Arsenic And Old Books

“I agree,” Kanesha said. “I wish I could narrow down the time frame for the office search. It must have occurred during the night, because it’s next door to the secretary’s office. She would have heard someone moving around in there otherwise.”

“Marie obviously had an excellent hiding place, because you didn’t turn up the diaries when you searched her house,” I said. “Maybe the missing pages are in the same spot, wherever it is.”

“I sent two deputies over to search the house again tonight,” Kanesha said. “They reported no signs of forced entry or of a search but they’re still looking for the pages.”

“I hope they turn up,” I said. “The contents have to be pertinent to this crazy situation somehow.”

“I expect so,” Kanesha said. “If we find them, I’ll be in touch.” She ended the call.

I wondered what Marie could have found in the torn-out pages. If the information in those pages could damage someone—either the Longs or Jasper Singletary—then obviously the killer would want to find and destroy them.

Perhaps Marie tried her hand at blackmail; but if she had, she paid the ultimate price. At least this train of thought produced a believable motive for her death—if I accepted that the missing pages contained seriously damaging information.

Jasper Singletary claimed that Rachel Long deliberately poisoned his ancestor’s wife and children. Would Rachel have confessed something like that to her diary? That would have been a stupid move, and from what I’d read today, I didn’t think Rachel was a stupid woman.

I went back to an old question—why was one volume of the diary hidden and not kept with the other four? Did the hidden one—that I had read today—contain information missing from the others? There had to be a reason it was separated and placed in the false bottom of the trunk.

There were too many questions. My mind buzzed from all the possibilities, none of which seemed to offer a solid answer.

I felt too restless, too mentally unsettled, to choose a new book to read. I checked the time. Eight thirty. At least ninety minutes or more before Helen Louise would call.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I told the drowsy cat beside me. He blinked at me and yawned.

I retrieved my laptop from the den and brought it back to the bedroom. I had some pages left to read of Rachel Long’s diary, and I might as well finish them tonight. I recalled having read about the death of her father-in-law in the fall of 1863 and then searching for information about her husband’s death. I hadn’t gone back to the diary to find out what Rachel recorded about the loss of her husband.

I found mention of it in an entry dated October 15, 1863.

Two weeks ago we laid to rest my precious Andrew, only days after we mourned the passing of his father. Father Long lost heart, seeing his son in such grievous condition, and the news of the war compounded his sorrow. I must remain strong and pray that the Lord will guide me now. My boy is too young for the responsibility of caring for his inheritance, and I cannot fail him, though I cannot see how we will last through the winter.

Poignant words, but I knew that Rachel had survived, along with her son. They made it through the war and somehow found the way to prosperity again. In her way, I thought, Rachel must have been a formidable woman. With the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband, she had a heavy burden. I recalled that her son, Andrew III, was only about five or six years old at the time.

I finished the pages about twenty minutes later. Rachel’s record-keeping grew sparse. She had little time to think about writing in her diary. The final entry came on May 17, 1865.

Word reached Bellefontaine today that General Lee surrendered to General Grant in Virginia. The war is over, and I find myself numb and exhausted. All but a few of our most loyal workers have fled. May the Lord watch over us and give us the strength to face the future.

I felt as if I’d been left hanging by an ambiguous ending to a mystery novel. I wanted to know what happened next. I wouldn’t have long to wait. The rest of Rachel’s diaries would be back in the archive tomorrow, and I could read the rest of the story, as it were.