The Evening Spider (18 page)

“And she was apparently a very small woman,” Wallace said. “She mentions in the diary not being able to reach things in the kitchen.”

“So I wonder if she actually tried to ingest some arsenic.”

“Often people who attempted to take arsenic vomited it all up if they took too much.”

“But would that happen to someone so concerned about taking the
minimal
amount to be noticed?” I asked. “The right amount to kill you efficiently?”

“I'm sure it could. It might have more to do with the relative strength of your stomach than how much, exactly, you chose to take. Or, just—luck.”

“So maybe she tried to take some and threw up.”

“Maybe . . . or maybe there was some other attempt altogether . . . or maybe she just mentioned to a friend or relative what she was considering . . . or something like that. I would think if there was a real attempt and therefore a real medical emergency, Dr. Graham would've written about it. But how much do you really want to know about this? There is potentially a lot to be learned about Frances and her family, but this very incident? I'm afraid you might not have much luck. Putting a family member in a hospital like that was generally a hush-hush affair. Maybe that was even why they went to great lengths to take her all the way up to Northampton. Far away, out of sight, out of mind. It's quite possible the details of that story were between Frances and her husband and the doctor and never went any further.”

“Oh, it went further,” I said. “In a general way.”

Wallace took a noisy sip of tea. “What does that mean?”

I started to tell Wallace about Stephanie Barnett, leaving out the issue of the ghostly presence and just telling him about the unspeakable thing that Matthew Barnett's wife had apparently done, breaking his heart and rendering him unable to practice criminal law.

“Which leads me to believe that she maybe did something
criminal,” I said. “Rather than something suicidal. Something really, really horrifying.”

Wallace was quiet for a moment, absently running his forefinger along his lower lip.

“
And
it makes me wonder who this ‘significantly smaller' person is she's writing about in that last entry,” I said.

“It makes
me
wonder if that family is full of shit,” Wallace said.

“
What?
” I sputtered, startled to hear Wallace use that particular turn of phrase.

“I know that can't be true, what this Stephanie person told you. I know that I've seen Matthew Barnett's name in accounts of other criminal cases after 1879. At least one or two. Although it's true that he didn't really live up to the potential he showed in those early cases like the McFarlene case.”

“Maybe it took a few years for his heart to break?” I said.

“Maybe the family needed to blame his ultimately lackluster career on someone, and the poor crazy wife in the asylum was an easy target. Perhaps she was a little off, or maybe even a little suicidal. And over the years, that became the ‘unspeakable' of the Barnett family legend. You know, off the top of my head, I can think of at least one later case Matthew Barnett was involved in that contradicts this dramatically vague family story. I'm going to dig it up for you.”

“Oh . . . you know . . . you've already done so much work on this for me . . . you don't need to do that.”

“Nonsense,” said Wallace. “And I hope you realize that I'm not being entirely unselfish, researching the various names and stories that come up in Frances's writings. It has already helped
to fill one or two holes in that era of Haverton's history. Most notable for me is the mention of Matthew and Clara's hired girl, Tessa Ripley. I didn't know she once worked for Matthew Barnett. She later married Edward Cowan. Now, I had to check that, because I wasn't sure if it was indeed the same Tessa. Edward Cowan was one of the luckiest guys in Haverton history, in my opinion. The Barnett family—specifically Daniel Barnett, Matthew's father—or Old Man Barnett, as he came to be known—sold Edward a small plot of land on Maple Avenue—with a little house on it—for next to nothing in 1885 or so. Edward Cowan ran a fairly successful tavern there for several years. It made him enough money to start a more respectable business in town later—a general store he ran with Tessa—that ended up doing quite well and then extended down the block as an added clothing store.
And
he ended up somehow investing in a textile mill in the eastern part of the state, and did quite well from there. And from that point on, they were fairly influential in town, both economically and politically.”

I stared at Lucy in the monitor screen. Did I see her arm twitch? Or did I just
want
to see her arm twitch so I'd have an excuse to stop Wallace's verbal overflow of names and dates?

“Anyway . . .
anyway.
Excuse my going on and on. It's just that—that initial transaction between Daniel Barnett and Edward Cowan—it's always been a mystery to me. Tessa's working for Matthew Barnett doesn't explain it completely, but it's an interesting tidbit. She went from being his maid to rising up the town's ranks to being his near equal socially and economically. I'm sorry to drone on. It's just one of several things I found interesting about Frances's account. A minor thing to you, perhaps.”

“Oh, I don't know,” I murmured.

“A couple of Edward Cowan's descendants still live here. Do you know of Ralph Greer, in town?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Of course. What am I thinking? You probably haven't lived here long enough yet. Ralph grew up here. He's a bit younger than me. His mother was a Cowan. Ralph was a day trader for a while, and then after all of that worldly New York stuff he retired back here. No place like home, I guess. For all his money, he goes to the town library and reads their copy of the
Wall Street Journal
. Then he spends the rest of the morning at the Dunkin' Donuts, gossiping with the other townies. Anyway. Why am I telling you this? Because he and I get along quite well. He has all of the old family papers and pictures that his grandfather kept, and he's let me peruse them on several occasions, for this historical display or that.”

No, Lucy wasn't awakening after all. I put down the monitor. “Uh huh?”

“I was thinking yesterday that he'd be
very
interested to know about this Tessa connection,” Wallace said. “He always jokes about that original land deal. That maybe Edward Cowan had something on Old Man Barnett. Caught him smooching on one of his sheep or something . . .” Wallace shook his head and cleared his throat. “Ralph can be a bit crass sometimes, but in any case . . . Well. Maybe, with Tessa working for Matthew and—who knows, possibly other Barnetts—maybe old Daniel Barnett had a soft spot for her. Wanted to give her and her husband a good, prosperous start in their new married life together.”

“That sounds a little . . . romantic.”

“Yes. Old Ralph will surely prefer his bestiality jokes, but nonetheless . . .”

“Umm . . .” I looked into my teacup, hoping a segue was about to present itself.

“But I'd like for Ralph to be able to see a copy of the journal. Would you mind terribly much if I showed it to him?”

“Not at all.”

“Maybe you'd like to come along? We'd probably meet at the library. Sometime in the next few days, if he answers his phone. Would you be comfortable bringing Lucy into the library?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Good. Ralph's quite knowledgeable about some aspects of Haverton history himself, and he might have some insights about Frances or some of the other Barnetts.”

“Hey—Wallace? While we're all sharing Frances's journal, I was wondering if I could see that doctor's log myself? I'd like to look through it in more detail.”

I had been thinking about the doctor's records since Wallace had shown them to me at the historical society. I couldn't quite believe there were
no
other hints of Frances's mental condition beyond the two terse entries Wallace had shown me. I wanted to believe there was some insight that Wallace had missed. He had never said he'd gone over it thoroughly—through the years preceding the hospitalization—with that question in mind. Nor did I consider it appropriate to ask him to do something so time consuming for me.

Wallace paused, then drained the last of his tea. “It's in several volumes.”

“I know. But I wonder if I could start just by borrowing the one you showed me that mentions Frances going to Northampton.
It's difficult for me to get out to the historical society—comfortably, I mean—for any good chunk of reading time.”

“I'm sure we can make some arrangement.” Wallace set down his mug. “I'll bring the relevant volumes when we meet with Ralph.”

“Thank you.”

“Well.” Wallace clapped his palms and rubbed them together for a moment. “I imagine you don't get a lot of time for yourself, so I'm going to leave you to it. Give Lucy my best, will you?”

I nodded, stifling a giggle as Wallace got up. I imagined myself propping a drooling, hand-sucking Lucy on my knee and informing her,
Wallace sends his best.

“Of course,” I said.

Northampton Lunatic Hospital

Northampton, Massachusetts

December 20, 1885

F
or a time, I did try to take your advice, Harry. I
did
try to put the murder and the trial out of my mind. I did a thorough cleaning of the house—of the sort one usually does only in spring—baked sweet breads and pies and knitted Martha three winter hats. And yet, the harder I worked, the thicker and more grotesque I felt my mask became.

Corpuscles. Corpuscles!
I'd say to myself often as I toiled in the kitchen or at the needle. I tried not to do it in front of Matthew, but sometimes the word seemed to simply spit itself out of my mouth without my permission.

Corpuscles!

Pardon me, Frances?

Oh, fussy! Martha was so fussy today.

Perhaps I preferred the word to
blood. Blood
was a frightening word.
Corpuscle
felt relatively innocuous, perhaps, in its scientific way.

I was trying not to think of blood.

And yet I was. Increasingly, and always.

Blood in the kitchen. Blood in my best cake pan.

Was it easier to think of
corpuscles
in my best cake pan?

These were not the kinds of questions I could share with Matthew. With you. With Louise. With anyone.

Haverton, Connecticut

December 15, 2014

I gazed at the journal copy Wallace had made me, whispering the words “significantly smaller” and “mere dusting” to myself a few times. They seemed the most important words in that entry. They had an oddity to them that unsettled me. The more I repeated the words, the slower I pronounced them, as if their true meaning would leak out between their syllables.

Lucy was asleep—looking eerily white in the night-cam mode of the baby monitor, sprawled out on her back, both fists raised above her head.

I took out the original journal, flipped to that final page, and stared at it. I put it close to my face, then held it at arm's length. As I repositioned my fingers to hold it at a normal range, I felt something slightly rough between that final entry and the previous page. In a move that probably would've given Wallace a coronary, I bent both sides of the page backward to examine closely in between the pages.

There was paper in between the pages—a jagged but extremely thin flap of paper, about half an inch long. It was only discernible if you bent the pages wide open. It looked as if someone had torn a page out—or maybe several pages—and missed one tiny spot where they'd cleared off the remains of the paper.

“Were you hiding something, Frances?” I whispered. I flipped the book over, pages hanging downward, and shook it. “Something suicidal, or something else?”

As I said it, I glanced again at Lucy's monitor. In that very moment, Lucy's eyes popped open, pupils glowing white on my screen.

I screamed. Tossing the monitor onto the floor, I hopped off the bed and ran down the hall. I found her door shut. I knew I hadn't shut it completely. I'd
always
left the door open a crack—but especially lately.

I stood there for a moment, unsure if I really wished to open it. Half-terrified that I'd find a demonic white-pupiled baby behind it. Half-terrified of something else altogether.

Had I heard the door slamming shut? Had I heard it, somewhere beyond my own voice, in the moment I screamed? I reached for the doorknob but dropped it quickly. I reached for it again.

OOOOOAAHHHHR-eeeee.

Lucy was awake, but she wasn't crying. She was kicking her legs and making conversational noises at her mobile.

I stepped into the room and closed the door, then opened it again.

OOOOOAAHHHHR-eeeee.

And again.

Since Lucy seemed content enough, I crept downstairs to the front hall, where we kept the toolbox.

I heard the front door just as I was removing the third hinge pin. I was surprised at how quickly I'd managed to finish the job.

When Chad appeared at the bottom of the stairs, I called down to him softly. “Hey—why don't you come up and help me with this?”

Chad pulled off his shoes and padded up the stairs. “What are we doing?”

“Moving the door. We'll store it along the side wall of the bedroom for now.”

“Why?” he whispered. “Isn't this going to wake up Lucy?”

I shook my head. “She watched me for a little while as I took off the hinge caps, but she fell back to sleep.”

“But why are we doing this?”

“The door needs new hinges. They make too much noise. They wake her up.”

“But tonight?”

“That way I don't have to deal with the door at all while you're gone.”

Chad held one side of the door, following me into the bedroom with it.

Once we'd positioned it against the wall, Chad said, “I was chatting with Ben Trask this morning. His daughter is definitely looking for babysitting jobs. Maybe you want to have her come over while I'm away. Give yourself a little break? You wouldn't have to leave the house if that would worry you too much. Just give yourself a little time to read or watch a movie or something.”

“You have her number?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Leave it with me, and I'll call if I get desperate.”

“Well, you shouldn't have to wait until you're
desperate
.”

“When's your flight, anyway?”

“Quarter after six,” Chad said, yanking his carry-on out from under the bed. “And I still need to pack.”

Please don't leave me alone in this house.

“Don't forget your medication,” I said.