But the contents of the house that I could see—the furniture and books—these told only a part of her ladyship’s story. I needed to know the woman herself in order to convey her spirit and élan to the world—and keep the Society on its proper track. Of course, I could march down to the bank and get the key to the cellar all on my own—I was the curator, after all. But again, did I want to make a permanent enemy of Mrs. Woolgar? What sort of working life would I have then?
And so instead, I made a vague comment about discussing the cellar with the Society’s solicitor, Duncan Rennie. Mr. Rennie, poor man, had learned early on he was to be referee between us, but this time, the threat alone was enough to send Mrs. Woolgar herself scurrying to the bank, and the following day she magically produced the key to the cellar.
Access at last. But, as my foray meant going to the lower ground floor and walking past the door to Mrs. Woolgar’s flat, she naturally accompanied me, because God knows what I could get up to left to my own devices.
The key was stiff in the Yale lock, telling me that the secretary did not spend her evenings like Mrs. Danvers, rearranging Lady Fowling’s hairbrushes and laying out her nightdress. There, you see, I was familiar with one of our Golden Age of Mystery authors—although the odd one out, du Maurier. And it was the film version of Rebecca, not the book.
The cellar door opened fully, but beyond its three-foot clearance, my entry was blocked by what looked like a floor-to-ceiling three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle made of wooden pieces. Stacked any which way they fit were side chairs, occasional tables, standing lamps with cloth-covered cords, an ancient rocking horse—Lady Fowling and her husband had had no children—broken hat stands, a dressing table with a cracked mirror, and other furniture accumulated from several lifetimes. Farther into the room—it ran about fifteen feet wide and deeper still—I could see columns of crates and cardboard boxes.
“Well, Ms. Burke.” Mrs. Woolgar smirked. “Shall I leave you to it?”
“Yes, thanks.” I saw her eyeing the key in the door. I reached over, extracted it, and dropped it into my jacket pocket. “This will be a fine project to tackle during my spare moments.”
Mrs. Woolgar returned to her office, and I remained in the doorway, studying the stockpile before me. I sighed, and told myself, Stiff upper, Hayley. Who else would get paid this well to do a clear-out?
* * *
* * *
I began at the top, carefully removing lighter pieces, hoping I wouldn’t be buried under an avalanche of furniture. Shifting a few side chairs, two hat stands, a nightstand, and a side table into the corridor outside the cellar door allowed me to reach a dresser and a highboy. I checked the drawers—they were empty apart from a loose button and a card of straight pins—and so I moved them out, too, their legs screeching across the stone floor. When I reviewed my progress, I saw I’d barely made a dent in the wall of furniture. I could do with a cup of tea.
When I heard footsteps, I thought Mrs. Woolgar might’ve read my mind, but although it was the secretary, she arrived with her hands empty and clasped at her waist.
“One of that group is at the door,” she announced.
Was it the harsh light from the three naked bulbs hanging from the ceiling, or had Mrs. Woolgar’s complexion taken on a blotchy scarlet tone? Was she ill?
I would never know—I’d dare not make such a personal enquiry. “Who is it?”
“The man—the tall one.”
“Trist,” I said, brushing myself off. “You asked him in—you didn’t leave him on the doorstep?”
“I will not have him in this house unattended,” Mrs. Woolgar retorted, and I was too stunned to reply before she turned on her heels and left.
I hurried after, but she’d already closed herself up in her office by the time I made it upstairs. When I opened the door to the street, a heavy mist was falling. Trist, who wore a thin jacket, had his leather case tucked under his arm, the unprotected corners covered in water spots.
“Hello, Trist. Please, come in. I was in the cellar and didn’t hear the buzzer.”
He stalked in and shook his head and arms, flinging droplets in a wide arc, which then landed on me.
“Fan fiction is a legitimate form of literature,” he said. “But this treatment isn’t unexpected—writers through time have been disparaged for their craft.”
I brushed the water off my wool jacket and cut my eyes toward the secretary’s door. “I’m sorry Mrs. Woolgar left you outside, but I have to say I don’t believe it has anything to do with your writing. It’s only that Middlebank has been her home for many years, and the opening up of the Society is taking some getting used to for her.”
The thought just expressed—by me—gave me pause. I hadn’t actually considered it that way before, but I suppose it was true. I should cut Mrs. Woolgar some slack.
“So,” I said with a pleasant but businesslike manner, “what can I do for you today?”
“You should know that there’ve been complaints.”
“Complaints about what?”
“About me and the way I run things—” He took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and wiped the rain off his forehead. “But I’m standing up for the quality of fan fiction—you just remember that. And I don’t believe anyone should have a special advantage. So, if you hear talk . . .”
“Yes, if I hear talk, what am I supposed to do?”
“Be fair. I’m only trying to make everyone accountable for his or her own work.”
“I’m not an arbiter for your or anyone else’s writing, Trist. We provide space for your group, and that’s all. And at this point, I must tell you, I am reconsidering that offer.”
There. I exhaled with relief. I’d said it—he’d had his warning.
He took a step toward me, and more moisture cascaded off his thinning hair, splattering my face. I took a step back.
“I’m sure you realize”—he glanced up the stairs and back at me—“Lady Fowling wants us to be accommodated.”
The ghost card, was it? See if I’d take that bait.
“Well, if that’s all, Trist, I must get back to my work.” Cleaning out the cellar.
I shut the door on him, knocked on Mrs. Woolgar’s, and was given permission to enter.
“I want you to know I’ve warned Trist that the group may not be able to continue to meet here. I won’t stop them next week, but I will suggest they look for another place.”
“What did he say to you?” she demanded.
“I don’t know what he was talking about, really—squabbles within the group, I think. He isn’t the most pleasant person.”
“You’ve a knack for understatement, Ms. Burke.”
* * *
* * *
I returned to the cellar without a cup of tea and shifted a few more pieces of furniture halfheartedly before looking down at myself. Streaks of dust made my black wool jacket look like herringbone, and so I decided to hold off on further exploration until another time when I would wear my laundry-day togs. But I didn’t fancy attempting to put back the furniture I’d pulled out into the corridor. It didn’t look as if it would fit, but then, I was always bad at puzzles. Instead, I lined the pieces up along the wall in the corridor, locked the cellar, and went upstairs to explain.
“And so the pieces are nowhere near the door to your flat—they won’t be in your way at all,” I said to Mrs. Woolgar, who pressed her lips together as if to say she didn’t believe a word of it. “That’s a lovely highboy,” I added.
“Queen Anne,” the secretary replied. “It was Sir John’s—when he was alive. I’m not sure her ladyship would approve of anyone else’s using her husband’s furniture.”
“I didn’t mean that I wanted—” Oh, forget it.
At last, the end of the day. I dashed upstairs and changed into denims, a light sweater, and trainers, rinsed my face, and washed my
hands. I grabbed a jacket on my way out the door—I needed to clear my head of dust and do a bit of shopping. Perhaps I’d get the ingredients for an enormous salad for my evening meal.
I’d slacked off cooking over the last couple of years. Since Dinah moved away, I didn’t really see the point—but I knew I should stop living off ready-made meals from Waitrose. But I loved Waitrose—it had everything I ever needed. In addition to the usual grocery supplies, the place included a café, a bakery, a fish market and a butcher, and an array of fine dinners that someone else had prepared.
Cars clogged the streets of Bath at this time of day—everyone on the way home—and so I avoided traffic and took the long route, walking by the Assembly Rooms with their Georgian columns and spacious rooms. I’d attended a Jane Austen event there, and had a grand time—although it meant I had to wear Regency clothes. I don’t care for those high waists—the dresses always make me feel rather lumpy. Mrs. Woolgar, on the other hand—with a figure straight as a rail—would look lovely in them.
I had just crossed George Street when I spotted Adele—easy to do with her mass of red hair like a Celtic goddess and her penchant for wearing purple.
“All right for some,” I said. “Wandering the streets of Bath in the late afternoon—schoolteachers have it easy, don’t they?”
“Who was it let the curator loose?”
We laughed and, without voicing the decision, turned and headed down Old King Street to the Raven, where neither of us could resist the chicken-and-mushroom pie. Just at the corner of Quiet Street, we almost collided with a sleek runner who wore a skintight outfit of swirling colors, and if it hadn’t been for the long blond braid, I never would have recognized her.
“Amanda!”
“Hayley, God, I’m sorry. Are you all right?” She ran in place as she asked.
“Yeah, fine.”
“Good,” she replied. “See ya next week.”
“Bye,” I said to her disappearing figure.
“Who’s that, then?” Adele asked, also watching Amanda’s figure.
“She’s a writer—one of the fan-fiction group. Want me to introduce you?”
“No,” Adele said as we climbed the stairs in the pub and took the corner table by the windows. “I’ve no great luck with being set up for a first date—that friend-of-a-friend thing. It’s awkward when it doesn’t work out.”
“Yeah, better to meet like Wyn and I did—by accident.”
“And how is the Inventor of Fleet Street?” Adele asked. “Has he been down to see you lately?”
“No”—I pulled a face—“not since I started the new job.”
“Have you been up to London?”
“Haven’t quite had the opportunity.”
“Mmm. The usual?” she asked. I nodded, and she headed for the bar to get our drinks and order our pies. When she returned, we changed the subject.
Adele and I had met at my previous job at the Jane Austen Centre, where my greatest perk was that I worked behind the scenes, saving me from wearing a Regency-era dress every day and selling T-shirts splashed with I’m the real Mr. Darcy!
This was seven years ago, when Adele had a more militant way of letting her views be known. She had secured a job in the café solely to make a statement—this had been obvious the moment she’d arrived in her Regency gear, with shaved head, tattooed scalp, and ear riveted with silver studs, and proceeded to pass out leaflets that read Was Jane Austen a lesbian?
Needless to say, her tenure at the Centre had been short-lived. I had been assigned to escort her off the premises, and the two of us had snickered our way down the stairs and met for a drink later. We had become the sort of friends who always sat down for a chat on the rare occasions we happened to meet on the street. Since that event, Adele had toned down her protests, grown out her hair, lost a few studs, and taught school locally.
“I wish you could’ve known Georgiana,” Adele said, shaking her head after I reported the latest indiscretion by the fan-fiction group. “She’d’ve loved what you’re doing. Glynis is trying to cast her in stone, but she was truly a forward-thinking woman. And backward, too, I suppose—given her favorite writers.”
“I wish I could’ve known the two of you as friends,” I replied.
On the surface, Adele may have seemed an odd choice for board member of the Society—even Adele admitted that. She had met Lady Fowling at Topping & Company, both perusing a new release of Agatha Christie’s secret notebooks. This triggered a lively conversation on detection and resulted in a warm friendship. They were, in a word, simpatico. Adele—never the wistful sort—had once told me it was too bad her own mother hadn’t been more like Lady Fowling. In return, her ladyship had deemed the young woman “full of the spirit of our role models”—and had promptly appointed her to the board.
Over our pies and mash, Adele caught me up with stories about her school, a local academy where she had been voted best teacher two years in a row by both students and parents. In exchange, I told her about my recent triumph—starting on the cellar.
“I didn’t get far—deconstructing the wall of furniture will take a while.”
“God knows how long some of that stuff has been down there,” Adele said.
I knew that Middlebank had seen the Fowlings through at least a century, and her ladyship had been the tail end of their occupation. A long tail, as she’d been only twenty years old when she married the seventy-year-old Sir John.
“I’m not sure how I’d feel about marrying someone fifty years my senior,” I thought aloud.
“I doubt if you could find anyone that old at this point.” Adele shot me a grin as she lifted her glass. “Georgiana said they were quite happy.”
“But that makes it so tragic—they had only ten years before he died, and then she was a widow at thirty and alone for the next sixty-four years.”
“She didn’t let that hold her back—she found her passion and shared it with the world.”
“And that’s what I will get the Society back to.” I jabbed a finger on the table for emphasis. “Lady Fowling’s dream.” And with that, I shared my latest idea—literary salons to be held at Middlebank.
“Brilliant,” Adele said. She became thoughtful, tapping her fork on the edge of her plate. “Yes, quite good. What if you found a cosponsor? Not necessarily to share costs, but to help get the word out to a wider audience. Bath College has that adult learning program, you know. They do writing classes.”
“Yes, perfect. I’ll have a look at their faculty and find a likely person to contact.” I stared at our empty plates and glasses. “Another pint?”
“Go on, then,” Adele replied.
3
Friday’s highlight—at least for Mrs. Woolgar—was that she caught me out during our morning briefing when she mentioned Margery Allingham, one of the Golden Age of Mystery writers, and her protagonist, Albert Campion. I made the life-shattering mistake of referring to him as “inspector” when he was really an amateur sleuth. Score one for Team Woolgar.
Never mind—I had the weekend. On Saturday morning, I was at the station and on a train by seven o’clock, off to see my mum in Liverpool. It was a four-hour journey with two changes, but I didn’t mind—it gave me time to read and think and drink tea as I stared out the window. It wouldn’t take any less time if I drove, and besides—I didn’t have a car.
Once I’d made my second change at Birmingham New Street, I secured a slice of lemon drizzle from the tea trolley when it came past and had just ripped it open when my phone lit up and I saw Dinah’s name.
“Morning, Mum,” she said with cheer, although the greeting was followed by a yawn. “Are you on the train?”
“I am. Are you in bed?”
“I’m not—but I am standing next to it. How’s the job? Full of mysteries?”
“Good, it’s quite good. You’ll love my flat—alt
hough, I don’t suppose you’ll see it before Christmas, will you?”
“Yeah.” It was a distracted answer. “Listen, about the money you sent.”
“Yes, sweetie—what about it?”
“Thanks very much for it. It’s only that . . . Dad came for a visit yesterday.”
Those few words were enough to chill my blood.
“Did he?” I asked. “How lovely he could spend the time with you.” I wanted to say spare the time, but I knew the rules—don’t bad-mouth the ex in front of the child, even an adult child. No matter what went on between the parents, father and daughter had a right to their own relationship.
“And his car had something wrong with it, but he’s a bit skint right now and couldn’t pay for the repairs.”
My head swam with the vilest names imaginable for this so-called father, this ingrate, this mooch, this— I swallowed hard and choked out, “Oh?”
“And so, you know, I lent him the money. He said he’ll pay it back soon. He asked me not to tell you about it, but I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
I held the phone at arm’s length and clapped my other hand over my mouth as I whimpered. The older gentleman across the aisle cut his eyes at me and went back to his newspaper.
“That was money for your share of the house,” I reminded her. Dinah rented a large and mostly dilapidated Victorian pile of bricks with another young woman. The monthly rent was outrageous, but they loved the place. “Well, we can’t have you turfed out, now, can we?” I laughed lightheartedly through clenched teeth. Believe me, it’s possible, I’ve had plenty of practice.
“Thanks, Mum. I’m sorry about Dad. It’s just he gets so pitiful—like a little boy. He hasn’t really ever grown up, has he?”
* * *
* * *
Arrived in Liverpool, I walked up from Lime Street station to Mum’s flat in a sheltered housing arrangement for pensioners. I greeted her nurse—slipping her an envelope with her pay as she left—and leaned over Mum’s wheelchair to give her a kiss. After a quick coffee, the two of us were away for a day of shopping, lunch, a wander through a museum, tea, and then back to her flat for a much-needed nap. I got my two miles in and more, as I counted double when I pushed her chair up even the slightest incline.
The Bodies in the Library Page 3
