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Chapters (206)
  1. Praise for Maplecroft
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  6. THESE ARE THE THINGS AN EARTHQUAKE BRINGS
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  12. A DOCTOR, A LAWYER, A MERCHANT, A CHIEF
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  20. Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
  21. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  26. BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT
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  29. I CROSS THE MAGPIE, THE MAGPIE CROSSES ME
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  31. Nance O’Neil
  32. THIS KNOT I KNIT, THIS KNOT I TIE
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  37. AND IF YOU HAVE A HORSE WITH ONE WHITE LEG . . .
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  43. THE WORST IS TO BE JUDGED WITHOUT HOPE
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  46. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  53. BUT NETTLE SHANT HAVE NOTHING
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  55. CUT THEM ON FRIDAY, YOU CUT THEM FOR SORROW
  56. Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
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  62. HAPPY IS THE CORPSE THAT THE RAIN SHINES ON
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  67. A DWELLING PLACE OF JACKALS, THE DESOLATION FOREVER
  68. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  71. Nance O’Neil
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  84. Emma L. Borden
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  88. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  91. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  93. RIGHT CHEEK, LEFT CHEEK—WHY DO YOU BURN?
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  101. Aaron B. Stewart, Fire Chief, Farthington, Mass.
  102. Emma L. Borden
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  104. Gerald Macintyre, Telegraph Clerk, Western Union
  105. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  107. Physalia, Z. University I Was Not Now
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  109. DEPART, ALL ANIMALS WITHOUT BONES
  110. Emma L. Borden
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  115. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  119. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  130. Owen Seabury, M.D.
  131. Phillip Zollicoffer. Physalia Zollicoffris.
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  137. Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston
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  139. Emma L. Borden
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  144. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  150. Emma L. Borden
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  153. FAMILY SLAIN IN MAYFIELD
  154. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  165. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  176. Emma L. Borden
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  186. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  197. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  205. Inspector Simon Wolf
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It is true that my initial reports were sparse; but given the deaths across the state prior to the Fall River Event, my attention and my resources were stretched perilously thin. Even a man of my size can’t reach from the northern boundary to the ocean—not when scores of grisly murders lingered on the docket, each incident demanding investigation and assessment. If I had been allowed to proceed directly to Fall River, once it became clear that this was the locus of whatever occurred, I might have been able to offer a better understanding of how and why so many have died in the stretch between August of 1892 and May of 1894.

As things stand, all I could do was send warning to my contacts there. I gave them all the time to ready themselves that I could. If you’d allowed me to raise a few good men to assist at Maplecroft, they might have been readier still.

Maybe a small force would’ve changed the outcome there, and maybe not. But it was cruel of you to prevent me from giving it a try.

I realize that some of my superiors would quarrel with my dates, but I will insist with my dying breath that Abigail and Andrew Borden were the start of this. Perhaps not the center of it, no, but a catalyst of some kind. Somehow, they were the first.

I cannot say for certain, as I was not present for their murders or the subsequent trial—though I’ve studied the court transcripts forward and backward. I’ve found nothing to contradict my conclusions, and plenty to support them. I know the captain calls the details “circumstantial,” but he’s mistaken, and I believe he might’ve been behind the sincere and deliberate effort to keep me away from that setting, even in the wake of the Hamilton case.

He thought I was on the wrong track, and wasting resources. He was mistaken about that, too. Now, I suppose, he’s making an effort to save face.

I won’t have it.

I was forced to lobby vehemently to address Ebenezer Hamilton with any specific authority, and this should not have been the case. No permission ought to have been required. I should have set off without questions or bureaucracy standing between myself and the answers we needed.

The present hierarchy is worse than inconvenient: It is incompetent. I can scarcely believe the organization took so long to classify these crimes as falling within our jurisdiction, when they were so clearly beyond the understood geometry of mankind.