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.""I'll go there tomorrow," Emily had answered.On Thursday Emily had called the Sentinel and got permission to go through its library.On Friday she'd spent the day carefully sifting through crumbling copy that had never made the leap to the printed page.The archives seemed almost maniacally in order; some old New England newspapers were like that.She'd managed to pan out one gold nugget: a column, written by what passed for a society columnist back then, that covered what had to be the last ball in Hessiah Talbot's life.It seemed to Emily that the account of the ball must have become suddenly awkward after the murder of its most prominent guest and had been pulled at the last minute.It was written in the typically breathless, gushing voice of the society writer and described the guests, their clothes, the decorative theme (silver and gold), and the designated charity (local soup kitchen).It was a fascinating piece, filled with small and telling details.When Emily returned to her condo that night, she called Mrs.Gibbs and thanked her profusely.Now for the tenth time she was reading the column back to Fergus."Okay, let's see what we've got," she said, between spoons of oat bran cereal."We've got Mrs.William Wellington the Fourth.She sounds like an enormous woman, or she'd never have been able to wear a gown with 'a thousand golden roses sewn into its folds.' Would her husband Will, the 'prominent physician,' still find her attractive? Dr.Wellington must have hobnobbed with the Talbot family.Could he ever have treated Hessiah Talbot? Known something about her? Could she have known something about him?""Can't answer ye," said Fergus steadfastly, sitting opposite her at the kitchen table."Never saw a physician in me life, either professionally or socially."She killed the last of her orange juice."All right.Next.Jeremiah Blood.Obviously a nouveau riche.Proprietor of a string of liveries and smithies in the area.A bachelor, but clearly would be looking for a wife.Think, Fergus.Could he have loved Hessiah from afar? Shod her favorite horse before he worked his way up the ladder and became a parvenu?""Will ye drop that foreign talk, woman?" he groused."I have trouble enough with modern English.""Okay, okay; I'm just being snotty about this ball.It's so easy for me to picture it.Small town, not enough bluebloods for a quorum, they're forced to let in the upstarts, all in the name of charity.I can imagine the sniping and the put-downs all evening long.C'mon, Fergus." She gave him a dangerously tender smile."Don't be mad at me."He returned her look with a slant-eyed, half-mocking one of his own, and they were friends again.Emily ran down the rest of the list, which included the local priest whose soup kitchen was benefiting from the charity ball."It bothers me that Father O'Neil keeps popping up in this investigation," she admitted."You've said that he played whist regularly at the manor, that he was close friends with Hessiah's mother before she died, that—""What's yer point?" Fergus interrupted, more shocked than angry."Ye think a man of the cloth, a Catholic priest, actually strangled this innocent young woman?""It sounds unbelievable, I grant you.I'm just trying to be thorough.Anyway, since when is Hessiah Talbot an 'innocent young woman'? You once called her a bitch, remember?""That's because I was remembering the way she ordered me hauled off to Father O'Brien's mission.I didn't really mean it," he said, a little sullenly."But was she really all that innocent? Listen to this again: 'Miss Hessiah Talbot, whose late arrival only heightened the effect of her entrance, was quickly acclaimed by all to be the belle of the event.Miss Talbot was a vision of pure loveliness in a Paris gown of silver taffeta trimmed in exquisite French braid.Her ensemble was crowned by an extraordinary jewel that had the entire company, especially les débutantes charmantes, remarking on its striking size and color.Very soon it became apparent to all and sundry that her dance card was quite full, and it was even whispered that Lieutenant Dale Culver had earlier torn away an inscribed sheet and commanded those dances for himself, on the quite justifiable ground that he was beginning a tour of duty the following day.The gay and dashing lieutenant shall be sorely missed by many of the company and is wished godspeed.'"Well?""Ye're reading more between them lines than ever was intended.""Not at all," she said, taking a shovelful of by now soggy cereal."I think it was the Silver and Gold Ball that was the ball alluded to during the trial, the ball Hessiah Talbot attended on the night of her death.It explains why the society column was never printed
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