If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

7

IT WASN’T SOMETHING that he would admit to another adult, but sometimes when he was getting ready for work, Bill MacPherson would watch Mister Rogers on his tiny black-and-white television. Occasionally when he was meeting with clients, Bill found it comforting to think of the calm and sensible Mister Rogers, who never seemed to be shocked or angered by anything. A succession of petty criminals, sullen teenage vandals, and vicious divorcing couples had convinced Bill that he and Mister Rogers did not live in the same neighborhood; today he had begun to wonder if they lived on the same planet. Dolphin weddings and dead polygamists seemed beyond the scope of any wisdom within Fred Rogers’s power to impart. Bill was on his own.

Now, as he followed Edith’s telephone directions to Donna Morgan’s house, he tried to think where to go from here, but he knew it was too soon to make any decisions on the matter. Chevry Morgan was dead, which meant that he no longer needed to pursue a case of possible bigamy against the man. Whether Donna Jean Morgan would have farther need of his services in a criminal capacity remained to be seen.

He found the house without difficulty. It was a one-story white frame house, with a green-striped awning over the front porch. It sat back from the blacktop road, flanked by a grove of pine trees. Donna Jean Morgan was in the front yard, near the plaster deer, weeding the bed of pansies set out in the whitewashed truck tire. She was alone.

Bill eased the car up the bumpy dirt driveway, sighing with relief that a contingent of police cars was not in evidence. Donna Jean, straw hat and gardening trowel in hand, came to meet him. Her dumpling face was splotched from crying, and her gray hair was scraggly and uncombed. She wore a faded housedress and men’s high-top sneakers.

“I just had to do something,” she said, pointing to the flower bed. “I thought that if I sat in that house one more minute, listening to the phone ring, I’d go right out of my mind. It’s not that I don’t grieve for poor darlin’ Chevry. You understand, don’t you?”

Bill nodded. All except the grieving part, he thought. “If you are saddened, then I’m very sorry that your husband is dead,” he said, choosing his words carefully. As humanity went, he privately thought the world could spare Mr. Morgan and never miss him. He wondered if Chevry had possessed the forethought to prepare a will, but decided that it would have been out of character. Just as well for Donna Jean, too. A court fight could eat up an estate in no time.

“Where’s Tanya Faith?” he asked.

“Over to her parents.” Donna Jean dabbed at her eyes. “She left as soon as we heard.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

She led him to a shaded circle of lawn chairs in back of the house. Bill had to decline lemonade, coffee, homemade pound cake, and a footstool before he could get her to sit down in the canvas chair and focus on the problem at hand. Finally, after a quick trip into the kitchen for a box of tissues for herself, Donna Jean was ready to talk. “Chevry went off last night, like he always did these days, to fix up that big old house next to the church for him and Tanya Faith. He came by here first, because I always packed him some supper to take along while he worked.”

Bill had vowed not to interrupt, but he heard himself say, “Why didn’t Tanya do that?”

Donna Jean gave him a tearful smile. “Oh, honey, Tanya Faith can’t hardly spell cook. Anyhow, I packed his food, and-”

“Wait.” Bill pulled out his pocket notepad. “I’d better get this down. Exactly what did you give him to eat?”

“Well, I had some ham left over from Sunday dinner, and I made him some potato salad, because he’s always been partial to it. I put in some bread-and-butter pickles that I made back in the summer, and I gave him a plastic margarine tub full of leftover baked beans. There was four or five fresh-baked biscuits, too, and a baby-food jar with homemade grape jelly in it. And a couple of homemade doughnuts. Chevry always said that working gave him an appetite.”

“Did anyone else eat this food?”

“Only me,” said Donna Jean Morgan. “And there’s just my word on that. Tanya Faith is what you call a picky eater. She had ice cream for dinner, and then she went next door to baby-sit for the neighbor’s little girl. So she didn’t see what I ate.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“Well, he didn’t come back last night. I went on to bed early, same as always, and Tanya Faith sat up awhile, wondering why he hadn’t come home, but she couldn’t drive, so she just fretted about it until nearly midnight. Finally she called her daddy, and he drove over to the old house, and found Chevry laid out in the kitchen, soiled with his own upchuck-” She broke off here and covered her face with a clean tissue.

Bill waited until the sobs subsided. “Was he dead?”

“Not then. Reinhardt called the rescue squad, and they took him off to the hospital in Danville, but it wasn’t no use. He kept on being sick right along, and finally his heart gave out from the strain of the convulsions. He died around six this morning. The sheriff’s department was here by eight.”

“What did they say?”

“The sheriff’s deputy-a Mr. Brower; nice, polite-spoken feller-he told me that Chevry had died under suspicious circumstances. The doctors in Danville were insisting on an autopsy and saying that they thought Chevry might have been poisoned. Mr. Brower knew all about Chevry’s marital situation, and he seemed to think that had a bearing on the case.”

“Well, Chevry’s behavior would inspire many wives to poison.”

“I preferred prayer,” said Donna Jean. “So, anyhow, they’ve sent his body off to the medical examiner and they’re testing all the leftover food that was in the kitchen. Now we have to wait and see what the report says.”

“Maybe it was food poisoning,” said Bill, putting away his notebook. “If you made the potato salad with mayonnaise, it could have easily gone bad and caused the poisoning symptoms. I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Mrs. Morgan.”

“Yes, I do,” said Donna Jean. “My maiden name was Todhunter.”

A. P. Hill was in conference with her client. She was by far the more apprehensive of the two, pacing back and forth, her fists clenched at her sides. Eleanor Royden, looking wan but alert in an unflattering green prison shift, was buffing her nails and watching her attorney with an expression of polite interest.

“What’s eating you, Sunshine?” she finally asked.

“This case,” said Powell Hill, through clenched teeth. “I’m wondering if I ought to resign.”

Eleanor raised her eyebrows. “Was it something I said?” she murmured.

“It’s something everybody said! The district attorney’s office sent a wreath to your husband’s funeral. None of them can say your name without grimacing. And your so-called friend Marizel wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire, so don’t expect to build any defense on her support. And then there’s you! You sit here gloating about committing two murders, and collecting case-related bumper stickers! And I’m supposed to defend you. How am I supposed to contend with all that?”

Her client shrugged. “Considering your hourly rate, what did you expect? An easy acquittal? Charlie Manson’s fingerprints at the crime scene?”

“It’s not that.” Powell Hill sighed. “I don’t mind hard work. I don’t even mind the fact that you shot them, and that you’ve admitted it. I’m just worried that my best work won’t be good enough in this case. The state is going to ask for the death penalty, and I’m afraid the jury will give it to them. I don’t know if I can live with that.”

“I certainly can’t,” Eleanor observed.

“There you go again, Mrs. Royden. Making jokes about your situation as if it were a community theatre production instead of literally life and death. You may not take all this seriously, but I do. And I wonder if somebody else could do a better job of defending you. Someone with more experience.”

Eleanor Royden smiled. “Do you propose that I be defended by a-what was that picturesque term you had for my husband’s more distinguished male colleagues?”

A. P. Hill hung her head. “A silverback,” she muttered. “But silverbacks can be awfully effective. They have the experience, the connections, and the know-how to beat the system-if they choose to. Maybe you’d be better off with one of them defending you. Mrs. Royden, I’m almost as much of an outcast as you are.”

“That seems fitting to me,” said the defendant. “At least I know that I can trust you. You won’t make secret deals behind my back, or urge me to plea-bargain for the sake of your own fee schedule or your legal reputation. If we go down, it’s together. I like that. Marriage used to work that way; now you have to try to find an attorney who’ll promise to be with you till death do us part.” She nodded. “Yes, I do like that.”

A. P. Hill managed a faint smile in return. “That’s very brave of you, Mrs. Royden, but I’m not sure I want to play the Sundance Kid in your production. You’re the one who might be sentenced to die. Will I be able to prevent that? I just got out of law school last year. My grades were excellent, but my trial experience is minimal, and I keep thinking that you deserve better representation.”

Eleanor Royden put down her nail file and looked up at her attorney with an expression bordering on seriousness. “Amy Powell Hill, on your honor as an officer of the court, do you swear that you personally believe that I killed Jeb and Staci Royden with provocation!”

A. P. Hill stopped in midstride, her mouth open. After a moment she continued. “Provocation? Yes, I guess I do.”

“Good. Then you ought to be able to convince a jury of that, Sunshine. Till death do us part, then?”

A. P. Hill extended her hand. “Till death do us part.”

“Todhunter,” said Bill MacPherson, puzzled by his client’s worried expression. What did Mrs. Morgan’s maiden name have to do with her husband’s sudden death? “That’s rather an unusual name.”

“It’s pretty famous around here,” said Donna Jean.

Bill mulled it over, trying to figure out why the name sounded familiar. Finally it hit him-and his stomach lurched with a sudden, unpleasant realization. “Not old Lucy Todhunter! Lethal Lucy?”

Donna Jean Morgan nodded mournfully. “That’s what they call her. Only the poison was supposed to have been in a doughnut, I think. Lucy Todhunter was my great-grandmother. Of course, she had been dead for years and years, so nobody in the family ever knew her, but the fact that she poisoned her husband was common knowledge. The menfolk in the family used to joke about it at weddings. I remember they said something about it to Chevry at the reception when I married him. Funny, isn’t it?”

Not if they can find somebody who remembers them saying it, Bill thought. Aloud he said, “But I thought Lucy Todhunter was acquitted of murdering her husband.” His knowledge of the case was hazy, based more on hand-me-down references than on any familiarity with the trial records. He knew she hadn’t been hanged, because A. P. Hill kept track of such things.

“She got off, all right. But people always said it was because she outsmarted the law. Nobody ever doubted that she did it.”

Bill MacPherson nodded sympathetically. “Like Lizzie Borden. No one remembers that she wasn’t convicted. Of course, I think she was guilty, too. But the Lucy Todhunter case was more than a century ago. What difference does it make now?”

“My great-grandmother was a notorious poisoner. People think she killed her husband,” said Donna Jean patiently. “My husband Chevry just died of poisoning. Don’t you think a jury will put those two facts together?”

“I hope not,” said Bill. “I know for sure that the information about your great-grandmother absolutely cannot be introduced into the evidence at the trial. If there is a trial, I mean. They don’t even have the autopsy report yet. Your husband may have died of natural causes.”

“Not Chevry,” said his widow mournfully. “He never was one to take the easy way out. I just know what folks will be saying. If they can’t prove how Chevry was poisoned, they’ll reckon that Lucy Todhunter passed her secret down to me-how to poison your husband and get away with it. Maybe nobody will come right out and say it in court, but the word will get around. Small towns have long memories.”

“All right,” said Bill. “I’ll have our investigator look into Lethal Lucy’s trial. Maybe she was innocent, too. And you promise me that if any law-enforcement people come by to question you, you will ask for permission to call your lawyer-and you won’t answer anything until I get here. Is that understood? Before you even offer them pound cake, you call me.”

“You think they’ll be back, then?” asked Donna Jean.

“Oh, maybe not,” said Bill. “I’m just taking every precaution to ensure your safety.” Privately he would have bet a year’s rent that she’d be seeing badges before the week was out.

“I am not a distrustful or cynical person,” said Elizabeth MacPherson, eyeing a pizza deliveryman who looked suspiciously like her brother, Bill. “But when you turn up at my door at ten in the evening bearing pepperoni and mushrooms, with a look of canine eagerness on your face, I am bound to ask you what inconvenient task you want me to perform.”

“May I come in?” asked Bill, wisely deciding to defer the debate until after the bribe had been taken.

“Oh, all right,” his sister grumbled, standing aside. For her indeterminate stay in Danville, Elizabeth had taken an apartment in the same building as A. P. Hill, although they saw little of each other as neighbors. Elizabeth was not feeling very sociable most of the time. Still, when she heard the knock at her door that evening, she was glad of the company-not that she would have admitted such a thing to her older brother, who was standing there exuding pizza fumes with a fatuous smile.

She ushered him in. “I suppose you want to talk about this emergency that called you away from Mother’s party. Since you came bearing high-calorie gifts, I suppose I’ll listen to your unreasonable requests. Lucky for you that Mother has decided to forgo the serving of actual food at her parties these days.”

“Really? I’m sorry I missed it-intellectually, I mean. I’m sure my stomach profited by my absence. What did you have for dinner?”

Elizabeth scowled. “Library paste. Put the pizza box on the coffee table while I get us some Cokes from the kitchen. Actually, I had decided for the sake of my diet, not to mention my cholesterol, not to eat for the remainder of the evening.” She set a tray of plates and glasses down beside the pizza. “And I was just regretting it. You are an angel unawares.”

“How gratifying,” said Bill, helping himself to the largest slice. “I thought you didn’t trust me.”

“I don’t. I am under no illusions as to which sort of angel you represent. The tropical kind, I am sure. If you tell me what you want now, will it put me off my food?”

“I doubt it,” said Bill. “It may be another answer to prayer. You’ve been pestering us to give you some investigating to do, and now I have two related cases that demand your attention.”

“Go on,” said Elizabeth warily. “I’m listening.” She had not forgotten the time she’d been obliged to track a covey of absconding old ladies to Georgia for one of Bill’s cases.

Between slices of pizza, Bill managed to outline the Morgan case-and to tell Elizabeth as much as he knew about the century-old notoriety of Lethal Lucy Todhunter, ancestor of the present suspect. Elizabeth’s expression became increasingly forbidding as the conversation progressed. Finally, after divulging everything he could think of, he lapsed into silence, his former enthusiasm in tatters. “Doesn’t it sound fascinating?” he finished weakly.

Elizabeth sighed. “Fascinating? Try impossible. I’m not sure what you think is entailed in the abilities of a forensic anthropologist, but I can assure you that those skills do not include solving century-old murder cases, involving the unautopsied remains of long-decomposed corpses. And I can’t do anything about the Morgans until somebody makes a ruling on how Chevry died. I doubt if they’ll give me the body and invite me to see for myself.”

“Don’t worry about the Morgans yet. I just wanted you to be aware of the situation in case things start to happen quickly. I think they might. As for Lethal Lucy, you could look into it, couldn’t you?” asked Bill. “Maybe there is some evidence that you could reevaluate in the light of modern science.”

“But what’s the point? Mrs. Morgan hasn’t even been charged yet. Why are you investigating her great-grandmother?”

“Look,” said Bill. “You’re the one who has been complaining that you have too much time on your hands. You’re the one who’s been pleading with us to find you something to do. I’m offering you one of the most famous cases in Virginia criminal history-a woman who was acquitted because no one could figure out how she did it. Now, do you want to work on it, or do you want to sit around brooding about your loss-and your mother’s new lifestyle?”

Elizabeth blinked at him. There had been very few times in Bill MacPherson’s life when he had been assertive. Most of the time people forgot what an intelligent fellow he was, because his unassuming nature allowed them to do so. In the South, “simple country boys” are often the sharpest and most dangerous people-it is a pose particularly favored by aspiring politicians. Elizabeth began to be afraid that her brother, the simple, modest country boy, might be planning to run for the Senate someday. The idea made her shudder. “Yes. All right,” she said quickly. “I work for you guys, right? If you want me to investigate an 1860s wrongful death, then I’ll hop right to it.”

“Great,” said Bill, lapsing back into his usual Bertie Wooster demeanor. “Only don’t take too long about it, okay? As soon as the Morgan autopsy comes back, I think you’ll have a more recent murder to worry about.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “Bill! You think your client is guilty?”

He shrugged. “Not exactly. But Chevry Morgan richly deserved to be murdered. I can’t believe that no one took him up on it.”

Donna Jean Morgan would not have known the Emily Dickinson poem that contained the line “the bustle in the house the morning after death”; but she was familiar with the custom. The dining-room table was laden with neighbors’ offerings of peach and apple pies, three kinds of potato salad, cold cuts, and half a dozen plates of deviled eggs. Certain dishes were “fitten” to take to a house of mourning, and most people stuck to tradition. In anticipation of this onslaught of friends and parishioners, Donna Jean had been up since six, giving the already spotless house yet another cleaning. At a quarter to nine, she had changed her faded housedress for her navy-blue Sunday best. She had set a stack of paper plates and napkins on the sideboard, then deposited herself in Chevry’s lounge chair to wait.

Her kinfolk turned up promptly at nine-the men gravely shaking her hand and expressing a restrained sympathy before they stumped out onto the back porch to talk among themselves about cars and quarterbacks, while the women, after perfunctory hugs, set about rearranging the table and adding their own contributions to the buffet. They roamed around the house with brooms and dishcloths, looking for ways to make themselves useful, chattering brightly all the while. But nobody really talked to Donna Jean.

By noon, clumps of visitors arrived, families together or women in pairs. The men joined the male contingent on the porch and the women bustled or scattered about the parlor to gossip, their hushed, mournful tones gradually giving way to the usual sunny babble of idle conversation. No one said much about Chevry, beyond the first sentence or two of condolence, although an elderly second cousin of Donna’s attempted to console the widow by observing that Donna Jean was “a sight better off without the rutting hound.” Since Cousin Elsinor was popularly assumed to be senile, no one paid any attention to this untactful remark. They heartily concurred, of course, but no one would have dreamed of saying so. Apparently the void he left in the community was neither large nor permanent.

No one mentioned the suddenness of Chevry Morgan’s death or speculated on the cause of it. Donna Jean knew that this was a bad sign. People were avoiding a touchy subject, one that they had discussed at length elsewhere-not in her presence. The community had already held its own unofficial grand-jury hearing, and its own arraignment, conducted by telephone and in the aisles of the Food Lion. Donna Jean wondered what private verdict had been reached. She avoided the topic as well, because she was too numbed by the fact of Chevry’s death to worry about anything else. She wanted friendly company, not an informal inquest.

Tanya Faith Reinhardt (Morgan) turned up at one. Swathed in a sheath of black chiffon, with a matching hat and gloves, she emerged from the backseat of her parents’ Ford Tempo, tottering a little on newly purchased spike-heeled shoes. Her parents, clad in Sunday clothes and looking ill at ease, trailed along behind her; Tanya’s mother was carrying a foil-wrapped pot of yellow chrysanthemums.

Donna Jean, who had observed the mournful procession from her picture window, met Chevry’s second widow at the door. “I might have known you’d come late,” she said, her voice heavy with scorn. “Now that all the work has been done around here.”

Tanya Faith tossed her head, causing her widebrimmed hat to lurch suddenly toward her ear. “Some of us are too grief-stricken to think about stuff like cooking and housekeeping,” she declared.

“Some of us are too lazy ever to think about cooking and housecleaning,” Donna Jean replied. “Did you come to pay your respects?”

“I don’t have any respect for you,” said Tanya Faith. “I’m here because I loved Chevry, and I don’t want you going through all his things and keeping the best for yourself. He wouldn’t want that. I know he’d want to see that I was taken care of.”

“Oh, bull turds!” Donna Jean Morgan was oblivious to the shocked murmurs from her guests. This was clearly not how they thought a bereaved woman should behave. On the other hand, the provocation of meeting one’s husband’s other widow did seem to call for extreme measures. Donna Jean was no coward-you had to give her that. In the dining room, one woman murmured to another, “Todhunter blood.”

“You think Chevry would want to see you taken care of?” said Donna Jean, with an unpleasant smile. “Why, honey, where he went, I reckon the lusts of the flesh drop right off you when you shed your earthly form, so I doubt if you cross his mind much at all anymore. Taken care of! Well, if you want me to, I can go out on the back porch and see if any of the old men out there are in the market for a sluttish extra wife.”

In the shocked silence that followed her offer, Tanya’s father decided that it was time to stand up for his little girl. “Now, Donna Jean, you know that you accepted the situation while Chevry was alive. And now you’ve got no call to talk that way to-”

“I have both the call and the right,” said Donna Jean Morgan. “While Chevry was alive he called the shots, because I had no skills and no income. I had no more say than his coonhound. He could ram this piece of trash down my throat and claim they were married in the eyes of God-the devil must be laughing over that one!-and I had no choice but to go along with it. Well, Chevry is dead now, so all that is over and done with. Now, you Reinhardts, listen good! As of now, this is my house and my land, and Chevry has nothing to say about it anymore. If you don’t want to be arrested for trespassing, you’ll get out of here right now, and take your trashy young’un with you.”

Tanya Faith took the potted chrysanthemums from her mother’s slack grasp and threw them with careful precision at the newly vacuumed living-room rug. The plastic container shattered on impact, spilling clumps of moist brown dirt and severed petals across the ivory carpet. “Part of what Chevry left is mine by rights,” she said. “And, Donna Jean Todhunter Morgan, if you killed our mutual husband, which I reckon you did, then all of it is mine.”

In her first act as investigator for her brother’s cases, Elizabeth MacPherson paid a morning visit to the Sutherlin House, Danville’s local history museum. The elegant two-story brick house, justly billed as the Last Capitol of the Confederacy (for one frantic week in 1865), was maintained with period furniture and exhibits related to the history of the house itself, as well as other items of local interest, such as maps, displays of crafts, and artifacts of area notables.

Elizabeth knew that Lucy Todhunter would not be featured in a Sutherlin exhibit, because she did not represent the image of graceful gentility or successful capitalism favored by local preservation groups in their displays of regional pride. To outsiders, a famous murderess may be the town’s most celebrated citizen, but locally such a person is considered best forgotten.

Once, in Fall River, Massachusetts, Elizabeth and her cousin Geoffrey had gone in search of a Lizzie Borden museum, or at the very least Lizziebilia, souvenirs in the form of tiny hatchet key chains or T-shirts announcing ACQUIT ME: I’M AN ORPHAN. The nineteenth-century ax murderess was, in fact, the entire reason for their visit to Fall River, but they soon discovered that interest in the infamous Lizzie was not encouraged locally. No signs assisted the traveler in finding the infamous house in which she had axed her father and stepmother; in fact, the house number had been changed and the building was now home to a print shop which did not advertise its landmark status. Elizabeth and Geoffrey had managed to find the house and they had retraced Andrew Borden’s fateful walk home from the bank on the morning of his death, but to their chagrin, they found not so much as a postcard commemorating Lizzie. (Geoffrey later remarked that he supposed there wasn’t going to be a Lorena Bobbitt exhibit in Manassas, either.)

No, there would be no memorial to Lucy Todhunter in Danville-but Elizabeth was banking on the fact that some resident historian had been unable to resist the temptation to document the case. If so, the best place to look for an account of Lucy’s career would be in the basement of the Sutherlin House, where the museum kept a craft shop and bookstore, offering such locally printed pamphlets as In a Rebel Prison, or Experiences in Danville, Virginia by Alfred S. Roe, late private, Co. A, Ninth New York Heavy Artillery Volunteers.

It was there. Tucked in between Recipes of the Confederacy and The Gibson Girl in Danville was a softcover chapbook of a little more than one hundred pages, bound in black construction paper, and featuring as its cover illustration an antique arsenic label complete with skull and crossbones. The book was unimaginatively titled: The Trial of Lucy Todhunter, Suspected Poisoner from Danville. Elizabeth picked it up and flipped through the first few pages for copyright information. The volume had been typeset and assembled at a local print shop, and its publication consisted of the author- according to the title page, one Everett Yancey- taking a stack of copies around to the local drugstores, gift shops, and other tourist-oriented establishments. The book, published in 1972, was in its thirteenth printing (at approximately two hundred copies per printing, Elizabeth guessed). This would be the perfect resource with which to begin her immersion in the Lucy Todhunter case. Elizabeth handed the clerk ten dollars for the purchase, thinking that there was nothing amateurish about the author’s pricing instincts. She hoped his research would prove equally good.

“Is the author still alive?” she asked the smiling young woman behind the counter.

“I hope so,” the volunteer clerk replied. “He’s our volunteer docent here at the Sutherlin House on Thursday mornings.”

“Good,” said Elizabeth. “I may come back then and take the tour. After I’ve done my homework.”