The Compsons stayed on after the death of Major Todhunter, ostensibly to give aid and comfort to their bereaved kinswoman, but also perhaps because the local law-enforcement people wanted them to be available for questioning, and to testify at the forthcoming trial.
I told them all I knew, Mary Hadley Compson recalled. Which was that Lucy seemed a dutiful helpmeet, and a sympathetic nurse to the dying Major. She had voiced no complaint to me about her marriage, and at no time did I see her behaving in a sinister fashion, with potions or anything of the sort She gave him a pastry, I told them in court, and I know it was not tainted, because we all ate from the same plate. Any one of us could have chosen the one he ate. So there! Mercifully, Lucy has been acquitted, and we have not spoken of the unpleasantness, although she knows that we are anxious to leave. We think it might not be wise to eat too many Virginia… pastries.
“Ha! Mary Compson suspects Lucy, too!” said Elizabeth, tapping the paper. “But she isn’t sure of her guilt, because she can’t figure out how it was done. Neither could anybody else, which is the only reason Lucy was acquitted. How do you poison a man with a doughnut, when you didn’t have the opportunity to tamper with it? I wish I knew. But, clearly, nobody thinks the major did it to himself. And why did he cry out, ‘Lucy, why did you do it?’ I have to figure out what it was that she could have done.”
By the time Elizabeth had finished reading the Compsons’ testimony about their visit to the ill-fated household, and then the medical reports of the deceased, she was fairly certain that she knew the motive for the murder of Major Todhunter, and she had a suspicion about what might have caused his death, but now she needed to do some reading on nineteenth-century medicine-or nineteenth-century ailments.
If I’m right, this will be one of those good news/bad news situations, thought Elizabeth. I hope Bill looks on the bright side. I think his client’s great-grandmother committed murder, but not in a way that Donna Jean Morgan could duplicate. Now I suppose I’ll have to figure out that poisoning, too.
Elizabeth looked at the clock. Just after ten, but this was urgent. She found Edith’s home phone number scribbled on the erasable message board in the kitchen, and dialed the number. “I know it’s late,” she told the secretary, “but I remembered that Bill said you had gone with him to Chevry Morgan’s church one night. I wondered if you could give me directions on how to get there. I need to look at the place as part of my investigation.”
“You sure do,” said Edith. “We got a call from the widow Morgan late this afternoon. They’ve arrested her for murder. I thought I’d wait until she was convicted to notify the Nobel Prize people.”
“I thought she claimed to be innocent.”
“Just modesty, I expect,” said Edith. “But I realize that Bill has to get her off, because her husband has done enough harm to her without inconveniencing her with a prison sentence, so you just let me know how I can help.”
“Can you tell me how to find the church, Edith?”
“Well… it’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from there. Anyhow, I can’t remember all those three-digit state road numbers that they use for those cow paths. It would be easier just to show you where it is. Do you want to go tomorrow?”
“Yes, but I was planning to go early. I also need to drive to Charlottesville tomorrow to consult the UVA medical library. How long will it take us to find the church?”
“Let’s allow two hours for the round-trip and the poking around,” said Edith. “Meet me at Shoney’s at six, and we’ll have the breakfast buffet before we drive out there.”
“Thank you, Edith,” said Elizabeth. “I really appreciate your taking the time and trouble to do this for me.”
“You’re buying breakfast,” said Edith, followed by a dial tone.
Elizabeth replaced the receiver, still thinking about the poisoning cases. She supposed that she ought to go to bed if the day’s research was going to start so early. Somewhat startled, she realized that she had not thought about Cameron Dawson for nearly two hours.
“What do you mean, my lawyer’s in Florida?” asked Donna Jean Morgan, her eyes red from crying.
“He’s getting depositions for another case,” said A. P. Hill. She was uncomfortable in the presence of strong emotion, and she hoped she wouldn’t be expected to bestow comforting hugs, or to cope with hysterical outbursts from this poor, drab woman.
“But I’ve been charged with murder, ma’am,” wailed Donna Jean. “How could he leave me at a time like this?”
“Don’t call me ma’am,” murmured A. P. Hill automatically. “I answer to Powell, or A.P., or just about anything, except honey.” A guard had just tried that last one, and received a blistering lecture on the deportment of law-enforcement personnel, delivered in an icy tone from four inches below his shoulder patch. Bill hadn’t been able to get an evening flight back into Danville, because the connecting flights were full, so he’d phoned to say that he was taking the red-eye to Charlotte, and the puddle jumper he’d be on from there would get him to Danville about ten in the morning. That seemed fine until an hour later, when Donna Jean Morgan had used her traditional jailhouse phone call to summon her lawyer, as she had just been charged with her husband’s murder. A. P. Hill hoped that nothing would delay her partner’s return: she couldn’t cope with two murder cases at once. Eleanor Royden was more trouble than a shoe full of fire ants.
“They said they got the autopsy back, and that Chevry had arsenic in him. They’re saying I poisoned him. I just knew they’d blame me!” Tears trickled out of her swollen eyes.
“But you didn’t do it?” asked Powell Hill. She asked merely out of curiosity; it was Bill’s case, but, personally, she would have taken an ax to the old trout weeks earlier, and she marveled at Donna Jean Morgan’s self-restraint. (Had the woman not been a client of the firm, A. P. Hill would have characterized her behavior with words less charitable than self-restraint.)
“I did not kill my husband,” said Donna Jean. “Not that anyone will believe that, on account of my great-grandma being a famous poisoner and all.”
“Oh, yes, Lucy Todhunter. Well, don’t worry about that, Mrs. Morgan. The sins of one’s ancestor are not admissible as evidence in a court of law. What Lucy did or didn’t do has no bearing whatsoever on your case. Besides, MacPherson and Hill have their best investigator working on your husband’s murder. We may find evidence that will give the DA something else to think about.” She forbore to mention that MacPherson and Hill’s “best investigator,” Elizabeth, was in fact the firm’s only investigator. The poor woman needed reassuring, after all.
“I don’t see how anybody else could have done it. Tanya Faith sure had no reason to want him dead.” Donna Jean looked thoughtful. “I expect she would have, you know, in a few years’ time. When she realized what-all she missed of her youth, and what a dull, sorry life she’d be leading as an old man’s darling, I reckon she’d wish him dead fast enough, but right now she was as high as a wave on a slop bucket. So don’t think you can pin this on her.”
“We don’t have to pin it on anybody,” said A. P. Hill. “All we have to do is to provide a reasonable doubt about your guilt. Rounding up other suspects is the sheriff’s job, not ours.”