MacPherson's Lament

coming up here and I simply can’t get away. Anyhow, divorces take months and months, so I suppose there’s no real rush. Perhaps we ought to let them simmer down a bit before we do any meddling. But meanwhile you must try to find out what’s going on! We can’t deal with this thing until we know the facts. Tell Mother that as her attorney you have to be told everything. And keep me posted. I mean often.

Bill, I’m relying on you. You’re the family’s only hope. Don’t let this happen!

Love,

Elizabeth

“ A few more days for to tote the weary load”

– STEPHEN FOSTER,

“My Old Kentucky Home”

CHAPTER 2

“I’M NOT GOING to be here this afternoon,” said A. P. Hill. “Can you manage by yourself?”

“By myself?” Bill MacPherson looked up from his paperwork. “You mean alone? Abandoned? What about Edith?”

“Try to bear up, Bill. It’s Edith’s day off, remember? Tuesday afternoons and all day Friday.”

The law firm of MacPherson and Hill was now ten days old, still solvent, and boasted a caseload of half a dozen clients. They had also engaged a part-time secretary-receptionist: Edith Creech, a recent graduate of the local business college. Edith’s salary was as modest as her grade point average. She was maddeningly slow at office work and her spelling showed a creativity that bordered on genius, but she was a notary public, a useful asset to a law firm, and she was thoroughly in awe of her attorney employers, which went a long way toward offsetting her shortcomings.

“And where are you going this afternoon?” Bill wanted to know.

A. P. Hill reddened. “I’ve got an appointment,” she said, in a tone calculated to discourage further inquiry. “But you should be all right. Have you heard from Trowbridge yet?”

“Yep. He called this morning with his first question. It’s a doozy. Are you ready for this? He wants to know: if a neighbor’s tomcat gets the Trowbridge tabby in the family way, can the tomcat’s owner be sued for child-er, kitten-support?”

His partner rolled her eyes. “Oh, just say no!” she advised.

“That’s easy for you to say, Powell,” Bill grumbled. “You’re a Republican. But Old Trowbridge wants chapter and verse. I did inform him that the kittens would have to have blood tests to prove paternity.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll come up with something. Did you remember to check the mail before you came in?”

“Yes. That’s the other thing I was going to tell you about. You know that newspaper ad we ran? Did we say that we were catering in legal services to the deranged or anything?”

“Why?”

“They seem to be seeking us out. First the Trowbridges and now this.” He held up a flowered envelope. “This letter came today, addressed to us-MacPherson and Hill, Attorneys at Law. Dear Sirs: If it is entirely convenient with you, I shall be calling on Friday afternoon at one o’clock to discuss a small legal matter in which I should like to avail myself of your services. Sincerely, Flora Dabney. And-get this, Powell-Miss Dabney has enclosed a picture of herself in costume.”

“Let me see that!” A. P. Hill snatched the picture from her partner’s outstretched hand. From the sepia photograph a lovely but earnest-looking young woman gazed back at her with big, intelligent eyes. Flora Dabney looked a proper Edwardian gentlewoman in her coat with wide lapels and a frilled blouse with a jabot of lace at her throat. Her dark hair was brushed away from her forehead and tied with a ribbon at the back, a style that eschewed glamour, but did not hide her wholesome good looks.

“I think I’m in love,” said Bill.

“She looks too intelligent for you,” said A.P., handing back the photograph. “She doesn’t say what she wants?”

“No. Women seem determined to be mysterious in my presence. Where are you going this afternoon, by the way?”

His partner smiled sweetly. “Just out. Now try not to do anything that will get you disbarred.”

Bill was still laughing merrily as A.P. left the office. She glanced at her watch. Nearly one o’clock. Just as well that she’d packed her gear this morning. She hated to leave the car parked downtown with the rifle in the trunk, but it couldn’t be helped. Now she had to go into the ladies’ room and change. It wouldn’t do to show up in her present outfit: a pink linen coat and skirt and high heels. Better stow them in a locked briefcase in the trunk, just to be safe, after she changed into her other set of clothes.

Anyone loitering about on the sidewalk in front would have insisted that A. P. Hill did not leave the building that afternoon. However, a teenaged boy in a hat and overcoat might have been observed leaving the second-floor ladies’ room with a briefcase.

An hour later Bill was still attempting to make sense of the vagaries of feline paternity when an elderly woman appeared in the outer office. She wore a black silk dress and pearls and she had posture that a general would envy. She took in her surroundings in one piercing glance. But when she saw Bill peering at her through the open door of his office, her demeanor changed to one of fluffy amiability. She smiled as she came in, motioning for him to sit back down.

“A. P. Hill?” she said eagerly.

“No, ma’am. She’s my partner, but she’s not here right now. And our secretary’s gone, too. I’m Bill MacPherson.”

The woman in black surveyed Bill’s shabby surroundings. Her sharp eyes flickered over the framed diploma and the secondhand furniture. They paused momentarily on the gaily appareled rodent leering at her from the corner.

“I think you’ll do fine,” she declared, settling happily into the captain’s chair Bill had purchased from Goodwill for the comfort of his clients. “I thought I’d drop by today because Lydia had to come downtown anyway to do her incessant courthouse research. I just know she drives them all crazy down there in the records office. Tracing her family tree, you know. She can’t quite prove a connection between her people and Robert E. Lee, so now she’s trying to find out the maternal grandmother of the man he bought Traveller from!”

Bill blinked, trying to find his way into the conversation.

“That’s why we thought it would be such fun to have A. P. Hill as an attorney. She might know something about the general’s family connections that the Danville Courthouse doesn’t have a record of.” She stopped herself, as if she had just realized that the young man might see this preference as a personal slight. “But of course our legal business has nothing to do with the war at all,” she hastened to explain. “It’s just a simple little old transaction. I bet you could do it standing on your head.”

Bill pictured Mr. Trowbridge bursting in and shouting, “Is it legal for an attorney to plead a case while standing on his head?” He smiled and ventured a question of his own. “Were we expecting you this afternoon, ma’am?”

Her gray eyes widened in surprise. “Why, I hope so, young man! I took the trouble to write you.”

Bill began to shuffle through the papers on his desk when she leaned over and announced, “There! You have my picture right there on top of your desk calendar.” She pointed one white-gloved finger at the sepia portrait of the Edwardian beauty.

Bill stared from one to the other. “You… I mean to say… Is that-”

She nodded with a satisfied little smile. “Oh, yes! It’s me all right. A good many years ago, before I married Mr.