“It was Sir John’s house first, of course—her ladyship’s husband—but I feel as if she brought her own spirit to Middlebank. Now, it’s your choice how to work the search for Murder Must Advertise. Oona explained about how it’s signed?” Clara nodded. “So, do you prefer to start with the bottom shelves and work your way up or go from the top down? Most of the Sayers collection is up there. I think you’ll be able to reach just fine with the ladder.”
Clara’s enthusiasm flagged.
“Doesn’t look terribly safe,” she said.
The ladder had only two steps and a top cap—it wasn’t as if she’d be climbing to the roof. But I thought Clara had enough to endure, being bossed round by Oona, and I wouldn’t add to her burdens.
“I tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you start on arranging the notebooks by date. I’ll bring them up for you—and I’ll take a look at the books later.”
“Yes, if you think that’s best,” she said with relief. “After all, you are in charge.”
I don’t know where she got that idea.
I returned downstairs to find no sign of Bunter. Oona had cleared my desk of my things and was now emptying the contents of her satchel—notebooks, drawing pads, laptop—onto my desk.
“Just taking Lady Fowling’s notebooks up to the library,” I said, creeping round her to retrieve a carton.
“Mmm,” she replied.
I also snatched my laptop from under a stack of sketchbooks Oona had deposited on the floor and scooted out. When I returned an hour later, she barely looked up.
“Naomi at the Charlotte is waiting for our payment,” I said, brave little soldier that I was, “and so I’ll collect that and run it round. I may be out an hour or two. Could I bring you lunch?”
“No,” Oona muttered, “I’ll send Powell out for something.”
* * *
* * *
And that makes it official,” Naomi said, slipping the check into her desk drawer and handing me a copy of the agreement. “You certainly have your work cut out for you the next twelve weeks, don’t you?”
We sat in her office on the first floor, and out the window I could see the Assembly Rooms across the road and the Mendip Hills in the distance. I thought of my office being occupied for the next twelve weeks, and not by me.
“Naomi, what about that space you have on the other side of the Charlotte? We used it for offices and storage while getting ready for the Centre’s exhbition.”
When the Charlotte had been created by knocking through the walls between two terrace houses, a vertical slice of it from ground level to second floor had been left untouched.
“It’s been sitting untouched for years—I don’t think it’s in a fit state to be occupied.”
“Oh, please,” I asked, with feeble hope, “it’s only that it would be easier on all concerned”—me—“if we gave the manager and her PA room to spread out.” I wondered what Oona would say about hot-desking, but promptly dismissed the idea.
“Well . . .” Naomi drew out the word as she thought. “I suppose I could let you have the space on the second floor. You have to climb an old, windy staircase. It might do—at least you’d have your own entrance off the street and wouldn’t have to come through the main door every day.” She appeared to brighten up at that thought. “Do you want to take a look?”
She led me back through a door to an area of the building that had not been refurbished. It was as I remembered, only more so—shabby, with stained and peeling Victorian wallpaper and a decided smell of damp. A dusty wooden staircase went down to the ground floor and the door out to the pavement. Leading up to the storage-cum-office was a wrought-iron spiral staircase. It might once have been white, but what paint hadn’t chipped off had yellowed. I followed Naomi, and we climbed to the second floor.
“Sorry,” she said at the top, pushing a stack of cartons to the side, then brushing her hands together and coughing.
She pulled keys from her pocket and opened the door to reveal a dark storage closet stacked with file boxes, several old computer monitors, and a few broken chairs. “Here we are. It isn’t awfully large. I believe there’s a desk in the back. Could your manager make do with this?” she asked.
My nose itched from the dust damp. I thought it would take a fair amount of work to transform the musty closet into something resembling an office.
“Perfect,” I said.
“Who is it you’ve hired?”
“Oona Atherton. Do you know who she is? She didn’t think you’d met.”
Two pink spots bloomed on Naomi’s tan cheeks. She crossed her arms tightly. “She said that? Oh, well, difficult to remember the little people, I suppose. Look round if you like—if it suits, you can take the keys with you.”
* * *
* * *
I’m so glad you’ve branched out into Sayers,” my mum said. “She had such a mind. And you’ve no idea where Lady Fowling may have hidden this particular first edition?”
We sat over coffee in the kitchen of her flat in Liverpool on Saturday morning. Weekends with my mum were a restorative for me, sort of a mini-holiday and therapy session rolled into one.
I licked my finger as I finished up a Chelsea bun and said, “It’s most likely in the cartons at the bank—I’ll start on those next week when things settle down.”
The coffee revived me. I had fallen asleep on the train to Liverpool that morning, almost missing my change at Birmingham New Street. I should just dismiss sleep from my daily schedule until after the exhibition.
Thursday evening and all of Friday had been given over to cleaning the former storage closet to make it inhabitable for Oona and Clara—I had been determined to get them moved into the Charlotte and out of my hair. True, they would be only a ten-minute walk away, but even that distance would give me breathing room.
Oona had done her share of work, whereas Clara had seemed to see her job as representing Health and Safety, and kept reminding us to hold on to the railing as we went up and down both the wooden staircase from ground to first floor and the spiral steps up to the second. At ten thirty Friday night, Val and I had left Oona and her PA arranging the meager furniture. He walked me back to Middlebank, pulling a cobweb from my ponytail before kissing me good night.
“How can she fault you for wanting a proper two days off?” Val had asked.
“‘We’ve very little time and a great deal to accomplish,’” I had intoned. “How many times will I hear that in the next three months?”
Oona hadn’t been best pleased upon hearing I’d be visiting my mum Saturday and Sunday. I’d followed that up by telling her I would be away for three days the following weekend. At this second piece of news of my skiving off work, she’d picked up her pencil and started sketching a display layout. No bark, only silence.
“I’d rather have the bark,” I now told Mum as I swirled the dregs of my coffee. “At least I’d know where I stood with her.”
“I remember your Jane Austen exhibition,” Mum said, “and Dinah studying for her exams. There were quite a few tears—and not all of them from your daughter. But just you remember”—Mum touched my cheek—“this time is different.”
* * *
* * *
Was it?
“We’ll need to shift that portrait of Lady Fowling from Middlebank here to the Charlotte the week before the exhibition,” Oona said to me Monday morning. “That large painting on the library landing. We’ll install it as the last thing people see on their way out, as if she’s bidding them good evening. Here, Powell”—she handed her satchel to Clara—“I want to go down to look at the space before the watercolorists arrive.”
I stood blocking the doorway, too stunned to move or reply. I couldn’t let Oona take Lady Fowling away—she belonged at Middlebank.
“Surely some facsimile of the painting could be made,” I suggested.
“Do you think we could just ring up the Royal Academy and have them send down a young artist who is eager to copy the masters?”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
But Oona wasn’t listening. She picked up her sketchbook, pushed me aside, and bolted out the door, her feet clanging on the metal of the spiral staircase. Clara chased after and grabbed hold of the railing.
“Oona, please do be careful,” she shouted down. She returned to the office, shaking her head. “She won’t listen. Well, Hayley, are you here to look over the press releases?”
That had been my intention, but now I had other issues. I must think of an acceptable alternative to moving Lady Fowling’s portrait. I couldn’t let it be shuttled about as if it were merely canvas and paint—it was the embodiment of the woman herself. And if it were gone, to whom would I talk?
At some level I knew that I did not carry on actual conversations with a painting—even though Val had heard me murmur a comment or two on my way up or down the stairs—but I felt her ladyship’s presence at Middlebank, and I attached that feeling to the portrait. Moving it would be like tossing Lady Fowling in the boot of a car and carrying her off.
* * *
* * *
From that Monday morning, I crammed eight days of work into my four-day workweek, including two briefings a day. First at Middlebank with Mrs. Woolgar—we carried those off without a hitch. I reminded the secretary about my impending three-day holiday, and she told me that she would be gone overnight Thursday to visit a friend in Tunbridge Wells. As this meant Bunter would not be left alone, we were both satisfied.
Next, the morning briefing at the Charlotte, ostensibly run by me. On Tuesday when I arrived, it was to hear Oona finishing a story she’d been telling Clara.
“So, I was stood there, and he didn’t even notice until the fellow behind me said, ‘Oi, Berryfield—trouble with your posh coffee order? Move along.’”
Clara snickered in response, and Oona acknowledgd my arrival with a wry smile. “It was Zeno, wasn’t it?” she asked. “The other manager you were talking with about this job?”
“What? Who?” Was it a good thing that I was such a terrible liar? “Oh, Zeno Berryfield?”
“Count your lucky stars I was here to save you. Isn’t that right, Powell?”
“Heigh-ho,” Clara said with a grin, and her face reddened.
“Heigh-ho, indeed.”
* * *
* * *
I continued to search the library for the signed copy of Murder Must Advertise while also transcribing a decade’s worth of her ladyship’s notebooks. I dated every page of entry, beginning with February 1950. I felt sure one of those assignments had been Clara’s, but she was no longer at Middlebank and so I carried on. I didn’t mind— I felt as if I understood Lady Fowling and had a better idea of how to sort her musings, although many defied categorization. What was I to make of this string of nonsense from September 1950?
Quiet Anticipation Despite
Wiley Detective Beckons Death
Betrayal Deemed Quintessential Appraisal
Marvelous Merchants Appropriate Quietly Authentic Deception
I suspected the phrases related to Lady Fowling’s Dorset detective, François Flambeaux—she had a penchant for flowery language when it came to her own sleuth. Perhaps he’d gone undercover as a newspaperman in one of her stories and had to write headlines, just as Lord Peter had become an adman and created jingles. I listed those odd phrases on a page all their own and left it to Oona to decide how to handle them.
* * *
* * *
Our second literary salon was remarkable for its lack of drama—unlike Oona’s moody performance the next morning.
“They’re like midges,” she complained to me, huddled over her desk. “Impossible to swat away. Interest in the exhibition is one thing, harassment is another. If you see any of them hanging about, Hayley, send them on their way.”
By them I thought she meant Stuart Moyle or his ilk. A second brief item had appeared in the papers about the first edition signed by the Detection Club—this one with a quote from Oona. If she kept planting these bits of gossip, how could she be annoyed that they generated interest?
On Thursday morning, I edged into Oona’s aerie at the Charlotte with coffees from across the road as a peace offering. Clara, in the corner, set her tablet on a tea table and, with a distracted air, thanked me for her cappuccino.
Oona had not spoken about my upcoming three-day weekend, but her displeasure was palpable, hanging in the room like a miasma. To prove myself worthy of a normal life, I had printed out what I’d done to date and brought the file folder with me. I eased it onto her desk.
“I’ll drop the final pages off tomorrow morning,” I said. “And I will have finished searching the library by then, so on Monday, I’ll start on the cartons of books from the bank.”
Oona muttered something and pushed the thick folder to the side. I hurried out, my swift exit prompting Clara to remind me to be careful on the stairs.
* * *
* * *
Late Thursday afternoon, Val and I met at the Waitrose café. We kept to business. He had finished up his own preweekend task list—contacting next week’s lecturer and putting out a call for bids to print the exhibition program. It was difficult to stay focused—my mind kept trying to move further away from the exhibition and closer to Woolacombe and the seaside.
My phone vibrated on the table—a text from Oona.
I know where it is! Death is the clue. Murder must
And there it broke off.
“She knows where it is?” I asked. “The signed copy? Or is this a ploy to get me to go through another decade of notebooks before I’m allowed to leave town?”
“You don’t need her permission,” Val reminded me.
“Too right, and I’ll tell her so. It’s all well and good if she’s discovered the location of the book—it’s quite exciting—but I don’t need to write signage for the display this very second.” I tapped a finger on the tabletop and then composed my reply.
Happy dance! Will stop by to take a look.
“But I won’t stay long,” I told Val. “I’ll acknowledge her find, locate the book, and take it off to Duncan Rennie so that he can store it securely.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Thanks,” I said, grateful for the support in case Oona put up a protest. “I wonder how she figured it out? Well, I’m sure she’ll tell us the whole story.”
And yet, we did not leap up from the table and rush away. Instead, we finished our tea and held hands and looked out the window as a shaft of sunlight fell across Walcot Street. Nothing else came in from Oona, and at last, I sighed and said, “Better get this over with—and then I can go pack for the weekend.”
“You don’t need much,” Val reminded me with a wink, and I grinned and blushed like a schoolgirl.
Just gone four o’clock, we zigzagged our way to the Charlotte—cutting across Saracen Street and up Broad, dashing across George Street when the traffic had stopped, and then up Bartlett and Alfred, where we reached the wide paved area outside the Assembly Rooms and ran into a crowd. My first thought was a tour bus had unloaded, but then I saw Dom standing to the side. Then I noticed the reflection of blue lights flashing in windows across the road.
“Hiya, Dom,” I said. “Is it an ambulance? Did someone in the Assembly Rooms collapse?” Medical emergencies at popular tourist spots were not unheard of.
“You hired Oona,” Dom said.
“Yes, I did. For our upcoming exhibition. It’s because, although she may be difficult, she’s—here, Dom, let me introduce you to Val Moffatt.”
“You teach writing at Bath College,” Dom said. “Margo says you’re Hayley’s boyfriend.”
Val confirmed the statement with a smile. “And I h
ear you work magic with computer systems,” he replied.
“Dom,” I said, “how did you know I’d hired Oona?”
“Margo told me. She said Sarah in the shop talked with Terry, who saw Adele at the Minerva.” He pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose.
Good to know the grapevine was alive and thriving.
“I know Oona’s difficult, Dom, but remember how good the exhibition was.”
Like a curtain, the crowd in front of us parted, revealing the street to be filled with blue-and-yellow-checkered police cars. So, not a pensioner in need of medical attention. Instead, across the road at the Charlotte, PCs in yellow high-vis vests were stretching crime-scene tape across the door. Not at the Charlotte’s front door, but at the site around the corner—the door that led up two flights of stairs to Oona’s temporary office.
My mind went numb. And then I saw several people emerge from the building wearing blue paper coveralls and booties and gloves and—
“SOCO,” I whispered. “Scene-of-crime officers.”
Val and I pushed forward, but a woman PC stepped in front of us and said, “Move along, please.”
“I’m Hayley Burke, curator of the First Edition Society at Middlebank House.” My voice shook and I had a flash of déjà vu—identifying myself to police like this. “This is Val Moffatt. Our exhibition manager is working on the second floor, what’s happened?”
The PC turned away and spoke into the radio attached to her shoulder strap, received a crackled reply, and said to us, “Would you follow me?”
Val grabbed my hand. We crossed the road and made it to the Charlotte just as the blue-and-white crime-scene tape across the doorway was lifted and out came a face I recognized—Detective Constable Kenny Pye, his sleek black hair and dark skin set off against the pale Bath stone building behind him.
Murder Is a Must Page 7
