Arsenic and Old Books Page 13

  “I’d very much like to talk to you, too, Mr. Singletary,” I said. I thought he sounded tense. “I’m available this morning. When and where would you like to meet?”

  “How about your office at eight forty-five?”

  I glanced at the clock. I had time for a quick breakfast before I would need to head to the archive. “That will be fine.”

  He rang off.

  While I dressed I thought about the coming interview. Kelly Grimes had no doubt given him an earful about my recent conversation with her. I hoped he wouldn’t be hostile, but I certainly didn’t expect him to be overly friendly. Nothing like a good confrontation to start the day, I thought morosely.

  Azalea had my breakfast on the table when Diesel and I walked into the kitchen. Cheese grits, bacon, and toast this morning. I loved her buttery cheese grits, but I groaned inwardly at the thought of all the calories.

  “Good morning,” I said. “Breakfast looks delicious as usual.”

  “Morning, Mr. Charlie,” Azalea said. “You, too, cat.” She stared down at Diesel as he looked back and forth between her and me. He wanted bacon, and he didn’t mind who gave it to him first.

  “I’m going to have to make this fast,” I said as I picked up my coffee. “I’ve got an appointment at eight forty-five.” Azalea would cluck over me if she thought I was eating too quickly.

  “All right,” she said.

  I had a sip of my coffee, then a bite of the heavenly grits. “So good. Do you know the Singletary family? I don’t remember them from when I was growing up. Now, of course, Jasper Singletary’s in the paper all the time lately.”

  Azalea nodded. “They been around these parts a long time. Go way back, just like the Ducotes and the Longs and some of the other old families. Always been poor, though. Mr. Jasper’s the first one of them who amounted to anything, you ask me.” She sniffed. “Mostly sorry folks, always moaning and carrying on because they’re poor. Still farming that sad old place where they hardly ever made no money.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met any of them,” I said, “though I’ve seen Jasper a few times in public. He seems like a smart, hardworking young man. I wonder, though, if he stands a chance in this election against Beck Long.”

  “He might do better than you rightly expect. People are talking about him being a good man,” Azalea said. “Now, Mrs. Long is a nice lady. Reckon Mr. Long is a fine man himself, but their son, well, he got himself in some messes back when he was in school. He’s still kind stuck on himself; that’s what I hear.”

  “Typical rich boy acting up and then his parents get him out of it, I guess.” I pinched off a piece of bacon for Diesel, then popped the rest of the slice into my mouth.

  “My friend Ronetta’s been their housekeeper since before that boy was born,” Azalea said. “Ronetta told me Mr. Long never would make that boy mind. Now, that ain’t no way to raise a child. They got to know what they can do and what they can’t. If you don’t teach ’em that, you’re just asking for trouble.”

  I agreed with that wholeheartedly. I liked to think that my wife and I instilled our children with good manners and self-discipline. They had their moments growing up, particularly during their teenage years, but I never had to get them out of serious trouble.

  “Looks like he’s finally straightened up,” I said. “I haven’t heard any talk about him acting badly these days.”

  “I reckon he finally grew up and got some sense,” Azalea said. “He’s been living in Atlanta for a while. Didn’t come home until last year when he decided he wanted to be a politician.”

  I spooned up the last of the grits and gave the cat one final piece of bacon. “If he got into trouble in Atlanta, I guess nobody here’s heard about it.” I drained my coffee cup and pushed back my chair. “I need to get going. Thanks for breakfast.”

  Azalea nodded. “You’re welcome. I’ll be leaving before you come home for lunch, but it’ll be waiting for you.”

  I thanked her again. Sometimes she told me what she was making; other times she let it be a surprise. Today must be a surprise day.

  Diesel and I were out of the house a few minutes later. The morning was hot and humid—as it often was this time of year—and we did not hurry. We still made it to the office several minutes ahead of my appointment. Shortly after we both settled in our accustomed places, I heard a knock at the door.

  I stood. “Good morning, Mr. Singletary. I’m glad to meet you. Please come in.”

  He advanced into the room, and I moved around the desk to shake his proffered hand.

  “Morning, Mr. Harris. I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.”

  He glanced past me, and his eyes widened when he spotted Diesel. The cat climbed down from the windowsill and came over to greet Singletary. Diesel sniffed at his hand before rubbing his head against it. For the cat, that was the seal of approval. I was afraid he would try to rub himself against Singletary’s dark trousers, but he went back to his spot in the window.

  “Handsome animal,” Singletary said. “I’ve never seen a cat that big before.”

  That was my cue to explain about Maine Coons, and by now I had it down to a few sentences. Singletary nodded when I finished, and I could tell he was impatient to get on with things. I indicated he should take the chair in front of my desk before I returned to my seat.

  Face-to-face as we now were, I could see the firm jaw, the intense expression, and the broad shoulders, all of which made me aware of an aura of power this young man exuded. He was ambitious—I knew that—and determined. But would he stop short of murder? Or would he do anything to get what he wanted?

  “Kelly Grimes told me about the conversation she had with you yesterday. She was upset.” His voice was deep, and his drawl betrayed his Mississippi origins. Mine had come back since I moved home again, after many years in Texas, but his was more pronounced.

  “Yes, I was pretty hard on her.” I intended to face potential complaints about my treatment of Ms. Grimes head-on. “I will tell you exactly what I told her. I do not appreciate being lied to, and I consider what she did a breach of her professional ethics. I ought to report her actions to the editor of the paper, but I’m willing to let it go, unless I catch her lying to me again about anything.”

  “Fair enough.” Singletary nodded. “I asked for Kelly’s help in doing research, Mr. Harris. I did not know until after the fact that she pretended to be my opponent’s fiancée.” He shrugged. “I don’t see that her ruse was necessary, but I can assure you, both she and I will be straightforward with you from now on.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “I have to say I am completely at a loss to understand why you are so interested in these diaries. Why have you and Ms. Grimes been so determined to get a look at them?”

  “I must ask you to keep what I am about to tell you to yourself, if at all possible.”

  His intense expression made me even more curious about his interest in the diaries.

  “Unless it has some bearing on the murder of Marie Steverton,” I said in a firm tone, “I will of course respect your wishes.”

  He stared hard at me for a moment. Then he nodded. “All right.” He paused for a breath. “Here’s the deal. I’m looking for proof that Rachel Long was a murderess.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  His response shocked me. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it surely wasn’t that. I stared at Jasper Singletary and he gazed steadily back.

  “Murderess?” I shook my head. “That’s a terrible accusation to make. Who is she supposed to have murdered?”

  “Three members of my family, all children,” he said, his tone grim. “Four, really, if you count the mother who died of a broken heart.”

  “What members of your family? I don’t know anything about your ancestors, so you’re going to have to explain this to me.” I leaned back in my chair. I felt a paw on my sh
oulder. As usual, Diesel picked up on the fact that I wasn’t my typical calm self. I rubbed his paw to reassure him while I kept my eyes focused on Jasper Singletary.

  “Sure, but this will take a few minutes, so you’ll have to bear with me,” he said. “This goes back obviously to Civil War days. My family owned a good-sized farm—we still own it, actually, even though it’s a lot smaller now—that abuts the Long property, so the Singletarys and the Longs have been neighbors for over a century and a half.” He laughed bitterly. “Some neighbors they are. Anyway, my three times great-grandfather, also Jasper, married twice. He and his first wife had one son, my two times great-grandfather, Franklin. First wife died in 1855 when Franklin was about ten years old, and Jasper remarried less than a year later. He and the second wife had three children, little stair-steps. First one came along when Franklin was twelve, and the third one when he was fifteen.

  “Is that all clear so far?” he asked. When I nodded, he continued. “Good. Well, Jasper had married late the first time, and he was already in his forties when Franklin was born. By the time the war came, Jasper was too old to fight. He had heart trouble of some kind, according to my great-aunt Caroline, my grandfather’s sister, and that kept him at home even though other men his age ended up fighting.

  “Jasper doted on all his children, particularly the little ones. Franklin was ready to enlist right after Mississippi seceded, but he was only sixteen. He also had the same heart trouble Jasper had, and Jasper refused to let him go.”

  He paused, and I decided to interject a comment. “I’m sure that was frustrating for Franklin, seeing so many others his age going off to fight.” I shook my head. “Early on, they all thought it would be over in a couple of months, at the most.”

  “It’s a good thing Franklin didn’t go.” Singletary smiled briefly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I’m happy to say also, in case you were wondering, I didn’t inherit the heart defect they both had.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that,” I said. “You’ve set up the situation with your ancestors. How do the Longs fit into all this? Particularly Rachel?”

  “About this time, right after the war got started, probably in June of 1861, Jasper had a serious bout of heart trouble. I figure he had a stroke or two, and that left him unable to do much work. They did have one hired hand, a distant cousin of Jasper’s, but he was young enough and enlisted right away. Jasper didn’t hold with slavery, so everything fell on Franklin, his stepmother, and the little ones.”

  “Admirable, but certainly unusual in Athena at that time,” I said. “That must have been difficult for your family, not having help.”

  “It was, and things got worse. Jasper didn’t improve, and the family was having a hard time. He wouldn’t ask anybody for help, although there were some cousins who did what they could. With the war on, things got harder for everybody. Jasper still couldn’t work that fall, and Franklin didn’t have the stamina to do all that he needed to do. Jasper’s wife, Vidalia, decided to go to Rachel Long and ask her for help. Their clothes were in rags, they had barely any food, and Vidalia was desperate. Jasper was too proud to ask the high-and-mighty Longs for anything, so she went behind his back and did it for him.”

  He sounded angry, but I didn’t know whether it was with his namesake for his stubbornness or with Vidalia for going behind her husband’s back. Pride could be a good thing, but not if it meant letting your wife and children starve to death.

  “How did Rachel Long respond to Vidalia?” I asked. Given his charges against Rachel, I was prepared to hear that she turned her back on the Singletarys and let them all starve.

  “Lady Bountiful went swanning over—my great-aunt’s words, you understand—to dispense charity in the form of clothing and food so the pitiful Singletarys wouldn’t be on her conscience. In the meantime, her father-in-law, Andrew Adalbert Long, Sr., decided this would be a good time to talk Jasper into selling him some land he’d had his eye on for the past twenty years.”

  “Did Jasper sell?” I asked.

  My visitor shook his head. “No, not then. He did later, but I’m getting ahead of the story. Jasper almost had another stroke when he found out Vidalia went begging, but she and Franklin didn’t listen. They and the little ones needed the food, and the little ones needed warm clothing. So at first they thanked Rachel. After that initial visit, she didn’t come again, but she did send her maid, a slave from her family’s plantation in Louisiana, over a few times with more food.” He grimaced. “This is the part of the story I don’t get, but my great-aunt said she had it straight from Franklin, her daddy, that Rachel Long’s maid was a conjure woman.”

  “A lot of people in those days believed in voodoo,” I said, “and they often associated it with Louisiana.”

  Jasper nodded. “I know that, but I still find it hard to believe myself. The strange thing was, when the maid started visiting, the children and Vidalia all turned sickly. They weren’t strong to begin with because of malnourishment, although the food from the Longs helped. The little ones all died within the space of a week.”

  “Wasn’t a doctor called? Couldn’t anything be done for them?”

  “The only good doctor in town had gone to serve as an army doctor,” Jasper said. “All they had left were a couple of midwives who knew about herbal medicines. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the children.”

  “You said the mother died of a broken heart. When did Vidalia succumb?” I asked.

  “Several months later, in the winter. Jasper died the next spring, leaving Franklin on his own. In the meantime, while Jasper was out of his mind with grief over the little ones dying, Andrew Long came in and talked him into selling the land for far less than it was worth. Franklin was out in the fields when it happened, and Vidalia was on the verge of dying herself. Neither one of them knew what was going on.”

  “In your great-aunt’s mind, then, Andrew Long cheated her grandfather and father out of land.”

  “That’s about it,” Jasper said. “Aunt Caroline believed, like her daddy did, that Rachel Long had her maid poison the children to drive Jasper crazy. All so Andrew could get his hands on a hundred acres.”

  What an appalling story, I thought. Could any of it be true? I could believe that Rachel’s father-in-law was an opportunist and decided to get what he wanted when Jasper was at a weak point. But to believe that Rachel, through her maid, poisoned those little children to help her father-in-law cheat Jasper Singletary? That sounded far-fetched, at best. The death rate for children—particularly for children who didn’t have enough of the right food to eat—was high during that time. They probably died of natural causes.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Jasper said. “Children died routinely back then. Starvation, acts of war, you name it; the civilian death rate skyrocketed while the war raged on. But the war hadn’t yet reached Athena when these children died.”

  “If I remember correctly, the Union Army finally came to Athena in November 1862,” I said.

  “That’s correct,” Jasper replied. “That was a year after the children died. And Vidalia. She lasted less than half a year after burying her babies.”

  “One tragedy after another,” I said. That sounded weak to me, but I couldn’t figure out what to say to the man about the sad deaths of his family members more than a hundred years ago.

  “That’s the luck of the Singletarys.” His tone held a bitter edge. “That’s the way it’s been ever since, but I’m aiming to change all that. I am going to win this election and prove that I have what it takes. Beck Long and his hallowed family name aren’t going to stand in my way.”

  Again, I didn’t know quite how to respond to that. I hadn’t decided yet on my choice in the election, and I didn’t want to get into a discussion of it right now. I waited a moment to see whether he would continue. When he didn’t, I said, “Given all you’ve told me, I would say you’re hoping Rachel
Long’s diary will contain some proof of these allegations.”

  “Yes,” Singletary replied. “There may be some clue in there to tell us what really happened.”

  “If there is any kind of proof in the diaries that Rachel Long and her maid were responsible for those deaths, what will you do?”

  The hopeful politician narrowed his eyes. “Blacken the Long name so that they finally pay for their sins.” He smiled broadly. “And put myself in office.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  I could read nothing but malice into Jasper Singletary’s words. If it were indeed true that Rachel Long and her maid were somehow responsible for the deaths of Singletary’s family members, I could understand his wanting to have the truth known.

  The rancor he felt toward the Longs—that was harder to understand. Had the Singletarys made the Longs the scapegoats for every misfortune they suffered since the Civil War? For that to be true, I reckoned, the Longs would have to have been actively persecuting the Singletary clan for more than a hundred and fifty years.

  Or had the bitterness of that one terrible winter eaten into the Singletary family’s collective soul and kept the hatred alive all this time?

  That sounded melodramatic, but bitterness corroded. I was curious to find out what other incidents could have kept the feud fresh one generation after another. Another talk with Miss Eulalie was in order, and I might consult the Ducote sisters as well. If those three ladies couldn’t answer my questions, I doubted anyone could.

  While I woolgathered, Jasper Singletary stared at me, his impatience obvious.

  “I understand that you want to know the truth,” I said, “but have you considered the possibility that the diaries may contain no proof whatsoever that these allegations are valid?”

  “Yes, I have thought about it,” Singletary replied. “If the proof I need isn’t in the diaries, I’ll keep looking. One way or another I will prove that the Long family harbored a murderer, no matter how long ago it was.”