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Murder at Monticello
A Homer Kelly Mystery
Jane Langton
A MysteriousPress.com
Open Road Integrated Media Ebook
For Meg Ruley
To Captain Meriwether Lewis esq. Capt. of the 1st regimt of Infantry of the U.S. of A.
… The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it’s course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean … may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce.
Beginning at the mouth of the Missouri, you will take observations of latitude & longitude, at all remarkeable points on the river.… The courses of the river between these points of observation may be supplied by the compass the log-line & by time.…
… Given under my hand at the city of Washington this 20th day of June 1803.
TH: JEFFERSON Pr. U.S. of A.
Author’s Note
Most of the chapters in this book begin with passages from the journals of Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, leaders of the expedition that was first imagined and then brought into being by President Thomas Jefferson. Other passages are taken from the journals of Sergeant John Ordway, Sergeant Patrick Gass, and Private Joseph Whitehouse.
Together they form a continuous sequence from the departure of the expedition on May 14, 1804, to its return to St. Louis on September 23, 1806.
Except in a metaphoric sense, they are not related to the ongoing narrative. They are a story in themselves.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Preview: The Escher Twist
Copyright Page
Prologue
Monticello is a curiosity! Artificial to a high degree; in many respects superb. If it had not been called Monticello, I would call it Olympus, and Jove its occupant.
Richard Rush to Charles Jared Ingersoll, October 9, 1816
The houses of the great men and women of the past are different from those of ordinary dead people, because so much trouble has been taken to stop time in its tracks.
It often fails. Worn away by the tramp of visitors’ feet, the living surface of the floor has been embalmed in polyurethane. The chairs on which the deceased once sat have been reupholstered. No stain from a fallen tear blots the starched handkerchief in the glass case. Too many flower arrangers have stood gazing at a vase, studying the effect of one more delphinium.
Sometimes a few fragments are snatched from the clearing out of attics—the hairshirt of Savonarola, Darwin’s rolling chair, the teacup of Emily Dickinson. But often the place has been falsified by centuries of tidying up.
In the life of the original owner the house might have been a godawful mess, but now all the books are neatly shelved, not scattered on the floor and stepped on. The papers are stored in acid-free folders, not coffee-stained in drifts on the desk or lost under the bed. The sticky glass on the mantelpiece and the half-empty bottle have given way to the delphiniums.
The house of Thomas Jefferson is more evocative than most. The painted buffalo hide speaks of him, though only a copy of the one sent by Lewis and Clark from the Missouri River. Other memorials are the household gadgetry and the mastodon jawbone from Kentucky. The engraved copies of the Declaration of Independence are of course a powerful reminder, but keenest of all is the sharp gaze of the bust of Thomas Jefferson by Jean-Antoine Houdon. How those eyes flash and pierce!
Jefferson’s mind and flesh are gone, but a breath of life still remains in the house he called Monticello.
Chapter 1
Rejoice! Columbia’s Sons, rejoice! To Tyrants never bend your knee, but join with Heart and Soul and Voice for Jefferson and Liberty.
Patriotic song, 1800
“Homer Kelly, is that you?”
“It is indeed. Who’s this?”
“It’s me, Ed Bailey. You know, your old friend Ed in Charlottesville, Virginia? Listen, Homer—”
“Oh, Ed! Well, hey there, it’s good to hear from you. Just a sec.” Homer shouted at his wife, “Hey, Mary, pick up the phone, it’s Ed in Charlottesville.”
“Ed! Hello, Ed!”
“Mary, bless your heart. How are you, dear?”
“Fine, I’m just fine. How are you, Ed?”
“How am I? I’m patriotic, that’s how I am. I’ve got an American flag right here and I’m standing at attention and saluting. No, hold it, wait a minute, gotta shift the phone, person can’t salute with their left hand.”
Ed was shouting, so Homer shouted too. “Well, okay, Ed, good for you. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Fireworks,” cried Ed. “You know fireworks, Homer? WhizzzzzzBOOM? Hey, Mary, you like skyrockets? SsssssssssBANG”?
Mary made a face and held the phone away from her ear. Homer carried on. “Of course she likes skyrockets, Ed. We’re crazy about skyrockets. What skyrockets do you mean exactly?”
“Fourth of July, naturally. You guys got anything against the Fourth of July?”
Homer laughed. “Oh, come on, Ed, what are you talking about?”
“Big celebration at Monticello, Fourth of July.”
“Monticello?” said Mary. “You mean Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello?”
“Of course I mean Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. You gotta come. Bicentennial celebration, election to presidency, big deal, fireworks, zzzzzz—”
“Okay, okay, you mean Jefferson was elected to the presidency in 1801 on the Fourth of July?”
“Nah, nah, not the Fourth of July! It was February, but who the hell wants to celebrate in February? Besides, the Fourth of July was when—you know, KABLAM, KABLAM!”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ed, we get it. You mean the fourth of July in 1776, when the founding fathers signed Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Is that it?”
“You got it.” Ed whispered a soft kaboom.
Mary gave up and went back to the news on television, but it was just as bad. By some ghastly coincidence it was reporting a murderer on the loose in Albemarle County, Virginia, and now it was zooming in on target practice in the firing range of the Charlottesville Police Department, SPANGITY BLAMMITY BLAM.
When Homer came in at last, grinning, she turned off the TV. “Homer, what on earth was Ed talking about?”
“He wants us to come. Big celebration at Monticello on the Fourth of July, two hundredth anniversary of Jefferson’s election to the presidency. Sounds great.”
“But he’s drunk. He’s positively smashed.”
“Oh, sure. I’ll call back in the morning. He’ll be cold sober in the morning. How about it? You want to go?”
Mary thought it over. “Well, I think so, Homer. As a matter of fact, I’d love to.”
“Good. I’ll tell him we’re coming.”
“Isn’t Charlottesville where Whatsemame is? You know who I mean, Homer, one of our old students, Fern somebody. I wrote a recommendation when she applied for a grant at Monticello. I’ll bet she got the job.”
“Oh, sure, I remember Fern. Wasn’t she that funny girl who whistled through her teeth?”
Chapter 2
Set out from Camp River a Dubois at 4 oClock P.M. and proceded up the Missouris under Sail to the first Island in the Missourie.… men in high Spirits
Field Notes of Captain William Clark,
May 14, 1804
It was May 14, the anniversary of the day the Lewis and Clark expedition had set out on the waters of the Missouri River, abandoning their first winter camp.
George Dryer was aware of the significance of the day as he shopped for supplies in the Bargain Mart on Hydraulic Road in Charlottesville. George, after all, knew more about Lewis and Clark than any of those high-toned professors.
With a couple of new shirts under his arm, he stopped to read a big handwritten sign on the bulletin board beside the checkout counter:
NEIGHBORHOOD MEETING
ON THE SAFETY OF OUR DAUGHTERS
It gave him a jolt. At once he decided to go to the meeting, hoping to hear himself talked about.
In the auditorium of St. Anne’s Belfield Upper School on Ivy Road, George sat in the back, behind forty or fifty mothers and fathers. He was not disappointed. The worried parents talked fervently about the monster who was threatening the young women of Albemarle County. They were urgent with questions about the protection of their children.
It was so thrilling, George could hardly control himself. He wanted to stand up and talk a blue streak. With difficulty he kept his mouth shut.
The female sitting next to him was a good-looking olive-skinned woman, Latino or Native American. It occurred to George that she looked a lot like Jeanie. And probably the Mandan squaws had looked just like that.
He spoke to her as they left the hall, and she told him how worried she was about her little girl. “She’s only fourteen, so vulnerable. Do you have a daughter?”
“Three of ’em,” said George, the long-suffering father. “You live in Charlottesville? I’d be glad to accompany your little girl when she goes out. Where do you live?”
She told him gratefully that it was right around the corner.
“I’ll walk you home,” said George. “Can’t be too careful.”
Chapter 3
CAMP RIVER DUBOIS April the 8th 1804
HONORED PARENTS: I now embrace this oportunity of writing to you … I am well thank God and in high Spirits. I am now on an expedition to the westward, with Capt Lewis and Capt Clark, who are appointed by the President of the united States to go on an Expedition through the interior parts of North America.… This party consists of 25 picked men … and I am so happy as to be one of them.…
JOHN ORDWAY Segt.
On the day after the meeting that had been called to protect the wives and daughters of Albemarle County, two hikers exploring the woods in McIntire Park came upon the strangled and disfigured body of a woman.
Ed Bailey saw it all on television, the ambulance pulling away from the scene, the interview with the hikers. The boy hiker was excited and talkative, the girl was deeply affected and could hardly speak.
Wisely, Ed decided to say nothing about this sordid episode to Homer Kelly.
Therefore Homer had no inkling of the ugly news from Charlottesville as he lugged a stack of books down the great staircase of Widener Library in Harvard Yard. All the books were about Thomas Jefferson. Homer was reading up.
In the downtown mall in Charlottesville, the president of the Society for Jefferson Studies was also unaware of the savage attack in McIntire Park. Augustus Upchurch was shopping, going from store to store. In a moment of abandon he bought several bow ties in jolly colors, seeking a dashing and youthful effect. He had a certain young lady in mind. His wife would have hated the new ties, but she had been dead for years.
And in the woods around Thomas Jefferson’s house at Monticello, a trespasser walked his motorcycle up the hill from Route 53 and pushed it higher and higher through the undergrowth of hackberry and spicebush.
He was careful not to tread on the delicate blossoms of lady slippers, or crush under the wheels of his bike the green canopies of jack-in-the-pulpit. Moving up and up, away from the road, he found a level place at last and parked his bike, breathing hard. It had been a long, steep climb. Then he set to work unpacking his tent and lashing it to a pair of oaks and a hickory tree.
The trespasser too had not seen today’s edition of the Charlottesville Daily Progress.
Nor had any copies of the Richmond Times Dispatch or the Washington Post found their way to the very top of the hill into Thomas Jefferson’s house—neither downstairs, where batches of tourists were moving through the beautiful rooms, nor upstairs, in the office of Curator Henry Spender, nor still farther upstairs, to the very top of the house, where Fern Fisher was beginning her first afternoon on the job.
Fern was a middle-sized big-boned woman with clever eyes, a cheerful expression, big feet, a gap between her front teeth through which she could utter a piercing whistle, and a lot on her mind.
For the moment she was content to bask in her working quarters. Nobody else in the world had as good a place as this.
As an office, the Dome Room of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello was an inconvenient place to get to, because you had to climb three long flights of breakneck stairs. But once you made it to the top, the great glowing room was a reward.
It was a huge round space with the sun’s eye staring through an oculus at the top, throwing down a blob of light that moved silently across the floor with the turning of the earth.
The dome was actually a shallow octagon resting on octagonal walls, but the enclosed space felt hemispherical, like the sky above. With its six round windows it was a collection of circles, echoing and re-echoing the most perfect of shapes. Thomas Jefferson had designed the room himself, following the divine Palladio. Palladio, he had said, is the Bible. There were domes in Palladio’s Bible, and Jefferson had built one.
Afterward he had not known what to do with it. It had become a playroom for his grandchildren, a storeroom, and leftover attic.
But Fern knew what to do with it. Her grant had come through, her wonderful grant. The stipend was small, but the working space was magnificent.
She was eager to get started, but there was a job to do first. “It’s just routine,” Mr. Spender had said. “Everybody has to fill out a questionnaire.”
She looked at it. There were all the usual queries.
Name, etc. Fern wrote the answers neatly. Address: 222 South Street, Lewis and Clark Square, Charlottesville.
Most of the questions were easy, but there was a final question, Honors, prizes, awa
rds? Fern balked and dropped her pen.
It was silly, because at twenty-three, Fern had achieved a few things. She was a Ph.D., she had taught classes, her dissertation had been published. It had won a prize.
Folding the questionnaire, she wondered why it didn’t ask for Shameful episodes, because she would have answered that one truthfully—Rotten marriage, miserable divorce, three coy self-descriptions in three personals columns, three embarrassing blind dates. And after that—well, never mind.
Now, how to begin? Fern picked up the letter from the grant committee and read it again. They had laid out in precise language exactly what they expected her to do.
In awarding this grant to Fern Fisher, the Society for Jefferson Studies wishes her to write a book in celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s election to the presidency.
We assume that Ms. Fisher is aware of the increasing chorus of criticism, in particular the attacks upon his personal life.
The members of the Grant Committee hope that her book will restore to our third President the distinction he deserves in the eyes of his countrymen. She will not, of course, ignore the burden of the attacks against him, some of which may be justified, but she will remind the citizens of the United States, who have perhaps forgotten, how important to the formation of this nation were his life and thought.
Fern closed the folder. God, it wasn’t much to ask. What if the book was impossible? What if she couldn’t do it?
Well, of course they were right, she did revere Thomas Jefferson, there was no question about that. And of course it was true that the great man was getting a raw deal. But—Fern scraped back her chair and jumped up—the committee’s high expectations made her feel like a rebellious child.
For most of the day she arranged her books and set up the computer that had been paid for by the Grant Committee.
“There’s no electricity up here,” the curator had explained as he led the way upstairs. He pointed to the cable taped along the baseboard. “So we’ve connected you to the second floor. It should work all right.”