Elizabeth Blackwell remained in London with her son until at least July 1747. There is no further record of her, although one historian claims she died in 1758 and was buried in Chelsea Old Church. Her work was acclaimed long after her death and was translated into Latin [and German] in 1773 as the Herbarium Blackwellianum, by the Count Palatine, Dr. Christopher Jacob Trew, and Christian Ludwig. It was unusual for a woman of her time to produce such a book, as it was intended for and used by a professional medical audience.*
—Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women
Edinburgh University Press, 2007
And then? And then? I looked up from my tablet.
“And then what?” I asked aloud. “I’ve come to the last page. Elizabeth has paid her husband’s debts and bailed him out of jail. She is about to finish the book. They’re starting over. So what happens next? When can I read your next chapter?”
Jenna got up from her computer and went to put another couple of logs on the workroom fire. She wore a half smile. “What do you think happens next?”
“But you’re the one telling the story,” I objected. “Do the two of them live together? Are they happy? Does Elizabeth have other children? Can they manage on the sales of her book, or does Alex have to go to work? He obviously doesn’t have a very good reputation. Who is going to hire him? To do what?”
“Whoa.” Jenna lifted her hand. “Wow. So many questions. I wish I could answer them all.”
“You can’t? Why not? It’s your novel, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s my novel. But it’s Elizabeth’s life.”
Oh, right. I had momentarily forgotten. “That’s true,” I said. “Well, okay, then. Tell me what happened to Elizabeth after she finished the Herbal.”
“It’s easier to tell you what happened to Alexander,” Jenna said. “There’s still a lot of mystery but I’ve found at least some documentation on him.”
She sat down in the chair on the other side of the fireplace, pulling it closer to the fire. “After Elizabeth got him released from prison, he lived in the Swan Walk house with her for at least a year or two. We know that, because he’s listed on the tax rolls. Elizabeth did get pregnant—at least once.” She bent toward the blaze, warming her hands. “We know that because they baptized a son named Alexander in 1742. The baptism took place in St. Paul’s Church, in Covent Garden, so I’m guessing that Elizabeth wasn’t living in Chelsea at the time.”
“At least once?” I calculated. “You think she might have had a miscarriage before Alexander was born?”
“Or a baby who died.” She sat up and crossed her legs. “That wouldn’t have been unusual at a time when nearly half of the children didn’t live to celebrate their first birthday. We also know that somebody—most likely Alex himself—published a book under his name about how to drain clay lands and improve the soil. That was in 1741. The Blackwells had sold more shares of the Herbal to the printer John Nourse, so maybe they were using part of the money from the sale to finance the printing of that book.”
“Under his name? You’re suggesting that he didn’t actually write it?”
Jenna looked grave. “I am. I’ve read this book—in fact, I own a facsimile copy that I bought online. It’s called A New Method of Improving Cold, Wet, and Barren Lands. It’s quite evidently written by somebody who had spent decades improving the soils of Northern England. There’s absolutely no evidence that Alexander even traveled there or that he had any farming experience whatsoever.”
“You’re saying he plagiarized this book?”
“I think he somehow acquired the manuscript, perhaps when he was still in the printing business. He had it printed and then claimed authorship—or let people believe that he was the author, which amounts to the same thing. The title page has no author’s name and the dedication signature is missing. Even so, the book is still sold under his authorship, almost three centuries later. I saw it for sale recently for nearly eight hundred dollars. It’s said to be quite rare, so perhaps he had only a few copies printed and handed them out himself, rather than putting it in bookshops.” She grinned bleakly. “I can just see him, holding it out with a modest, ‘I thought you might like to have this little trifle of mine.’”
I was puzzled. “But why would he do such a thing?”
“To bolster his credentials.” Jenna’s mouth tightened. “Don’t you see, China? He was inventing himself all over again. This book turned him into a bona fide agricultural expert—which would be quite understandable, since his wife was now an internationally recognized expert in medicinal plants. He used it to leverage himself into what might have been a very good job, if he’d had any ability at all.”
“What kind of a job?
“Around this time the Duke of Chandos, probably on the basis of that book, hired Alexander to manage the gardens at Canons, near Edgeware. It was a prestigious post, because the gardens were thought to be among the loveliest in England. Some historians say that Alexander laid out the gardens—but that simply isn’t true, for the gardens were designed in the early 1720s, long before Alexander arrived on the scene.” A burning log shifted in the grate and she took a poker and pushed it back. “The duke’s estate was north of London about ten miles, a half-day by coach and too far to commute in those days of bad roads.”
“Then I suppose he must have lived on the estate,” I said. “Did Elizabeth make the move with him?”
“We don’t know.” Jenna returned the poker to its rack. “But we do know that Alex wasn’t at Canons very long. When he left, it was ‘under a cloud’ of some sort, as one of his friends diplomatically put it.”
“No details?”
She shook her head. “I think he had stretched his credentials with that book and couldn’t deliver. He was found out to be a fake, word got around, and he packed up and left England for Sweden. That would have been about 1742. Elizabeth didn’t go with him.”
“Sweden?” I blinked. “Isn’t that rather . . . odd?”
“I thought so, but maybe not. Maybe Sir Hans helped. Or he knew somebody who knew somebody. Anyway, he was invited by the Swedish prime minister to serve as an agricultural consultant—on the strength of that book, it seems. He must have talked a good line, for he was given an annual stipend, a house, and the supervision of a Swedish model farm. He also somehow managed to get himself named a court physician.”
I chuckled. “Another reinvention.” But it wasn’t funny.
“Exactly. But things must have gone downhill pretty fast. He wasn’t well liked—he was said to be self-important, arrogant, and ‘conceited of his own abilities.’ He made a mess of the model farm and people began to wonder whether he had actually written that book. Then he got involved with a woman and was implicated in the death of her husband.”
“Wow,” I said, transfixed by the story. “Really?”
“Really. Carl Linnaeus writes about it. It appears that he didn’t think much of Alexander, either.”
“Carl Linnaeus? The Swedish naturalist who invented the binomial classification system? You mentioned him in the section I just finished. Did Elizabeth meet him when he visited the garden?”
“I’m sure she did,” Jenna said. “Linnaeus wrote to a friend about Alexander’s scandalous behavior. As he tells it, Alexander was ‘intimate’ with the wife. The husband got sick. Alexander treated him. When the man died, it was apparently easy—and perhaps convenient—to blame Alexander, either for poisoning him or for being such a poor doctor that he couldn’t save him. Who knows?”
“It could have been just gossip, couldn’t it? It sounds like he got a lot of preference from the Crown. People must have been jealous.”
“I suppose. And it may have just been Carl Linnaeus who was jealous. But after that, things went from really bad to horribly worse for Alexander. He got involved in a political intrigue in the royal court, something to do with a plan to poison the heir to the Swedish throne and put the Duke of Cumberland—the youngest son of King George II—in his place. Alexander claimed to be acting for the British Crown, but King George called him a ‘liar and an imposter,’ so that explanation never went anywhere.”
“Sounds like a spy thriller,” I said. “Like something out of a novel by Le Carré.”
“You’re so right,” Jenna agreed. “The thing is that nobody ever knew whether Alexander made the story up—working for the British Crown, I mean—or whether the Brits actually put him up to it and then abandoned him. Whatever, he was convicted of plotting against the monarchy and beheaded.”
“Beheaded?” I yelped. “Yikes!”
Jenna leaned back in her chair, stretching her feet toward the fire. “He’s said to have made a joke about it. He apparently laid his head on the wrong side of the block and then apologized. He said it was an honest mistake—it was the first time he had ever been beheaded.”
“Oh, God,” I said softly. “Oh, poor Elizabeth!”
“Can you imagine?” Jenna was shaking her head again. “One account—the one that depicts her as a devoted wife—says she was on her way to join him in Sweden when she got word that he was dead. Personally, I doubt it.” She lifted her chin. “My Elizabeth probably gave that jerk his walking papers when he got fired by the Duke of Chandos and left England. After all, she had a continuing income from sales of the book. She could support herself and her son with that—or she could do something else. But no matter how she felt about Alexander, she had to deal with the fallout from what he had done. There were reports about his execution in all the London newspapers and magazines, in Scotland too—it was a huge story. And since nobody knew the details, there must have been dozens of rumors floating around. Can you imagine how difficult that was for her?”
I thought of the elaborate copy of the Herbal that Elizabeth had signed and presented to Hans Sloane—the book that had disappeared from the library at Hemlock House. She would have been proud of what she had achieved and treasured the recognition of her work. So she must have felt horribly embarrassed and even humiliated by Alexander’s irresponsible behavior, especially since it was out there in full public view. All the men she had come to respect would have known about it—would she have had to answer their questions? But could she? How much did she know about what her husband had been up to in Sweden?
After a moment, I thought of something else. “In one of your early chapters, you mentioned midwifery. Is there any evidence that Elizabeth might have gone in that direction?”
“According to a nineteenth-century account, that’s what happened. The Herbal had given Elizabeth plenty of connections in the medical community. She was still a young woman, educated, adaptable. But nobody knows for sure. She probably stayed on in Chelsea. When she died in 1758, she was buried in the graveyard at the Chelsea Old Church. Her name is on a plaque there, along with three other notable women.” She eyed me. “So what do you think, China?”
I considered for a moment. “Your Elizabeth—the one you’ve already created in your novel—is a woman who knows her mind. She’s smart, gutsy, and able to make her own choices. I’m betting that she didn’t cut that husband of hers any slack at all. When he left England, she probably told him not to bother coming back. Not to her, anyway. I’m also betting that she wouldn’t have wanted to sit around twiddling her thumbs, living off her book sales. She would want to be doing something useful. So I would vote for midwifery.” I paused. “Since there’s lots that isn’t known, you can make it up, can’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” Jenna agreed. “But that’s the problem with biographical fiction, isn’t it? I can tell a story that fits with the recorded details of Elizabeth’s life. But it’s impossible to know her inner life. What she hoped, feared, loved, hated. I wish she had left a journal, some letters, a trail of breadcrumbs, something that would tell us more about her.”
“Well, it’s Elizabeth’s story but it’s yours, too,” I said. “You have a right to tell it your way.” I sighed. “I’m just so sorry that I haven’t been able to put a happy ending to the search for her Herbal.” I pointed to her computer. “Have you been able to match any of the items Conway has listed on his website with things you know to be missing from this library?”
“Actually, yes,” Jenna said, brightening. “I’ve identified five definites and two possibles. I’ll know for sure when I get a look at the items themselves. And I just looked at a few webpages. There’s lots more.”
“That’s a good start,” I said. “The chief will be delighted to get your list, I’m sure.” I sighed. “Jed is going to have to come clean about the whereabouts of the Herbal. He must know something.”
“Well, you’ve given it your best shot,” Jenna said in a comforting tone. “And if you didn’t find the herbal, you’ve uncovered so much else. If you hadn’t been in the bookstore when Jed Conway was shot, he would probably have died. And if he had died, Amelia might never have revealed the real story of Sunny’s murder.” She stretched her arms over her head. “When are you going back to Texas?”
“Day after tomorrow.” I glanced out the window, where the snowfall seemed to have stopped. “I’m glad it isn’t tomorrow. I’m not sure I’d want to drive those switchbacks until the road is plowed.”
“I heard the snowplow go past a little while ago.” Jenna got up and went back to her computer. “But it’s good that you’ll be here one more day. If you like books about plants, there’s lots to look at in the library.” She turned to give me a sober glance. “And we were talking about a sleepover tonight—playing ghostbusters. Remember?”
“How could I forget?” I asked. “We’ll have a party.”
I wasn’t being snarky. As I said earlier, my attitude toward ghosts was changed when I was introduced to Annie, a benign spirit who likes to ring the bell over my shop door and—when she has something to say—communicates via the magnetic letters on the announcement board behind the counter. So who am I to question the existence of a ghost at Hemlock House?
And while Dorothea had described her as a “bit of a drama queen,” Jenna struck me as a highly imaginative but commonsensical young woman. I didn’t question her claim that she had been deeply frightened by what she had heard the night before. And that she genuinely believed it was Sunny’s ghost.
Was it? The ghost of Sunny, I mean.
Well, there was Claudia Roth’s testimony that Sunny believed that Hemlock House was haunted with the ghosts of her father and grandfather, both of whom had died in this place. Claudia claimed to see the ghost too, so something spooky had apparently been going on here long before Jenna arrived. And there was plenty of room for another spirit—especially that of a woman who had been robbed of her life by someone she liked and trusted.
On the other hand, the place was old and not very well maintained. There could be any one of a number of explanations for the noises Jenna had heard and the ghost that Claudia and Sunny had seen.
As Ruby says, the Universe asks us questions. It doesn’t give us answers.
• • •
The snow stopped in late afternoon, leaving the house surrounded by white-draped hemlocks in a sculpted winter wonderland landscape. Jenna was right. The snowplow had cleared the road. The switchbacks might be scary, but I was sure I could manage them on my way back to the airport, even in my small car.
As if to apologize for the late-season snowfall, the sun came out and smiled contritely across the mountain, so Jenna and I decided to go for a walk. Dorothea loaned me her parka and I wore Jenna’s mittens and the snow boots I had borrowed from Margaret. The snow was a special delight for this Texas girl—someone who doesn’t have to live with it all winter long. It crunched deliciously underfoot, the air was crisp and fresh, and the valley below stretched out like a scene from an Alpine postcard. I had wanted to look for ginseng and Mayapple, but they were buried under inches of snow. The view was spectacular, though. I took photos on my phone and emailed them to McQuaid and Ruby. Ruby replied with two words and a string of exclamation points:
SNOW BOOTS!!!!!
We followed the road uphill in the direction of Claudia’s parrot sanctuary, and when we got tired, we turned around. Back at Hemlock, I called Chief Curtis to ask about the outcome of his searches. He said that his officers had come up empty-handed. They hadn’t found the Herbal. He was satisfied that Margaret Anderson didn’t know anything about the theft, but they hadn’t closed the book on her and he was going to continue to question Conway.
“It’s possible he’s still concealing that information,” he said. I shrugged. The investigation was in his hands now. I had done all I could.
Our walk had made us hungry, which was a good thing. For supper, Rose had left us a big pot of Hoppin’ John soup—black-eyed peas, ham, and rice—served with warm chunks of skillet cornbread.
The soup, Dorothea said, was one of those Appalachian New Year’s traditions that’s good all year round. It’s said to have taken its name from Hoppin’ John, a street soup-peddler in Charleston, South Carolina, who walked with a cane. The black-eyed peas are supposed to bring luck, especially if you leave three of them on your plate for financial fortune, good health, and romance. Served the next day—a sign of the household’s frugality—Hoppin’ John leftovers are known as Skippin’ Jenny. For dessert, we had something called stack cake with an old-fashioned homemade apple butter filling. It was scrumptious. I was going home with a couple of extra pounds, I was sure.
Over our soup and cornbread, we talked about the day’s events. Dorothea was trying to think of the best way to break the news about Sunny’s murder to the Hemlock Foundation’s board and to anticipate the questions they would ask. They had been Miss Carswell’s friends. They were bound to want answers.
“I just don’t understand why Sheriff Rogers couldn’t see that it was murder and not suicide,” she said, shaking her head. “He must have done a really sloppy investigation.”
“I wondered that too,” Jenna said. “You’d think a trained law enforcement officer could tell the difference—especially because Amelia was in the house when it happened.”
“It’s not always that simple,” I said. “If somebody phones 9-1-1 and says, ‘I’m reporting a suicide,’ the responding officers may arrive on the scene with that mindset. They’d tend to treat the situation from the first as a suicide, rather than look for clues to a possible homicide.” I paused, remembering. “The sheriff did say that the coroner had some questions, apparently about fingerprints on the gun. But even he was eventually satisfied. Yes, it’s a mistake, and one that the cops are supposed to be alert to. But it’s still an easy mistake to make.”
“Rose told me that she was the one who called,” Jenna said. “She heard the gunshot, then Amelia yelled from somewhere upstairs that she should phone 9-1-1 and tell them that Sunny had just shot herself. Rose said that she didn’t even go up to Sunny’s room until her body was gone and she had to clean up the blood.” She shuddered. “That’s something I could never do. Even a few drops of blood make me feel faint.”
“So Amelia would have had plenty of time alone with the body before the deputies got here,” I said. “She could have moved it or wiped her prints off the gun and imposed Sunny’s. And there were other factors that made suicide seem plausible. For one thing, everybody knew that Sunny didn’t have much longer to live.”
“Lots of people knew about her interest in the Hemlock Guild, too,” Dorothea said.
“And the gun,” I added. “It had killed her father and her grandfather. Maybe it reinforced the idea that this was some sort of ritual suicide. All of that could have outweighed the absence of a suicide note.”
In fact, I thought, it was probably all too easy for the sheriff’s deputies to assume that Sunny had killed herself. Now, though, the case would be reopened. Amelia’s suicide note would be entered into evidence. Jed Conway would be called to testify—and maybe even charged as an accessory after the fact. The coroner’s ruling would be changed from suicide to homicide. The case would be big news in Hemlock County.
“Amelia must have figured she was home free,” I said, “until Jed Conway threatened to tell what he knew.”
“So she shot him to keep him from spilling the beans,” Jenna said thoughtfully. “About Sunny’s murder. And the thefts as well.”
“But her suicide note said that she didn’t take the Herbal,” Dorothea pointed out.
“And that Margaret did,” Jenna said.
“Which apparently isn’t true,” I reminded them. “At least the cops couldn’t find it when they searched the house where Margaret had been staying. Her mother’s house.” I didn’t think it was necessary to tell them about Chief Curtis’ romantic involvement with his suspect. That was his own particular can of worms.
Dorothea turned to me. “Honestly, China, do you think we’ll ever get our book back?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. I hate to confess to failure, but I know I’m not going to get it back for you. I guess it depends on whether you can persuade the board to announce that it’s been stolen so that dealers and collectors and museums can at least be on the lookout for it.”
From their glum faces, I guessed that they didn’t think there was much of a chance of that.
* The subtitle of the German translation: The Masterful Book of Plants by the Extraordinary Elizabeth Blackwell