If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Tanya Faith stood up and waved solemnly to the congregation. Chevry Morgan motioned for her to sit back down.

  Speaking of thinking you are God’s gift … Edith scribbled hurriedly.

  The minister bowed his head, and the room filled with an electric silence. Finally he raised his head, eyes closed, and intoned, “There are those who would persecute me for my faith, believers.” His eyes blazed open, and he began to pace back and forth in front of the lectern, still clutching the microphone. “There are those who would mock my divine revelation. They call me names and laugh at my belief. They try to shake the faith of my wife Donna, and to make her think that the Lord’s chosen way is wrong. They want to lock me away in a jail cell for what I believe. In America, neighbors! Religious persecution!”

  There were murmurs of protest from the crowd. Somebody shouted, “Keep the faith!”

  What if you’re a devout ax murderer, and the Lord told you to do it? Edith wrote on Bill’s notepad.

  Bill wrote back: Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.

  MACPHERSON & HILL

  ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW

  DANVILLE, VIRGINIA

  All right … I’m calm now. I can continue writing this letter as a mature, objective adult, who is adjusting gracefully to the fact that her dowdy and probably senile old mother has just decided in the twilight of her life that she is a lesbian!

  My first dizzy thought was that she had her terms muddled, and that she was actually going in for amateur theatrics (you know: a thespian), or that she had moved in with someone from Lesbia, Mississippi, or something. If you were reading this, Cameron, you would be snickering at me, or telling me how naïve I am, but, really, consider the situation. Here is poor old Mother, who got married as a teenager (back during the Crimean War or so) and has stayed married just forever, being a den mother, station-wagon mom, and all the rest of it; and then Daddy gets all lusty and peculiar with his midlife crisis and divorces her, and suddenly she decides that she prefers women?

  I mean, now? After fifty-something years? It just dawned on her? And, let me tell you, there were no signs of it prior to this, I can assure you. Why, I’ve seen that woman watch old Steve McQueen movies with such a look of rapt adoration on her face that she’d hardly even blink while he was on the screen. We’re talking serious magnetism here. And now she’d have me believe that it was Natalie Wood she preferred all along? I think not. I said as much to her in the Chinese restaurant while I finished pulverizing my fortune cookie.

  Mother smiled sweetly. She admitted that she still thought Steve McQueen was adorable in an aesthetic sort of way—you know, the way one can admire irises or gazelles for their natural beauty, without wanting to get intimate with one. She explained that she was a political lesbian.

  “Which is?”

  “It is a philosophical stance,” she explained to me, sounding as if she were reading an invisible cue card. “Women have been oppressed for centuries by the patriarchal male. Woman-centered religions were dismissed as witchcraft. Female equality was denied by law. There has been systematic repression and exploitation of women by the male authority figures throughout the ages, so that to participate in a heterosexual relationship is to sleep with the enemy.”

  “Political lesbianism,” she finished triumphantly, “is a conscious decision to renounce the male oppressor as a sacrifice to the struggle for liberation of our gender.” If I had heard that from one of my college friends, I probably would have applauded her dedication to a political ideal. To hear this, though, from someone who used to fox-trot with Dad when The Lawrence Welk Show came on, was a bit unsettling, to say the least.

  I said that I thought sexual orientation was something you decided on at an early age, not as an afterthought when one is a divorcee in her fifties. I ventured to express this opinion to the flaming radical herself, and she said that political decisions were governed by reason, not by glandular impulses. Doesn’t that statement take the shine off all those old Cary Grant movies? Ugh. She went on to say that she had never realized what a lovely relationship one could have with other women. Such a lifestyle simply hadn’t been an option in her early years.

  Then she gave me an ironic smile and said, “Besides, dear, once a woman is past fifty, she might as well be a lesbian. He certainly doesn’t want you anymore.”

  “Who?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Men. Any of them.”

  Isn’t that a cheery little aphorism to pass along from mother to daughter? She probably wouldn’t have said it if you had been—you know—still around, but even in my present solitary state, it wasn’t the sort of womanly wisdom I wanted to hear from my aged parent. Whatever happened to gray-haired grandmothers who talk baby-talk to cats? Now, apparently, they’re all out having sex lives that make us look like seventh graders. Here I am, still in my twenties, sleeping alone, going to bed at ten, flossing, and alphabetizing my spice rack, while my mother is living a TV movie of the week with some mysterious femme fatale named Casey.

  Dr. Freya is going to be no help at all with this.

  She’ll just look at me over her horn-rim glasses and ask me why I am so upset—and perhaps I am repressing similar feelings, nicht wahr? To which I will reply, “Not unless Kiefer Sutherland is one hell of an actress.” But, of course, she won’t be convinced. Apparently, once you get into psychoanalysis, every opinion you have about anything is considered a symptom of something.

  So I had to work it out for myself. I finally decided that what’s bothering me is that I thought I knew my mother. Now it seems I didn’t. Parents aren’t supposed to have interesting lives. They’re supposed to be dull and conservative and vaguely worried about us, while we go out into the world being outrageous and daring. They are not supposed to change. They’re our safety net, in case the world out there knocks us for a loop. Then we have some place to retreat to. But where can I go? Dad is busy being Casanova-the-Hamster with Caroline; Mother is Danville’s answer to Isadora Duncan; and you are … lost at sea. (There. I said it. But it doesn’t mean I believe that it’s forever. After all, Penelope waited twenty years for Ulysses, and it turned out she was right. By that logic, I still have a long way to go.)

  Besides, I have more immediate concerns. I asked Mother if she had shared this stunning revelation with Bill. She replied that she was leaving that task to me. Bill and I are invited to Mother’s new home for dinner on Saturday, at which time we will meet Professor Casey. Mother is sure we will all get along splendidly. I’m sure to need industrial strength antacids. And Bill will probably have to be shot with tranquilizer darts.

  Because of Dad, I had already contemplated the idea of a stepmother. I’m not sure I can handle the prospect of two of them, though.

  With love from an old-fashioned girl (apparently),

  Elizabeth

  ON THE DAY of her husband’s death, Lucy Todhunter was visited by the local sheriff, a courtly, silver-haired politician, and told in the politest possible terms that she should not consider leaving town. Indeed, the law would take it most kindly if she would stay within the house itself while the authorities conducted investigations into her husband’s demise. Neither Dr. Humphreys nor Dr. Bell was prepared to sign a death certificate, the sheriff explained. Until the test results arrived, he suggested that she remain calm. He added that he hoped an attorney would be among those who dropped by to pay her a condolence call. Meanwhile, he would like her formal permission to question her houseguests about the events surrounding her husband’s final illness.

  Lucy, already attired in mourning of the deepest black-dyed satin, complete with veil, nodded her assent and reached for her black-edged handkerchief.

  Two days later the chemist’s report was telegraphed to Royes Bell from Richmond. He took the report with him to Richard Humphreys’s office to discuss its implications. “Well, here it is,” he said, sinking down into his colleague’s consulting-room chair. “Interesting results. According to Richmond, the samples of regurgitation from Philip Todhu
nter—the ones collected before we administered the nux vomica, mind you—were free of arsenic, but the autopsy samples tell quite another story.” He opened the telegram and handed it to the other physician.

  Humphreys’s eyebrows rose as he read the report. “Trace amounts of arsenic found in Todhunter’s intestines. One thousandth of a grain in the kidneys, and a full one-eighth grain in his liver. Hair samples also indicate the presence of arsenic.”

  “I wonder how the devil she did it,” said Royes Bell.

  That statement was to become the refrain of the entire Todhunter case. On the basis of the chemical analysis, Lucy Todhunter was charged with poisoning her husband. Ascribing a motive for her actions was not easy, but finally the district attorney settled on Lucy’s anticipated inheritance of Todhunter’s wealth as her incentive for murder.

  She made a lovely defendant, sitting on the witness stand in her widow’s weeds, so becoming to her pale skin and dark eyes. Her attorney, Patrick Russell, an auburn-haired Irishman with a gift for courtroom histrionics, heightened the illusion of Lucy’s frailty by escorting her to and from the defense table as if she were made of spun glass. He had other tricks, too, for the benefit of the twelve solemn farmers and shopkeepers who sat in the jury box.

  “Now, Mrs. Todhunter,” he would say, softening his voice to the point of reverence. “In the matter of your departed husband, the former Union Army Major Todhunter—”

  Several of the war veterans on the jury would stiffen each time he used that phrase, and Gerald Hillyard, the young prosecuting attorney, would mop his brow with his handkerchief—and hope that he had enough evidence to carry the day.

  He was to be disappointed in that hope.

  The medical evidence was clear enough regarding the symptoms of arsenic poisoning that Philip Todhunter had certainly displayed. Both doctors were adamant in their assertions that the dying Philip Todhunter had every sign of someone poisoned with arsenic: clammy skin, uncontrollable vomiting, esophageal pain, blood-tinged diarrhea, and finally a coma followed by death. The postmortem testing confirmed their opinion: arsenic in the internal organs—even in hair samples and nail cuttings taken from the deceased. Hillyard had felt confident that he was winning the case, despite Russell’s theatrics, until the defense began to present its own case.

  The servants were questioned first. With each of them, Russell was charming and confidential. “Now here’s the person who knows what goes on at the Todhunters’,” he said to a stern-faced Mrs. Malone. “I always say that the cook is the heart of the house.”

  The portly woman sniffed disdainfully. “I don’t know about that,” she said, but Russell’s exuberance was boundless.

  “Now, Mrs. Malone,” he said, with a winning smile. “You were in charge of the kitchen, of course.”

  “And you’ll find no tainted meat or bad mushrooms in my larder!” she informed him.

  “Naturally not. And did Mrs. Lucy Todhunter give you instructions about what to cook?”

  “Now and again,” the cook conceded. “But not what you’d call regular. She never seemed to care what she ate.”

  “And was she much of a help to you in the kitchen? Buying the food? Or chopping vegetables, perhaps? Preparing the pastry?”

  Mrs. Malone’s incredulous stare suggested that Patrick Russell and his senses had parted company. “Not while I know it!” she replied. “I can’t remember the last time I saw Miz Lucy in the kitchen. And if I saw her do a hand’s turn of work, that would have been a day.”

  “So she didn’t prepare any meals for former Union Army Major Todhunter during his last illness?”

  “No more did I. He wouldn’t take so much as a bowl of gruel. Said his stomach wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “But a cup of tea, perhaps? Or a glass of spirits?”

  “Not that I ever saw.” A thought struck her. “Except his beignet.”

  “Ah, the beignet!” Russell nodded encouragingly. “His breakfast pastry—an acquired taste from New Orleans. Could you tell us a bit more about that?”

  “She used to take him one of my fresh-baked beignets every morning. It was a custom of his. He didn’t want anybody else to bring him his pastry, only Mrs. Todhunter. And she always did, except the couple of days he was sick. That day he was mortally stricken, she took him a beignet to keep up his strength, but it was no use, rest his soul.” Despite the piety of her words, she did not seem unduly grieved by her employer’s demise.

  “And she never took him anything else during his illness?”

  Mrs. Malone shook her head. “She wouldn’t leave his bedside, most times, unless she was so tired that she collapsed in her own room. So mostly I took up broth and juices, or I sent one of the girls up with it. Not that he’d touch a mouthful of it.”

  “Was Mrs. Todhunter herself taken ill during her husband’s final days?”

  “No, sir. She wore herself out sitting up with him, but she was fit enough.”

  “And the other members of the household? All hale and hearty?”

  Mrs. Malone’s lips tightened. “We were sound as a bell, all of us! I told you that no contagion came out of my kitchen, and there’s your proof!”

  Russell thanked the cook profusely and excused her from the witness stand. He followed her testimony with that of the housemaids, who whispered agreement to Mrs. Malone’s version of the events. “And did Mrs. Todhunter ever take the broth or pastry, or whatever you brought, and add anything to it?” Russell asked gently.

  “No, sir,” said the terrified kitchen maid. “That is, I couldn’t say for most days she didn’t, but that last day, she surely did not.”

  “Well, perhaps she took the tray from you and sent you back downstairs so that she could give the broth or pastry to Mr. Todhunter herself?”

  “No, sir.” The girl shook her head: a definite no. “She always made me stand there and wait so I could take the tray and dirty dishes back to the kitchen. And the slop bowl, too, like as not.”

  “Caring for invalids is an arduous task,” said Russell sympathetically. “But I’m sure you were a great help in the family’s hour of need.”

  “Besides, Mr. Todhunter wasn’t taking any nourishment by then, anyhow. Dreadful ill, he was.”

  The other maid said much the same, but with considerably more terror in her voice at the prospect of being on display in such a menacing place as a courtroom. Patrick Russell called Dr. Humphreys and Dr. Bell to the stand, with a deference suggesting that they were on loan from the Oracle of Delphi. They were popular men in Danville, and Russell knew it. He did not challenge their statement that the patient had succumbed to arsenic poisoning.

  “Now, Dr. Bell, I’ll ask you the same as I’ve asked Dr. Richard Humphreys. Did you ever see Mrs. Lucy Todhunter administer anything potable to her unfortunate husband?”

  Bell’s eyes narrowed. “I did not. But I suspected she had. During my stay with the patient, I searched the rooms, and sure enough, finally after Todhunter’s death, I found arsenic—”

  “You did find arsenic, Doctor? Tell us the circumstances.”

  “It was white powder in a small glass jar. I suspected what it was, of course, and I took a sample away to be tested.”

  “Oh, yes. And the results confirmed your suspicions, did they not?”

  “They did. The substance in the jar was arsenic trioxide, a fine white powder that puts one in mind of sugar.”

  “Humphreys says the same,” mused the attorney. “And one of you was with the patient at all times until the end?”

  “Yes. Or Norville or her cousin Mary Compson.”

  “Yes. And do you know, Dr. Bell, Mrs. Mary Hadley Compson of Maysville, North Carolina, has testified to the same statement—that at no time did she see Lucy Todhunter administer anything to her ailing husband, the late Union Army Maj—”

  “You haven’t asked Norville yet!”

  “Let me remedy that at once, Doctor,” said Patrick Russell with a courtly bow.

  Richard Norville came
to the stand, wary of justice among strangers, but willing enough to tell what he knew. “Yes, I escorted Mrs. Todhunter to her husband’s room the day he took sick,” he told the court. “She wanted to take a tray up to him from the breakfast table, and I wouldn’t allow her to carry it.”

  “And they say the Union had no gallant officers!” said Patrick Russell solemnly.

  Norville seemed discomfited by snickers from the spectators, but he resumed his testimony. “I took the tray up to Philip’s room and went in with her. She handed him the plate of beignets and he ate most of it. Then he sank back as if he were taken ill again.”

  Russell heard the buzz from the back of the courtroom, but he did not turn around. “He had an attack at once, did he? Well, that could have been the pastry, but it seems unlikely that it would work so quickly. What happened next?”

  Norville squirmed in his seat and muttered something.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Norville? I couldn’t quite hear what you said.”

  “I said: ‘And then she ate the rest of the beignet herself!’”

  Russell raised his eyebrows, giving a convincing imitation of someone who is hearing startling news for the first time. “You say that Mrs. Lucy Todhunter herself consumed a piece of the same pastry her husband had eaten? The very same one?”

  “Yes. There were half a dozen on the plate. He chose himself one at random. We had all eaten one.”

  “And did you see her add anything to that particular pastry? More powdered sugar, perhaps?”

  “I did not. Never took my eyes off her for a moment. She didn’t add anything. I’ll take my oath to that.”

  “So you have, Mr. Norville,” said Russell, smiling. “Mrs. Todhunter gave her husband a beignet, and he became ill and died. But she ate from the same pastry and was not affected. Perhaps some secret antidote to the fatal dose?”

  Norville shook his head. “There’s more to it than that. I told you: we had all eaten a pastry from that plate at breakfast before she took the tray up to his room.”