genealogies of some of our more prominent families. I do have some shelves toward the back with some ‘popular’ titles.” The word
“No, I don’t.”
The whole place smelled like wood and leather and Lydia walked up and down the shelves looking at the beautiful volumes there. She traced a finger along the bindings and thought she caught the slightest scent of lemon, as if the books had been dusted with Pledge.
She came to a narrow staircase that crept along the wall, the mahogany banister polished until it gleamed in the light. A small plaque at the bottom of the stairs announced that Haunted historical texts and genealogies were kept above and were for reference only, not to leave the library. Lydia looked around, expecting the librarian to leap out from the shelves and forbid her to go any farther. But she didn’t and Lydia jogged lightly up to the next landing. It was hard to believe that a town so small and innocuous could have so many volumes dedicated to its town history and the people who lived there, but there were at least ten floor-to-ceiling shelves lined across the room and stuffed with leather-bound volumes. Lydia looked around for a light switch but didn’t find one. She made do with the low light that traveled up from the floor below and scanned the shelves. She went to the shelf marked Q-T to see what might exist on the Ross family and walked along that row, squinting her eyes and leaning in close so that she could read the bindings. Toward the end of the shelf, she found a book entitled
She sat and opened the book. The book was in pristine condition and the now-familiar scent of lemons seemed to waft from its pages. She perused the table of contents and found a chapter entitled “Descendants,” then flipped to that page. What she found was a careful chart, dating back to Hiram’s great-grandparents, continuing through his marriage to a woman named Elizabeth Rye in 1856, who died early, before her twenty- second birthday, just a few years later in 1859. Less than a year later, Hiram remarried to a woman named Eleanor Hawthorne, who bore him a son and a set of fraternal twins, one boy, one girl. The chart covered several pages, reaching all the way to three generations later, to Eleanor and Paul Ross, twin daughter and son of Hiram’s great-great-grandson. The chart ended at Eleanor’s marriage to Jack Proctor, with no mention of Julian’s birth or Jack’s death. Lydia scanned back through the marriages and saw that Eleanor had been telling the truth, that the husbands of the Ross women seemed to die all within a few years of the birth of their children.
“What are you looking for exactly?” said the librarian, poking her head up from the stairs and flipping on a light from someplace Lydia couldn’t see. Lydia’s heart leapt, but she managed not to show it.
“How long have you worked here?” asked Lydia, not looking at her.
“Just over thirty years,” she said.
“Did you grow up here?”
Marilyn seemed taken aback by the personal nature of her questions. She hesitated, then answered.
“Why yes.”
“Does the name Ross mean anything to you?”
Marilyn laughed a quick, uncertain laugh and seemed to back away a few steps. “The name Ross means something to everyone in this town. Something different to everyone.” Lydia turned her eyes from the book. Marilyn looked as if she might turn and scurry away, but she didn’t.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Marilyn asked finally.
“I’m looking for information on Eleanor Ross and her murder trial back in 1965. And anything else you can tell me about the Ross family.”
A strange expression crossed the woman’s face, some combination of conspiratorial pleasure and fear, the desire to talk and the knowledge that she shouldn’t.
“I know the librarian can be the hub of almost any small town,” Lydia flattered, remembering how well Marilyn had responded to the compliments to her library. “And I can see I wasn’t wrong in coming here before going anyplace else.”
“Who are you?” asked Marilyn again, moving in closer to her.
“I’m Lydia Strong. I’m a writer interested in the case.”
“Oh, of course,” the librarian said, covering her mouth and the smile that bloomed there. “I should have recognized you. I’ve read every one of your books.”
Lydia smiled. The librarian had climbed the rest of the steps and now stood beside her, glancing at the book open in front of her on the table. Lydia held out her hand, which Marilyn grabbed and shook enthusiastically.
“Will you help me, Marilyn?”
The woman could barely conceal her excitement, but she recovered well and took on her previous air of authority. “Well, it depends on what you’d like to know. I’ll tell you what, there’s a lot you won’t find in these books.”
Lydia followed Marilyn back to her office behind the information desk and sat in a plush sofa. Marilyn offered tea, and when Lydia accepted, she walked from the office and was gone for a time. Lydia looked around the small space, made smaller by the heavy wood paneling and large oak desk lit by the same style banker’s lamp that had sat on the desk out front. Marilyn’s degrees hung behind her desk: there was a bachelor’s in English literature, a master’s in library science, as well as a second master’s in American history, all from Syracuse University. Lydia stood up to inspect them more closely.
Marilyn’s desk was predictably spotless and impeccably organized. A small pile of manila folders was stacked flush against the far corner of the desk, ten identical Uni-Ball black ink pens stood in a leather cup: A cup of tea, still steaming, sat on a coaster. A small, sectioned tray contained rubber bands and paper clips. An unfinished game of computer solitaire when Lydia
“You said this library was funded by a private trust?” asked Lydia, sitting back down on the sofa and placing the tea on the end table. Marilyn jumped up to place a coaster beneath the cup and then sat back down.
“Yes, from the estate of one of the original settlers of this town, a man named Thomas Hodge. He is the ancestor of a woman who still lives in Haunted, a woman named Maura Hodge.”
She paused a second and then took a sip of her tea.
“Does your visit have something to do with the recent murder of Richard Stratton?” Marilyn asked.
“It does,” Lydia answered simply, not offering any additional information.
Marilyn nodded and a look of uncertainty crossed her features, as if she were unsure now that she wanted to offer Lydia what she knew. But after a moment, she began to speak. “The Rosses’ ancestors, originally from Holland, settled Haunted back in the 1700s. The land, obviously, was virtually wrested from the Seneca Indians, who are just one of the tribes that existed in this region before colonization. Mainly trappers and farmers, the settlers flourished here in the ‘New Netherlands.’ ”
Lydia smiled politely, not exactly interested in a history lesson. The woman must have read it on her face. “I know it seems like I’m starting a long way back, but I think it’s relevant to what you want to know,” she said.
“Please, go on,” said Lydia. “It’s fascinating.”
“By the beginning of the early 1800s the Rosses were by far the wealthiest farming family in the North. They also owned the largest number of slaves. In fact, before slavery was abolished in 1865, New York had the largest number of slaves of any northern state.”
She paused here and took another sip of her tea, looking at Lydia over the rim of the mug, gauging her reaction.
“The Rosses were notoriously brutal to their slave workers. In particular, Hiram Ross, Eleanor Ross’s great- great-great-grandfather, was rumored to have beaten and even murdered his slaves. Beatings, of course, were not unusual. But actual murder was rarer than you might think because slaves were extremely valuable. A strong young male could be worth as much as twenty-five hundred dollars, which in that day was an extremely large sum of money, as odious as it is to talk about human life in such a way.”
Lydia nodded her agreement and understanding. She felt cold suddenly and had the sense that the history lesson was about to get ugly.
“Anyway, Hiram Ross was hated and feared by just about everyone who knew him… his slaves, his fellow
