I accepted the compliment and kept to myself the belief that my home had far more going for it by way of turrets and battlements than the one on the cover. “Here we have Karisma,” I said. “Behold him at one with the elements. He is the uncharted sea, the unbridled wind, the promise of sunrise upon the horizon. He is the Earl of Polmorgan—his hair streaming like victory’s banner. A nobleman ousted from the ancestral home by the cruel machinations of his impecunious stepmother and forced to turn smuggler along the Cornish coast. His innate gallantry dictates that he provide for the lovely young woman who was his father’s ward. She has gone into a decline after being forced into marriage with an odious man who terrified her on the wedding night by unsheathing his sword and …”
Brigadier Lester-Smith took advantage of the emotional break in my voice to interject hastily, “It must take him a month of Sundays to dry his hair. And speaking of time marching on, Mrs. Haskell, I do think we should be making our way upstairs to the reading room. The other members of the league expect me to have the coffee on the perk, and the minutes from the last meeting”—he patted his briefcase—“laid out on the table, ready for review.” Crossing the mosaic tile in two measured steps, the brigadier opened the door into the library proper.
The arrangement inside was unapologetically old-fashioned. No little turnstiles by which to enter and exit and send one into a tailspin. No revolving magazine racks. No magnifying mirrors installed for the purpose of assisting in the apprehension of book nabbers. No computers pretending to mind their own business even as they secreted away information on the reading habits of each and every library-card holder.
The brigadier and I might have been standing on the threshold of a household library, the kind guaranteed to lend just the right touch of snob appeal to a gentleman’s country retreat. There were no other patrons about because it was after closing hour. And by some quirk of shadow and light the free-standing bookcases turned the room—partitioned by archways—into a maze that would appear to have been set up for the express amusement of his lordship’s children. Two or three worn leather chairs were drawn conversationally around an oak table positioned in front of the leaded windows overlooking Spittle Lane. A pair of hunting prints echoed the muted tones of the Jacobean-patterned curtains. A hammered brass screen stood guard in front of the stone fireplace. The marble bust of Shakespeare sat on a pedestal above the archway leading into the nonfiction area, which in turn opened onto the children’s section.
Perhaps, on second thought, the fact that the books were not uniformly bound in gold-tooled leather did hint that this was not a private collection. There was also the reception desk—the size of Amelia Earhart’s practice runway—to clinch one’s suspicions that we were in a lending institution.
Miss Bunch, our stalwart librarian, lived at that desk. Rumour had it that she had been born there—fully grown, already stout, red-faced, and with her hair cropped to an uncompromising bob. I had it on good authority (from Mrs. Malloy) that Miss Bunch did not possess a first name. Doubtless her parents had instantly realized the impropriety of attempting to become too familiar with their offspring.
My knees had a tendency to knock on those occasions when I approached Miss Bunch at her desk—my arms loaded with books whose overdue status would momentarily be calculated down to a percentage of a second. Being an accomplished coward, I had on occasion brought along a doctor’s certificate to excuse my disregard for timely returns, but this evening I did not feel the full force of Miss Bunch’s bull’s-eye stare as I tiptoed forward with my eight volumes of riveting romance novels. My engrossing conversation with Brigadier Lester-Smith had blinded me to the obvious.
For tonight our librarian was conspicuous by her absence.
“Surprising!” The brigadier glanced from me to the door marked Private and shook his head. No need for him to expound. The concept of Miss Bunch abandoning her post in order to indulge in a cup of tea and a cream bun or—heaven forbid, go to the loo—was not open to discussion. Miss Bunch would have handed in her date stamp sooner than exhibit such human frailty. That she might be stacking books in the far reaches of nonfiction was equally unlikely. A time for every job was Miss Bunch’s sacred maxim. Books were always returned to their allotted shelves between the hours of ten A.M. and noon.
“I expect she went upstairs to turn on the lights for us in the reading room,” I said while scanning the room uneasily out of the corner of my eye. Surely it was the patter of rain on the windows and the ghoulish gurgle of the wind that made the library seem suddenly forlorn?
“You cannot be serious, Mrs. Haskell.” Brigadier Lester-Smith looked suitably grave. “Turning on the lights, along with plugging in the percolator, has always been my job. I do not imagine that for all her industriousness, Miss Bunch would overstep that particular line.”
It was my opinion that Miss Bunch would do precisely as she chose in her own library, but I kept mum as I planted my books on the eerily deserted desk. For the moment I was freed from the obligation of confessing that I had left an indelible coffee cup ring on page 342 of Speak Her Name Softly by the prolific Zinnia Parrish. So with my mind determinedly focused on the evening’s meeting, I stood behind the brigadier as he opened the door that gave access to the staircase.
“After you, Mrs. Haskell.”
My gasp made us both jump.
Misunderstanding my reaction, the brigadier’s cheeks turned a peachy pink that complemented his fading ginger hair nicely as he hastily made his apologies. “You’ll have to forgive me, Mrs. Haskell; being an old-fashioned chap I forget once in a while that what used to pass for common courtesy is now perceived as an insult to all womankind.”
“Forget the fallout from women’s lib!” With a trembling finger I pointed towards the N–O fiction section of the book stacks. “Brigadier, surely you see … there on the floor … way down at the end of that aisle …” The wind chose that moment to emit a death rattle that vibrated the walls along with the windowpanes. “We have a body in the library.”
A blatant case of hyperbole! What we had was a leg. No, make that a foot. But was it unreasonable to assume that a body was in some way involved—out of sight, around the corner of the stack?
“A shadow, Mrs. Haskell, nothing more.”
“I tell you …”
“If you’ll excuse my saying so, Mrs. Haskell, you’ve been reading too many thrillers.” This said, with gentlemanly restraint Brigadier Lester-Smith did me the honour of setting down his briefcase on the desk.
“It’s such a cliché, isn’t it?” I followed him with lagging steps and galloping heart as, clearly bent on humouring me, he headed into the wooden maze. The foot I was sure I’d seen would prove to be nothing more ominous than a book left carelessly on the floor by a library patron. The brigadier’s steps quickened even as I decided I had made a complete imbecile of myself. Doubtless before he could pick up said volume and return it to its rightful place on the shelf, Miss Bunch would appear from Nonfiction to announce that the guilty patron would be forthwith stripped of his or her library card and sentenced to two weeks’ community service in card catalogue.
There was in fact a book—its pages flung wide in careless abandon on the floor. And a few inches away was an object that unmistakably constituted a foot, encased in a serviceable brogue. The wind drew a shuddering breath as the brigadier spoke our librarian’s name in startled greeting.
“Miss Bunch, are you feeling out of sorts?” He had tracked around the end of the aisle and now dropped to his immaculate knees beside the librarian who lay sprawled face-up on the floor in her bottle-green skirt and matching jersey. She was, as always, a stout, florid-faced woman with a combative gleam in her glassy stare. “Brace yourself, Mrs. Haskell,” the brigadier said, and I obediently swayed against the stacks. “Miss Bunch has crossed the finishing line.” He spoke as a man who, though having routinely faced the grim implacability of death in his army textbooks, was opposed to using a certain four-letter word in the presen
ce of the opposite sex.
“Dead? Perhaps she will come out of it.” A crisis invariably brings out the idiot in me. “It’s not as if her throat has been cut from ear to ear, or her head caved in with a blunt instrument.”
“Possibly a heart attack, Mrs. Haskell.”
“Surely not!” I warded off the suggestion with the hand I wasn’t using to wipe my eyes. “I’m convinced Miss Bunch would never give way like that, not on the job. She has an irreproachable work ethic. And an unerring sense of what is appropriate. I will never forget the drumming she gave me when she discovered I had jotted down a phone number on the flyleaf of A Midsummer Night’s Scream. In pencil, mind you! And,” I blithered, “it wasn’t as though it were the number of a male-escort service.”
Clearly Miss Bunch’s bulging eyes were beginning to get to me, for nothing short of extreme stress would have caused me to let slip the words “male escort.” We all have our little secrets. Mine was that I had acquired Ben Haskell for a husband after renting him for a family-reunion weekend from Eligibility Escorts. Overweight, underloved, I had been seized by a wild impulse to indulge in something more daring than a new frock with which to impress my assorted relatives, especially my diabolically beautiful cousin Vanessa. Eligibility was owned and managed by Mrs. Swabucher, an elderly lady given to powder-pink hats and a fondness for Belgian chocolates. Believe me, there was nothing sleazy about her operation. No bullet holes in her office door, no naughty magazines on the desk or disgruntled clients being fed into the shredder. How could I go wrong when the man who turned up at my door to escort me to Merlin’s Court was the breathtakingly handsome Bentley T. Haskell?
When we were first married I wouldn’t have lost more than a few hours’ sleep had word leaked out about Eligibility Escorts. Love would have weathered the gossip. But now there were the twins to be considered. How awful it would be if my children failed to get into the nursery school of their choice because Ben and I lacked credibility as parents. And, not to take myself too seriously, I did have to consider my civic responsibilities, along with my recent decision to return to work, on a part-time basis, as an interior designer.
“Mrs. Haskell?” Brigadier Lester-Smith brought me back to the matter—or rather the corpse—at hand. “Are you feeling faint, my dear?”
“I’m steady as a rock,” I lied. “Why don’t you go and ring for an ambulance while I wait here with Miss Bunch? I know it’s silly, but I don’t like abandoning her to the unholy glee of Hector Rigglesworth. Listen”—I held up a hand—“do you hear him laughing?”
“The wind,” Brigadier Lester-Smith replied without undue conviction. “We mustn’t let our imaginations run riot. It is true that upon occasion I have sensed a presence while on these premises but …” He paused as I took a step backwards, sending the book lying on the floor skidding across the aisle.
“You were saying?” I picked up the volume without looking at the title and absently dusted it off on my raincoat sleeve.
“Only, Mrs. Haskell, that whilst I might suspect Mr. Rigglesworth of such malicious pranks as unplugging the percolator or helping himself to a couple of ginger nuts while my back was turned, I cannot believe a gentleman of the old school, whether living or dead, would find poor Miss Bunch’s … present predicament a laughing matter.”
“The man was soured on women.” I lowered my voice and looked around uneasily. “Look at this book, Brigadier. Can you deny the possibility that Mr. Rigglesworth lured Miss Bunch into the stacks by means of an ominous rustling and then caused this book to fly off the shelf and hit her a fatal wallop on the head?”
“Murder, Mrs. Haskell, is a serious accusation against a man who is not available to defend himself.” Brigadier Lester-Smith tightened his raincoat belt in a grim attempt at holding his emotions in check. “I am sure Miss Bunch is the victim of a stroke or a heart attack, and the fact that tonight is the hundredth anniversary of Hector Rigglesworth’s demise is no more than an unhappy coincidence.”
This revelation brought a gasp to my lips. I was about to babble away about circumstantial evidence, when I felt the floor vibrate under my feet and, whether from a momentary dizziness or not, saw a section of books quiver as if revving themselves up to let fly. “You’re absolutely right, Brigadier,” I made haste to say, “life is filled with coincidence. And people die all the time without ghostly assistance. Poor Mr. Rigglesworth, he did not have things easy in life and should not be maligned in death.” Avoiding Miss Bunch’s icy glare, I took comfort in having avoided the avalanche. Then I felt it—another reverberation. But before I could leap into the brigadier’s arms, I realized that the library door had swung open and closed.
Footsteps heralded the arrival of our fellow members of the Library League. Mrs. Dovedale’s pleasant musical voice was heard in conversation with the vicar’s husband.
“How kind of you to bring one of your lovely sponge cakes. And not from a packet, if I know you, Mr. Spike.”
“That’s all well and good, Mrs. Dovedale,” came Mr. Poucher’s dour response. “But I for one come to these meetings to feed my mind, not my belly.”
“Oh, go on, you old grouchy-pouch!” That was the irrepressible Bunty Wiseman. “You’ll be wolfing down your slice of cake and licking the cream off your fingers along with the rest of us.”
My mouth watered, a purely nervous reaction.
“I’d better go and give them the bad news.” Brigadier Lester-Smith soldiered his way towards the assembled voices.
Alas for Miss Bunch, I thought sadly. She was an institution and the library would never be the same without her. But did she leave anyone to mourn her? The rain wept steadily against the windows, but no loud burst of sobs arose in response to the brigadier’s announcement.
Sir Robert Pomeroy did say “Bloody bad show!” But he spoiled the effect by adding, “I suppose this means the meeting’s off for this evening. What! What! A bit of a shame really, seeing I was hoping to present my suggestions for improving the parking situation.”
“He doesn’t mean to be callous,” I whispered to Miss Bunch in the futile hope of softening her up. There could be no doubt they were in shock, every one of them, including timid Sylvia Babcock, who had taken time out from her honeymoon to be here, rather than risk censure for seconding fewer motions than any league member, past or present. Any moment now the penny would drop with a monumental clang. Someone surely would voice the possibility of Hector Rigglesworth taking a ghostly hand in Miss Bunch’s demise. The significance of the date would be bandied about. And the fact that the book I had found lying on the floor within inches of the body was titled The Dream Lover would forever ensure her place in local lore.
Chapter
2
“I’m sorry you couldn’t get away from the restaurant to attend the funeral, dear.” Ben and I sat in the rose-and-peacock drawing room at the close of a long but fulfilling day. “But for your absence, it couldn’t have been more perfect. The rain never let up for a moment and we stood around the grave in a huddle of black umbrellas, just the way you see on the films. Only in those cases”—I leaned back, weary but replete, in the Queen Anne chair—“on the screen, that is, the person being buried is usually an extremely shady character who had managed to lead a double life while never missing a manicure appointment. But somehow, even in the chill of the moment, I could not picture Miss Bunch as a denizen of the underworld. Particularly as it has been determined that she died of natural causes.”
“You can’t be sure Miss Bunch was a model citizen.” Ben shook his head at my naïveté. “My father always told me to beware of a woman with a forty-four-inch bust.”
“There was a man in an upturned raincoat lurking behind a tombstone,” I conceded. “And I’ll admit I did find myself wondering if he might have fathered the child Miss Bunch conceived while a novitiate at the Convent of Perpetual Penance, the one she was forced to hand over into the keeping of the head gardener’s wife.”
“Ellie, you’re making this
up.”
“I’m afraid so.” I settled more comfortably in my chair. “The poor man was skulking around St. Anselm’s churchyard, thinking he was in the pet cemetery at the other end of Chitterton Fells. Seemingly, he had come to pay his last respects to his aunt Edith’s basset hound. As for Miss Bunch, I don’t suppose she was ever inside a convent, let alone a man’s pajamas.” I lowered my voice, even though the twins had been upstairs in bed for over an hour. “Her life made for rather a tame eulogy.”
“You’re far too trusting, Ellie.” Ben prowled over to the window and drew the curtains against the gathering night. He was looking endearingly spousal in the apron he had worn to bathe the twins—his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbow and his black hair tousled. “It is entirely like you to have been taken in by Miss Bunch’s bottle-green cardigans and bolster bosom.” He scooped up Tobias the cat and returned to the sofa. “But what do you know about her inner self?” Two cups of coffee after dinner and Ben tends to wax philosophical. “The sad truth, sweetheart,” he said, “is that most of us remain an enigma even to ourselves.”
“Oh, I don’t know! You and I understand each other inside and out, dear. But it could be we’re the lucky ones.” It was impossible to prevent complacency creeping into my voice, given the coziness of the room and the certainty of Ben’s affection. It had been ages since we had a good row. Thank God! The days flowed one into the other without any of the old silliness that used to get in the way. No more floods of tears from me if he forgot the anniversary of the day we met. No more sulking from him if I raved about Mr. Spike’s sponge cakes. Yes, life was good. So good in fact that death lost all credibility, dwindling away to an old wives’ tale that was only occasionally used these days to scare little children into good behaviour.
“Was it a big funeral?” Ben’s voice interrupted my happy contemplation of the Chinese vases on the mantelpiece. I’d washed them along with polishing the silver and replacing the lightbulbs in the brass wall lamps before setting out for the service. The goad to my rear had been my intention to invite the mourners back to the house for tea or sherry, but it turned out that no one had the time to spare.
How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams Page 2
