Chapter 35 #2
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, Miss Lydia Mabel, 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 to keep 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?
Finally, a message from Jude.
I told myself I wouldn’t reach out to him unless he reached out to me first. Yesterday was radio silence. Today, contact. I can’t send my reply fast enough.
Absolutely! Twig and I are at Evermore. We found another mention of the curse.
I snap pictures. The letter from Raphael II, the notice of Lydia Mabel’s death, along with all three mentions in Tittle Tattle from the Hollow. I send them off with an invite to join us at town hall. His reply comes five minutes later, when Twig and I are already cutting through the square.
In no time, we’re stepping into the cool, quiet foyer, which smells faintly of lemon.
We walk past a young receptionist who doesn’t look up from her phone, and follow the hand-lettered sign that reads, “Public Records Office.” Inside, a fluorescent light buzzes over rows of filing cabinets and labeled boxes.
The grumpy clerk sits behind the counter, hunched over his Sudoku puzzle book.
“Hi,” I say, my voice full of cheer. Anticipation, too. If Lydia Mabel was with child, surely this information would be in the coroner’s inquest.
The older gentleman looks up, his wary eyes moving from Twig to me. “You again.”
“Yep, it’s me.” I smile brightly, determined to catch my flies with honey. I set my elbows on the counter between us. “We’re hoping to look at a coroner’s report from 1795. It’s for a girl named Lydia Mabel. She lived in the River District. The death was ruled a poisoning."
He blinks slowly. “From seventeen ninety-five?"
“It may have been filed with the physician’s notes or burial permits. Possibly under deaths of interest.”
He rubs the bridge of his nose, an exaggerated gesture of long-suffering. “Miss, as you must know, most of those records disappeared in the fire.”
I hold up my finger. “Molly Ludwig’s didn’t.”
At least, not her record of birth, anyway.
He bowls past my objection. “And even if it does exist, it’ll be sealed up in archives, not open for public curiosity."
“But we’re not just curious. It’s for historical research. I—we work for the historical society."
"Then let Maggie Henshaw come ask me herself."
The door opens behind us.
Jude steps in—cool and understated, wearing a perfectly tailored coat, the shadows under his eyes extra dark. A fact that makes the knots in my stomach tie tighter once again.
Behind the counter, Mr. Grumpy Pants’s demeanor changes visibly.
Jude is a Vandenberg after all, and tittle tattle on the street says the stepmother is a bully not to be crossed.
Never mind Jude himself, who radiates a my-family-built-this-town energy.
The man is several decades Jude’s elder, but becomes as deferential as Mr. Denis Tulane.
I can’t help feeling a mixture of gratitude and annoyance.
The clerk comes to his feet. He unlocks a cabinet, removes a ledger labeled 1770-1799 Coroner’s Inquests. He brings it to the counter and flips to June of 1795. Lydia Mabel’s is one of two reports made in that year.
“Those archives sure are sealed up tight,” Twig mutters under his breath.
I stifle a laugh.
It took the clerk approximately two minutes to dig this up.
The magic word was obviously Vandenberg.
The three of us lean over the handwritten report, held on the fourth day of June, ordered by the town physician, and investigated by the sheriff.
It includes a testimony of witnesses—who found her, where she was found, the description of the body.
The conclusion?
Suspected poison, consistent with arsenic. Murder by person unknown. There’s no mention of a pregnancy. But there is mention of a strange birthmark, which is accompanied by a sketch.
With wide eyes, I look at Jude.
But he refuses to look back at me.
He just stares down at the sketch, his face as pale as wax.
The same symbol that marked my mother, marked Lydia Mabel, too.