Marilyn and Jim Sanburne sat in the second pew on the right along with their daughter Marilyn Sanburne Hamilton, alluring in black and available thanks to a recent divorce. Big Mim would apply herself to arranging a more suitable match sometime in the future.
The entire town of Crozet must have been there, plus the out-of-towners who had occasion to know Wesley from business dealings, as well as friends from all over the South.
The Reverend Herbert Jones, his deep voice filling the church, read the Scriptures.
Somber but impressive, the funeral would have been remembered in proportion to Wesley’s services to the community. However, this funeral stuck in people’s memories for another reason.
Right in the middle of Reverend Jones’s fervent denial of death, “For if we believe we are risen in Christ . . .” Lucinda Payne Coles whispered loud enough for those around her to hear, “You sorry son of a bitch.” Red in the face, she slid out of the pew and walked back up the aisle. The usher swung the door open for her. Samson, glued to his seat, didn’t even swivel his head to follow his wife’s glowering progress.
As the people filed out of the church, Mim cornered Samson in the vestibule. “What in the world was that all about?”
Samson shrugged, “She loved Wesley, and I think her emotions got the better of her.”
“If she loved Wesley, she wouldn’t have marred his funeral. I’m not stupid, Samson. What are you doing to her?” Mim took the position that men wronged women more often than women wronged men. In this particular case she was right.
Samson hissed, “Mim, this is none of your business.” He stalked off, knowing full well she’d never refer a customer to him again. At that moment he didn’t care. He was too confused to care.
Harry, Susan, and Ned observed this exchange, as did everyone else.
“You’re going to get a call tonight.” Susan squeezed her husband’s forearm. “That’s the price of being such a good divorce lawyer.”
“Funny thing is, I hate divorce.” Ned shook his head.
“Don’t we all?” Harry agreed as the source of her former discontent, Fair, joined them.
“Damn.”
“Fair, you always were a man of few words.” Ned nodded a greeting.
“My patients don’t talk,” Fair replied. “You know, something’s really wrong. That’s not like Lulu. She knows her place.”
“It’s going to be a much poorer place now,” Susan wryly noted.
“Mim will wreak vengeance on Samson. Bad enough he told her to bugger off, he did it in public. He’ll have to crawl on his belly over hot coals—publicly—to atone for his sin.” Ned knew how Mim worked. She used her money and her vast real estate holdings as leverage if she felt a pinch in the pocketbook would suffice. When her target was a woman, she generally preferred to cast her into social limbo. But the human is an animal nonetheless, and harsh lessons were learned faster than mild ones. Had Mim been a man, she would have been called a hard-ass, but she’d have been lauded as a good businessman. Since she was a woman, the term bitch seemed to cover it. Unfair, but that was life. Then again, had Mim been a man, she might not have had to teach people quite so many lessons. They would have feared her from the get-go.
Larry Johnson, physician to Wesley and the family, climbed into his car to follow the funeral procession to the family cemetery.
“Hear Warren wouldn’t let anyone sign the death certificate but Larry,” Fair mentioned. “Heard it over at Sharkey Loomis’s stable.”
“That must have been a sad task for Larry. They’d been friends for years.” Harry wondered how it would feel to know someone for fifty, sixty years and then lose them.
“Come on, or we’ll be last in line.” Susan shepherded them to their cars.
22
A hard-driving rain assisted Kimball Haynes. The slashing of the drops against the windowpane helped him to concentrate. It was long past midnight, and he was still bent over the records of births and deaths from 1800 to 1812.
He cast wide his research net, then slowly drew it toward him. Medley Orion, born around 1785, was reported to be a beautiful woman. Her extraordinary color was noted twice in the records; her lovely cast of features must have been delicious. White people rarely noted the physiognomy of black people unless it was to make fun of them. But an early note in a lady’s hand, quite possibly that of Martha, Jefferson’s eldest daughter, stated these qualities.
Martha married when Medley was five or six. She would have seen the woman as a child and as she grew. Usually Martha kept good accounts, but this reference was on a scrap of paper on the reverse of a list penned in tiny, tiny handwriting about different types of grapes.
A flash of lightning seared across the night sky. A crackle, then a pop, sounded out in the yard. The electricity went off.
Kimball had no flashlight. He was wearing his down vest, since it was cold in the room. His hands fingered a square box of matches. He struck one. He hadn’t placed any candles in the room, but then, why would he? He rarely worked late into the night at Monticello.
The rain pounded the windows and drummed on the roof, a hard spring storm. Even in this age of telephones and ambulances, this would be a hateful night in which to fall ill, give birth, or be caught outside on horseback.
The match fizzled. Kimball declined to strike another. He could have felt his way down the narrow stairway, a mere twenty-four inches wide, to the first floor, the public floor of Monticello. There were beeswax candles down there. But he decided to peer out the window. A rush of water and occasional glimpses of trees bending in the wind were all he could make out.
The house creaked and moaned. The day you see, the night you hear. Kimball heard the door hinges rasp in the slight air current sent up by the winds outside. The windows upstairs were not airtight, so a swish of wind snuck inside. The windows themselves rattled in protest at the driving rains. The winds howled, circled, then swept back up in the flues. Occasionally a raindrop or two would trickle down into the fireplace, bringing with it the memory of fires over two hundred years ago. Floorboards popped.
Perhaps in such a hard storm a wealthy person would light a candle to bring some cheer into the room. A fire would struggle in the fireplace because the downdraft was fierce, despite the flue. Still, a bit of light and good cheer would fill the room, and frightened children could be told stories of the Norse and Greek gods, Thor tossing his mighty hammer or Zeus hurtling a bolt of lightning to earth like a blue javelin.
“What would such a storm have been like in Cabin Four?” Kimball wondered. The door would be closed. Perhaps Medley might have had tallow candles. No evidence of such had been found in her cabin, but tallow candles had been found in other digs and certainly the smithy and joinery had them for people who worked after dark. A quilt wrapped around one’s body would help. The fireplaces in the servants’ quarters lacked the refinement of the fireplaces in the Big House, so more rain and wind would funnel down the chimneys, sending dust and debris over the room. At least Medley had a wooden floor. Some cabins had packed-earth floors, which meant on the cold mornings your bare feet would hit frost on the ground. Maybe Medley Orion would hop into bed and pull the covers up on such a night.
Kimball feverishly worked to piece together the bits of her life. This was archaeology of a different sort. The more he knew about the woman, the closer he would come to a solution, he thought. Then he’d double-think and wonder if she might be innocent. Someone was killed in her cabin, but maybe she knew nothing. No. Impossible. The body had to have been buried at night. She knew, all right.