“A bad writer,” Nicholas intervenes. He produces a book:Selected Poems, written by Edgar Rolo Butterworth.
Vivian frowns. “Wait, where do I know this name?”
“Remember at your mom’s house, that terrible book of poetry that we found the letters in?Musings on Love and Life, or something like that? Well, that was also written by this Edgar Rolo Butterworth—or should I say Dr.Thurgood.”
Vivian blinks, not totally understanding.
“Edgar Rolo Butterworth is an anagram of Robert Walter Thurgood. It’s his pseudonym. They are the same person,” Nicholas says rather matter-of-factly.
“What? Christ.”
“One of your ancestors must have known, which is why they put the letters in that book,” says Rachel.
“How did you figure this out?”
Rachel riffles through her papers to retrieve a printout of a tombstone. “This is the epigraph on Dr.Thurgood’s tombstone.”
Judge me not today
But for eternity.
In death the truth shall be.
—E. R. Butterworth
“Hidden in plain sight,” Rachel says. “When I saw this quote, I remembered the book of poetry at your mom’s house. And then I reached out to Nicholas, who had this book in his store. As you might guess, it’s another poorly written poetry collection—I guess Butterworth had a knack for that. Anyway, want to show her, Nicholas?”
He nods, carefully opening the book and pointing to the inside left flap, at a stamped image: a ghastly skull head with smoke billowing from its eyes, over the words “Ex Libris Robert Walter Thurgood.”
Goose bumps prickle across Vivian’s skin.
“The library of Robert Walter Thurgood,” Nicholas says. “It’s a bookplate, to indicate ownership. People back in the daytook pride in their personal library collections and marked their books with custom stamps. In this case, it’s more than that. Robert is giving us a clue that he is both the owner of the book and the author.”
Rachel jumps in. “Given the two instances of Butterworth and Thurgood being linked—the tombstone and the bookplate—we realized it had to be more than coincidence. Also I researched Butterworth, and he doesn’t exist.”
“This is wild.” Vivian looks back and forth between the tombstone printout and the book.
“Dr.Robert Walter Thurgood also published some medical books under his real name,” Nicholas says. “I don’t have them, but I could get them, if that would be of interest.”
“Thank you, Nicholas,” Rachel says.
“Perhaps unsurprisingly, his medical books appear to be on pathology.”
“I get why people—writers—use pseudonyms,” Vivian says. “But something doesn’t make sense to me. If Dr.Thurgood wanted anonymity as a poet, then why risk discovery by putting this quote on his tombstone?”
Rachel taps her fingers against the counter, almost impatiently. “For the same reason that serial killers write letters to the public or leave their ‘signatures’ at crime scenes. Dr.Thurgood wanted to be discovered eventually. He was leaving a trail so someone—like us—could connect the dots: that the doctor was the poet.”
“But why? What was he doing? What was his ‘crime scene,’ so to speak?”
Rachel exhales. “I don’t know. But I think it involved your ancestor and pathology. Those are the dots he’s given us to connect. And whatever it was, it seems he wanted to belauded for it, after his death. ‘Judge me not for today but for eternity.’ ”
Vivian shakes her head, trying to erase the unfortunate skeletal images that have now taken hold. She becomes hyperaware of her own body, a chill slowly traveling down each subsequent, isolated vertebra.
Selected Poems(an excerpt)
By Edgar Rolo Butterworth
Mother’s Poison
