nancy Randolph, died that winter of 1634, aged six months. The second born, Raleigh Randolph, survived. We descend from this son.”

  Ansley, amazed, gasped. “Word for word.”

  “Mom, we heard it, seems like every day.” Stuart half smiled.

  “Yeah. Wish I could hear him again and—and I hate all that genealogy stuff.” Breton’s eyes welled up again. “Who cares?”

  Ansley sat next to Breton, putting her arm around his shoulders. He seemed bigger the last time she hugged him. “Honey, when you get older, you’ll appreciate these things.”

  “Why is it so important to everyone?” Breton asked innocently.

  “To be wellborn is an advantage in this life. It opens many doors. Life’s hard enough as it is, Breton, so be thankful for the blessing.”

  “Go to Montana,” Stuart advised. “No one cares there. Probably why Big Daddy never liked the West. He couldn’t lord it over everybody.”

  Ansley sighed. “Wesley liked to be the biggest frog in the pond.”

  “Mom, do you care about that bloodline stuff?” Breton turned to face his mother.

  “Let’s just say I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

  They digested this, then Breton asked another question. “Mom, is it always like this when someone dies?”

  “When it’s someone you love, it is.”

  28

  Medley Orion left Monticello in the dispersal after Thomas Jefferson’s death in 1826. Kimball burned up tank after tank of gas as he drove down the winding county roads in search of genealogies, slave records, anything that might give him a clue. A few references to Medley’s dressmaking skills surfaced in the well-preserved diaries of Tinton Venable.

  Obsessed with the murder and with Medley herself, Kimball even drove to the Library of Congress to read through the notations of Dr. William Thornton and his French-born wife. Thornton imagined himself a Renaissance man like Jefferson. He raced blooded horses, designed the Capitol and the Octagon House in Washington, D.C., was a staunch Federalist, and survived the burning of Washington in 1814. His efforts to save the city during that conflagration created a bitter enmity between himself and the mayor of Washington. Thornton’s wife, Anna Maria, rang out his praises on the hour like a well-timed church bell. When she visited Monticello in 1802 she wrote: “There is something more grand and awful than convenient in the whole place. A situation you would rather look at now and then than inhabit.”

  Mrs. Thornton, French, snob that she was, possessed some humor. What was odd was that Jefferson prided himself on convenience and efficiency.

  Kimball’s hunch paid off. He found a reference to Medley. Mrs. Thornton commented on a mint-green summer dress belonging to Martha Jefferson—Patsy. The dress, Mrs. Thornton noted, was sewn by Patsy’s genie, as she put it, Medley Orion. She also mentioned that Medley’s daughter, not quite a woman, was “bright,” meaning fair-skinned, and extraordinarily beautiful like her mother, but even lighter. She further noted that Medley and Martha Jefferson Randolph got along quite well, “a miracle considering,” but Mrs. Thornton chose not to explain that pregnant phrase.

  Mrs. Thornton then went on to discuss thoroughly her feelings about slavery—she didn’t like it—and her feelings about mixing the races, which she didn’t like either. She felt that slavery promoted laziness. Her argument for this, although convoluted, contained a kernel of logic: Why should people work if they couldn’t retain the fruits of their labors? A roof over one’s head, food in the stomach, and clothes on one’s back weren’t sufficient motivation for industriousness, especially when one saw another party benefitting from one’s own labor.

  Kimball drove so fast down Route 29 on his way home that he received a speeding ticket for his excitement and still made it from downtown Washington to Charlottesville more than fifteen minutes faster than the usual two hours. He couldn’t wait to tell Heike what he had discovered. He would have to decide what to tell Oliver, who grew more tense each day.

  29

  Kimball Haynes, Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, Mim Sanburne, and Lucinda Coles crammed themselves into a booth at Metropolitain, a restaurant in Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. The Metropolitain combined lack of pretension with fantastic food. Lulu happened to be strolling in the mall when Kimball spotted her and asked her to lunch with the others.

  Over salads he explained his findings about Medley Orion and Jefferson’s oldest child, Martha.

  “Well, Kimball, I can see that you’re a born detective, but where is this leading?” Mim wanted to know. She was ready to get down to brass tacks.

  “I wish I knew.” Kimball cut into a grits patty.

  “You all may be too young to have heard an old racist expression.” Mim glanced at the ceiling, for she had learned to despise these sayings. “‘There’s a nigger in the woodpile somewhere.’ Comes from the Underground Railway, of course, but you get the drift.”

  Lulu Coles fidgeted. “No, I don’t.”

  “Somebody’s hiding something,” Mim stated flatly.

  “Of course somebody’s hiding something. They’ve been hiding it for two hundred years, and now Martha Jefferson Randolph is in on it.” Lulu checked her anger. She knew Mim had yanked properties away from Samson because of his outburst at the funeral. Angry as she was at her husband, Lucinda was smart enough not to wish for their net worth to drop. Actually, she was angry, period. She’d peer in the mirror and see the corners of her mouth turning down just as her mother’s had—an embittered woman she swore never to emulate. She was becoming her own mother, to her horror.

  Harry downed her Coke. “What Mim means is that somebody is hiding something today.”

  “Why?” Susan threw her hands in the air. The idea was absurd. “So there’s a murderer in the family tree. By this time we have one of everything in all of our family trees. Really, who cares?”

  “‘Save me, Lord, from liars and deceivers.’ Psalm 120:2.” Mrs. Hogendobber, as usual, recalled a pertinent scripture.

  “Forgive me, Mrs. H., but there’s a better one.” Kimball closed his eyes in order to remember. “Ah, yes, here it is, ‘Every one deceives his neighbor, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.’ ”

  “Jeremiah 9:5. Yes, it is better,” Mrs. Hogendobber agreed. “I suppose letting the cat out of the bag these many years later wouldn’t seem upsetting, but if it’s in the papers and on television, well—I can understand.”

  “Yeah, your great-great-great-great-grandfather was murdered. How do you feel about that?” Susan smirked.

  “Or your great-great—how many gre
ats?” Harry turned to Susan, who held up two fingers. “Great-great-grandfather was a murderer. Should you pay the victim’s descendants recompense? Obviously, our society has lost the concept of privacy, and you can’t blame anyone for wanting to keep whatever they can away from prying eyes.”

  “Well, I for one would like a breath of fresh air. Kimball, you’re welcome to go through the Coleses’ papers. Maybe you’ll find the murderer there.” Lulu smiled.

  “How generous of you. The Coleses’ papers will be invaluable to me even if they don’t yield the murderer.” Kimball beamed.

  Mim shifted on the hard bench. “I wonder that Samson has never donated his treasures to the Alderman Library. Or some other library he feels would do justice to the manuscripts and diaries. Naturally, I prefer the Alderman.”

  The olive branch was outstretched. Lulu grabbed it. “I’ll work on him, Mim. Samson fears that his family’s archives will be labeled, stuck in a carton, and never again see the light of day. Decades from now, someone will stumble upon them and they’ll be decayed. He keeps all those materials in his temperature-controlled library. The Coleses lead the way when it comes to preservation,” she breathed, “but perhaps this is the time to share.”

  “Yes.” Mim appeared enlightened when her entrée, a lightly poached salmon in dill sauce, was placed in front of her. “What did you order, Lucinda? I’ve already forgotten.”

  “Sweetbreads.”

  “Me too.” Harry’s mouth watered as the dish’s tempting aroma wafted under her nose.

  “What a lunch.” Kimball inclined his head toward the ladies. “Beautiful women, delicious food, and help with my research. What more is there to life?”

  “A 16.1-hand Thoroughbred fox hunter that floats over a three-foot-six-inch coop.” The rich sauce melted in Harry’s mouth.

  “Oh, Harry, you and your horses. You have Gin Fizz and Tomahawk.” Susan elbowed her.

  “Getting along in years,” Mim informed Susan. Mim, an avid fox hunter, appreciated Harry’s desire. She also appreciated Harry’s emaciated budget and made a mental note to see if she could strong-arm someone into selling Harry a good horse at a low price.