If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Elizabeth fell in behind the first cluster of students and listened in respectful silence as Everett Yancey began the tour. He had obviously given the lecture many times, because his narrative never faltered, and he quoted names and dates with a clipped precision born of long familiarity. He talked about the fateful week in April 1865 when the Sutherlin House served as the capitol building for the Confederacy, and he was eloquent in his description of the frenzied Confederate leaders, hurrying to escape the approaching army. When he told of the wooden box constructed in Danville to hold the gold bars salvaged from the Confederate treasury, the audience seemed to be holding its breath. Elizabeth thought of adding her own comments about the eventual disposition of the Confederate gold, but since she had no proof to offer, she kept quiet. Everett Yancey was not the sort of guide who encouraged audience participation.

  She did note that as Yancey’s history of Danville neared the twentieth century, the guide became less ardent in his recital of events. In 1912, the Sutherlin House became Danville’s public library, and Everett Yancey seemed to lose interest in the house and in Danville as a whole. His discussion of industrial progress after World War II was positively perfunctory, and the students began to fidget, no longer caught in the spell of a storyteller. He shepherded them to the basement gift shop, pointed out copies of his self-published pamphlets on local history, and volunteered to autograph their purchases, but no one took him up on the offer. The students, dazed with boredom and information overload, drifted away, leaving Elizabeth MacPherson alone with the guide.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “If you’re not in a hurry, I’d like to talk to you.”

  Everett Yancey looked at her speculatively. “I charge twenty dollars an hour for ancestor research,” he said without notable enthusiasm.

  “It’s not that.” Elizabeth smiled. “At least, I hope she’s not an ancestor. I wanted to talk to you about Lucy Todhunter. Can I buy you lunch?”

  “As long as we don’t order beignets,” he replied. “You might be a Todhunter reenactor.”

  Twenty minutes later they were settled into a red paneled booth at the Long River Chinese Restaurant—Everett Yancey’s choice. Elizabeth was relieved that it was not the booth she shared during that fateful luncheon with her mother; the modern scandal might have kept her mind off the nineteenth-century femme fatale.

  “I’ve read your book on Lucy Todhunter,” Elizabeth told Everett Yancey. “It was fascinating.”

  His response was wary. “You’re not the sort of romantic who wants to prove that Lucy was innocent, I hope?”

  “No, I’m a forensic anthropologist. The case interests me because it’s technically an unsolved crime. Lucy was acquitted of the murder of her husband. Your book convinced me that she did poison her husband, but I do wonder about two other questions: how and why!” Elizabeth decided not to mention the more modern connection to the case: the mysterious death of the husband of Donna Jean Morgan, descendant of Lucy Todhunter.

  Everett Yancey busied himself with his bowl of hot-and-sour soup. Presently he said, “It makes me uneasy when young women come up and ask how Lucy Todhunter managed to kill her husband. I’m not sure I’d tell that to anyone, even if I knew.”

  “I told you, I’m a forensic anthropologist,” said Elizabeth patiently. “I don’t have any plans to dispose of a husband.” She took a sip of green tea, to keep herself from telling this forbidding stranger all about Cameron, and how much she wished she had him back. That was not germane to the matter at hand. Better think about the case.

  “Well, I’m not sure you can solve the case from a distance of more than a century, but I’d be glad to help you try. That could be a very nice sequel to my original history of Lucy. Er—you weren’t planning to publish anything yourself, were you?”

  Elizabeth assured him that she was not.

  “You asked why she did it,” said Yancey thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Wish I did. I took my best guess in the book: perhaps she hated Major Todhunter for threatening to sell her family farm. Doesn’t that seem logical to you?”

  “Not entirely,” said Elizabeth. “She sounded like the sort of woman who would have tried persuasion rather than poison to get her way. Something about your explanation didn’t ring true. Never mind, though. That was idle curiosity. I really need to know how she did it. Do you think the account of the case given at the trial was accurate?”

  “You mean, are the facts of the poisoning as impossible as they seem? It is tempting to suppose they are not. If the doctor was mistaken, or the cousins lied, or the servants were bribed, perhaps the Todhunter poisoning wasn’t such a great mystery after all. Perhaps Lucy simply poisoned her husband’s pastry with arsenic-laced powdered sugar, and got away with it through the collusion of her household. I don’t think so, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because one of the key witnesses wanted her to be guilty. Major Todhunter’s old comrade in arms, Richard Norville. He had never met Lucy before that visit, and he never saw her afterward, but still he swore that she had finished off the beignet she had given to her husband, and she suffered no ill effects. Surely, if this strange woman had murdered Norville’s good friend, he would do all that he could to see her hanged for it.”

  “I suppose so,” Elizabeth conceded. “I can’t think of any reason for him to protect her.”

  “By all accounts that beignet was the only nourishment taken by Philip Todhunter within days of his death; yet on autopsy his system was found to be filled with arsenic. The remaining beignets and the sugar were untainted, however. And while the entire household ate from the same batch of pastry, no one else became ill.”

  “All the testimony agreed on that point, didn’t it? I don’t suppose everyone would have lied to protect Lucy,” mused Elizabeth.

  “I doubt if anyone would have,” Everett Yancey replied. “Her cousins disapproved of her for marrying a Union officer. The servants didn’t care for her. And neither doctor appeared to be smitten by her charms. No one would have minded in the least if she’d been convicted. They told the truth quite grudgingly, I thought, judging from the trial transcripts.”

  “All right,” said Elizabeth. “We’ll assume that the scenario was reported truthfully. Lucy Todhunter gives her husband a homemade pastry, and he dies. I don’t suppose he was allergic to it?”

  “Arsenic in the corpse,” Yancey reminded her. “Besides, he ate one nearly every morning.”

  “I don’t suppose his death could have been an accident of some sort?”

  “Philip Todhunter didn’t think so. Almost his last coherent words were: ‘Lucy, why did you do it?’ But the question is: What did she do?”

  “And all the guests ate sugared pastry from the same tray; Norville says Todhunter chose one at random from those remaining; and Lucy ate a few bites from the same one her husband ate, so that lets out the idea of the murderer being immune,” said Elizabeth. “I was thinking of a Dorothy Sayers novel, in which the murderer and his victim share a poisoned meal, but only one dies because the other has a tolerance for the poison. That would hardly work with a collection of strangers, though. Norville had only recently arrived, so he could not have built up a tolerance to a fatal dose of arsenic.”

  “If Lucy had been trying to get a houseful of people immune to arsenic, there’d have been vomiting stories from half of them, since their tolerance levels would vary. That’s the tricky thing about arsenic: the fatal dose varies greatly, according to the individual. But nobody reported being sick during their stay at the Todhunter home. I think we’ll have to pronounce them unpoisoned.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “That doesn’t get us anywhere, though.”

  “Would you like to read my source material on the case?” asked Everett Yancey. “I don’t think you’re going to solve it over lunch. I still have my trial transcripts, and photocopies of letters, diaries, and so on. Perhaps you might find something in there.”

  “I’d like to try,” said Elizabeth.


  “Certainly. As long as I get to publish your results.” Everett Yancey smiled, and twirled a forkful of shrimp lo mein. “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

  The two officers from the sheriff’s department were sitting in Donna Jean Morgan’s living room, attempting to look genial, without actually accepting the repeated offers of coffee, pound cake, or butterscotch fudge. Both as a courtesy to the widow, and perhaps as a strategy toward a possible murderess, they were pretending that their visit was little more than a social call. The suspect, Donna Jean Morgan, was also pretending that their visit was a formality, because she was too embarrassed and frightened to consider any other possibility.

  “You’re sure you wouldn’t like a doughnut?” she twittered again.

  The older deputy responded with a plaster smile, while the young, nervous one got out his notebook and looked expectantly at his partner.

  Alvin Brower decided that it was time to get down to business, but he wasn’t going to be unpleasant about it, because this was still an interview, not an interrogation. In an interview, you put the witness at ease, acted friendly, and let him do most of the talking, because you didn’t know all the answers yet, and you wanted all the information you could get, including, you hoped, any inconsistencies or demonstrable lies the witness might care to tell. The interrogation came later, when you did know all the answers, and you wanted the suspect to admit guilt. That discourse was far less courteous, and would not be held in the suspect’s living room. Brower thought he was one step closer to an interrogation now: the autopsy report had come back.

  “Now, Mrs. Morgan, I don’t want to have to charge you with assault on my waistline,” he said, smiling again. “So don’t tempt me with baked goods.” Actually, the offer wasn’t all that tempting, since the last recipient of Donna Jean’s cooking was dead of arsenic poisoning. “Let’s go back over the evening of Mr. Morgan’s death again, as best we can.”

  Donna Jean sighed. “It won’t change with retelling, Mr. Brower. He came here, and I fixed him a supper to take with him while he worked. I always fixed his supper. Maybe he thought Tanya Faith would take over that task, and she was welcome to it as far as I was concerned, but I don’t think it ever would have happened. Catch Tanya Faith cooking!” She smiled at the absurdity of it.

  “But you were angry with your husband, weren’t you, Mrs. Morgan?”

  “Chevry could be a stubborn man,” his widow admitted. “And I think he heard more instructions from the Lord than the Lord ever gave.”

  “My wife agrees with you there, ma’am,” said Brower genially. “She had heard about your previous trouble over polygamy, and I’m sorry to tell you that she laughed out loud when she heard of your late husband’s demise.” He watched the widow closely for a trace of a smile.

  “He didn’t deserve to die for being a graven fool,” said Donna Jean solemnly. “To my way of thinking, he deserved to live so that he could repent at leisure after he found out what a bad match he made with that teenaged slut.”

  The deputies looked at each other. A new possibility had presented itself. “Was Tanya Faith helping your husband work that night?”

  “She was not,” said Donna Jean.

  “And she wasn’t supposed to go over and eat with him, by any chance?”

  “No. Tanya Faith didn’t go out there much. I don’t think she liked the fact that it was next to the old church cemetery. She’d have had nightmares if they’d moved in, you mark my words. Anyhow, the old place wasn’t fancy enough for her yet. She was waiting for her wallpaper and her carpeting to be installed.” The older woman frowned. “She stayed here with me.”

  “Did she help you fix Chevry’s dinner?”

  “No more than she could help.” Donna Jean sniffed. “She may be a handmaiden to the prophet in the bedroom, but she made herself scarce in the kitchen.” She thought for a moment in the ensuing silence. “Reckon that would have changed in time. She’d have been scarce both places, but Chevry wasn’t ready to see that. I wish he could have lived for the disillusionment.”

  Alvin Brower frowned at the other deputy. Donna Morgan wasn’t sounding like any bona fide killer that he’d ever met, but he’d be the first to admit that he wasn’t an expert on homicides—especially not on homicides perpetrated by women. She could be too sly to gloat about her husband’s death—or maybe she did regret his passing, but that didn’t necessarily mean that she hadn’t helped him leave this world in a fit of jealous rage.

  “Was Tanya Faith ever alone with Chevry’s dinner box that evening?”

  “I didn’t pay her any mind.” Donna Jean sniffed. “I was too busy working.”

  “I sure wish you could remember details about that night, ma’am,” said Brower. “Because, you see, the fact is we got the autopsy report back, and it shows arsenic in your late husband’s system.”

  “I didn’t poison him,” said Donna Jean. “He’d been saying that he felt poorly off and on for more than a week. Even Tanya Faith had a touch of it for a day or so.”

  “And what about you, Mrs. Morgan? Did you ever feel sick?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there may be explanations we haven’t even thought of yet,” said Brower, standing up and shifting into his brisk mode. He talked faster when he wanted suspects to agree to something without thinking too much about his request. “We need to clear this up, though, Mrs. Morgan. You don’t want this business hanging over your head for who-knows-how-long. You know how people talk in a small town. If we don’t clear it up soon, you’ll be subjected to trial by bridge club.”

  “Card playing is sinful,” murmured Donna Jean.

  “So is gossip,” Brower agreed. “So I say let’s shut ’em down. If you’ll let Wade and me search the house now, and if you’ll show us how you made that dinner, that will go a long way toward clearing things up. I have a report to write, you know.”

  It always amazed Brower that people didn’t tell him to go to hell right then and there. There was no way that he could legally impel a suspect to allow an informal search or to reenact part of a suspected crime, but most people didn’t seem to realize that. Maybe they were afraid that they’d look guilty if they refused, or maybe they thought he’d never find anything incriminating. Maybe they just didn’t want to inconvenience him. I have a report to write, you know. It was his best line, practically surefire. Sure enough, Donna Jean Morgan was smiling and nodding just like all the rest of the poor fools who had given Brower just about an inch too much rope.

  But then, she said, “Certainly, Mr. Brower. I’ll just call my attorney, and if he says it’s all right, why, then you can do whatever you please.”

  It was 5:04 P.M., and Margaret MacPherson was experiencing the familiar sensation of waiting for the emissary from the outside world. She remembered it well from her married life: she stayed home day after day, sending children to school, and a husband off to the city, while she waited in the tidy brick house, like a domestic Prisoner of Zenda, cooking and cleaning and waiting to hear about everyone else’s adventures that day. Because, of course, she hadn’t had any.

  She thought she had left behind that existence, when she filed for divorce upon finding out about Doug’s pubescent bimbo, but now the feeling was back: the five o’clock vigil. She had busied herself all day with her photography, trying out new exposure times in the darkroom on some of the black-and-white portraits. She had even mopped the kitchen floor, because it needed doing, and she’d set some green beans and new potatoes on to cook, because she was home and Casey wasn’t. It wasn’t a division of labor or anything. She wasn’t a housewife anymore. She just happened to be home, so it seemed like the sensible thing to do.

  At least she didn’t have to comb her hair and put on makeup anymore just because it was five P.M. Some things had changed, after all.

  Phyllis Casey turned up at 5:30, slinging her briefcase onto the dining-room table with a groan. “If anyone wants to know what it was like in the Borgia court, they have only to ask me
,” she declared, heading for the wine decanter.

  “English faculty meeting?” Margaret guessed.

  “What else?” Casey kicked her shoes off and sank down in the armchair across from Margaret. “I think we should put a metal detector at the door to the conference room, because, I swear, one of these days an untenured peon is going to kill Stanley Johnson. It may be me.”

  “I know a good lawyer,” said Margaret, with a lazy smile.

  “Actually, it wasn’t as bad as usual,” Casey said. “I think word of our party had got around. All through the meeting, Johnson kept eyeing me nervously, as if he expected me to jump up and spit tobacco juice into his coffee mug.”

  “Yeah, you militant lesbians are dangerous, all right,” said Margaret solemnly.

  Casey nodded. “It was very gratifying. We started discussing the teaching schedule for the fall term, and I spoke right up and said that I didn’t want to teach the Transcendentalist poets anymore. I wanted the James Joyce/D. H. Lawrence course. And I said that I wanted to add Virginia Woolf to the course for a feminist perspective on sexuality.”

  “Good for you! How did they take it?”

  Phyllis Casey laughed. “First, there was a charged silence in the room, as if everyone were thinking furiously at once, and then Dr. McClure started to wheeze, which means that he’d heard the rumors. And Johnson just nodded, and went on to the next item on the agenda. I couldn’t believe it, Margaret! After all these years of being well-spoken and polite, during which time they ran roughshod over me, and gave me the courses nobody else wanted, now suddenly I let it be known that I’m a lesbian, and they treat me like a conquering Visigoth. It was wonderful.”

  Margaret MacPherson nodded happily. “My children are shocked into absolute silence. We should have thought of this years ago!”

  “And the best part of it is, they just take your word for it!”

  “Well,” said Margaret reasonably, “it’s not the sort of thing you can check up on, is it?”

  Casey said, “Do you think I ought to buy some leather outfits, anyway? Just in case?”