No Nest for the Wicket (12 page)
Read No Nest for the Wicket Online
Authors: Donna Andrews
It wasn’t quite that bad. We hit pay dirt in box nineteen. Not that we didn’t find a great many strange and interesting things in the first eighteen boxes. Hundreds of old photos, the kind where everyone begins to look alike because they’re all frowning from the effort of sitting still long enough. Hundreds of old letters that we didn’t read—half of them were cross-written, to save paper, and most were in fading ink on fragile paper. Newspapers we didn’t dare open for fear they’d crumble. We weren’t looking for contents yet, just dates. Anything from during or shortly after the Civil War we studied carefully and put aside in a special stack—a small stack. Most of the stuff was from the late 1800s through the 1920s.
“Hey, that’s still pretty old,” Michael said when I complained about this. “Probably a great research project here. I recognize most of the last names—old Caerphilly families. And all the newspapers and documents are local.”
“Fodder for a real history of Caerphilly,” I said.
“Something a lot more accurate than Mrs. Pruitt’s version.”
“Something a lot more accurate than Mrs. Pruitt’s version.”
“You thinking of writing it?” he asked.
“Not on your life. “That’s a job for a real historian. But I have changed my mind about giving them to someone from UVa or Caerphilly. Caerphilly didn’t care, and UVa sicced Lindsay on me, though I suppose that’s Helen Carmichael’s fault, not UVa’s.”
“Then what are you going to do with it all?” Michael asked, eyeing the stack of boxes.
“Give it to Joss, if she wants it,” I said. “If she’s serious about studying American history, well, here’s a motherlode of original source material she can cut her teeth on.”
“Keep it in the family,” Michael said, nodding. “Good plan.”
I’d hit a dull patch in box nineteen—a bunch of documents from the mid 1950s and early 1960s, which made them about a century too new to be useful at the moment. Still, I kept on methodically. After all, I’d made no effort to arrange things by date, only to gather all the papers of possible historical interest in the boxes.
At the bottom of the box I’d begun to call the “Eisenhower archive,” I found it—a nondescript manila file folder, but when I opened it, I discovered the original photograph of Col. Jedidiah Pruitt and his wife and daughter.
I opened my mouth, but before I could tell Michael, I became transfixed by the photo. Not so much by the contents—though it was easier, in the
original, to get some idea of their personalities. The colonel looked smug and self-satisfied, less interested in his wife or the new addition to his family than in preening for the photographer. At first glance, his wife looked demure, with her lace bonnet and downcast eyes. Demure, and surprisingly young for someone who’d had fourteen children. Doubtless she’d started having them at an age when modern girls aren’t even allowed to baby-sit. After studying her for a few minutes, I decided her eyes weren’t downcast after all. She was glaring sideways at the colonel’s hand, which lay on her shoulder with such a casual, proprietary air, and I didn’t think her gaze looked particularly affectionate.
original, to get some idea of their personalities. The colonel looked smug and self-satisfied, less interested in his wife or the new addition to his family than in preening for the photographer. At first glance, his wife looked demure, with her lace bonnet and downcast eyes. Demure, and surprisingly young for someone who’d had fourteen children. Doubtless she’d started having them at an age when modern girls aren’t even allowed to baby-sit. After studying her for a few minutes, I decided her eyes weren’t downcast after all. She was glaring sideways at the colonel’s hand, which lay on her shoulder with such a casual, proprietary air, and I didn’t think her gaze looked particularly affectionate.
“So I’m voting for her as most likely to become a self-made widow,” Michael said, looking over my shoulder.
“Do you blame her? That’s baby number fourteen she’s holding.”
“Justifiable homicide, then,” he said. “I take it that’s the heroic Colonel Pruitt?”
“Or not. The jury’s still out on whether the battle was much of a victory.”
“Still—fascinating.”
I agreed. Michael perused the folder’s contents—the rest of the photos, the fragile clipping from the 1862
Clarion,
and the equally fragile letter that mentioned the burning of the Shiffley distillery. I lapsed back into my fascination with the photo of the colonel and his wife. I realized I didn’t know anything else of their history. I didn’t know if the colonel had survived the Civil War, though odds
were he had, since she went on to have three more children. Had his wife lived to a ripe old age or died in childbirth with the seventeenth child? What was her name, anyway? It bothered me, not having anything to call her but Mrs. Pruitt. The more I looked at her, the more annoyed I became with how little I knew about her. Mrs. Pruitt, wife of the colonel, who gave birth to seventeen children—surely there was more to her life than that?
Clarion,
and the equally fragile letter that mentioned the burning of the Shiffley distillery. I lapsed back into my fascination with the photo of the colonel and his wife. I realized I didn’t know anything else of their history. I didn’t know if the colonel had survived the Civil War, though odds
were he had, since she went on to have three more children. Had his wife lived to a ripe old age or died in childbirth with the seventeenth child? What was her name, anyway? It bothered me, not having anything to call her but Mrs. Pruitt. The more I looked at her, the more annoyed I became with how little I knew about her. Mrs. Pruitt, wife of the colonel, who gave birth to seventeen children—surely there was more to her life than that?
And while the colonel looked like a Pruitt—round-faced and already running to jowls beneath the bushy beard—I couldn’t remember seeing an echo of her features in any of the modern Pruitts I knew. I figured I should check the family genealogy, though, because her strong, sharp features looked familiar. Probably many old local families were descended from the determined-looking colonel’s lady.
“What’s wrong?” Michael asked.
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s just amazing to think that they could have held these very photos over a hundred and forty years ago. We’re touching pieces of history.”
“We’ve been touching pieces of history for several hours now,” Michael said, yawning. “You only just noticed? About half a ton of history by now. I’ve got little crumbly bits of history all over my hands and clothes. Or does it only count as history if someone’s put it in a book?”
“It counts, but I don’t get excited right now unless it’s history we can use to fend off the outlet mall,” I said, putting the manila folder carefully aside.
“Well, let’s hurry and search the rest of the history for more useful bits,” Michael said, reaching for another box. “You realize that these photos, fascinating as they are, don’t to a thing to prove or disprove Mrs. Pruitt’s story of the battle.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s only one photo of the battle—the aftermath, anyway. We might prove it’s Mr. Shiffley’s pasture those bodies are lying in, but even that would be hard. We have no idea if it really was taken in July 1862. Could have been anytime during the Civil War, and some Pruitt assumed it was their pet battle and labeled it decades after the fact.”
“You’re right,” I said, nodding. “Furthermore, we know Jedidiah Pruitt existed, but not his rank, or even that he was in the Confederate army—he’s wearing civilian clothes in the photo. Naming his daughter Victoria Virginia could have been a generic patriotic act rather than a commemoration of a particular battle.”
“In short, something happened on that field during the Civil War, but we have only the Pruitts’ version.”
“We also have the
Clarion
’s version,” I said. “From 1862 and 1954. Which has some details that aren’t exactly flattering to the colonel, so I believe it more than Mrs. Pruitt’s account.”
Clarion
’s version,” I said. “From 1862 and 1954. Which has some details that aren’t exactly flattering to the colonel, so I believe it more than Mrs. Pruitt’s account.”
“Yes, but who knows what unflattering details they omitted,” Michael said. “After all, the Pruitts used to own the
Clarion.
”
Clarion.
”
“They did? In 1862 or 1954?”
“Both. They founded it just before the Civil War and didn’t give it up till one of them ran it into bankruptcy
in the sixties. So maybe they published a few negative details that they didn’t dare leave out, because everyone already knew them—but who knows what they suppressed?”
in the sixties. So maybe they published a few negative details that they didn’t dare leave out, because everyone already knew them—but who knows what they suppressed?”
“We need to find more source material,” I said, nodding.
“Which means back to the boxes,” Michael said with a sigh.
I glanced at the photos again before I dug back in. Now that we’d raised so many questions about the real story behind them, I found it easier to resist their pull. Especially the melodramatic one with the scrap of cloth fluttering on the wire. Something about that bothered me. Maybe it was a famous Civil War photo of some other battle. I could ask Joss later.
The Morris dancers ceased and desisted around 11:30, and we finished the last box shortly thereafter. Apart from the folder that I felt sure was the original source material for the
Caerphilly Clarion
’s article on the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge, we didn’t find anything else relevant.
Caerphilly Clarion
’s article on the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge, we didn’t find anything else relevant.
“Of course, how do we know what’s relevant?” Michael said. “Not being Lindsay, we can’t really guess what she was looking for.”
We both contemplated the boxes in silence for a few moments.
“Tell me—” I began, then stopped myself.
“Tell you what?” Michael said after a second.
“I was about to ask you to tell me about Lindsay. But it sounds like I’m prying into your past, and I’m not. Just wondering what she was like.”
“And why someone would have wanted to kill her,” he said. “I understand.”
“Do you mean you understand what I’m asking, or you understand why someone would want to kill her?”
“Maybe both,” he said. He looked nostalgic—no, that wasn’t the word for it. More a cross between wistful and rueful, if there was such a thing. He frowned and thought. I waited.
“When I first met her,” he said finally, “I admired her fierceness.”
“Fierceness?” Perhaps I’d just discovered the secret of his ability to tolerate Spike.
“About causes. Against injustice. She was always marching into battle about something—writing letters to the editor, carrying around petitions, organizing demonstrations, telling people off. I remember saying to someone who found her irritating that the world was filled with people who never stood up for anything, except maybe their own self-interest, and she wasn’t afraid to speak out.”
“Sounds admirable,” I said. I meant it. I wouldn’t have minded meeting the woman he was describing. I wouldn’t have minded it if someone described me that way.
“Yeah,” he said. “Trouble was, I was seeing her the way I wanted to see her, not the way she was. It wasn’t really about the cause to her. It was all about the battle. She went around looking for things to get mad about. And she always found something. If I believe in something, I try to stand up for it, even if not everyone approves, but there’s big difference between that and reveling in the number of new enemies
you create every time you do anything. If you disagreed with her cause, you were a fascist, or an idiot, or a Neanderthal. If you agreed with her cause but not with her methods, you were a wimp or a coward. If you agreed with her on everything, she could still find a way to tick you off.”
you create every time you do anything. If you disagreed with her cause, you were a fascist, or an idiot, or a Neanderthal. If you agreed with her cause but not with her methods, you were a wimp or a coward. If you agreed with her on everything, she could still find a way to tick you off.”
“Sounds uncomfortable.”
“It was,” he said. “Uncomfortable to be around, at any rate, though she thrived on it. Ultimately self-destructive. I remember when she told me that the history department had decided to get rid of her. She wasn’t upset; she was jubilant. Another big battle she could fight.”
“Were they? Trying to get rid of her, I mean. Or was she just paranoid?”
“Nothing paranoid about it,” he said. “They definitely had it in for her. They weren’t even subtle about it. She’d have had a great case against them—in the press anyway. Outspoken radical professor ousted by reactionary administration. Chauvinists punish uppity female. Except by the time it happened, she not only didn’t have any allies; she’d have had leave town to find more than a handful of people who weren’t already enemies.”
“Damn,” I said.
“What’s wrong?”
“I wanted to dislike her,” I said. “Out of—I don’t know. Retroactive jealousy, I guess.”
“She wasn’t hard to dislike,” Michael said with a sigh.
“She made people unhappy, herself most of all, I
suspect,” I said. “But she didn’t deserve to be killed like that.”
suspect,” I said. “But she didn’t deserve to be killed like that.”
“The problem was, once she got cornered—once it started to look like she was going to lose—she got … Well, she changed. She started thinking in terms of what she could get on people, and how she could use it against them. The affair with Marcus Wentworth—as I said, I think she wanted to use it to blackmail him into saving her job.”
“Do you think he was the only one? Or do you think she tried with other people?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t seeing much of her by then. And, hell yes, she probably was blackmailing people. Not for money, but to save her job. The last time I saw her before she headed out of town, she was even madder, and talking about getting back at people. Making them pay, making them sorry, ruining their lives. I warned a couple of the people I figured she had it in for. Kept an eye open for any sign that she was doing something like that. After a while, I figured … well, not that she’d calmed down—she was a marathon grudge holder—more that putting her life back together would keep her busy when she first left, and by the time she’d been gone a year or so, I figured she had newer enemies to torment. To tell the truth, maybe I was just relieved that she hadn’t decided I was one of her enemies.”
“What if something made her decide to come back after her old enemies after all?” I said. “Or what if she’d been harassing or blackmailing some of them all along?”
And, not that I was going to upset Michael by mentioning this, what if her turning up practically in our backyard wasn’t a coincidence, but part of some plot to cause him trouble?
“I’m beat,” Michael said after a short pause. “Let’s knock off.”
“As soon as we pick everything up,” I said.
“We’re going to lock up, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but we’re leaving him here to guard,” I said, pointing to Spike. “We don’t want to leave anything on the floor, where he could shred it or pee on it. For that matter, we should get those boxes up off the floor. He could do serious damage if he decided to pee on them.”
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