CHIEF INSPECTOR GAMACHE SERIES

Millie – how brave of you to face family and friends and say “no”. I know just how hard that is, even though it sounds so easy, but you have a really good excuse right now, as you can tell them with your eye surgery you are taking some time to heal and get used to the new way of seeing. I think you can let on that this is not something that’s over in a day or two, but that will be an ongoing thing for awhile. Hopefully, that will get you used to saying “no – that doesn’t fit in with our plans” enough that you will have learned a new skill and earned some peace… My husband Vern (who has no idea how hard it is for me to say “no”), always says “They don’t respect you more if you let them walk all over you”, and I know that’s true. Just so darn hard to do much about for me.

I must confess, I, too, had lost track of when the second eye was getting “done” – that’s fast – good for you! Hopefully, things will soon be on track (no matter what you tell people) and you’ll be feeling so much better. Keep us posted…

Speaking of newsletters, the latest just about broke my heart… Louise is the strongest, bravest person I know of… I’m so glad she and Michael had a chance to go to Jamaica, though an off-handed comment makes me think she knew at that time, that it would be the last trip… I can’t imagine watching the one you love just fade away before your eyes.

Julie, I have dabbled in genealogy on and off for many years. I keep terrible records and am very easily distracted by names of neighbors in census records and so I am off and running once again on a track that will not help me trace my people. I have learned that my paternal line arrived in VA and not SC as I had always thought I “knew”.
I won’t be upset by whatever is revealed. I’m very excited and my sister and I talked about it yesterday and last night. We will probably have the most boring report ever. All English or British at least.
When a friend and her husband saw theirs, it was only a confirmation of what they already knew from genealogical research. They are both from families that have kept family history alive for many generations.
When I began, I thought I was Scots, Irish and English only. Then a G-G-Grandfather was listed in a census as having been born in Germany. I fought that by insisting that Germany was probably the name of a no longer existing small town. I was assured that there was never a
place in SC named Germany. I checked with the State archives and the head of the History Dept. of USC. All said no such town or village existed. I finally accepted the truth when his immigration records were found years later. I had assumed he came later than he did. I am such an example of what not to do. Always keep an open mind and never say impossible when the records show it is possible.
I hope the kits arrive in tomorrow’s mail.

Barbara, I’m intrigued that you are testing your DNA – have you done any other genealogical discovery? Do you kind of know what you think the DNA will show? Or will it be a big surprise? My mother always said we had some native American blood – and I guess it would be Cree, considering where in Canada we lived, but I have never actually figured out how that happened. She said her father’s mother was native American, but he was born in England, not Canada… so I think there’s a secret in there somewhere…. You could certainly believe it if you saw him (though I’ve only seen photographs). Her last name was French, which makes me think that there’s some possibility that her father’s father could have been descended from an actual Frenchman who married a native woman, then took the baby back to Europe. When they moved to England, who knows? It’s interesting – my mother didn’t have details, and of course, we all wait too long to ask these questions… one of these days I will start to look into this sort of thing on Ancestry.com – once my eyes are a little worse, I’m lining up other things to do, hahaha.

Do let us know what you find out (if it’s not too personal).

“Where did this mysterious toxin come from?”
Robbie could almost hear Morgan shaking his head over the phone.

“There the mystery deepens but the thinking of the experts is that he made it himself. The suicide victim was a bloke called Brendan Whitmore, a chemical engineer by trade who made a fortune manufacturing insecticides and pesticides in developing countries. His company ran a small research unit locally where he had a development team tinkering with better and safer agents. Strangely that team had no knowledge of the toxin that killed Whitmore and there were no records that one had been produced, but the general supposition was that he probably made the stuff himself.”
It seemed like a lot of trouble to go to in order to commit suicide mused Fox. Morgan agreed and if it was the same agent, how on earth did it end up on a tour bus?
It was late in the evening when Fox and Collie shared a meal in the now deserted dining room. The tour guests were ensconced in cosy accommodations upstairs with a constable guarding the exit, just in case.
“If it was the same weird nerve agent Whitmore used, then the killer had to be on the bus,” Collie announced. She was flicking through the report on Whitmore’s death which Morgan had sent over. “It kills within seconds so it had to have been ingested right before she died.”
Fox nodded as he swallowed the last mouthful of a delicious lamb pie. “In which case the likely repository for said toxin was Ms Purdue’s water bottle but she had been sipping from it all morning as was her want apparently, with no ill effects. Well, no prior ill effects. And she was seated alone. In all my interviews I could not identify anyone with access to the bottle. How about you?”
Collie shook her head and sipped from a bottle of beer, grateful that the Inn was licensed.
“Therese Longley moved from the seat Evangeline was in but that didn’t give her access to the water bottle. Could the toxin have been administered in another way?”
“Are you having James Bond thoughts?”
“Why not? We have seen stranger…ricin pellets delivered by umbrella, Polonium in tea…”
“It’s not impossible. Nerve agents can be absorbed across the skin Morgan tells me. I daresay injection would work quickly as well. I didn’t see anything of that ilk but we will see what Morgan and the SOCO team turn up. If it is murder we are dealing with, any likely suspects among the crowd you spoke to?”