Dropping Acid ... on Graves

Once investigators had descended on the village, many women were desperate to stop graves from being disturbed and bodies being exhumed. 

They surely did not want autopsies, but many also had more immediate concerns about leftover arsenic, which had been buried with some of the victims. They knew once the coffin was popped open, there that vial would be. 

The frantic ladies did their best to stay one step ahead of the inquest.

[I cut the following vignette early in the process because it just didn’t fit. But it does describe what the despairing ladies did under cover of darkness.]

   "They crept on hands and knees in the dark. The ground was damp with dew and covered in a thick blanket of pine needles. They had hidden in the forest until the sun had gone down. They had brought no lanterns with them. They had patted dark mud onto their faces to hide the shine of white skin. Their black dresses smelled of sweat and soil. They crawled frantically from grave to grave, stabbing knives into wooden grave markers to gouge out the names displayed there. They poured acid on headstones to erase the names etched into the granite. Over the barks of fire-bellied toads, they listened for the night watchmen, now out in numbers, patrolling the village."

The photo—I took it of a grave on Martha’s Vineyard. Tis perfect, no?