I had to confess to Helen Louise later that I couldn’t remember what she served me for lunch that day. My brain was so focused on the memoir, Rachel Long’s diary, and the murder of Marie Steverton and how they all connected, I couldn’t process much else.
When Diesel and I both finished and Melba came to collect us for the drive back to campus, I at least remembered to wave good-bye to Helen Louise. She was busy with customers but gave me a quick wave back.
Melba chattered about something she and her friend discussed over lunch but I barely heard her. Diesel warbled a few times from the backseat, and Melba laughed.
“At least one of you is paying attention to what I’ve been saying.” She pulled her car into her parking space in the library lot and turned to grin at me.
“Sorry.” I had the memoir clutched to my chest like a favorite teddy bear. “I didn’t mean to ignore you; I’m just really preoccupied right now.”
“No kidding,” Melba said as we got out of the car. “It’s okay. I know you. Go on up to your office and start reading.”
“Thanks, and thanks again for the ride to the bakery and back.” Diesel and I followed her into the building through the back door, and we parted ways in front of the stairs.
“Come on, boy.” I jogged up the stairs, but Diesel made it up to the office door several seconds ahead of me. He thought I was playing, and he liked to race me on the stairs. Sometimes he acted almost like a dog.
After I let us into the office, I locked the door behind us. I didn’t want to be surprised by any other visitors this afternoon while I dug into both the memoir and the missing diary pages.
While Diesel got comfy on his windowsill, I sat at my desk and mulled over which one I should read first. After several moments of going back and forth between the two, I finally opted for the memoir, even though there were fewer diary pages.
I picked up the memoir and opened it. The book had a frontispiece, a portrait-style photograph in black and white of Rachel Afton Long, taken near the end of her life. She would have been around seventy at that point.
I studied the picture. Rachel’s rather stern gaze in partial profile made her look like a formidable old lady. I could tell from her bone structure that she had been a beautiful woman in her youth, though she did not seem to have aged well. Her mouth had a slightly petulant twist to it, as if Rachel resented being old. Perhaps it was simply the result of the tragedies of her life, the losses during the war and their effect on her.
The book was published in 1911, the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. By then Rachel would have been dead for about fifteen years.
I turned the page to the foreword from the author, Angeline McCarthy Long. The book was based on “reminiscences of the life of a Southern gentlewoman during times of great strife and their aftermath.” That sounded typical for both the time in which the book was written and for the intent of such a memoir. Angeline Long went on to say that she had the privilege of knowing her husband’s grandmother intimately only the final two years of her life, but had been so in awe of Rachel’s experiences and character she wanted to share her love and admiration with others. She stated that she had first written the memoir three years after Rachel’s death in 1896 but had waited until the anniversary year to see it published. She ended the foreword by writing, “I know all the citizens of Athena will join with me in celebrating the life and contributions to our wonderful town and, indeed, our great state of Mississippi, as we remember those sad years of the war. From Rachel Afton Long may we all take inspiration for the future and model ourselves upon a woman whose charitable works enriched us all.”
I couldn’t help but feel a bit cynical at the cloying sweetness of Angeline Long’s words. She made Rachel Long sound almost like a candidate for sainthood rather than a flesh-and-blood woman. Once I had time to read the complete diary, I thought it would be interesting to come back to the memoir and read it again after making my own assessment of Rachel’s character.
The memoir was brief, only seventy-eight pages, and the print was good-sized. It wouldn’t take me long to read. If the rest of the book was as sickly sweet as the foreword, I’d be glad of the brevity.
I plunged in and quickly discovered that the memoir consisted mostly of Angeline’s retelling of stories told to her by Rachel. The first of these was the tale of Andrew Adalbert Long, Jr.’s courting of Rachel Afton.
Upon first glance Rachel knew that she was destined to share her life with this dashing young man. Though it meant leaving her family in Louisiana to head north to Athena, she went willingly. “He was everything most gallant and handsome,” Rachel once told me. “The epitome of every manly virtue with none of the vices that bedeviled so many of his acquaintance.”
Angeline went on to share certain details of the actual courtship and its successful conclusion, resulting in the couple’s wedding. Then she moved quickly forward to Rachel’s stories of life at Bellefontaine during the war. Some of the incidents sounded vaguely familiar, and I realized I had read about them in the forged diary.
That was interesting. I wondered whether this book was the chief source the forger used.
The more I read, the more convinced I became that I was right.
When Angeline launched into the story of Rachel’s charitable acts—and in particular those involving the Singletary family—I no longer doubted it. The phrasing sounded very similar, and I knew if I compared some of the passages, they would be word for word the same.
The story of the pitiful appeal from Vidalia Singletary on behalf of her children was identical as was Rachel’s response. Then I hit upon one detail that was significantly different from the story in the forged diary.
According to Angeline Long, the girl Celeste was not a slave from the Afton plantation in Louisiana. Instead she was the daughter of the overseer there and had been sent north at her father’s plea to keep her from making an unsuitable alliance with a poor white farmer’s son there. Celeste did work for the Longs—as a seamstress.
No wonder Miss Eulalie’s copy of this little book disappeared, I thought. Lucinda Long couldn’t afford to let anyone get hold of it.
Then another question struck me. What had prompted Marie to take the college library copy and hide it in her carrel?
THIRTY-FIVE
I remembered that Marie Steverton knew about the diaries from the mayor before Mrs. Long brought them in. Marie had made her interest in them plain to me. She was evidently determined that Rachel Long’s diaries would finally help her earn tenure at Athena College, after failed attempts at other schools. So, my reasoning ran, she took the memoir from the library collection and hid it. Then she went to the circulation desk and told them it was missing. After a quick check by one of the staff—that was the usual procedure—the library declared it lost.
On a hunch I decided to call the circ desk and talk to the head of the department, Lisa Krause. She answered right away.
After the preliminaries were out of the way, I said, “I know circulation information—who checks out a particular book—is confidential, but that’s not what I need to know. Here’s the situation. On Monday a book had its status changed to lost, and I wanted to double-check the procedure on that. At what point is the status actually changed?”
Lisa said, “That’s easy enough. A student or professor comes to the desk and says, I can’t find such-and-such book. It’s not on the shelf. We ask them to fill out a search request, and then it gets passed on to one of the student workers, who will go into the stacks to look for the book. About half the time the book is simply mis-shelved somewhere nearby, and a diligent search is all that’s needed.” She laughed. “Professors in particular are usually in too much of a hurry to look beyond the spot on the shelf where the book is supposed to be.”