Миранда Джеймс - Arsenic And Old Books

I stumbled back and almost tripped over Diesel. I managed to step around him. He darted up the stairs while I turned to face my attacker.

“Why did you do that, woman? Are you insane?” I rubbed the spot where her head had connected with my midriff. “I have a good mind to call the police and charge you with assault.”

“You already set the police on me.” Her pitch rose with every syllable. “I could kill you for what you’ve done to me. Why do you hate me? What have I ever done to you ?”

To my dismay she broke into wild sobs. Tears rolled down her face. She stood there, arms hanging down listlessly, and continued to cry. Despite my anger at her attack, I felt a sneaking sympathy for her distress. I stepped around her to close the door, then came back to where she could see me.

“What happened?” I asked in a gentle tone.

Her chest heaved as she struggled to regain enough composure to respond to me. “The police showed up at my house this afternoon and accused me of theft. That’s what happened. Then they tore my house apart looking for the diaries. You were responsible for it—I know you were—so don’t try to deny it.” Suddenly she collapsed in a seated heap on the floor and started sobbing again.

I knelt by her. I was afraid to touch her because the good Lord only knew how she would react.

“Marie, I’m sorry for your distress,” I said. “I did report the theft of the diaries, and naturally I had to give the authorities the names of anyone I knew who had expressed interest in them. I didn’t do it out of malice, I swear to you. It was simply the truth.”

“It was humiliating.” Her voice was so low I barely made out the words. The volume grew as she continued to speak. “Never in my life have I been so embarrassed. I’ll be a laughingstock on campus because of this. And on top of everything else, the diaries have disappeared. Now I’ll never get to work on them, and I won’t get tenure.”

“Did you steal the diaries?” I asked her. Time for a tougher approach, I thought. Maybe that would force her to see sense, if anything would.

She glared at me, her expression full of loathing. “No, I did not. I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”

“Then stop acting like a drama queen trying to hide her guilt.” I stood and extended a hand. “Get up off the floor and come into the kitchen with me. I’ll give you coffee or something stronger, and we’ll talk about this.”

Her eyes narrowed as she stared at me, then at my hand. After a long moment, she grasped my hand, and I helped her get to her feet.

“How about brandy?” She sounded hoarse now from the crying and carrying on.

“I have some,” I said. Might as well have some myself, I decided. I glanced up at the stairs, but there was no sign of the cat. Diesel was probably under my bed. He would be okay until I had Marie calmed down completely and out of the house.

Marie pulled out a chair and plopped down. Her short legs barely touched the floor. I found the brandy in the cabinet and poured some for both of us.

“Thanks,” she said in a less than gracious tone before she knocked it back in one go.

I held up the bottle, and she nodded. This time she had a sip and set the glass down. “I’m waiting,” she said. “Talk. I want you to explain to me how you were careless enough to let someone walk in and steal those diaries.”

I set the brandy bottle down before I was tempted to slug her with it.

“Chief Ford examined the lock on the office door,” I said as evenly as I could. “He believes the thief picked it. I always lock the door whenever I leave the office, even for a few minutes. I’m sure I did that today when I left for lunch.”

Marie looked skeptical. “Why didn’t you have them somewhere more secure, like a safe?”

“For one thing,” I said, “I don’t have a safe in the archive. I could have put them in the storage room next door. It has a better lock on it, one that’s difficult to get into.” I shrugged. “But there was no reason to. I had no reason to think someone would steal the diaries. They aren’t that valuable.”

“I guess you’re right,” Marie said. “At least about locking them up. They are valuable, though, extremely valuable. Not in terms of money, of course. To me they’re priceless.”

“I can understand that they could be valuable to your research,” I said. “What I don’t get is why you’re so convinced they will be. You don’t know there’s anything interesting or worthwhile to a historian in them.”

Marie looked down at her hands. “No, I don’t know for sure, but those diaries are still the best shot I have at finally getting tenure.” Her shoulders sagged. “And now they’re gone. It isn’t fair.”

She didn’t look at me once while she spoke. Even now she appeared to be absorbed by her hands. I figured that meant she was lying about something. But what? I suspected that she had knowledge—just how, I didn’t know—of the contents of the diaries. Either that or she was gambling against less than convincing odds.

“What is it you’re not telling me?” I asked.

Her head shot up, her expression indignant. She opened her mouth to speak, then clamped it shut while I stared hard at her.

“Come on, you do know something,” I said. “Tell me.”

She took a deep breath. “You might as well know.” Her tone was grudging. “I can’t say specifically what is in those diaries, but I do have a source that gives some indication. According to the source, Rachel Afton Long had a lot to say about everything happening around her. Including less than savory things about the great families of Athena.”

Family scandals. That could explain a few things, I thought.

“What is the source?” I asked, though I had an inkling of the answer.

When Marie didn’t respond right away, I continued. “Your source wouldn’t be Angeline McCarthy Long’s memoir of her grandmother-in-law, would it?”

“You think you know everything, don’t you?” The venom in her tone didn’t surprise me. “Yes, that is my source. Angeline is pretty vague about some of the details, but she hints at an awful lot. Particularly about the juicy stuff. I figure she’s talking about things that happened during the war. Things that some of the families around here would just as soon not have come to light.”

This could explain why the copy of the memoir in the library went missing, I thought. Tomorrow one of my priorities would be searching the Long collection in the archive for a copy of that little book.

“I ran across the memoir in the online catalog,” I said. “I also found out that it has been declared lost, as of yesterday. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Why should I know anything about it?” Marie practically spit the words at me. “I told you I am not a thief. I would never steal a book from the library, and if you try to tell anyone that I did, I’ll sue you for everything you have.”

I held up my hands in a placatory gesture. “I didn’t say you stole the book. I simply asked whether you knew anything about its disappearance. For example, when was the last time you used it?”

Marie didn’t appear mollified by my words, but she answered my question. “Four or five years ago. I had mostly forgotten about it until I overheard that dinosaur Newkirk talking about the diaries with the departmental secretary a couple days ago.”

“Do you know of any other copies of the memoir? Do the Longs have one?”

Marie shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not that many were printed to begin with, and who knows what happened to them over the years. You’re the librarian. Why are you asking me? Don’t you have some database you can check?”