Why had Rachel kept two diaries for roughly the same period? The one I read did not use all the pages of the book like this one did. Was the one I read the original diary of the period, and the one on my desk perhaps a fuller version Rachel wrote later? I knew Mary Boykin Chesnut edited and rewrote parts of her diary before the book, A Diary from Dixie, was published in 1905. The diary was not published in Mary’s lifetime. From what I could remember she died in the mid-1880s and asked a friend to see about getting it published.
Rachel couldn’t have known, of course, about Mary Chesnut’s diary, but perhaps she had a similar ambition, to see her diary published as a record of her experiences growing up in the South through a tragic era.
Miss Eulalie might be able to shed light on the subject, although I now felt diffident about asking her. There might also, I realized, be information in the correspondence and other papers in the Long collection.
All that could wait. Right now I wanted to delve into this volume of the diary to see what information it might contain that would be in any way relevant to present-day events.
I went back to the gap in the pages. The last sentence before the missing pages read, “Words cannot express the horror and sickness I feel over . . .”
Over what? I wanted to scream. How frustrating. This lead-in told me that there must be something sensational in the missing pages.
I suppressed my irritation and read the first words on the page after the gap. They were just as intriguing as the words preceding the gap: “behind us, never to be mentioned or recalled as long as I draw breath.”
I glanced down the page to see the date of the next entry: September 30, 1863.
What had happened between August 10 and September 30, 1863, besides the deaths of Rachel’s husband and father-in-law? The Union Army didn’t come to Athena until the winter of 1863, in November, I thought.
I would have to do some digging to see what I could find about the summer of 1863 in Athena. Dr. Brooke’s dissertation might cast light on it. I closed the diary and set it aside.
A knock at the door caught my attention before I could resume reading the dissertation. I looked up to see Jasper Singletary approaching me.
“I apologize for dropping by unannounced like this, Mr. Harris.” He extended his hand, and I shook it. “I took the chance you’d be here and would have time to talk with me about the diary.”
“I’m glad to see you.” I indicated a chair. “Please sit. I have to tell you I’ve been curious about your reaction to the information related to your ancestors.”
Singletary regarded me in silence for a moment. I couldn’t read his expression.
“My first reaction is that Rachel Long was a liar,” he said. “She came across to me as a bit self-righteous about her charitable behavior. Just because she didn’t admit to anything in that diary doesn’t mean she didn’t poison the children and their mother deliberately.”
He surprised me. I thought the first thing he’d address would the news about Celeste. Instead he focused on his grievance against the Longs.
“I can’t deny that,” I said. For now, I decided quickly, I wasn’t going to tell him about the diary he read being a partial duplicate of another one. I wanted to figure out the reason for its existence before I talked with him or any of the Longs about it. “Rachel could very well have omitted anything that would make her look guilty. You’ll have to look elsewhere for your proof that she was a murderess.”
“I’m not giving up,” he said firmly. He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded me with that enigmatic expression again. “Rachel was also lying about my great-great-grandmother Celeste. Don’t you think we would have known before now if she had been a slave before she married my great-great-grandfather Franklin?” He snorted.
“What kind of family documents do you have?” I asked.
The question obviously surprised him. “What do you mean? Are you talking about birth certificates?”
“No, because I don’t think they gave them out in the 1860s. I’ll have to look that up,” I said. “I’m talking about a marriage license, or some proof that Franklin and Celeste married. It was illegal for a black woman—and Celeste would have been considered black even though she was allegedly of mixed race—to marry a white man, and vice versa.”
“You think if I have a copy of a license showing they were legally married, that would prove she was white?” Jasper shrugged. “Look, it doesn’t matter to me whether she was or she wasn’t a slave in the long run. By all accounts she and Franklin had a happy marriage even though they were dirt poor all their life together. I’m not ashamed of my background, but I am curious why nobody in my family, including my great-aunt who’s ninety-eight and still sharp, knows anything about this. I asked Aunt Addie this morning, and she laughed. Celeste died when Aunt Addie was fifteen.”
“The fact that your great-aunt knew Celeste doesn’t rule out the possibility. If Celeste had been a slave, she and her husband would have taken great pains to keep it from the rest of the family.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Jasper said. “But how come no one ever came up to Aunt Addie or my grandfather and said anything about their grandmother being a slave once upon a time? If Celeste had been a slave, people in town would have known. You couldn’t hide something like that.”
I couldn’t argue with his logic, and I told him so. “That’s been troubling me, too. For the moment, let’s assume that it’s true that she was a slave. If that became public knowledge now, would it have a bad effect on your campaign?”
“I might lose some votes from narrow-minded people.” He sounded tired all of a sudden. “Look, people come up with all kind of nutty reasons not to vote for a candidate. They think he has a squint and looks like a crook, or the other candidate is more attractive. If it does turn out to be true, who knows? I could actually pick up support from black voters in this district.”
I couldn’t tell whether he really believed what he had told me, about not being all that concerned over Celeste’s racial heritage, or whether, in typical politician fashion, he was saying what he thought was most expedient in the situation. I hoped it was the former.
Singletary stood. “I’ve taken up enough of your time, and I’ve got to get on the road. More campaign stops. I’d also better do what I can to find out if Beck Long and his handlers plan to make this stuff public.”
We shook hands again, and out he went. I sat again and stared at the diaries on my desk. On a sudden whim, I got up and went to the storage room next door. I found the fifth volume and brought it back to my desk. I opened it to a random page beside one of the other volumes and began to compare them.
After fifteen minutes I gave up. The handwriting looked pretty much the same to me. The fifth volume had the same binding, the same paper, from everything I could see. Still . . .
I hesitated for a moment, then picked up the phone. I punched in Stewart Delacorte’s number on campus and hoped he would answer.
THIRTY-ONE
Stewart answered after several rings, and I identified myself.
“Hi, Charlie, how are you?” Stewart asked.
“Doing fine. I’m working on a new project,” I said. “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”
“Sure,” Stewart said. “What do you need?”
“It might be better if I explained in person,” I said. “Can I come over to your office sometime today?”
Stewart chuckled. “I’m not in the office at the moment. I have my office phone forwarded to my cell phone. I’m home, actually. How about I come to your office in about twenty minutes?”