Trouble in the Town Hall

by Jeanne M. Dams

  13

  I WAS GREETED at the bookshop by a notice on the door announcing that, due to power failure, the shop was closed until further notice. As the only window in the place was so small as to admit almost no light anyway, the decision was practical, but I was annoyed that no one had let me know. Unreasonable, of course—how was anyone to phone me?—but I wasn’t feeling reasonable. Upset with Alan, my nerves frayed by the storm and my abortive conversation with the Davises, I badly needed to talk to someone sensible. As usual, Jane was the chosen victim.

  I dumped my purse in my kitchen and was heading out the door when I happened to glance at the calendar. It had a red ring around Tuesday, July 6. Today was Jane’s birthday.

  Oh, dear. I couldn’t go over there without an offering of some sort. Jane might snort over whatever I brought and say it was all nonsense, one didn’t have birthdays at her age, I should have had better sense—but she would be deeply hurt if I forgot. I picked up my purse and headed out again.

  Almost without conscious volition, I found myself walking into Underwood’s. A silly choice of shops, really; I’d never seen anything in Mavis’s emporium to appeal to Jane’s practical, earthy taste, and I knew from past experience that I’d almost certainly end up buying something. Perhaps my subconscious wanted to see how Mavis was doing.

  Once I had seen, I had plenty of material for thought.

  For Mavis was doing very well indeed. The shop, deserted the last time I’d been in, had five or six customers. A pretty young assistant was manning the cash register, while Mavis was showing the brass bedstead to a couple that looked likely to buy it.

  I lurked in the back of the shop, fiddling with a pile of hearth rugs until Mavis had triumphantly negotiated the sale and noticed me.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Martin,” she trilled. “Lovely morning after the storm, isn’t it?”

  “A good day for cleaning up, and there’s a lot of it to do. At least you have electricity, which is more than I can say. Did you have any damage at home?”

  “I hadn’t the time to notice, did I? Rushed myself off just to look in at the other shops before I fetched up here.”

  “You seem to be very busy today.”

  “My dear! I haven’t had a moment to so much as sneeze these past few days. It’s quite incredible.”

  The color in her cheeks today looked natural, and her hair had been toned up to an even brighter auburn. She glowed.

  “It looks as though murder’s been good for business, then, doesn’t it? One can’t always rely on how the public will react, I suppose.”

  Her eyes hardened. “I can’t imagine what you mean, dear. Were you interested in those rugs? Lovely and thick, you see, they’ll wear forever.”

  They weren’t actually impossible. The roses were a trifle too large and a trifle too pink, but for keeping sparks off the carpet, they’d do. I picked one up, paid the exorbitant price, and walked out wondering with half my mind what on earth Jane was going to do with it, while the other half was busy considering the benefit Mavis had, unexpectedly, derived from the death of a twenty-three-year-old boy.

  I found a ribbon in a crowded drawer in my kitchen, tied it around the rug, and marched next door, avoiding the workmen who were cautiously dealing with live wires in my erstwhile flower beds.

  “Happy birthday,” I said, thrusting the rug into Jane’s arms as I stepped around a rush of eager, curious dogs. “If you hate it, take it to the next jumble sale or use it on the floor of one of the kennels. And for pity’s sake, make me a cup of tea and let me talk to you.”

  Jane, being Jane, accepted that ungracious speech with no more than a raised eyebrow and established me at the kitchen table with tea and biscuits before she even untied the ribbon. Then she growled an utterly characteristic, deprecating thanks and sat down opposite me, head cocked inquiringly. “Problems?”

  “Oh, I don’t know! It’s just—that was a really bad storm; it scared me. And I’m being snubbed by Barbara Dean—though that’s hardly news—and Alan doesn’t have time for me and some friends I wanted to visit are going away. In short, I’m feeling thoroughly sorry for myself. And I’m not getting anywhere with the murder, either.”

  Jane’s eyes were calm, searching. “Why do you have to?”

  “Well, of all the—do you want a murderer to go free? I thought the English cared more about justice than that!” My voice had risen; my hands waved in the air, and the nearest dog growled a small warning.

  Jane’s voice remained level. “We do. Why you?”

  “What—oh.” I felt suddenly very warm. “Sorry. I get carried away. It’s a reasonable question, and I don’t really know the answer. Except that this whole business seems to be connected with the question of preserving old buildings and—and good workmanship in general—and those are things I care about. And Alan is so busy—oh, I know he doesn’t really have anything to do with day-to-day police work, but his men are all tied up with the royal visit, too, and they just don’t seem to be doing anything. And besides—you didn’t see him, Jane. That young kid, spread out there on the floor. I can’t forget how pathetic he looked.”

  Jane looked at me searchingly over her teacup. “Can’t leave well enough alone, can you?”

  “I could,” I retorted. “If anything were well enough. It isn’t.”

  “Ah, well. You have a talent for landing on your feet. And as for Alan—he’ll come round.” She looked out the kitchen window. “Phone’s probably working now—they’ve done with the wires.”

  I put my cup down. “Oh, then I’ll get out of your way. I have a phone call to make.”

  I couldn’t help it if she thought I was about to phone Alan.

  In fact, he was not even on my list for today. I was definitely annoyed with Alan Nesbitt. If he wasn’t interested in what I had to say, fine. No doubt he could get along perfectly well without my help, and I had no wish to intrude where I wasn’t wanted. He obviously had better things to do with his precious time.

  Which just goes to show how silly and spiteful a middle-aged woman can be.

  My phone call was to Sheffield, or it was intended to be. I couldn’t get through. Even though my phone was working fine, lines were evidently down all over the place, and circuits weren’t available.

  Well, I wasn’t going to let that stop me. Probably the Davises were already on their way to Portugal, anyway. If I wanted more details about that building scandal that had begun to intrigue me, I’d have to look closer to home.

  In the year I had lived in Sherebury, I’d become well acquainted with its excellent public library. I wasn’t quite sure how to go about looking up an old news story, when I didn’t know the date or the papers that might have covered it, but assuming the lights were on and the library open, someone, I was confident, would help me.

  It was the reference librarian who showed me the microfilm machines and gave me a whole drawer full of the Times, as well as an index. I’d have to rely on the national papers; Sherebury, in the southeast, wasn’t particularly interested in the affairs of a big city far to the northwest of it, and the library didn’t carry their regional publication.

  The search was less tedious than I’d supposed. In less than an hour I had my information, but I wasn’t sure I knew much more than I had before. The fire that had destroyed a Sherebury apartment complex (a “block of flats”), built to house the elderly, had happened over three years ago, in March. It had been a late-breaking story; names of the victims were withheld pending notification of their families. The Times said there would be an investigation into the possibility that faulty wiring was to blame, but I couldn’t find a follow-up article on the results of the investigation, nor did I see the names of the victims, presumably published later. The only other mention of the affair at all was a very brief news item a couple of years earlier, about the proposed project to be built by the firm of Mr. George Crenshawe & Co., which was arousing some opposition on the part of preservationists who felt the Victorian terrace and red
undant church on the site should not be demolished. No members of the opposition were named. There was a picture of Mr. Crenshawe and a member of the county council, shaking hands and beaming.

  I sighed. Really there seemed to be no connection with Sherebury at all. Peering again at the picture, squinting through the bottom of my bifocals, I could see that Mr. Crenshawe was a man, had the usual number of arms, legs, and eyes, and was bald. The photograph had never been especially good; microfilm reproduction hadn’t improved it.

  I decided to be thorough about the search while I was at it. Knowing the dates helped. I worked my way through the Telegraph, the Guardian, and the Evening Standard before deciding enough was enough. My neck had what felt like a permanent crick in it from the angle required to read a screen through bifocals, and I’d learned nothing really relevant. The Standard, given the benefit of a later deadline, did give the names and ages of those killed in the fire, and I dutifully copied them down. Miss Hattie Bulstrode, 83, Mrs. Janet MacLeod, a mere 76, and Mr. James Wyatt, 99. The last was particularly pathetic, since Mr. Wyatt’s 100th birthday would have been in three days, and he was said to have been vigorous, active, and looking forward to the celebration.

  Well, the Standard would have said that even if he’d been a feeble old man with little mind left. All girls are pretty in newspapers, all women at least striking, all victims pitiable. It makes better copy. Still, I left the library full of fury.

  If I ever encountered Mr. George Crenshawe, he’d better watch out.

  I spent the afternoon trying to help Bob restore some order to my desolate wreck of a garden. Working on my knees, getting mud on my hands and very nearly everywhere else, had the usual effect of restoring balance to my mind. Gardening is a steadying occupation; it’s so very real.

  So, after I’d scrubbed off the worst of the mud, I decided to relent and try to call Alan. I had no idea whether the pitiful little bits of information I’d gathered would be of interest, but he deserved to have them. It was simply silly to carry a pique, like a teenager.

  He was, as I expected, at the office, and my high-minded mood didn’t last long.

  “Hello, Dorothy, I’m up to—hold on a moment.” I could hear a brief, muted conversation at the other end of the line before he turned his attention back to me. “Sorry. As I started to say, things are a trifle frantic here. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, there are some things I wanted to talk to you about, and I was hoping you might have time for a quick meal, but I don’t suppose . . .” I trailed off disconsolately, but Alan, usually sensitive to my moods, didn’t pick up on my tone of voice.

  “Sorry, it’s sandwiches from the canteen for me this evening. What’s on your mind?”

  His impatience was fully justified. He was plainly juggling a great many problems at once and didn’t have time to deal with a dithering female.

  Which didn’t make me feel one bit better.

  “It’s nothing I can talk about on the phone. And probably not important, anyway. You’re busy; I’ll let you go.”

  This time he did catch it. “Dorothy, I—”

  I hung up, gently.

  14

  THE TROUBLE WITH assertions of independence is that they often feel fine at the time, but the warm self-righteousness cools all too soon to a hard lump of misery. I spent the rest of the evening wishing I hadn’t hung up on Alan, or hadn’t called him at all, and forcing myself not to call again, and went to bed missing Frank so fiercely I cried myself to sleep. For once, two warm, friendly cats were no help at all.

  Weary, red-eyed, and late, I dragged myself out of bed in the morning and decided to go to the bookshop. Wednesday isn’t one of my regular days, but they might be deluged with tourists after being closed for a day, and I felt I needed something productive to do. My moods were becoming entirely too dependent on one Alan Nesbitt.

  When I got there I found everyone as edgy as I was. It was another British Tourist Authority kind of day, warm and sunny, so the place was full of customers clamoring for service, and Mrs. Williamson—I had to remember to call her Willie—and Barbara Dean were trying to cope by themselves with a busload of camera-laden Japanese and another of earnest-looking Germans. I hurled myself into the fray, wishing I had some proficiency in some language other than English (or, as the English would insist, American).

  “Where’s Clarice?” I hissed at Willie as I rang up seventeen postcards and she finished explaining that she really could not take traveler’s checks written in yen, they’d have to be changed at a bank. “We need her.”

  “Don’t know,” she said, pawing frantically through a pile of illustrated cathedral guidebooks for the German-language version. “Home, I suppose. She hasn’t phoned and I haven’t had a moment to ring her or talk to Barbara. She might know, if you can catch her; it was late Monday afternoon, after you left, when Clarice collapsed again and had to be taken home. Here you are, sir, that’s one pound fifty.”

  “Bitte?” said the elderly man, studying his handful of heavy English coins with a puzzled frown.

  Willie managed a smile, though it was a little frayed around the edges, and began to sort through the coins for the ones she needed. “See, this thick one is a pound, and this is ten pence . . .”

  But Clarice had been in such a good mood Monday! I didn’t understand at all, but there was no time to think about it until a lull hit a couple of hours later, and I made a pot of tea. Barbara Dean came into the staff room to join me, looking more human than I’d ever seen her. Her hair wasn’t perfect and there was actually a smudge on her lapel. She sat down heavily in the squashy old armchair and accepted a cup of tea with murmured thanks.

  “You look tired, Barbara,” I ventured, settling gingerly on the couch, which was easier to get into than out of.

  She sighed, and then pulled herself together. “So do you,” she said, “and we’ve both earned it. We should all have been a great deal better off this morning with more help.”

  That gave me my opening. “Yes, what’s the matter with Clarice, do you know? Mrs.—Willie said she caved in again on Monday.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea,” Barbara said crisply. “We were simply talking when she turned white as paper and crumpled. Canon Richards took her home.”

  “Good heavens. Was it something about the murder again, do you think? She’s awfully sensitive about that, for some reason. I think she’s still worried that her husband might be—suspected.”

  “If that is the case, she ought to have been reassured. Yes, we were discussing the matter, but quite calmly. I told her I was quite certain that the roots of the matter lay with the boy’s background, in Sheffield. And she fainted dead away.”

  “But that makes no sense at all. Do you think she’s ill?”

  Barbara shrugged, and I took a different tack.

  “I’m curious, though. There was a building scandal in Sheffield not too long ago—well, you probably know all about it. Do you think it could possibly have anything to do with our murder?”

  “I’m afraid I prefer not to talk about Sheffield. There are some rather painful memories . . .” There was a surge of noise, and Barbara put down her teacup and stood up. “There seems to be quite a crowd coming in again. Perhaps we should get back to work.”

  Well, that was a clear “No Trespassing” sign. But she’d talked about Sheffield to Clarice. Was it because I was a foreigner, or had I said something wrong somehow? I was going to have to be very careful with future questions, at any rate. Not sure of an approach, I wasn’t really sorry I had no more chance to speak to Barbara until the end of the morning, which was when the really odd thing happened.

  Lunchtime had thinned out the crowd, and all three of us, Barbara, Willie, and I, had seized the chance to tidy up. Barbara and I were working together at a shelf of poetry that had been wildly disarranged, and I was making conversation, trying to work my way back to Sheffield, when she suddenly stood stock-still, staring at the book in her hand. I
had never seen such a look on anyone’s face. She might have been a Greek goddess, or one of the Fates—cold, implacable marble.

  “Barbara, is something wrong? Are you okay?”

  “What?” Her voice came from a great distance. “Oh. Yes. Please excuse me.” And she put the book on the shelf, precisely where it belonged, and walked out of the shop, stopping only to pick up her handbag.

  I stared after her, and then picked up the book she had been holding.

  What on earth was there about the poems of George Herbert to turn anyone to stone?

  I STAYED MOST of the afternoon. Even with the two women of the afternoon shift, we were frantically busy until after four, when the weather changed and the flood of tourists diminished to a trickle, and Willie shooed me out. “You’ve done a yeoman’s job, and I’m truly grateful, but it’s time you put your feet up. You look tired.”

  I was, in fact, exhausted after a restless night and hours of standing, and nothing sounded better than putting my feet up and having a cup of tea. Or perhaps something stronger. However, duty called, and resentfully I listened. I should stop at Clarice’s to see how she was. The woman could be infuriating, but she was a friend, and friendship shouldn’t be taken lightly.

  The gray sky and gentle sound of the rain were most conducive to a nap. I knew if I once relaxed, I was out for the count. So I hurried home, getting wet in the process, greeted the cats, had a cup of tea, and climbed into the car. Maybe I could find out what was bothering the wretched woman, anyway.

  Once I got to her house, with no more than the usual number of wrong turns, I thought I might have saved myself the trouble. Clarice wasn’t talking and didn’t appreciate my solicitude. She let me in with a reluctance that was downright insulting, though she tried to disguise it, and sat nervously on the very edge of one of the blocky modern couches in the living room.

  “It’s very good of you to come, I’m sure, but Archie will be home in a moment and I really must—”