If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

2

LUCY TODHUNTER PAUSED for one stricken moment, staring at the spilled beef tea that was slowly staining the linen sheets-and at the writhing man in the bed. Then she turned and ran from the room.

Richard Norville grasped his friend by the shoulders. “Todhunter, what is the matter with you? I haven’t seen anything like this since the war.” He thought of the gut-shot youths he had seen right there in Virginia, and his face grew gray. “We’ll have the doctor around to you soon,” he said.

Philip Todhunter’s only reply was a guttural cry and more thrashing among sweat-soaked sheets.

“What was that?” asked Norville, straining to catch the word. He thought he heard the word basin, but when he moved the china bowl closer to the bed, Todhunter only shook his head and howled, clutching at his abdomen with both hands. Trying not to glance at his wretched friend, Norville picked up the towel from atop the oak washstand. “Perhaps you’d like to bathe your forehead,” Norville muttered, eyeing the door with longing. “The doctor should be along presently.”

This time the gabbled cry was-distinctly- “Don’t leave me!”

Norville sat down again, trying not to fidget. Absently, for want of anything else to do, he picked up a copy of The Lady of the Lake, leafed through the pages, and began to read aloud: “‘Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er, Dream of fighting fields no more-’”

For three quarters of an hour Richard Norville read aloud Sir Walter Scott, while the sick man alternately drowsed and screamed. Then the retching began. Twice he filled the basin with the blood-streaked evidence of his distress.

It was nearly noon when Lucy Todhunter returned, ushering in Dr. Richard Humphreys. They entered during one of Philip’s somnolent periods, and he lay motionless with his back to them while Norville fidgeted in his eagerness to be relieved of duty.

“How is he?” asked Lucy, giving the invalid a tender glance.

Norville indicated the basin, spilling over onto a now stained carpet-evidence of the recent illness. “I have never known a man so stricken to live,” he said. “His suffering is piteous.”

The doctor edged past them and bent over the patient. “How long has he been like this?”

“The pains and vomiting began just this morning,” said Lucy. “But for a day or two he has been seedy.”

Humphreys held his fingers against Philip Todhunter’s wrist. “Seedy!” he said in a voice tinged with sarcasm. “What has he eaten, Mrs. Todhunter?”

“Only a little pastry. I brought beef tea, but-”

“Last night, then. Was there seafood in the house? Mushrooms? Did anything taste as if it had spoiled?”

“Nothing,” said Lucy Todhunter. “But Philip did not dine with us. He has refused his meals since Sunday. He said he could not bear the sight of food.”

The black-bearded doctor scowled at her and leaned down to feel the patient’s forehead. “Clammy,” he remarked to no one in particular. “So he has eaten nothing these two days, madam?” She nodded. “Then what has he taken?”

“But I told you,” she said, giving him a bewildered look. “Only some water now and again, and his beignet a little while ago. I brought him beef tea, but he spilled it without taking any.”

“Madam, I ask you again. What has your husband taken? If he had dined on a bit of questionable beef or the odd mushroom, I should put this down to gastric upset. But since he has not done so, I must regard this as a case of poisoning. Make no mistake about it.” He turned to Richard Norville. “Sir, I shall need some of the basin’s contents collected in a small container for analysis. And bring me the breakfast pastries as well.”

Norville, happy to be given an honorable excuse to flee, hurried from the room in search of a jar. Lucy Todhunter joined the doctor at her husband’s bedside. “Philip,” she called out. “Oh, my dear, can you hear me?”

Todhunter groaned, but his eyes remained closed.

“He will be all right, won’t he?” she whispered to the doctor.

Philip Todhunter opened his eyes, and groaned. A shudder of pain convulsed him, and when it was over, he lay back against the pillow, panting, and cold sweat beaded on his brow.

Dr. Humphreys leaned close to his patient’s ear. “Todhunter,” he said, speaking slowly and distinctly. “You must tell me what you have taken, or you will surely die.”

Todhunter stared up with unseeing eyes, and one trembling hand flailed at nothing. “Lucy!” he cried. “Why did you do it?”

Bill MacPherson was still holding the photograph of the frowsy middle-aged couple and the smiling teenage girl. Funny how one bit of information can completely change what you see. Suddenly the dull but pleasant family group had changed into a leering tabloid peep show. Bill had often heard the phrase the mind boggled; this was the first time his had actually done so. In fact, it was boggling like mad.

“Your husband brought home this girl-this kid in the picture-and said she was his wife?”

Donna Morgan dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “Yes.”

“Did you know her?” Bill looked back at the photo, half expecting to see a cringing kidnap victim with pleading eyes, but the grinning girl looked as saucy as before. He might even venture to say smug.

“Knew who she was. From church. Her name is Tanya Faith Reinhardt. Well, she goes by Tanya Faith Morgan now, and I-I guess I ought to-”

“How old is she?” asked Bill, forestalling another cloudburst.

“Sixteen.”

Bill glanced at the doorway. Surely this was a prank at his expense. Surely any second now Edith and A. P. Hill were going to leap out grinning, and shout, “Gotcha!” But the damp silence went on and on. Bill sighed and made a note on his legal pad: sixteen. “What do her parents think of this?”

“Oh, they won’t stand in the way of the Lord’s will. They’re stronger in the faith than I am. Though I do pray for the strength to accept this with a loving heart.”

Bill nodded. That was reassuring. Most of the women of his acquaintance would have prayed for the strength to lift a newly sharpened double-bladed ax. He was glad that violence was not an issue here, but he still couldn’t figure out how polygamy had arrived in Danville without his noticing. “The Lord’s will?” he said. “I still don’t follow you.”

“Chevry is a minister. He has a little white-frame church out in the country past Pumpkin Creek. There’s no steeple or anything. It used to be a Baptist church, but that closed years ago, so the congregation got it cheap. We fixed it up ourselves. The men made benches for pews, and Chevry laid the carpet.”

“Protestant?” asked Bill, for want of saying that Chevry seemed to lay a lot of things.

“Well, we’re not connected to any worldwide denominations. We’re just simple country people-”

From the planet Twilo, thought Bill, but he nodded sagely for her to continue.

“Not too well-off. Chevry preaches at night, but he has a day job laying carpet for the big discount carpet place here in Danville.”

Bill swallowed a quip about prayer rugs. She’s probably not kidding, he kept reminding himself. “I see. And when did your husband receive his-um- revelation?”

“It’s been three weeks now. He said the Lord spoke to him while he was in his truck driving up Highway 86. First he told Tanya Faith about it, and after she accepted him, they went and told her parents.”

“Who went ballistic?”

“I believe Dewey Reinhardt took it hard at first, but Chevry said it was a test of faith, like Abraham being called to sacrifice Isaac and that they hadn’t ought to question it.”

“Wait,” said Bill, glancing around for the office Bible. “Hold it right there. Unless there has been a major rewrite since I went to Bible school, Abraham didn’t end up killing Isaac. When God saw that the old man was willing to go through with it, He allowed him to sacrifice a sheep instead.” He shuddered. “I don’t suppose your husband-”

“Oh, no,” said Donna Morgan. “He went ahead and consummated it all right. You should see them together. She’s all over him.”

“But they actually got married?” Bill tried to remember the legal age limit for marriage in Virginia. Of course, with parental consent, sixteen was probably old enough. Except for the spot of bother about bigamy.

“Well… it wasn’t a formal wedding, but he says they did solemnize their heavenly vows.”

“With a state marriage license? Justice of the peace?” Bill was scribbling furiously now.

“Neither one. Chevry said they didn’t need to fool with paperwork for a divine union.”

I’ll bet it was. Aloud and willing his lips not to twitch, Bill said: “They did this in your husband’s church? Before witnesses?” He wrote common law and a question mark.

“No, they didn’t have a church ceremony,” said the first Mrs. Morgan, her voice quavering again. “They just knelt in the back of Chevry’s carpet truck and promised to be man and wife.”

Bill pictured himself repeating his client’s story to A. P. Hill. He could sell tickets to that. To say that A. P. Hill would not be amused was a foolhardy understatement. She was practically the poster child for the humorously challenged anyhow; this little tale of lust and lunacy would enrage her beyond the power of tranquilizer darts. If there was anything Amy Powell Hill hated more than chauvinistic men, it was the women who let them get away with it. “They make it harder for me to get taken seriously,” she would rage.

He looked at his notes, thick with underlinings and exclamation points. “All right, Mrs. Morgan,” he said. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Your husband, a part-time minister, claims to have received a directive from God, instructing him to marry a sixteen-year-old girl named Tanya. Her parents agreed to it. They plighted their troth in the back of a carpet truck, and then he brought her home to live with him and with you, his legal wife. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Bill sat back and silently counted to ten. Mrs. Morgan did not burst out laughing. No video cameras appeared in the doorway. No one giggled in the outer office. She really wasn’t kidding. Bill sighed. And she was his problem. Sooner or later he would accept the reality of the situation, and then no doubt he would be just as appalled as A. P. Hill. Just now, though, he was trying not to be overwhelmed by the absurdity of it.

“A couple of things come to mind here, Mrs. Morgan,” he said, doodling a row of vertical bars on his legal pad. “Statutory rape is a possibility, or a quaint old law that Virginia still has about seduction. We can even look into the exact wording of the statute on bigamy. We may be able to get him on his own admission of polygamy. I’d say the odds are favorable on Chevry doing jail time. That, of course, will strengthen your position in divorce proceedings.”

“But I don’t want a divorce,” said Donna Morgan.

Bill blinked. “You don’t?”

“I told you that it’s against our religion.”

“Yes, ma’am, but harems-I mean, multiple marriages-are against the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia. I don’t even have to look it up to be sure. The government feels quite strongly about it.”

“And I didn’t come here to get Chevry put in prison.”

“Mrs. Morgan, I’m a lawyer, not a marriage counselor. What do you want?”

“I just wondered if there are any rules about wives having to be treated alike. Maybe some kind of contract spelling out our rights? I mean, I believe the Lord willed this and all, but I don’t think He’d want me to take a backseat to Tanya Faith, do you?”

When Bill could trust himself to speak, he said, “I’m sure that the Lord is entirely in sympathy with you, Mrs. Morgan. Why don’t you let me do some checking on the legal ramifications of this? I’ll get back to you.”

Mrs. Morgan gave him a misty smile. “That sounds fine,” she said. “And could you talk to Chevry, too?”

“Believe me,” said Bill. “I am most anxious to do so.”

A. P. Hill’s client interview wasn’t going any better than her partner’s. Eleanor Royden was chatting with cheerful lack of remorse that would have gotten her a life sentence for jaywalking. As she talked she paced the concrete floor, looking at nothing in particular, but her delivery was as polished as a stand-up comic’s. She’s in denial, thought A. P. Hill.

“How long have I known the deceased?” Eleanor Royden toyed with a lock of faded blonde hair and looked thoughtful. “That phrase will take some getting used to. I feel as if I’d just sunk the Bismarck.

Oh, I’ve known Jeb since before your diapers ever polluted a landfill. I met him when I was a freshman in college.”

“So you went to school together?”

“No indeed. I wish I had a cigarette. No, we weren’t at the same school. Jeb was at North Carolina State University, very macho and self-important in prelaw, and I was bouffant hair and a string of cultured pearls at Meredith, which is a Baptist women’s college. I think the State boys saw Meredith as a kind of stocked trout pond.” She shrugged. “And maybe we looked on them as potentially wealthy patrons. I majored in art. Not even art education so that I might have been able to get a teaching job. Just art. And I can’t draw worth a damn. It was just a fashionable way to pass the time while I primped and partied, and looked for a breadwinner.” She bent down and peered at the young lawyer. “Can you relate to any of this, Sunshine?”

“No.” A. P. Hill gave an involuntary shudder. “I’d sooner join the marines.”

“Yes, I believe you would,” said Eleanor, resuming her pacing. “But you are of a different generation, you know. In my day, that is what proper young ladies did. They were supposed to be half of a career. The dinner party and housekeeping part. We were raised to think that those things mattered.”

“I see.”

“Oh, I had a bookkeeping job for a bit, working for a friend of my father, but everybody called that working for dress money. It meant they didn’t have to pay me much. And I suppose I was glad enough to quit and become Mrs. Jeb Royden, do-mes-tic engineer.”

“So you did not work outside the home,” said A. P. Hill, making notes. “You devoted yourself to your husband’s career and well-being.”

Eleanor Royden hit the conference table with her fist. “And I did a good job, too, damn it! I can cater a cocktail party on forty minutes’ notice. I had our Christmas cards done every year by November twenty-ninth. Our house is spotless, and in all these years I never once asked Jeb Royden to pick up a sock, or wash a dish, or take out the trash. I never let him see me in curlers. And I can still fit into my college ball gowns! I did everything right!”

A. P. Hill sighed. “And he divorced you anyhow.”

“Yes! Was that fair?”

“Mrs. Royden, I’m afraid that justice doesn’t have much to do with human relationships.”

“It does now.” Eleanor pantomimed a pistol shot with her thumb and forefinger.

“You have to stop doing this,” said A. P. Hill with a note of desperation in her voice. “The legal system takes a very dim view of people who gloat.”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through these past two years.”

“So tell me. What happened to your marriage?”

“Jeb turned fifty. Don’t men get strange when they hit middle age? I think it’s testosterone poisoning. Do you suppose anyone is working on a cure? We could organize a telethon.” She struck a pose. “‘Poor Baldy is doomed to a life of bimbos and NordicTrack, unless you help…’”

A. P. Hill sighed impatiently. “I realize that this humor is a defense mechanism, Mrs. Royden, and that you are probably experiencing a delayed shock, but I need to hear the facts. Do you feel up to talking about the divorce?”

“Why not? I’ve dined out on it for two years now. What do you want to know?”

“Well… what were the circumstances leading up to your separation?”

“My husband the legal piranha defended the bimbo landscaper against some unhappy clients, and he won the case, and out of gratitude or opportunism-opinions vary-she tapped his maple tree, to use a colorful plant metaphor.”

“Hmmm,” said A. P. Hill. “Can you tell me something a little more concrete about the second Mrs. Royden?”

“Well, she died young.” Eleanor Royden’s cackle of laughter ended in a smoker’s cough. She patted her chest and continued. “Oh, there wasn’t much to her that I could see except youth. A valuable, but perishable commodity. She was young and pretty, with a mind like an Etch-A-Sketch toy. She had a good figure, though. It pleased Jeb’s vanity to see the lust on other men’s faces when he walked into a room with her. Men would nudge him and say, ‘You sly dog!’ That’s puzzling, isn’t it?”

“How so?” asked A. P. Hill.

“It’s like being praised for buying a Mercedes. I mean, if you won one or even stole one, there might be some distinction in it, but any fool with a fat wallet can obtain one, so what constitutes the triumph? So if a fat, ugly, poor middle-aged bore managed to snare a young beauty, then maybe it would be a coup, but, hey, with Jeb’s money, he could have rented sweet young things by the hour, so why the to-do that one of them let herself be taken by him on a long-term lease?”

“You ought to recruit for convents, Mrs. Royden,” said A. P. Hill. “You make marriage seem like a disease.”

Eleanor smiled. “Yes, but it’s generally fatal to women only. In my small way, I hope to have changed that.”

“Will you stop!” A. P. Hill shook her head. “This is not how people facing a murder charge ought to talk. You should be contrite, tearful. You should be terribly sorry that you were overcome by emotion. You should be grieving for your loss.”

“Oh, honey, I did all that when we went through the divorce. All I did this morning was finalize the decree.”

“But why did you shoot them? Lots of women end up being divorced after years of marriage, and they don’t resort to violence. Why didn’t you just say, ‘Screw the bastard,’ and get on with your life? That’s what a jury will want to know.”

Eleanor Royden smiled bitterly. “Why? Because my husband considered divorce trials a blood sport.”