Миранда Джеймс - Arsenic And Old Books

Turnbull set the box down and pulled some papers out of the top. “If you’ll sign this for me, sir, to acknowledge you accepted return of the books, I’d appreciate it.” He put the papers on the desk in front of me.

“Certainly.” I sat and picked up a pen. I followed the direction of the deputy’s pointing finger and signed as asked.

“Thank you, sir,” he said. He gave a sharp nod. “Have a good day.”

I thanked him in return and bade him good day as well. My hands trembled as I reached in a drawer and pulled out a pair of cotton gloves. I was thrilled to have the diaries back in the archive.

I stared down at the contents of the box as I pulled on the gloves. Would the diaries yield the information necessary to shed light on the bizarre events of the past few days? I took a deep breath and began to unload the box.

THIRTY

“Well, boy, I have my work cut out for me now,” I said as I placed the last volume on my desk and set the box on the floor beside it. I figured the cat would want to investigate the box, and better that it should be on the floor than on my desk.

I turned to the windowsill. Diesel wasn’t there.

I had a brief moment of panic, then forced myself to calm down. “Diesel? Where are you, boy? Come here please.”

I waited for at least fifteen seconds before I repeated my summons.

No cat appeared. He was probably downstairs with Melba. I stripped off one glove, picked up the office phone, and punched in her extension. She answered right away.

“I was about to call you,” she said. “I have a furry visitor, and I’ll bet you didn’t know he’d sneaked out of the office and come down here.”

I felt a huge sensation of relief. “No, I didn’t know he’d left the office. I was pretty engrossed in reading, and he got out without my knowledge. Thank goodness he’s safe with you, the little demon.”

“I thought he might follow Art Turnbull, the deputy who was here a few minutes ago. He stopped in to say a quick hello to me before he came upstairs.”

“One of your many admirers, no doubt,” I teased her gently. I figured Turnbull for mid-forties, but that was close enough for Melba.

“No, he’s married,” she said. “But I know his sister Madge real well. You probably don’t remember her. She was a few grades behind us in school.”

“No, can’t say that I remember her. Look, are you okay with Diesel down there? Or do you want me to come get him?”

“He can stay with me for a while,” Melba said. “When I get ready to take a break, we’ll come upstairs.”

“Thanks.” I felt relieved but also a bit aggravated with myself. I shouldn’t have been so wrapped up in my reading that I missed seeing my large cat slink out of the office. I needed to be more alert.

My heart rate returned to normal, I picked up the discarded glove and put it back on. I figured I might as well take a look at the volume with the missing pages. Each of the volumes lay on its side on my desk, with the bottom pages of the book toward me. I bent closer to them and examined each one.

The volume with the missing pages wasn’t hard to spot. There was a slight gap in the pages about two-thirds of the way toward the back of it. I pulled that one forward and opened it with care.

I turned to the place in the book where the pages had been taken out. I examined the area, and it looked to me like Marie had used a razor blade to cut the pages loose. There was no point in feeling anger over Marie’s act of vandalism. She had already paid a higher price than I could have exacted.

The date of the entry preceding the gap was August 10, 1863. I turned to the beginning of the diary and found the initial date there: November 1, 1860.

That was odd. This volume covered at least part of the same period as the volume Mrs. Long found hidden in the false bottom of the trunk.

I checked the final entry for a date: June 3, 1866.

This volume did cover the same time period. Actually it was a bit more extensive, I realized after a moment’s thought. The volume I had read started in March of 1861 and ended in mid-May 1865, a week or two after the end of the war.

Why had Rachel kept two diaries for roughly the same period? The one I read did not use all the pages of the book like this one did. Was the one I read the original diary of the period, and the one on my desk perhaps a fuller version Rachel wrote later? I knew Mary Boykin Chesnut edited and rewrote parts of her diary before the book, A Diary from Dixie , was published in 1905. The diary was not published in Mary’s lifetime. From what I could remember she died in the mid-1880s and asked a friend to see about getting it published.

Rachel couldn’t have known, of course, about Mary Chesnut’s diary, but perhaps she had a similar ambition, to see her diary published as a record of her experiences growing up in the South through a tragic era.

Miss Eulalie might be able to shed light on the subject, although I now felt diffident about asking her. There might also, I realized, be information in the correspondence and other papers in the Long collection.

All that could wait. Right now I wanted to delve into this volume of the diary to see what information it might contain that would be in any way relevant to present-day events.

I went back to the gap in the pages. The last sentence before the missing pages read, “Words cannot express the horror and sickness I feel over . . .”

Over what? I wanted to scream. How frustrating. This lead-in told me that there must be something sensational in the missing pages.

I suppressed my irritation and read the first words on the page after the gap. They were just as intriguing as the words preceding the gap: “behind us, never to be mentioned or recalled as long as I draw breath.”

I glanced down the page to see the date of the next entry: September 30, 1863.

What had happened between August 10 and September 30, 1863, besides the deaths of Rachel’s husband and father-in-law? The Union Army didn’t come to Athena until the winter of 1863, in November, I thought.

I would have to do some digging to see what I could find about the summer of 1863 in Athena. Dr. Brooke’s dissertation might cast light on it. I closed the diary and set it aside.

A knock at the door caught my attention before I could resume reading the dissertation. I looked up to see Jasper Singletary approaching me.

“I apologize for dropping by unannounced like this, Mr. Harris.” He extended his hand, and I shook it. “I took the chance you’d be here and would have time to talk with me about the diary.”

“I’m glad to see you.” I indicated a chair. “Please sit. I have to tell you I’ve been curious about your reaction to the information related to your ancestors.”

Singletary regarded me in silence for a moment. I couldn’t read his expression.

“My first reaction is that Rachel Long was a liar,” he said. “She came across to me as a bit self-righteous about her charitable behavior. Just because she didn’t admit to anything in that diary doesn’t mean she didn’t poison the children and their mother deliberately.”

He surprised me. I thought the first thing he’d address would the news about Celeste. Instead he focused on his grievance against the Longs.

“I can’t deny that,” I said. For now, I decided quickly, I wasn’t going to tell him about the diary he read being a partial duplicate of another one. I wanted to figure out the reason for its existence before I talked with him or any of the Longs about it. “Rachel could very well have omitted anything that would make her look guilty. You’ll have to look elsewhere for your proof that she was a murderess.”

“I’m not giving up,” he said firmly. He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded me with that enigmatic expression again. “Rachel was also lying about my great-great-grandmother Celeste. Don’t you think we would have known before now if she had been a slave before she married my great-great-grandfather Franklin?” He snorted.