Sharyn McCrumb - If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

A. P. Hill thought that she might have been tempted to do much the same, but she only nodded. “I see. So the battle lines were drawn.”

“Actually, Jeb was pretty sympathetic. He didn’t move out. Didn’t even seem too upset. He probably told Eleanor that she was imagining things, or that he’d break it off. And then he tried to be more discreet.”

“I do like an honorable man,” said A. P. Hill with a sour smile. “But tell me about the divorce.”

“Well, as I said, Jeb tried to be discreet. Eleanor, however, had a nasty suspicious mind, and she behaved like an absolute bloodhound. No matter how he covered his tracks, she simply wouldn’t believe that he was being faithful. Her endless badgering grew tiresome, so, of course, he moved out.”

“Well, poor old Jeb. And in the divorce proceedings, I suppose he cast her as the Polish cavalry?”

World War II metaphors were wasted on Creighton, whose intellect was even more limited than his imagination. He ignored the remark and launched into a detailed account of Jeb Royden’s legal maneuvers in his efforts to humiliate his ex-wife and to deprive her of every vestige of financial security. He described the campaign as dispassionately as he might have discussed the strategies of the Trojan War. To Creighton, any human suffering incurred in the legal battle was a minor side effect of the technical process. A. P. Hill detected a note of admiration in her colleague’s description of the suits and countersuits in Royden v. Royden .

“Jeb was remarkably patient with her,” he said. “He was always a lawyer first and a litigant second. Eleanor really lost it a few times. She stormed into his office and started relating her version of the divorce to his clients, so Jeb quietly had her arrested and charged with trespassing.”

“How noble of him.”

“He was fed up. Anybody would be. She took out an ad on the Possibilities page of the Roanoke Times -that’s the dating section. It said: Prosperous Roanoke lawyer, long on financial assets, short on physical ones, seeks gold-digging bimbo to jazz up his briefs. Preference given to sluts named Staci .”

A. P. Hill raised her eyebrows. “What did the happy couple do about that?”

“They just laughed. Eleanor was becoming the town loony by that time. Everybody could see why he wanted to get away from her. But Jeb got even with her by donating their furniture to Goodwill, and giving her a check for half its appraised value as used household goods. About two hundred and fifty bucks. The stuff was brand-new James River furniture worth nearly twelve grand, but Jeb said he could afford to take the loss, just for the pleasure of hearing Eleanor scream about losing it. The next week he took Giselle to North Carolina and bought almost exactly the same stuff for their new home. Boy, was Eleanor steamed!”

A. P. Hill stood up. “This has been fascinating,” she said. “But I’ve got to meet with my client now, Creighton. Before I go, let me give you one of these. A woman’s group in Roanoke had them printed up, and they sent me a stack.” She reached into her purse, and handed the assistant DA a red-and-white bumper sticker: FREE ELEANOR ROYDEN AND SEND HER OVER TO MY EX-HUSBAND’s PLACE.

LUCY TODHUNTER SAT at the defense table, swathed in mourning, but dry-eyed, watching the jury with a tremulous smile that widened slightly when the judge told them that they could not convict a defendant of murder unless they were able to work out how the crime was committed. In his summation for the defense Patrick Russell had said much the same.

“Mind you, gentlemen, you cannot say that the defendant somehow managed to administer arsenic to the victim-you know not how-and is therefore guilty,” Russell told the jurors. “You must be certain beyond a reasonable doubt, when and by what means the fatal dose was administered. If you are unable to decide that-and I cannot say that the prosecution has been much help to you in the matter-it is your bounden duty to acquit the defendant, Mrs. Lucy Todhunter. It does not mean that you believe her to be innocent; only that by strict legal standards you cannot prove her guilty. In a court of law, we can be concerned only with whether or not the facts presented can support the verdict. The state of Mrs. Todhunter’s soul is the province of Almighty God, not the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

“You might have shown more faith in my innocence,” Lucy Todhunter murmured as her attorney sat down.

“Never mind what I think,” Russell told her. “It is the opinions of those twelve men that count. I hope I have left them little choice in the matter.”

Apparently he had succeeded in this aim, for in less than an hour the solemn jurors, looking rumpled and sweaty in unaccustomed suits and cravats, filed back into the courtroom and resumed their places.

“Gentlemen, have you reached a verdict in the matter of the Commonwealth of Virginia v. Mrs. Lucy Todhunter ?”

“Reckon we have,” said the foreman, a tobacco farmer, who later remarked that the formality of courtroom procedure made him itch. He handed a folded sheet of paper to the bailiff, who passed the verdict to the judge.

His Honor peered over his spectacles at the message-lengthier than the usual jury decision. “It is unnecessary to explain your decision, gentlemen,” he said mildly as he passed the paper back to the bailiff. The verdict read: Not Guilty. We can’t figure out how she did it .

Patrick Russell shook his client’s hand and formally congratulated her upon her victory. He sent her an exorbitant bill and never spoke to her again.

As the crowds made their way out of the courtroom, Royes Bell turned to his fellow physician Richard Humphreys and said, “Now that Mrs. Todhunter has been acquitted of her husband’s death, in the interests of science, she ought to tell us how she managed it.”

She never did, though. Lucy Todhunter went back to her late husband’s opulent home, where she remained, declining visitors, until three months after the trial-when a pair of events brought Lucy once again to the forefront of the Danville gossip mill. First, Philip Todhunter’s relatives from Maine arrived to contest Lucy’s possession of her husband’s estate; second, the young widow’s pregnancy became evident, despite the camouflage effect of the long full-skirted dresses that were currently in fashion.

The Danville grapevine estimated the widow Todhunter to be about four months along in her pregnancy, and after considerable finger counting, they grudgingly allowed that the child was probably sired by her husband. It was just as well the jury hadn’t decided to hang her, everyone conceded, but impending motherhood did not endear her to the community. The Todhunter relatives were not impressed by this last legacy from poor dear Philip. They wanted the house, but not the heir, until attorneys for both sides pointed out to them that the baby would inherit a share in its father’s fortune.

“They’ll get that house over my dead body!” Lucy Todhunter told her few remaining friends.

They did.

She was never a robust young woman, and the strain of pregnancy, perhaps complicated by the rigors of the trial, exhausted her strength. She went into labor several weeks early and died of complications in the ensuing birth. It wasn’t to be wondered at, said the matrons of Danville. Didn’t she have all those problems with her earlier confinements? She even had to go to the spa to recuperate. Her funeral was well attended, since those who forbore to speak to her after the trial resumed their friendship with her at the graveside. Her headstone gave only her name, the dates of her birth and death, and verse 15:51 from the Book of Corinthians: BEHOLD I SHEW YOU A MYSTERY. Royes Bell attended Lucy to the last and regretfully reported to his colleagues that Mrs. Todhunter’s secret, whatever it was, went with her.