Arsenic And Old Books

After I let us into the office, I locked the door behind us. I didn’t want to be surprised by any other visitors this afternoon while I dug into both the memoir and the missing diary pages.

While Diesel got comfy on his windowsill, I sat at my desk and mulled over which one I should read first. After several moments of going back and forth between the two, I finally opted for the memoir, even though there were fewer diary pages.

I picked up the memoir and opened it. The book had a frontispiece, a portrait-style photograph in black and white of Rachel Afton Long, taken near the end of her life. She would have been around seventy at that point.

I studied the picture. Rachel’s rather stern gaze in partial profile made her look like a formidable old lady. I could tell from her bone structure that she had been a beautiful woman in her youth, though she did not seem to have aged well. Her mouth had a slightly petulant twist to it, as if Rachel resented being old. Perhaps it was simply the result of the tragedies of her life, the losses during the war and their effect on her.

The book was published in 1911, the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. By then Rachel would have been dead for about fifteen years.

I turned the page to the foreword from the author, Angeline McCarthy Long. The book was based on “reminiscences of the life of a Southern gentlewoman during times of great strife and their aftermath.” That sounded typical for both the time in which the book was written and for the intent of such a memoir. Angeline Long went on to say that she had the privilege of knowing her husband’s grandmother intimately only the final two years of her life, but had been so in awe of Rachel’s experiences and character she wanted to share her love and admiration with others. She stated that she had first written the memoir three years after Rachel’s death in 1896 but had waited until the anniversary year to see it published. She ended the foreword by writing, “I know all the citizens of Athena will join with me in celebrating the life and contributions to our wonderful town and, indeed, our great state of Mississippi, as we remember those sad years of the war. From Rachel Afton Long may we all take inspiration for the future and model ourselves upon a woman whose charitable works enriched us all.”

I couldn’t help but feel a bit cynical at the cloying sweetness of Angeline Long’s words. She made Rachel Long sound almost like a candidate for sainthood rather than a flesh-and-blood woman. Once I had time to read the complete diary, I thought it would be interesting to come back to the memoir and read it again after making my own assessment of Rachel’s character.

The memoir was brief, only seventy-eight pages, and the print was good-sized. It wouldn’t take me long to read. If the rest of the book was as sickly sweet as the foreword, I’d be glad of the brevity.

I plunged in and quickly discovered that the memoir consisted mostly of Angeline’s retelling of stories told to her by Rachel. The first of these was the tale of Andrew Adalbert Long, Jr.’s courting of Rachel Afton.

Upon first glance Rachel knew that she was destined to share her life with this dashing young man. Though it meant leaving her family in Louisiana to head north to Athena, she went willingly. “He was everything most gallant and handsome,” Rachel once told me. “The epitome of every manly virtue with none of the vices that bedeviled so many of his acquaintance.”

Angeline went on to share certain details of the actual courtship and its successful conclusion, resulting in the couple’s wedding. Then she moved quickly forward to Rachel’s stories of life at Bellefontaine during the war. Some of the incidents sounded vaguely familiar, and I realized I had read about them in the forged diary.

That was interesting. I wondered whether this book was the chief source the forger used.

The more I read, the more convinced I became that I was right.

When Angeline launched into the story of Rachel’s charitable acts—and in particular those involving the Singletary family—I no longer doubted it. The phrasing sounded very similar, and I knew if I compared some of the passages, they would be word for word the same.

The story of the pitiful appeal from Vidalia Singletary on behalf of her children was identical as was Rachel’s response. Then I hit upon one detail that was significantly different from the story in the forged diary.