====================== A Mimicry of Mockingbirds by Lillian Stewart Carl ====================== Copyright (c)2002 by Lillian Stewart Carl First published in White House Pet Detectives, October 2002 Fictionwise www.Fictionwise.com Mystery/Crime/Historical Fiction --------------------------------- NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. --------------------------------- The evening was fine and warm in a last lingering imitation of summer. Through Tom's open window came a distant strain of harpsichord music, accompanied from time to time by a woman's voice. He would have preferred hearing the salutations of the muse of law, as he was at this moment preparing a difficult case. He pulled his candle closer to _Littleton's English Law with Coke's Commentaries_. A song, an echo of the original, trilled from the tree outside. Tom looked up with a smile. He liked the voice of the mockingbird, _mimus polyglottos_, the American nightingale. Mockingbirds were clever little fellows, modest as widows in their silver and gray suits.... Voices shouted, the harpsichord and the woman's voice ceased abruptly, and with a flutter of wings the bird flew away. Tom dipped his pen and turned to a fresh page in his commonplace book. "As our laws so have our vocabularies been shaped by the customs of our sovereign Britain. Such collective nouns as 'an ostentation of peacocks' or 'a parliament of owls' amuse our fancies and remind our intellects of the deep roots of our mother tongue. And of its insularity, that such a charming creature as a mockingbird has no such appellation..." A knock drew his attention. "Come!" His landlady opened the door. "Mr. Jefferson, are you working still?" "Indeed I am, Mrs. Vobe. My colleague Patrick Henry will soon argue a case of inheritance, for which I have promised him a complete brief." "He does go on, Mr. Henry does. Why, you'd think he was preaching revolution!" "So one might think," Tom returned, without venturing to express those grievances of which he as well as Mr. Henry were sensible. Mrs. Vobe was wiping down a long-necked wine bottle with her apron, causing its blue glass to wink gaily in the light. "Here you are, Mr. Jefferson. Shocking, the dust from the streets, but I reckon it repels the flies." "Thank you." Tom placed the bottle at the far end of his desk, away from his books and papers, noting as he did so that despite Mrs. Vobe's best efforts with the apron, her own fingers, tacky with the baking and basting due her position, had left smudges upon the glass. "Did I hear voices exclaiming in the street just now?" "Aye, that you did. Mr. Bracewell's been taken sick, very sudden, and his wife's sent for the doctor." "Which Mr. Bracewell, Robert the merchant or his brother Peter?" "Robert, the elder." "I hope he recovers speedily." "And if he don't, well then, there's work for you in proving his will." "Which is a duty I should gladly forgo, for I have quite enough work without wishing ill of one of my fellow citizens. There are greater matters at hand than such domestic ones as wills and properties. And yet," Tom turned back to his books, "such domestic matters are as vital to those whom they closely affect as are the present debates on taxation to the citizens of all His Majesty's colonies." He heard the door shut as Mrs. Vobe went on about her business and left him to his. * * * * Raindrops sifted down the back of Tom's collar as he stood with his hat in his hand. But he took no more notice of them than he did of the odors of mortality, smoke and cooking food and ordure, which hung in the misty air. Beyond the churchyard the various buildings of the town seemed little more than suppositions, allowing him to imagine them as fine palladian structures, not the serviceable but disagreeably ramshackle houses of Williamsburg. "Earth to earth", intoned the rector, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust...." Eliza Bracewell attended the dark gash in the earth that was her husband's last resting place, her child clasped against her skirts. At her side stood Peter Bracewell and his wife. Robert had owned property and served his time as juror. If not representing the upper stratum of society, still he'd been of the solid middling sort. Now a goodly number of Williamsburg's citizens stood around his grave, eyes downcast in seemly sobriety. To Tom's mind came the words of Cicero: "What satisfaction can there be in living, when day and night we have to reflect that at this or that moment we must die?" A child was more likely to come to its funeral than to its marriage. Those souls who lived long enough to marry seldom made only one such contract. Tom's old school companion Bathurst Skelton, for example, had recently died, leaving his charming wife, Martha, a widow. Anne Bracewell, Peter's wife, had been the relict of James Allen, a planter from Surry County. And now dire misfortune had deprived the other Mrs. Bracewell, Eliza, of her husband. Surely Peter, despite his reputation of caprice and instability, would remember his obligations to his nephew and provide for his education just as Tom's uncle had provided for his after the untimely death of his father. Although Eliza could be expected to marry again. She was a comely young woman, her complexion pale beneath the brim of her fashionable bonnet but of a pleasing plumpness. "Amen," said the rector. In a soft wave of sound the gathered people echoed the word. Eliza directed her steps toward the gate, awkward as a marionette, supported less by her brother-in-law on the one side than supporting her child on the other. Peter's wife walked just behind. By the draping of her skirts Tom perceived Anne was with child, and politely averted his eyes. Every few steps Peter paused, inviting the socially select amongst the mourners to share the funeral feast at Robert's house. "Mr. Jefferson, we should be honored by your presence." "Thank you, Mr. Bracewell. I should be honored to attend." The rain thickened, dripping in resonant thuds down upon the coffin. Three mockingbirds perched along the wall of the churchyard, the notes of their song passing from the one to the next and then to the next in an avian symphonic composition. An exaltation of larks. A watch of nightingales. A mimicry of mockingbirds.... Tom found his creation pleasing, and promised himself he would write it down as soon as may be, after the funeral courtesies had been observed. * * * * A cold wind blew dried leaves into the house. Hastily the servant closed the door and accepted Tom's hat, cloak, and gloves. Tom strode briskly through the hall, past the staircase, elegant in its austerity, to George Wythe's familiar office with its intoxicating scent of books. "Mr. Jefferson, how very amiable of you to attend me." Wythe greeted his former pupil with a hearty handshake. His high forehead and eagle's-beak nose caused the lawyer and jurist to seem a veritable new world Aristotle, intellect personified. "I always come to this house with great pleasure and fond memories, Mr. Wythe. How may I assist you? Is it a case of law?" Wythe gestured Tom toward an empty chair and returned to his desk, stacked high with papers. "That is for you to tell me." "I beg your pardon?" "Allow me to set forth the facts of the matter, beginning with a question. How well were you acquainted with the affairs of Robert Bracewell, who was taken by death only two days since?" "More by reputation and rumor than by actual discourse," Tom answered. "I confess it is his younger brother's reputation of which most rumor has reached my ears." "There is no surprise in that," said Wythe, "when Peter has spent a rather longer time than most young men in sowing his wild oats." "And so has found himself without the means to reap them?" Tom returned. "Mrs. Skelton, with whom I was conversing most amiably at the Governor's palace last week, said she should not be surprised if Peter had married the former Mrs. Allen so that the property left to her by Mr. Allen might assist in the payment of his debts." "Be that as it may, debts Peter has yet, many contracted upon the expectations of an inheritance from his brother." "Have you read out Robert's will and made an inventory of his personal property, then? Has something gone amiss with one or the other?" Wythe leaned forward. "Something has gone amiss, yes. Not with the will or the inventory but with the heirs themselves. And with, I fear, the circumstances of Robert's death." "Indeed?" Tom frowned, not caring for the direction of Mr. Wythe's conversation but intrigued nonetheless. "Three days since, Robert sat at his desk tending to his accounts, as was his habit of an evening, when he was afflicted suddenly by a severe gastric fever. Mrs. Bracewell assisted him to his bed and summoned Dr. de Sequera, but the usual remedies availed nothing, and Robert died soon after dawn, may God rest his soul." "Fevers are not infrequent this time of year." "Neither are disputes between heirs, at any time of the year. This one, though, goes well beyond most such quarrels. Both Mrs. Robert Bracewell and Mr. Peter Bracewell have waited upon me, separately, each to accuse the other of murder by poison." "Murder!" exclaimed Tom. "Disagreeable as we may find it to be, that is the word exactly. At root, as you may expect, are the contents of Robert's will." "And, I would presume, the contents of his last meal as well?" Tom smiled, thinly, as befit the circumstances. "Has Robert left Eliza less than her widow's third, so that she intends to renounce the will for her dower rights?" "Not at all, no. He has left her the majority of the estate, property and business both, and Peter but a small settlement. Peter asserts, however, that Robert intended writing a codicil to his will that would ensure him a full two-thirds of the estate. He suggests that Eliza killed her husband before he could do so. Eliza, in turn, asserts that Peter killed Robert believing that the codicil had already been written, reluctant to wait til nature had in the course of time worked its will upon his brother." "Many a man has teased his family with implications of the contents of his will," offered Tom. "True enough." "But are these infamous charges true? Have you any evidence that such a terrible crime as murder was actually committed?" "Not one jot or tittle of evidence, no. This is why I sent for you. I know how you enjoy digging into a case and discovering evidence." "And yet no case is to be seen, Mr. Wythe, only the suspicions and accusations of dissatisfied heirs." "As yet, yes. But if the citizens of Virginia are to live under the rule of law, as is their right, then such suspicions must be answered. I'm asking you to research the matter, Mr. Jefferson. Then if you believe that no case exists to be brought before judge and jury, there the matter will rest." "Very well." Tom returned. "As reason is the only sure guide which God has given to man, I shall apply my reason to the problem." "Good," said Wythe. "I trust you to find its solution." * * * * Tom made his way up Duke of Gloucester street, envisioning himself a small boat tacking against the wind. His cloak fluttered like a sail. He secured his hat with one gloved hand. What he at first took to be a swirling red leaf settled upon a fence and revealed itself as a redbird. So were man's senses deceived. Had the Bracewells allowed such distasteful motives as jealousy and greed to deceive them as well? Indeed, Tom himself had wondered at the stiffness between Eliza and Peter after Robert's funeral, each offering the other courtesies so exaggerated as to be mocking. Death struck too easily and too swiftly to hasten anyone into his arms. Murder must out. Tom must not only prove a case of murder but bring its perpetrator to justice, lest doubt besmirch the community as surely as mist had smeared the streets the day of the funeral. He turned into Dr. de Sequera's gate. There was the man himself, plucking globes of red, yellow, and green from several windblown bushes. "Doctor!" De Sequera looked around. "Mr. Jefferson! What brings you out in such a gale?" "A serious task. Eliza Bracewell and her husband's brother, Peter, are each accusing the other of the murder by poison of Robert." "Well, well, well." De Sequera's thick black brows arched upward. He picked up a basket that was half-filled by smooth round fruits. "Come inside." The two men walked up the steps and into the still silence of de Sequera's house. Tom looked about as eagerly as he always did when waiting upon his friend, finding great interest in the array of scientific instruments and medicines in their glass bottles. One of de Sequera's refracting lenses had so intrigued Tom he'd ordered a copy from England for himself, to magnify the vexatiously small print in his books. "What have you there?" he asked, indicating the basket. "Tomatoes?" De Sequera held up a rosy red globe. "Yes. I eat them often." "But are they not of the nightshade family?" "They are, yes. And yet despite their mimicry of less salubrious fruits, they are tasty and nutritious. The food we eat determines our state of health. And nowhere more so than with Robert Bracewell, it appears. Tell me what you have heard." "Very little, in truth." Tom repeated what Wythe had told him and concluded, "You treated Robert. What symptoms did you observe?" "During the autumn I see many fevers of the remitting and intermittent kind. Robert was taken by a very sudden fit of gastric fever, vomiting so severe I had no need for the usual vomits and purges. I administered snake root and Peruvian bark, but to no avail. This particular fever did run its course uncommonly swiftly, but each body is heir to its own." "Vomits and purges. Those would also be the symptoms of some poisons." "So they would." "I should hate to ascribe to malice what could have occurred by accident. Could Robert have eaten food unsuitable for consumption? Not tomatoes, I warrant," Tom added with a smile. "According to his relations, he took his dinner with friends at Weatherburn's Tavern, then supped lightly on the same bread and cheese eaten by his wife. If poison had been introduced into either meal, Robert should not have been its only victim. Tis more likely the poison found its way, by whatever means, into a cup or glass from which he and he alone drank, not long before he was struck down." "I see." Tom nodded. "Arsenicum produces such symptoms, does it not? And antimony, the favorite of Lucrezia Borgia?" "Both are elemental metals. Antimony, though, does not dissolve in food or water and tastes bitter. If Robert were indeed poisoned, I should think arsenicum a more likely means, as it readily dissolves and leaves no taste." Tom knew he must not be afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead. "Is it possible that Robert dosed himself, thereby taking his own life?" "Tis possible. But if I were to make my own end, I should choose a method much quicker and tidier. Tis certainly against our deepest instincts to cause ourselves suffering." "Yes," Tom agreed. "How unfortunate that it is not always against our deepest instincts to cause suffering to another. Thank you for your help, doctor." "If I can be of further assistance, please let me know." De Sequera hoisted his basket onto his arm. "Til then, I have a recipe to perfect, a sauce of tomatoes and herbs, served over fowl, perhaps. Will you join me in such a culinary experiment?" "If you can eat tomatoes with a smile upon your face, then I shall gladly join you, and prove scientifically that they are a wholesome and delectable fruit." Shaking his head -- the good doctor might be somewhat eccentric, but his methods were sound -- Tom walked back out into the cold. So Robert had indeed been hurried to his grave by poison. Now to discover whence the poison and how it was dispensed. Those considerations must, Tom hoped, bring him in due course to the hand that had dispensed it. * * * * Robert Bracewell's parlor was small but in every particular fashionable. The porcelain figurines lining the mantelpiece were as superior a quality as any found in the best houses in Williamsburg. Tom doubted Robert, a pleasant but less than polished individual, had selected such tasteful furnishings. As the daughter of a small planter possessing no more than an acre or two, it was Eliza who had by marrying a merchant risen above her origins. Mrs. Bracewell's countenance was colored prettily now, but her fine dark eyes displayed a rigidity approaching haughtiness. In her black silk dress, its bodice softened by a white fichu, she reminded Tom of a magpie. "Allow me to offer you refreshment. Tea?" Tom held that the present tax on tea was not so much an absurd expense as an affront to colonial rights. Bowing, he refused the tea but accepted a chair. After a few moments of polite conversation he came to the point of his visit. "Mr. Wythe has told me of your allegations against Mr. Peter Bracewell. And of his corresponding allegations against you." Eliza flicked open her black-trimmed mourning fan and with it concealed her lips as she spoke. "He cannot even present you with a reasonable falsehood. Why should I kill my husband and render myself a _femme sole_, alone in the world?" "Was the poison introduced into Robert's food, do you think?" "No. No one else fell ill. I expect it was mixed with his wine." "Wine?" "Twas his custom to take a glass or two of wine in the evenings as he looked over his accounts. He fell ill with the bottle and the glass still before him, or so I found him when I answered his cries of distress." "You were not with him when he was taken ill?" "No. I was here, endeavoring to learn the words of a new song. My husband took pleasure in my singing, whether or no I had the advantage of tutors in music and deportment in my youth." Her voice took on a mocking edge. Tom nodded. "May I see Robert's office, please, Mrs. Bracewell?" "Surely." Furling the fan, Eliza led the way down a narrow hall to a closet at the back of the house. A bookcase, a desk, and a chair filled the tiny room. Two ledger books lay upon the desk next to an inkwell and pen. A blue wine bottle and a glass occupied the far corner, beyond several bills of lading. A child's toy horse lay next to the door. "This is how the room appeared when Mr. Bracewell was taken ill?" Tom asked. "Twas necessary to wash the floor," said Eliza. "Ah." Tom had no wish to press Robert's wife as to the unfortunate details of his illness. He picked up the bottle, recognizing the same vintage he kept for his own use. Twas merchant Josiah Greenhow's best, evinced by Greenhow's seal, a glass medallion, affixed to the bottle just beneath its shoulder. The cork that plugged the bottle's mouth was still damp and firm. A small amount of wine splashed back and forth inside. "This bottle is new, is it not?" "I purchased it at Mr. Greenhow's store little more than an hour before my husband drank from it." "Did you first draw the cork? Did you note whether it were sound?" "I drew the cork, which was quite sound, with my own hands, to ease my husband's way for him." And so was his way eased across the Styx, Tom said to himself. "Who, then, could have entered the room between the time you brought the bottle home and the time he drank from it?" Eliza's plump face took on the appearance of a dried apple. "Our cook and housekeeper, Sylvia, was away that night. But Peter lives just there, on my husband's sufferance, and comes and goes in this house as though we lived here on his." She gestured toward the window. It overlooked the house's dependencies, kitchen, dairy, smokehouse, and privy. Beyond the small structures lay a garden, set out with a trellis and a row of fruit trees in design very like to the Wythe's garden. Over the few remaining leaves of the trees rose the roof of Peter Bracewell's cottage. A narrow path ran between the two properties, for the convenience of the servants, no doubt. "Robert owns the house where Peter and his wife make their home?" "He did, yes. Now Peter owns it, for it and it alone was left to him in the will." Tom set the bottle back down. "What then, could be the motive for murder, Mrs. Bracewell?" "My husband's other properties, not to mention his business, all of which have now come to me. Peter desires to live in leisured dignity but has not the means to do so. I must confess he is no stranger to the gambling tables, and in other ways lives well beyond his income. All is status and show to him." Tom offered no response to that statement. "The evening before the one my husband was taken from me, he and his brother fought most bitterly over Robert's refusal to pay Peter's debts. They spoke so loudly I could not help but overhear, walking as I was outside the door." "Did Robert advise Peter that he intended to make his will more favorable to him?" Eliza's chin went up. "Robert told him he had already made the change, hoping to encourage Peter to mend his ways and turn his hand to business." "But Robert did not in fact write the codicil?" "No. He did not. Twas Peter's pride and avarice that led him to believe Robert's ruse, as though Robert would compromise his own son's inheritance in favor of a blaggard such as Peter!" "And so you believe Peter hastened Robert to his grave." "I do not believe it, Mr. Jefferson. I know it." "The facts of the matter have yet to be proved," Tom told her. "May I have the use of this bottle and its contents?" "To pour away, I should hope, lest some other unfortunate soul should drink from it." Tom's intentions were otherwise, but Mrs. Bracewell had no need to know his true purposes. "I should greatly appreciate the loan of a basket in which to carry the bottle. And may I interview your cook?" Eliza, her color high, stared him up and down for a long moment, then quit the room. Tom turned to the desk. Despite the sunlight outside, the room was dusky, and he had no means by which to light the lamp now sitting cold upon the desk. Still he inspected the desktop, books, and empty glass as best he could. Yes, by Jove, a few grains of a chalky white powder were caught in the hinges where the desktop could be folded away. Tom wet his forefinger at his lips and pressed it to the spot, so that a particle or two adhered to his flesh. Making a face indicative of doubt and caution mingled, he put his fingertip first close to his nostril, then passed it across his tongue. The substance had neither smell nor taste. It was neither sugar nor flour. The light from the door was blocked by a woman's entrance into the room. By her simple calico garb, white headcloth, and ebon complexion, Tom deduced that she was the cook and housekeeper. She proffered a wicker basket filled with straw, her hands trembling so severely the straw rustled. "Mrs. Bracewell sends you this, Mr. Jefferson." "Thank you," he said, and accepted the basket. "Sylvia is your name?" "Yes sir." "Were you in the house the night Mr. Bracewell was taken ill?" "No sir. Twas my night out, so I went visiting with my daughter at Mr. Randolph's house. I was no where near this room, no sir." As this statement could be readily investigated, and as Tom was eager to ascertain the cause of the woman's agitation, he moved on to another question. "Do you have any knowledge of poisons, Sylvia?" Her eyes widened, surpassing agitation and achieving outright fear. "No sir. I never poisoned Mr. Robert. Why would I do that?" "Indeed, Sylvia. An excellent question." As an enslaved person, Sylvia's testimony would not be allowed before a court of law, giving her no reason to lie about the circumstances in which she found herself. Indeed, to murder her master would have gone against her best interests, for even with her inheritance Eliza might have found herself obliged to make economies, and an experienced cook like Sylvia would bring a good price in that market for human flesh Tom found so troubling. "Sylvia, you need fear no retribution if only you tell the truth. What do you know of Mr. Bracewell's death?" "Nothing, sir," the poor woman stammered. "Only that he was taken terrible sick just after I brought arsenicum and soft soap into the house." "Arsenicum and soft soap?" "Mrs. Bracewell bid me buy them at the market, so as to clean the bedsteads and rid them of bedbugs. But within a day they was gone and Mr. Bracewell was dead." "Did you by any chance overhear Mr. Bracewell and his brother in disputation over the younger gentleman's financial situation?" "Oh no sir, I never heard anything of the sort. Not that I'd be listening, mind." Nodding, Tom placed the wine bottle in the basket and slipped the handle over his arm. He found a small coin in his pocket and pressed it into Sylvia's hand. "Thank you. Please give my respects to Mrs. Bracewell, and tell her that I am continuing my investigations into the matter." Her manner mollified, Sylvia showed Tom to the door. * * * * Tom walked round the corner of the street toward Peter Bracewell's front door. Two households, as Master Shakespeare had said, both alike in dignity, and no less given to feuding, or so it seemed by Eliza Bracewell's testimony. Black birds swirled like cinders in the wind, stooping over a field at the edge of town. Ravens or crows, most likely, although at this distance Tom could not ascertain which. An unkindness of ravens, he said to himself. A murder of crows. The bottle and basket hung from his arm. He should not allow his next witness any knowledge of what the previous one had said. He concealed the basket behind a patch of tobacco which, despite the time of year, still flourished between the cottage and the street. Then Tom stepped up to Peter Bracewell's front door and in a matter of moments was seated in another parlor furnished a la mode, complete with an elegant French mirror above the mantel. Peter himself, in truth only a half-brother of Robert, had always had more of a taste for culture than had the bluff merchant now deceased. Tom himself had recently spent a most agreeable musical evening in this house, playing his violin whilst Peter played the harpsichord and his wife sang like a lark. The cold supper had been the equal of one served at the palace itself, a calf's head displayed as the centerpiece of a veritable cornucopia of dishes. Today Peter stood before the fireplace warming the tails of his coat, his handsome face soured by recent events. "Mr. Jefferson, I have given the matter much thought, and have concluded that my brother's death was an unnatural one. Fevers abound in these climes, yes, but for him to suffer one so conveniently defies belief." "His fever and subsequent death were convenient?" Tom asked. "On the day before his death, Robert stated his intention of paying my debts. He also informed me he'd added a codicil to his will leaving much of his property and his business to me, as a reward for my hard work in its pursuance. So Holy Scripture instructs us to welcome home the prodigal, he said, and congratulated me on mastering my baser appetites. But his wife has always been jealous of Robert's affection toward me, thinking it better directed to her own son." "And who can blame a woman who wishes to protect her child?" Peter's mouth twisted in a satirical smile. "No one at all. But not when she imposes upon Mr. Wythe, and through him upon you, the vilest of falsehoods -- a charge of murder laid against an innocent man." "Why, then, should Mrs. Bracewell accuse you?" "If she were to eliminate me, then would not Robert's entire estate fall upon their son, and through him, upon her? Who's to say she does not have her eye and her cap set already toward a new husband, one of greater property and therefore greater prospects than my poor brother?" "What are you suggesting, Mr. Bracewell?" "That Robert was indeed murdered. But by his own wife." "How then, do you think Mrs. Bracewell could have accomplished such an outrage?" "With poison from her own kitchen. My own wife saw Robert's Sylvia purchasing arsenicum and soft soap, and remarked upon it, whereupon Sylvia admitted to the infestation she hoped to combat." Peter paced across the room, drew an arpeggio from the keyboard of the harpsichord, then looked out the window at Robert's roof. "Less than an hour before my brother's death I passed Eliza upon the street outside Mr. Greenhow's establishment, her basket upon her arm and the neck of a wine bottle protruding from it. Robert was accustomed to taking a glass or two before retiring. How easier to introduce a poison to him but to no one else?" "You saw her carrying a bottle such as that one?" Tom indicated two blue glass bottles sitting in the corner cupboard, close beside several stemmed glasses. "Very similar. Those, though, are my own private stock. Robert, with less of a palate than God saw fit to give me, drank from the common store." Peter presented one of the bottles to Tom's inspection. The common store was quite acceptable for everyday consumption, in Tom's considered opinion. But he kept his own counsel and noted only that yes, the glass medallions on the bottles were indeed imprinted with Peter's name, not with that of merchant Greenhow. "Surely you will not object to telling me, Mr. Bracewell, how you were employed between the time Mrs. Bracewell brought home the new bottle and the time her husband first felt the pangs of -- his illness." "I found employment just here, Mr. Jefferson, practicing the new minuet by Corelli, neglecting even to take my supper, for my wife and I intend to hold yet another musical evening very soon. We should be honored if you would join us. I shall," he added with a sly smile, "extend an invitation to Mrs. Martha Skelton as well." Tom concealed his expression by inspecting his shoe buckles. Delightful as she was, blessed with a voice as lovely as her form, Mrs. Skelton was not party to this problem. "Thank you, Mr. Bracewell. I heard your playing myself that night, accompanied by your wife's most agreeable singing." As though summoned by his words, Mrs. Anne Bracewell entered the room. She too, had no doubt happened to be walking outside. Her silk wrapper was more highly colored than her complexion, which was very pale, as befit her delicate condition. "May I offer you dinner at our table, Mr. Jefferson? Our cook is not the equal of my sister-in-law's Sylvia, but she does tolerably well." "Thank you, Mrs. Bracewell, but I expect Mrs. Vobe has already prepared my usual dish of vegetables." Tom rose to his feet. "I was complimenting your husband on your singing, which was cut so lamentably short the night of Mr. Robert Bracewell's death." "I was fortunate to have had the advantage of tutors in music and deportment in my youth." Anne inclined her head with grave propriety, but Tom did not imagine the edge of mockery in her voice. He heard the echo of Eliza's words in Anne's. Yes, Anne's family was of a higher status in Virginia than Eliza's, a fact of which both women seemed only too aware. Making his excuses, Tom found his way to the street. There he retrieved the basket and stood for a moment listening to a mockingbird singing in a nearby tree. Just now it seemed to be repeating no particular melody. He wondered whether he could teach one of the little creatures a song, an Irish or Scottish air, perhaps, even though its duplication could be but a counterfeit of the original. Just as the support Peter Bracewell had given Eliza at her husband's funeral was counterfeit, or perhaps as Peter's indignation or Eliza's excuses were counterfeit. The bird, though, did not purpose to deceive with its mimicry. * * * * After stopping to speak with several other citizens, Tom returned to his lodgings and amazed his landlady by asking to purchase one of the chickens that occupied a pen behind her kitchen. "An old one will do, one destined soon for the pot," he explained. "Well then," replied Mrs. Vobe, "have that old cockerel in the far corner, the one's grown weary of his life and is pondering dumplings and gravy." This chicken would not follow its relatives into dumplings and gravy or even into de Sequera's exotic sauce. The good doctor might be content to experiment upon himself, but Tom intended to take a safer course. He isolated the chicken in a small pen and set before it a dish of corn laced liberally with a draught from Robert's wine bottle. Leaving the animal pecking away at the food, he sat down to his own dinner, a splendid _potage a pois_. He had had little need to inquire of the Bracewells' neighbors whether they heard the music of harpsichord and voice the night of Robert's death. With the windows standing open, he had heard both himself. He did, though, ascertain that Peter had recently, if reluctantly, turned his hand to Robert's business, and that the relations between the brothers had not always been so cordial as Peter would have Tom think, as the issue of his own debts caused a constant friction. Mrs. Randolph had assured Tom as to the whereabouts of Eliza's Sylvia at the fatal hour. And Josiah Greenhow, who'd readily testified to Eliza's acquisition of the infamous bottle of wine soon before her husband's death, asserted that its cork had been fixed and whole when it left his hands. Nothing, then, that Tom learned from the citizens of the town led him to believe either Bracewell a liar and therefore a murderer. He returned to Mrs. Vobe's yard to discover the chicken in its death throes. Before he could do it a mercy by wringing its neck, it expired in a shuddering heap of feathers. Tom poked and prodded its lifeless body, but unlike a Roman haruspex of old declined to inspect its internal organs. He'd proved that the poison, probably arsenicum, had been introduced into the bottle of wine in the brief interval between its arrival at the house and Robert's pouring it out. There should be some way of formulating a more exact test, to indicate not only the presence of poison but its specific sort. Then no uncertainties would remain on the mind, all would be demonstration and satisfaction.... No. Science could not illuminate the shadows of the human heart. It could identify the poison but not who placed it in the bottle. The question, as always, was _cui bono_, who benefited from the crime? Peter might well have killed his brother to gain enough income to pay his debts and to live in the style to which he had accustomed himself. He, though, could not have been playing his harpsichord and poisoning the wine at the same instant. Eliza might have killed her husband to prevent her own income from being diminished, as oftentimes widows found themselves obliged to take in lodgers or depend upon the kindness of relations, which, considering the demeanor of Eliza's relations, was not an alternative. But then, if Eliza had made good with her first marriage, why not make better with her second, especially with her first husband's estate as bait? A squawk made Tom glance around. Mrs. Vobe's cat was crouching in the door of the kitchen, its fur forming a bristling ridge down its back. A mockingbird stood only a few feet away, wings half-extended, cawing its contempt at its nemesis. No wonder it was named a "mocking" bird, when it not only copied but teased. If the season had been spring, Tom would have thought the bird intended to draw the cat away from its nest. Such was always the maternal imperative, to protect the child even at the forfeit of one's own life. But the season was autumn. Perhaps the bird fancied the cat encroached upon its territory, which passion was also a human trait. Tom considered that Robert's child was as much a motive in his death as his territory, his possessions. Eliza and Peter would each benefit from the other's demise, as Robert's property would go to his son, and the surviving adult, whether mother or uncle, would have control over its use. But both Peter's and Eliza's accounts rang true. Neither countenance displayed any guilt or sly regard. Indeed, both seemed quite sincere. And yet one of them must be false. Tom needed more evidence, evidence that could be demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction. The cat leaped forward. The bird launched itself into the air and flew away, evading the extended claws by inches. A thin dust swirled lazily into the air and then drifted back to earth. The cat slinked back into the kitchen, admitting to no defeat. Its paws left a spoor in the dust. Frowning, Tom strolled closer to the site of the momentary battle. Had he not seen it for himself, still he could have reconstructed the affray from the marks in the dusk, the spiky prints of the bird's feet, the pugmarks of the cat, and the twin furrows where the bird's wings had brushed the earth upon its abrupt departure. Tom's eye then turned to the wine bottle, still sitting where he'd laid it, on a shelf inside the chicken coop. A fine layer of dust and chaff shrouded its gleam. He remembered Mrs. Vobe, at the very moment poor Robert was hastening toward his mortality, entering Tom's room wiping another bottle with her apron. No doubt Greenhow had done the same, cleaning the bottle Eliza purchased of dust and dirt.... If his mind could stretch itself to invent a new collective noun, it could also invent a new scientific test. One that could identify the hand that had poured the poison. Taking great care to lift the bottle by its lip, Tom held it up to the light and squinted at its smooth glass sides. * * * * Tom waited politely as George Wythe seated his guests around the green baize-covered table in his office. Mrs. Robert Bracewell twitched her skirts away from Peter Bracewell's buckled shoes, whilst Mrs. Peter Bracewell folded her hands in her lap and looked about with little expression. Her husband and sister-in-law bent upon each other expressions of distrust and disdain, each complexion colored as pinkly as though Mr. Wythe's fire burned with much greater heat. "Mr. Jefferson," said Wythe, seating himself in the remaining chair. Stepping forward, Tom placed a clear pane of glass on the table between Eliza and Peter. "Would you each be so kind as to press your thumbs and fingertips firmly against this glass?" "I beg your pardon?" demanded Peter. Eliza said haughtily, "An exceedingly strange request, Mr. Jefferson." "If you please," Wythe said, "indulge my young friend's scientific endeavors. He has explained his reasoning to me, and it rings true in every respect." With indignant murmurings, first Eliza and then Peter did as he requested, even suffering Tom to apologetically roll their thumbs back and forth against the glass. He carried the pane closer to Wythe's lamp, scattered it with the fine dust he'd collected in Mrs. Vobe's yard, and blew the excess into the fireplace. He then inspected the resulting smudges through his refractive lens. "It seems as though the oils inherent in human flesh leave marks upon all they touch, in a process not dissimilar to the way marks are made upon paper by the metal type and ink of a printing press. These marks can be readily distinguished on such a hard, smooth surface as glass, be it this pane of glass I borrowed from Mr. Geddy's workshop, or the glass of a wine bottle, which must be grasped firmly lest it fall and break." Not the least murmur or rustle of fabric came from any of the gathered souls. Tom turned to the sheet of paper resting upon the corner of Wythe's desk. He'd employed the afternoon sunlight in scrutinizing each print upon the bottle and painstakingly sketching its patterns, so that now he had before him a gallery of whorling designs like miniature labyrinths. "I theorize," he continued, "that each human fingerprint is as distinct, albeit subtly, as each leaf upon a tree, or each snowflake falling from the sky in winter." There, yes, one pattern matched those made by Eliza's fingers. Another matched the set he'd taken from himself, and a third matched that of Josiah Greenhow, who'd agreed with good humor to the test. Wythe himself had provided a wax seal pressed by Robert Bracewell's thumb, from which Tom had been obliged to extrapolate the rest of the dead man's grasp. But nowhere upon his paper was a copy of the pattern Peter had just this moment impressed upon the glass. So then. The presence of Eliza's prints proved nothing, as she'd already admitted touching the bottle. The absence of Peter's prints, though, proved that he'd never touched it at all, and was therefore innocent of pouring the arsenicum into its narrow mouth. Tom might perhaps have settled then and there upon Eliza as the perpetrator, except he had yet one set of designs upon his paper for which he could make no attribution. Was it possible that Eliza and Peter were both telling the truth, and the murderer was someone else? He could hardly test the fingertips of every citizen of Williamsburg who'd passed by the Bracewell's house during the fatal hour. But no. _Cui bono_, he reminded himself, and turned toward the group of people seated around the table. The disgruntlement of heirs. From the chill twilight beyond the windows came the chirrup of a mockingbird, so gentle he would have found it hard to believe the same bird capable of the harsh squawks he'd heard this afternoon had he not heard them for himself.... The answer winged into his mind like a mimicry of mockingbirds winging amongst the trees. He himself, not to mention the neighbors, had heard a woman's voice singing whilst Peter played the harpsichord. All had leaped to the assumption, as the cat had leaped toward the bird, that the voice belonged to Anne. But, as the cat had missed the bird, so assumption had missed fact. Eliza had been practicing a song at that same hour. Without study, who could tell the song of one mockingbird from another? Who could tell Eliza's song from Anne's, particularly as Eliza had been endeavoring to copy Anne? That Anne had been privileged to possess tutors in music and deportment was a fact with which each woman mocked the other. Tom considered Anne Bracewell's lacy cap, which was presented to his gaze as her own gaze was directed to her lap. From modesty or from guilt? Any mother, avian or human, would put her child's welfare above her own. She would be compelled to defend any encroachment into her territory, even though such defense meant the risk of her own life. Eliza might have killed her husband to provide for her son, but Anne, too, had a child who wanted provision. As a _femme coverte_, her property might belong to her husband but his belonged to her. And to their child. Anne had remarked upon Sylvia's purchase of arsenicum. Anne would have known Robert's and Eliza's habits as well as Peter. Anne, going about her lethal errand, might have deliberately started singing every time Eliza paused, so that music accompanied her trip through the dusk from house to house and back again as though in a tragic opera. It would have been the work of only seconds for her to steal the arsenicum from the kitchen on her way into the house and to dispose of its packaging in the privy on her way back. Tom set his pane of glass on the table in front of her. "If you please, Mrs. Bracewell, might I have the impressions of your fingers as well?" "What is the meaning of this?" Peter demanded, and again Wythe remonstrated. Slowly Anne raised her hand and set it against the glass, so limp and feeble that Tom had to push her fingertips down with his own. A moment later he had ascertained that the remaining marks upon the poisoned bottle were indeed those of her hands. Glancing up, he met Wythe's solemn eyes, and received a nod of encouragement. "Facts are stubborn things," Tom said. "The fact of who poured arsenicum in Robert's wine is now revealed. Mrs. Peter Bracewell left the marks of her fingers upon the bottle. Her husband, intent upon his music, was never sensible of his wife's brief absence from the room. Mrs. Robert Bracewell, intent upon hers, was never sensible of her sister-in-law's brief presence in her house." Eliza's eyes darted to Anne's bowed head, and her countenance suffused with understanding. Peter's countenance went red. "You accuse my wife of murder?" "I do, yes," said Tom. "Mrs. Bracewell no doubt intended Robert's death to be thought a natural one. And so would it have been, had you and Mrs. Robert Bracewell not chosen to contest the estate. In time Mrs. Anne would have discovered an opportunity to destroy the dregs of the poisoned wine, and no one would ever have been the wiser." "But, but," stammered Peter. "Why?" "For the child." Anne rose unsteadily to her feet, her complexion as pale as ash. Her hands rested upon the swelling of her belly. "I could not bear our child being born to less than the income he deserved, an income which his uncle permitted his own child but denied to ours. Now it is the child that I shall plead before the court..." She fell as a curtain falls when the hooks are torn away, folding to the floor. Eliza knelt over Anne and cradled her lolling head even as disgust wrote its lines across her features. Peter stared from Wythe to Tom and back again, as though they were capable of changing the situation in which he found himself. "I shall send for the sheriff and his constable," said Wythe, his sober mien becoming grim. "I see no need, however, to conduct Mrs. Bracewell to the jail. She may stay in her own home until after the trial. Until after the delivery of the child." Tom turned toward the window. Yes, all had been demonstrated. But he found little satisfaction in his demonstration. And yet his failure to solve the problem would have caused a different set of uncertainties to remain upon his mind. Against the darkness he could see only his own shape reflected imperfectly in the glass. He could still hear, though, the song of the mockingbird outside. So men, he said to himself, often imitate the finer sentiments, but defectively and with less pleasure to those nearby than the mockingbird mimics music. * * * * Tom threw open his window upon the bright, soft, spring day. There were his little friends, perched amongst the new leaves of the tree just outside. Tom sang a few lines of "Barbara Allen" and first one, then the other mockingbird repeated them, heads tilted to the side, throats swelling, eyes shining like obsidian beads. When he completed his property at Monticello, Tom intended to populate it with mockingbirds in the most comfortable cages he could devise. He considered also that his new house was in need of a mistress. Indeed, he had only this morning copied into his commonplace book Milton's lines celebrating the felicities of marriage, which, along with the joys of books, friends, and music, gave the lie to old Cicero and his dissatisfaction with living. Death came soon enough. Life was meant to be embraced. As was Mrs. Martha Skelton.... But it was a truth universally acknowledged that a widow in possession of a good fortune might not necessarily be in want of a new husband. He meant to convince Martha that he wanted her not for her fortune or her social position but for herself, just as he enjoyed the mockingbirds for themselves, and not because he intended to submit them to gravy or de Sequera's delectable tomato sauce. He scattered a few dried berries on the windowsill, and laid out several long red hairs from his own head. In such a context he could not help but remember the Bracewells. Anne had come to trial and been found guilty of murder, but the sentence of the court had not been carried out by human hands. Just past the new year she'd died as so many women died, bringing new life into the world. Now Peter was courting another widow, this one with both children and fortune, who had expressed herself glad of Anne's daughter. Eliza, on the other hand, had settled down with her middling income and declared her intentions never to remarry. One bird lit softly upon the sill and picked up a berry. The other seized upon the hair and flew away to build its nest, the task set before it by natural law. That same natural law that gave men the free will to covet and to murder. Or to do neither. Was it not simply reason no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions? Was it not simply reason that all men were created equal, and that a government existed for men, not men for government? It went against the law of nature that the laws for the citizens of Britain should be the just laws, and those for the citizens of the American colonies only imitations, more imperfect in equity and justice than any song repeated by a mockingbird. Tom leaned against the frame of the window and watched the mockingbirds weaving the long red strand amongst the twigs of its nest, building for the future. ----------------------- Visit www.Fictionwise.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.