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

“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.”

“Do you think that Mr. MacPherson can convince them I didn’t do it?”

“He believes in you,” said A. P. Hill, with what she hoped was an encouraging smile. “We’ll do everything we can. Starting with a bail hearing.” She glanced at her watch. “You may have to trust me to handle that for you. Bill’s plane is delayed.”

Donna Jean Morgan nodded politely. “I’m sure Mr. MacPherson has taught you everything he knows.”

Professional loyalty kept A. P. Hill solemn. “I guess he has,” she agreed. “Now let’s see if they feel like letting you out of here.”

“I SUPPOSE YOU’RE related to the general?” said Eleanor Royden, when her attorney joined her at the conference table. She nodded toward A. P. Hill’s navy-blue suit and tailored blouse. “You look like you’re in uniform, too.”

A. P. Hill sighed. “Leave it to you not to want to talk about your impending murder trial,” she said.

“Well, it isn’t as if it’s coming anytime soon,” Eleanor pointed out. “Besides, I just found out that there was a Confederate general called A. P. Hill. I’d heard of the Boy Scout camp by that name in northern Virginia. I suppose that’s named for him, too. He was no Boy Scout, though.” Eleanor chuckled. “Imagine catching syphilis while you’re a West Point cadet. I hope you didn’t inherit that, too.”

“I didn’t.” A. P. Hill scowled. “That was a few generations back. Where did all this historical trivia come from?”

“I have been reading,” said Eleanor triumphantly. “I never had much time for it before, but now that I am a lady of leisure, I have taken to cultivating my mind. Unfortunately, the jailhouse library consists of dog-eared Louis L’Amours, and a full collection of tomes about the Civil War, donated by the widow of the judge who collected them. That’s one way to clean house. Of course, it’s fairly tedious for me, having to sit around my cell day after day, reading about that tiresome war.”

“I expect it is,” said A. P. Hill. As a reenactor, Powell Hill’s idea of heaven would be to sit around all day with nothing to do but read books about the War. Maybe I should shoot someone, she thought. Time to get back to business. “Are you ready to talk about the battle in progress, Eleanor?”

“Not yet. I had a question. Are you, by any chance, a bastard?”

Powell blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Well, your last name is Hill , but I was reading a biography of the general, and it mentioned that all his children were daughters, which means that they should have ended up with different surnames, so, of course, I wondered-”

The attorney sighed. Everybody wondered. Sooner or later real war buffs always got around to delicately phrasing that question. “It’s like this,” she said. “I’m descended from the general’s youngest daughter, Ann Powell Hill, who was born June sixth in Culpeper, a few weeks after her father’s death. She married Randolph Junkin and, since there were no other descendants, the couple decided to preserve the general’s name by calling themselves Randolph and Ann Hill-Junkin. When the family moved to southwest Virginia in the 1930s, the male heir thought that the name was too pretentious sounding for a rural law practice, so he dropped the Junkin part. Personally, I’m glad they kept Hill, because of the historical connection, and because I like the sound of it. So I am descended from Confederate general A. P. Hill. Okay?”

“God,” said Eleanor. “You’re so straitlaced, you can’t even be a party to a scandal once removed. Enough about your ancestors! You’re almost as boring as the jail library.”

“How gratifying,” said her attorney. “Then you’ll be thrilled by a change of subject. Dr. Stanfield has given me his report.”

“Who? Oh, you mean Skippy, the Boy Shrink. That must have been fun reading. What’d he say about my little legal problem? That I should have reloaded and fired again?”

A. P. Hill frowned. “No. Remember that you want him to find psychological problems in your personality, because that’s what will keep you from being convicted for first-degree murder.” She opened her briefcase and withdrew a computer printout. “He says you’re narcissistic, overly dramatic, and… repressed.”

Eleanor Royden cackled. “Did you keep a straight face through that one?”

A. P. Hill did not smile back. “I admit it sounded a bit odd, but Dr. Stanfield explained what he meant by repressed. He says that you put on a show of being funny and charming so that people won’t know how you really feel.”

Eleanor nodded. “It’s called being Southern,” she said. “You paid him for this pronouncement?”

“He seems to think you put on such a show for people that you have lost touch with how you really do feel.”

“I was pretty clear on Jeb and the bimbo,” Eleanor pointed out.

“Yes, but that was in a private setting, and the people involved hardly had time to think harshly of you.” It was as close to sarcasm as A. P. Hill ever came. “In public, you make a great show of concern for others, and you seem obsessed with what they think of you. Like just now when you thanked the guard for holding the door open for you. He was just doing his job.”

“I was raised to be pleasant, Sunshine. It’s supposed to make life easier for all concerned.”

“You overdo politeness, Eleanor. You are perky on automatic pilot so that no one ever knows how you really feel about anything-including yourself.”

“Is that a defense?”

“Well, it does suggest someone who might not realize the depths of her rage. It means that people couldn’t tell how you really felt about anything, which would mean that their testimony regarding you was unreliable. We might be able to argue a sort of Dr. Jekyll syndrome-that you thought you were all right, but the carefully concealed rage inside you took over, and killed the Roydens without conscious effort on your part.” Powell Hill shrugged. “Diminished capacity due to an emotional disorder. It could work.”