Murder at Monticello Read Online Free PDF

their feet squished in the moist earth.
    â€œIf you feel a descent, you know we’ve keeled over into the food garden.” Harry stopped for a moment.
    â€œWe can stay on the path and go slow. Harry, Kimball isn’t going to be out here in this muck.”
    But he was. Wearing a green oilskin Barbour coat, a necessity in this part of the world, big Wellies on his feet, and a water-repellent baseball hat on his head, Kimball resembled any other Virginia gentleman or gentlewoman on a misty day.
    â€œKimball!” Harry called out.
    â€œA fine, soft day,” he jubilantly replied. “Come closer, I can’t see who’s with you.”
    â€œMe,” Susan answered.
    â€œAh, I’m in for a double treat.” He walked up to greet them.
    â€œHow can you work in this?” Susan wondered.
    â€œI can’t, really, but I can walk around and think. This place had to function independently of the world, in a sense. I mean, it was its own little world, so I try to put myself back in time and imagine what was needed, when and why. It helps me understand why some of these buildings and the gardens were placed as they are. Of course, the people working under the boardwalks—that’s what I call the terraces—had a better deal, I think. Would you two damsels like a stroll?”
    â€œLove it.” Harry beamed.
    â€œKimball, how did you come to archaeology?” Susan asked. Most men Kimball’s age graduating from an Ivy League college were investment bankers, commodities brokers, stockbrokers, or numbers crunchers.
    â€œI liked to play in the dirt as a child. This seemed a natural progression.” He grinned.
    â€œIt wasn’t one of those quirks of fate?” Harry wiped a raindrop off her nose.
    â€œActually, it was. I was studying history at Brown and I had this glorious professor, Del Kolve, and he kept saying, ‘Go back to the physical reality, go back to the physical reality.’ So I happened to notice a yellow sheet of paper on the department bulletin board—isn’t it odd that I can still see the color of the flyer?—announcing a dig in Colonial Williamsburg. I never imagined that. You see, I always thought that archaeology meant you had to be digging up columns in Rome, that sort of thing. So I came down for the summer and I was hooked. Hooked on the period too. Come on, let me show you something.”
    He led them to his office at the back of the attractive gift shop. They shook off the water before entering and hung their coats on the wooden pegs on the wall.
    â€œCramped,” Susan observed. “Is this temporary?”
    He shook his head. “We can’t go about building anything, you know, and some of what has been added over the years—well, the damage has been done. Anyway, I’m in the field most of the time, so this suffices, and I’ve also stashed some books in the second floor of the Big House, so I’ve a bit more room than it appears. Here, look at this.” He reached into a pile of horseshoes on the floor and handed an enormous shoe to Harry.
    She carefully turned the rusted artifact over in her hands. “A toe grab. I can’t make out if there were any grabs on the back, but possibly. This horse had to do a lot of pulling. Draft horse, of course.”
    â€œOkay, look at this one.” He handed her another.
    Harry and Susan exclaimed at this shoe. Lighter, made for a smaller horse, it had a bar across the heel area, joining the two arms of the shoe.
    â€œWhat do you think, Susan?” Harry placed the shoe in her friend’s hands.
    â€œWe need Steve O’Grady.” Susan referred to an equine vet in the county, an expert on hoof development and problems and strategies to overcome those problems. He was a colleague of Fair Haristeen, whose specialty was the equine reproductive system. “But I’d say this belonged to a fancy horse, a riding horse, anyway. It’s a bar