I give a low whistle. “The nerve of the guy,” I say with more than a little sarcasm.
“Public proposals were quite scandalous back in the day, Selah,” Maggie says. “Especially if this fellow didn’t ask for permission first. By the sound of the rapscallion, I doubt he did.”
The front door jingles downstairs.
Walt calls out a greeting.
Maggie leaves us be as Twig and I take a seat at the table. We’re unsure when Lydia died. We only know it couldn’t have been any later than July of 1795. The letter to Amos was dated in early August of that same year and post back then didn’t travel quickly, especially if Raphael II was, as he claimed to be, writing from Winchester, England.
But was he, really?
I recall a different letter, one Jude showed me weeks ago inside The Cobbler, written from a grieving young man to his mother. After the violent death of his twin sister, Gabriel Vandenberg set sail for Winchester, England. Presumably, to reclaim the stolen portrait. But according to the letter, Raphael II was nowhere to be found in Winchester, nor any account of the Vandenberg name. Having no idea what to make of this contradictory information, I shove it aside and focus on the topic at hand.
A poisoned girl named Lydia.
Each publication is four pages printed back-to-back on one large sheet folded in half. Deaths are listed on page two. Gossip on page three. We find nothing in January. Nothing in February. Nothing in March or April or May. Not until the second publication in June do we hit pay dirt.
I hunch over the paper. “On the third day of June, MissLydiaMabel, aged sixteen years, of the River District, passed from this life following a brief and sudden illness. She is survived by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jonas Mabel. Burial was held at St. Fortuna’s Churchyard on the sixth. The family requests privacy in their time of grief.”
“Mabel,” Twig says, his eyes meeting mine.
We have a last name.
Together, our attention moves to page three.
Twig reads the column aloud. “A cloud lies heavy over the River District this week, dear readers.Word reaches us that the late Miss Lydia Mabel, a quiet girl of sixteen summers, has departed this life by means most unnatural. The name arsenic drips from certain lips like poison itself, and tongues wag from the market to the magistrate. It is said the girl had caught the eye of a certain heir. A Vandenberg, some say. Perhaps too fine a name to be seen at her door by the light of day. It is known the elder Vandenberg had his objections. Is this a case of a tonic gone astray, or something more sinister?”
By the time he finishes, I’m already opening the M drawer of Maggie’s card catalog. I flip through the cards, stopping only when I reach one in particular—Mabel, Lydia. “It says here she’s mentioned again in the next publication, and one last time in late July.”
We turn to the respective columns.
The first focuses on young Amos’s suspicious absence from church, Ezra’s private meeting with the sheriff, and the rumors swirling over Ezra’s open disapproval of the budding courtship. The last takes a significant turn. The author questions Lydia’s virtue, dancing around the notion that she may have been with child, and if so, by whom? It seems to me it would have been Amos, but there’s no mention of the Vandenbergs at all.
“Another tragedy,” I say.
“Involving the Vandenbergs,” Twig replies.
The knots in my stomach tie tighter.
I’ve been keeping a notecard in my bedroom tokeep track of them all. With the addition of Florence lost in the fire, I’ve officially run out of space. But now, here’s another.
“If she was poisoned,” I say, “there would have been an autopsy report, right?”
Twig and I look at one another, then we scoop up the ledger filled with gazettes and hurry downstairs, where Walt and Maggie bicker behind the counter. The argument cuts short as soon as Maggie sees what I’m holding.
“What are you doing with that down here?” she asks, aghast, like first floor air is more toxic than second floor air and at any moment, the pages will disintegrate.
I set the ledger on the counter and show her what we’ve found. Walt reads over her shoulder.
“Now that was reporting with a flair,” he says with a nostalgic, faraway look in his eye.
“Would there be an autopsy report?” Twig asks.
“A coroner’s inquest, if it survived the fire,” Maggie says with a scowl. “And that, as you well know, would be in town hall.”
My phone dings—a sound that makes my heart leap.
Did Horror Night live up to the hype?
