Page 99

BODY FOUND IN BANEBERRY HALL
If the headline of every article was this sensational, then no wonder Allie was worried. I’d be alarmed, too.
A subhead sits below the main headline, not as large but equally as intriguing.
Remains discovered in notorious house allegedly girl missing for 25 years.
Included with the article, written by none other than Brian Prince, are three photos. One is an archive image of Baneberry Hall, probably taken around the time the Book came out. The other two are my father’s old author photo and a faded yearbook shot of Petra Ditmer.
Seeing that front page makes me loathe to enter the office. But the sad truth is that I need Brian Prince more than he needs me. So enter I do, finding myself in an office that’s less like a functioning newspaper and more like a hobby. A solitary one. The newsroom, if it could even be called that, is filled with empty desks on which sit computers probably unused since the Clinton administration.
Sitting opposite the front door is a grandmotherly receptionist with the requisite bowl of hard candy. When she sees me, her mouth forms a tightOof surprise. “Mr. Prince is—”
I quiet her with a raised hand. “He’ll want to talk to me.”
Hearing my voice, Brian pops his head out of an office conspicuously markedEDITOR. “Maggie,” he says. “This is certainly a surprise.”
I can’t argue there. I’m just as surprised as he is, especially when I say, “I need your help.”
Brian’s smirk is brighter than his bow tie. “With what?”
“I want to search your archives.”
“Everything theGazettehas published in the past twenty years isarchived online,” he says, knowing full well that’s not what I’m looking for.
We stare at each other a moment—a silent face-off. I blink first. I don’t have much of a choice.
“Help me, and I’ll give you an exclusive interview,” I say. “Nothing’s off-limits.”
Brian pretends to think it over, even though his mind’s already made up. The ruthless glint in his eyes gives it away.
“Follow me,” he says.
I’m led to a door in a back corner of the newsroom. Beyond it are a small hallway and a set of steps that go to the basement.
“This is the morgue,” Brian announces as we descend the stairs. “All our old editions are here. Every single one.”
He flicks a light switch when we reach the basement, brightening a room the size of a double-wide trailer. Running along the two longest walls are rows of metal shelves. Bound volumes fill them, each the height and width of a newspaper page. Printed on the spines are the years of publication, beginning with 1870.
I go straight for the one marked 1889. The year Indigo Garson died.
“What other years are you looking for?” Brian says.
I’ve read the Book so many times that I’m able to rattle off all the dates my father mentioned. Brian collects them all. Five volumes from four different decades—a load that leaves him red-faced and huffing.
“When are we going to do that interview?” he says as he plunks them down on a metal desk at the far end of the morgue.
I sit and open the first volume—1889. “Now.”
While a clearly flustered Brian Prince runs upstairs to retrieve a pen and notebook, I page through brittle copies of newspapers a hundred years older than I am. Because theGazettehas always been aweekly paper, it doesn’t take me long to find an article about Indigo Garson—TOWN MOURNS GARSON HEIRESS.
I bristle at the headline’s many indignities and implications. That heiress had a name, and it would have been decent of them to use it. Then there’s how the headline pulls focus away from Indigo and directs it at Bartleby itself, as if a dead sixteen-year-old doesn’t matter as much as the town’s pain.
The article is equally frustrating. It reveals few details about how Indigo Garson died, yet takes great pains to mention that her father remained locked in his bedroom, inconsolable. The meat of the story doesn’t arrive until a few issues later, with the shocking report that a maid at Baneberry Hall claimed to have seen William Garson carry the house’s namesake berries up to his daughter. Two weeks after that was the headline my father had mentioned in the Book.
GARSON DEEMED INNOCENT IN DAUGHTER’S DEATH
He hadn’t been lying. All of this was true.