The Dead Letter by Finley Martin Page B

done…or not. Carolyn suspected something. Find out whether my sister’s death was a genuine or a convenient coincidence . That’s all I ask.”
    Both women had been unable to discount the close timing between Carolyn’s death and the murder her letter alluded to, but neither had spoken of it. Now their cards were on the table, face up.
    â€œYou realize, don’t you, that after so many years it will be difficult to learn the truth…,” said Anne.
    â€œI do.”
    â€œâ€¦and that it may be difficult, maybe even impossible, to find justice, even if we learn what happened?”
    â€œI can live with that,” said Edna, and she smiled faintly.
    Anne walked out the door to her car. She hesitated thoughtfully for a moment. Then she drove across the city to the university library.
    The University of Prince Edward Island was a collection of brick buildings on the crest of a ridge at the north end of town. The library was a building near the middle of the pack. The grass in the commons area glistened with a fresh soak of rain. Water slowly trickled through deep ridges in the bark of venerable oaks and maples and distorted Anne’s reflection in the glass at the entrance to the library.
    The microfilm viewer was in a room beyond the check-out and reference desks and beyond the front lanes of computer stations. A librarian retrieved a roll of film and fed it into the viewer, and Anne spun the crank until the date of 19 October 2001 appeared below The Guardian newspaper banner. The murder of Simone Villier and the arrest of John Dawson dominated the news on the nineteenth and twentieth. No mention of Carolyn Jollimore’s death appeared on those dates, but the morning edition on Monday the twenty-second provided a page-three story and a picture of her wrecked car.
    The news story reported that “Carolyn Jollimore, a resident of Mermaid, PEI, died in a single-vehicle accident which occurred shortly after midnight Friday on the Bunbury Road, two miles east of the town of Stratford. Visibility was good, but roads were wet at the time the woman’s vehicle left the road and struck a culvert. Emergency response personnel used the jaws-of-life to extract the driver, and paramedics transported her to QE Hospital where she was pronounced dead. Ms. Jollimore was the sole occupant of the vehicle. Alcohol was not believed to have been a factor in the mishap, and an RCMP officer at the scene speculated that the driver may have fallen asleep at the wheel. No witnesses have come forward…”
    Despite the reporter’s crisp and dispassionate rendering of the accident, Anne felt a queer tingle at the base of her neck that she couldn’t account for. She shook it off, finished recording the details in her notebook and left. The afternoon was quickly fading, and she needed a bit more daylight to complete her day’s work. When she reached the library’s foyer, she saw a familiar figure pass through the turnstile. One hand of the woman supported a shoulder strap attached to a well-laden briefcase. Her other hand carried three books. She was engaged in conversation with a tall dark-haired student wearing jeans and a UPEI sweatshirt.
    â€œWas that Edna Hibley who just came through?” she asked a librarian at the check-out counter.
    â€œProfessor Hibley,” she replied, correcting her. “Yes. That was she.”
    â€œDoes she teach here?”
    â€œNursing Sciences, I believe, and a course or two at the Vet College.”
    â€œCan I request some special services?”
    â€œCertainly. What services are you looking for?”
    â€œI need photocopies of all local news stories regarding the Simone Villier murder from October to December 2001.”
    â€œThey’ll be ready tomorrow morning.”
    Anne crossed the bridge to Stratford to look at the crash site. As Anne approached the scene of Carolyn’s accident, the two-mile mark on the Bunbury Road, she