Murder at Monticello

by Rita Mae Brown

  Six months earlier the idea of helping the postmistress wouldn’t have occurred to her. But Mim had turned over a new leaf. She wanted to be warmer, kinder, and more giving. It wasn’t easy, overnight, to dump six decades of living a certain way. The cause of this volte-face Mim kept close to her chest, which was, indeed, where it had begun. She had visited Larry Johnson for a routine checkup. He found a lump. Larry, the soul of discretion, promised not to tell even Jim. Mim flew to New York City and checked into Columbia-Presbyterian. She told everyone she was on her semiannual shopping spree. Since she did repair to New York every spring and then again every fall, this explanation satisfied. The lump was removed and it was cancerous. However, they had caught the disease in time. Her body betrayed no other signs of the cancer. Procedures are so advanced that Mim returned home in a week, had indeed accomplished some shopping, and no one was the wiser. Until Jim walked in on her in the bathtub. She told him everything. He sobbed. That shocked her so badly that she sobbed. She still couldn’t figure out how her husband could be chronically unfaithful and love her so deeply at the same time, but she knew now that he did. She decided to give up being angry at him. She even decided to stop pretending socially that he didn’t have a weakness for women. He was what he was and she was what she was, but she could change and she was trying. If Jim wanted to change, that was his responsibility.

  “Earth to Mrs. Sanburne,” Harry called.

  “What? I must have been roller-skating on Saturn’s rings.”

  “We’re going to help Kimball read through the correspondence and records of Jefferson’s children and grandchildren,” Harry told her.

  “I can read with my eyes closed,” Miranda said. “Oh, that doesn’t sound right, does it?”

  After lunch Lulu escorted Mim to her silver-sand Bentley Turbo R, a new purchase and a sensational one. Lulu apologized profusely a second time for her outburst during Wesley’s funeral. After Mim’s luncheon she had smothered her hostess in “sorries.” She had also confessed to Reverend Jones and he had told her it wasn’t that bad. He forgave her and he was sure that the Randolphs would too, if she would apologize, which she did. Mim listened. Lulu continued. It was as though she’d pried the first olive out of the jar and the others tumbled out. She said she thought she’d smelled another woman’s perfume on Samson’s neck. She’d been on edge. Later she’d entered his bathroom and found a bottle, new, of Ralph Lauren’s Safari.

  “These days you can’t tell the difference between men’s colognes and women’s perfumes,” Mim said. “There is no difference. They put the unguents into different bottles, invent these manly names, and that’s that. What would happen if a man used a woman’s perfume? He’d grow breasts overnight, I guess.” She laughed at her own joke.

  Lulu laughed too. “It strikes me as odd that the worst thing you can call a man is a woman, yet they claim to love us.”

  Mim arched her right eyebrow. “I never thought of that.”

  “I think of a lot of things.” Lulu sighed. “I’m a tangle of suspicions. I know he’s cheating on me. I just don’t know who.”

  Mim unlocked her car, paused, and then turned. “Lucinda, I don’t know if that part matters. The whole town knows that Jim has enjoyed his little amours over the years.”

  “Mim, I didn’t mean to open old wounds,” Lulu stammered, genuinely distraught.

  “Don’t give it a second thought. I’m older than you. I don’t care as much anymore, or I care in a new way. But heed my advice. Some men are swordsmen. That’s the only word I can think of for it. They swash and they buckle. They need the chase and the conquest to feel alive. It’s repetitive, but for some reason I can’t fathom, the repetition doesn’t bore them. Makes them feel young and powerful, I suppose. It doesn’t mean Samson doesn’t love you.”

  Tears glistened in Lucinda’s green eyes. “Oh, Mim, if only that were true, but Samson isn’t that kind of man. If he’s having an affair, then he’s in love with her.”

  Mim waited to reply. “My dear, the only thing you can do is to take care of yourself.”

  30

  “If you light another cigarette, then I’ll have to light one too,” Deputy Cynthia Cooper joshed.

  “Here.” Sheriff Shaw tossed his pack of Chesterfields at her. She caught them left-handed. “Out at first,” he said.

  She tapped the pack with a long, graceful finger, and a slender white cigarette slid out. The deep tobacco fragrance made her eyelids flutter. That evil weed, that scourge of the lungs, that drug, nicotine, but oh, how it soothed the nerves and how it added to the coffers of the great state of Virginia. “Damn, I love these things.”

  “Think we’ll die young?”

  “Young?” Cynthia raised her eyebrows, which made Rick laugh, since he was already middle-aged.

  “Hey, you want another promotion someday, don’t you, Deputy?”

  “Just a beardless boy, that Rick Shaw.” She placed the cigarette in her mouth, lighting it with a match from a box of Redbuds.

  They inhaled in sweet silence, the blue smoke swirling to the ceiling like a slow whirling dervish of delight.

  “Coop, what do you think of Oliver Zeve?”

  “He took the news as I expected. A nervous twitch.”

  Rick grunted. “His press statement was a model of restraint. But nothing, nothing, will beat Big Marilyn Sanburne advancing her stalker theory. She’s good. She’s really good.” Rick appreciated Mim’s skills even though he didn’t like her. “I’d better call her.”

  “Good politics, boss.”

  Rick dialed the Sanburne residence. The butler fetched Mim. “Mrs. Sanburne, Rick Shaw here.”

  “Yes, Sheriff.”

  “I wanted to give you the report from Washington concerning the human remains found at Monticello.” He heard a quick intake of breath. “The skeleton is that of a white male, aged between thirty-two and thirty-five. In good health. The left femur had been broken in childhood and healed. Possibly the victim suffered a slight limp. The victim was five ten in height, which although not nearly as tall as Jefferson’s six foot four, would have been tall for the times, and given the density of bone, he was probably powerfully built. There were no signs of degenerative disease in the bones, and his teeth, also, were quite good. He was killed by one forceful blow to the back of the skull with an as yet undetermined weapon. Death, more than likely, was instantaneous.”

  Mim asked, “How do they know the man was white?”

  “Well, Mrs. Sanburne, determining race from skeletal remains can actually be a little tricky sometimes. We’re all much more alike than we are different. The races have more in common than they have dissimilarities. You could say that race has more to do with culture than physical attributes. However, forensics starts by considering the bone structure and skeletal proportions of a specimen. Specifically, the amount of projection of the cheekbones, the width of the nasal aperture, and the shape and distance between the eye sockets. Another factor is the amount of projection of the jaw. For instance, a white man’s jaw is generally less prominent than a black man’s is. Prognathism is the term for the way the jaw figures more prominently in the faces of those of African descent. There is also in many white skeletons the presence of an extra seam in the skull, which extends from the top of the nasal arch to the top of the head. Perhaps even more helpful is the amount of curvature in the long bones, especially the femur, of an individual. A white person’s skeleton tends to have more twisting in the neck or head of the femur.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Yes, it is,” the sheriff agreed.

  “Thank you,” Mim said politely, and hung up the phone.

  “Well?” Cooper asked.

  “She didn’t succumb to the vapors.” Rick referred to the Victorian ladies’ habit of fainting upon hearing unwelcome news. “Let’s run over to Kimball Haynes’s. I want to see him away from Oliver Zeve. Oliver will shut him down if he can.”

  “Boss, the director of Monticello isn’t going to obstruct
justice. I know that Oliver walks a tightrope up there, but he’s not a criminal.”

  “No, I don’t think so either, but he’s so supersensitive about this. He’ll put the crimp on Kimball somehow, and I think Kimball is the one person who can lead us to the killer.”

  “I think it’s Medley Orion.”

  “How often have I told you not to jump to conclusions?”

  “Eleventy million times.” She rolled her big blue eyes. “Still do it though.”

  “Still right most of the time too.” He kicked at her as she walked by to stub out her cigarette. “Well, I happen to agree. It was Medley or a boyfriend, father, somebody close to her. If we could just find the motive—Kimball knows the period inside and out and he’s got a feel for the people.”

  “Got the bug.”

  “Huh?”

  “Harry told me that Kimball eats and sleeps this case.”

  “Harry—next she’ll have the cat and dog on it too.”

  31

  The night air, cool and deep, carried stories to Tucker’s nose. Deer followed the warm air currents, raccoons prowled around Monticello, a possum reposed on a branch of the Carolina silver-bell near the terrace which Mrs. Murphy, like Kimball, thought of as a boardwalk. Overhead, bats flew in and out of the tulip poplar, the purple beech, and the eaves of the brick house.

  “I’m glad Monticello has bats.” Mrs. Murphy watched the small mammals dart at almost right angles when they wanted.

  “Why?” Tucker sat down.

  “Makes this place less august. After all, when Thomas Jefferson lived here, it probably didn’t look like this. The trees couldn’t have been this grand. The garbage had to go somewhere—know what I mean?—and it must have been filled with noises. Now there’s a reverential silence except for the shuffling of human feet on the tours.”

  “It must have been fun, all the grandchildren, the slaves calling to one another, the clanging in the smithy, the neighing of the horses. I can imagine it, and I can envision a bright corgi accompanying Mr. Jefferson on his rides.”

  “Dream on. If he had dogs out with him, they would have been big dogs—coach dogs or hunting dogs.”

  “Like Dalmatians?” Tucker’s ears dropped for a moment as she considered her spotted rival. “He wouldn’t have owned Dalmatians. I think he had corgis. We’re good herding dogs and we could have been useful.”

  “Then you would have been out with the cattle.”

  “Horses.”

  “Cattle.”

  “Oh, what do you know? Next you’ll say a cat sat by Jefferson’s elbow when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.”

  Mrs. Murphy’s whiskers twitched. “No cat would ever have allowed the phrase ‘All men are created equal’ to pass. Not only are all men not created equal, cats aren’t created equal. Some cats are more equal than others, if you know what I mean.”

  “He wrote it in Philadelphia. Maybe that affected his brain.” Tucker giggled.

  “Philadelphia was a beautiful city then. Parts of it are still beautiful, but it just got too big, you know. All of our cities got too big. Anyway, it’s absurd to plunk an idea like that down on parchment. Men aren’t equal. And we know for sure that women aren’t equal. They weren’t even considered at the time.”

  “Maybe he meant equal under the law.”

  “That’s a farce. Ever see a rich man go to jail? I take that back. Every now and then a Mafia don gets marched to the slammer.”

  “Mrs. Murphy, how could Thomas Jefferson have dreamed of the Mafia? When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, only a million people lived in the thirteen colonies and they were mostly English, Irish, Scottish, and German, and, of course, African from the various tribes.”

  “Don’t forget the French.”

  “Boy, were they stupid. Had the chance to grab the whole New World and blew it.”

  “Tucker, I didn’t know you were a Francophobe.”

  “They don’t like corgis. The Queen of England likes corgis, so I think the English are the best.”

  “Jefferson didn’t.” The cat’s silken eyebrows bobbed up and down.

  “Not fair. George III was mental. The whole history of the world might have been different if he’d been right in the head.”

  “Yeah, but you could pick out any moment in history and say that. What would have happened if Julius Caesar had listened to his wife, Calpurnia, on March fifteenth, when she begged him not to go to the Forum? Beware the Ides of March. What would have happened if Catherine the Great’s attempt on her looney-tunes husband’s life had failed and she was killed instead? Moments. Turning points. Every day there’s a turning point somewhere with someone. I think the creation of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals gets my vote as most important.”

  Tucker stood up and inhaled. “I pick the founding of the Westminster Dog Show. Say, do you smell that?”

  Mrs. Murphy lifted her elegant head. “Skunk.”

  “Let’s go back in the house. If I see her, then I’ll chase her and you know what will happen. The odor of skunk in Monticello.”

  “I think it would be pretty funny myself. I wonder if Jefferson would like the idea of his home being a museum. I bet he’d rather have it filled with children and laughter, broken pottery and wornout furniture.”

  “He would, but Americans need shrines. They need to see how their great people lived. They didn’t have indoor plumbing. Fireplaces were the only source of heat in the winter. No washing machines, refrigerators, stoves, or televisions.”

  “The last would be a blessing.” Mrs. Murphy’s voice dripped disdain.

  “No telephones, telegraphs, fax machines, automobiles, airplanes . . .”

  “Sounds better and better.” The cat brushed up against the dog. “Quiet except for natural sounds. Just think, people actually sat down and really talked to one another. They were under an obligation to entertain one another with their conversational abilities. You know what people do today? They sit in their living room or family room—isn’t that a dumb word? Every room is a family room—they sit there with the television on and if they talk they talk over the sound of the boob tube.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Murphy, they can’t all be that crude.”

  “Humph,” the cat replied. She did not consider the human animal the crown of creation.

  “I’m surprised you know your history.” Tucker scratched her ear.

  “I listen. I know human history and our history and no matter what, I am an Americat.”

  “And there is an Ameriskunk.” Tucker scurried to the front door, which was open just enough so she could squeeze in as a fat skunk at the edge of the lawn hastened in the opposite direction.

  Mrs. Murphy followed. The two ran to the narrow staircase behind the North Square Room, turned left, and scampered up to Kimball’s makeshift workroom.

  Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, and Kimball, now bleary-eyed, had sifted through as much correspondence as they could. Martha Jefferson, the future president’s daughter, married Thomas Mann Randolph on February 23, 1790. Together they produced twelve children, eleven of whom gained maturity and most of whom lived to a ripe old age. The last died in 1882, and that was Virginia Jefferson Randolph, born in 1801. Martha’s children in turn begat thirty-five children. Maria, her sister, had thirteen grandchildren through her son Francis Eppes, who married twice, which brings that generation’s count to forty-eight. They, too, were fruitful and multiplied—not that everyone lived to breed. A few grew to adulthood and never married, but the descendants were plentiful even so.

  Mrs. Hogendobber rubbed her nose. “This is like finding a needle in a haystack.”

  “But which needle?” Harry joined her chorus.

  “Which haystack, Martha or Maria?” Kimball was also wearing down.

  “You’d think someone would say something about Medley or her child.” Harry noticed her friends enter the room. “What have you two been up to?”

  “Discussion of history,” Mrs. Murphy answered.


  “Yeah, deep stuff.” Tucker plopped at her mother’s feet.

  “The sad truth is that back then black lives weren’t that important.” Mrs. Hogendobber shook her head.

  “There sure are enough references to Jupiter, Jefferson’s body servant, and King and Sally and Betsey Hemings, and well, the list could go on and on. Medley gets a footnote.” Kimball started pulling on his lower lip, an odd habit indicating intense thought.

  “What about Madison Hemings? He sure caused a sensation. A dead ringer for Thomas Jefferson with a deep brown tan. He waited on the dinner guests. Bet he gave them a start.” Harry wondered what the real effect must have been upon seeing a young mulatto man in livery who surely shared the president’s blood.

  “Born in 1805, and as an old man he said he was Jefferson’s son. Said his mother, Sally, told him.” Kimball abruptly leapt up. “But that could be a desire to be the center of attention. And Jefferson had a wealth of male relatives, each and every one capable of congress with Sally or her pretty sister, Betsey. And what about the other white employees of the plantation?”

  “Well, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Martha’s oldest son, who was born in 1792 and lived to 1875, swore that Sally was Peter Carr’s favorite mistress and Sally’s sister, Betsey, was mistress to Sam Carr. Those were Jefferson’s nephews, the sons of Dabney Carr and Martha Jefferson’s younger sister. Wild as rats they were too.” Kimball smiled, imagining the charms of a black purdah with one white sultan, or, in this case, two.

  “Wonder if Sally and Betsey thought it was so great?” Harry couldn’t resist.

  “Huh”—he blinked—“well, maybe not, but Harry, you can’t remove sexual fantasy from the life of the male. I mean, we all want to imagine ourselves in the arms of a beautiful woman.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Harry grumbled. “The imagining isn’t so bad, it’s the doing it when one is married. Oh, well, this is an ancient debate.”