A Murder for the Books

by Victoria Gilbert

  I cast Richard a quick smile. “She’s going to bring food too, you know. No one comes to this house without being offered something to eat.”

  “I’m familiar with that habit.” Richard sat back against the glider cushions. “My aunt’s the same. My dad’s sister, I mean. My mom is an only child. She was the one actually related to Paul Dassin. Only living relative when he died, although supposedly he had fostered a boy back in the 1950s. But that kid left town and disappeared at age eighteen. Since no one could track him down after Paul’s death, and the will didn’t mention him, the house came to my mom.”

  “I see.” I sank into the cushions of the wicker chair. The sun spilling through the windows was filtered by wooden venetian blinds, painting the concrete floor with brushstrokes of light.

  “It would make a nice studio,” Richard observed before turning to look at me. “So your uncle died a while back?”

  “Years ago. Before I was born, actually. I never met him.”

  Richard’s gaze slid off me to focus on a battered wooden easel still occupying one corner of the room. “Was he a professional artist?”

  “He was, although not famous. But he did sell some work here and there.”

  “Rather like my great-uncle, although he was an author. I guess since your uncle lived here in your aunt’s home, her family money supported him?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s not much different from Paul. He received an inheritance that allowed him to purchase the Cooper place and retire from journalism to write full time. Otherwise, I guess he would’ve gone back to the city and his newspaper work.”

  “Paul Dassin’s a bit better known than my Uncle Andrew. At least around here. We have all his books in the library.”

  “Might be the only library that does. Only one book ever made him any real money.” Richard lifted his arms in a graceful stretch. “Sorry, a bit tense. Need to loosen the muscles.”

  “No problem,” I said, and it wasn’t. Except for my stare, which might’ve lingered a bit too long on the elegant lines of his upper body. “That book about the Cooper case is the famous one, right?”

  “Not famous exactly. In its day, maybe. But yeah, A Fatal Falsehood. He turned the true story into fiction, but everyone knew it was about the Coopers. He covered the trial as a journalist.”

  “And fell in love with Eleanora Cooper.” Aunt Lydia entered the room, somehow managing to use her cane while carrying a large wicker basket filled with an assortment of bottles, glasses, and food. “No, no, don’t get up. I’m going to set this down right here.” She bustled over to a tall, narrow side table and pulled items out of the basket.

  Richard studied Aunt Lydia as she uncorked a sherry bottle. “You seem pretty sure of that.”

  “Why, yes, I am. Now what would you like? Or don’t you drink? I can fetch some water or lemonade if that’s the case.”

  “I think I spy scotch. That will do,” Richard said. “And just some of those grapes, if you don’t mind.”

  Aunt Lydia poured him a glass of the amber liquid, then placed a few of her homemade cheese wafers on a plate along with some grapes. “You must try some of these,” she said as she crossed to him. “I insist.”

  “Thank you.” Richard took the proffered plate and glass and promptly placed them on the glass-topped end table beside the glider. “Now tell me, what makes you so certain my great-uncle was in love with Eleanora Cooper? That rumor’s circulated in my family for years, but no one’s ever been entirely sure it was true.”

  “Amy, you can get your own,” Aunt Lydia said as she poured herself a full glass of sherry and sat in the wooden rocker near the side table.

  I smiled, not offended by my aunt’s order. It only meant I was family, not a guest. Visitors were to be pampered, but family, as she often told me, could take care of themselves.

  Aunt Lydia studied Richard, her lips curving into a smile. She loved to tell stories from the past, especially if she could reveal something other people didn’t know. “Well, you see, he told me so himself.”

  “Really?” Richard slid forward until he was perched on the edge of the glider. “When was this?”

  “Often, actually.” Aunt Lydia crossed her legs at the ankles and demurely sipped her sherry. “We were close. My father’s father died when I was three, and my mother’s folks lived in the Midwest, so we barely saw them. Paul Dassin was more like a grandfather to me than a neighbor. Although we had to keep our visits secret.” She tilted her head and gave Richard a little smile. “Which just added to the charm, of course.”

  “Secret? Why?” I paused in pouring myself a tumbler of scotch to glance at my aunt. “You’ve talked about Paul Dassin as your neighbor but never mentioned this before.”

  Aunt Lydia shrugged. “Old habits die hard.” She turned her brilliant gaze on Richard. “Poor Paul. So many people in town would never accept him. He was an outsider like Eleanora, so that was one strike against him. But the final straw was when his articles swayed public opinion outside town and helped Eleanora Cooper win an acquittal.”

  “He truly believed she was innocent.” Richard picked up his tumbler and took a swallow of his scotch.

  “But he was the only one who did. Of course, the case was tried in another town, since no one in Taylorsford could claim to be fair and impartial.”

  I clutched my drink. “But he was your neighbor. Why’d you have to sneak around to visit him?”

  Aunt Lydia pursed her lips and sat in silence for a moment before speaking. “Because my grandmother hated him.”

  “Rose Litton?” Richard sat back, studying my aunt’s stoic face. “My great-uncle included several mentions of her in his research for his book about the Cooper case, although he used her maiden name, Rose Baker. Guess she wasn’t married at that point. I haven’t examined all the papers carefully, but I remember that name.”

  I thought back on information I’d recently discovered in the library archives. “Yes, my Great-Grandmother Rose. She was involved in the trial, you know. Witness for the prosecution.”

  Richard sat up at that. “What? I knew she was a neighbor, but I’m surprised she testified during the trial. Wasn’t she rather young at the time?”

  “It’s true she was only seventeen in 1925,” I said, “but she was apparently a key witness.”

  Aunt Lydia pressed her back against the hard rungs of her rocking chair, her expression as shuttered as an abandoned house. “I didn’t realize you knew that, Amy.”

  “Well, like Richard, I decided to do some historical research.” I was confused by my aunt’s reaction to this news. She was clutching her sherry glass so tightly I was afraid it would shatter.

  “What brought that on?” my aunt asked, keeping her voice light.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Guess I realized how little I knew about my family history. Figured I might as well take advantage of my research skills during some slow times at the library.”

  “You could’ve just asked me.” Aunt Lydia sat forward.

  “Sure, but . . .” I polished off my drink, almost sputtering as too much of the scotch slid down my throat. Plunking my glass down next to my chair, I took a deep breath before speaking again. “I like to discover stuff for myself. Look through original documents and see if I can piece the story together. No offense, Aunt Lydia, but you would only provide your side of things. What you were told—not necessarily what actually happened. If I’m going to conduct proper research, I prefer to dig up the facts for myself.”

  Aunt Lydia placed her empty glass on the side table. “Fair enough.”

  Richard stood and crossed to stand near the windows, absently flexing one foot and then the other. “Now that’s what I call research assistance. Seems you’ve already started compiling the information I need, Amy, even before my arrival. What else did you discover? Connected to Eleanora Cooper, I mean.”

  Richard exuded a physical energy that filled the room. I sank back against the chair cushions. “That Great-Grandmother suppose
dly saw stuff that made her suspicious. Some old herbal, for one thing. Apparently Rose spied Eleanora consulting it before Daniel fell sick and told the prosecution there were recipes for poisons in the book. In Eleanora’s handwriting.”

  “An herbal?” Richard asked. “What’s that?”

  I met his interested gaze squarely. This was fortunately a topic I’d researched for a library patron recently. “A book containing information on plants, especially in relation to their medicinal properties. They were typically compiled by people who practiced herbal medicine. They can include a lot of folklore and even some references to magic, but there are legitimate treatments in them as well. I mean, like willow bark being used for fevers and such. A lot of herbalists wrote down their successful recipes and then eventually bound the loose pages into a type of book. Herbals in some form have been around forever—there are even examples from ancient Egypt and China. This one could’ve been in Eleanora’s family for a long time, since supposedly her mother and grandmother were known as healers in their mountain community.”

  “Really?” Richard turned away to pace, making a circuit around the porch before speaking again. “So this herbal was part of the trial?”

  “Yes, it was evidence,” Aunt Lydia explained. “Like Amy said, Grandma Rose apparently found it after Eleanora was arrested and turned it over to the investigators. It was damaged, but Rose claimed the damning pages were missing because Eleanora had torn them out to cover her tracks. Rose testified she’d seen Eleanora writing the lost pages and swore they had detailed some type of herbal poison.”

  I slid to the edge of my chair. “But see, Richard, since the pages were missing, no one could prove Rose’s claim. That was actually a factor in the acquittal. Because they only had my great-grandmother’s word that such pages existed.”

  Aunt Lydia shrugged. “True, and I guess the testimony of a seventeen-year-old girl wasn’t enough to convince the court.”

  “So what happened to the herbal after the trial?” Richard stopped pacing and leaned back against a window near the side table.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything about that in the archival documents,” I said.

  “It was lost?” Richard asked.

  Aunt Lydia shook her head. “No, it wasn’t lost. But it was also never returned to Eleanora.”

  A thought slid into my mind as if whispered by some phantom voice—something about the actual fate of the herbal. “They gave it back to Rose, didn’t they?”

  Aunt Lydia gasped and stood up so quickly that I feared her injured leg might give way and send her crashing to the floor.

  Chapter Four

  Richard closed the short distance to Aunt Lydia in two strides and offered her his arm.

  “Thank you,” she said, leaning against him. “I always forget about this bum leg of mine. So annoying.” She straightened and waved him off. “I’m fine now. Just pour me another sherry, would you, Richard?”

  He guided her back to the rocker before complying with her request. “So the herbal went to Rose Baker after the trial?”

  “Yes, she kept it hidden in a trunk in the attic for many years.” Aunt Lydia settled into the rocker before taking the drink from Richard’s outstretched hand.

  I gazed at my aunt’s serious face. “But why?”

  “I don’t know. The authorities apparently thought they should return it to her since she had given it to them. Anyway, Eleanora Cooper had disappeared—some say she went back to the community she came from. She was never seen in Taylorsford again.”

  “Leaving behind the house and lands and mountain lumber lots everyone had claimed she killed Daniel for.” Richard leaned back against one low windowsill, his leg stretched out in what looked like a habitual dancer’s pose. “See, that part never made sense to my great-uncle, and it certainly seems strange to me.”

  “Well, as I said, Eleanora was an outsider. Daniel met her on one of his trips to oversee his lumber operations. She came from some isolated community up in the mountains.” Aunt Lydia swirled the sherry in her glass.

  Poor Eleanora. I knew what it was like to feel like an outsider in Taylorsford, and I had family connections even if I wasn’t strictly a native. “So where is the herbal now? Still in the attic?”

  “No.” Aunt Lydia took a sip of her drink before setting it on the floor beside her chair. “I donated it to the town library. Mainly because I didn’t want to burn it.”

  “Why would you ever consider destroying such a thing?” Richard flexed his extended foot.

  “That’s what Grandma Rose wanted.” Aunt Lydia met my astonished gaze calmly, but I noticed her hands pleating the soft material of her blouse as it lay draped in her lap. “I didn’t even know she had the thing, but when she was on her deathbed, she demanded I open an old trunk and bring her the book. When she saw it in my hands, she told me to burn it. Of course, Grandma was scarcely in her right mind by that point. She’d had serious dementia for almost twelve years—started showing signs of it in 1985, the year Paul Dassin died.”

  Richard stared intently at Aunt Lydia. “You were living here then and caring for her?”

  “Yes.” Aunt Lydia’s hands stilled. “It was our home, you see. Our family home, anyway. Debbie, Amy’s mother, and I lived with our parents a few blocks away but visited Grandma Rose often. My grandfather died right after I was born, and my dad was an only child, so he felt obligated to visit his mother almost every Sunday. Then when I was fourteen and Debbie was ten, our parents were killed in a car crash. Grandma Rose had been living all alone in this big house. So she took us in.”

  “My mother hated it,” I said when Richard glanced in my direction. “Never liked this house. I don’t really know why. She always claims Rose was mean and far too strict, but I don’t think that was the only reason.”

  Aunt Lydia shrugged. “No, not the only one. Debbie was totally traumatized by the death of our parents, and I was not much help, being rather a mess myself. And Grandma Rose was no help at all. She thought Debbie was malingering, as she called it. Kept telling my poor grieving sister to buck up and get over her foolishness. Grandma Rose was never very warm and nurturing.” Aunt Lydia’s smile at this recollection resembled a grimace. “So Debbie grew up hating Taylorsford in general and this house in particular. She sent her daughter to visit me when Amy was old enough to travel on her own but wouldn’t come back herself. I always have to make the trip to see her and the rest of the family.”

  “Did Rose say why she wanted you to burn the herbal?” Richard asked.

  “Honestly, she was so confused at that point, I questioned the reasons for any of her demands. But she was pretty clear she wanted that book burned. So I said I’d do it.”

  I grabbed my tumbler and rose to my feet. “But you didn’t.”

  “I hated the idea of burning any book—and a historical artifact? I just couldn’t. Figured I’d donate it to the library after her death.”

  Richard caught my eye as I crossed to the side table. “That’s the first thing I’d like to see in the archives for sure.”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t come across it yet.”

  Aunt Lydia sighed. “And you won’t. I asked the former director about it a few years back. Apparently the herbal went missing not long after I gave it to the library.”

  “Well, damn.” Richard stepped aside as I reached for the scotch decanter. “I sure would’ve liked to inspect that book.”

  “But now”—Aunt Lydia looked up at Richard with a bright smile—“I think we’ve talked your ears off enough. You probably want to head home and relax after everything that’s happened today. Don’t let us keep you.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. Just going home to an empty house.”

  Aunt Lydia tilted her head and stared up at the slowly spinning ceiling fan. “Poor Doris. It’s so odd. Of all the people in town, I’d have said she was the least likely to be murdered.”

  Richard cast Aunt Lydia an inquisitive glance. “Did you know her well
?”

  “All my life, although we were never close. Doris Beckert, she was before her marriage. The Beckerts have lived here forever, so we couldn’t help but be acquainted. And even though Doris was a year behind me in school, in a town like this, you tended to hang out with everyone around your age. She was always nice enough, although rather boy crazy. Married Peter Virts right out of high school. He joined the Navy, and they moved around until Don—that’s their eldest—was born. Then Doris and the kids stayed here even while Peter was deployed.”

  Richard motioned toward the scotch decanter, which I was holding. “Think I’ll grab a quick refill, if that’s okay.” He glanced at my empty glass.

  Yeah, I know I shouldn’t have more. I sighed and set down the scotch as the memory of Charles’s many admonishments concerning excessive drinking or eating repeated in my head.

  But Richard just motioned toward my glass as he picked up the decanter. “More? I wouldn’t blame you for downing an entire bottle after the shock of today.”

  “No, thanks,” I said but gave him a warm smile.

  He smiled back before pouring a little scotch into his tumbler. “Donald Virts, that’s the dentist, right? Has an office right outside of town?”

  Aunt Lydia made a face. “That’s him. Not as nice as his mother, I’m afraid. But then, his dad died when he was only seven, a year after Bethany was born. Killed in some action over there in the Persian Gulf. So Don grew up with just his mom and sister.”

  “He’s not our dentist,” I volunteered. “Aunt Lydia thinks he charges too much. And I think he’s just . . . unpleasant.” I frowned, remembering how Don had chewed out Bethany once in front of all her customers because she’d forgotten to pay some bill for their mother.

  “Anyway”—Aunt Lydia shot me a stern look—“poor Doris was left with two little kids and nothing but her husband’s pension, so she opened up a diner in town. You may have eaten there already. The Heapin’ Plate?”

  “Yeah, it’s actually not bad,” Richard said before taking a swig from his glass.

  “Doris was always a great cook. Taught Bethany everything she knew, which was a blessing since Doris isn’t . . . sorry, wasn’t herself these days.”