Hemlock

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Carole Humphreys. She’s here a couple of mornings a week, lending a hand with the cataloguing. And of course there’s Jenna.”

  I nodded. “She mentioned that she’s writing about the Herbal for her master’s degree. You’re her supervisor?”

  “Yes. She was my student, when I was still teaching. She’s getting course credit for the work she’s doing here—cataloguing and compiling finding aids. As you might guess, her work on the Herbal is on hold.” She gave me a direct look. “Until we get it back.”

  I avoided a direct reply. “The cataloguing alone sounds like a huge job.”

  “It is. Jenna and I are doing our best, and we get a few hours’ help a week from Carole. But there’s just so much.” She stood, went to one of the desks, and logged onto the computer. “Here. We’ll take the tour later, but let me show you what we’re up against first.”

  I went to stand beside her. On the screen was a photograph of a room about the size of my large bedroom upstairs, with windows along one wall. The other three walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves, and more shelves filled the center of the room, with only narrow aisles between. The shelves were filled with books, some of them double-shelved. There were stacks of books in the aisles.

  “This is one room,” Dorothea said. “There are two others—plus dozens of boxes that have never been opened. Miss Carswell was a packrat. Sometimes she bought single titles, carefully. Other times she seems to have bought a box without knowing what was in it. Either way, when the books got here, she simply put them on the shelves, in no particular order. And then bought more.”

  I frowned. “It’s pretty damp in these mountains, isn’t it? I wouldn’t think that high humidity is the best environment for books—especially old books.”

  Dorothea logged off the computer. “Oh, you’re so right! A few weeks after I arrived, I brought in a couple of air conditioning people and asked them what it would cost to climate-control the book storage areas. It’s not rocket science,” she added. “It’s a simple matter of buying and installing the right-sized units and doing whatever rewiring is necessary. The board has had my proposal for several months. They’re still trying to make up their minds about it.”

  I could hear the frustration in her voice. The job was obviously very difficult, and it was clear that Dorothea and the foundation’s board weren’t exactly made for each other.

  She turned away from the computer. “Anyway, you can see the problem. We don’t know what was here, so we don’t know whether anything else beside the Herbal was taken. And even if the Hemlock County sheriff arrests somebody and his garage turns out to be full of antique botany books and nature prints, it wouldn’t be easy to identify them as belonging to Hemlock House. Sunny didn’t—”

  The door opened and Jenna put her head in “Supper’s on the table,” she said cheerfully. “I thought we would eat in the kitchen, where it’s warmer.”

  “Good idea,” Dorothea said, with satisfaction. “The dining room is elegant, but it’s as big as Mammoth Cave and about as cold. I’d rather be homey and comfortable than elegant and shivering.” She made a face. “There’s certainly enough of that in this house.”

  Chapter Four

  American Indians used the cambium [the hemlock’s inner bark] as the base for breads and soups or mixed it with dried fruit and animal fat for pemmican. Natives and white settlers also made tea from hemlock leaves, which have a high vitamin C content.

  Eastern Hemlock, Tsuga canadensis

  United States Department of Agriculture

  Natural Resources Conservation Service

  The kitchen still had the original stone floor and painted wooden cupboards, along with a walk-in pantry, an old-fashioned porcelain sink, and overhead racks for pots and pans and utensils. It had been built to accommodate a team of cooks plus the battalion of servants it took to produce and serve elaborate meals for the Carswells, a houseful of guests, and a sizeable household staff. But it had recently been modernized with a gas range, a microwave, a dishwasher, and a large refrigerator-freezer. One corner was furnished with a small round table and chairs for dining.

  Jenna had laid three places at the table, which was centered with a pottery bowl of fragrant violets. Our meal began with a salad: fresh greens with avocado, tomato, cucumber, and feta cheese. Then the shepherd’s pie, hot, with a flaky crust and a rich and savory beef filling. And a carafe of red wine. The pie was delicious, and after a day of travel-snacking, I was seriously hungry.

  While the three of us ate, Jenna was mostly silent and Dorothea and I went back to our conversation. “Tell me about the foundation’s board,” I said. “How many members? Are they local?”

  “Eight,” Dorothea said. “Seven women, one man. Three of them live in Bethany, but the rest are in Asheville and Raleigh. They have lifetime appointments, and they can name their own successors.” She wrinkled her nose. “Kind of an incestuous arrangement, if you ask me. But that’s how it was organized in the bylaws of the trust Miss Carswell set up.”

  “Is it an active board?”

  She chuckled wryly. “Well, they actively know what they don’t want to do. They’re not very involved with the collection, except for Carole Humphreys, who volunteers a few hours a week with the cataloguing. The full board is supposed to meet four times a year. I meet with them and report on our progress with the collection.”

  I glanced around the cavernous kitchen. The house was well over a century old, and huge. It must cost quite a bit to maintain.

  “Is there enough income from the trust to keep this place going?” I asked.

  Dorothea nodded. “Enough to pay current staff salaries, utilities, taxes, repairs, and maintenance. Better yet, there’s enough to install the climate-control system and even to hire an additional one or two full-time people to help with the cataloguing—if the board could agree. So far, that hasn’t happened. Worse, they can’t agree on a long-term plan for the collection, or for the house and grounds, which is frustrating.” With a sigh, she pushed her plate back. “There are factions. It’s complicated.”

  I’ll bet. Trusts and boards are always complicated and sometimes generate all kinds of bad feeling. I didn’t envy Dorothea, having to deal with people who put board politics ahead of the job they were supposed to do. But that was an intractable problem and likely not relevant to the theft.

  Changing the subject, I said, “How about that list I suggested? The names of people who have visited the library since you came.”

  “I mostly worked on it,” Jenna said. “It wasn’t hard, actually, because we haven’t had that many guests. Just a handful of academic researchers—three from North Carolina, one from Georgia. They were already on the calendar.”

  “Opening to researchers was the board’s idea,” Dorothea said. “Eventually, it’s what we want to do, but we’re not ready for that yet. I’ve put a stop to visits until the collection has been catalogued.”

  “The garden was open to the public one weekend,” Jenna added.

  Dorothea nodded. “We don’t have the names of all the people who came to that event because they didn’t all sign the guest book. But that was in October, months before the Herbal disappeared. And none of those visitors came into the house.” She frowned. “At least, they weren’t supposed to. But anyway, yes—Jenna has the list for you. Names and contact information, where we have it.”

  “I also noted who has keys to this place,” Jenna added. “There aren’t many, but I thought you might want to know who they are.”

  “Thank you,” I said. It probably wouldn’t be of much use, though. Keys can be copied. And people don’t always remember where they’ve put their key or when they saw it last. “When did the theft occur?”

  “Hang on a sec.” Jenna pushed her chair back. “If everybody is ready for dessert, I’ll take your plates and bring coffee.”

  “And I’ll get the dess
ert,” Dorothea said.

  We ended our supper with coffee and warm apple crisp topped with vanilla ice cream. I forked up a bite, savoring the cinnamon-and-nutmeg flavored apples. “Back to the theft,” I said. “When did it happen?”

  “Two weeks ago today,” Dorothea said, stirring her coffee. “Jenna is the one who discovered it. She wanted to check something in the text, but when she went to the display case where it was kept, the Herbal was gone.”

  Jenna sighed. “I can still work on my project, but I have to rely on the online copies, like the one from the Raven Library at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Miss Carswell’s copy is different. And special.”

  “Special how?”

  Jenna hesitated. With a little smile, Dorothea said, “Go ahead, Jenna. It’s your project. You know far more about it than I do.”

  Jenna leaned eagerly forward. “Elizabeth’s book was first published as a serial.”

  I frowned. “You mean, installments?”

  “Yes. Four pages every week, five hundred pages altogether, over a period of almost two-and-a-half years. After all the weekly installments were out, she published a two-volume set. The usual binding appears to have been morocco or calf leather, sometimes with gilt edges. Depending on what somebody wanted to pay.”

  “I saw quite a few copies online,” I said. “Different editions, printed at different times. And even several modern reprints. In paperback.”

  Since I learned about the Herbal, I had done research on it and wanted to do more. Online, I had discovered plenty of photographs of the book, in various bindings. Most fascinating were a couple of sites where you can virtually turn the pages and study the plants and read Elizabeth’s carefully hand-engraved descriptions. The one I like best is owned by the British Museum. It opens to a meticulously detailed, carefully hand-colored drawing of a dandelion in full bloom.*

  Jenna picked up her cup and took a sip of coffee. “The Hemlock Herbal is special because all five hundred of the plates are bound in a single volume, with an ornately carved calfskin cover, eight silver corners, and a pair of ornate silver clasps. The book has Elizabeth Blackwell’s signature and an engraved armorial bookplate signed and dated by Sir Hans Sloane, her sponsor and supporter. The illustrations are all carefully hand-colored, probably by Elizabeth herself. It’s absolutely stunning.”

  “You probably know that the London apothecaries were trained in the Chelsea Physic Garden,” Dorothea said. “The plants were grown there as medicinals and harvested for the apothecaries’ laboratory, where herbal medicines were made. Elizabeth drew the plants from life—which means that she must have spent hours in the garden, sketching them, rather than copying the pictures from another book.”

  “Which is quite different from the way the earlier English herbals were produced,” Jenna added. “The herbals compiled by Gerard and Culpeper and Parkinson all contain stylized woodcuts that couldn’t have been much help if you wanted to actually identify a plant. Elizabeth’s copperplate engravings are highly detailed and accurate. They can actually help you find the plant you’re looking for.”

  “That’s important,” Dorothea said with a little smile. “Especially if you’re trying to tell the difference between look-alikes. Between Queen Anne’s lace, which was used for birth control, and poison hemlock, for instance. Elizabeth’s drawings were almost as good as photographs. The earlier woodcuts weren’t much help when it came to identifying the plants.”

  Jenna nodded. “Plus, the earlier books were full of irrelevant and questionable information, including lots of superstition and old wives’ tales. Elizabeth was succinct. She wrote down what doctors and apothecaries were actually prescribing the plants for, at that time. We wouldn’t call her book ‘scientific,’ by the standards of our day. But that’s what she’s aiming for. That’s why she calls it a ‘curious’ herbal.”

  “I was wondering about that word,” I said.

  “Everybody does,” Dorothea said. “Back then, it meant ‘careful’ or ‘meticulously accurate,’ something like that.”

  Jenna nodded. “A Curious Herbal was as good as it got in the seventeen-thirties. Gold standard. Amazing that Elizabeth could pull it off, in the midst of all the politics and intrigues around the garden.”

  “And that husband of hers.” Dorothea shook her head. “He certainly didn’t help matters.”

  “I’d like to hear about him,” I said, “but right now, I need to know more about the theft. When was the last time you saw the book?”

  “Two weeks ago last Friday,” Jenna said. “There’s not enough light in the library, so I had brought the book to my desk in the workroom. Carole Humphreys, one of the board volunteers, came in. She’s been interested in the Herbal, so we looked at it together for a little while. Then it went back where it belonged.”

  “I was returning a trolley full of books to the library,” Dorothea said. “I took the Herbal as well, and put it in the display case.”

  “And locked it?”

  “Of course. And put the key back where it’s kept.”

  “Which is?”

  “On a hook under a shelf beside the door. Then Carole left and Jenna and I drove to Asheville to see a play. We stayed over to go shopping on Saturday and went to a movie on Saturday night. We drove home on Sunday.”

  “It was Monday before I saw that the Herbal was gone,” Jenna said.

  “That’s when you phoned the police?”

  Dorothea frowned. “I’m afraid it didn’t quite work that way. I called Mrs. Cousins, the board chair, down in Ashville, and told her what had happened. She called the other members and they talked it over. The next day, she telephoned to tell me that the board thought I should report the theft to Sheriff Rogers, but they didn’t want me to make a public announcement. Mrs. Cousins was quite specific about that. No public announcement.”

  “But that plays right into the thief’s hands,” I protested.

  “I know. That’s what I told her.” Dorothea picked up her coffee cup, took a drink, and set it down again. “But she’s the boss. I had to ask the sheriff to keep it quiet, and he agreed.” She sighed. “Because he had to, I believe. Mrs. Cousins had a conversation with him.”

  I understood Dorothea’s frustration. The board was obviously more concerned about the foundation’s reputation than about getting to the bottom of the theft—or getting the Herbal back.

  But I knew there was more. “Penny told me that you’ve found pages missing from other rare books of botanical prints,” I said. “How many?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Dorothea said. “We’ve surveyed only a few of the most important books. We keep looking, but we don’t have the staff for a full inventory. We can’t search every book. And even if we find a page or two missing, we have no idea when that happened. Maybe the book wasn’t complete when Miss Carswell acquired it.”

  “And since we don’t have a reliable inventory,” Jenna added, “we don’t really know what other books might have been taken.”

  “We gave the sheriff a list of what we think might be missing,” Dorothea said. “But we told him it was a work in progress. We haven’t found everything—we’ve barely got a start.”

  Jenna gave me a crooked smile. “And we haven’t found the secret room yet, either. Who knows what treasures it holds?”

  “You were serious about that secret room?” I asked quizzically.

  “Every old house of this size has at least one secret room,” Dorothea said in a dismissive tone.

  “But Dorothea,” Jenna began.

  “I wouldn’t put too much faith in that old story,” Dorothea said firmly.

  “Who was here at the house when the Herbal was stolen?” I asked.

  “Nobody,” Jenna said, “Joe and Rose spent the weekend with Rose’s parents—it was her mother’s birthday.”

  “And Jenna and I were in Asheville, which we’d b
een planning for several weeks,” Dorothea said. “We locked up when we left, and there was no evidence that anybody had tried to break in.”

  “Alarms?” I asked. “Video surveillance?” Surely, with a valuable collection . . .

  “Cameras and an alarm system are on the list of things I proposed to the board right after I came,” Dorothea said. “They haven’t been approved yet.”

  I was feeling stymied. “How about the sheriff? Did he make a thorough investigation?”

  “I don’t know how thorough it was,” Dorothea replied. “He questioned Rose and Joe, but I don’t think he saw their nephew. Jenna, of course. Carole and Margaret, probably.” She took a breath. “And me.”

  Jenna looked at Dorothea. “Poor Dorothea,” she said sympathetically.

  Dorothea winced. “He believes I did it. Since I didn’t, he can’t have any proof. But that doesn’t keep him from thinking it was me. Or wishing it was me. Or something.”

  Earlier, I had noticed the worry lines between her eyes, and I wondered if they were the product of this threatening situation. If so, I certainly couldn’t blame her. “Did he say why he suspected you?”

  “No. Personally, I think it’s because I’m handy.” Her lips tightened. “And I’m afraid that Mrs. Cousins agrees with him. The two of us—Mrs. Cousins and I—didn’t get off on the right foot. She thought my proposal for installing the alarm system was ‘unnecessary.’ The theft has strained things between us. I suspect that she thinks I took the Herbal just to prove a point.”

  “Prove what point?”

  “To demonstrate that the cameras and the alarm are really necessary. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I were fired.” She nodded toward Jenna. “If that happens, it will mean a big interruption in Jenna’s work.”

  “I wouldn’t stay without you, anyway,” Jenna said loyally. “But they’d be silly to fire you, Dorothea. You’re just beginning to bring some organization to this collection. And there’s simply nobody else who could make sense of it.”