Obsessed with the murder and with Medley herself, Kimball even drove to the Library of Congress to read through the notations of Dr. William Thornton and his French-born wife. Thornton imagined himself a Renaissance man like Jefferson. He raced blooded horses, designed the Capitol and the Octagon House in Washington, D.C., was a staunch Federalist, and survived the burning of Washington in 1814. His efforts to save the city during that conflagration created a bitter enmity between himself and the mayor of Washington. Thornton’s wife, Anna Maria, rang out his praises on the hour like a well-timed church bell. When she visited Monticello in 1802 she wrote: “There is something more grand and awful than convenient in the whole place. A situation you would rather look at now and then than inhabit.”
Mrs. Thornton, French, snob that she was, possessed some humor. What was odd was that Jefferson prided himself on convenience and efficiency.
Kimball’s hunch paid off. He found a reference to Medley. Mrs. Thornton commented on a mint-green summer dress belonging to Martha Jefferson—Patsy. The dress, Mrs. Thornton noted, was sewn by Patsy’s genie, as she put it, Medley Orion. She also mentioned that Medley’s daughter, not quite a woman, was “bright,” meaning fair-skinned, and extraordinarily beautiful like her mother, but even lighter. She further noted that Medley and Martha Jefferson Randolph got along quite well, “a miracle considering,” but Mrs. Thornton chose not to explain that pregnant phrase.
Mrs. Thornton then went on to discuss thoroughly her feelings about slavery—she didn’t like it—and her feelings about mixing the races, which she didn’t like either. She felt that slavery promoted laziness. Her argument for this, although convoluted, contained a kernel of logic: Why should people work if they couldn’t retain the fruits of their labors? A roof over one’s head, food in the stomach, and clothes on one’s back weren’t sufficient motivation for industriousness, especially when one saw another party benefitting from one’s own labor.
Kimball drove so fast down Route 29 on his way home that he received a speeding ticket for his excitement and still made it from downtown Washington to Charlottesville more than fifteen minutes faster than the usual two hours. He couldn’t wait to tell Heike what he had discovered. He would have to decide what to tell Oliver, who grew more tense each day.
29
Kimball Haynes, Harry, Mrs. Hogendobber, Mim Sanburne, and Lucinda Coles crammed themselves into a booth at Metropolitain, a restaurant in Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. The Metropolitain combined lack of pretension with fantastic food. Lulu happened to be strolling in the mall when Kimball spotted her and asked her to lunch with the others.
Over salads he explained his findings about Medley Orion and Jefferson’s oldest child, Martha.
“Well, Kimball, I can see that you’re a born detective, but where is this leading?” Mim wanted to know. She was ready to get down to brass tacks.
“I wish I knew.” Kimball cut into a grits patty.
“You all may be too young to have heard an old racist expression.” Mim glanced at the ceiling, for she had learned to despise these sayings. “‘There’s a nigger in the woodpile somewhere.’ Comes from the Underground Railway, of course, but you get the drift.”
Lulu Coles fidgeted. “No, I don’t.”
“Somebody’s hiding something,” Mim stated flatly.
“Of course somebody’s hiding something. They’ve been hiding it for two hundred years, and now Martha Jefferson Randolph is in on it.” Lulu checked her anger. She knew Mim had yanked properties away from Samson because of his outburst at the funeral. Angry as she was at her husband, Lucinda was smart enough not to wish for their net worth to drop. Actually, she was angry, period. She’d peer in the mirror and see the corners of her mouth turning down just as her mother’s had—an embittered woman she swore never to emulate. She was becoming her own mother, to her horror.
Harry downed her Coke. “What Mim means is that somebody is hiding something today.”
“Why?” Susan threw her hands in the air. The idea was absurd. “So there’s a murderer in the family tree. By this time we have one of everything in all of our family trees. Really, who cares?”
“‘Save me, Lord, from liars and deceivers.’ Psalm 120:2.” Mrs. Hogendobber, as usual, recalled a pertinent scripture.
“Forgive me, Mrs. H., but there’s a better one.” Kimball closed his eyes in order to remember. “Ah, yes, here it is, ‘Every one deceives his neighbor, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.’ ”
“Jeremiah 9:5. Yes, it is better,” Mrs. Hogendobber agreed. “I suppose letting the cat out of the bag these many years later wouldn’t seem upsetting, but if it’s in the papers and on television, well—I can understand.”
“Yeah, your great-great-great-great-grandfather was murdered. How do you feel about that?” Susan smirked.
“Or your great-great—how many greats?” Harry turned to Susan, who held up two fingers. “Great-great-grandfather was a murderer. Should you pay the victim’s descendants recompense? Obviously, our society has lost the concept of privacy, and you can’t blame anyone for wanting to keep whatever they can away from prying eyes.”
“Well, I for one would like a breath of fresh air. Kimball, you’re welcome to go through the Coleses’ papers. Maybe you’ll find the murderer there.” Lulu smiled.
“How generous of you. The Coleses’ papers will be invaluable to me even if they don’t yield the murderer.” Kimball beamed.
Mim shifted on the hard bench. “I wonder that Samson has never donated his treasures to the Alderman Library. Or some other library he feels would do justice to the manuscripts and diaries. Naturally, I prefer the Alderman.”
The olive branch was outstretched. Lulu grabbed it. “I’ll work on him, Mim. Samson fears that his family’s archives will be labeled, stuck in a carton, and never again see the light of day. Decades from now, someone will stumble upon them and they’ll be decayed. He keeps all those materials in his temperature-controlled library. The Coleses lead the way when it comes to preservation,” she breathed, “but perhaps this is the time to share.”
“Yes.” Mim appeared enlightened when her entrée, a lightly poached salmon in dill sauce, was placed in front of her. “What did you order, Lucinda? I’ve already forgotten.”
“Sweetbreads.”
“Me too.” Harry’s mouth watered as the dish’s tempting aroma wafted under her nose.
“What a lunch.” Kimball inclined his head toward the ladies. “Beautiful women, delicious food, and help with my research. What more is there to life?”
“A 16.1-hand Thoroughbred fox hunter that floats over a three-foot-six-inch coop.” The rich sauce melted in Harry’s mouth.
“Oh, Harry, you and your horses. You have Gin Fizz and Tomahawk.” Susan elbowed her.
“Getting along in years,” Mim informed Susan. Mim, an avid fox hunter, appreciated Harry’s desire. She also appreciated Harry’s emaciated budget and made a mental note to see if she could strong-arm someone into selling Harry a good horse at a low price.
Six months earlier the idea of helping the postmistress wouldn’t have occurred to her. But Mim had turned over a new leaf. She wanted to be warmer, kinder, and more giving. It wasn’t easy, overnight, to dump six decades of living a certain way. The cause of this volte-face Mim kept close to her chest, which was, indeed, where it had begun. She had visited Larry Johnson for a routine checkup. He found a lump. Larry, the soul of discretion, promised not to tell even Jim. Mim flew to New York City and checked into Columbia-Presbyterian. She told everyone she was on her semiannual shopping spree. Since she did repair to New York every spring and then again every fall, this explanation satisfied. The lump was removed and it was cancerous. However, they had caught the disease in time. Her body betrayed no other signs of the cancer. Procedures are so advanced that Mim returned home in a week, had indeed accomplished some shopping, and no one was the wiser. Until Jim walked in on her in the bathtub. She told him everything. He sobbed. That shocked her so badly that she sobbed. She still couldn’t figure out how her husband could be chronically unfaithful and love her so deeply at the same time, but she knew now that he did. She decided to give up being angry at him. She even decided to stop pretending socially that he didn’t have a weakness for women. He was what he was and she was what she was, but she could change and she was trying. If Jim wanted to change, that was his responsibility.