of the body, the coloration, the bruises on her neck. I read through the report and looked at the photographs of the girl who might have been pretty. In graduate school I’d had courses in forensic pathology, and all this looked sadly familiar. I kept thinking, though, that there was something else I should be looking for, but I couldn’t remember what it was. All my notes were back in Scotland anyhow. I was about to put the folder aside, thinking that the missing detail might come back to me later, when the phone rang. I hoped it was Bill. I hadn’t had dinner.
“Calvin Trowbridge here,” said a male voice laden with Southern money. “Is Bill there?”
“It’s nearly eight o’clock,” I said, glancing at my watch. “He’s not in the office. Is it urgent?”
“No, just a thought. See, I have Bill on retainer to-”
“Oh, you’re the one! Well, he’s terribly busy. Why don’t
I hung up before he could reply. I had considered many careers during my four-year stint as a liberal arts major, but public relations was never one of them.
At ten o’clock I gave up on Bill and went back to my motel room. (I could have stayed with my brother, but lodging two people in his apartment would be like trying to live in a squirrel’s nest.) I was still thinking about A. P. Hill’s case and trying to come up with more ideas for tracing the old ladies. Washing my hair did not get me any further along on either problem.
I waited until nearly midnight before trying to return Geoffrey’s call. The chances of waking him up were slim, but I’d hope for the best. After two rings he picked up the phone, sounding as disgustingly bright and cheerful as ever.
“This is your cousin from Scotland,” I told him. “And don’t make any snide remarks about Queen Elizabeth I calling Mary Queen of Scots that, because I’m in no mood for Trivial Pursuit.”
“Actually, it was James I to whom she referred,” purred Geoffrey, “but I wouldn’t dream of wasting your time with intellectual banter. You haven’t the gift for it. I did just want to tell you a story that might interest you. Cameron hinted that there were family problems in the Old Dominion. Would you care to elaborate?”
“No. If you have anything useful to tell me, I’ll feed your hunger for gossip. Otherwise you will have to depend on supermarket tabloids for your weekly quota of sleaze. Now what’s so important that you called Scotland to talk to me about it?”
“Actually my main reason for phoning was to see if you knew anything about the Lime Kiln Theatre in Lexington. They have a wonderful repertory company and put on a series of plays-”
“Yes, I know about them, Geoffrey. I suppose you were thinking of auditioning?”
“Well, I thought I might enjoy the acting experience. And I’d much rather spend a summer in Virginia than in Manhattan. Besides, they do a play called
“Rubbish! He was a general. You’re too young to play a general.”
“He was a braggart and a show-off,” I conceded. “So there might be some justification in casting you in the part. I’d like to see you engulfed in a red beard. But I’m sure you didn’t call me to discuss your acting career.”
“No. That was only to give you some background so you’d understand why I was at Stone Mountain wearing a Confederate uniform.”
I sighed. “No, Geoffrey. Even with the background you provided, I cannot make that leap. Why the devil
“Have you ever been to Stone Mountain? On the side of it is a huge bas-relief of Lee and his generals. Quite inspiring. I’d driven down to Atlanta to visit all the historical sites and also to visit a wonderful costume shop in the Underground, where I found quite a fetching Confederate uniform, in which I look unutterably dashing.”
“Let me guess. You bought this Confederate uniform. Did it have a fringed gold sash and a plumed hat, by any chance? I thought so. And you just could not resist nipping down to Stone Mountain to prance around-”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Oh, all right. Go ahead.”
“That’s better. Where was I? Oh, yes. Stone Mountain. I was strolling in the parking lot, trying to get the feel of being a general, when a little old lady came up to me and admired my uniform. We started to chat, and when I told her about my hopes of going to do theatre in Lexington, she said that she and her friends were from Virginia, and of course I asked what town, and she said Danville, and then we played Southern chess: do you know my friend-so- and-so?”
“Old ladies?” I was suddenly interested. “Were there eight of them?”
“I only counted five,” said Geoffrey. “But the one I talked to knew Bill. After a moment she seemed to realize that admitting this had been a mistake. She became decidedly uneasy. And then her friend came along and hustled her off before I could find out what was going on. It seemed fairly strange to me, because usually little old ladies want to talk your ear off, and they’ll tell you their life stories without the least provocation, so I wondered why this lot was so evasive.”
“Well, the State Bureau of Investigation would like a word with them, for starters,” I said. “They seem to think that Bill murdered them.” I explained the simple little house sale to Geoffrey.
“And people wonder why chivalry is dead,” he murmured. “So they conned Virginia out of a million five and left Bill to talk to the authorities. That would explain why they seemed so fidgety.”
“Where were they going?”
“By the time I asked that, the old lady’s bossy friend had turned up and was trying to elbow her toward their car. She said they were going to an island to meet friends.”
“Probably the other three fugitives,” I said.
“Well, I did ask who they were going to see, because they were acting as suspicious as all get-out, but I had to make my question charming and innocent-sounding, on account of their nervous states. As she walked away, the sweet old lady said, ‘We’ll be visiting Major Edward Anderson.’ I remember the name because he was a comedian that Captain Grandfather used to like, but it seemed odd to me that they’d be visiting an old-time comedian.”
“Maybe they knew him. Would he be about their age?”
“I’m sure he was much older. He played Rochester on the old Jack Benny show. And I never heard anybody call him major. I knew that the old dears were trying to be vague, but sometimes people tell bits of the truth when they’re trying to be misleading.”
“And some people are misleading when they’re trying to tell the truth.”
“Well, I thought it was worth looking into. If I could do it without expending any particular effort.”
“You’ve never been mistaken for Mother Teresa, have you?” I asked, but sarcasm is wasted on Geoffrey.
“Don’t be ungrateful. I called Mother to see if she knew an Edward Anderson, thinking he might be a politician or a social lion in Georgia, but she’d never heard of him. I suppose I could consult a library, if it’s a question of Cousin Bill going to prison.” Geoffrey yawned, not from the lateness of the hour, but at the prospect of exerting himself on someone else’s behalf.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” I told him. “But feel free to pursue the matter if the spirit moves you, Geoffrey.”
“There’s not a reward out for the old dears, is there?”
“No. Everyone else thinks Bill has murdered them. I suppose we could call you to testify if it comes to that.”
“I saw only five of them,” he pointed out. “He could have murdered the other three.”
“Thank you for that vote of family confidence, Geoffrey. I’ll take it from here.”
“Good. And if I’m cast as Jeb Stuart, you will come and see the show, won’t you?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
After that I went to sleep, but I must still have been reviewing the events of the day because I kept dreaming about making phone calls and trying to find Misti Hale’s name in the phone book so I could call her up and ask her how she died. Something must have been percolating through my subconscious, though, because around six A.M. I sat bolt upright in bed, realizing that I had been mulling over that autopsy report and that there was something odd about it. It might have been a simple omission of a detail on the part of the coroner, but it wasn’t there. If A. P. Hill was any good at all at being a lawyer, she could take that fact and run with it. I wondered if I could catch her before she left the motel.
