Murder at Monticello

by Jane Langton

  Mr. Upchurch leaned back, looking relieved. “That’s what people so often forget. George Washington had slaves at Mount Vernon, so did James Madison at Montpelier and James Monroe at Oak Hill.”

  Bravely Fern grasped the thorn. “I think of it this way, Mr. Upchurch. You see, it’s such a common fault among historians, judging the past by the present.” She leaned forward eagerly. “Suppose that a hundred years from now everybody is vegetarian. I mean on moral grounds. The very idea of butchering animals for food would be repugnant—the thought of cattle prodded into freight cars, and slaughterhouses dismembering hogs, and supermarkets selling carcasses cut up and packaged as bottom round and sirloin steak.”

  Mr. Upchurch looked stunned.

  Fern had invented this little allegory only recently. “What would they think of us? I mean, looking back? They’d never forgive us. All our heroes, all our famous writers and artists, all our great scientists and statesmen—their achievements would be rejected with disgust because they were carnivores with blood running down their chins.”

  Mr. Upchurch gasped. Then he laughed with delight. “Of course, of course!” He slapped his knee and sat back, beaming. But then his face scrunched up again. His voice dropped an octave and he whispered the name of Sally Hemings.

  Fern was ready. She had been expecting it. At once she said calmly, “But it could just as well have been his brother Randolph who slept with Sally Hemings. He had the same DNA. Why do people pick on Thomas Jefferson? I mean, it’s inconceivable that he could have fathered all those children.”

  Mr. Upchurch relaxed. He was charmed. “The award is yours, my dear,” he said, and shook her hand. “I know your book will be everything we hoped for.”

  But now the book was on hold. Fern ran along Mulberry Row and down the sloping brick path to the graveyard. This time there was nothing within the iron fence but the obelisk and all the other monuments and stones memorializing various Jeffersons, Randolphs, Carrs, and Eppeses.

  No tall figure moved among the graves, whether living or dead or in between.

  Chapter 8

  Here the Man who left us with the horses 16 days ago George Shannon … joined us nearly Starved to Death, he had been 12 days without any thing to eate but grapes & one Rabit, which he Killed by shooting a piece of hard Stick in place of a ball.…

  Captain William Clark, September 11, 1804

  “Welcome to Monticello,” said Gail Boltwood, opening the tall glass door to admit another batch of tourists.

  They gathered around her politely as she explained the Great Clock over the door, and the cannonball weights, and the days marked on the wall. “Do you see the holes in the floor? The weights have to go down into the cellar to reach the other days of the week.”

  Then Gail showed them the mastodon bones in the glass case. “The President hoped the live animal itself would be discovered in the West, because he didn’t believe in the extinction of species. If the bones existed, then the creature itself must be out there somewhere.”

  “You mean he didn’t agree with Charles Darwin?” asked an earnest tourist.

  Gail smiled gently. “Darwin published his theory many years after Jefferson’s death.”

  “I see,” said the humbled tourist.

  They were not all so humble. Today there was a crude visitor with only one thought in his head. “Is it true about Sally Hemings? Did he really have sex with a slave I mean, they’ve got the DNA to prove it, right?”

  Gail was used to the question, and she handled it with scholarly good taste. “Perhaps it’s true. But perhaps the children of Sally Hemings were fathered by another member of the family. Some people have suggested Thomas Jefferson’s nephews, the sons of his sister, but their DNA would have been quite different. But Thomas Jefferson’s brother Randolph is plausible, or one of his sons. Theirs would have been exactly the same.”

  The scandal-monger would not be denied. “But it’s true, right? Every one of her five kids was born nine months after he was right here at Monticello. You know, back from Washington or someplace else. Isn’t that a fact?” He grinned right and left, looking for agreement, but the others were too polite to accuse their long-dead host of scandalous behavior.

  With relief they followed Gail as she walked ahead of them into the parlor. Reverently they looked down at the maple-and-cherrywood geometry of the floor and up at the molding along the top of the wall—copied, Gail told them, from a Roman temple in a book.

  She was a good guide, Gail knew that, but perhaps she was too pedantic. A Roman temple in a book! Why would anybody care about that? Well, they were lucky she didn’t tell them which Roman temple and which book, because it was the personal things they cared about, like which slave he had slept with, how rich he had been exactly, and was it true he had died poor?

  Chapter 9

  Capt. Lewis and Several more of the party went out a hunting they came in had killed 13 common Deer 2 black taild Deer 1 Goat & 3 Buffaloe.… Drewyer caught 1 beaver. killed a prarie wolf, these wolves are larger than a fox.

  Private Joseph Whitehouse, September 17, 1804

  Bright sunlight poured from the top of the dome. Fern could barely see the words on the monitor. She squinted at it and typed a word, then stopped and listened. There was a heavy thumping on the stairs.

  Soon it turned into the sound of gasping, and there in the doorway stood Mr. Upchurch, blowing out his cheeks and wheezing. He was wearing a gentlemanly seersucker suit and a shocking-pink bow tie.

  Fern leaped up. “Oh, Mr. Upchurch, hello.”

  “Good morning.” He smiled, and asked how she was coming along. Did she have an outline the committee could see Had she written a chapter or two?

  “Oh, Mr. Upchurch, it’s too soon. A writer can’t—I mean, they have to have some—” She had been about to say personal space, but it was a phrase she detested, and she stopped.

  But Mr. Upchurch understood at once. He too was a writer. He too knew the necessity for time to allow the creative process to work its mysterious will.

  “Oh,” said Fern, relieved, “you’re a writer, Mr. Upchurch?”

  “Just now and then,” said Mr. Upchurch modestly. “Little occasional pieces like a genealogical study of my family, The Upchurches of Rappahanock Valley, which several newspapers have been good enough to praise. Don’t you find”—Mr. Upchurch became confidential, one writer sharing his experience with another—”that good things come into your head when you least expect it? Happy strokes? I once found an entire chapter writing itself in my head while walking my dog.”

  Fern heartily agreed, and mentioned the inspiration to be found in the aisles of a supermarket. “The green broccoli, Mr. Upchurch, the scarlet tomatoes, the purple grapes.”

  “Golf!” exclaimed Mr. Upchurch, his eyes shining, and at once he began describing the flow of soul occasioned by the sunlit putting green, the ramble from one hole to another, the flight of the ball over the fairway.

  At last he said goodbye and went away, descending the staircase heavily.

  Fern listened until the sound of his footsteps faded. Then she went to one of the round windows and peered down at a cluster of visitors boarding the shuttle bus. No, Mr. Upchurch was not getting on the bus. He was walking downhill in the direction of the staff parking lot. Well, of course, as a big giver to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, he didn’t have to park at the bottom of the hill.

  Mr. Upchurch was gone. It was safe to go out.

  Once again Fern walked along Mulberry Row and descended to the vegetable garden. There were tourists here too, stooping to read the markers.

  “Hey, honey, look at this, purple broccoli.”

  “Wow, look at the size of those cabbages.”

  Fern found the stairs to the orchard, where some of the peach trees were beginning to set fruit. Wandering along the grassy verge of the vineyard, she was surprised to see Thomas Jefferson himself, once again, standing stockstill below her. He was staring up at Carter’s Mountain, the ro
und green hill that blocked the view of the distant range of the Blue Ridge.

  Even though he was the offspring of her own will, Fern was startled by the solidity of his shoulders. He was not transparent, like the man she had imagined in the garden, through whom she had clearly seen a shovel. This apparition was standing motionless in the posture that was Jefferson’s own, arms crossed on chest, back perfectly straight. Fern remembered what slave Isaac had said—Mr. Jefferson was a tall strait-bodied man as ever you see: nary man in this town walked so straight as my Old Master.

  Well, of course she knew exactly what he was thinking. He was looking a little sideways, staring westward, worrying about the men he had sent out on a dangerous mission, wishing he could see beyond Carter’s Mountain and the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies and straight across the eight hundred miles of intervening wilderness to the little band of men working their way up the Missouri River. He’d be worrying about the dangers they were facing, wondering if they would ever come back.

  The clothes of this visionary Jefferson were a little odd—he was wearing a loose blue jacket and long blue trousers. She had never imagined him in anything but breeches buckled at the knee. Frowning at her creation, she commanded it to change its pants.

  It didn’t. It still stood there stubbornly with its arms crossed, looking out. Then, to her surprise, it lifted a hand to its face. There was a trickle of smoke.

  Shocked, Fern started forward, but then she slipped on the sloping grass and gave a small cry.

  At once the face turned toward her. Instantly the vision tossed away its cigarette and plunged downhill, vanishing in the trees.

  Tom waited until the woman went away. Then he climbed back to the orchard and poked in the undergrowth until he found the cold cigarette stub. He put it in his pocket and got the hell out of there.

  The woman had seen him twice. The first time he had been taking a shortcut around the graveyard, and he had assumed she was just a tourist. This time it was clear she was a member of the staff.

  What in the hell would happen now? Would they scour the woods? Make him clear out?

  Goddamn her anyway.

  Chapter 10

  the head chief the Black Buffaloe, Seized hold of the cable of the pearogue.… Capt. Clark Spoke to all the party to Stand to their arms.… the large Swivel [was] loaded immediately with 16 Musquet Ball.… the chief Sayed he … would follow us and kill and take the whole of us by degrees.…

  Sergeant John Ordway, September 25, 1804

  George sat down with his book at a table in the Charlottesville Public Library and copied out a passage in his meticulous small hand—The Chin-nook womin are lude and carry on sport publickly. It was another find. There were plenty more, he was sure of it. George vowed to pounce on them all—no problem for a guy like him, a real brain, not like those partying bastards on Fraternity Row who never cracked a book.

  Then George moved to another table, where he could watch the librarian. She was pulling on her coat. It was lunchtime. A younger woman was taking her place. They were chatting. The older woman was explaining something in a whisper. She was leaving.

  He studied the new one intently. He’d never seen this one before. She had dark hair in pigtails. She was fat, just like Jeanie.

  She was possible, quite possible.

  To Fern’s alarm, Mr. Upchurch began dropping in without warning.

  Hearing his heavy step on the stair, she would sigh and prepare her face for a smiling welcome. And there he would be again, the dignified old gentleman, wearing another of his crazy neckties. Sometimes Fern wondered which was the real Augustus Upchurch, the dignity or the craziness? It was a silly question. Mr. Upchurch was a sweet, foolish, kindly old dear, and that was all.

  He was always delighted by her growing stack of feeble pages. One day he asked if he might borrow them and bring them back next morning.

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry, Mr. Upchurch. I can’t let anyone see a first draft.” Shrewdly Fern flattered him. “Of course, you of all people know what first drafts are like.”

  “Oh, of course.” His scrunched-up face attested to the torments of the writer.

  But why did he keep coming?

  She should have guessed why. He was lonely. Augustus Upchurch lived all by himself in a gloomy ten-room house, he had no hobbies, he had nothing to do all day, and his old friends were either dead or in Miami.

  Fortunately, his son Roger lived only a few miles away, on Jefferson Lake Drive, not far from Monticello, and Augustus was usually invited for Sunday dinner. Until the arrival of Fern Fisher, it had been the highlight of his week, because Roger and his wife were the parents of twin daughters who were their grandfather’s joy.

  Everything else had fallen away. Augustus Flaminius Upchurch had once been a highly respected elder statesman in Charlottesville, as well as a successful businessman with a chain of printing shops all over the state of Virginia—but in the fifteen years since his retirement the shops had been totally transformed.

  The thump and rattle of the old machinery was gone, and so were the craftsmen in inky aprons who had worked so swiftly in the dark clutter of the old shop, nimbly scooping up letters with their dirty fingernails, reading the chases backward and upside down.

  The new equipment merely clicked and hummed in pale rooms harshly lit with fluorescent lights. Teenagers with clean pink hands sat staring at a dozen screens.

  The first time he had wandered into the new building for a visit and a cheery cup of coffee, hardly anyone had known who he was.

  “Whodja say you want?” the child in the office had asked him, sipping her Diet Coke.

  And then the young proprietor had hurried out of his office—busy, bored, and interrupted.

  Augustus told himself gloomily that he should never have retired. He could have learned the new way himself. It couldn’t be all that difficult. He would take a course at the university. But he didn’t.

  He had begun to feel his age in other ways. Augustus often reflected on the passage of time, wondering if there had been a particular moment when the slippage had started. An instant before that moment, he had been at the apex of success and esteem. An instant after, the descent had begun.

  Around him teemed a younger race, fiercely ascending, edging him aside. They were jovial middle-aged men and women jiggling with energy, throwing themselves into the world’s work. They failed to appoint him to committees. He was never invited to dinner.

  Fortunately, the Society for Jefferson Studies remained. For twenty years he had been its president. The other elderly board members still looked up to him. They spoke his language. They were his friends. In fact, one was too friendly by far.

  Flora Foley was a widow, and when Martha Upchurch had died at last, Flora had attacked on all fronts.

  She might have made more headway if she had not been such an old hag, such a genuine fright. Her cheeks hung in swags, her black wig swore at her face, and her face swore back. Augustus was embarrassed that such an old crone should think him fair game. Why weren’t younger, more attractive women making eyes at him?

  They were not. It was only Flora Foley.

  The other members of the board were kind and comfortable, but they met only once a month. The rest of the time Augustus didn’t know what to do with himself.

  In the past he had found fellowship in the Charlottesville Public Library, but now the old librarians had all retired. Their replacements were brisk and helpful, but there was no jocular exchange of gossip, just a dry stamp, stamp on the flyleaves of his books.

  So the young woman at Monticello was an oasis, a social resource. Surely it was proper for him to show an interest, to ask how she was getting along?

  Of course it was proper. Fern was immensely grateful to Mr. Upchurch, and she told herself that he had a perfect right to come.

  At his fourth visit, he was interrupting nothing anyway. She had been falling asleep over the local paper, the Charlottesville Daily Progress. Even the gruesome news about another m
urdered woman hadn’t kept her awake.

  The tread on the stair woke her up. She jumped out of her chair. “Oh, Mr. Upchurch, I didn’t hear you coming.”

  He always began by asking politely how the book was coming along, and she always politely lied that it was getting along just fine.

  Once he had come so early, half an hour before the official tours began, that Fern had given him her own personal tour of the house.

  He was surprisingly ignorant. In Jefferson’s Cabinet he was puzzled by the polygraph. “What’s that thing on the table?”

  “A Xerox machine,” joked Fern. “No, no, of course it isn’t, but it does the same thing. It makes copies. It’s called a polygraph.”

  “Oh, yes, I see. The two pens are connected. You write with one and the other imitates every stroke. How ingenious.” And then, to Fern’s dismay, Mr. Upchurch invited her to lunch.

  “Oh, thank you, but I’d better not.” She racked her brain for an excuse, and simpered—if her eyelashes had been longer she would have batted them—“I’ve got to keep my nose to the grindstone.”

  “Well, that’s admirable of you, I’m sure.” It was clear he was disappointed.

  When he was gone she hurried outdoors, abandoning the grindstone.

  June in Virginia was a bower of flowers. The Canada lilies along the walk were chandeliers of orange bells. The sweet Williams and foxgloves were in bloom. But it was the trees that counted most. Fern wished that the man who had made a garden on his mountaintop could see these massive galaxies of leaves—the purple beeches, the tulip poplars, the sugar maples.

  Elsewhere on earth people might be freezing, sweating, starving, scrabbling in garbage dumps for food, sleeping in gutters, dying. At this very moment a dangerous killer was threatening the town of Charlottesville. But here at Monticello such things were unimaginable. Here there was no starvation, no homelessness, no death.