by Simon Brett
‘Oh.’ Carole felt her face colouring. ‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Anyway, I didn’t like that Detective Inspector Rollins’s attitude. If anyone’s going to solve the case, I’d much rather it was the local amateurs.’
‘That’s also very kind of you.’
For the first time that morning, there was a twinkle in the librarian’s eye as she said, ‘I think I’ve been spending too much time in the crime section. I’m afraid I’m a sucker for those Golden Age books in which the baffled PC Plods have rings run round them by brilliant amateurs.’
‘Does this mean you’re giving me carte blanche to ask as many questions as I wish?’
‘Mm.’ Di pointed down to the few remaining books on the top shelf of her trolley. ‘Not too many. When I’ve finished this lot, I must go and once again engage with the public.’
‘Fine. Just a few quick questions then. Jude got the impression that the remains of the broken bottle in the staff room had been cleaned up by your junior?’
‘Vix, yes.’
‘Do you know how she did it?’
‘I asked her that. She told me she got some kitchen roll and picked up the larger bits of glass with that over her fingers, so that she didn’t cut herself. She put those in the pedal bin by the sink. She swept up the smaller shards with a dustpan and brush, and put them in the bin too. Then she mopped up the wine and remaining tiny bits of glass and washed the mop out under the tap over the sink.’
‘The dustpan, mop and what-have-you … where were they kept?’
‘There’s a broom cupboard just next to the staff toilets. When she’d finished, Vix put everything back in there.’
‘And was the pedal bin emptied subsequently?’
‘It would normally have been. That’s part of the cleaners’ duties. They come in at nine, but only two days a week. Their next day would have been Thursday, but of course with the library being closed …’
‘So the police have presumably got the remains of the wine bottle?’
‘They’ll be pretty inefficient if they haven’t. No sign of the pedal bin contents this morning. Nor, come to that, of the dustpan and mop from the broom cupboard. Which is another inconvenience.’
‘Taken away for forensic analysis?’
‘Assume so. That’s what happens in all the television police shows, doesn’t it? So they can be examined by some guest star playing a scientist way out on the extreme edge of the Asperger’s spectrum.’
Carole grinned. Behind her quiet exterior, Di Thompson was a sharp and highly intelligent woman.
‘So soon the police will have proof that it was walnut extract in the wine bottle that killed Burton St Clair?’
The librarian shrugged. ‘That would seem to be the logical conclusion. But, as I said before, I doubt if that’s data they’re likely to share with us.’
She looked down at her watch, but before she had time to say anything, Carole got her oar in. ‘Steve Chasen …’
‘Yes?’
‘According to Jude, he was badmouthing Burton St Clair after his talk.’
‘True enough.’
‘And he would have had a chance to put something in the wine bottle?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t watching his movements all evening.’
‘But he could have deliberately ensured that the wine bottle got smashed?’
‘I suppose he could.’ The librarian sounded reluctant to accept the suggestion. ‘I’m sorry. I know Steve’s a pain, and on more than one occasion I’ve had to ban him from the library, but there is something about him I respect.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, I know he gets pretty unmanageable when he’s been drinking, but he’s completely self-taught. He’s one of those people who’s got all of his education from the public library.’
‘An autodidact?’
‘Yes, the exact word. And not one that’s heard very often these days. Nor do we get a lot of people in the library these days, educating themselves. Most now seem to learn stuff from YouTube videos. So, though I can’t condone a lot of Steve’s behaviour, I do think he’s one of those people for whom the library service was set up and, I fear, one of a dying breed.’
‘Admirable,’ said Carole crisply. ‘But, of course, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that he’s also a murderer.’
‘No, I’ll concede that.’
‘And what about your junior – Vix Winter, is it?’
Di Thompson’s face tightened up. It seemed that her junior was not the most co-operative of colleagues. ‘What, do I think she’s a possible murderer? I can’t see it. Planning something like that would be too much like hard work.’
‘Ah. Would you have a contact number for her?’
Di provided it. ‘But I wouldn’t try her today. Remember she’s ill.’ The last word was loaded with a wealth of cynicism.
‘Thanks, anyway. Ooh, one other thing …’
A weary ‘Mm?’
‘I’ve been trying to contact other people who were here for Burton St Clair’s talk. Jude mentioned some tall American woman, who was something of an expert on crime fiction?
‘Nessa Perks. Possibly Professor Nessa Perks. Don’t know what her proper title is, but she’s involved in the English Department at the University of Clincham. She helped out on a few sessions for the library’s Writers’ Group.’
‘Oh yes, Oliver Parsons mentioned that.’
‘Mm. He used to come along for a while. Mind you, we don’t run it any more.’
‘Funding?’
‘Partly. More lack of interest from the good people of Fethering. Same problem that’s scuppered a good few other initiatives I’ve set up to prove the relevance of this library in the twenty-first century. Book group’s still running, but the rest of them …’
With an air of finality, Di Thompson moved the last book from her trolley’s top shelf to a lower one. ‘There. I must—’
‘Just one more question.’
‘Yes.’ There was now a put-upon edge to the librarian’s voice.
‘Jude said that when Burton St Clair put his arm round you, you flinched.’
‘I don’t deny it.’
‘Any particular reason? Or just general dislike of men you don’t know well putting their arms around you?’
‘Well, there was more of a reason with Burton St Clair. The bastard had just come on to me in the staff room.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, pushing me against the wall, one hand on my breasts, the other up my skirt. I had to fight him off.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not the first time it’s happened with an author. A lot of them seem to have some feeling of entitlement when it comes to groping librarians. And groping members of their publishers’ publicity departments, come to that. One of the clichés of publishing life, I believe – authors having it off with publicity girls.’
‘Oh? Then, if he came on to you, you did have a strong reason to dislike Burton St Clair?’
‘Yes,’ said Di, with a sardonic look at Carole. ‘What I didn’t have, though, was time between his groping me and my getting him a glass of wine, to research the fact that he had a walnut allergy, to source some chopped walnuts, and to infiltrate them into the bottle of red wine in the staff room.’
‘I can see that,’ said Carole, feeling a little put down.
‘Now I’m afraid I have—’ A cacophony of infantile screaming had suddenly broken out in the children’s section. The two twenty year olds in paper-plate masks were faffing around, clearly not up to resolving the situation. Carole saw two toddlers locked in a boxer’s clinch, bawling and pulling each other’s hair out. Worse than that, the two toddlers’ dads were also squaring up to each other.
‘I must go and sort things out,’ said the librarian.
FIFTEEN
Vix Winter seemed surprisingly ready to talk to Carole. About anything. When told it was about Burton St Clair’s death, she was even more enthusiastic. And no,
she hadn’t had any face-to-face conversations with the police yet, just a call in which she’d been asked to confirm that she had left the library in Di Thompson’s car on the Tuesday night. She’d been questioned briefly about cleaning up the staff room when the bottle of wine had been broken, then told that the police would probably be contacting her again at a later date. But, since then, she hadn’t heard anything more from them. She sounded disappointed, and Carole wondered whether that’s why she’d agreed so readily to talk to her.
‘We can’t do it here, though,’ the girl whispered conspiratorially down the phone line. ‘I live with my parents.’
‘Well, when do you think you’ll be well enough to meet up?’
‘What?’
‘I’ve just come from the library. Di Thompson said you’d called in sick.’
‘Oh yes. Actually, I’m feeling a bit better than I was earlier. Thank goodness. Could meet now if it’s OK with you?’
‘Fine. Where?’
‘I don’t know. Some pub?’
‘My local’s the Crown & Anchor in Fethering. Don’t know if you know it?’
‘’Course I do. I’ve lived in the village all my life.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Downside.’
‘Right.’ Carole had duly taken note of this social marker. The Downside Estate, to the north of Fethering, was made up of council houses – or, as they seemed to have become known, ‘social housing’. Their world was far from the middle-class gentility of High Tor.
‘Then of course you know the Crown & Anchor. Well, might that be suitable? Or would you worry about meeting Di there – you know, what with you being off sick?’
‘That’d be OK. She never goes near the pub. Doesn’t drink.’
‘So, when could you meet?’
‘I don’t know … twelve?’
‘Sounds good to me. What, will you walk there, or do you have transport?’
‘Ooh, no. Couldn’t afford a car on my salary. But I don’t really fancy walking, not with being off sick and all.’
‘Of course not. I’ll pick you up then.’
Carole’s instructions were not to collect the girl from the house. She was to pick Vix up by the postbox at the end of her road. Whether the girl wanted the assignation to be a secret from her parents, or was ashamed of where she lived, Carole neither knew nor asked.
So, the immaculate Renault was driven sedately out of the High Tor garage. For a moment, Carole considered telling Jude what was happening, even suggesting she might come along. But she curbed the instinct. Her neighbour seemed to have been genuinely frightened by the cautions Detective Inspector Rollins had given her. Jude wanted to – indeed, had to – keep her nose clean.
Which meant that Carole Seddon was the sole investigator on the case, if you didn’t take the police into account. And, despite her Home Office background, when Carole was involved in an investigation, she very rarely took the police into account.
Vix Winter hadn’t said much on the short drive from Downside, and she didn’t say much inside the Crown & Anchor until she had taken a long swig from her pint of cider. As instructed, Carole had asked at the bar for a ‘K’ (which was apparently some kind of cider), but Zosia had said they didn’t carry it, so she had made do with draught Aspall’s.
Carole hoped Ted Crisp didn’t appear in the bar. The sight of her in the company of a girl with green hair and facial piercings would provide him with teasing ammunition for weeks.
‘Phew!’ said Vix, putting her glass down on the table. ‘I needed that.’
‘Oh?’ said Carole, after taking a sip from her small Sauvignon Blanc.
‘Got a bit bladdered last night.’ She took her mobile phone out and placed it on the table right in front of her. ‘On the “K”, I was, with my mate Jools, in this club we go to.’
‘And then you woke up this morning feeling ill?’
‘Yes.’ A sly grin crept across the girl’s plump face. ‘Don’t know why.’
The temptation for Carole to be censorious was only momentary. She was reminded that she needed to ingratiate herself with Vix Winter to extract the maximum amount of information from the girl.
‘You presumably know about everything that happened after you left the library on Tuesday evening?’
‘Well, I don’t know everything, or I’d know who the murderer is, wouldn’t I?’ She giggled, and took another long, revivifying swallow from her pint glass. ‘But I know what I saw, sure enough. Everyone in the library’s been asking me about it, and at the club we were in last night too.’
She spoke with some level of pride. Vix Winter wasn’t the first person Carole had encountered who glowed in the spotlight turned on them by having some involvement in a murder enquiry.
‘Right, on the Tuesday, after the library had been locked up, Di Thompson drove you home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was that a usual arrangement?’
‘How’dja mean?’
‘Did Di normally give you a lift home, if you both finished work at the same time?’
‘God, no. She could do that quite easily, I’m virtually on her way, but she’d never think of it. No, normally I have to walk, or catch a bus. But, as I’m sure you know, there’s no buses in Fethering at that time of night.’
Carole nodded agreement, although, thanks to her trusty Renault, she had not travelled by bus once since she had moved permanently to the village.
‘On Tuesday, Di had to promise me a lift home. Otherwise there was no way I was going to stay for the evening. I thought it was a liberty asking me to do it, anyway. No talk of overtime. I know the hours I’m meant to work, and evenings aren’t part of them. Having spent the whole day dealing with books, last thing I want to do is stay at work in the evening for some bloody author.’
It wasn’t the first time during their interview that Carole had contemplated asking Vix whether she thought she’d really taken the right career path. Though there were not many librarians amongst her acquaintance, the ones Carole did know were very devoted to their profession. They might moan about management and changes in regulations, as everyone who worked for a large organization did, but they did actually care about the libraries and the customers who frequented them. Above all, they loved books.
But that was a part of the job specification which seemed to have passed by Vix Winter.
‘Tell me,’ asked Carole, ‘did Di say anything about the evening as she was driving you home?’
‘No. She hardly said a word. Except “Goodnight” when she dropped me at the end of our road.’
‘She didn’t make any comment about Burton St Clair? Or the contents of his talk?’
‘No.’
‘What did you think of it?’
‘What did I think of what?’
‘Burton St Clair’s talk.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, you were there, weren’t you? You must’ve heard what he said.’
‘I wasn’t listening. I was sat at the back with my mobile. Spent most of the time WhatsApping my mate Jools.’
Once again, a question about Vix’s suitability for her chosen career was on the tip of Carole’s tongue. But she didn’t let it go any further than that. ‘Presumably you were in the library when Burton St Clair arrived that afternoon?’
‘Yes, he got there about six. Library closed at five thirty, so Di and I had had to rush around moving chairs and things before he arrived.’
‘I gather some volunteers were there too, to help put the chairs out?’
‘Yes. But I did most of it.’
‘And what time were the doors opened for the public?’
‘Six thirty.’
‘Did you get the impression that Di had met Burton St Clair before?’
‘Don’t think so. She went into her routine about how much she’d always enjoyed his work, and how delighted she was about the success of … whatever the new one’s called. But I’ve heard her do all that with other authors.’
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‘Hm. Earlier, Vix, you talked about the “murderer”. Has anyone actually said that Burton St Clair’s death was murder?’
‘Well, everyone in Fethering says it was.’
‘But you haven’t heard the word used by the police?’
‘Like I said, I only had a brief chat on the phone with them.’
‘Of course. When Burton St Clair did his talk, I understand he had a bottle of mineral water with him …’
‘Oh, are you going down the poisoning route? Yeah, a lot of people have been talking about that. And before you ask: no, the bottle of water had not been opened before it was set up for him. I know that, because I took it out of the staff room fridge myself.’
This did of course raise the possibility that Vix herself might have had the opportunity to adulterate the contents, but Carole didn’t think that avenue was worth pursuing. She was coming round to Di Thompson’s view that planning a murder would have been too much like hard work for Vix Winter to have anything to do with it.
‘God, I feel better for that.’ Vix looked down at her empty glass. Carole took the hint. Though she was only halfway down her Sauvignon Blanc, she went to the bar to get another pint of Aspall’s. Zosia served her. The girl looked rather subdued and, Carole noticed, wore heavier eye make-up than usual. The whites of her eyes were pinkish, as though she’d been crying. Jude would instantly, without any awkwardness, have asked Zosia if everything was OK. But Carole wasn’t made like that. She just voiced her thanks and took Vix’s cider back to the table.
As the girl took another deep swallow, Carole asked, ‘Do you mind just going through what happened between Burton St Clair’s arrival at the library and the start of his talk?’
‘Not much did happen, really. I told you, I spent most of the time moving chairs.’ The resentment in her voice was strong. ‘Some volunteers were meant to come in at six thirty to help with that, but by the time they arrived I’d done it all,’ she concluded righteously.
‘And where was Burton during this time?’
‘He was in the staff room with Di. She’d got some M & S sandwiches. Not that I was allowed to have any. They were all for him. And she made him some coffee.’
