Free Murder at the Bellamy Mansion by Ellen Elizabeth Hunter

by. I was making notes, and taking pictures. Drawing big Xs with white chalk on those windows that we definitely have to remove and take to the shop to rehab. Next thing I know, something kinda caught my peripheral vision. A flash. Motion.”
    He gave us a level look. “You know I wasn’t facing that way. The next thing there was an explosion and it felt like something slammed me out of this world. Then nothing. Nothing till I woke up in this bed on Friday morning.”
    I reached over and squeezed his hand. “And we are so thankful you did wake up, Willie,” I said. “It’s a miracle that you made it.”
    “ It sure is,” Jon agreed.
    “ Praise the Lord,” Esther said.
     

 
     
     
     
    10
     
    We met Lonnie Hudson at the Bellamy Mansion early on Monday morning. The sun was up and shining brightly. The day would be sunny and dry, pleasant, a perfect day for working in the belvedere to resume the assessment that Willie had begun the day that he was shot.
    “ For eighteen-sixty, the plumbing system at the Bellamy was far ahead of its time,” Lonnie told Jon and me as we ascended the stairs to the attic. He led us to the tank room on the third, or attic, floor. Lonnie was explaining how the system had functioned when the Bellamy family had moved into the house in February of eighteen-sixty-one, on the eve of the Civil War.
    The tank room was a corner room on the attic level, tucked under the eaves at the rear of the house. With a low pitched roof and windows that were set about knee high, the room was cramped and gloomy. The tank itself was a large lead-lined reservoir, clad with oak planks. On display in the room was an old-fashioned sitz tub, but that would not have been where the Bellamys had bathed. In their day, the house had been equipped with a warm water shower in the bathroom directly below the tank room.
    Lonnie explained, “Today this tank is as dry as dust because at some point the original plumbing system was replaced with city water. But way back when, the family got their drinking water from a well and their washing water from a cistern.”
    The well and cistern were unused now. The openings were sealed with heavy covers. And they were clearly visible in the rear yard.
    “ Warm water showers were unusual for that era,” Jon said, “and as you say, well ahead of their time.”
    “ Where did your great-great-grandfather learn how to construct such a sophisticated plumbing system since they were so uncommon?” I asked.
    “ Wilfred was a literate man,” Lonnie boasted. “He learned to read as an adult. Then as a father, he taught his children to read. So all the Hudsons have been a literate family going back to the antebellum period.
    “ Wilfred found the plumbing design in a book written by a famous architect of the day. That’s the way the story’s been told in the family. And he was clever enough to know how to take that design and turn it into reality. And just like my pa, Wilfred relied on his sons and grandsons to assist him in his plumbing business.”
    I did not tell Lonnie that Willie had confided he was considering giving his son a greater role in running their general contractor’s business. I’d let Willie do that. And Willie was right: Lonnie deserved a greater participation in running the operation.
    “ This is how the plumbing system worked back then,” Lonnie told us. “The Bellamy butler, a young man named Guy who was a slave and also drove the carriage, would hand pump water from the cistern and force it up here to fill this tank.” He indicated the boxy tank. “Down in the kitchen there was a large copper boiler. As needed, the water would flow down through pipes to the boiler where it was heated. Through a system of draw and stop cocks, the warm water flowed to wherever needed in the house. The bathroom was located under this tank room, so cold water could flow down there directly through a cold water pipe.”
    “ You must be proud of your ancestors,” I