If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “That’s an interesting inscription,” said Edith, who had been trailing after Elizabeth, reading the older inscriptions. “‘Behold I shew you a mystery.’” Elizabeth nodded. “It’s a Bible verse, but I’ve never seen it written on a tombstone before. Whose grave is it?”

  Edith knelt down to read the fading letters. It was an old tombstone, weathered and chocked with weeds. “Lucy something Tod-something…”

  “Lucy Todhunter! Let me see!” Elizabeth rubbed the dirt from the inscription. “It is Lucy Todhunter. Donna Jean’s deadly ancestor. I remember now. In Everett Yancey’s manuscript, he mentions that epitaph. I don’t remember him saying where she was buried, though. So here she is. Maybe she did it.”

  “I’m still plumping for divine intervention,” said Edith. “This wasn’t her house, was it?”

  “No,” said Elizabeth. “I think her place was closer to Danville. It was badly damaged by fire in the Thirties, and they tore it down. That would have been spooky, though, wouldn’t it? If she had lived in the house where her great-grandson-in-law was murdered?”

  “It would have made an interesting defense for your brother,” said Edith. “He could have had Donna Jean plead demonic possession.”

  “Bill is unconventional enough as it is. I just hope we can help him prove her innocence.”

  A few yards from the cemetery wall stood the house that the preacher had been fixing up for his child bride. They stepped over the low stone wall and started for the back steps. “Did you remember to clear this visit with the widow?” asked Elizabeth.

  Edith reached in her purse and pulled out a modern key. “Does that answer your question?”

  “Yes, but it still leaves me with about five hundred other questions. How did Lucy Todhunter kill the major? And how did Donna Jean kill Chevry? Or if she didn’t, who did?” She shivered as she looked up at the decaying structure nestling in a thicket of weeds. “Maybe it’s the house.”

  “Edgar Allan Poe was from Virginia, but he never got this far west,” said Edith. “Let’s see what you can find out from the inside. It’s hot enough out here to melt polyester.”

  Moments later they were inside a narrow, old-fashioned kitchen. The imitation parquet linoleum looked new, and the cabinets had been freshly painted, but the lightbulb still hung from a bare socket in the center of the room, and the walls were an unappetizing shade of green, streaked with grease and decades of accumulated dust.

  “If I had to live here, I’d drink the poison willingly,” Edith remarked.

  “It has potential,” said Elizabeth, glancing approvingly at the high ceilings and the oak wainscoting. She tore a paper towel from a roll on the drain board and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Want some water?” she asked Edith. “There’s probably a glass around somewhere.”

  Edith shook her head. “Ill go check out the rest of the estate.”

  Elizabeth found a dusty jelly glass, rinsed it out in rusty tap water, and refilled it when the water ran clear. “They need a water filter,” she muttered, making a face, but because she was thirsty, she drank it. “Well, I suppose no one needs a water filter here anymore. Tanya Faith will go home to Mommy and Daddy and finish high school. Maybe someday she’ll realize how lucky she was that it worked out this way.”

  She joined Edith for a tour of the rest of the house. The old place had been built at least a century earlier as a simple wooden farmhouse, with two large rooms on either side of the modest entrance hall, where a straight staircase led upstairs to four bedrooms, one of which had been subdivided with wallboard to form an upstairs bath. Each bedroom was resplendent with multicolored deep-pile shag carpeting in iridescent colors, clashing almost audibly with the peeling floral wallpaper from decades past.

  “Maybe it was the house,” muttered Edith, after they had contemplated the riot of color in stunned silence.

  “Maybe it would have looked better after he’d painted the walls,” said Elizabeth, who was loath to criticize the decorating taste of the recently departed. “Anyhow, I expect he got a good discount on the carpeting, since he was in the business. Let’s look around for anything that seems out of the ordinary.”

  Edith pointed to the pink-and-purple heather shag monstrosity that seemed to be exhaling dust motes before them. “That qualifies.”

  “I mean, bottles in medicine cabinets, or loose floorboards, or-”

  “Secret passages?”

  “Oh, sure. Or an empty mummy case, with a sign that says Back in half an hour. Any little thing, Edith.”

  The house’s tin roof made the upstairs rooms almost shimmer with heat from the morning sun, but they searched diligently for more than an hour, finding nothing more interesting than a few empty beer bottles tucked in an otherwise empty closet. The bathroom medicine cabinet consisted of two tin shelves behind a paint-spattered mirror. Apart from an accumulation of dirt and two rusty razor blades, it, too, was empty.

  Downstairs, they checked the pantry, the parlor, and the dining room, without success. No floorboards were loose. No mantelpieces swung open. No walls concealed hidden rooms. The house was as simple and shabby as it had appeared, offering no clues about the death of the man who had tried to restore it.

  Elizabeth and Edith searched the kitchen together, opening every drawer, searching the cupboards, and peering under the sink, much to the mutual horror of Edith and a field mouse in residence. Elizabeth, now on her third glass of tap water, had to keep taking deep breaths to keep from laughing, but Edith was not amused.

  It was nearly nine-thirty when Elizabeth, dirt-smudged and shining with sweat, agreed to call it quits. “I know we stayed longer than we intended, and I have to get you back,” she told Edith. “Either the crime-scene investigators found everything, or else there was nothing to find.”

  “At least we tried,” said Edith, hurrying to the back door before Elizabeth could change her mind. “Maybe the poison was in the food, after all.”

  “Apparently, it wasn’t. But it certainly isn’t here. Maybe someone came to see Chevry Morgan, and brought him something-a poisoned beer, for example.”

  “Maybe.” Edith didn’t bother to sound convinced. “Let’s head back to town now. Bill’s due back today from his Florida expedition, and I need to get to the office.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I have some research to do in the UVA medical library.” She looked back at the shabby kitchen with its new linoleum shining in an otherwise depressing hovel of grime. “I keep feeling that I’ve missed something.”

  Bill MacPherson had returned from Florida on the red-eye flight, and despite his disheveled appearance and lack of sleep, he had formulated a theory about his new civil-rights case, and he was determined to discuss his legal strategy with his law partner. A. P. Hill received these confidences with grave courtesy, but with a notable lack of enthusiasm.

  “Bill,” she said. “Never mind about the mating habits of your mother’s friends. You have a criminal case to worry about. One of your real clients has been charged with the murder of her husband. I had to do the bail hearing for you.”

  “Good grief!” said Bill, momentarily distracted. “Poor Donna Jean. I was afraid it might come to that. In domestic cases, the spouse is usually the best bet. Did you get her out?”

  “No. I argued that she was harmless, and that she really had no place to run to, but the judge took the view that poisoning people ought to be discouraged, and he set bail at five hundred thousand dollars. So, technically, I suppose she could get out, but of course she can’t afford it. I told her you’d go and see her today.”

  “Of course I will,” murmured Bill, running a hand through his already rumpled hair.

  “You might want to shave and change clothes first. Otherwise, they might keep you on a charge of vagrancy.”

  “Yes, fine, but let me tell you about this other idea I had, Powell. I’ve been thinking about it all the way back on the plane, and I really think I’m onto something.”

  “Are you still raving about dol
phins?”

  Bill nodded eagerly. “You should have seen him, Powell! He could understand everything anybody said to him.”

  A. P. Hill wished that she could say the same about Bill, but she merely nodded for him to go on, resigned to the fact that she would have to hear him out before they could proceed with more serious matters.

  “The marine-park people were very helpful, and they all said they’d testify as character witnesses. We’ll need character witnesses. It turns out that dolphins often try to initiate sex with their trainers, so you can’t exactly call him an unwilling animal victim. Isn’t that interesting?”

  A. P. Hill pictured a local district attorney of her acquaintance prosecuting a dolphin rape case, but she forbore to comment on the matter. “Go on,” she said.

  “There’s a precedent for this, you know,” said Bill, pausing dramatically and peering down at her with what he hoped was a look of great shrewdness.

  “Oh, no, Bill…”

  “Oh, yes, Powell! The Dred Scott decision! Remember? In the 1850s, a runaway slave-”

  “He wasn’t a runaway. His master went north to an unorganized territory in which slavery was banned, and he took Dred Scott along with him.”

  “Okay. I’ll admit I haven’t read up on it, but I dimly remember hearing about it in class once. Here’s my point: When Scott and his master returned to Missouri, Dred Scott sued for his freedom, claiming that he had been freed by being taken to a free territory. And then you argue all the bits about what constitutes personhood. You know, Dred Scott couldn’t be denied his rights because he was different from what the courts then thought of as a citizen. And I’ll argue that Porky is a thinking, feeling sentient being, whose rights cannot be denied just because he is different. There! Is that a landmark case or what?”

  “Aside from the fact that your argument is probably suicidally politically incorrect, because I doubt that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas-to name just one black jurist-is going to enjoy the comparison-aside from that, I do see one glitch in your argument.” A. P. Hill leaned back in her swivel chair and propped her feet up on the desk. The pose usually meant trouble for the other person present.

  “Glitch?” said Bill. “What glitch?”

  “Dred Scott lost the case. The U.S. Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Taney, ruled that black people were not citizens, and therefore could not sue. Which is exactly what you’re going to hear if you try to pursue this dolphin business. Your finny friend cannot sue for his rights, because he hasn’t got any rights.”

  “Okay, Powell. Maybe I haven’t researched this quite well enough yet, and I admit that the Dred Scott case is a setback in my thinking, but don’t forget that blacks were granted citizenship in the- um-thirteenth amendment.”

  “Fourteenth. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery.” She swung her chair round to the bookcase and took down a large, well-worn volume. “Here’s what you are thinking of: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’” She closed the book and looked up at her partner. “Fourteenth amendment.”

  She had expected Bill to be chagrined by this declaration, but he still looked as eager as before. “That’s all it says, isn’t it?” he asked, grinning.

  “That’s all,” Powell replied. “I should think it was quite enough.”

  “No, it’s great!” Bill insisted. “It says ‘all persons… are citizens,’ and so on.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “So what is the legal definition of a person?” A. P. Hill had opened her mouth to explain the obvious to him, but Bill waved her into silence. “That’s where we insert our argument. What is a person? Is a person just a vocalizing primate, or does it mean any sentient being who happens to be here? Citizens don’t have to speak English. They don’t have to be able to walk, or even talk. And the fifteenth amendment guarantees equal rights for all persons regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. I remember that one.”

  “It’s bound to be on the books somewhere,” muttered a badly flustered A. P. Hill. “Somewhere it’s got to say that a person is a human being, a member of the species Homo sapiens.”

  “Doesn’t matter!” said Bill. “The definition got expanded twice before: once to include black men, and once to include women. Maybe this is an idea whose time has come.”

  “Bill, this isn’t something that should be tackled by a small law firm in Danville. Surely the ACLU with all their resources ought to be the ones to handle this.” And to appear on Oprah and Geraldo, she finished silently.

  For a moment Bill hesitated before his enthusiasm carried him away again. “I took the case,” he said. “And I’ll see it through.”

  “Bill-”

  “Unless it gets horribly expensive and time-consuming, and then I might turn it over to them.”

  “Fair enough,” said A. P. Hill. “Now let’s talk about your other client. The one who’s in jail for first-degree murder.”

  Elizabeth MacPherson wondered if the air-conditioning in the medical library was malfunctioning. Either that, or she was coming down with something. One minute she would be bathed with sweat, and the next she’d feel chilled to the bone. Her joints ached, too, now that she thought about it. That might be the result of all that tramping around through the cemetery and the Morgan house that morning, but a summer flu seemed the more logical alternative, because her stomach felt queasy, too.

  These symptoms had come on slowly as the afternoon progressed, but Elizabeth fought against them. If she had not driven so far to use the library in Charlottesville, she would have given up at the first sign of queasiness, postponing her search for another day, but as it was, quitting now would mean that she would have to make another five-hour round-trip drive at a later date. That seemed such a waste of time and gasoline that she did her best to ignore the symptoms of an oncoming flu. She resolved to concentrate on the search instead of her abdominal cramps.

  My illness does set the tone for the research, she thought, trying to tough it out.

  Elizabeth was reading up on arsenic in the library’s medical texts. To be thorough she had skimmed the section on the history of the use of arsenic as a method for murder in the Middle Ages, when it had been the toxic substance of choice among villains. In those days arsenic was popular for three reasons: (1) it was easy to obtain; pharmacies sold it for rat poison, flypapers, and weed killers; (2) its symptoms could be mistaken for those produced by natural causes; and (3) it was easily dissolved in food or drink, yet it could not be detected by taste. When used as a poison, arsenic was usually in a white powder form: arsenic trioxide (As2O3). In the days of the Borgias, arsenic might have passed for natural gastric distress, but in later years a tox screen (if the medical examiner thought to request one) would turn up arsenic in a corpse’s vital organs. Nevertheless, each year a significant number of traditionalists continued to use it. Chevry Morgan’s liver had been full of it.

  The text went on to say that arsenic poisoning had once been so popular among the homicidally inclined that laws were passed prohibiting the manufacturers of embalming fluid from using arsenic in their products. Very sensible of them, thought Elizabeth. It would certainly bugger the autopsy results. During the embalming process the fluid-fixative replaces blood and permeates the viscera; if the embalming fluid contained arsenic, it would be difficult to tell whether the poison had been introduced into the body after death-or before. At least defense attorneys would have seized upon the point to argue a reasonable doubt, and scores of murderers might have got away with their crimes.

  Elizabeth had just begun to wonder when the arsenic-free embalming law had
been passed, and what they used in the stuff now, when a wrenching abdominal cramp sent her tottering toward the rest room. Typical, she thought as the walls spun around her. The room was full of medical students, and not one of them noticed that I was ill.

  She spent twenty minutes in the ladies’ room, throwing up and trying to regain control of her body. Many paper towels later, she emerged, pale and shaky, but determined not to give in to a summer virus, or, she was beginning to suspect, food poisoning. “The eggs on the breakfast buffet,” she muttered to herself as she sat down again in front of the pile of books. But now that she had vomited, she was probably over the worst of it.

  Because Elizabeth wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold out against infirmity, she decided to skim through the rest of the introductory material. “Arsenic as medicine,” she whispered, stabbing a forefinger at the wavering lines of type. In the nineteenth century arsenic preparations were often used as additives to patent medicines. A topical preparation of arsenic was recommended as a cosmetic for women, because it whitened the skin, and some upper-class gentlemen took arsenic as a tonic, believing that it was an aid to virility. It was known to have been prescribed by physicians as a treatment for malaria and other protracted illnesses in that era; however [the book cautioned], once a person became an arsenic-eater, whether from personal vanity or doctor’s orders, he became addicted to the substance, and his body developed an increased tolerance for higher dosages. An attempt to cease taking the drug would produce violent stomach pains and the agonies associated with any poison victim. Elizabeth was trying to see through her headache to copy down a most interesting footnote, quoting from an 1885 edition of Chambers Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, when the page blurred and began to waver, and the last thing she remembered was a spinning thought about Lucy Todhunter’s method of murder.