Perhaps as Agnes Larrabee took that first gulp of cooling tea, she did taste some of the bitterness of the poison. But a well-bred Charlestonian simply does not spew as lesser creatures might. So it was that Agnes Larrabee swallowed her death potion with as much dignity as she could manage, and within minutes died beneath a down-filled duvet, clutching the gold crucifix on the chain around her neck and calling out the name of Jesus, her cries of agony lost in the crashing thunder and the rain that poured upon her mansion.
It has been commonly maintained that Timothy’s downward spiral into juvenile delinquency and subsequent years in federal prison resulted from the terrible combination of innocently delivering the instrument of his grandmother’s death and then watching her die in such a horrible manner.
Yet I now know that what I believed about Timothy Larrabee as I grew up in Charleston was only a small part of the whole truth.
For the childhood that broke him held other stories.
Far more secret.
And far worse.
Out of the Shadows Page 27