Murder at the Mansion Hotel
Nighttime, Fernandina Beach, Amelia Island, Florida, 1884
Thomas Jefferson Eppes collected his whip and his pistol and headed for the Mansion Hotel. His wife’s words played repeatedly in his head as he made his way through the town’s muddy streets.
He insulted me, Jeff, she’d said.
Insulted you how? he’d demanded.
She hesitated. He acted ungentlemanly.
How, damn it?!?! Eppes demanded.
He made a pass, she finally said.
With that, Eppes left the house and went hunting.
An eyewitness would later describe Eppes as “a man with small features,” which is a descriptor with the perfect amount of detail to give our imaginations any number of directions in which to run.
Whatever the face of a man with small features looked like, Eppes had never hurt anyone before. Not seriously, anyway. Certainly hadn’t killed anyone. In fact, though being an a reportedly unremarkable man, Eppes seemed on the up-and-up at that point in his life.
So, he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d do when he saw Ferdinand Charles Suhrer, the manager of the Mansion Hotel, and a man whom Eppes knew well — for Eppes had lived at the Mansion for a long time. He’d only moved out recently, in fact.
