American Indians used the cambium [the hemlock’s inner bark] as the base for breads and soups or mixed it with dried fruit and animal fat for pemmican. Natives and white settlers also made tea from hemlock leaves, which have a high vitamin C content.
Eastern Hemlock, Tsuga canadensis
United States Department of Agriculture
Natural Resources Conservation Service
The kitchen still had the original stone floor and painted wooden cupboards, along with a walk-in pantry, an old-fashioned porcelain sink, and overhead racks for pots and pans and utensils. It had been built to accommodate a team of cooks plus the battalion of servants it took to produce and serve elaborate meals for the Carswells, a houseful of guests, and a sizeable household staff. But it had recently been modernized with a gas range, a microwave, a dishwasher, and a large refrigerator-freezer. One corner was furnished with a small round table and chairs for dining.
Jenna had laid three places at the table, which was centered with a pottery bowl of fragrant violets. Our meal began with a salad: fresh greens with avocado, tomato, cucumber, and feta cheese. Then the shepherd’s pie, hot, with a flaky crust and a rich and savory beef filling. And a carafe of red wine. The pie was delicious, and after a day of travel-snacking, I was seriously hungry.
While the three of us ate, Jenna was mostly silent and Dorothea and I went back to our conversation. “Tell me about the foundation’s board,” I said. “How many members? Are they local?”
“Eight,” Dorothea said. “Seven women, one man. Three of them live in Bethany, but the rest are in Asheville and Raleigh. They have lifetime appointments, and they can name their own successors.” She wrinkled her nose. “Kind of an incestuous arrangement, if you ask me. But that’s how it was organized in the bylaws of the trust Miss Carswell set up.”
“Is it an active board?”
She chuckled wryly. “Well, they actively know what they don’t want to do. They’re not very involved with the collection, except for Carole Humphreys, who volunteers a few hours a week with the cataloguing. The full board is supposed to meet four times a year. I meet with them and report on our progress with the collection.”
I glanced around the cavernous kitchen. The house was well over a century old, and huge. It must cost quite a bit to maintain.
“Is there enough income from the trust to keep this place going?” I asked.
Dorothea nodded. “Enough to pay current staff salaries, utilities, taxes, repairs, and maintenance. Better yet, there’s enough to install the climate-control system and even to hire an additional one or two full-time people to help with the cataloguing—if the board could agree. So far, that hasn’t happened. Worse, they can’t agree on a long-term plan for the collection, or for the house and grounds, which is frustrating.” With a sigh, she pushed her plate back. “There are factions. It’s complicated.”
I’ll bet. Trusts and boards are always complicated and sometimes generate all kinds of bad feeling. I didn’t envy Dorothea, having to deal with people who put board politics ahead of the job they were supposed to do. But that was an intractable problem and likely not relevant to the theft.
Changing the subject, I said, “How about that list I suggested? The names of people who have visited the library since you came.”
“I mostly worked on it,” Jenna said. “It wasn’t hard, actually, because we haven’t had that many guests. Just a handful of academic researchers—three from North Carolina, one from Georgia. They were already on the calendar.”
“Opening to researchers was the board’s idea,” Dorothea said. “Eventually, it’s what we want to do, but we’re not ready for that yet. I’ve put a stop to visits until the collection has been catalogued.”
“The garden was open to the public one weekend,” Jenna added.
Dorothea nodded. “We don’t have the names of all the people who came to that event because they didn’t all sign the guest book. But that was in October, months before the Herbal disappeared. And none of those visitors came into the house.” She frowned. “At least, they weren’t supposed to. But anyway, yes—Jenna has the list for you. Names and contact information, where we have it.”
“I also noted who has keys to this place,” Jenna added. “There aren’t many, but I thought you might want to know who they are.”
“Thank you,” I said. It probably wouldn’t be of much use, though. Keys can be copied. And people don’t always remember where they’ve put their key or when they saw it last. “When did the theft occur?”
“Hang on a sec.” Jenna pushed her chair back. “If everybody is ready for dessert, I’ll take your plates and bring coffee.”
“And I’ll get the dessert,” Dorothea said.
We ended our supper with coffee and warm apple crisp topped with vanilla ice cream. I forked up a bite, savoring the cinnamon-and-nutmeg flavored apples. “Back to the theft,” I said. “When did it happen?”
“Two weeks ago today,” Dorothea said, stirring her coffee. “Jenna is the one who discovered it. She wanted to check something in the text, but when she went to the display case where it was kept, the Herbal was gone.”
Jenna sighed. “I can still work on my project, but I have to rely on the online copies, like the one from the Raven Library at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Miss Carswell’s copy is different. And special.”
“Special how?”
Jenna hesitated. With a little smile, Dorothea said, “Go ahead, Jenna. It’s your project. You know far more about it than I do.”
Jenna leaned eagerly forward. “Elizabeth’s book was first published as a serial.”
I frowned. “You mean, installments?”
“Yes. Four pages every week, five hundred pages altogether, over a period of almost two-and-a-half years. After all the weekly installments were out, she published a two-volume set. The usual binding appears to have been morocco or calf leather, sometimes with gilt edges. Depending on what somebody wanted to pay.”
“I saw quite a few copies online,” I said. “Different editions, printed at different times. And even several modern reprints. In paperback.”
Since I learned about the Herbal, I had done research on it and wanted to do more. Online, I had discovered plenty of photographs of the book, in various bindings. Most fascinating were a couple of sites where you can virtually turn the pages and study the plants and read Elizabeth’s carefully hand-engraved descriptions. The one I like best is owned by the British Museum. It opens to a meticulously detailed, carefully hand-colored drawing of a dandelion in full bloom.*
Jenna picked up her cup and took a sip of coffee. “The Hemlock Herbal is special because all five hundred of the plates are bound in a single volume, with an ornately carved calfskin cover, eight silver corners, and a pair of ornate silver clasps. The book has Elizabeth Blackwell’s signature and an engraved armorial bookplate signed and dated by Sir Hans Sloane, her sponsor and supporter. The illustrations are all carefully hand-colored, probably by Elizabeth herself. It’s absolutely stunning.”
“You probably know that the London apothecaries were trained in the Chelsea Physic Garden,” Dorothea said. “The plants were grown there as medicinals and harvested for the apothecaries’ laboratory, where herbal medicines were made. Elizabeth drew the plants from life—which means that she must have spent hours in the garden, sketching them, rather than copying the pictures from another book.”
“Which is quite different from the way the earlier English herbals were produced,” Jenna added. “The herbals compiled by Gerard and Culpeper and Parkinson all contain stylized woodcuts that couldn’t have been much help if you wanted to actually identify a plant. Elizabeth’s copperplate engravings are highly detailed and accurate. They can actually help you find the plant you’re looking for.”
“That’s important,” Dorothea said with a little smile. “Especially if you’re trying to tell the difference between look-alikes. Between Queen Anne’s lace, which was used for birth control, and poison hemlock, for instance. Elizabeth’s drawings were almost as good as photographs. The earlier woodcuts weren’t much help when it came to identifying the plants.”
Jenna nodded. “Plus, the earlier books were full of irrelevant and questionable information, including lots of superstition and old wives’ tales. Elizabeth was succinct. She wrote down what doctors and apothecaries were actually prescribing the plants for, at that time. We wouldn’t call her book ‘scientific,’ by the standards of our day. But that’s what she’s aiming for. That’s why she calls it a ‘curious’ herbal.”
“I was wondering about that word,” I said.
“Everybody does,” Dorothea said. “Back then, it meant ‘careful’ or ‘meticulously accurate,’ something like that.”
Jenna nodded. “A Curious Herbal was as good as it got in the seventeen-thirties. Gold standard. Amazing that Elizabeth could pull it off, in the midst of all the politics and intrigues around the garden.”
“And that husband of hers.” Dorothea shook her head. “He certainly didn’t help matters.”
“I’d like to hear about him,” I said, “but right now, I need to know more about the theft. When was the last time you saw the book?”
“Two weeks ago last Friday,” Jenna said. “There’s not enough light in the library, so I had brought the book to my desk in the workroom. Carole Humphreys, one of the board volunteers, came in. She’s been interested in the Herbal, so we looked at it together for a little while. Then it went back where it belonged.”
“I was returning a trolley full of books to the library,” Dorothea said. “I took the Herbal as well, and put it in the display case.”
“And locked it?”
“Of course. And put the key back where it’s kept.”
“Which is?”
“On a hook under a shelf beside the door. Then Carole left and Jenna and I drove to Asheville to see a play. We stayed over to go shopping on Saturday and went to a movie on Saturday night. We drove home on Sunday.”
“It was Monday before I saw that the Herbal was gone,” Jenna said.
“That’s when you phoned the police?”
Dorothea frowned. “I’m afraid it didn’t quite work that way. I called Mrs. Cousins, the board chair, down in Ashville, and told her what had happened. She called the other members and they talked it over. The next day, she telephoned to tell me that the board thought I should report the theft to Sheriff Rogers, but they didn’t want me to make a public announcement. Mrs. Cousins was quite specific about that. No public announcement.”
“But that plays right into the thief’s hands,” I protested.
“I know. That’s what I told her.” Dorothea picked up her coffee cup, took a drink, and set it down again. “But she’s the boss. I had to ask the sheriff to keep it quiet, and he agreed.” She sighed. “Because he had to, I believe. Mrs. Cousins had a conversation with him.”
I understood Dorothea’s frustration. The board was obviously more concerned about the foundation’s reputation than about getting to the bottom of the theft—or getting the Herbal back.
But I knew there was more. “Penny told me that you’ve found pages missing from other rare books of botanical prints,” I said. “How many?”
“We don’t know yet,” Dorothea said. “We’ve surveyed only a few of the most important books. We keep looking, but we don’t have the staff for a full inventory. We can’t search every book. And even if we find a page or two missing, we have no idea when that happened. Maybe the book wasn’t complete when Miss Carswell acquired it.”
“And since we don’t have a reliable inventory,” Jenna added, “we don’t really know what other books might have been taken.”
“We gave the sheriff a list of what we think might be missing,” Dorothea said. “But we told him it was a work in progress. We haven’t found everything—we’ve barely got a start.”
Jenna gave me a crooked smile. “And we haven’t found the secret room yet, either. Who knows what treasures it holds?”
“You were serious about that secret room?” I asked quizzically.
“Every old house of this size has at least one secret room,” Dorothea said in a dismissive tone.
“But Dorothea,” Jenna began.
“I wouldn’t put too much faith in that old story,” Dorothea said firmly.
“Who was here at the house when the Herbal was stolen?” I asked.
“Nobody,” Jenna said, “Joe and Rose spent the weekend with Rose’s parents—it was her mother’s birthday.”
“And Jenna and I were in Asheville, which we’d been planning for several weeks,” Dorothea said. “We locked up when we left, and there was no evidence that anybody had tried to break in.”
“Alarms?” I asked. “Video surveillance?” Surely, with a valuable collection . . .
“Cameras and an alarm system are on the list of things I proposed to the board right after I came,” Dorothea said. “They haven’t been approved yet.”
I was feeling stymied. “How about the sheriff? Did he make a thorough investigation?”
“I don’t know how thorough it was,” Dorothea replied. “He questioned Rose and Joe, but I don’t think he saw their nephew. Jenna, of course. Carole and Margaret, probably.” She took a breath. “And me.”
Jenna looked at Dorothea. “Poor Dorothea,” she said sympathetically.
Dorothea winced. “He believes I did it. Since I didn’t, he can’t have any proof. But that doesn’t keep him from thinking it was me. Or wishing it was me. Or something.”
Earlier, I had noticed the worry lines between her eyes, and I wondered if they were the product of this threatening situation. If so, I certainly couldn’t blame her. “Did he say why he suspected you?”
“No. Personally, I think it’s because I’m handy.” Her lips tightened. “And I’m afraid that Mrs. Cousins agrees with him. The two of us—Mrs. Cousins and I—didn’t get off on the right foot. She thought my proposal for installing the alarm system was ‘unnecessary.’ The theft has strained things between us. I suspect that she thinks I took the Herbal just to prove a point.”
“Prove what point?”
“To demonstrate that the cameras and the alarm are really necessary. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I were fired.” She nodded toward Jenna. “If that happens, it will mean a big interruption in Jenna’s work.”
“I wouldn’t stay without you, anyway,” Jenna said loyally. “But they’d be silly to fire you, Dorothea. You’re just beginning to bring some organization to this collection. And there’s simply nobody else who could make sense of it.”
“I’m afraid Mrs. Cousins doesn’t agree.” Dorothea gave me an apprehensive glance. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you how unsettling this is, China. If I were charged with theft, that would be the end of my career.”
“They can’t charge you without evidence,” I said firmly, and not entirely truthfully. I’ve seen plenty of charges based on easily challenged evidence.
“But even the suspicion of theft . . .” She bit her lip. “If the sheriff doesn’t manage to find out who did this, the suspicion will linger.”
“We won’t let that happen.” It’s a lawyer’s standard reassurance of an apprehensive client, and while I put the usual confidence behind it, I wasn’t so sure. There were too many unknowns, too many players. There was very little security, as far as I could see. Anybody who knew that the Herbal was here could have walked in and taken it.
I pushed my dessert dish away and leaned my forearms on the table. “What are we talking about here? How much is the Herbal worth?”
“An auction estimate would probably come in at a hundred thousand dollars,” Dorothea said. “Christie’s and Sotheby’s both have offered a couple of two-volume sets in the last two years. One went for forty thousand, the other for sixty. Of course, with interested bidders, this one would go for more, since it’s Elizabeth’s presentation copy to Sir Hans Sloane.”
“Or the thief could take out the colored plates and sell them separately,” Jenna reminded her. To me, she added, “I’ve seen those colored plates online for as high as three or four hundred dollars apiece, which means that there’s probably a hundred and eighty or two hundred thousand dollars in the plates. It would be safer for the thief to sell it that way,” she added glumly. “Once the plates have been removed, there’s no way to tell which edition they came from.”
I nodded, remembering that Michael Blanding’s map thief had worked that way: slicing maps out of rare books and selling the single pages for thousands of dollars to eager collectors who never bothered to ask for provenance—where the plates had come from. And I, too, had seen colored plates from Elizabeth’s Herbal, matted and framed, for sale on the internet. For the thief, this could be a low-risk, high-payoff enterprise.
“Where did Miss Carswell acquire the Herbal?” I asked. “How long had she had it?”
Dorothea and Jenna exchanged looks. At last, Dorothea shook her head. “We don’t know. She traveled to England several years ago, and we’ve found receipts for some things she bought at that time. But not the Herbal. We’ve asked Jed Conway, but he says he doesn’t know.” She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “That’s still a mystery to be solved.”
“I read a couple of online biographies about Elizabeth,” I said. “It appears that she’s pretty much a mystery, as well. Which is strange, because her Herbal seems quite exceptional. I read that this is the only English herbal, in any era, that was written, illustrated, engraved on copper plate, and colored—by a woman.”
“That’s true,” Dorothea said. “The male herbalists get all the attention. Nicholas Culpeper, for instance. And John Gerard. Everybody knows about them. Nobody remembers Elizabeth Blackwell.”
Jenna spoke with a barely restrained passion. “And given the kind of pressure she was under—well, it’s a wonder the work got done at all! Her husband had gotten himself thrown into debtor’s prison. His own stupid fault, really. He was an arrogant fellow who thought he could do exactly as he pleased and get away with it.” She shook her head. “If Elizabeth hadn’t spent three whole years of her life producing the Herbal and selling it, he might have spent the rest of his life locked up in Newgate. It was her persistence that bought his freedom. Plus her smarts. Not to mention her stubbornness. That woman just didn’t know when she was beaten.”
I had to smile at Jenna’s intensity. This was obviously something she cared about. I said, “I read a nineteenth-century biographer who described the Herbal as Elizabeth’s ‘most touching and admirable monument of female devotion’ to her husband, But I understand that Alexander only lived another ten years or so after she bailed him out. And wasn’t there something . . . unusual about the way he died?”
Jenna and Dorothea exchanged eyebrow-arched glances. “You might say so, yes,” Jenna said.
“He was executed.” Dorothea said.
“They lopped off his head,” Jenna said.
“In Sweden,” Dorothea added.
“For treason,” Jenna said, with a disgusted look. “If you ask me, he deserved it. That man was always trying to be somebody he wasn’t. There aren’t many details, but it seems that he was passing himself off as a physician to the Swedish king when he managed to get embroiled in some sort of palace conspiracy. And he plagiarized somebody’s book, as well.” She made a face. “That’s Alexander for you. Always wanting to be a big-time player—and never quite understanding the game he was in. This time, though, Elizabeth wasn’t there to bail him out. She had washed her hands of him. At least, that’s what I think.”
“Jenna doesn’t believe that Elizabeth Blackwell was motivated by ‘female devotion,’” Dorothea said matter-of-factly. “Her novel tells a different story.”
“I’ve only read the first section,” I said, “but I got that idea.” I turned to Jenna. “The novel is part of your master’s thesis?”
Jenna nodded. “Yes, along with an analysis of the printing history of the Herbal. I considered writing the usual biography. But I’ve dug up all this amazing stuff about eighteenth-century London and the apothecaries—the pharmacists of their day—and the way books were printed and sold. I think I’ve pieced together how Elizabeth got involved with the Physic Garden and how she produced the book, in spite of all the obstacles. I’ve begun to feel close to her, as if I know her. Know her personally, I mean. As a friend. So I didn’t want to write just a biography. I wanted to get closer.”
Dorothea put out a hand. “Jenna,” she said gently, “you’re on your soapbox again. China doesn’t want to hear—”
“Yes, I do,” I said.
But Jenna barely heard us. “And she’s an incredible woman, really. Her husband had squandered her dowry and gone to prison and there she was, homeless, with two young children.” She gave me an indignant glance. “Really, China. Don’t you think she must have been just totally disgusted with Alexander? If he were my husband, I would have been ready to kiss him off.” She made an impatient noise. “Female devotion, my foot.”
“So what you wrote—that Elizabeth and her children had nowhere to go—that was really true? In real life, I mean.”
“Oh, you bet. He had managed to lose their printing business and their house on the Strand. He was in prison and she had no money. Her parents had cut her off, his mother and stuck-up brother wouldn’t have anything to do with them, and Alexander had squandered her dowry on his printing business, even though he didn’t meet the seven-year-apprenticeship requirement. That man was always pretending to be somebody he wasn’t. Of course, Elizabeth—”
“Jenna,” Dorothea said more loudly. But Jenna was going on.
“Of course, Elizabeth and the children could have moved into Newgate with him. Lots of women did. Or she could have sponged off friends. She and Alexander were both Scottish, and there was a big group of expat Scots in London. They looked out for one another. That’s why Dr. Stuart was willing to give her a job and a place to live. But Elizabeth didn’t go that route. Instead, she rolled up her sleeves and—”
She stopped herself, glancing from Dorothea to me. “Oops, sorry,” she muttered. “I let myself get carried away sometimes. I can be a bore, chattering on about a story that mostly interests just me.”
“That’s okay,” I said, admiring her passion. And her energy. “If you’re writing a novel, I suppose you have to get carried away—or get carried into it—or you can’t write.”
“And you’re never a bore,” Dorothea said comfortingly. “I’ve already learned so much about the Herbal from you. And about Elizabeth, too.”
A rueful smile hovered on Jenna’s lips. “Of course, she lived almost three hundred years ago, and a lot of her life really is a mystery. It’s like a tangled skein that begs to be unraveled—the mystery of who she was.”
“I loved the beginning and I’m ready for more,” I said. “When can you send another chapter or two?” I wasn’t just handing out an empty compliment. In her enthusiasm, Jenna had made me curious about Elizabeth Blackwell and that husband of hers. I doubted that knowing more about the author of the stolen book would take me further toward the thief, but you never know.
“How about tonight?” Jenna asked with a little laugh. “That is, as long as you don’t mind reading a draft. This is very much a work in progress.”
“That would be great,” I said. “I have my tablet with me. You could email the sections. Or put them on a thumb drive.”
Dorothea got up and began to clear the table. “Why don’t you do that while I put the dishes in the dishwasher, Jenna. And don’t forget the list you were making for China. The names of visitors to Hemlock House.”
“I’ll help with the cleanup,” I volunteered.
The kitchen chores were almost finished by the time Jenna got back to the kitchen. “I’ve emailed parts two and three of the novel,” she said. “And here’s the list.”
“Wonderful,” I said, taking the printout. “Bedtime reading.”
I had gotten up early that morning in Texas, so I said thank you and goodnight and excused myself. I took the back stairs—the circular staircase—to the second floor, wishing for better lighting and being careful where I put my feet. As I came to the landing, I was tempted to go up and have a look around on the third floor, where Sunny Carswell was said to have died. And where her ghost presumably hung out, if indeed there was one. But I had no good reason to go where I hadn’t been invited, and I was looking forward to my reading.
I was just opening the door to my room when Jenna caught up with me.
“I hope you noticed how worried Dorothea is about this thing,” she said in a low voice. “This theft is really hard on her—the loss itself, of course, but also Mrs. Cousins’ disapproval and the sheriff’s suspicion. She doesn’t believe that the police will find the Herbal, and I’m afraid I agree.” She put her hand on my arm. Her eyes were intent, her voice taut, pleading. “Dorothea didn’t steal it, China. I didn’t, either. You do believe us, don’t you?”
I hesitated. I did, didn’t I? I had thought that Dorothea couldn’t possibly be guilty of stealing a valuable book. But why did Jenna think she had to urge me to believe in her innocence? And how well did I know the woman, really? Money was obviously an issue for her. Was it possible that—
“You’re our best hope, China,” Jenna said urgently. “You’ve got to find it. Please don’t fail us. Please.”
“I’ll do what I can” was all I could come up with, and it didn’t sound any too convincing, even to me. But I couldn’t promise to find something that might be on its way to the shelves of some collector’s private library—or a worktable, where it could be hacked to pieces by an enterprising thief with an X-Acto knife.
I liked Jenna, but I was glad to step into my room and close the door behind me. And I wasn’t too tired to enjoy my lovely room. I opened the casement window and was rewarded by the inquiring who-who-whooo? of an owl in one of the nearby hemlocks and a whiff of April air, sweet with the scent of rich forest soil and new green leaves. I changed into McQuaid’s old black T-shirt, two sizes too large and the most comfortable sleeping shirt I’ve ever worn. Then I stacked up the pillows, crawled into bed with my tablet, and logged into the eighteenth-century world of Elizabeth Blackwell’s London.
What Jenna had emailed me began where her first section had left off, with Elizabeth on her way up Holbourn Hill and into some sort of new adventure. I plunged in eagerly. Jenna’s story might be fiction, but it seemed entirely plausible to me. It was fascinating.
And if the ghost of Sunny Carswell dropped in to read over my shoulder, I was too deeply engrossed to notice.
* You can see the British Museum’s copy at http://www.bl.uk/turning-the-pages/. It originally came from the library of King George III, who was an advocate of the study of botany.