On March 14th, 1838, a woman walked into the sheriff’s office in Nachez, Mississippi, carrying something that would haunt every person who heard her words for decades to come. Her name was Abigail Turner, and she confessed to murder. Not one murder, seven. Sheriff Henry Dalton had been eating his lunch when she appeared, a simple meal of bread and cheese that his wife had packed that morning.
He was alone in the office, his deputy having gone to investigate a property dispute on the edge of town. The door opened without a knock, and when Dalton looked up, he found himself staring at a woman who seemed to have materialized from nowhere. She was thin, unnaturally so, with skin that had the power of someone who spent too much time indoors.
Her dress was plain gray cotton, clean but worn, the kind of garment a house servant might wear on her day off. Her hair was pulled back severely from her face, not a strand out of place, but it was her eyes that stopped Dalton midbite that made him set down his food and stand slowly from his desk. They were completely empty, not sad, not frightened, not angry.
Just empty, like looking into two dark wells that went down and down forever without reaching bottom. I need to confess, she said, her voice flat and emotionless as a court clerk reading a docket. I’ve murdered seven people. Dalton had been sheriff of Adams County for 15 years. He had dealt with drunks and thieves, had witnessed three hangings, and investigated a dozen killings.
He considered himself a man not easily shaken. But something about this woman, about the way she said those words with no more emotion than if she were commenting on the weather, made his skin crawl. Ma’am, he said carefully, his hand moving instinctively toward the pistol he kept in his desk drawer. You’d better sit down and tell me exactly what you’re talking about. No.
She moved to the chair across from his desk with an odd gliding walk as if her feet didn’t quite touch the ground. She sat with perfect posture, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. My name is Abigail Turner,” she began. And then she told him a story that would consume him for the rest of his life.
She spoke for 2 hours without pause, without emotion, describing in meticulous detail how she had poisoned an entire family over the course of 11 months. The Fairmont family, one of the wealthiest plantation families in the county, known throughout Mississippi for their cotton empire and social standing.
She described each family member by name. Marcus Fairmont, the patriarch, 48 years old. Katherine Fairmont, his wife, 45. Their children, Thomas, 29, and newly married. Jonathan, 27, Elizabeth, 24, and young James, only 7 years old. And finally, Sarah, Thomas’s wife of 2 years, 26 years old, and recently settled into the family estate.
Abigail knew everything about them, their habits, their schedules, their preferences in food and drink. She knew that Marcus took his coffee with two sugars and a splash of cream each morning at precisely 7:00. She knew that Catherine suffered from headaches and took a special tea before bed. She knew that Thomas was studying law and often worked late in his father’s study, snacking on whatever was left from dinner.
She knew that young James loved sweets and would sneak into the kitchen for cookies when he thought no one was watching. And she knew exactly how she had poisoned each of them, what substances she had used, how she had mixed them into their food and drink without detection. “I started with small amounts,” she told Sheriff Dalton, her voice never wavering.
So small they would barely notice. “A stomach ache here, a headache there. Nothing that would raise suspicion, just enough to begin the process. “What process?” Dalton asked, his hand cramping from writing so fast to keep up with her confession. “Building tolerance while building dosage,” Abigail said, as if explaining a cooking recipe.
“The body adapts to poison if you introduce it slowly enough. The symptoms decrease even as the amount increases. They think they’re getting better, but they’re actually getting worse. The poison becomes part of them, woven into their blood and bones. She described obtaining the substances, certain plants that grew wild in the woods around Nachez, herbs that could be found in any apothecary if you knew what to ask for.
Roots that could be dried and ground into powder so fine it dissolved invisibly into liquid. Pokeweed root, she said. White snake root, oleander, water hemlock, autumn crocus, some arsenic from the rats bane in the cellar, but only occasionally. Too much of that and even the stupidest doctor will notice.
The plant-based poisons are better. They mimic natural illnesses. Stomach ailments, fevers, inflammation. Nothing that seems deliberately caused. Dalton felt sick listening to her. The detail was too specific, too knowledgeable. This wasn’t the rambling of a mad woman. This was the testimony of someone who had studied her craft carefully and executed it with precision.
“Why?” he asked, though he was afraid of the answer. “Why would you do this?” Abigail’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered in those empty eyes. Something that might have been pain or rage or grief so deep it had burned away everything else. They did something unforgivable, she said simply.
And so have I. She continued with her confession, describing the pattern of illnesses that had plagued the Fairmont family for nearly a year. How each member had fallen sick multiple times, recovered, then fallen sick again. How the episodes had become more frequent as time went on. How Dr. Samuel Hwitt, the family physician, had been baffled by the recurring symptoms.
He tested everything, Abigail said with something that might have been amusement in her voice. The water, the food, the air quality. He never thought to test me. And then she described the final dinner, March 10th, 1838, a Sunday evening. She had prepared a special meal. Roasted chicken with herb gravy, potatoes whipped with butter and cream, fresh spring vegetables from the garden, and for dessert, a peach cobbler that young James had specifically requested.
I put the final dose in the gravy, she said. A concentration of everything I had been building in their systems for months, enough to finish what I had started. She described how they had eaten together in the dining room. The whole family gathered as they did every Sunday. How they had complimented the meal.
How Marcus had asked for seconds of the gravy. How little James had eaten three servings of the cobbler. They retired to the sitting room afterward. Abigail continued, her voice still flat and mechanical. They sat together reading and talking, a perfect portrait of family contentment. I watched them from the doorway.
I wanted to see the moment when they realized something was wrong. And did they? Dalton asked quietly. No, Abigail said. The poison worked too slowly for that. They felt tired, perhaps a little unwell, but nothing alarming. They went to bed at their usual times, and by morning, they were dead. All of them. She described finding them the next day, Monday, March 11th.
Marcus in his study slumped over his desk where he had apparently tried to work despite feeling ill. Catherine in their bed, one hand reaching toward the bell pull she had tried to ring for help. Thomas on the floor of his room halfway to the door. Jonathan in his bed curled on his side. Elizabeth at her vanity, her head resting on her folded arms.
Sarah in the nursery where she had gone to check on James. and James himself in his small bed looking like he was simply sleeping. “I spent two days with them,” Abigail said, and for the first time something like emotion entered her voice. I washed their bodies. I dressed them in their best clothes.
I folded their hands across their chests and closed their eyes. I sat with each one and told them why I had done it. Even though they couldn’t hear me anymore, I told them. “What did you tell them?” Daltton asked, his own voice rough with horror. The truth, Abigail said simply, about what they had done, about what I had taken from them in return.
About justice and revenge, and whether there’s any real difference between the two. She had cleaned the house methodically, she said. She had disposed of the poison bottles, washed every surface that might have held residue, eliminated any trace of her crime. She had done it carefully, professionally, with the same meticulous attention to detail she had used in the poisoning itself.
And then I came here, she finished, because I wanted someone to know. I wanted it recorded. I wanted there to be a witness to what I had done, even if no one could prove it. Sheriff Dalton stared at her across his desk, trying to process what he had just heard. It was one of the most detailed, disturbing confessions he had ever taken.
It was also, he was about to discover, completely impossible because when he sent his deputies to the Fairmont estate that afternoon, they found the family alive. All of them, healthy, breathing, bewildered by the accusation. There were no bodies, no deaths, no crime, just a woman with empty eyes who insisted with absolute certainty that she had killed seven people who were very much alive.
The Fairmont plantation sat on 300 acres of prime cotton land just outside Nachez overlooking the Mississippi River. The main house was a Greek revival mansion, white columns and wide veranders, the kind of ostentatious display of wealth that was common among the planter class in the 1830s. Sheriff Dalton had visited the estate several times over the years, always on social occasions.
Marcus Fairmont was a prominent member of the community, serving on the church board and the county council. His wife Catherine was known for hosting elaborate dinner parties. The family was by all appearances respectable and well regarded, which made Abigail Turner’s confession all the more disturbing. Dalton rode out to the estate with two of his deputies, Tom Crawford and Billy Mason, both young men who had been with him less than a year.
They had listened to Abigail’s confession with growing alarm and now seemed eager to see what they would find. “You really think she killed them all, Sheriff?” Tom asked as they approached the estate’s long oaklined drive. “I think she believes she did,” Dalton replied carefully. “Whether she actually did?” “Well, we’re about to find out.
” The house looked peaceful in the late afternoon sun, its windows glowing with lamplight. Smoke rose from the kitchen chimney. Everything appeared normal, undisturbed, not at all like a house where seven people had been murdered 3 days earlier. Dalton dismounted and approached the front door with a growing sense of unease.
Something was wrong here, though he couldn’t articulate what. It wasn’t that the house looked too normal. It was something else. Something in the quality of the light or the air or the way the shadows fell across the veranda. He knocked and after a moment the door opened. Marcus Fairmont stood there alive and apparently well, holding a glass of whiskey in one hand and looking annoyed at the interruption.
Henry, he said, recognizing the sheriff. What brings you out here at this hour? Dalton felt his stomach drop. He had hoped, though he hadn’t articulated this hope even to himself, that Abigail had been telling the truth, that they would find bodies, evidence, something concrete, because if she had been telling the truth, at least it made sense, a terrible, horrific sense, but sense nonetheless.
But this, a living, breathing Marcus Fairmont, irritated at being disturbed during his evening drink, this made no sense at all. Mr. Fairmont, Dalton said carefully. I need to speak with you and your family. All of them. It’s urgent. Marcus frowned, but stepped back to let them in. Very well, though I can’t imagine what would require disturbing us at dinnertime.
The entry hall was grand. Polished wood floors, a crystal chandelier, a curved staircase leading to the upper floors. Through an open doorway, Dalton could see into the dining room where the family was indeed gathered for their evening meal. Katherine Fairmont sat at one end of the long table, elegant in a deep green dress, a slight frown on her face at the interruption.
The children were arranged along the sides, Thomas and his wife Sarah sitting together, Jonathan across from them, Elizabeth next to her mother, and young James at the other end, still wearing a napkin tucked into his collar. All of them alive, all of them healthy, all of them staring at the sheriff and his deputies with expressions ranging from curiosity to concern.
Sheriff Dalton, Catherine said, rising from her seat. Has something happened? Is there trouble in town? Dalton removed his hat, turning it in his hands. How did you ask a family if they were actually dead? How did you explain that someone had confessed to murdering them in meticulous detail, describing their deaths with such specificity that you could see it happening as she spoke? “Ma’am, I apologize for the intrusion.
I need to ask you all some questions about a member of your household staff.” “Our staff?” Marcus’s frown deepened. “Which one? A woman named Abigail Turner. The change in the room was immediate and palpable. Every member of the Fairmont family went still, their faces shifting through a series of expressions, surprise, recognition, and then something else.
Something that looked like fear or guilt, or perhaps both at once. It was Catherine who spoke first, her voice tight. “That woman no longer works here.” “When did she leave your employment?” Two days ago, Marcus said, his earlier annoyance replaced by something harder, more guarded. We dismissed her for theft. What did she steal? Marcus exchanged a glance with his wife.
Money from the household accounts, some jewelry. We confronted her about it, and she simply left. Didn’t defend herself, didn’t apologize, just walked out. This didn’t match Abigail’s story at all. She had said nothing about being dismissed or accused of theft. According to her timeline, she had served the poisoned dinner on March 10th and remained in the house for 2 days afterward alone with the bodies.
Mr. Fairmont, I need to know, has anyone in your family been ill recently in the past year? The silence that followed this question was heavy and strange. The family members looked at each other, some unspoken communication passing between them. “Why do you ask?” Catherine said carefully. Please just answer the question, ma’am.
Thomas spoke up from his place at the table. We’ve all had episodes. Stomach ailments, fevers, nothing serious, but recurring. Dr. Huitt has treated us multiple times. When was the most recent episode? I was sick 2 days ago, Thomas said. March 12th. But I recovered by evening. March 12th.
The day after Abigail claimed they had all died. The day she said she had spent alone in the house with their bodies. And the rest of you? Dalton pressed. Have any of you been ill since then? They all shook their heads. Dalton took a deep breath. Mr. Fairmont, Mrs. Fairmont, I need to inform you that Abigail Turner walked into my office this morning and confessed to poisoning your entire family.
She described in detail how she had been systematically introducing toxins into your food for nearly a year. She claimed that she served a final lethal dose on March 10th and that all of you died by the morning of the 11th. The reaction to this statement was not what Dalton expected. They didn’t laugh, didn’t express outrage or disbelief.
Instead, the fear he had glimpsed earlier became more pronounced. Catherine put a hand to her throat. Elizabeth made a small sound that might have been a sob. Young James looked confused and frightened, glancing between his parents as if seeking guidance. That’s insane, Marcus said. But his voice lacked conviction.
We’re clearly alive, Sheriff. Whatever fantasies that woman has concocted. She wasn’t raving, Dalton interrupted. She was calm, detailed, specific. She knew things about your family, about your habits and routines that only someone who had worked in your household would know. She knew about your illnesses, the symptoms, the timing.
She described exactly what she used and how she administered it. We’re alive, Marcus repeated. But now he sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as the sheriff. She clearly didn’t succeed in whatever she attempted. Did she attempt something? Then you’re acknowledging that she may have actually tried to poison you. No, Catherine said quickly.
Too quickly. We’re saying no such thing. The woman is clearly deranged. You only have to look at her to see that something is wrong with her. What do you mean? Dalton asked. Catherine struggled to articulate it. Her eyes, the way she moves, the way she watches people. There’s something not right about her. We never should have hired her.
Why did you hire her? Dalton asked. Where did she come from? Marcus and Catherine exchanged another one of those loaded glances. She presented herself with references, Marcus said finally. From a family in Louisiana, the Bowmonts. She seemed capable and we needed additional household help. Do you still have those references? They would have been filed with our household records.
I can have our clerk locate them if necessary. But Dalton noticed the hesitation. the way Marcus’s eyes shifted slightly when he mentioned the references. He was lying or at least not telling the whole truth. “I’d like to see them,” Dalton said. “And I’d like to speak with your other household staff, anyone who worked closely with Abigail Turner, Sheriff,” Marcus said, his voice taking on an edge of authority.
I appreciate your diligence in investigating this matter, but as you can plainly see, we are all alive and well. Whatever claims this woman has made are clearly the product of a disturbed mind. I failed to see why you need to disrupt our household further. Because something happened here, Daltton said quietly. Something that prompted her to walk into my office and confess to seven murders.
And I intend to find out what it was. Marcus’s expression hardened. Are you accusing us of something, Sheriff? I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I’m investigating a confession. That’s my job. Your job is to maintain order in this county, Marcus said coldly, not to harass respected families based on the ravings of a clearly insane servant.
Now, if you’ll excuse us, our dinner is getting cold. It was a dismissal, clear and firm. And technically, Marcus was right. Dalton had no legal grounds to push further. The supposed victims were alive and unwilling to cooperate. There was no crime to investigate. But as Dalton and his deputies left the estate, riding back toward town in the gathering darkness, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had just witnessed something deeply wrong.
Not in Abigail’s confession, but in the Fairmont’s reaction to it. They were alive. So why did they seem so afraid? Back at his office, Dalton found Abigail Turner exactly where he had left her, sitting in the holding cell with perfect posture, hands folded in her lap, staring at the wall with those unsettling empty eyes.
She didn’t react when he approached, didn’t turn to look at him, didn’t acknowledge his presence in any way. She simply continued staring at that same spot on the wall as if she could see something there that he couldn’t. Abigail, Dalton said carefully. I went to the Fairmont estate. I know, she said, her voice flat. They’re alive. All of them.
I know, she repeated. Dalton pulled up a chair and sat down outside the cell bars, studying her profile. So, you lied to me. You didn’t kill them. No, Abigail said calmly. I didn’t lie. I told you exactly what I did. You just misunderstood what it meant. Explain it to me then. For the first time since he’d returned, Abigail turned to look at him.
Her empty eyes fixed on his face with an intensity that made him want to look away. I poisoned them, she said slowly, as if speaking to a child. I introduced toxins into their systems over the course of 11 months. I built up concentrations in their organs, their blood, their bones. I made the poison part of them, inseparable from their own flesh. That part is true.
That part happened exactly as I described. But they’re not dead. Not yet, Abigail agreed. Death isn’t always immediate, Sheriff. Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes it’s planted like a seed and takes years to grow. I killed them. The dying just hasn’t finished yet. The words sent a chill down Dalton’s spine.
You’re saying you poisoned them, but not lethally. That they’re going to die eventually from what you did. Everyone dies eventually, Abigail said. I just determined how and when. That’s insane. You can’t predict when someone will die, can I? Abigail tilted her head slightly like a bird studying an insect. Tell me, Sheriff, do you know what happens when you feed someone small amounts of toxins over a long period of time? You build up their tolerance.
You just said that yourself. Yes, but there’s more to it than that. The toxins accumulate in the body. They settle into the organs, the bones, the brain. They alter the way the body functions at a fundamental level. A person might seem healthy, might even feel healthy, but they’re carrying death inside them.
And eventually, years, sometimes decades later, that accumulated damage manifests. She leaned forward slightly, her eyes never leaving his. Marcus Fairmont has an irregular heartbeat now, though he probably doesn’t know it yet. The arsenic I fed him has settled into his heart muscle. Give it time, 20, maybe 30 years, and it will kill him.
They’ll call it heart failure, natural causes, but it will be murder. You can’t possibly know that, Dalton protested. Catherine has toxins in her brain, Abigail continued as if he hadn’t spoken. water hemlock compounds that crossed the blood barrier. She’ll start having episodes in a few years. Paranoia, hallucinations, violent mood swings. They’ll call her mad.
They’ll lock her away. But it will be the poison I put in her working slowly to destroy her mind. Stop, Dalton said. But Abigail kept talking, her voice never changing in pitch or tone. Thomas has nerve damage from the pokee. It will progress. His muscles will waste away. He’ll be crippled before he’s 35.
Jonathan has cellular damage that will manifest as tumors. Elizabeth has been dosed with so much autumn crocus that she’s lost the ability to feel properly. Physical sensation, emotional response, all of it muted and fading. Sarah, well, Sarah will never carry a child to term. The things I fed her have damaged her womb beyond repair. and young James.
She paused and for the first time something like emotion crossed her face. Not regret exactly, but perhaps a distant acknowledgement of something lost. James was the hardest, she said softly. He’s just a child, but he’s also a Fairmont, and the poison doesn’t discriminate. He’ll live long, longer than the others.
But his life will be marked by suffering, chronic illness, early aging, the death of his own children. The toxins are in his blood now, and when he has children, they’ll inherit trace amounts. The Fairmont line will wither slowly, generation by generation, until it disappears entirely. Dalton felt sick.
Not because he believed her. The claims were too outlandish, too much like something from a Gothic novel, but because of the certainty with which she spoke, the absolute conviction that what she was describing would come to pass. “This is madness,” he said. “Even if you did poison them, even if everything you’re saying is true, you can’t predict the future.
You don’t know what will happen to them, don’t I?” Abigail smiled, and it was the most disturbing expression Dalton had ever seen on a human face. I’ve studied poisons for years, Sheriff. I know exactly what each substance does, how it accumulates, how it manifests over time. I didn’t choose randomly. Every dose was calculated. Every substance was selected for specific effects.
I built their deaths into their bodies as carefully as an architect builds a house. The structure is there now. It just takes time for the walls to fall. Why? Dalton asked, his voice rougher than he intended. Why would you do this? What did the Fairmonts do to you? Abigail’s smile faded. The emptiness returned to her eyes. Ask them, she said, though I doubt they’ll tell you the truth.
People like the Fairmonts never do. They bury their crimes and move on, pretending to be respectable while the bodies rot beneath their foundations. What bodies? Dalton demanded. Whose bodies? But Abigail had turned back to the wall, resuming her eerie vigil. She wouldn’t say another word, no matter how much Dalton pressed her.
Dalton spent the next day trying to piece together Abigail Turner’s background. He sent telegrams to Louisiana inquiring about the Bowmont family that Marcus Fairmont had mentioned. He checked records in Nachez and surrounding counties, looking for any documentation of Abigail’s existence before April 1837. He found nothing. No birth records, no previous employment records, no family connections.
The Bowmonts in Louisiana had never heard of anyone named Abigail Turner. There were no references, no letters of recommendation, no paper trail of any kind. It was as if she had simply materialized out of thin air on the doorstep of the Fairmont Estate. This should have been impossible. In 1838 in Mississippi, everyone had a history.
Everyone came from somewhere, had connections to something. Even freed slaves had papers documenting their manu mission. But Abigail Turner appeared to have no past at all. Frustrated, Dalton decided to return to the Fairmont estate and speak with the household staff as he had originally intended.
Marcus Fairmont wouldn’t like it, but Dalton was within his rights to interview potential witnesses to a crime, even a crime that apparently hadn’t happened. He went alone this time, early in the morning, hoping to catch the servants before the family was awake. The kitchen staff he knew started work before dawn to prepare breakfast.
That would be his best opportunity to ask questions without Marcus interfering. The kitchen building sat separate from the main house connected by a covered walkway, a common design in the south, meant to keep heat and cooking smells away from the living quarters. Dalton approached it just as the sun was rising, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold.
Through the window, he could see movement. Someone inside moving between the cooking fire and the workt. He knocked on the doorframe and called out, “Hello, anyone available to speak with the sheriff?” A young black woman appeared in the doorway, maybe 20 years old, with intelligent eyes and flower dust on her apron.
She looked startled to see him, then worried. Sheriff, she said, “Is something wrong?” “Not at all. I just need to ask some questions about the household. You are Ruth, sir.” I work in the kitchen. She glanced back over her shoulder nervously. Master Fairmont don’t like us talking to people without permission.
Master Fairmont doesn’t need to know, Dalton said gently. I just want to ask you about Abigail Turner. Ruth’s expression changed immediately. Fear unmistakable and sharp. That woman, she whispered. You knew her. Everyone knew her or tried not to. Anyway, Ruth stepped outside, pulling the door partly closed behind her.
She kept her voice low. She wasn’t right, sir. In the head. The way she moved, the way she looked at people, like she was always watching, always calculating something. How long did she work here? Started in April last year. The mistress hired her sudden like didn’t consult with the rest of us. Just showed up one day and started working.
Did she say where she came from? Ruth shook her head. Never talked about herself at all. never talked much about anything. Truth be told, she’d do her work and then just disappear. You’d turn around and she’d be gone, quiet as a ghost. Then you’d turn back and she’d be right behind you, making no sound at all.
Scared me half to death more than once. Did she have any friends among the staff? Anyone she confided in. No one wanted to be close to her, Ruth said firmly. There was something wrong about her, like she wasn’t quite human, you know. I know that sounds foolish, but that’s how it felt. Dalton nodded encouragingly. Did you notice anything strange about the family’s illnesses? They’ve been sick repeatedly over the past year.
Ruth bit her lip, her expression troubled. That started after she came. Never occurred to me to connect them before, but yes, Master Thomas was the first to get sick. Maybe 3 weeks after she arrived, then the others one by one. Dr. Huitt was here so often he practically lived in the house. Did Abigail help care for them when they were ill? Oh yes, Ruth said, and there was something bitter in her voice.
She was especially attentive when they were sick. Mistress Catherine even praised her for it, said she was devoted. But I, she trailed off, looking uncertain. What is it? Dalton prompted. Ruth lowered her voice even further. I saw her one night late. I’d come back to the kitchen to fetch something I’d forgotten.
Abigail was in the herb pantry mixing something in a bowl. When she saw me, she put herself between me and whatever she was working on, like she didn’t want me to see. Did you ask what she was doing? I did. She said it was medicine for the family. Dr. Hwitt had asked her to prepare some herbal remedy, but the way she said it and the way she looked at me, Ruth shuddered. I didn’t ask again.
I got what I needed and left. Can you remember what date that was? Ruth thought for a moment. August, I think. Late August. The heat was terrible that month. I remember because Master Jonathan was sick and the heat was making it worse. August. Abigail had been working at the estate for 4 months by then.
According to her own timeline, she would have been well into her poisoning campaign. Ruth, Dalton said carefully. Do you know anything about someone named Hannah? The change in Ruth’s face was dramatic. Color drained from her cheeks. Her eyes went wide. How do you know about Hannah? I don’t, Dalton admitted. That’s why I’m asking you.
Ruth looked around nervously, checking to make sure they were still alone. When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible. Hannah was one of us. Worked here since she was a girl. She died last March just before Abigail showed up. Ruth’s eyes were glistening now. She was my friend, one of the kindest souls I ever knew. And what happened to her? She stopped, unable or unwilling to continue.
What happened to her, Ruth? She got sick, Ruth said. But there was something evasive in her voice. Real sick. Died after a few weeks. They buried her in the plot out back. What kind of sickness? Ruth wouldn’t meet his eyes. Don’t know. Dr. Hwitt couldn’t figure it out. She just wasted away. Dalton had interviewed enough witnesses to know when someone was holding back.
Ruth, if you know something, you need to tell me. It could be important. I can’t, Ruth whispered. If they knew, I’d talk to you about Hannah, about what really happened. Please, Sheriff. I’ve already said too much. You should go. Just tell me one thing, Dalton pressed. Did Abigail Turner know Hannah? Ruth’s eyes met his, and in them he saw pain and guilt and fear all mixed together.
Hannah had a sister, she said finally. Older sister who got sold away when they were young. Hannah used to talk about her sometimes, wondering where she was, hoping she was all right. And then Hannah died. And a few weeks later, Abigail showed up. than I thought. What did you think? I thought maybe Abigail was her.
Ruth said the sister come back looking for Hannah, but that’s impossible, isn’t it? How would she have even known Hannah was here? And if she was the sister, why wouldn’t she say so? Maybe, Dalton said slowly. Because she found out her sister was dead. And maybe she found out why. Ruth’s expression confirmed what he was thinking.
There was more to Hannah’s story. Something dark that Ruth knew but wouldn’t or couldn’t say. Before he could press further, they heard voices from the main house. The family was waking up. “You have to go,” Ruth said urgently. “If Master Marcus finds you here questioning us, “I understand. Thank you, Ruth. You’ve been very helpful.
” As Dalton walked back to his horse, his mind was racing. Hannah, an older sister, a mysterious illness and death. Abigail arriving shortly afterward. The pieces were starting to fit together, forming a picture he didn’t want to see, but couldn’t ignore. Whatever had happened to Hannah, it was connected to Abigail’s poisoning confession. He was certain of it now.
He just had to figure out how. Dr. Samuel Huitt’s office was above the merkantile on Main Street. two rooms filled with medical books, specimen jars, and the pervasive smell of carbolic acid and ether. Huitt himself was a man in his 50s, thin and scholarly, with spectacles perpetually sliding down his nose.
He looked up from his desk when Dalton entered, surprise crossing his face. “Henry, I wasn’t expecting you. Is someone ill?” “No, Samuel, I need to talk to you about a case. The Fairmont family.” You frowned. What about them? their illnesses over the past year. I need to see your records. The doctor’s frown deepened.
That’s confidential medical information. I can’t just Samuel. A woman has confessed to systematically poisoning them. I need to see if her timeline matches up with their symptoms. Huitt went pale. Poisoning. But they’re all healthy now. Well, relatively speaking, no worse than usual. Tell me about usual. How often were you treating them? Huitt pulled out a leatherbound ledger, flipping through pages covered in cramped handwriting.
Let’s see. First call was May 1st, 1837. Thomas Fairmont. Severe abdominal cramping and fever. Treated with lordinum and bed rest. Recovered after 3 days. Who was sick next? Catherine. 2 weeks later. Same symptoms. Then Jonathan in June. and Marcus in July, Elizabeth in August. They were all experiencing similar complaints.
Stomach pain, nausea, fever, muscle weakness. The episodes would last 3 to 5 days, then resolve completely. How often? Huitt ran his finger down the page. Initially, every few weeks, but by autumn, it was happening more frequently. Sometimes multiple family members would be sick at once. I was there at least twice a week through December.
And after January, it became almost constant. I moved some of my supplies to their estate because I was spending so much time there. Someone was always ill. I tested everything. The water supply, the food stores, even the air quality in the rooms. I was convinced there had to be an environmental cause. Some contamination I wasn’t detecting.
But you found nothing. Nothing. It was baffling. The symptoms suggested some kind of toxin, but I couldn’t identify the source. And then about 2 weeks ago, it just stopped. Dalton leaned forward. Stopped completely. Yes. Thomas had an episode on March 12th, the last I was called out. Since then, nothing. No one in the family has reported any symptoms.
It’s as if whatever was causing it simply vanished. March 12th, the day the Fairmont said they had dismissed Abigail. The day after she claimed to have killed them all. Samuel, I need you to look at something. Dalton pulled out the notes he had taken from Abigail’s confession, the detailed list of substances she claimed to have used.
If someone had been administering these compounds in small doses over nearly a year, would it produce the symptoms you observed? Huitt studied the list, his expression growing more troubled with each line. Pokeweed root, white snake root, oleander, water hemlock, autumn crocus, arsenic. Good god, yes. Small, regular doses of these would produce exactly the symptoms I treated.
The timing of onset, the duration, the recovery periods, it all fits. And if someone had been building up the doses over time, the tolerance effect would mask the increasing toxicity, Huitt said slowly. The symptoms might actually decrease even as the damage accumulated. The body would adapt to the presence of the toxins while they continued to do internal harm.
Could that harm be permanent? Could it cause delayed effects years later? Huitt removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. Henry, are you asking me if Abigail Turner actually succeeded in poisoning the Fairmont family? I’m asking if it’s possible. The doctor was silent for a long moment, staring at the list of poisons.
Arsenic accumulates in bone and hair. It can cause long-term cardiovascular damage. The plant compounds pokeed, hemlock, oleander. They can cause lasting nerve damage, organ dysfunction, cellular changes that might not manifest for years. Autumn crocus contains cultureine which affects cell division. Insufficient accumulated doses.
He looked up at Dalton, his face grim. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It’s possible. If someone had been carefully administering these substances over an extended period, they could have caused damage that won’t become apparent until years later. The victims might feel perfectly healthy now while carrying the effects of chronic poisoning that will eventually kill them.
” “How would we prove it?” “You can’t,” Huitt said flatly. Not without exuming bodies and testing for accumulated toxins, and even then the evidence would be circumstantial. Some of these compounds break down over time. Others are naturally present in small amounts in the environment. You’d never be able to prove deliberate poisoning, so she gets away with it.
If she actually did it, yes, unless Huitt hesitated. Unless what? Unless the pattern continues. If the Fairmont family members begin dying or developing severe health problems over the next few years, and if those problems match the predicted effects of chronic exposure to these substances, that would be compelling evidence.
Not proof that would stand up in court perhaps, but evidence nonetheless. Dalton felt cold. You’re saying we have to wait for them to die to prove she killed them. I’m saying, Huitt corrected gently, that this is a crime, if it is a crime, that exists in the future as much as the past. The murder hasn’t finished yet. Dalton returned to his office, determined to document everything he had learned.
He spread Huitt’s medical records across his desk next to his notes from Abigail’s confession and Ruth’s testimony. The correlation was undeniable. The timeline matched perfectly. the symptoms aligned with the substances Abigail had described. He spent hours writing a comprehensive report detailing every piece of evidence, every testimony, every suspicion.
Even if he couldn’t prove Abigail had committed a crime, he could at least create a record of what had happened. If the Fairmonts did start dying or developing severe health problems, this documentation would be crucial. He finished just after midnight, his hand cramping from hours of writing. The report was 20 pages long, thorough and methodical.
He placed it in a folder along with Huitt’s copies of the medical records, Ruth’s testimony, which he had written down immediately after speaking with her, and his own observations. Then he locked the file in his desk drawer, and went home to sleep. When he returned to the office the next morning, the lock on his desk had been picked and the file was gone.
Everything. Abigail’s confession, the medical records, Ruth’s testimony, his own comprehensive report. All of it had vanished. Dalton stood staring at the empty drawer, feeling as if the floor had dropped out from under him. This wasn’t a random theft. Nothing else in the office had been touched. The petty cash box was still locked and full.
The weapons cabinet was undisturbed. Even other files in the same drawer had been left alone. Someone had come specifically for the Abigail Turner file. His first thought was the Fairmonts. They had the resources and the obvious motivation. But breaking into the sheriff’s office was a serious crime, even for someone with Marcus Fairmont’s connections.
Would they really risk it? Unless they were desperate, unless there was something in those files that they absolutely couldn’t afford to have exposed. Dalton immediately went to Dr. Huitt’s office. The doctor looked up in surprise at his urgent entrance. Henry, what’s wrong? Do you still have your original medical records for the Fairmont family? Of course. Why? Check.
Right now, Huitt frowned, but opened his filing cabinet. He flipped through folders, his frown deepening. That’s odd. I could have sworn. Where did I put the Fairmont file? It’s gone, isn’t it? Huitt looked up, his face pale. How did you know? Because mine was stolen, too. Last night, someone broke into my office and took everything related to Abigail Turner’s confession.
But who would? You stopped, realization dawning. The fairmonts. Can you reconstruct your records? Do you remember the dates, the symptoms? Some of it certainly, but the specific details. Huitt shook his head. Without my notes, I can’t be certain of the exact timeline. And anything I try to recreate now would be dismissed as unreliable, wouldn’t it? Memory rather than contemporaneous documentation.
Dalton swore under his breath. They’re burying it, erasing any evidence that the poisoning might have happened. But why? If they’re the victims, why would they want to hide the crime? That was the question, wasn’t it? The Fairmont should want justice. They should be demanding a full investigation, insisting that Abigail be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Instead, they were actively working to make the entire incident disappear, which meant there was something about this case, something about Abigail’s motivation, her reasons for poisoning them, that the Fairmonts desperately didn’t want revealed. “Hannah,” Dalton said suddenly. “It’s connected to whatever happened to Hannah.
” “Who’s Hannah?” Dalton quickly explained what Ruth had told him about the servant girl who had died in March 1837. About the possibility that Abigail was her sister, about Ruth’s fear when the subject came up. Ruth knows what really happened, Dalton said. And the Fairmonts know she knows. That’s why she was so frightened.
She’s afraid of what they’ll do if they find out she talked to me. You think they killed this Hannah girl? I think something happened to her. something bad enough that her sister came back to exact revenge. Something the Fairmonts will do anything to keep hidden. Huitt was silent for a moment. What are you going to do? I’m going to find Ruth and get the full story.
And this time, I’m going to write it down somewhere the Fairmonts can’t reach it. Finding Ruth turned out to be more difficult than Dalton anticipated. When he returned to the Fairmont estate that afternoon, he was told that Ruth no longer worked there. She had been dismissed that morning. the same day his files were stolen.
The timing was not coincidental. Marcus Fairmont was coldly polite when Dalton demanded to know where Ruth had gone. I’m afraid I don’t track the movements of dismissed servants. Sheriff, she was paid her wages and left. Where she went is her own affair. Why was she dismissed? Theft, Marcus said smoothly. We’ve had problems with items going missing.
Had to let several people go. Several? Who else? I don’t see how that’s relevant to any official sheriff’s business. A woman is in custody for confessing to attempted murder of your family. I’m conducting an investigation. That makes everything about your household relevant. Marcus’s expression hardened. Sheriff Dalton.
I’ve been patient with your interest in this matter, but enough is enough. Abigail Turner is clearly insane. She confessed to murders that never happened. The case, if there ever was one, is closed. Now, unless you have a warrant or some other legal authority for harassing my family, I’ll ask you to leave my property.
Dalton wanted to argue, wanted to push back, but Marcus was right. Without the files, without documentation, without any physical evidence, he had no legal grounds to continue the investigation. The supposed victims were alive and unwilling to cooperate. There was no crime to prosecute. He left the estate frustrated and angry, but also more determined than ever.
The Fairmonts were hiding something, and their increasingly desperate attempts to cover it up only confirmed that it was something serious. He spent the next two days searching for Ruth. He checked with other plantation owners, thinking she might have found work elsewhere. He asked at the market, at the church, at the boarding houses where freed black workers sometimes stayed. No one had seen her.
It was as if she had vanished as mysteriously as Abigail had appeared. On the third day, a young black man approached Dalton on the street. He was nervous, looking over his shoulder repeatedly as he spoke. Sheriff, you the one looking for Ruth? I am. Do you know where she is? She asked me to give you this.
He thrust a folded piece of paper into Dalton’s hand. Said it was important. Said you’d understand. Before Dalton could ask anything else, the young man hurried away, disappearing into the crowd on Main Street. Dalton unfolded the paper. The handwriting was crude but legible. Sheriff, I can’t stay here.
They made it clear what would happen if I kept talking about Hannah. I’m going north to Memphis where I have family, but I’m writing down what I know because someone needs to remember. Someone needs to know the truth about what they did. Hannah was 17 when she died. Beautiful and sweet and didn’t deserve what happened to her. The Fairmont men, Marcus and his sons Thomas and Jonathan, they used her, all three of them.
She tried to tell Mistress Catherine tried to get help, but the mistress said Hannah was lying, that she was trying to cause trouble. Hannah got pregnant. She didn’t know which one was the father. Maybe she knew, but was too scared to say. When they found out, they gave her something to take care of it. Some kind of medicine.
They told her said it would fix the problem. But something went wrong. The medicine didn’t just end the pregnancy. It destroyed her from the inside. She bled and bled. She was in so much pain. Dr. Hwitt came, but said there was nothing he could do. I don’t think he even knew what they’d given her. They let him think she was just sick with some kind of illness.
She died over 3 weeks slowly and in agony. And they buried her quick before anyone could ask too many questions. Put her in the plot behind the house with just a wooden marker that didn’t even have her full name on it. After she died, some of us talked about telling someone, about going to the authorities, but who would believe us against the Fairmonts? And what could we prove? Hannah was gone, buried.
It was our word against theirs. And we all knew how that would end. Then Abigail showed up. She never said she was Hannah’s sister, but we knew. They had the same eyes, the same way of moving. Abigail asked questions, quiet questions, careful questions. We told her everything and then she stayed. She took the job and she stayed.
And we thought maybe she was just trying to be close to where Hannah had been to have some connection to her sister. We didn’t know what she was planning. Not until you came asking about poisoning. Then it all made sense. What she’d been doing in the kitchen late at night, the way she watched the family during meals. The strange satisfaction in her eyes every time one of them got sick.
She’d been killing them slowly, making them suffer the way Hannah suffered. And none of us said a word because part of us thought they deserved it. Part of us still does. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you this in person. I’m sorry I’m running instead of staying to testify, but I have to think about my own safety now.
The Fairmonts have made it clear they won’t tolerate anyone digging up the truth about Hannah. But you know now, Sheriff, you know what they did and why Abigail did what she did. I don’t know if it was murder or justice or something in between. All I know is that Hannah deserved better than what she got and the Fairmonts deserved worse.
Ruth Dalton read the letter three times, standing in the middle of Main Street, feeling the weight of what he was holding. This was it. This was the missing piece. The reason for Abigail’s methodical revenge. The secret the Fairmonts were so desperate to hide. They had abused Hannah, gotten her pregnant, gotten given her something to terminate the pregnancy that had instead killed her slowly and painfully.
And then they had buried the evidence literally and tried to move on as if nothing had happened until Abigail came back. Abigail, who had been sold away as a child, who had somehow managed to gain her freedom and returned to find her sister. Too late to save Hannah, but not too late to make the Fairmonts pay.
The poisoning wasn’t random revenge. It was calculated retribution. She had made them suffer the same way Hannah suffered slowly, painfully with accumulating damage that would eventually kill them. She had turned their own crime back on them, making them carry death inside their bodies the way they had forced Hannah to carry death inside hers.
It was horrifying. It was also a kind of terrible justice. Dalton carefully folded Ruth’s letter and put it in his inside pocket. This at least the Fairmonts couldn’t steal. He would keep it with him always, a testimony to what had really happened. But what could he do with this information? He couldn’t charge the Fairmonts with Hannah’s death.
There was no body to exume, no medical evidence, just the hearsay testimony of servants. And even if he could prove what they’d done, would it matter? In Mississippi in 1838, the abuse of a slave or servant by her owners was rarely prosecuted and almost never resulted in meaningful punishment.
The law wouldn’t deliver justice for Hannah. Abigail had understood that, which was why she had taken matters into her own hands. But now Abigail was in custody, facing commitment to an asylum for confessing to crimes that couldn’t be proven. And the Fairmonts were free, actively working to erase any record of what had happened. Dalton had to make a choice.
Let this go and allow the Fairmonts to bury their crimes along with Hannah or find some way to keep the truth alive, even if he couldn’t deliver legal justice. He chose the latter because someone needed to remember Hannah. Someone needed to make sure her death mattered, even if the law said it didn’t.
The legal proceedings for Abigail Turner’s commitment happened with remarkable speed. Too much speed, Dalton thought. Within a week of her confession, she had been examined by three physicians, declared mentally unfit and committed to the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum in Jackson. Dalton attended the hearing, such as it was. Abigail sat quietly while the doctors testified about her delusional disorder, her fixed false beliefs about having committed murders, and her lack of appropriate emotional response.
They described her as potentially dangerous to herself and others, requiring indefinite confinement for treatment. No one mentioned the possibility that her confession might have been true. No one brought up the Fairmont’s pattern of illnesses or the suspicious timing of their recovery. The entire proceeding was designed to reach one predetermined conclusion.
Abigail Turner was insane and needed to be locked away. Marcus Fairmont attended the hearing as well, sitting in the back of the courtroom with his wife. When it was over, when the judge had signed the commitment papers, and Abigail was being led away in restraints, Dalton saw Marcus lean over and whisper something to Catherine.
She nodded, and they both smiled. Small, satisfied smiles that made Dalton’s blood boil. They had won. Abigail would disappear into the asylum system where she would be forgotten. The story of her confession would become a curious anecdote, gradually distorted and dismissed, and the Fairmonts would continue their respectable lives, their crime buried along with Hannah.
Dalton tried to speak with Abigail before she was taken away, but the guards wouldn’t allow it. He caught her eye as she was being led out of the courtroom, hoping to convey something, sympathy, understanding, a promise that he would remember what she had done and why. Her expression didn’t change. Those empty eyes looked at him without recognition or acknowledgement.
But just before she reached the door, she spoke so quietly that only Dalton standing nearby could hear her. 23 years, she said. That’s when it starts. Remember the number 23? Then she was gone. Taken away to Jackson and a cell in the lunatic asylum. Dalton stood in the empty courtroom trying to make sense of her final words.
23 years until what? Until the Fairmont started dying as she had predicted. He did the calculation in his head. 1838 + 23 years would be 1861. Was she saying that’s when the effects of her poisoning would begin to manifest clearly? Or was it something else entirely? He wrote the number down in his personal journal, the one he had started keeping after his official files were stolen.
A journal he kept at home, hidden away where no one but him would ever find it. Abigail’s final words. 23 years. Remember the number. 23. I don’t know what it means yet, but I’ll remember. I’ll document everything. And someday when whatever she set in motion comes to fruition, there will be a record. The Fairmonts can steal my files and silence witnesses and lock Abigail away, but they can’t stop me from remembering.
They can’t stop me from writing down the truth. The years passed. Dalton continued his work as sheriff, dealing with the usual run of petty crimes and disputes that made up law enforcement in a small Mississippi county. But he never stopped watching the Fairmont family. Never stopped documenting what happened to them. At first, they seemed to thrive.
The illnesses that had plagued them for a year disappeared completely after Abigail’s departure. They regained their health, resumed their social prominence, appeared to be the perfect example of a successful plantation family. But Dalton noticed small things. Marcus’ hands would sometimes shake when he thought no one was watching.
Catherine became increasingly withdrawn, less likely to host her famous dinner parties. Thomas, who had been studying law with great ambition, seemed to lose interest in his career, complaining of persistent fatigue that no amount of rest could cure. In 1842, 4 years after Abigail’s confession, Thomas’s condition deteriorated significantly.
His hands began to shake uncontrollably. He experienced muscle spasms and weakness that made it difficult for him to walk. Dr. Huitt was called in but could find no explanation for the symptoms. It’s like his nervous system is slowly failing. Huitt told Dalton privately. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The progression is steady but slow, as if something is systematically destroying the connections between his brain and his muscles.
Could it be the result of chronic poisoning? Dalton asked carefully. Huitt looked at him for a long moment. 4 years after the supposed exposure. I suppose it’s possible if certain toxins had accumulated in his nervous tissue. Yes, I suppose delayed effects of that nature could occur. By 1846, Thomas was confined to a wheelchair.
By 1848, he was bedridden, unable to move anything except his eyes. He died that year at the age of 29, his body completely paralyzed, while his mind remained sharp until the end. a particularly cruel fate. Dalton wrote it all down in his journal. He noted how precisely Thomas’s decline matched what Abigail had predicted.
Progressive muscular degeneration, the wasting away of physical function while the mind remained intact. He noted the timeline. The symptoms beginning 4 years after the poisoning stopped, escalating over 6 years, ending in death exactly 10 years after Abigail’s confession. It could be coincidence or it could be exactly what Abigail had planned. Elizabeth was next.
She had married in 1845 and moved to Louisiana, but her letters home became increasingly strange. She described feeling disconnected from myself, being unable to feel emotions properly, losing sensation in her hands and feet. It’s like I’m fading away, she wrote to her mother in one letter.
Like I’m becoming a ghost in my own body. I can see and hear, but I can’t feel. Not pain, not pleasure, not anything. It’s terrifying. Her husband had the marriage enulled, claiming she was unresponsive, and unsuitable for the duties of a wife. The euphemistic language couldn’t hide what he meant.
Elizabeth had become hollow, empty of emotion or physical feeling. She returned to the Fairmont Estate in 1847, and lived there in near silence. Dalton saw her once walking the grounds of the estate like a shade. Her face expressionless, her eyes vacant. She reminded him unbearably of Abigail, that same emptiness, that same sense of being present but not alive.
She died in 1851 at 26. The cause of death was listed as failure to thrive, a medical euphemism for someone who simply stops living without any clear organic cause. Dalton suspected she had effectively shut down. Her body following where her mind had already gone into that empty place where feeling couldn’t reach.
Again, he wrote it down. Again, he noted how it matched Abigail’s predictions. The loss of sensation, the emotional emptiness, the gradual fading. The autumn crocus, Abigail had said, would cause this culcasine affecting nerve endings and brain chemistry, creating a living death where the victim was trapped in a body that no longer registered the world properly.
Catherine’s descent was perhaps the most dramatic. It began in 1849 with episodes of paranoia. She became convinced that people were watching her, that there were presences in the house that meant her harm. She would wake screaming in the night, claiming she saw figures standing at the foot of her bed.
Marcus tried to keep it quiet, but servants talked. Stories spread through Natchez about how the mistress of the Fairmont estate was losing her mind, how she would sometimes be found wandering the halls at night, having conversations with people who weren’t there. She talks to Hannah. One servant told Dalton when he inquired discreetly, “Keep saying Hannah is watching her, judging her.
She seems terrified of this Hannah, whoever she was.” The irony was almost too much. Catherine, who had dismissed Hannah’s accusations, who had refused to help her, who had let her die in agony. Now she was haunted by the memory of that death. Whether it was guilt or the effects of the poison in her brain or both, the result was the same.
Catherine lived in increasing terror until Marcus finally had her committed to a private sanitarium in 1852. She died there in 1854 at 54, still screaming about shadows and watches and judgment. Dalton recorded it all. Water hemlock Abigail had said, affects the brain, causes paranoia and hallucinations. The timeline fit, the symptoms matched, coincidence or calculated revenge.
Jonathan developed tumors in 1853. They started in his throat, a swelling that he initially dismissed as a cold, but the swelling didn’t go down. It grew, spread, became painful. When Dr. Hwitt finally examined him, he found masses throughout Jonathan’s throat and neck. It’s cancer, Huitt told the family grimly. advanced and aggressive.
I’ve never seen it spread so quickly. Jonathan died within 6 months at 31, unable to eat or breathe properly by the end. His body consumed by the tumors that had grown with terrifying speed. Cellular damage. Abigail had said the poisons would cause changes at the cellular level that would manifest as tumors.
How had she known? How could she have predicted with such precision? Dalton added Jonathan’s death to his record. Five Fairmont’s dead within 16 years of Abigail’s confession. Each death matching her predictions with eerie accuracy. Sarah, Thomas’s widow, had remained at the estate after his death. She remarried in 1850, hoping for a fresh start, but pregnancy after pregnancy ended in miscarriage.
Four times she conceived and four times the pregnancy terminated spontaneously, often with complications that horrified the physicians attending her. The fetuses are Huitt couldn’t finish the sentence when Dalton asked him about it. Malformed badly, as if something had interfered with their development at the most fundamental level.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Sarah died in 1857 during her fifth miscarriage, bleeding out despite Huitt’s best efforts to save her. Abigail had said Sarah would never carry a child to term, that the poisons had damaged her womb irreparably. Another prediction fulfilled, six dead. Only Marcus and young James remained.
Marcus Fairmont aged rapidly after his children’s deaths. The proud, imposing man Dalton remembered from 1838 became stooped and gray. his eyes haunted by losses he couldn’t explain and secrets he couldn’t reveal. The plantation suffered under his increasingly erratic management. Crops failed, workers left.
The Grand House began to show signs of neglect, peeling paint, overgrown gardens, a general air of decay. In his mid60s, Marcus began experiencing heart problems, irregular rhythms, chest pains, episodes where he would clutch at his chest and gasp for air. Huitt treated him as best he could, but there was little to be done for a failing heart.
In 1860s medicine, “It’s like his heart is literally falling apart,” Huitt told Dalton. “The muscle tissue is weak, the rhythm erratic. He could go at any time.” Marcus died in 1868 at 67 of sudden cardiac failure. He was found in his study. The same study where Abigail had claimed to find his body 30 years earlier.
The same study where he had sat alive and annoyed when Dalton had come to investigate her confession. Dalton wrote it down, noting the bitter irony. Abigail had said Marcus would die of heart failure in his late 60s, the arsenic having accumulated in his heart muscle over decades. She had been off by a few years on the age, but otherwise her prediction was exact.
Seven Fairmonts now. Only James remained, and 23 years had passed since Abigail’s confession. 23 years after Abigail Turner walked into Sheriff Dalton’s office and confessed to murder. The country was tearing itself apart. South Carolina had secceeded in December 1860. Mississippi followed in January 1861. By April, the civil war had begun.
Everything was chaos and change and violence. In the midst of all this upheaval, Dalton received word that the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum in Jackson had burned. Not completely, some wings had survived, but the records room had been destroyed. Patient files going back decades were lost, including Dalton was certain any records of Abigail Turner.
He traveled to Jackson to investigate, using his official authority as sheriff to gain access to the asylum. The administrator he met, a different man from the one who had admitted Abigail in 1838, knew nothing about a patient named Abigail Turner. I can check the surviving records, he offered. But if she was admitted back in 38 and her file was in the section that burned, they checked anyway.
There was no file, no admission record, no death certificate, nothing. “Are you certain she was here?” the administrator asked. Dalton showed him the commitment papers he had kept copies since his originals had been stolen. The administrator frowned at them. “These look official enough, but without our corresponding records, I can’t confirm anything.
I’m sorry, Sheriff. This patient may have died years ago or been transferred elsewhere or he shrugged. It’s not uncommon for patients to be forgotten, especially during the earlier years when recordeping was less rigorous. Dead ends, no trail, no proof that Abigail Turner had ever been confined there at all.
But as Dalton was leaving the asylum, one of the older orderlys, a man who looked like he’d been working there since the building was constructed, pulled him aside. “You asking about a woman named Abigail,” he said quietly. “Came in around 38 39.” “I am. Did you know her?” “Didn’t know her exactly, but I remember her. Strange woman.
Never spoke, never reacted to anything. just sat in her cell staring at the wall like she was waiting for something. How long was she here? 3 years maybe. Then one night she was just gone. Cell door standing wide open. Not a trace of her anywhere. We searched but he shrugged. This was during the Randall administration and he didn’t like admitting we’d lost a patient.
So the paperwork got adjusted, death certificate filed, burial recorded, case closed, but there was no body. Grave was empty except for stones to give it weight. We all knew it, but no one talked about it. And then Randall died. New administration came in and the whole thing got forgotten. Did anyone see her after she escaped? The orderly’s expression became guarded. Rumors maybe.
Some folks claim to see a woman matching her description around the region over the years, but nothing solid, nothing you could prove. Do you believe she survived? That she’s still out there? The old man was quiet for a long moment. I believe, he said finally. That woman came here for a reason.
Confessed to a crime that hadn’t happened yet. Got herself locked up, then walked out when the time was right, like she’d planned the whole thing from the start. So yeah, I think she survived. I think she’s been watching all these years, waiting to see if her predictions came true. 23 years, Dalton said softly. She told me to remember the number 23.
The orderly nodded slowly. Well, Sheriff, it’s been 23 years. Whatever she was waiting for, I reckon it’s here now. Dalton left Jackson more unsettled than when he’d arrived. The idea that Abigail had planned even her own commitment and escape, that she had orchestrated everything from the beginning, was almost too much to accept.
But the alternative, that it was all coincidence, that her predictions had come true by chance, was even harder to believe. James Fairmont survived longer than the others, as Abigail had predicted. But survive was perhaps too generous a word for what his life became. He inherited what remained of the estate after Marcus’s death, but it was a shell of its former grandeur.
The war had devastated Mississippi’s plantation economy. Reconstruction brought new challenges. James struggled to keep the property afloat, hampered by poor health and the weight of his family’s dark history. Dalton watched him over the years, a man haunted by losses he couldn’t understand, watching everyone he loved die while he lived on.
James married twice. Both wives died young. He had five children. Three died in infancy, two in early childhood. The Fairmont line, once so proud and extensive, dwindled to just James himself. He developed chronic health problems in his 40s, respiratory issues, digestive problems, joint pain that no doctor could adequately explain or treat.
He aged prematurely, looking 70 when he was barely 50. It’s like his body is just wearing out, Dr. Huitt told Dalton. Huitt himself was quite old by then, nearing retirement, but he still kept track of the Fairmonts with the fascination of a man who suspects he’s witnessing something extraordinary. Wearing out, Huitt continued, or like it’s carrying some fundamental damage that gets worse with each generation.
Those children of his who survived to birth, they all had health problems from the start. weak constitutions, frequent illnesses, failure to thrive. It’s as if something in his blood is poisoning them. You’re saying the effects are hereditary? I’m saying I’ve never seen anything like it.
If Abigail Turner really did what she claimed, if she introduced toxins that accumulated in James’ system when he was just a child, then yes, it’s theoretically possible that trace amounts could be passed to his offspring through his blood. The science isn’t clear on such things, but Huitt trailed off, shaking his head. James Fairmont died in 1891 at 60, having outlived his entire family.
The estate was sold to pay his debts. The grand house was eventually torn down. The cotton fields were divided and sold off. of the Fairmont family that had once been so prominent in Natchez society. Nothing remained except a few graves in the town cemetery in Dalton’s journal documenting their slow destruction over 50 years. Sheriff Henry Dalton retired in 1873 after 38 years of service.
He was 75 years old, his mind still sharp, but his body finally admitting its age. He moved to a small house on the edge of Natchez and spent his remaining years doing what he had done since 1838, documenting the Abigail Turner case. His journal had grown to three volumes by then, filled with meticulous notes about the Fairmont’s deaths, medical records, what he could reconstruct or obtain, testimonies from people who had known the family, and his own observations about the uncanny accuracy of Abigail’s predictions. He also recorded the rumors
that persisted about Abigail herself. Sightings of a woman matching her description, thin with empty eyes, appearing in various places throughout Mississippi and Louisiana over the decades. Always brief glimpses, never confirmed, but eerily consistent. In 1875, one such rumor caught his attention. A woman had been seen at the Nachez cemetery standing beside the plot where Hannah was buried.
The gravestone, the simple marker that had mysteriously appeared in the 1840s, had been cleaned, the weeds around it cleared away. Dalton went to investigate. The grave was indeed freshly tended, the stone scrubbed clean so that Hannah’s name stood out clearly. And beside the grave, someone had planted flowers, wild ones, the kind that grew in the woods around Nachez, the kind Hannah might have picked herself when she was alive.
There was no note, no sign of who had done it, but Dalton knew. He sat on the ground beside Hannah’s grave, his old bones protesting the movement, and looked at the simple stone. She remembered you, he said softly to the dead girl buried there. “She came back, and she made them pay, and she never forgot you.
I hope that matters. I hope you can rest now.” He stayed there for a long time thinking about justice and revenge, about crimes that go unpunished and retribution that can’t be proven, about a woman who had confessed to a murder that took 50 years to complete and might never be officially recognized as murder at all.
When he finally stood to leave, his knees aching, he noticed something tucked against the base of Hannah’s headstone. a folded piece of paper, yellowed and worn, as if it had been carried for a very long time. With trembling hands, Dalton picked it up and unfolded it. The handwriting was familiar, the same meticulous script from Abigail’s original confession in 1838.
Sheriff Dalton, if you’re reading this, then you remembered. You kept the record. You didn’t let them bury the truth along with the bodies. Thank you for that. You probably have many questions. I’ll answer the ones I can. Yes, I poisoned them. Every word of my confession was true, though not in the way you initially understood.
I introduced toxins into their systems slowly, methodically, building a foundation of damage that would manifest over years. I made their deaths part of their bodies, inseparable from their own flesh and blood. Why confess before they were dead? because I wanted someone to know.
I wanted a record to exist before the Fairmonts could erase it. I knew they would try stealing your files, dismissing witnesses, making everything disappear. But I also knew you would remember. I saw it in your eyes that first day. You were a man who wouldn’t let go of truth once he’d recognized it. The commitment to the asylum was expected.
I allowed it to happen because I needed to disappear for a while to let the process I’d started run its course without interference. The escape was simple. I’d observed the routines, noted the weaknesses. No institution is as secure as it believes itself to be. I’ve spent these decades watching from a distance, documenting the effects just as you have, making sure each death matched my predictions, making sure the Fairmonts understood in their final moments what had been done to them and why. Marcus knew at the end.
I visited him 3 days before he died. Walked right into his study, the same study where Hannah used to clean, where he used her before discarding her. He recognized me immediately, even after 30 years. I told him that Hannah’s death was finally catching up to him, that the poison I’d fed him so carefully was about to stop his heart.
He tried to call for help, but I’d made sure we wouldn’t be interrupted. Did she suffer? He asked me. Hannah, did she suffer? Yes, I told him. She suffered more than you can imagine. And now you understand how that feels. He died 3 days later, clutching at his chest, probably wondering if every pain was the poison finally finishing its work.
Was it the poison that killed him or his own fear and guilt? Does it matter? He died either way, and he died knowing why. I visited each of them before the end, told them about Hannah, reminded them of what they did to her and what I did to them in return. Let them die with that knowledge, with the understanding that they never escaped, that justice, even if no law recognized it, had been served. James is the last.
I’ll wait for him to die naturally, as he suffered enough simply by living. And then my work will be done. The Fairmont Line will be extinct, destroyed as thoroughly as they destroyed Hannah. You might wonder if I regret it. If I think what I did was right, the answer is complicated.
I don’t regret avenging my sister. She deserved someone to fight for her to make her death matter. But I also destroyed seven people, including a child. I took James’s childhood, condemned him to a life of suffering for crimes he was too young to have committed or prevented. That weighs on me. It always will. But I would do it again because some crimes are so terrible that they demand terrible retribution because the law failed Hannah utterly and someone had to provide the justice it couldn’t.
You documented everything. You kept the record. That makes you part of this story too, Sheriff. Part of the judgment against the Fairmonts and part of the testimony that Hannah’s life mattered. That her death wasn’t meaningless. Thank you for that service. Thank you for remembering when everyone else forgot. By the time you read this, I’ll be gone.
Truly gone, not just disappeared. I’m old now and tired and ready to rest. I’ve done what I set out to do. Hannah has been avenged. The truth has been preserved. I hope that’s enough. I hope she would think it was enough. I hope somewhere she’s at peace now. Abigail Turner. Dalton read the letter three times, tears streaming down his weathered face.
Then he carefully folded it and placed it in his jacket pocket next to Ruth’s letter, which he still carried after all these years. He had his answer. Not the answer a court of law would accept, but the truth nonetheless. Abigail Turner had committed murder. Slow, calculated, methodical murder that took 50 years to complete.
She had poisoned seven people, destroyed a family line, and never faced legal consequences for her actions. But she had also delivered justice for a girl whose abuse and death would otherwise have been forgotten. She had made sure Hannah’s life mattered, that her death wasn’t swept under the rug of polite society’s desire to protect the powerful and ignore the powerless.
Was it justice or murder? Dalton still didn’t know. Maybe it was both. Maybe some acts exist in the space between law and morality, where the answer depends on which lens you look through. He walked home slowly, feeling every one of his 77 years. When he reached his house, he added Abigail’s final letter to his journal, writing a note beneath it.
This is the truth. All of it. What anyone does with this knowledge, I leave to their conscience and judgment. I’m too old and too weary to carry it any longer. Hannah existed. She suffered. She died unjustly. Abigail existed. She remembered. She took revenge. The Fairmonts existed. They committed crimes.
They paid for them eventually, though no court ever judged them guilty. These things happened. This is true. Whether it was right or wrong, I cannot say. I’m just a sheriff who tried to document a crime that existed outside the bounds of law in the space where morality and revenge and justice all blur together. Let history judge. I’m done. Sheriff Henry Dalton, 1875.
Sheriff Henry Dalton died in 1876 at 78. His daughter, sorting through his possessions, found the three volumes of journal entries about the Abigail Turner case. She read them with growing horror and fascination. She considered burning them. The story was too dark, too disturbing, too likely to damage her father’s reputation as a respected lawman.
People would think he’d become obsessed, perhaps even delusional, spending decades documenting what amounted to an elaborate theory based on the confessions of a mad woman. But she didn’t burn them. He something about the meticulous detail, the careful documentation, the obvious dedication her father had brought to preserving the truth.
It convinced her that the journals mattered, that they should be preserved, even if no one believed them. She donated them to the Mississippi Historical Society with a note explaining that they were her father’s records of a case he had worked on, and that she believed they should be kept for historical purposes, even if the events described seemed unlikely.
The journals sat in the society’s archives for decades, occasionally examined by researchers interested in 19th century law enforcement or medical history. Most dismissed Dalton’s conclusions as the obsession of a man who had let one strange case consume him. The story of Abigail Turner and the Fairmont family became a footnote in regional history.
An interesting example of how even experienced lawmen could be misled by a compelling criminal. But the records exist. All of it. Abigail’s confession, Dalton’s investigation, Ruth’s testimony, the medical records, the timeline of deaths matching Abigail’s predictions with eerie precision. Abigail’s final letter explaining it all. The Fairmont family is gone.
Their line extinct, their estate dissolved. Their graves in the Nachez cemetery are visited by no one. Most people in the region have forgotten they ever existed. But Hannah’s grave remains. Her simple marker Hannah died April 3rd, 1837. Beloved, still stands, maintained by the historical society after the plot’s ownership reverted to the county.
It’s marked on historical tours. Now, though most guides don’t know the full story, they mention only that it’s an example of servant burial practices in the antibbellum period. They don’t mention what happened to Hannah. They don’t mention Abigail’s decadesl long revenge. They don’t mention the seven deaths that followed from that one crime connected by threads of toxin and retribution too subtle for any court to trace.
Some truths are too complicated, too morally ambiguous, too uncomfortable to fit into neat historical narratives. But Sheriff Dalton’s journal preserves it all. Three volumes of meticulous documentation sitting in an archive in Jackson, waiting for anyone curious enough to dig through the past and find the story buried there.
The story of a woman who confessed to a crime that took 50 years to complete. The story of a crime that was also justice or justice that was also a crime depending on how you looked at it. The story of Hannah who deserved better than what she got. and the story of Abigail who made sure her sister’s death wasn’t forgotten no matter the cost.
Whether you believe it or not, whether you think Abigail Turner actually poisoned the Fairmont family with substances that killed them slowly over decades, or whether you think it was all coincidence and delusion, the records remain. The deaths happened. The timeline matches. The predictions came true. And somewhere in those undeniable facts lies a truth that no one has quite been able to explain away.
Was it poison in their blood or poison in their conscience? Guilt and fear manifesting as physical illness? Was it murder? Or was it justice served through channels the law couldn’t recognize? Was Abigail Turner a killer? Or was she an avenger? The question remains unanswered, preserved in three volumes of journal entries in the empty graves at the Fairmont estate, in the single maintained marker for a girl named Hannah, whose death mattered to exactly one person.
And perhaps that’s exactly what Abigail intended all along, to leave a question that could never be fully answered. A confession that was both completely true and completely impossible to prove. A crime that existed in the space between law and morality, where justice and murder become indistinguishable. And in that impossible space, something happened.
Something that destroyed a family over 50 years that was set in motion by seven methodical doses of poison and an unshakable conviction that some crimes demand terrible retribution. Whether it really happened the way Abigail described or whether it was all an elaborate coincidence, we’ll never know for certain. But the Fairmonts are dead. All of them.
Exactly as Abigail predicted they would be. And that fact remains documented and undeniable, waiting in an archive for anyone brave enough to confront what it might mean.
