Murder at Monticello

by Jane Langton

  “And you’re sure he was here that day?”

  Victoria turned to her computer and began swooping up and down the screen, rollicking in the vastness of cyberspace. “Yes, he was here, all right. Do you think—?”

  Homer shook his head. “You say he’s elderly? I’m afraid it doesn’t fit the usual pattern for serial killers. They’re usually men in their twenties or thirties.”

  “Oh, too bad,” said the librarian, crestfallen.

  Chapter 42

  We are infestd with sworms of flees already in our new habitations; the presumption is therefore Strong that we shall not devest our selves of this intolerably troublesom vermin dureing our residence here.…

  Captain William Clark, January 2, 1806,

  Fort Clatsop

  It was the last week of June. To Chief Pratt’s relief, the sensational articles in the local paper about the failure of the police to capture the stalker/slasher/killer had been replaced by enthusiastic profiles of the highly educated young pervert now awaiting trial in the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail.

  Standing in line at the post office, Mary heard one woman say to another, “Wouldn’t you know it would be somebody totally unexpected? Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Those quiet types,” agreed her friend, “they’re the worst.”

  Tom’s family was besieged. They had to lock their doors, pull their curtains, and unlist their telephone.

  Behind the drawn curtains there were mortified conferences, whispers, and sobs.

  Grandmother Dean and sister Myrna were for disowning Tom altogether. Tom’s mother disagreed, although she was humiliated and ashamed. How would they ever again hold up their heads? They should never have allowed that boy to go off somewhere and live in a tent by himself. Look what it had led to! Not nature study, the way he said, but the acting out of hideous and unnatural sexual fantasies.

  Tom’s father paced the floor, growling and muttering.

  Mary clipped Tom’s picture out of the Charlottesville Daily Progress and showed it to Homer. There he was, poor old Tom, handcuffed between a couple of uniformed officers, walking into the jail. He looked gawky and solemn. His arms were so thin and childlike! Mary’s long-suppressed maternal instinct welled up, and she said, “Oh, the poor kid.”

  “You know what will happen if his name isn’t cleared,” said Homer gloomily. “He’ll have a section all to himself in one of those gruesome books, right between Jeffrey Dahmer and John Gacy.”

  He called the jail and made an appointment to see Tom that afternoon at three o’clock. And then he was late—not because he lost his way, but because he ran into a classic example of road rage.

  The infuriated driver was all alone, driving very slowly in a big gray van. When Homer tried to pass him, the driver honked angrily and swerved viciously into the middle. Then, to Homer’s dismay, he slowed down to a surly crawl. Homer had to jam on his brakes and proceed at fifteen miles an hour. For the next five miles he was stuck on the winding road behind the rancid driver of the van.

  He wanted to blat his horn, but it was exactly what the creep wanted him to do. Who was this guy? From the rear he looked like a young white male with a small head and a black buzz cut. His van had a license plate, but the numbers were daubed with mud. Well, thank God, at last it was time to turn off.

  As Homer made the left turn in the direction of the jail, the van’s exhaust pipe emitted a loud fart. A cloud of oily black smoke smeared the air. So long and up yours, said the smoke.

  On the other side of the thick slab of glass, Tom’s freckled face was blanched from a week in solitary confinement. He mumbled a greeting into the phone.

  Homer wasted no time on sympathy. He said, “Tom, I’ve got something to show you.” Then he put down the phone and held a sheet of paper against the glass. Pressing it flat with one hand, he picked up the phone and said, “These are the notes that were left on the bodies. The killer uses pins. Oh, God, the pins, that’s another thing. Well, never mind the pins. Look at the notes. The originals, they’re nicely lettered, he takes a lot of trouble. Some are bloodstained, but they’re all still legible, so I suppose he uses waterproof ink. Do you have any idea, any idea in the world, what they mean?”

  Tom sat forward and stared at the paper. Time went by.

  At last he sat back and smiled at Homer. He picked up the phone and said, “I know what they are. At least I remember the tobacco box. It’s from the journal of Sergeant Gass.”

  “Sergeant Gass Who’s he?”

  “Sergeant Patrick Gass was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. He was one of the journal-writers. Oh, God, it’s terrible, his journal. I mean, he was just a simple guy, like most of them, but he hired a schoolteacher to pretty up his language. It’s a godawful shame. But his facts are right. I mean, they agree with the other journals. And I remember that tobacco box.” Tom grinned at Homer. “It was the price of having sex with the chief’s daughter. The last two, I’ll bet they go with it.”

  “The last two?” Homer turned the list around and looked at it. “You mean this one, honour of passing a night? Oh, right, I see how they go together—honour of passing a night with the daughter of.” He looked up at Tom. “The daughter of who?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was the daughter of the head chief of the Mandans.” Tom’s face fell. “The guy who leaves these notes, all he cares about is their sexual exploits. What a travesty.”

  “Sexual exploits?” Homer was astonished. “You mean the men of the expedition had sex with Indian women along the way?”

  “Sure, sure. It comes up in the journals every now and then. There doesn’t seem to be any tut-tutting or disapproval. The only trouble was the physical results, the symptoms of venereal disease.”

  Homer laughed. “It isn’t the usual image of Lewis and Clark. Tell me, did the captains themselves—?”

  “Sleep with the women? Probably not. But maybe they were careful not to leave any record. Somebody suggested that Lewis’s suicide later on was the result of an advanced state of syphilis, but I don’t think anybody takes that seriously.”

  “Oh, God, I forgot.” Homer shook his head sadly. “I forgot he killed himself.”

  “Homer,” said Tom, looking at him solemnly, “the sentence isn’t finished.”

  Homer nodded gravely. “It means he’ll kill again, is that what you mean? He’ll finish the sentence by killing again.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Homer cheered up. “But that would be good news, for you anyway. Well, of course it would be horrible, but it would mean the serial killer is still on the loose, while you’ve been innocently locked up and out of circulation. They’d have to let you go.”

  “No, Homer.” Tom shook his head. “The fact that the notes come from the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition is one more strike against me. Tell me, who’s the big Lewis and Clark enthusiast around here? Who’s been vandalizing the walls of Thomas Jefferson’s Dome Room with quotations from their journals? Who’s been painting the course of the Missouri River on the ceiling, another act of illegal violence to Thomas Jefferson’s sacred premises?”

  “Oh, God, you have, I’m afraid,” agreed Homer. “I see what you mean. But since the killer is not you, it means there’s somebody else out there, some godawful bastard with a similar fixation on Lewis and Clark.”

  “No, no,” protested Tom. “Not similar, not similar at all. This kook doesn’t care about anything in the journals but a few passages about the men sleeping with squaws. He’s sick.”

  “Well, of course he’s sick.” Homer stood up to go. “But it may give us something to go on.”

  “Wait.” Tom scrambled to his feet, dropped the phone, picked it up, and then, with elaborate casualness, said, “I just wonder if you’ve seen Fern?”

  “Fern? Oh, Fern Fisher. No, sorry, Tom, I haven’t.”

  Tom’s face fell. “I thought she might come,” he said gloomily, “but she hasn’t.”

  Unable to think o
f anything comforting, Homer said, “Clever girl. Have you ever heard her whistle through her teeth?”

  Tom brightened. “No. Can she do that?”

  “She sure can. Blasts your ears off.”

  Tom looked pleased and murmured goodbye.

  Chapter 43

  Capt Clark set out after an early breakfast with the party in two canoes.… Charbono and his Indian woman were also of the party; the Indian woman was very impo[r]tunate to be permitted to go, and was therefore indulged; she observed that she had traveled a long way with us to see the great waters, and that now that monstrous fish was also to be seen, she thought it very hard she could not be permitted to see either.…

  Captain Meriwether Lewis, January 6, 1806,

  Fort Clatsop

  July 1 was unbearably hot. In decades past, the citizens of Charlottesville had sat on their front porches cooling their faces with paper fans. Now they turned their air conditioners to HI-COOL and stayed indoors.

  Air-conditioned too were the classrooms and laboratories at the University of Virginia. Sprinklers watered the lawn and cooled the air in front of Jefferson’s Rotunda. Tourists took refuge from the sun in the shadowy arcades. On Fraternity Row a small army of groundskeepers, mostly black, rode lawnmowers up and down. But there were African-American students as well as white among the kids who sweated up the hill on Emmett Avenue to buy textbooks in the air-conditioned bookstore.

  On Hydraulic Road the pavement in front of the Bargain Mart was unbearably hot, but inside the huge store the recirculated air went around and around, making shopping endurable.

  Lazy ceiling fans did nothing to cool the air in the convenience store where Augustus Upchurch bought his magazines. It was a sweltering dark cave. Augustus dodged in and out and hurried home, his pink scalp and thinning hair protected by a Panama hat.

  But at Monticello the air was fresh, the temperature cooler than in Charlottesville. The great trees around the house were islands of whispering leaves. Mary Kelly stood under the tall Liriodendron tulipifera, the last remaining healthy tree from Thomas Jefferson’s time. From its high branches a canopy of shade dropped straight down over terrace walk and lawn, and she was reminded of Concord’s vanished elms—Thoreau had called them chandeliers of darkness.

  The house itself was not air-conditioned. The basement offices were the coolest part of the building. In the Dome Room, Fern’s electric fan hummed softly.

  There were no fans in the public rooms because the entire first floor was authentically unelectrified. Even so, the tourists in their shorts and duckbilled caps and sunhats were grateful to come in out of the sun to listen to the patient guides.

  Cleverly, Gail Boltwood had thought of something cool to tell them about. “If you walk around the house you’ll see the ice house under the North Terrace Walk. The deep pit was once filled with blocks of ice for the preservation of meat and the making of ice cream.”

  “Ice cream!” exclaimed one of the tourists. “Jefferson had ice cream?”

  “Indeed he did. In fact, the first American recipe was written in his own hand. It was one of the dishes he enjoyed in France. But”—Gail raised her voice—“you must stay well back behind the fence in front of the ice house. The iron railing has been removed for”—what should she call the removal of dead rats?—”necessary repairs.”

  The tourists came and went in their usual orderly succession. But there was nothing orderly about the tempestuous activity in the offices of the curator and his assistant on the second floor. Preparations for the Fourth of July were at a pinnacle of nervous excitement.

  A horrid thought had occurred to Henry Spender. What if someone planted a bomb among the fireworks? What if the President of the United States and the President of France and the Prime Minister of Great Britain were blown to kingdom come? Three great nations would be thrown into chaos at the same time!

  Gail’s morning stint was over. She followed her last batch of tourists out of doors and met Mary Kelly, who had invited her to lunch.

  Fern Fisher had been invited too. Fern drove to the Kellys’ house in her own car, after running her finger over a map to find University Circle.

  Homer had not been invited, but it didn’t occur to him to stay away. Lunch, after all, was lunch. The fact that there were only three place settings at the table meant nothing in particular. “Wait a sec,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll get another bowl.”

  It was not a successful meal. Fern was a distracted and anxious guest, although she ate her spinach soup hungrily and held out her bowl for more.

  Gail was distracted too. For once her calm face was not smiling. “I went to the funeral,” she said unhappily.

  Mary’s spoon stopped in the air. “You mean—”

  “Flora Foley’s. She was an old friend. It was the most ridiculous service. If it hadn’t been so sad, I would have laughed out loud.”

  “Why?” Mary had been present at a few absurd funerals herself.

  “Oh, the minister was into pop psychology. Griefwork. You know the kind of thing. As if people didn’t know how to cry.”

  “Ah,” said Homer gloomily, “they call it the stages of grief.” He put down his spoon and said something so wise, his wife forgave him for crashing the party. “It’s too bad there aren’t any stages for the dead. All they get is a sudden end and eternal darkness.”

  Mary squeezed his hand under the table, and Gail changed the subject.

  “You people are coming to the Fourth of July celebration, aren’t you? Oh, God, there’s so much to do. And the security people, they’re such a pest. They’re all over the place already.”

  Mary passed the salad. “Is this in honor of our so-called serial killer? Don’t they think he’s already in custody?”

  Fern half rose from her chair and said in a choked voice, “Well, if they do, they’re wrong. The real killer is still out there somewhere.” She plumped herself down again and muttered, “Sorry.” Her spoon clattered on the edge of her plate.

  “Well, of course it’s not Tom,” said Mary soothingly. “Homer knows that, don’t you, Homer?”

  Homer opened his mouth, but Gail hurried on. “No, no, I’m talking about the preparations for the arrival of the President. Two presidents in fact. The President of France will be here too, in honor of Jefferson’s friendship with Lafayette, and the Prime Minister of England’s coming, although I can’t imagine why.” Gail put her hand to her head. “It’s terrible. They’ve grilled everybody on the staff. Politely, of course, but it feels like a police state up there.”

  “They talked to me too,” said Fern.” And they have a key to the west door of the Dome Room. They’re going to have a sharpshooter out there, over the portico.”

  Gail’s sense of doom had popped loose all her hairpins. Fussing them back into place, she continued to worry. “I don’t know how the invited guests will ever get up the mountain. Henry says there’ll be thirty local patrol cars as well as twenty-five Secret Service vehicles and a whole parade of limousines.”

  Homer snickered. “I’ve been reading about Jefferson’s travels from Monticello to Washington when he was president. He had no guards at all. It never occurred to anybody to keep him safe with a whole company of militia.”

  “Well,” said Gail uncomfortably, “it was a different age.”

  When lunch was over, Fern thanked Mary, hurried to her car, and drove dangerously fast down Interstate 64 in the direction of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail.

  Chapter 44

  … we … also paisted up a copy in our room … “through the medium of some civilized person … it may be made known to the informed world, that the party … whose names are hereunto annexed, and who were sent out … to explore the interior of the Continent of North America, did penetrate the same by way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to the discharge of the latter into the Pacific Ocean.…”

  Captain Merivcether Lewis, March 18, 1806,

  leaving Fort Clatsop

  Fern ha
d to lie her way in.

  “You’re his girlfriend?” The officer in charge looked at her, wondering how any female could be so dumb as to get mixed up with a serial killer. “Well, I suppose it’s okay.”

  Fern was disappointed to find a barrier between herself and Tom. She had meant to give him an impulsive hug, a purely friendly embrace. It was hard to be friendly through a telephone line and four inches of glass.

  “Oh, Tom,” said Fern, talking into the phone, “this is so ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous, right,” agreed Tom. “Har, har.” He was looking at her hungrily.

  “How can anybody think you could possibly have done all those things?”

  “You mean, me with my college education and all? Too hoity-toity to carve up helpless females?”

  “Well, yes, I guess so. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  Tom’s cheerfulness faded. “Well, they do, that’s the trouble.”

  “What does Homer Kelly think? I saw him just now. His wife says he’s trying to help.”

  “Oh, Homer’s great. Makes me laugh. But I don’t know if he can do anything. I mean, he’s a complete stranger around here, doesn’t know anything about Charlottesville or our own comfy Virginia kind of serial killer. Well, neither do I, of course. All I know is what any kid knows who grew up around here in the lap of middle-class suburban stupidity, plus of course I can draw you a picture of the human pelvis. You want to see? It’s no mean achievement.”

  For some reason this sent Fern into a fit of crying, which soon turned into a fit of laughing. She mopped her wet cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  Tom stood up. Holding the phone close to his mouth, he said, “Fern—”

  “Twenty minutes,” said the man in uniform, appearing in Fern’s compartment. “Time’s up.” He picked up the phone and spoke to Tom. “You got a couple more visitors out there, won’t take no for an answer.” He waggled his head comically at Fern.