“I don’t know.” Susan kidded her schoolmate. “We’re thirty-something, you know.”
“Babies.” Port kicked off one shoe.
“Time to have some.” Mim glared at her daughter. Little Marilyn evaded her mother’s demand.
Kimball rubbed his hands together.“Ladies, once again we are indebted to Mrs. Sanburne. I do believe she’s the glue that holds us together. I knew we couldn’t proceed at Mulberry Row without her leadership in the community.”
“Hear. Hear.” More toasts and teaspoons on china cups.
Kimball continued.“I’m not sure what Mim has told you. I called needing her wisdom once again and she has provided me with you. I must ask your indulgence as I review the facts. The body of a man was found facedown in Cabin Four. The back of his skull bore testimony to one mighty blow with a heavy, sharp object like an ax but probably not an ax, or else the bone fragment would have been differently smashed—or so Sheriff Shaw believes. The victim wore expensive clothes, a large gold ring, and his pockets were full of money. I counted out the coins and he had about fifty dollars in his pockets. In today’s money that would be about five hundred. The remains are in Washington now. We will know when he died, his age, his race, and possibly even something about his health. It’s amazing what they can tell these days. He was found under the hearth—two feet under. And that is all we know. Oh, yes, thecabin was inhabited by Medley Orion, a woman in her early twenties. Her birth year isn’t clearly recorded. The first mention of her is as a child, so we can speculate. But she was young. A seamstress. Now, I want you to cast your minds back, back to 1803, since our victim was killed then or shortly thereafter. The most recent coin in his pocket was 1803. What happened?”
This stark question created a heavy silence.
Lucinda spoke first.“Kimball, we didn’t know that a man was murdered. The papers said only a skeleton was unearthed. This is quite a shock. I mean, people speculated but …”
“He was killed by a ferocious blow to the head.” Kimball directed his gaze toward Lucinda. “Naturally, Oliver didn’t, and won’t, want to attest to the fact that the person was murdered until the report comes back from Washington. It will give all of us at Monticello a bit more time to prepare.”
“I see.” Lucinda cupped her chin in her hand. In her late forties, she was handsome rather than beautiful, stately rather than sweet.
Ellie Wood, a logical soul, speculated.“If he was hit hard, the person would have had to be strong. Was the wound in the front of the skull or the back?”
“The back,” Kimball replied.
“Then whoever did it wanted no struggle. No noise either.” Ellie Wood quickly grasped the possibilities.
“Might this man have been killed by Medley’s lover?” Port inquired. “Do you know if she had a lover?”
“No. I don’t. I do know she bore a child in August of 1803, but that doesn’t mean she had a lover as we understand the concept.” Kimball crossed his arms over his chest.
“Surely you don’t think Thomas Jefferson instituted a breeding program?” Lucinda was shocked.
“No, no.” Kimball reached for the brandy. “He tried not to break up families, but I haven’t found any records to indicate Medley ever had a permanent partner.”
“Did she bear more children?” Little Marilyn finally joined in the conversation.
“Apparently not,” he said.
“That’s very odd.” Puzzlement shone over Susan’s face. “Birth control consisted of next to nothing.”
“Sheepskin. A primitive form of condom.” Kimball sipped the brandy, the best he had ever tasted. “However, the chance of a slave having access to anything that sophisticated is out of the question.”
“Who said her partner was a slave?” Harry threw down the joker.
Mim, not wanting to appear old-fashioned, picked it up.“Was she beautiful, Kimball? If she was, then her partners may indeed have had access to sheep membrane.” Mim implied that Medley therefore would have attracted the white men.
“By what few accounts I can find, yes, she was beautiful.”
Lucinda scowled.“Oh, I hope we can just slide by this. I think we’re opening a can of worms.”
“We are, but somebody’s got to open it.” Mim stood her ground. “We’ve swept this sort of thing under the rug for centuries. Not that I enjoy the process, I don’t, but miscegenation may be a motive for murder.”
“I don’t think a black woman would have killed a man merely because he was white,” Ellie Wood said. “But if she had a black lover, he might be driven to it out of jealousy if nothing else.”
“But what if it was Medley herself?” Kimball’s voice rose with suppressed excitement. “What would drive a slave to kill a rich white man? What would drive a woman of any color to kill a man? I think you all know far better than I.”
Catching his enthusiasm, Port jumped up.“Love. Love can run anyone crazy.”
“Okay, say she loved the victim. Not that I think too many slaves loved the white men who snuck into their cabins.” Harry grew bold. “Even at her most irrational, would she kill him because he walked out on her? How could she? White men walked out on black women every morning. They just turned their backs and poof, they were gone. Wouldn’t she have been used to it? Wouldn’t an older slave have prepared her and said something like, ‘This is your lot in life’?”
“Probably would have said ‘This is your cross to bear.’ ” Miranda furrowed her brow.
Unsettled as Lucinda was by Samson’s infidelity, and she was getting closer and closer to the real truth, she recognized as the afternoon continued that her unhappiness at least had a front door. She could walk out. Medley Orion couldn’t. “Perhaps he humiliated her in some secret place, some deep way, and she snapped.”
“Not humiliated, threatened.” Susan’s eyes lit up. “She was a slave. She’d learned to mask her feelings. Don’t we all, ladies?” This idea rippled across the room. “Whoever this was, he had a hold on her. He was going to do something terrible to her or to someone she loved, and she fought back. My God, where did she get the courage?”
“I don’t know if I can agree.” Miranda folded her hands together. “Does it take courage to kill? God forbids us to take another human life.”
“That’s it!” Mim spoke up. “He must have threatened to take someone else’s life—or hers. What if he threatened to kill Mr. Jefferson—not my stalker theory, mind you, but an explosive rage on the dead man’s part—something erratic?”
“I doubt she’d kill to save her master,” Little Marilyn countered her mother. “Jefferson was an extraordinary human being, but he was still the master.”
“Some slaves loved their masters.” Lucinda backed up Mim.
“Not as many as white folks want to believe.” Harry laughed. She couldn’t help but laugh. While bonds of affection surely existed, it was difficult for her to grasp that the oppressed could love the oppressor.
“Well, then what?” Ellie Wood’s patience, never her strong point, ebbed.
“She killed to protect her true lover.” Port savored her brandy.
“Or her child,” Susan quietly added.
An electric current shot around the room. Was there a mother anywhere in the world who wouldn’t kill for her child?
“The child was born in August 1803.” Kimball twirled the crystal glass. “If the victim were killed after August, he might have known the child.”
“But he might have known the child even before it was born.” Mim’s eyes narrowed.
“What?” Kimball seemed temporarily befuddled.
“What if it were his?” Mim’s voice rang out.
A silence followed this.
Harry then said,“Most men, or perhaps I should say some men, who have enjoyed the favors of a woman who becomes pregnant declare they don’t know if the baby is theirs. Of course they can’t get away with that now thanks to this DNA testing stuff. They sure could get away with it then.”