The Bodies in the Library

by Marty Wingate

  * * *

  * * *

  Peter left, and I hurried upstairs to my flat, where I popped a few grapes into my mouth as I tried on various outfits. I needed to make a good impression with the committee.

  At last, I chose a burgundy dress with a square neck, nipped in at the waist, and with a flared skirt. I could breathe—just. Pulling the band from my ponytail, I brushed my hair and twisted it up high on the back of my head, and secured it with a spring clip.

  “Too much?” I asked my mirror image. But I had no time to answer, as the front-door buzzer sounded. I grabbed my black wool blazer and hurried to the door, fearing I was doomed to be visited by each member of the writers group every single day until Trist’s murder was solved. I would put shed to that right now.

  I heaved open the door, talking as I did so. “Yes, you can meet here on Wednesday, but there’s no point in complaining to me about the police, because—”

  Val Moffatt stood on the doorstep peering at me from under the hood of his duffel coat.

  “Wasn’t I supposed to meet you there?”

  “When I left home, I saw it was raining,” he replied. “I thought I’d give you a lift.”

  “Thanks. But wasn’t I out of your way?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Where do you live?” Because, you know, I might as well ask.

  He cocked his head south. “Just off the Bristol Road—Oakhill.”

  “That’s the other side of the college, Mr. Moffatt, and so I was out of your way.”

  He shrugged and grinned. “Didn’t seem like it.”

  I reached for an umbrella, and when I turned back, I caught him trying not to stare at me.

  “What?” I said, looking down at my dress. “I wanted to look my best. Is it all right, do you think?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, nodding quickly and turning pink. “It’s . . . You’re . . .” He laughed and shook his head. “You look lovely.”

  I tugged on my jacket and smoothed my skirt and blushed.

  A black estate car pulled up to the curb, and DS Hopgood emerged, straightening his sleeves and his mustache. I watched as he came up behind Moffatt and nodded a greeting.

  “Sergeant.” I sighed. “I’m sorry, but I’m just on my way out. Is this urgent? Could we talk later?”

  “I wouldn’t want to keep you, Ms. Burke,” he replied, the rain already glistening on his black mackintosh. “As it happens, I’m here for Mrs. Woolgar.”

  I turned to see the secretary emerge from her office, coat already buttoned. She had her handbag over an arm and gripped an umbrella so tightly her knuckles were white—which matched the color of her face, apart from the two red spots on her cheeks.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  My gaze darted from secretary to DS and back.

  “Why have the police come for you?” I asked. “Sergeant, if there’s something you need to know about the Society, I’ll be happy to—”

  “Mrs. Woolgar is accompanying me to the station. She’s helping us with our enquiry,” Hopgood said in a gentle voice. “No need for you to worry.”

  “If you’ll excuse me, Ms. Burke,” Mrs. Woolgar said as she edged past me.

  I stood at the door and watched them get into the car and drive off.

  “I don’t understand,” I said to Moffatt. “Why does Mrs. Woolgar have to go off with Sergeant Hopgood? And what does that mean—‘helping them with their enquiry’?”

  “It means she’s a suspect.”

  11

  I whirled round on Moffatt. “Mrs. Woolgar—a suspect? You’re saying the police believe she killed Trist? That’s mad! How could she—she would never . . . Why?” I demanded. “Why would the police believe she—”

  I shot out to the pavement as if I could take hold of Hopgood’s car and stop its forward journey.

  “Hayley!” Moffatt caught my hand and pulled me back into the entry.

  “It might not be that bad,” he said. “Maybe she’s remembered something and she thinks it’s important. Did she know him—Trist?”

  I shook my head violently. “No. At least, she never said.” I racked my brain for a clue to this recent turn of events.

  “Look, do you want to follow them?” he asked. “I could take you to the station, and then I’ll go on to the meeting at the college.”

  That brought me to my senses. “Certainly not. You and I must both be there so that the committee sees this is a cooperative effort. I’m sure it’s nothing serious with Mrs. Woolgar—and she’s quite capable of taking care of herself.” I looked down the empty street, then shrugged off my worry and threw back my shoulders. “Right, Mr. Moffatt. Val.” He grinned. “We’d best be off.”

  During the short journey, I focused my thoughts on convincing the committee that a collaboration on a program of literary salons would raise both our profiles—in the best possible way. I must avoid the topic of murder, and yet I longed to weave my newly found mentor into the conversation.

  “How would Miss Marple handle this?” I asked, under my breath.

  “Sorry,” Val said, leaning in, “did you say something about Jane Marple?”

  We’d pulled into the car park at the college, and he switched off the engine and turned to me. It was time for a full confession.

  I looked him in the eye and said, “I read The Body in the Library on the train yesterday. I’d never read anything like it before.”

  He pulled his chin back and gave me a quizzical look. “Are you saying you’ve never read Christie?”

  “I’ve never read any of them—Sayers, Marsh. None.”

  “You’re curator of an impressive collection of first editions from the Golden Age of Mystery,” he reminded me.

  I nodded miserably. “I’m a fraud. I studied nineteenth-century literature at uni. I read Trollope.”

  He chuckled, and I pursed my lips.

  “Oh, come on, now,” he said. “It isn’t a crime.”

  “Ha-ha,” I replied.

  He continued in good humor. “And it isn’t as if you can’t catch up to the rest of us. It’s your new beginning.” He nudged me gently with his elbow. “Isn’t it?”

  I smiled in spite of myself.

  * * *

  * * *

  How do you think it went?”

  We stood outside the building under clear but fading skies, and I looked back as if I could see through walls to where, at this very moment, the committee was deciding our fate.

  “You were brilliant,” Val said. “Especially the idea about putting on an evening hosted by Jane Marple. Where did you pull that from?”

  “Thin air,” I replied. “I don’t know anyone who could impersonate Miss Marple, and I’m not sure we could actually get the Christie people to agree to it. Ah, well, cross that bridge . . .” I exhaled in a huff. “And so, now we wait.”

  “Shouldn’t be long,” he said, checking the time. “Another hour or so and they’ll give me a ring.”

  “Well, we can’t stand out on the pavement the entire time. Fancy a drink?” I asked, and glanced across the road. “What about there—the Black Fox?”

  Val shook his head. “Full of students, and I’d end up fielding questions about grades.”

  “Do you know the Minerva? We aren’t too far.”

  “The Minerva it is.”

  We walked to Northumberland Place while Val quizzed me about Lady Fowling.

  “But Adele has told you all about her, surely,” I said.

  “Before Adele knew her—how did her husband make all his money?”

  “Tins.”

  “Tin? He owned a mine?”

  “No, he manufactured tins for food. Tomato soup. Beans. It was early in the twentieth century, and he captured the market.”

  “There was quite a spread in age between th
em,” Val observed. “She became a widow awfully young, but never remarried.”

  “Yes, but she wasn’t a recluse. She went out and about in society, and became known for her generosity—and also for her collection of first editions, of course.”

  “And never moved away from Middlebank.”

  “I believe she did leave briefly, not long after Sir John died, but returned and never left again. Who would want to?”

  “Is there no other family?”

  “Not on Sir John’s side. Lady Fowling has her nephew, much to everyone’s dismay. I’ve never met him—he lives abroad, I believe, for at least part of the year, but swept in after her ladyship died and tried to break her will. Apparently, he thought what she’d left him wasn’t enough.”

  When I told Val what the nephew had received from the estate, he whistled.

  Inside the Minerva, we spotted one of its six tables free, and Val threw his coat over a chair. Now, in the late afternoon, when the sun hit the stained-glass windows along the front and threw broken colors across the floor, it was as if we were trapped inside a kaleidoscope.

  Pauline was working the bar. “Hiya,” I said. “This is Val Moffatt.” I turned to him. “Pauline Lunn—owner of Cleaned by Pauline.” They exchanged greetings, and I added, “She comes to us every Thursday morning.”

  She shot me a look, reminding me it had been only the previous Thursday she’d found Trist’s body.

  “How are you, Pauline?” I asked, because she didn’t look good—although, it could be the green light on her face that made her appear nauseous.

  She shrugged halfheartedly. “All right, I suppose. It’s terribly unsettling, though, isn’t it, Hayley? Sorry”—she glanced at Val—“should I not talk about it?”

  It didn’t matter to me, but she had no chance as a customer came up for another round. Val and I got our drinks and placed an order for chips and took our table. At first, we hashed over the meeting details, but that talk petered out, and we sat quietly until he gave his stubbly beard a scratch in that way men do when they’re about to say something important and want to make it look casual.

  And here came Pauline with our chips. Good thing, too—I was halfway through my wine and needed ballast.

  After I’d taken the edge off my hunger, I licked the grease from a finger and asked, “So, Val Moffatt, where do you come from? Have you always lived in Bath?”

  He took a long drink of his pint before answering. “I grew up in Margate.”

  “The seaside?”

  “Well, close on.”

  “We used to go to Clacton-on-Sea or Southend every summer—drive straight east from Hereford. I remember it taking us all day.” The walls of the Minerva faded away, and I saw a stretch of sand and rock pools begging to be explored. “My dad would hire a caravan and he and Mum would read under an enormous umbrella, and I would spend my days as a pirate searching for booty or a scientist counting the arms on starfish or I would build an enormous sand castle. And I’d eat an ice cream every day.” I sighed heavily. “I love the seaside.”

  “Do you still go back?” Val asked.

  My sand castle melted under the strong current of more recent memories. “No, not for many years.” I stole a glance at him. He didn’t speak, only waited as if he knew I had more. I dropped my gaze to the table and told him the story I’d told few others. “The last time was when we—Roger and I—took our daughter, Dinah, to Brighton. She was ten. One afternoon, she and I were to go to a magic show, but the day turned out fine, and so we went back to our cottage to get her pail and shovel. I opened the door and interrupted Roger and the young woman from the fish-and-chips stand. Right there, in our own—” I gestured into air, my voice thick. “Dinah didn’t see—she was behind me. I pulled the door to as quickly as I could and told her Daddy wasn’t feeling well and I’d take her to buy a new pail and shovel.”

  I laid my hands flat on the table to keep them from trembling, hating that after twelve years I still could be so angry. “It was her birthday. Dinah’s, that is, not the . . .” I shook my head. “Since then, I haven’t had much time for the seaside.”

  I chanced a look at Val and saw a spasm of pain cross his face.

  “It doesn’t go away, does it?” he asked. “The anger and the hurt— no matter how much time goes by. And you ask yourself, ‘What did I do wrong?’”

  My anger gave way to confusion. His wife had died—he’d told me so. What was this about?

  Before I could ask for clarification, his phone rang.

  Hearing half an important conversation is worse than hearing nothing at all. I listened to Val—“Yes, good. Well, I’m sure we can get—” and I took in every nod, shake of his head, eyebrow twitch, and gesture, trying to form it all into some coherent message. Was the Bath College committee saying yes or no?

  “Of course—I’ll make sure you have it in hand.” Val ended the call and studied me for a moment.

  “Please—put me out of my misery,” I begged. “Am I a curator who can actually do her job or have they declined the offer, marking the beginning of the end of my short career?”

  “They’re ready to commit,” he said. There was a but coming—I could feel it hanging in the air—and so I held back from a celebratory shout. “But they want the commitment to be strong on both sides. They want to know your board of trustees is one hundred percent behind the idea—every one of them. They’d like a signed statement.”

  “The board loves the idea,” I said. “Will love . . . the idea. You know, I don’t actually need their permission for every move I make as curator.”

  “Well, this time you do.”

  I began assessing my position. “All right, let me think. Certainly I have Adele’s approval, and Mrs. Moon and Mrs. Moon would love the salons. But the other two—Mrs. Arbuthnot and Ms. Frost—they have a tendency to say no first and think second.” I dropped my head in my hands and covered my face. “Oh no.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “The Moons—they leave on Wednesday for a cruise, and they’ll be gone two months.”

  Val frowned. “That’ll put off approval until the new year.”

  “We can’t wait that long—the literary salons should begin in January, it’s the perfect winter activity. And the Society could use a boost in its image. No, we’ll have to sort something out.” I shifted my mind into top gear. “I’ll invite the board to tea—an emergency meeting tomorrow afternoon. That’ll catch the Moons before they’re gone. Adele will be at school, and that’s too bad, because I could really use her support—but she could be on the phone.”

  “I’ll be there, too,” Val said.

  A flood of relief caused me to feel a bit giddy. “Yes, thanks—that will help.” I began to talk to myself. “I’ll have the acceptance already printed on letterhead, and all they’ll need to do is sign it. First thing tomorrow, I’ll need to dash off to the bakery, and then we can—”

  “Let me sort out the food.”

  “Good, good. They’re quite particular and really only prefer cakes and things from that French place.” I looked at our empty glasses. “Shall I get us another round, and we’ll plan it out?”

  I waited at the end of the short bar as Pauline engaged in a quiet, but heated, discussion with a young woman who wore a Cleaned by Pauline bandanna over curly black hair.

  “This is unfair harassment,” the woman protested.

  Pauline, a full head taller, towered over her. “You knew the job when you took it, and if you won’t do it, you can just move along.”

  This appeared to be work-related, and I hesitated to intrude, but they broke off their exchange when they saw me.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” I offered meekly. “Shall I come back?”

  “No, it’s fine.” Pauline took the empties. “Same again?”

  “Yeah, and oh, listen, I have the new
key and code for you, so—”

  “Later.” Pauline’s voice cut like a knife. “Sorry, Hayley, it’s only that—”

  The pub door opened and clear light flooded in behind an influx of customers.

  “It’s only that it’s a busy time,” she finished.

  Pauline began taking orders while the young woman stood at the end of the bar and watched. I felt a hand on my arm and turned to find Val had come up beside me.

  “Sorry, Hayley, I got a bit carried away,” he said. “I forgot I have a class in a half hour. Good thing I saw Amanda come in—it jogged my memory.”

  Both Pauline and the young woman shot glances at the pub door, and I looked past the new customers to see it swing shut.

  “Where’d she go?” I asked.

  Val looked, too. “I don’t know. She probably saw me and remembered the same thing—it’s the class she’s in.”

  12

  I declined Val’s offer of a lift to Middlebank and spent the walk back on the phone. Adele quickly agreed to persuade Mrs. Arbuthnot and Ms. Frost to attend an emergency board meeting the next day.

  “I’ll ring them this minute.”

  “Hang on,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Val Moffatt and that you were the one who told him about the salons?”

  “Did I forget that?” Adele asked in a high, sweet, and completely fake-innocent voice. “Sorry—well, it hardly matters. All right, I’ll tackle the recalcitrant board members—you take the pushovers.”

  I rang the Moons.

  “No, Sylvia,” Mrs. Audrey Moon explained to her sister-in-law across the phone’s receiver, “our bon voyage tea was last week. Hayley has an idea to tell us about.” She came back on the line. “But there will be tea, won’t there?”

  Now to explain it to Mrs. Woolgar.

  That stopped me in my tracks. I stood on the corner of George Street as cars crawled up Lansdown Road, and I remembered what I’d chosen to forget—Mrs. Woolgar had gone off with DS Hopgood to “help with their enquiries.”