Murder at Monticello

by Jane Langton

  Fern cast the tragic world aside. She had been invited into this paradise, and she might as well enjoy it.

  In the back of her mind, or perhaps not in the back but smack in the front, was the man she had seen below the orchard, staring out at Carter’s Mountain and smoking a cigarette.

  He was not, after all, the resurrected ghost of a long-dead president of the United States. He was real.

  Chapter 11

  The main Chief of the Mandans Sent 2 Cheifs … to envite us to Come to his Lodge.… I with 2 interpetes walked down, and with great cerimony was Seated on a Robe by the Side of the Chief; he threw a Robe highly decorated over my Sholders, and after smokeing a pipe with the old men in the circle, the Chief Spoke “he belived all we had told him, and that peace would be genl … they now could hunt without fear & thier women could work in the fields without looking every moment for the ememey.…

  Field Notes of Captain William Clark,

  October 31, 1804,

  arrival among the Mandans

  In Charlottesville, part of Market Street in front of the Jefferson-Madison Public Library was cordoned off with yellow tape. Half a dozen police cruisers and a police ambulance were double-parked on the street. On the side of each of the cruisers was the heraldic emblem of the city of Charlottesville, divided into quarters displaying the Rotunda of the University of Virginia, a Civil War cannon, a dogwood blossom, and a mysterious trio representing three Virginia presidents—Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. (Perhaps the city had something against James Monroe, the fourth president from Virginia.)

  A stretcher emerged from the front door of the library, its contents covered with a plastic sheet. As it was carried down the steps, a woman leaped over the no-trespassing ribbon and catapulted forward. When an officer tried to stop her, she thumped him with her fists. It was Victoria Love, the director of the library. Her hair was in a frowze, her shoes were on the wrong feet.

  Oliver Pratt, Charlottesville’s Police Chief, was just in time to seize her arm as she tried to pull back the sheet.

  “Now, ma’am,” he said, “are you a relative?”

  “A relative?” cried Victoria. “No, certainly not.”

  Someone whispered in Pratt’s ear. The Chief nodded. “I see,” he said to Victoria, easing her gently away from the stretcher. “You were her boss. Well, now, ma’am, just keep calm, and we’ll soon straighten things out.”

  But Pratt himself was anything but calm. In fact, he was a jittering mass of confused rage. Still holding the director of the Jefferson-Madison Public Library by the elbow, he guided her to the corner of the street, where a woman officer from Forensics was holding something close to her eyes with a pair of tweezers. It was a bloodstained scrap of paper.

  When Chief Pratt introduced Victoria, the woman from Forensics seemed pleased. “You knew the young lady? Well, then, maybe you can help us out. This was pinned to her clothing. What do you think it means?”

  “Oh, my God,” said Victoria. She stared at the paper and pawed at her breast, where she usually carried her glasses on a string. “Oh dear, I forgot my glasses. What does it say?”

  The Forensics officer read it aloud. “It says Sport publickly.”

  “Oh, please,” moaned Victoria Love, and she tottered away.

  Chief Pratt looked at the strip of paper. “Spelled wrong, of course. Killers, lots of times they’re illiterate, can’t even read.”

  The officer from Forensics dropped her piece of evidence in a plastic sack. “Since when has carving up women been a public sport?”

  A crowd had gathered across the street. One of them, a lanky guy with an orange ponytail, stood beside a small motorcycle. His overdue library books were weighing down his backpack. “What’s going on?” he asked the guy standing next to him, a thickset man with a small head and an orange bristle cut.

  “Dead female,” said the man, his eyes shining with excitement. “Strangled, all carved up.”

  “Make way, you people,” called out Chief Pratt, his voice shaking. “Car coming through.”

  It was the limousine of the Governor of Virginia, speeding to the scene of the latest attack on the young women of the commonwealth. He was eager to show his concern.

  “High time he showed up,” said the man with the bristle cut. “Must be feeling kind of helpless. This guy’s too clever for ’em. They’ll never catch him.”

  They stood back out of the way as the limousine pulled up to the curb. A couple of Secret Service men got out, and then the Governor—portly, red-faced, and grave.

  The Secret Service men looked left and right. One of them, running his eyes along the barrier tape, saw the two redheaded men standing side by side.

  He nudged one of the Charlottesville police officers, and wagged his head. “That eyewitness last month, she said he had red hair, remember?”

  The police officer turned and saw only the redheaded guy with the motorcycle.

  George Dryer had slipped away.

  In his office at the University of Virginia, Ed Bailey unfolded the Charlottesville Daily Progress, glanced at the front page, saw the story about the latest victim, and decided once again not to pass along the news to Homer and Mary Kelly, who were driving down next week to join him in the house on University Circle.

  Homer wouldn’t be put off by the news, but Mary Kelly was skittish about the increasing number of murdered and mutilated women in the city of Charlottesville. Females, thought Ed, God bless ’em, they’re such timid creatures.

  He smiled with anticipation. Not only were the Kellys dear old friends, but, thank God, he would no longer be responsible for the care and feeding of Doodles, his landlord’s little toy poodle.

  Chapter 12

  … the young men who have their wives back of the Circle go to one of the old men with a whining tone and request the old man to take his wife (We sent a man to this Medisan Dance last night, they gave him 4 Girls) all this is to cause the buffalow to Come near.…

  Captain William Clark, January 5, 1805, winter camp at Fort Mandan

  Fern was back at the family cemetery, a little off the path, when she almost collided with him.

  She said, “Oh,” and backed up.

  He backed up too. “Whoops, sorry.”

  The question burst out of Fern, “Who are you?”

  “Tom,” he said at once. “My name’s Tom.”

  Fern gasped and whispered, “Oh, it is not.”

  “It isn’t?” He looked at her in mock dismay. “Oh, sorry. I guess I’ve had it wrong all my life. Maybe it’s Ethelbert. Yes, that’s it, I remember now. Ethelbert Szybloski here, how do you do?” He reached out a dirty hand and smiled pleasantly. “Actually, my name’s Tom Dean.”

  She laughed and shook it. “Fern Fisher.” How could she ever have been so carried away? This Thomas Not-Jefferson had the right pigmentation, red hair and a fair skin blotched by the sun. But he had a funny face with a big shapeless nose, and he was wearing grubby jeans and a Laurel and Hardy sweatshirt. His faded blue jacket was denim. His frayed sneakers were nothing like the tall narrow boots that stood so primly on the floor beside Jefferson’s writing table. “But what are you doing here, Ethelbert—I mean, Tom? I keep seeing you. You’re all over the place.”

  He coughed. “Forester. I look after the trees. You know, sycamore, oak, et cetera.”

  “Oh, is that it.”

  He turned away and pointed to the top of a pine rising above the other trees a long way off. “Canker sores, root rot. Gotta see to it. So long.”

  He loped away. Fern stared after him. Did trees get canker sores?

  On her way back to the third floor, she put her head in the door of the curator’s office. He was standing behind his desk looking at the mail.

  “I didn’t know Monticello had a forester,” said Fern.

  “A forester?” Henry Spender looked blank. “You mean Marcus Constable? He runs all kinds of things around here, not just the forest.”

  “Marcus Constable? But I me
t—well, never mind. My mistake.”

  The curator was staring at her, or, rather, through her. He seemed anxious. “Do you know anything about presidential protocol?” He heaved his shoulders nervously up and down. “It’s this Fourth of July celebration. The President’s coming and so are a lot of other important people in the administration, and I don’t know who should be seated where.”

  Fern laughed. The opportunity to show off was too good. “What about President Jefferson’s principle of pell-mell? Sit anywhere? Remember when he got in trouble because he didn’t ask the wife of the British Minister to sit beside him at the table?”

  “Oh, yes, the Merry affair,” said Henry Spender absently. “Big hullabaloo.” Then he said, “Letter for you,” and handed it across the desk.

  A letter? Fern was pleased. It was her first at this address. Smiling, she reached for it, hoping it was from Jim Reeves, who had murmured in her ear, “Let’s keep in touch.”

  But it was from one of the professors who had recommended her application for the Monticello grant:

  Dear Fern,

  Homer and I are so pleased to hear that you won that lovely grant. It sounds like a real plum. Will you be at Monticello this summer? We’ve been invited to the Fourth of July celebration, so we’ll be coming to Charlottesville right after final exams. We hope to see you then.

  Affectionately,

  Mary Kelly

  P.S. Oh, Fern, we keep hearing about the Charlottesville killer. We trust you’re being careful!

  Chapter 13

  about five oClock this evening one of the wives of Charbono [Sacagawea] was delivered of a fine boy.… Her labour was tedious and the pain violent; Mr. Jessome informed me that he had freeauently admininstered a small portion of the rattle of the rattle snake, which … had never failed to produce the desired effect, that of hastening the birth of the child.… She had not taken it more than ten minutes before she brought forth …

  Captain Meriwether Lewis, February 11, 1805, at Fort Mandan

  There were too many books about Thomas Jefferson. Fern was losing track. She had read only a few from front to back, taking careful notes.

  Of course, she didn’t need to copy down the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, because she knew it by heart:

  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.…

  The memoir of the slave named Isaac was especially beguiling, even though he referred to Thomas Jefferson as Master:

  Old Master had abundance of books:

  sometimes would have twenty of ’em down

  on the floor at once: read fust one, then tother.

  So were the recollections of Margaret Bayard Smith:

  The children … now called on him to run with them, he did not long resist and seemed delighted in delighting them. Oh ye whose envenomed calumny has painted him as the slave of the vilest passions, come here and contemplate this scene!

  Fern copied this passage, underlining vilest passions, and flipped open another book.

  To Giovanni Fabbroni, 1778—If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world, it is to your country its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul.…

  “Oh, God, that’s right,” muttered Fern to herself, “he played the violin.” She underlined favorite passion of my soul.

  But there were a lot of other books she was reading at the same time, important books about Jefferson’s championship of the rebellion, his political opposition to John Adams, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton, his presidential accomplishments and failures.

  The trouble was that reading put her to sleep. Sometimes her eyes closed. Then she would shake herself, jump up and stretch, sit down, read another page, and begin to nod again.

  So today, when Fern went outside for a brisk walk, it wasn’t to find the phony forester who looked so much like Thomas Jefferson, it was to wake herself up.

  But the imposter was looking for her. “Hi there,” he said, appearing suddenly from behind the South Pavilion.

  Fern jumped and gave a small screech. Then, recovering her breath, she said innocently, “How are the canker sores?”

  “Canker sores? Oh, those, they’re fine. I just inject a little penicillin.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, what about the root rot?”

  “No problem.” The stranger whose name was Tom dismissed root rot with a wave of his hand. “Household bleach. You just pour a little around the base of the tree. Nothing to it.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Fern, grinning at him, “that’s silly. Tell me what you’re really doing around here.”

  He looked at her accusingly. “Well, okay then, tell me what you’re doing here. That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “I asked you first.”

  He looked at her silently, and then said, “I’ll show you.” Gesturing with his elbow at Mulberry Row, he turned away and ambled down the slope.

  Fern glanced back at the house and murmured, “I really ought to be getting back.” But she knew it didn’t matter. She was completely independent of everyone else. The tourists ebbed and flowed, the guides led them from room to room, the hired cleaners came and went, the windows were washed every day, the curator pursued his curatorial duties and worried about presidential protocol. Nobody noticed Fern’s comings and goings.

  Stepping sideways down the hill, she was acutely conscious of the stringy condition of her hair. She should have washed it last night, but she hadn’t.

  Tom wasn’t looking at her anyway. He was walking ahead, not waiting for her to catch up.

  It was a long way. They were descending into the woodland Jefferson had called the Grove, pushing deeper and deeper into the undergrowth, descending below the first Roundabout road and then the second.

  “Hey,” said Fern, when a branch lashed back in her face.

  “Oh, sorry.” He stopped and looked at her with concern. “Are you all right?”

  She mopped at her eye. “You might tell me where we’re going.”

  “We’re almost there. This way.”

  And in a moment his camp appeared. It looked like something in a Boy Scout manual. His old-fashioned tent was slung between three trees, but there was no other miscellany of frontier life, no pot hanging from a teepee of sticks, no frying pan on a circle of stones. Only a small dusty motorcycle.

  Tom lifted the tent flap. “Come in.”

  Fern ducked her head and went inside. At once the familiar fragrance of the sizing in the canvas walls charmed her, and the net-covered windows and the way the sunlight striped the translucent fabric. Memory rushed up—the delicious warmth of sleeping in a tent between her mother and father and waking up to the smell of frying bacon.

  “Look,” he said, showing her a card table covered with bottles, small bags, and sealed envelopes. “My pharmacopeia.”

  “Pharma—you’re a doctor?”

  “No, no. Well, not yet anyway. Actually it’s not my pharmacopeia, it’s Lewis and Clark’s. I’m trying to collect samples of their medical supplies. Lewis made a list.” He pointed at a small stoppered bottle. “Ipecacuanha.” He picked up one thing after another. “Tartar emetic, mercury ointment, calomel.” He opened a folder and turned the pages.

  Fern stared at the dried leaves and flattened flowers. “I know, it’s a—”

  “Herbarium. Botanical specimens, samples of plants they mention in their journals.”

  The light dawned. “Oh,” exclaimed Fern, “Lewis and Clark! That’s why you’re here, because the expedition was Thomas Jefferson’s idea.”

  “Right. It was the one good thing he did.”

  “The one good thing!” Fern stared at him. “How can you say that?”

  And then the argument began. It was soon obvious that Tom was the enemy.

  It was too outrageous to need rebuttal, but Fern spluttered out the first things that came int
o her head, the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom—

  He cut her short with one word: “Slavery.”

  “Slavery!” Fern remembered the word passionately that she had underlined so often in her notes. “But he was passionately against slavery! He was furious when the abolition of slavery was taken out of the Declaration, he hated the inhumanity of human bondage, and, good God, he persuaded Congress to end the slave trade. What more do you want?”

  Tom led her outside and pointed up the hill. “How do you think he built this place? Oh, sure, he was the architect, but who did the work? Who made the bricks, who did the plowing and harvesting so he could live like a king?”

  Fern didn’t want to hear it. Through her head shot the facile excuse she had given Mr. Upchurch, that all the founding fathers from Virginia had kept slaves. Somehow it wasn’t enough. Looking around, she said angrily, “How do I get back?”

  Tom closed his mouth. Then he said curtly, “Follow me.”

  They said nothing all the way back. Fern trailed after him blindly, gasping up the steep wooded hillside. She tripped over tree roots, scratched her arms on briars, tore her shirt on a thorn.

  When the house showed through the trees, he stopped. A little penitent, Fern smiled at him wanly and said, “Thank you.”

  He nodded, his face solemn.

  She walked away, a jiggling mass of self-doubt, feeling his eyes on her back.

  At least, she told herself ruefully, climbing the hill, this man called Tom who was trespassing in Jefferson’s sacred grove had not brought up the name of Sally Hemings. Had the master of Monticello slept with his slave or not? The evidence was against him.

  Fern wasn’t ready for that one.

  Chapter 14

  … all the party in high Sperits they pass but fiew nights without amuseing themselves danceing possessing perfect harmony and good understanding towards each other, Generally helthy except Venerials Complaints which is verry Common amongst the natives and the men Catch it from them