Necessary Evil (24 page)

“As promised,” I
answered and he bolted for the doorway, shouting, “Why didn’t you say so
before?”

Trusty barked and
raced after him, and I was a step or two behind her. We were quick, but Randall
was already at the safe, spinning the dial frantically and undoing the
combination in his haste.

“Let me,” I said,
as I crouched beside him to work the door.

I pulled open the
door at last and gestured to the safe and he dove into it, pulling out the
precious plastic-wrapped item with as much reverence as though he were handling
the Shroud of Turin.

“Excellent!”

He jumped out and
rushed out of the room. Trusty and I followed.

He went back to
the counter, pushed aside the various cups, pieces of mail, and kitchen
instruments left on its surface, and laid the letter on it. Then he deftly pulled
a pair of plastic gloves out from his back pocket and pulled them on, his eyes
never leaving the page, his lips moving in silent recitation of the well-known
words.

Trusty and I
stopped on the other side of the counter, and I watched him as he carefully
extracted the letter from its covering. Behind me, I heard the laughing chatter
from the living room.

“Don’t you think
that we ought to do this in the office?” I asked.

He shook his head,
completely absorbed in his work. “Better light in here,” he said. “Oh, you have
the envelope, too – fantastic! I had no idea this still existed!”

There was a gleam
in his eye that was unfamiliar to me. He pulled the letter out and laid it
carefully on top of its covering, then bent down to read it, adjusting his
oversized glasses as he did so.

I leaned over and
read what I had, over time, nearly memorized:

June 1, 1862

Dearest Mother,

Your letter of the 12
^th
arrived
yesterday

And I was glad to receive it.

Any word from home is always welcome. I

Pray that you and Avery are well. I al-

So wish to thank you for your kind words
of

Blessing – they are dew-drops to my soul.
Marched

Long today and I am exhausted by hours

Of training and miserable Poe-like
terrain. We shall meet 

Johnny Rebel any day and I am itching for
the introduction.

To glory we go, hungry and tired, but with

New vigor and eagerness. It may seem
strange but I have no

Fear, just regret that I leave so little
behind for my dearest

Mother – just the earthy good contained in
my home soil.

Do pray for me, as I always do for you,
knowing our God is

Just and loving and all is in His hands.

Yours, always,

Alexander.

PS: When I fear, I think on the August
words in my beloved psalmery, especially no. 29. Read on this and think of me.
– AC

It was written on
what we were told was cheap, common paper at the time, and there were stains on
the page from both dirt and moisture, maybe sweat or rain, or possibly - as the
more poetic observers suggested - tears. There was a ragged tear in one section,
where his pen dug a little too deeply, and several deep wrinkles that marred
the beauty of the unexpectedly clear and well-formed cursive.

Seeing it gave me
a feeling similar to what Mary’s journal provoked: that this was a bridge to a
time before, to people that were connected to me but never seen, whose lives -
though ended - were as present now as they were then. Looking at the letter, I
got the sensation that the dead hadn’t gone as far away as one might think.

My morbid thoughts
made me shiver.

Randall stirred,
nodding vigorously.

“
Yes
!” he
shouted.

“See something?” I
asked.

He looked at me,
his expression one of triumph. It took me aback – I’d never seen him look so
happy, nor so young. He looked like a different man entirely: a man so alive, so
full of life that his vibrancy was barely contained. I found myself remembering
his crack about the shirt-tearing novelist and blushed like a schoolgirl.

Not that Randall
appeared to notice.

“It is here, Madeleine,”
he said, his tone hushed with reverence. “It’s here, I know it.”

“What’s here?” I
asked.

“Give me another
minute.”

He pulled out a
small, square magnifying glass and went back to his examinations, pouring over
the envelope with almost as much care as he did the letter. This puzzled me, as
there was nothing more on the envelope than the address and the usual markings
of travel. With nothing else to do, I studied it, too, though I couldn’t see
anything more on it than had been on the copied version.

I was about ready
to chalk up his statement to mere excitement when he interrupted my thoughts by
pointing to the letter with his gloved hand.

“Look at that,” he
demanded, then pointed to another spot, then another. “Look at those wrinkles.
Here’s where the paper was folded and put into the envelope. You can tell that
these are the primary folds because of the dirt that gathered on their outer
spines. But if you look here… And here, you can see that this letter has been
folded before, in a smaller square. See?”

He pushed the
magnifying glass towards me, but I didn’t need it to see what he was talking
about.

“I see it,” I
mumbled and he went on before I could ask what it meant.

“And
here,
on
this line.
The ink is just a shade different color than the one before
it. Also, the writing is a little different. Here, where he writes ‘Long today
and I am exhausted by hours’, his hand is firm, his lettering is clear and
solid. He isn’t tired, not like he is here, where he writes ‘We shall meet
Johnny Rebel any day’. There his hand shakes, wavering a little on the ‘H’ and
‘N’, and here, where the pen went through the paper. And it changes
again
down
below, but that’s at the PS, were one would expect a change, so that’s not out
of the ordinary. Except for the obvious question that it should and has raised:
why did he feel it necessary to add that line? Usually postscripts were written
on the envelope and they were direct messages, like, ‘Tell Uncle Ben that I am
sending the books’, or something like that, not this - which can only be
described as a poetic afterthought.” He tapped the page. “This was one of the
reasons why I thought there was a message in this letter. Putting aside the
clumsy wording, which seems to announce ‘Here is a clue!’ The fact that it was
put in after the main body of the letter suggests that Alexander
wanted
special
emphasis on this line.”

“Which would
confirm the treasure hunter’s theory,” I said. “That he wanted his mother to
look at the hymnal and find the lines that point to the fields. But those
fields have been gone over with a fine tooth comb, and not even a coin has been
found. So where does that leave you?”

Pinching the
letter delicately in his fingers, he lifted it up and dangled the envelope next
to it.

“It leads me to
the source,” he said, and the gleam in his eyes grew stronger. “Look at these
both, Warwick, and tell me what it is that you see.”

I studied them for
a moment before shrugging impatiently. I was annoyed by these guessing games,
perhaps embarrassed by my lack of observation. My tone was sharp when I said,
“I see an envelope and a matching letter. Nothing more. What else is there to
see?”

Randall dropped
them back on the counter and pointed to the deep lines on the envelope. “You
have to know where to look. See these creases?”

“Yes.”

“They correspond
to the secondary creases in the letter, meaning that this envelope was folded
with the letter in it. Perfectly normal - and that in itself means nothing,
before you ask. So, the primary folds in the letter were to fit it in the envelope,
the secondary ones were made after the letter was in the envelope, presumably
sealed. But how do we explain the third set of folds?”

I frowned and
looked closer. Yes, the third set of folds, weaker and much less noticeable
than the others, were there. Now I was really confused.

“I don’t know,” I
confessed. “But does it really matter?”

“Of course it
matters
,
Warwick. I wouldn’t have brought it up if I didn’t think so, just as I have
chosen to ignore the coffee stain in the corner, here. They matter because if
you add this to the changes in the writing, you draw one unmistakable
conclusion: that this brief, rather unimaginative letter was carefully written
over a period of time. And
that
indicates that I was right, that there
is more to this than meets the eye. I wonder if this is what our rivals knew
when they decided to start poking around here…”

“But…” I
protested, but he wasn’t listening any more. The chattering laughter from the
living room had grown louder, and the women were heading for the kitchen.

He swiftly placed
the letter back into its packaging, along with the envelope, then put his
finger to his lips with a significant look towards the hallway, and darted out
before I could comment. I heard him hastily greet the ladies before the office door
slammed shut.

Darlene came into
the kitchen first, looking bemused.

“He looks very
happy,” she said. “What did you do, give him the keys to the Smithsonian?”

“You’ve got me,” I
said, shrugging. “The man is weird.”

I kept his
revelation - which didn’t seem like much to me - to myself, puzzling over his
excitement. What difference did it make if Alexander took a few days to write
the letter? Maybe he was busy. Maybe he was a slow writer. Perhaps he was
uncomfortable writing, and it took him a while to write what would be for most
men of the age a momentary chore.

That might be the
answer – but the easy dismissal didn’t sit with me as well as it used to.

Lindsay, Darlene,
and Jacob stayed for a hastily put together supper. I joined them after chores
and even had time to enjoy coffee with them, thanks to a last minute lesson
cancellation.

Jacob offered to
drive Lindsay home, something that delighted not only her, but the matchmaking
Darlene and Aunt Susanna as well. As she waited for him to bring the car
around, Lindsay saw me bringing a stack of paperwork out of the office to sort
on the kitchen counter.

“You can start
leaving that for me now,” she reminded me, and when I started protesting, she
put her hands on her hips. “You want me to earn my paycheck, right? Besides,
you’ve got detective work to do.”

I laughed as Jacob
came back in, insisting that he carry Lindsay’s backpack for her.

“Don’t forget your
bicycle,” I said as they turned to go.

He blinked at me,
confused. “Bicycle?”

I began to despair
about the future of our country. “The one Aunt Susanna gave you?” I hinted, and
when his confusion seemed to deepen, I added, “The one you were working on
outside?”

“Oh! That one!” He
looked relieved. “That isn’t mine. The professor asked me to clean it up for
him.”

“The professor?”

“Yeah. He said he
wanted to start riding in the mornings. Well, see you tomorrow.”

“Later, Boss!”
Lindsay chirped, and they left me balancing a pile of pages on the stairwell,
wondering what on earth would inspire Aunt Susanna to surrender Uncle Michael’s
bike to the professor.

I didn’t have a
chance to ask Gregory himself. He stayed in his office way past the wee hours
of the morning, long after I’d given up on the paperwork and gone to bed.

                                                                 
***

The bicycle was
gone when I returned from my run the next morning, drenched in sweat but grimly
triumphant. I’d found no hole, but as I showered, I began to worry again. Just
because I didn’t find it didn’t mean the diggers hadn’t been there last night;
and until I was sure, how could I allow the riders to use the trails?

On the other hand,
how could I close them without arousing suspicions?

For the second
time in two days, I found myself desperate to talk to Randall. But when I went
back into the kitchen, there was only Aunt Susanna, pouring herself a cup of
coffee while Trusty attacked her breakfast in the corner.

“Good morning!”
Aunt Susanna greeted me as I entered. “Isn’t it a beautiful day today?”

It was, but I
hadn’t noticed until that moment.

“Have you seen the
professor?” I asked, tossing my purse on the counter and checking my watch. I
barely had enough time to make a cup of coffee to go before I left. My haste,
added to my anxiety, put enough stress in my voice for Aunt Susanna to take
notice, her head tilting with curiosity.