Миранда Джеймс - Arsenic And Old Books

I suppressed a sigh. I really wanted to get to work on the diaries, but I knew Melba would follow me right up the stairs if I didn’t listen to her now.

The cat and I walked into her office. I didn’t sit, however, and I hoped she would understand that meant I had things to do.

Melba looked pointedly at the empty chair beside her desk, then at me. She cocked her head to one side and stared hard at me.

I gave in and sat down. Diesel stretched out on the floor between us, his head right by Melba’s chair. She reached down to pet him, as he intended her to.

“Okay, who was your lunch companion?” I asked. I could take the silence only so long.

Melba grinned. “Dr. Newkirk. I happened to run into him on my way out to lunch, and we ended up eating at the faculty club. I was his guest.” She preened a little.

“Let me try to guess what you talked about over lunch,” I said in a mock-puzzled tone. “I don’t have a clue. You’ll have to enlighten me.”

“If I had something heavy enough, I’d throw it at you right now and knock that silly smile off your face.” There was no rancor in Melba’s tone. “You know dang well I talked to him about Marie Steverton and those diaries she’s got the hots for.”

“Did you tell him about the scene between Marie and the writer this morning?”

Melba continued to scratch the cat’s head as she replied. “I thought about it. That witch deserves trouble on account of the way she behaves, but I decided not to. Instead I asked him about your diaries and why they might be important.”

“What did he have to say on that subject?” I asked.

“He talked a lot about daily life back in the old days around the Civil War and how bad things were here while the war was going on.” Melba paused for a moment, her expression thoughtful. “I’m sure glad I wasn’t around then. Women had it pretty rough while the men were off fighting the war.”

“Yes, they did,” I said. “Everyone in the South went through a lot of privation and violence during the war. It was a nasty business for everyone concerned. War always is.”

I was not one of those Southerners who had a romanticized view of the War Between the States , the Late Unpleasantness , or the War of Northern Aggression. Nearly three hundred thousand Southern men and boys died in the war—in battle, from disease, or as prisoners of war. Close to another two hundred thousand were wounded in action. Many came home permanently maimed, missing limbs or otherwise horribly scarred both physically and mentally. There was nothing romantic about it.

“I know.” Melba shuddered. “I remember my great-granny talking about how her daddy came back from the war with one leg shot off and part of an arm. She lived to be almost a hundred, and I still remember what she told me, even though I was an itty-bitty girl at the time. She had a picture of him, and it scared me, he looked so terrible.”

Diesel warbled, evidently sensing her momentary distress. Melba rubbed his head, and I could see her relax as she did.

“It sure made a powerful impression on you,” I said. “Did you and Dr. Newkirk talk about anything else?”

“We talked about Marie. I didn’t bring her up, though. He did, talking about the diaries. He sure doesn’t think much of her,” Melba said. “In fact, she got hired here over his objections. He said she’s intelligent enough, but that her work is limited by her prejudices.” She frowned. “I think that’s the way he put it.”

Dr. Newkirk’s reaction to Marie Steverton’s feminist rhetoric didn’t surprise me. He was definitely of the old school, the one that looked on women in academia with intense suspicion.

“Was that all?” I said.

Melba’s expression turned grave. “No, he let on to something he really shouldn’t have told me, and I’m not sure he realized he had. He was knocking back the wine pretty good over lunch.” She paused. “He confirmed what I told you the other day. Said Marie won’t get tenure unless she comes up with a real knockout book. Her last hope is these diaries.”

I had pretty much figured that already. I felt sorry for Marie. Life for non-tenured faculty could be rough. Lower salaries, moving from job to job trying to find the one where tenure might actually be possible. Desperation, however, did not excuse the way Marie behaved.

“I hope for her sake the diaries prove to be worth all the effort she’s going to put into studying them.” I rose. “And speaking of the diaries, I really have to get to work on them. Diesel, do you want to stay with Melba for a while?”

The cat looked at me and warbled, and I took that for a yes . “I’m assuming that’s okay with you,” I said.

“Of course. We’ll be up later to check on you.”

I left the two of them happily in each other’s company and trudged up the stairs. When I reached the office door, I inserted my key in the lock. Then I realized it was already unlocked.

That was odd. I always locked the door when I left the office, even for a few minutes. I could have forgotten it today—it did happen occasionally—but I was pretty sure I remembered locking it when Diesel and I left for lunch.

I turned on the lights and walked over to my desk.

My heart hit the bottoms of my shoes and kept on going.

The Rachel Long diaries were gone.

TWELVE

I called myself all kinds of idiot while I waited for the college police to respond to my call. How could I have been so stupid? Leaving the door unlocked, as I must have done, was inexcusable, and thanks to my forgetfulness, someone had been able to walk in and take the diaries.

After a cursory examination I thought nothing else was missing, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I could do a more thorough search. I didn’t want to touch anything until after the police finished investigating.

At least I could give the police a short list of suspects: Marie Steverton and Kelly Grimes. I thought about adding Jasper Singletary’s name, based on what I’d overheard earlier, but I realized that was only hearsay. Both the professor and the writer had made determined efforts to get their hands on the diaries, and I was willing to bet one of them had walked into the office and out again with the four volumes.

But why? What was the urgency?

I couldn’t figure out what could be so important about those diaries that a person had to have access to them today rather than wait just a few days more.

Perhaps I was looking at this from the wrong way round. What if the thief already knew what was in the diaries and didn’t want something in them made public?

The whole thing didn’t make much sense to me. Those diaries recorded events that happened a century and a half ago. I understood, like any reasonably intelligent person, that the past did affect the present. But in this case I was stumped. Until I could read those diaries for myself, I wouldn’t be able to figure this out.

I didn’t want to consider the possibility that the thief took the diaries in order to destroy them, but I couldn’t ignore it. They could already have been destroyed, consigned to a fire, or hacked apart and shredded.

That made me feel sick to my stomach.

“Mr. Harris? You called and reported a theft?”

The deep, authoritative voice brought me out of my self-absorption. I turned to see the college’s chief of police in the doorway.

“Yes, I did, Chief. Thanks for responding so quickly,” I said.

Martin Ford, a grizzled veteran Marine Corps retiree, had been at the helm of the campus police for about six months, I recalled. He had a distinguished record in the Corps, based on what I’d read about him. This was only the third time I’d met him, but I’d found him businesslike and professional in our previous encounters.