Миранда Джеймс - Arsenic And Old Books

“I don’t mind at all, Your Honor,” I said. “I have been reading, and I have discovered a lot of interesting information.” I wondered how she would react to the news about Jasper Singletary’s great-great-grandmother Celeste.

“Excellent,” she said. “Can you give me a summary? I have about twenty minutes before I have to leave for a dinner being held in my son’s honor.”

“Sure,” I said. I gave her a quick, general report about the nature of the entries in the diary. After a pause for breath, I related the strange story of Rachel’s connection with the Singletary family and her attempts to help them.

“Interesting,” the mayor said. “Perhaps this will stop young Mr. Singletary from making some of these wild claims of his.”

“Maybe,” I said. “There is more, however.” I told her about Franklin and Celeste.

When I finished, the mayor’s reaction shocked me.

She laughed. “Oh, this is priceless. He’s been having a fit to get his hands on these diaries, and now he’s going to be sorry I ever found them. His campaign is in big trouble now.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

How should I respond to the distasteful, gleeful malice I heard in Mrs. Long’s voice? She was making the assumption, I supposed, that Singletary would lose votes if it were known that he was of mixed race. One never knew how voters would react to anything. In the twenty-first century I wondered whether this could be a factor in the race.

I had to admit, however, that I’d had some of the same thoughts the mayor expressed to me—only I hadn’t been chortling over them.

Finally I said, “At the beginning you stated that these diaries should be available to the public. I have already discussed the contents of this volume with Chief Deputy Berry. Do you still want the contents publicly available?”

“By all means,” the mayor said. “The public has a right to know the background of the candidates running for office. Then it’s up to them to decide what’s important.”

That sounded smugly self-righteous—not to mention self-serving—to me, but I didn’t care to get into an argument with the mayor over it.

“In that case I will give Mr. Singletary a file of the digitized pages,” I said. “In the event that this could affect his campaign, he should know as soon as possible. I think that’s the only fair thing to do.”

“Agreed,” Mrs. Long said. “Now I really have to get going. I’ll check in with you again tomorrow. I heard the other books will be back in your office sometime in the morning.”

The phone clicked in my ear, and I put the receiver back in its cradle. I didn’t like to think so, but I believed that the issue of class had reared its nasty head. The Longs were among the elite in Athena, if not the entire state of Mississippi, whereas Jasper Singletary came from a poor family. The Singletarys had been in Athena for generations, but they didn’t have money or political clout. Mrs. Long might add a third lack to those two: breeding. The Longs considered themselves patricians, and there came with that status a sense of entitlement, at least on their part. That bothered me, but there was nothing I could do to change it.

I went back to the laptop and searched for a phone number for Jasper Singletary’s campaign headquarters. I didn’t want to go through Kelly Grimes. Instead I thought I should share the file only with the man himself. Number located, I punched it in on the house phone and waited for someone to answer. A harried-sounding woman picked up after five rings.

I gave her my name and stressed the urgency of my call. “He is interested in this information, and I know he will want to know about it as soon as possible.”

She promised to pass the message along, but I put down the receiver wondering when Singletary might actually receive the news of my call.

I should not have doubted the poor woman, as it turned out. Singletary called me about fifteen minutes later, when I had my head stuck in the fridge trying to decide what I wanted for dinner.

“You have news for me, I hear,” Singletary said after a quick greeting.

“I do. I would like to send you a file with the scanned pages from the diary,” I said. “I think you’ll find the contents interesting.”

“Did you find the evidence I need?”

“No, I didn’t,” I replied. “I really think you need to read this for yourself, rather than have me try to tell it all to you over the phone.”

Singletary expelled a sharp breath. “All right, then.” He gave me an e-mail address, and I jotted it down.

“Does anyone else read the mail sent to this address?” I asked. I wanted to be sure that he, and he alone, read this. He might want to think about the contents before he acted upon them.

“Yes,” he said. “Has anyone else seen this?”

“No one else has seen it,” I said, “but I did share the contents during conversations with Mrs. Long and with Chief Deputy Berry. I don’t see that there’s any connection to the current murder investigation, but there is family history that you should know about, if you don’t already.”

He did not respond for several seconds. “Go ahead and send me the file.” He ended the call.

I speculated that the abrupt hang-up meant he was angry I had talked to Mrs. Long and Kanesha. Well, so be it. I sat down and pulled the computer into my lap. It took less than half a minute to send the file on its way to Jasper Singletary. I powered down the laptop and set it aside. Time for dinner, I decided.

While I ate the chicken salad Azalea left for me and doled out cat treats to Diesel, I thought about the Singletary family and the source of their hatred for the Longs. I could understand that Franklin and Celeste did not want to tell their children about how father traded land for mother and instead might present the transaction as a nefarious deal arranged by Rachel’s father-in-law. But how could the knowledge that Celeste was once a slave be lost to collective memory?

The townspeople would surely have known, and given the mind-set of the time, I couldn’t imagine that there wasn’t gossip about the couple. Gossip that would have persisted over the years, at least for a generation or two.

I hoped Miss An’gel would call soon. In the meantime I had to think of a discreet way to ask her about the Singletary family and what would be considered miscegenation in the family tree. I knew Miss An’gel would not press me for details that I couldn’t share, but I still had to take care with what I said.

By the time she called the kitchen was clean and Diesel and I were upstairs. I was reading while he snoozed beside me on the bed.

“Good evening, Miss An’gel. How are you?”

“Doing fine, Charlie. How are you and that beautiful kitty of yours?”

“We’re fine, too. Diesel is stretched out beside me napping, though he did perk up when he heard your name.”

Miss An’gel laughed. “Give him a few rubs on the head for me and Sister. You said you wanted to talk to me about a local family. What’s going on?”

I gave her a quick précis of the situation with the diaries and the murder of Marie Steverton. “Mrs. Long thought there might be information about the family that could help her son in his election bid. In the one volume I’ve read so far, I haven’t spotted anything.”

“That boy will probably skate through on the family name,” Miss An’gel said. “I don’t think he’ll do any harm in state government, but he certainly won’t accomplish anything significant.” She sighed. “Young Singletary, on the other hand, is bright and capable, but he doesn’t have the cachet of a distinguished family like Beck Long. That could hurt his chances.”

“About the Singletarys,” I said, thankful she had given me a segue to my question, “other than the fact that they have been poor farmers for several generations, is there anything you might know of in their family tree that voters might find, well, objectionable?”