Free The Evening Spider by Emily Arsenault Page A

be beside herself, however, so perhaps it is best he has a quieter role.
    Arsenic?
    â€œWhoa,” I whispered.
    I reread the entry, then turned the page. The next entry was short, about cold weather and something called “Baked Apple Pudding.” It sounded good, but Frances only fretted over the egg to milk ratio and didn’t actually record a recipe.
    Then I took out my laptop.
    When I Googled “Hayden” and “Stannard,” quite a few articles and pages came up. The trial to which Frances Flinch Barnett referred was in late 1879 and evidently quite famous—though I’d never heard of it.
    Herbert Hayden, a minister, was accused of murdering a young woman named Mary Stannard, who had occasionally worked for him and his wife—helping around the house and looking after their children. Mary thought she was pregnantwith Herbert’s child at the time of her murder. She’d asked him for his help—she wanted an abortion—and ended up dead of arsenic poisoning and simultaneous throat slitting, it appeared. According to his accusers, Hayden had met her in the woods of Rockland, Connecticut, promising to bring her an abortion tonic. What he gave her instead was arsenic. She’d drunk it, and when she’d begun screaming in pain, he’d hit her with a rock and slit her throat.
    One of the more general online articles made reference to the trial’s sensationalistic coverage in the New York Times, so I went to their site and looked in the archives. I was surprised at the number of articles that came up.
    A long one—that appeared right before the trial started—summarized the events that had led up to Herbert Hayden’s being tried.
    MARY STANNARD’S MURDER
WHAT CAUSED THE ARREST OF REV. MR. HAYDEN.
    HIS TRIAL TO BEGIN TO-DAY—A HISTORY OF THE
PROCEEDINGS IN THE CASE—THE CLERGYMAN
ARRESTED, ACQUITTED, AGAIN ARRESTED,
AND THEN INDICTED—SUBSTANCE OF THE
TESTIMONY THAT WILL BE PRESENTED
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  NEW-HAVEN, Oct. 6—The Township of Madison, which lies 20 miles East of this city, is long and narrow. Its southern boundary is the Sound, and the land in its southern half is level and comparatively fertile. But at its northern end lies one of the wildest districts in the State,inhabited by a few hard-working families who earn a living by cultivating the stony soil and making charcoal. In this district, not inaptly called Rockland, a horrible and mysterious murder was committed on the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1878, and to-morrow afternoon, in this city, the trial of Rev. Herbert H. Hayden, for having committed that murder, will begin in the Superior Court. Charles S. Stannard, a middle-aged widower, had lived for some years in an isolated house in Rockland. He is an example of the “poor white” of New England, an inoffensive man, with nothing criminal or vicious in his character, so far as is known. He is working for neighboring farmers, and his housekeeper was Susan S. Hawley, his wife’s daughter by a former marriage. Mary E. Stannard, his daughter, an attractive young woman, 22 years old, had become the mother of an illegitimate child two years before the murder; but she had seemed so penitent, and conducted herself so properly afterward, that the honest farmers of Rockland admitted her to their families as a domestic, and forgot her deviation from the paths of virtue. She had frequently worked in the house of Rev. Mr. Hayden, a Methodist preacher, and in September she was employed by a family by the name of Studley, in the neighboring town of Guilford. On Sunday, Sept. 1, she came home from Guilford. Soon after she reached home a letter arrived which she had sent to her sister, Susan, and which had been delayed. It inclosed a letter addressed to the Rev. Mr. Hayden, and it instructed Susan to give this to him with great secrecy. The inclosed letter, being then of no use, was