The Silence Of The Library

THIRTY

“Was there something really valuable in those files?” Kanesha asked.

Melba frowned. “I’m not sure if there was anything worth money. I don’t understand all the stuff that goes on with collecting books the way Carrie did. She did tell me a lot of her books were worth a bunch because of their condition. I guess she meant they were in real good shape. She talked about dust jackets sometimes.”

I recalled Carrie Taylor’s parting words the final time I saw her. She claimed she had items in her collection that Gordon Betts didn’t. I wondered now whether she meant documents in her files rather than specific copies of Electra Cartwright’s books. Maybe a rare copy of The Mystery at Spellwood Mansion didn’t enter into the motive for murder at all.

“Do you have any idea what kind of documents Mrs. Taylor had in her files?” Kanesha asked. “Did she ever show you what was in them?”

“She pulled them out a few times and leafed through them with me.” Melba shrugged. “Carrie was a dear friend, but I wasn’t all that crazy about Mrs. Cartwright and her books the way Carrie was. I would listen to her talk about all that stuff, because sometimes you have to let your friends go on and on about things you’re not really interested in, right?”

I nodded. Kanesha remained impassive.

Melba still hadn’t answered the critical question. I decided to risk asking it again, hoping that she would finally get to the point.

“What kind of documents did she have in those files?”

Kanesha flashed me a sour look but turned quickly back to stare at Melba.

This time Melba evidently understood the urgency of the question. “She had folders of newspaper clippings, I remember. She showed some of them to me. One that I recollect in particular was when Mrs. Cartwright went to Hollywood. There was talk about making a movie out of her Veronica Thane character, but I don’t think anything came of it.” Melba paused as if trying to recall more. “Carrie said they ended up making movies of Nancy Drew instead, and so Veronica didn’t make it to the big screen. There were articles, though, with photos of Mrs. Cartwright meeting with a producer. I think there was even one with an actress that they were lining up to play the lead.”

This was all news to me. I had no idea that Veronica Thane had ever been considered for the movies. I had seen the four movies Bonita Granville made, playing Nancy Drew. While they were entertaining, the Nancy of the films was not my Nancy. I wondered what producers would have made of Veronica’s character.

“Do you remember who the actress was?” I asked.

Kanesha glared at me, and I realized I could be leading Melba away from the point again.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said hastily. “I’ll look it up later. What else was in the files besides newspaper clippings?”

“Actually the files were mostly newspaper articles with some magazine ones, too,” Melba said. “There was a real small file folder with a few letters, and two of them were Carrie’s prize possessions.”

“Why were they so important?” Kanesha asked when Melba failed to continue.

Melba didn’t answer right away. She stared at her mug, but when I offered more coffee, she shook her head. “I’m gathering my thoughts, is all. What I’m going to tell you may sound real pathetic to you, but it’s the truth about Carrie and who she was and how she felt.” For a moment I thought she was going to cry, but she took a deep breath and looked at each of us in turn.

“Go on, honey,” I said softly. “Just tell us.”

Melba nodded. “When she was around ten or eleven, Carrie said, all she could think about was Veronica Thane. She started reading those books about then, and she said when she read the first one, it felt like she had found a sister. I know that probably sounds weird, but it was how she felt. See, Carrie was an orphan like Veronica, and I guess she kind of identified with the girl in the books because of that.”

Kanesha nodded. “It’s understandable.”

Looking slightly relieved, Melba continued. “The thing was, Veronica had this rich old lady who took her in, and she had all the nice clothes she could wear, had her own car, and lived in a mansion with servants. Carrie got adopted by a couple who were doing okay when she first went to them, but not long after, her dad went bust somehow, and they were pretty poor. Veronica lived the kind of happy fancy life that Carrie wanted, and so she latched on to that character and just never outgrew her.”

The poignancy of Carrie Taylor’s story touched me, and I could tell that it affected Kanesha as well. She presented a hard shell to the world, but I knew there was a compassionate person underneath it. Melba’s words affected us both.

Diesel sensed this, too. After sitting contentedly by Melba all this time, he reacted to the emotional temperature change and warbled a few times. Even Kanesha smiled. Melba scratched the cat’s head, and after a moment Diesel moved around to me. I had to give him attention and assure him that I was okay. He was still a bit shy of Kanesha, however.

“Carrie loved the books so much,” Melba went on, “that she was determined to meet the woman who wrote them. Carrie was adopted when she was about six months old, and she had no idea who her real parents were. If her adopted mama and daddy knew, they never told her, and she was never able to find any records.” She paused for a breath. “Carrie said she got it in her head that Mrs. Cartwright was her long-lost mother. She was too young to understand, of course, or even think about the fact that those books were being published twenty years before she was born. You know how kids can be when they want something to be true hard enough, they don’t always think logically about it.”

What Melba told us made Carrie Taylor’s story even more heart-wrenching. I could feel for that little girl who wanted so desperately to know her biological mother and to escape from a life of poverty.

“So Carrie wrote to Mrs. Cartwright.” Melba paused. “I think she wrote in care of the publisher maybe. Anyway, she mailed her letter and waited. And waited. And waited. She kept reading the books over and over till they were about to fall apart.”

“Did someone give her the books?” I asked. “It doesn’t sound like her parents could afford to buy them for her.”

“They couldn’t,” Melba said. “One of the teachers at school felt sorry for her and gave them to her.”

“Did she ever get a letter back from Mrs. Cartwright?” Kanesha asked.

“About thirteen months after she mailed her letter.” Melba shook her head. “I read it once, the first time Carrie showed it to me, I guess it was. Mrs. Cartwright apologized real nice about answering so long after Carrie wrote to her, but she said that she had moved a couple of times during the year and the post office had trouble keeping up with her and forwarding the mail.” She shrugged. “That sounded kind of fake to me, but what do I know? Carrie was so thrilled to get the letter she didn’t care. She wrote back to Mrs. Cartwright, and this time got an answer right away. But in that second letter Mrs. Cartwright told her she was going to live overseas and didn’t know exactly where she’d be, so she didn’t have an address to give Carrie.” Melba shrugged again. “That really was a brush-off, I think, but Carrie was only twelve, I guess, and she believed every word of it. She wrote one more letter back to Mrs. Cartwright but it was never answered.”

“Was it the letters from Mrs. Cartwright she considered her prize possessions?” Kanesha asked.

Melba nodded. “They were real valuable to her, but do you think they were worth any money? Surely they weren’t worth somebody killing her for, were they?”

She was looking at me when she asked the question, and Kanesha also appeared to be waiting for me to answer.

I thought about it for a moment. “Frankly, I can’t see that they’d have significant monetary value. Maybe a hundred bucks or so, but unless letters in Mrs. Cartwright’s own hand are truly rare, I shouldn’t think they’d be worth much. It’s not like she was a hugely famous or successful person—although to her fans she was royalty.” A thought occurred to me. “Were those letters handwritten?”

“I’m pretty sure they were,” Melba said, though she didn’t sound completely certain.

“It doesn’t sound to me like those letters were valuable enough to kill over.” Kanesha rubbed her forehead. “If an item in those files motivated the murder, it surely had to be something else.”

But what? I wondered. I couldn’t come up with any ideas at the moment.

“Ms. Gilley, would you do me a favor and write down everything you remember about those files? Anything you can recall that you saw or even think you saw?” Kanesha drained the last of her coffee, and I refilled it. She nodded her thanks.

“I can sure do that,” Melba said. “If Charlie will find me some paper and a pen, I’ll get right on it.” She flashed a smile. “That is, if you and Diesel don’t mind me hanging around here a little while.”

Diesel meowed loudly, and I grinned at Melba. “I think he has spoken for both of us. I’ll be back in a minute.” I headed for the den at the back of the house and retrieved a notebook and a couple of pens from my desk there. Kanesha and Melba were silent when I returned to the kitchen.

“Before you start making your list,” Kanesha said, “can you think of anything else that could be important?”

Melba shook her head. “Not right this minute, but who knows what will come to me when I start writing? Okay with you if I do it here while you and Charlie talk? Or do you want me somewhere else?”

Kanesha eyed me for a moment.

“It’s fine with me if she stays here,” I said.

Melba flipped open the notebook, uncapped a pen, and started writing.

“Okay, then,” Kanesha said. “When you were at the Farrington House last night, did you rifle through anybody’s room?”