Miri thought about it. “The conditions are spelled out in a conventional marriage ceremony, aren’t they? You could go point by point and ask him.”
“Sure, why not?” said Bill, dumping a small puddle out of his tasseled loafer. “Dolphin law. It could be a whole new area of specialization. We have to give him the benefit of the doubt, don’t we?” Solemnly he turned toward the pool. “Do you, Porky, take this woman to have and to hold? In sickness and in health?”
Elizabeth MacPherson sat on the rug in her living room surrounded by a stack of old books and dog-eared photocopies on loan from Everett Yancey. Bill was off in Florida on a daft case for one of their mother’s friends. She had finished dinner; now she planned to spend most of the evening listening to classical guitar on the stereo while she read material on the Lucy Todhunter case. She was only about a quarter of the way through the documents after an hour of reading, and making notes of comments that seemed relevant to the case, but already she had a much clearer image of the Todhunters, having seen them characterized by friends, servants, and physicians.
From what she learned, Elizabeth did not regret missing the chance to meet them herself. In fact, she thought she had met versions of them several times in couples of her parents’ acquaintance. Philip Todhunter was the hearty, crass fellow, whom everyone suspected of having a terrible temper, although no one had ever seen it. Lucy was the smiling slender belle, with the Miss Georgia good looks, the brand-name vocabulary, and the decorator-magazine decor. As a couple, they would socialize with people important to the husband’s business interests, or the “right” people from the neighborhood or the country club, but no one would know them very well, because their conversation was confined to trivial pleasantries. Perhaps it was all they were capable of. Such people made Elizabeth feel five pounds heavier, and colt-awkward, because try as she might, she could not think of anything to say to them. She was glad that the Todhunters had been dead for more than a century, thus relieving her of the task of interviewing them in person.
Elizabeth turned to the transcript of Lucy Todhunter’s trial, but she found that the court record added little to the summary provided by Everett Yancey in his history of the case. Next she turned to a photocopy of a lengthy newspaper interview with Richard Norville. Since the case had been a cause célèbre in Danville, considerable coverage had been given to the trial, to the background of the unhappy couple, and to interviews with the principal witnesses. A pen-and-ink sketch of Norville, captioned WARTIME COMRADE: FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH, accompanied the article.
According to Richard Norville, his friend the major was something of a dandy, meticulous about his clothes and his possessions, but he was not a man of robust health. Philip Todhunter had suffered from neuralgia and stomach complaints during the war, and he was accustomed to dosing himself with patent medicines, in hopes of relieving his discomfort. Norville maintained, though, that despite his health problems, the major had been a good officer and, later in civilian life, a hardworking businessman.
“He was a hypochondriac and a carpetbagger,” Elizabeth remarked aloud. “I expect he was tiresome, but I wonder why anyone would want to poison him? Especially, why Lucy? If wives poisoned spouses just for being tiresome, entire continents would have to be used as prisons.” She added, “No offense, Cameron!” in case any angelic presences were passing through the room.
The journal of Dr. Richard Humphreys went into greater detail about the medical tribulations of the Todhunters. According to Humphreys’s narrative, Philip Todhunter was a cornerstone of his medical practice, forever calling in the physician to treat his headaches, his sleeplessness, and his aching joints. Humphreys noted that his patient was in the habit of dosing himself with patent medicines obtained from the cities he frequented on business. Despite the physician’s warnings about these nostrums, Todhunter was forever trying some new elixir guaranteed to cure all ills. Elizabeth thought she detected a note of asperity in the doctor’s description of his perpetually ailing patient. Apparently, he considered Todhunter a hypochondriac.
Humphreys’s attitude toward Mrs. Lucy Todhunter was altogether more sympathetic. He chronicled the difficulties of her pregnancies, and the sorrow and suffering that accompanied her miscarriages. She will not live to stand many more assaults on her constitution, Humphreys wrote. To my mind it is odd that the Major is so mollycoddling of his own health, and so indifferent to that of his wife. I have warned him that his determination to get an heir will make him a widower, but my counsel falls on deaf ears. I have told Miss Lucy as well, and she wept a bit and implored me to speak to Todhunter. Finally, I sent her off to White Sulphur Springs. The rest will do her as much good as the waters, I daresay.
Elizabeth read this passage three times, before finally putting the photocopy aside and staring at the white ceiling for some time. She resumed her reading with an air of determination. “Maybe Lucy wasn’t guilty,” she said aloud, turning a page. “I wonder if it can be that simple.”
Her next path of inquiry was to study Mary Hadley Compson’s version of the events. Everett Yancey had written a notation at the top of the page: The Compsons were Lucy Avery Todhunter’s North Carolina cousins, visiting at the time of Philip Todhunter’s death. Mary Compson’s account of that fateful visit was contained in a series of letters written to her married daughter in New Bern. The letters spanned the period of time both before Todhunter’s death and later during the trial. Because they dealt with a Danville cause célèbre, a descendant of Mary Hadley Compson had donated the letters to the city’s historical society. Everett Yancey had dutifully photocopied the lot of them, occasionally penciling in missing words where the copperplate script had faded into illegibility.
“He’s thorough; I’ll give him that,” said Elizabeth, settling down under the stronger light of the table lamp as she attempted to decipher the spidery writing.
Though she has much in the way of material wealth to make her proud, I cannot think that Cousin Lucy is a happy woman, Mary Compson had told her daughter, in a letter dated the week before Todhunter’s death. Her recent confinement has left her much weakened, and there is an air of strain between husband and wife that saddens me greatly. Mr. Todhunter seems to be neither a brutal man, nor a drunkard, but he seems more concerned with his own trifling ailments than with the health of his young wife. It grieves me to see them, Louisa, and I trust that you will count yourself fortunate to have been spared such a fate. You have not your cousin’s finery or possessions, but you will be the happier for it, I am certain.
“I wonder if she thought Lucy solved her marriage problems with white powder,” murmured Elizabeth, reading on.
Cousin Lucy’s husband has been taken dreadfully ill, Mary Compson wrote her daughter. At first we feared that it was some outbreak of fever that would imperil us as well, but that does not seem to be the case. It cannot be bad food, as the Major has taken nothing in several days. Both attending physicians have been most stern in their questioning of the household, but we could tell them nothing. Nor would we, if we knew anything to the detriment of that poor young woman, our cousin. She tends her stricken spouse like an angel of mercy, but I cannot say I have seen her in much distress over his condition.
The little maid-the clever one-told me that the poor Major was heard to say, “Oh, Lucy, why did you do it?” But this may be put down to the ravings of a delirious man. Indeed, I have given the matter much thought, and I have decided that if Lucy Avery made away with her husband, she is a cleverer woman than I take her for, for I cannot see how she could have accomplished it.