Poison to Purge Melancholy (21 page)

* * *

Sculpting the beet slices didn’t take long. Beets cut longways already sort of resemble a flat round sole fish. I just had to carve a tail. It reminded me of my Great-Aunt Isabella (on the Giamo side), making biscotti that looked like fishes and birds and wreaths for Advent.
This
felt like Christmas, more than anything else I’d encountered in this house.

Anyway, Miss Maggie begged a potty break, I said it sounded like a good idea, and she said, “Come help an old lady up these stairs.” That’s when I knew she had more in mind than a break. She never called herself an old lady without ulterior motives.

Glad, interestingly enough, seemed sorry to see us go. I think she was starting to
like
having visitors while she cooked. Good, I thought, because the kitchen is where I feel most at home, and if I was going to be her daughter-in-law—

“You take our bathroom,” Miss Maggie said as we reached the top of the stairs. “I’ll use the other, and we’ll rendezvous in our bedroom.”

Five minutes later, I was sitting on the daybed, my mentor standing by the window. On her sweatshirt, Rudolph seemed to be blinking more slowly now. I remembered that Miss Maggie had not been present for the news about Dr. Weisel, so I filled her in, though I couldn’t remember the name of the drug in his system.

“Protriptyline,” Beth Ann said as she came in, carrying her notebook and brown pencil. “It’s an antidepressant.”

“
Pills to Purge Melancholy
,” Miss Maggie said with a grim nod. When I raised my eyebrows in question, she explained, “An eighteenth century songbook—the whole title was
Wit and Mirth: Pills to Purge Melancholy
. Now, instead of wit and mirth, we have real pills. More effective, maybe, but singing has no harmful side effects.”

Beth Ann plopped down on the other end of the daybed. “I just checked the bathrooms for antacid. Thing is—”

“Antacid?” I echoed.

“That’s what was on Dr. Weisel’s nose last night. Liquid antacid.”

I remembered how he’d held a fist to his sternum before going upstairs. “I saw two bottles in the front bathroom yesterday.”

Beth Ann rolled her eyes in exasperation, like she was dealing with a young child. “I’ve been trying to tell you, Grandmom’s and Uncle Horse’s bottles are both gone from the front bathroom, and Uncle Foot’s isn’t in his bag in the back bathroom. And no empties in any of the upstairs trashcans. I looked in Dad’s suitcase, too, but he packed tablets instead of liquid.”

“Hugh takes antacid?” I asked, surprised. “He has a cast iron stomach.”

“Not when he eats something with nutmeg in it. My uncles and granddad are the same way. They all have an intolerance.”

I mentally reviewed every recipe I’d ever cooked for Hugh, sure I had put nutmeg in something. Or mace, the outer shell of the nutmeg. When was he going to tell me? After I made him sick?

“I knew about Hugh,” Miss Maggie said, “but not the rest of them. Rich has this intolerance, too? But not Acey?”

Beth Ann nodded. “I don’t know if Uncle Rich or Uncle Foot even brought any, and Uncle Horse might have repacked his. But isn’t it weird that Grandmom’s bottle’s missing? We both saw it in the cabinet yesterday.”

“Glad might have moved it,” Miss Maggie suggested.

“Or Evelyn,” I mused. “Might have put the bottle in his room, or carried it down to the kitchen.”

Beth Ann shrugged and made a noise like “I don’t know” with her mouth closed. Then, bored with nonmysterious explanations, she said, “Shouldn’t we write down what we learned from Grandmom’s scrapbook before we forget it?”

Miss Maggie took the paper from her pocket and handed it to Beth Ann. “And we’d better be quick about it, before Gladys wonders where we got to. Let’s see, next to ‘John Brennan’ put ‘snuff salesman’ and put ‘Samuel’ in front of ‘Walker’ and—”

“Wait.” I pointed out that I might have heard the names in my vision wrong, or that “J. Bren.” probably wasn’t the same man as John Brennan. “After all, there’s a two-year discrepancy between when ‘J. Bren.’ left the Carson house and when Dr. Riddick and Samuel Walker lived here.”

“No,” said Miss Maggie, “there’s a discrepancy between when John Brennan stopped paying Elizabeth money for his room and board, and when the other two men started. Doesn’t prove Brennan stopped living here. Bartering used to be common. Why, I remember Stoke county doctors taking chickens and bushels of vegetables in exchange for care right up through the 1950s.”

I sat up straighter—my legs were getting stiff with all this sitting. “You think Elizabeth Carson let John Brennan pay her in—in what? Snuff?”

“I don’t know. Snuff isn’t as unlikely as you think. It’s as addictive as cigarettes—”

“Brennan was a drug dealer,” Beth Ann blurted out, a look of enlightenment on her face.

“Yes, he was, in a way.” Rudolph stopped blinking at that moment and Miss Maggie looked down in disgust. “Drat, and I didn’t pack a spare battery. What was I saying? Oh, right. Elizabeth must have used bartering with both John Brennan and Mr. Dunbar, the music master. You’ll recall we didn’t find his initials with the others, yet Polly said he gave her singing lessons. Earned his keep that way, I’ll bet.”

Miss Maggie always took my visions for gospel truth. To me, they felt no different from a daydream—a product of my overactive imagination.

I was about to remind her of this when Beth Ann sat up, alert, asking, “Is there a car pulling in?” she asked.

I heard it then—car wheels on what was left of the snow in the backyard.

Miss Maggie glanced out the window. “Two cars. Anyone else comes, they’ll have to park on the roof.”

Beth Ann lunged for the window. “One must be my Aunt Irene. I’ve never seen her before.”

Curious, I joined the two at the window, peeking over Miss Maggie’s shoulder. She was right about the parking. The front newcomer, a white BMW, pulled in alongside the fence, blocking in the Escort, Miata, and Rich’s Volvo. The second driver stopped even with the house, so only part of a green bumper was showing. Probably assessing the parking situation.

“That’s the car that was parked across the street last night,” Beth Ann said, her forefinger smudging the window as she pointed to the BMW.

She was right. Getting out of the driver’s seat was a tall blonde woman dressed in form-fitting leather—jacket, pants, and high heels. The form they fitted was Barbie-ish and, with the heels in the inch of snow left on the ground, she moved like a marionette, hands hanging in midair for balance. I heard the kitchen door open and the woman glanced up at the porch. That’s when I got a good view of her face, which was maybe thirty percent lips. Mrs. Kevie.

“Doctor Weisel’s wife,” I said. “Acey invited her to dinner.”

“How interesting,” Miss Maggie observed, “that she left her husband’s sickbed to dash right over here.”

The driver of the second car—a thin Asian woman—got out and poked her head shyly around the corner of the house. By her gestures, she seemed to be asking where she should park.

“Think that’s Aunt Irene?” Miss Maggie asked, but she didn’t wait for Beth Ann’s reply. “Let’s go find out.”

She snatched up our paper of names from the bed, Beth Ann took up her notebook, and we all paraded down the spiral stairs.

Evelyn and Horse were on the back porch directing traffic. Standing sideways in the open doorway was Hugh, letting the cold air in. At the window, Foot stood by his mother whining that Irene wouldn’t have a place to park when she arrived.

Since that answered Miss Maggie’s question, she asked Glad who the second newcomer was.

“A friend of Acey’s, named Sachiko. Apparently Acey had called her and told her what had happened to Dr. Weisel, and this friend was worried and drove down from Richmond.” Glad didn’t look at all happy to have two extra dinner guests, though if this dinner was anything like last night’s, she’d have more than enough food.

“Aunt Acey’s in the shower,” Beth Ann said. “I passed her going in on my way to Miss Maggie’s room. I’ll go tell her.” And she disappeared back up the steps.

Hugh stepped into the room and shut the door. “Let me get my coat and keys. I’ll park the Escort over at Merchants Square and walk back.”

“Why don’t I move my car instead?” I volunteered. “You’re already blocked in.”

That amorous leer of his materialized. “Better yet, you follow me and give me a ride back. If I can’t find a spot at Merchants Square, who knows where I’ll end up?” Made sense, though his expression was saying that we hadn’t had a moment to ourselves all day. Seize the day and all that. Which made even better sense.

Hugh said he’d fetch my coat and keys along with his own and went up the stairs just as Weisel’s wife came inside.

She gave us a collective once-over, then centered her gaze between Miss Maggie and Glad, unsure who her host was. “Hi, I’m Cherry Weisel. So nice of you to invite me to dinner.”

Cherry? I told myself it could be short for Cheryl or Cerise, but I got the impression she’d handpicked it herself, so to speak. Cosmetically, she seemed a perpetual twenty-three, but considering her attitude, I was willing to bet she was no more than two years younger than me. Maybe older. And without the heels, no more than two inches taller than me. Bust-wise, I had the advantage, but her Scarlett O’Hara waist showed hers off better.

Evelyn and Horse led our second arrival into the kitchen. In complete contrast to Cherry, she had a boyish figure and was naturally twenty-something. Her delicate features, though anxious and uncertain, were makeup-free and framed by short, silky black hair. She wore jeans and high-top sneakers under a navy pea jacket, with blue driving gloves on her hands.

The first words out of her mouth, addressed to Glad, were, “I’m sorry to barge in on your dinner. I won’t stay. I just—Acey called and sounded so—”

“Sachi!” Acey had come down the stairs behind us. She’d thrown her caftan back on, but her hair was wrapped in a towel and her feet were bare. Besides surprise, I could have sworn I saw a tinge of fear in her eyes. “You shouldn’t have come.”

A half beat of silence followed, which Glad broke with, “Ann Carter, don’t be a fool. Of course you’re welcome, Sachi, and you’ll stay for dinner.” A gentle but firm order. For the first time since I’d arrived, Gladys Lee sounded like the head of the family.

“This cold uncomfortable Weather,
Make Jack and Jill lie close together.”

—Nathanael Ames’s Almanac, December, 1749

December 25, 1783—Mrs. Carson’s House

Darkness still pressed at
the windows when Sam woke me. He was dressed, his coat buttoned across his breast, and if not for his white shirt and stockings, I should never have seen him in the blackness of our room.

“The sun will be up soon, Ben. Hurry. I’ll go wake Jim and fetch our muskets. We’ll meet beside the woodpile.”

My head and limbs felt yet asleep. I’d lain awake late, my thoughts taken up with planning how I should avoid this Mr. Tyler of Norfolk, as well as pondering the puzzle of Brennan’s death, alarmed further by what Elizabeth had told us. Dr. Riddick had been following Brennan about, observing his condition, and had seen the shooting. Had he, I wondered, recognized us? He’d gone out again, Elizabeth said, to tend to a patient, and had not returned when I retired. Sam had also come in after I slept, so I hadn’t the chance to question him.

Our room was very cold this morning, the bare floorboards chill against my feet. In haste, I tugged on my wool stockings and britches, and blew upon my fingers as I buttoned my waist- and topcoats. Having no time to shave or tie back my hair, I pulled my duffel from under the bed, rolling it out until my hands came upon my red Liberty cap. The moths had made several meals of it since I’d worn it first at Morristown, but the cap would do this morn to keep my hair from my eyes and my ears warm beneath my tricorn.

’Twas then I heard a light foot upon the stair, and as I left my room, the furtive opening and closing of the front door. Jim, I thought, and laughed at his care in not waking the household when in a few moments, we’d be firing charges at the rising sun, waking the entire town. I thought also how lost in sleep he must have been to miss Sam’s direction to meet at the woodpile. Thinking to collect him, I followed him below, feeling for the steps in the darkness, and pulled open the front door.

The air was damp and the ground white with hoarfrost. At the top of the block, a man crossed the street at a run. Though only a faint blush of dawn touched the eastern sky and I saw naught but his silhouette, I knew the build to be Dr. Riddick’s.

“Ben!” came Sam’s hoarse whisper from behind. He was at the back door, beckoning me. Closing the front, I hurried down the hall to join him.

Once outside, he gestured to my musket, leaning against the side of the house. “Primed and loaded for you.”

I took it up, wincing because it was so cold. “The metal feels like ice.”

“Made worse, I’m sure, by the uphill window of the tin shop being propped wide open ’neath its shutter, and that fastened but loosely, with the turn of a bent nail, from the outside. ’Tis the only way in, now that the creek is risen nearly to the top step in front of the door. Fortuitous for me, or I’d have had two cold swims last night and another this morning.”