Read Online The Last Word by Ellery Adams - Free Book Online Page A

prison camp set up in New Bern. It was a large camp and employed many families from the surrounding counties. Men who were too old or had a physical disability that prevented them from enlisting became the prison’s guards. Some of the German POWs spent four years in that camp. Plumley’s descriptions of the guards educating their captives about democracy and capitalism are accurate. He was also correct in his depiction of how well the prisoners were treated. It was, for most of the war, a community of men exhibiting mutual respect and even friendship.”
    Though this recap was interesting, Olivia didn’t see that it had much to do with Harris’s house. “Yes, I remember that. The Germans were also encouraged to make items out of scrap materials for their own use or to sell. They were allowed to keep every cent of the profits they earned. The prisoners were so content that they never tried to escape—at least not until the pivotal scene in which a disgruntled Nazi captured and transported here toward the end of the war plans a rebellion. One of his confederates kills a guard, and together the escapees hop a freight train for the Midwest and are never seen again.”
    “What many people don’t know is that the event Plumley depicts so graphically actually happened,” the librarian stated solemnly. “The murdered guard was from Oyster Bay. His name was James Hatcher. Plumley gave both him and the Germans fictional names, of course, but I’ve met Hatcher’s son, and he believes Plumley described that night in perfect detail.”
    Olivia tried to rein in her impatience. “Did James Hatcher live in the house Plumley’s researching?”
    “No. I thought one of his descendants might have and that’s why Mr. Plumley was fixated on it, but that turned out to be a dead end.” Leona took a sip of coffee and stared at Haviland, her eyes glazing as she traveled into the past. Olivia began to shake her foot under the table. She was not accustomed to sitting still.
    Finally, the librarian blinked twice and, surfacing from the past, returned her attention to Olivia. “I wrote down the names of three families who’ve lived in the house. During the war, it was the Whites, but they moved out of town before the armistice. The next family, the Carters, were there the longest. They raised two boys in that house before moving to Florida in the early nineties. After that, it belonged to the Robinsons, the couple that sold it to your friend last month. They’re childless, and if the gossip chain is accurate, the wife is an agoraphobic.”
    That explains the dated interior, Olivia thought.
    “And there was nothing extraordinary about the Whites or the Carters?” she asked.
    Leona shook her head. “Not on paper. I pulled every bit of microfiche that had any bearing on those families and shared them with Mr. Plumley. Like you, I wondered why he was so interested in these rather unremarkable folks.”
    “If Plumley’s working on a sequel, there might be a connection between someone who lived in the house and the prison camp,” Olivia insisted.
    “That was my theory as well, but those families were made up of fathers who went to the office five days a week, mothers who tended house, and children who did their best in school and stayed out of trouble. They were churchgoers and sailors, gardeners and Masons. They played baseball and went to proms. I don’t see them as book material.”
    Olivia didn’t either, but asked Leona for printouts of the same material Plumley had collected.
    “That’ll be quite a bit of work on my part,” Leona said with a playful wink. “I’m perfectly willing to do it and I understand that you feel protective of your young friend, but I doubt he faces any danger from the house or from Mr. Plumley. He seems like a good man and he is an author.
    High praise from a librarian, Olivia thought and decided she would have to find an alternate means of snooping or run the risk of offending her mother’s