If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

12

BILL MACPHERSON WAS celebrating his client’s release from jail and his sister’s release from the hospital by treating the client, the sister, and the firm to a celebratory lunch at Ashley’s Buffet, a restaurant much favored by Bill for its all-you-can-eat policy, which catered to both his appetite and his income.

Elizabeth, still wobbly from her close encounter with the exculpatory evidence, was limiting her food to Jell-O and ice cream, for fear of causing a new bout of stomach cramps in her recently poisoned system.

A. P. Hill sat hunched over a plain salad, still brooding about the impending murder trial of her own client, but Edith, whose appetite was never affected by the troubles of others, was tucking into her second plateful of roast beef and mashed potatoes, with assorted vegetables piled around them for variety. “This is what I call a party,” she remarked, between mouthfuls.

Donna Jean Morgan chewed on a piece of fried chicken with mournful satisfaction. “This sure does beat the food they serve down at the jail.”

“That’s all over now,” Bill assured her. “You’ve tasted your last meal from the county jail. All we needed was the analysis of the well water, which came back from the lab yesterday. It contained arsenic. Elizabeth was right.”

“Of course I was,” she said.

“Once I took the water sample in to the district attorney, along with several affidavits explaining how arsenic from embalmed bodies in the church cemetery had contaminated the well water at the old house, he realized that their case against you was weak, to say the least. He even acknowledged that there was a chance that you could be innocent.”

A. P. Hill smiled. “They never actually admit that anyone is not guilty. District attorneys can’t afford to trust humanity. It would be bad for business.”

“They grumbled a bit,” Bill agreed, “but I pointed out that the county budget could be put to better use than staging pointless trials against innocent widows, in the face of overwhelming technical evidence. In the end they conceded the point, and the judge expedited the paperwork, and here you are.”

“It’ll be in the newspaper, won’t it?” asked Donna Jean. “I want the congregation and my neighbors to know I didn’t kill Chevry.”

“I called them myself,” said Bill. “They may want to interview you. Channel thirteen might come over from Lynchburg, if you want a press conference.”

“I’ll talk to them,” said Donna Jean.

“You’re not going to move away, then?” asked A. P. Hill, who had thought that the local notoriety might be too great, even for one proven innocent.

“No,” said Donna Jean. “I don’t know anywhere but here. Besides, Chevry didn’t leave all that much money. Reckon I’ll give some of it to Tanya Faith.”

“You are not required to by law,” said Bill. He blushed. “I mean, I could look it up, but-”

“No, I want to give her some,” his client replied. “I think she ought to go off to college. Maybe Chevry owed her that. Maybe she’ll get smart enough not to fall for some man’s line of talk if she gets educated.”

“Speaking of Tanya Faith,” said Edith. “There’s bound to be some unpleasant questions if you do hold a press conference. Are you sure you don’t want to skip the publicity?”

Donna Jean Morgan shook her head. “I welcome the chance to clear my name, and my great-grandmother’s, too.”

An awkward silence followed her remark. Bill and Elizabeth looked at each other. Finally Edith declared, “You might as well tell her. She’s got a right to know, being a descendant and all.”

“A right to know what?”

“The whole truth and nothing but the truth,” Edith sang out.

“Hush, Edith!” said Elizabeth. “Bill, I think I’d better tell her, since I’m the one who figured it out. Mrs. Morgan, you don’t want to mention your great-grandmother at the press conference. What they’re trying to tell you is that your great-grandmother, Lucy Todhunter, was guilty of murder. Technically, that is.”

“Technically? What do you mean?” Donna Jean Morgan wished these legal types would learn plain speaking. “Either she killed somebody or she didn’t.”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, who was wavering between sympathy for the murderess’s descendant and excitement over her discovery. “She did kill her husband, Philip Todhunter, but perhaps it’s just as well that she was acquitted, because the court would have had an awfully difficult time proving that Lucy had murdered her husband with a beignet. That’s a pastry covered with powdered sugar.”

“Oh, that old doughnut,” said Donna Jean. “I thought they tested a bit of the one she gave Great-Granddaddy Philip, and that they hadn’t found any trace of poison on it.”

“That’s true, Mrs. Morgan,” said Elizabeth. “The beignet contained no arsenic, which is why Philip Todhunter died. He had trusted Lucy to bring him his arsenic, and instead she brought him powdered sugar, and so he died.”

“But there was arsenic in his system.”

“Of course there was. Philip Todhunter was an arsenic eater.” Elizabeth had looked forward to this explanatory lecture during her own painful recovery from accidental poisoning, and now she was savoring the delicious triumph of having solved a mystery that had confounded researchers for more than a century. She had mentally rehearsed this summation of the case, and she intended to give it in fall.

“He took arsenic himself, habitually, just as a drug addict might take heroin or cocaine.”

“Why would anyone take arsenic?” asked Bill.

“It was considered a stimulant,” Elizabeth told him. “It was supposed to give one energy, and- probably more important to someone with a young bride-it was supposed to increase a man’s sexual prowess.”

“Oh,” said Bill. The four other occupants of the table, all female, were watching him with interest, so he directed his attention to the salad with rather more intensity than perhaps it deserved.

“It was not an uncommon addiction among nineteenth-century gentlemen,” said Elizabeth.

“It figures,” said Edith.

“The problem with taking arsenic is that it is addictive, and it does enable the body to withstand larger and larger doses, so that an addict can ingest an amount of poison that would kill an ordinary person, but according to the article in Chambers, there is one fatal flaw in the habit of arsenic eating: you can never quit.”

“Why not?” asked A. P. Hill. “Can’t you just taper off, until your body is no longer physically dependent?”

“Apparently, withdrawal is so horribly painful, that few if any addicts ever succeeded in quitting. The article was adamant about one thing, though: you can’t quit cold turkey, because if you do, the last dose you took acts as a poison on your system, just as it would affect the system of anyone who ingested a large dose of arsenic.”

“The last dose kills you,” mused Bill.

“Exactly. So the arsenic eater has to take his dose of arsenic every day in order to stay alive. He also has to take it in solid form, by the way.”

“I thought poisoners usually slipped arsenic into someone’s drink,” said A. P. Hill.

“Yes, but that’s how you administer arsenic when you want someone to die.” Elizabeth shivered. “That’s why I got so sick from drinking the tainted water at the old house. Apparently, arsenic in a liquid solution goes to the kidneys and other vital organs, and can cause a rapid, painful death.” She touched her abdomen gingerly. “I can testify to the painful part.”

“Arsenic eaters take their daily dose in solid form, then?” Bill held up a sugar packet between his thumb and forefinger, looked down at his iced tea, and tossed the packet down unopened.

“Yes. And they take care not to drink anything for a couple of hours after ingestion so that the arsenic isn’t carried to the kidneys in solution. Arsenic addicts take their drug in white powdered form.” She picked up Bill’s discarded sugar packet and smiled. “It looks a lot like sugar.”

“The beignet!” A. P. Hill had been listening to the evidence, and now she could see where the chain of reasoning led.

“Exactly! According to the testimony from Lucy Todhunter’s trial, Philip Todhunter was in the habit of eating a beignet for breakfast every morning. His wife, Lucy, always brought it to him, and the pastry was always covered with powdered sugar.”

“She brought him arsenic?” said Bill, whose appetite for dessert was rapidly disappearing.

“Yes-he insisted on it. He was an arsenic addict, so the arsenic beignet would not kill him. On the contrary, it kept him alive. They both knew that he had to have his daily dose of arsenic to survive.”

A. P. Hill looked thoughtful. “In that case it isn’t attempted murder to give someone arsenic.”

“Oh, no,” Elizabeth agreed. “It was medicinal. The attempted murder occurred-and succeeded-on the day that Lucy Todhunter brought her husband a beignet covered with powdered sugar.”

“Which he thought was arsenic.”

“Of course he did! Perhaps he had been trying to stop his addiction. I don’t know. The guests testified that he had been ill for nearly two days, and that he had eaten nothing. Obviously, he had given up trying to do without his required dose of arsenic when he accepted the beignet. Lucy, whom he had trusted for all those months to bring him his daily measure of poison, gave him the sugared pastry, and he ate it, thinking that his pains would soon cease once the drug stabilized his system, but instead the pains got worse, and he said to her, ‘Why did you do it?’ Meaning, I think, why did you bring me sugar instead of arsenic.”

“Why did she do it?” asked Edith. “I know you lawyers don’t set any store by motives, but the rest of us like to think that the world makes sense.”

“Let’s leave that point for a moment,” said A. P. Hill. “I’m interested in proof. Elizabeth, how did you know that Philip Todhunter was an arsenic eater to begin with? Have you any proof?”

“Yes. I first suspected that he might be an arsenic eater when I heard descriptions of him as a hypochondriac. His doctors described him as pale, with a clear waxy complexion. That description tallies with the addiction. Also, I knew that he had been in pain from injuries he’d suffered during the war, and I thought that some physician might have prescribed a tonic with arsenic as part of his treatment then. Arsenic was often used in patent medicines in those days. He could have built up a slight tolerance from taking an arsenic-laced tonic, and then later he might have drifted into a full-fledged addiction, eating pure arsenic.”

“Speculation,” said A. P. Hill.

“I haven’t finished, Powell. Remember that the doctors tested the uneaten part of the beignet and Philip Todhunter’s stomach contents for arsenic, and they found none. But during the autopsy, hair and tissue samples from Todhunter’s body tested positive for arsenic. He had arsenic in his system, but not in his stomach, and not from the pastry he ate on the day of his death. So, where did the residual arsenic come from? I realized that he had to have been taking it on a long-term basis.”

“Maybe Lucy was administering it to him on a long-term basis,” A. P. Hill pointed out.

“No. Otherwise, he would have been exhibiting the symptoms of poisoning long before that final illness. If the major were being poisoned without his knowledge, he would have had a history of gastric attacks, vomiting, lethargy, and all the other symptoms of systematic poisoning. But there’s no evidence of that. His last illness was sudden, violent, and unprecedented. The only theory that fits the facts is the one I gave you: Todhunter, an addicted arsenic eater, was killed because his wife withheld his supply of the drug, thereby triggering an attack that stressed his system so severely that his heart gave out.”

“You still haven’t told us why she did it,” said Edith.

“I know,” said Elizabeth. “If you think it’s difficult to solve crimes after a century has passed, you should try coming up with motives.”

“Don’t you have any idea?” asked Edith.

“Not really. I know there was some talk of his selling her farm, but that seems hardly sufficient.”

“Motives don’t have to be sufficient,” said A. P. Hill. “People have been killed for the most trivial of reasons. Last July, a man in Vinton was convicted of manslaughter for killing his buddy over a tomato. That’s why the law doesn’t require good motives, only good evidence.”

“So she got away with murder, why ever she did it,” said Bill cheerfully. “It happens, we all know that. And she probably lived to a ripe old age on her husband’s money.”

“She died less than a year later,” Donna Jean Morgan replied, perhaps resenting any implicit comparison. “In childbirth.”

“Oh,” said Bill. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Lucy Todhunter was probably resigned to that eventuality,” said Elizabeth. “She had nearly died twice before with miscarriages. She’d had to go away for quite a while to the spa at White Sulphur Springs to recover her health. You’d have thought she’d stop trying to conceive.”

Edith grumbled, “Some men won’t take no for an answer.”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “That’s true. They demand an heir. And apparently Major Todhunter was one of those brutal bastards, because he kept getting her pregnant as soon as she could walk again. Ugh. Poor Lucy.”

A. P. Hill looked thoughtful. “I think I’d like to have defended Lucy Todhunter,” she said quietly.

“But I told you, I’m sure she was guilty.”

The lawyer nodded. “I know she was. I would have entered a plea of self-defense.”

The next morning the triumph of saving one client had faded, and despite a slight hangover from overcelebrating, Bill was concentrating on his obligations to the other client: Miri Malone.

“Maybe I should represent the dolphin,” he said to A. P. Hill, who was trying to drink her tea in peace.

“I have a murder trial coming up, Bill,” she said in her most discouraging tones.

“Yes, but you’re not working on it at the moment, Powell, so why don’t you just listen to some of my ideas for this civil-rights case?”

In the outer office the telephone rang, but Edith got it on first ring, and the partners relaxed again and resumed their conversation.

“All right.” A. P. Hill sighed. “I suppose I’d better hear it before you go public with it. Go on-you were thinking of representing the dolphin. Why?”

“Because we’re not trying to transfer ownership from the Sea Park to Miri. We’re trying to prove that Porky is a person, and that no one should own him. Therefore, he needs his own attorney.”

“Have you ever tried billing a dolphin?”

“I see what you mean, but after all, Powell, money isn’t the first consideration. This could be a landmark case in animal rights.”

“You might consider becoming a vegetarian,” his partner advised. “The question is bound to come up in press conferences if you’re defending the civil rights of a dolphin.”

Bill frowned. “I’m not defending cows,” he said.

“Leave that aside for now, then. So, you’re planning to argue about the legal definition of the word person?”

“Right. And I thought I’d bring in some expert witnesses to testify to Porky’s intelligence and his ability to communicate. My argument is that sentient beings should be considered persons, even if they’re not our species. After all, if we ever have to deal with any extraterrestrial races, this question will come up.”

“I don’t think bringing up the possibility of flying saucers will strengthen your case, Bill.”

“Okay, maybe not. Anyhow, what do you think of my argument?”

“It’s interesting,” said A. P. Hill. “I can’t say that I can envision a local judge going along with it, but stranger things have happened.”

Edith appeared in the doorway. “I’ve got bad news,” she said. “Do y’all want to finish your breakfast drinks before I deliver it?”

“No,” said Bill, gulping the last ounces of lukewarm cocoa. “We can take it.”

“One of your clients is dead.”

After a moment of uncomprehending silence, A. P. Hill said, “It’s Eleanor Royden, isn’t it? I was afraid she might try to kill herself when she fully realized what she had done.”

“No, it’s not Eleanor,” said Edith cheerfully. “She’s probably busy right now answering all the proposals of marriage that she’s been getting in the mail. No, the deceased is one of Bill’s clients. Miri Malone. That’s why I interrupted you. I don’t think you’ll need all that dolphin defense strategy.”

“Miri is dead?” said Bill. “How? What happened?”

“She drowned at the Sea Park in Florida.”

“She drowned. But that’s impossible! She worked with sea mammals. She was a professional.”

Edith handed him a message slip bearing Rich Edmonds’s name and telephone number and a scribbled message. “You can call him back if you want to. He told me that Miri Malone’s nude body had been found in the dolphin tank, and that the coroner’s office is calling it an accident.”

“What does Rich think?” Bill squinted at Edith’s hastily written message. “What does conj-vs mean?”

“He agrees that her death was an accident,” said Edith. “But he has a better idea of what happened than the coroner does. He thinks Miri was in Porky’s tank on a conjugal visit, and that she ran out of air before they’d finished.”

A. P. Hill shook her head. “Only you, Bill.” She sighed.

“That’s terrible,” said Bill. “Miri was a very nice person. A little strange, I’ll admit, but maybe she was a pioneer in animal rights. Which reminds me-what’s going to happen to Porky?”

“Apparently, nothing,” said Edith, whose cheerfulness was untouched by the tragedy. “According to Rich Edmonds nobody seems very concerned about the dolphin as a threat to human life. He’s as friendly as ever. He did all his shows yesterday, and his appetite is good. The park put a female dolphin in with him to cheer him up, and it seems to be working.”

“That does it!” said Powell. “I’m having tuna fish for lunch.”

“I wonder if I should go on with the lawsuit,” said Bill.

‘You can’t very well petition for a marriage when the bride is dead,’ Edith pointed out. “Unless you’re really going to expand the concept of civil rights.”

“No, no,” said Bill. “I meant the case about whether or not Porky is a person. I was mapping out an argument to free him-”

“I think you’d better drop the entire matter, Bill,” said A. P. Hill. “In the best interests of the dolphin.”

“Why?”

“Think about it. Do you really want to prove that Porky is a person after he’s been involved in the death of Miri Malone? As an animal he has no rights or responsibilities, and he can’t be held liable for his actions. But what if you make the court rule that he is a person, and then they charge him with murder?” She shrugged. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“Fish jails,” murmured Edith. “That would be expensive.”

“You’re right,” said Bill. “Miri wouldn’t want Porky to suffer for her death. Maybe we should just leave things as they are.”

“Had Miss Malone paid you?” asked A. P. Hill.

“Not yet. I hadn’t billed her.”

“In that case, partner, the matter is closed.”

Several months later A. P. Hill had her day in court with Eleanor Royden. Powell had tried to balance her instinctive defense attorney’s delaying tactics against the need for a speedy trial to minimize the damage done by Eleanor’s relentless press conferences. “I’d rather defend O. J. Simpson,” she said in a moment of desperation. She hadn’t meant it, though. She was only tired, and exasperated, and above all frightened that her best wouldn’t be good enough to save Eleanor Royden.

The trial lasted the better part of a week- neither side had the funds or the patience for a lengthier battle. Eleanor was vilified by the prosecution as a bloodthirsty shrew who murdered her victims out of spite. A. P. Hill retaliated by presenting the Roydens as a selfish, shallow couple who delighted in tormenting Jeb’s ex-wife. Witnesses described the same incidents from opposite points of view: he was a monster; she was a monster. It all depended on whom the witness identified with, or, in the cases of some of the middle-aged women, it depended on whom the witness was afraid to be identified with. Some affluent wives apparently thought that Eleanor should be belled and cowled like a leper. She was dangerous: she threatened the well-being of all of them. A few courageous souls (most of whom were divorced) hailed Eleanor as a terrible prophet of feminism, who could single-handedly stem the tide of trophy wives and midlifecrisis divorces, but most people treated the case as a bad joke-nothing that need have any bearing on their lives.

Now all the hours of testimony, the psychiatric evaluations, and the media circus surrounding the trial had wound down to one focal point: a spotlight on A. P. Hill for the defense. She looked more pale and waiflike than ever in her navy-blue suit and sensible low-heeled pumps; her hair chopped into a straight bob covering her ears; and her lip gloss smeared on in haste, after she had finished throwing up in the courthouse ladies’ room. She looked as insubstantial as a pond reflection beside her client. Eleanor Royden’s newly tinted blonde hair shone like a helmet in an upswept coiffure, and her black silk dress reminded no one of bereavement. Perhaps its solemnity was marred by its low neckline and the diamond necklace at her throat. Eleanor’s makeup was vivid, and reapplied at short intervals, in case a photographer should be aiming at her with a telephoto lens. She had watched the entire proceedings with bright-eyed interest, and a cheery briskness that suggested that this was someone else’s trial. Perhaps it was A. P. Hill’s. She was growing thinner by the day as the circles under her eyes deepened.

Eleanor sometimes smiled at the jurors, or nodded in sympathetic agreement with the judge’s ruling, but A. P. Hill remained impassive, as if her life, not Eleanor’s, depended on the verdict. Now she tottered to the front of the courtroom to begin her summation. The jurors were watching her, expressionless, while Eleanor gave her a grinning thumbs-up sign that almost sent her back to the ladies’ room.

A. P. Hill took a deep breath and began. “I’m here to defend Eleanor Royden, not necessarily to praise her. I hope that Jeb and Eleanor Royden do not become the symbolic middle-class couple of the Nineties, because as a nation we deserve better role models than these two shallow, selfish, alienated creatures. But I do think they should have stayed together-because they deserved each other.

“The prosecution has gone to great pains to show you how heartless Eleanor Royden was to have shot her husband and his new wife while they slept, and of course I can’t stand up here and say that anybody, any victim, deserves to die, but…” She paused here, and shook her head. “I’d have to say that Jeb and Staci came close.

“The legal community here in Roanoke knew Jeb Royden as a capable attorney, a good friend, and a community leader. They all told you what a nice guy he was-and so he was-among his equals. But there was another side to Jeb Royden that his colleagues, his fellow officers of the court, never saw: Jeb the bully; Jeb the adolescent, addicted to self-gratification; Jeb the domestic tyrant, whose arrogance knew no bounds.

“Jeb Royden made a lot of money. He thought that made him important-certainly more important than fluffy blonde Eleanor, whose very food and clothing came from his bounty. He thought he was entitled to have his own way in all things because he was the one who mattered. Eleanor didn’t matter. She was just another one of Jeb Royden’s possessions, as bought and paid for as his sports car. And as replaceable.

“For much of their lives, Eleanor Royden had acquiesced in her husband’s delusions of grandeur. She let him have his own way. Sometimes that’s the easiest way to keep peace with a tyrant, but in the end it costs you, because tyrants feed on people who let them have their own way all the time. They take it for granted.

“Imagine Jeb’s surprise when he wanted a new toy, and insignificant old Eleanor said no. He had the palatial house in Chambord Oaks, and the midlife sports car, and all the money he needed, and now he wanted the trophy: a new young wife- the hormonal equivalent of a face-lift, I guess. And Eleanor said no.

“How dared she? Wasn’t he the rich and important attorney? Didn’t he deserve the best of everything? He could certainly afford it. Eleanor had tried to thwart the mighty Jeb Royden, and he thought she deserved to be punished for it.

“His indifference toward an aging and no-longer-beautiful wife turned to hatred for an enemy. He began to use his legal skills, his power and influence, as weapons to turn his divorce into a chess game. He would make Eleanor suffer for her presumption. The tragedy is that he began to enjoy tormenting her.

“Jeb Royden forgot that it is dangerous to torment the weak. They have nothing to lose.” A. P. Hill noticed a movement in the back of the crowded courtroom. She saw her partner slip into the last row of seats. A. P. Hill felt ridiculously glad to see him. He had driven all the way up from Danville just to give her moral support. No one could help her now, but she was grateful to see someone who was on her side. She couldn’t smile at Bill now; she would thank him later.

A. P. Hill turned away and picked up where she had left off: “You’ve been told in detail all the things that were done to punish Eleanor Royden for the sin of not going away quietly. She was arrested for trespassing; the furniture she had chosen for their home was given away so that she should have none of it; she was ridiculed in front of her former friends, and made to live in poverty by a man with a high-six-figure income, while he continued to live in his usual splendor. And through it all Jeb and Staci Royden laughed at Eleanor. They made fun of her. You saw a check he wrote her, on which he put: for upkeep of cow. That cow was Jeb Royden’s wife of twenty years, the woman he had promised to love for better or for worse.

“Then there was Staci Royden, Jeb’s little Giselle. Eleanor had a host of other names for her replacement. Can you blame her? Staci Royden knew that her prospective suitor was married from the moment she met him. She didn’t particularly care. Jeb was rich, and Staci was young and beautiful. And Eleanor didn’t matter.

“Our society seems to say that to people, through our advertising, our television shows, the attitudes of public figures-they all say: ‘Rich people, young people, pretty people matter. The rest of you don’t.’

“Eleanor Royden thought that she mattered. Perhaps a wiser woman would have been content to wait for Staci to grow old and learn the unhappy truth about youth and beauty not lasting forever, but I think Eleanor’s pain was too great for wisdom. She isn’t much given to introspection, anyhow. She is shallow. Could anyone who wasn’t shallow have loved Jeb Royden? I don’t think so.

“Eleanor is not without pride, though. And there was a limit to her endurance. Jeb and Staci taunted Eleanor for a couple of years, and finally she decided that it had to end. You know what she did then. She took her pistol, and she went to Jeb’s fine mansion, and she put an end to the torment. You believe that she shot Jeb and Staci. I believe it. But you know who doesn’t believe it, not really, deep down?”

A. P. Hill pointed to her client, who was no longer smiling. “She doesn’t believe it! Eleanor Royden cannot comprehend what she has done, because it is still incredible to her that someone as almighty as Jeb could be stopped by a nickel’s worth of lead. She still talks about him in the present tense, ladies and gentlemen. Now, you may think that it is insane to shoot someone, and then refuse to believe that they are dead. It certainly suggests that no intent to kill was there.

“Jeb and Staci made sport of Eleanor-and you know which sport it was? Bearbaiting. It’s an old, barbaric custom that we’ve done away with as far as bears are concerned; sometimes our next of kin are less fortunate. The way it worked: people chained a bear to a wooden stake, and they let dogs loose to attack it, forcing the bear to fight back. Usually the bear was hurt or killed, but often it managed to dispatch some of the attacking dogs before it died. That’s what the Royden case reminds me of, ladies and gentlemen. A poor trapped creature who could not defend herself against a rich and powerful ex-spouse was baited and teased and ridiculed until she snapped. And she fought back.

“Don’t use this tale as a parable of divorce. Most people are not Jeb and Staci and Eleanor. But this one time, two cruel and brutal people underestimated the rage of their victim, and she struck back, with fatal results. Whether they drove her insane, or whether she was acting in self-defense from the emotional abuse, the fact remains: Eleanor Royden did not commit murder in cold blood, and she should not be made to suffer further. The bear is still tied to the stake, but it has managed to defeat the dogs. Can we not call a halt to the sport now, and let her go in peace?”

The rest of the trial was something of a blur to A. P. Hill, who tended to develop stage fright after a performance rather than before. Dimly, she heard the prosecution’s argument, and she made herself watch the jury as they filed out to begin their deliberations. Then she went back to the ladies’ room, and was sick.

Eleanor Royden was returned to the cell to await the verdict, and A. P. Hill hung around the courthouse, pacing and wishing she smoked, for as long as she could stand it. Finally, Bill MacPherson lured her back to the Marriott with take-out hamburgers, after first securing promises from everywhere that they would be notified the moment any word came from the jury room. “We’re only five miles away,” he told her. “You could get there in less than ten minutes if you drove like a madwoman. Which you would.”

“I keep wondering if there was something else I should have said,” A. P. Hill said. She had kicked off her sensible shoes and was sitting curled up in an easy chair, watching hamburger grease congeal on the waxed paper in front of her. It was past seven o’clock now, and outside the light was fading, but A. P. Hill neither noticed nor cared.

“You gave a good speech,” said Bill. “Maybe better than your client deserved. I’m not sure I approve of sympathy for people who execute those who annoy them.”

A. P. Hill nodded. “You wonder how married people can become such strangers. I can’t imagine hating anyone enough to want them dead. But, then, I wouldn’t choose someone like Jeb Royden for a husband, either.”

“No?” said Bill between french fries. “I thought you liked brilliant, powerful people.”

His partner considered it. “I admire people like that, yes. They might be wearing on a daily basis, though.” She thought about all the bright high achievers she had known in law school. Some of them were even more ruthless than she was, and in partnership together they might have become fast-track legal piranhas, but instead she had chosen- proposed it herself, actually-to practice law in a small Virginia town with good old Bill MacPherson. He would probably never argue a case before the Supreme Court, but he brought her hamburgers and sat with her while she sweated out a verdict. A. P. Hill decided that she had made the right choice-at least for now.

“I can’t imagine you ever being a battered woman,” Bill was saying.

A. P. Hill looked appraisingly at her law partner. “No,” she said. “I don’t suppose I will be.”

They had finished eating, and Bill was reading the room-service menu in hopes of persuading Powell to join him for coffee and dessert when the phone rang. She sprang past him and snatched up the receiver. “Yes? They’re coming in? Of course. Give me ten minutes.”

Bill stood up. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No. I have to do this alone.”

He could see that it would be useless to argue with her. “You’ll come back, won’t you?”

She almost smiled. “It’s my room, Bill.”

“Well… I hope it goes well. Good luck, partner.”

“I’ll need it,” said A. P. Hill, closing the door gently behind her.

Bill decided that pacing the floor waiting for Powell to return would be a waste of energy. She was doing enough worrying on her own. He had never seen her so emotional. Privately, he thought that it was lucky the case was ending, regardless of the verdict, because A. P. Hill’s nerves wouldn’t stand much more of the Eleanor Royden circus. She must have lost ten pounds at least, and she didn’t have them to spare. He glanced at the half a hamburger Powell had left uneaten. Things had to get back to normal soon. Bill resolved to pour the bottles of pink medicine down the sink as soon as he got back to the office by way of celebrating the end of the ordeal.

Meanwhile, he called room service and settled back on the king-size bed to play remote-control roulette while he waited. He caught the last half of a Star Trek rerun, and was flipping desultorily back and forth between CNN, the Home Shopping Network, and Unsolved Mysteries, when he heard a soft tapping at the door. “Powell?” he called out.

“Yes.” The answering voice was quiet, but that didn’t tell him much. He couldn’t picture his partner whooping it up because she had won a case. Powell took everything calmly.

He flung open the door, waiting for his cue. She just stood there for a moment, looking dazed and tired, and then she flopped facedown on the bed, beating the counterpane with clenched fists.

She wasn’t crying, though, a fact for which Bill was thankful. He might be able to cope with rage; but grief made him sweat. He hovered over her, wondering if a hug would be in order, but deciding against it. “Tell me,” he said.

He heard her take a deep breath. “Guilty,” she said without looking up.

“I figured that. But how bad is it?”

A long silence. More deep breaths. Finally A. P. Hill sat up. “First degree. They decided that the crime was premeditated because Eleanor took the gun with her.”

“I thought she always kept it in her purse. Which is illegal, of course, but-”

“I’ll appeal. I don’t think it will do much good, since every silverback in the court system is a friend of Jeb, but I will try.” She smiled bitterly. “At least they stipulated that she not receive the death penalty. Wasn’t that big of them?”

“It’s one less thing for you to worry about,” said Bill.

The cold smile again. “Sure, no problem! Eleanor Royden could stay in prison until she’s seventy-five, that’s all. Good old Jeb wins again.”

Bill said quietly, “Jeb Royden is dead, Powell.”

“He still wins. He wanted Eleanor to suffer and, by God, she will. It was over for him in an instant, but not for Eleanor. She will suffer at leisure.”

“How did she take the verdict?”

“She had that tight little smile that Southern women put on, no matter what. I don’t think the truth has sunk in yet for her. She’s clinging to the notion that an appeal will save her, but I doubt that it will. I have to get a trial transcript, and start looking for loopholes-”

“Not now, Powell,” said Bill. “I thought whichever way the case turned out, you might need fortifying. So I ordered you something from room service.” He went to the bathroom, and brought back a plastic ice bucket and a fifth of Jim Beam.

A. P. Hill picked up two glasses from the dresser and held them out. “I’ll take it straight,” she said.

“Same here.” Bill poured two ounces of whiskey into each tumbler, “To a truce,” he said, raising his glass, “in the battle of the sexes.”