The Bodies in the Library

by Marty Wingate

“Yes, horrible,” he agreed with a momentary sad look. “So, did they get away with any of those incredibly valuable first editions?”

  “Those books are in the bank—remember I’ve explained that?” It had slipped my mind that Wyn could be cute, but exhausting.

  He pulled me close with a sly grin. “So, I am allowed to see the rest of your house, aren’t I? Including the bedroom?”

  “Allowed? Don’t be daft.” After all, I told myself, he was my boyfriend and we’d been apart far too long. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Middlebank isn’t all mine,” I explained—again. “Only the flat. The rest of the house is where I work—apart from Mrs. Woolgar’s living quarters on the lower ground floor.”

  Wyn rolled over in bed, propped his head up on his hand, and grinned. “The cow.”

  “She isn’t a cow—I never called her that.” At least, not aloud. I had this new sympathy for Mrs. Woolgar, knowing her history with Trist. But her chat with the police had added a soupçon of suspicion to our relationship. It didn’t mix well.

  Wyn reached over my shoulder and grabbed his phone. “God, look at the time,” he said.

  He sat up, dragging the sheet off me. I grabbed it and pulled it up to my chin, and then blushed at acting so modest in front of him. Hadn’t he just seen all of me—and not for the first time?

  “Why don’t I cook us a meal?” I asked. Instantly, a wave of guilt washed over me, a reminder I had made that same offer to another man not an hour earlier. Only, I couldn’t identify from which direction the wave came.

  “Can’t,” Wyn said as he hopped on one foot and pulled a sock on the other. I looked away. “I’m meeting a fellow this evening at the restaurant in the Bath Priory Hotel—out on the Weston Road. He’s got an idea for a software program to log orders into Myrtle’s system so that she can make the decision herself about which meal to collect and deliver next. It’s far superior to anything else we’ve found. I’m hoping we can bring him on board.”

  I bolted upright. “You what? You came down to Bath for a business meeting?”

  “Couldn’t pass that up, could I? He’s here just for this one day—otherwise, I’d’ve had to fly to Brussels to see him.”

  “I thought it might’ve been because of me,” I said, angry at how pitiful I sounded.

  “And you, of course.” Wyn leaned over and kissed me. “I always want to be with you.” He stuffed his shirt into his trousers and picked up his shoes.

  “After your meeting, you’ll come back here?”

  “Sorry, Hayley—I’ve got to get the train back to London tonight. Eight o’clock meeting tomorrow morning with one of our investors—he’s being a bit balky at recent costs. I’ll let you know how it goes.” He finished his excuse as he dashed from the bedroom. Just before he closed the door of my flat, he called out, “Love you.”

  For the longest time, I sat in bed, chin resting on a knee, alone in the silence and with my mind drifting like a fog across unsettled seas. Finally, I got up, dressed, and went downstairs, turning off lamps in the library on my way to the ground floor, where I set the alarm. In the kitchenette, I opened cupboards to put the silver service away, and noticed teardrops splashing onto the tray.

  “Stop it,” I muttered. I dried the tray with a tea towel, then wiped my eyes and blew my nose on it and crammed it in my pocket.

  Upstairs, I pulled a paperback from my cache of used mysteries and set it on the table, then showered, and—dressed in a ragged pair of flannel pajamas—ate scrambled eggs as I began The Murder at the Vicarage. But my heart wasn’t in it, and after only two chapters, I bid Miss Marple and St. Mary Mead a good night.

  * * *

  * * *

  Our morning briefing was coolly cordial, if there is such a thing. Mrs. Woolgar had been out the previous afternoon and missed the board meeting, so I caught her up.

  “We’re thrilled that the salons will go ahead,” I said, “although it will mean a great deal of work to get them up and running.”

  “The group returns this evening?” the secretary asked.

  We couldn’t be seen to dwell too long on success. “Yes, but I don’t want you to be concerned—you carry on with your usual plans. Mr. Moffatt will be here, you see—I’m sure he and I will get stuck in on scheduling and planning the salons.” He would still stop in, wouldn’t he? He had said so.

  I took a big breath. “I’m going to the police station to see Detective Sergeant Hopgood today.” The secretary blanched and I rushed on. “Not about you—it’s only I had a few other things to clear up.”

  More than that—I had to find out what was going on with the enquiry. Miss Marple always kept abreast of clues and suspects and the like—the police even consulted her on cases. Of course, I wasn’t quite there yet, so I knew I had to raise my game. Until now, I’d been acting as if this investigation had nothing to do with me, but since my conversion on Sunday afternoon when I’d read my first Christie, The Body in the Library, I’d come to realize that Trist’s murder was not something for other people to solve. I needed to sort this out. I needed to do this for the Society, so that we could move forward under clear skies. I was, after all, curator of one of the finest collections of first editions from the Golden Age of Mystery. Who better?

  Assuming Mrs. Woolgar would think I’d lost my mind if I made this confession, I ended our briefing with, “I don’t expect anyone while I’m out, but if you need me, you can reach me on my mobile.”

  She never had and never would, but it was only polite to make the offer.

  * * *

  * * *

  A hint of woodsmoke drifted on the air, and the tops of the beeches looked frosted in gold. A fine October morning, and it inspired me to take the long way to the police station. I’d missed my walk earlier—after a restless night, I’d fallen into a heavy sleep that gave me barely enough time to dress and get to work. So now I walked—through the wrought-iron gates at Hedgemead Park. Yellow leaves from the plane trees drifted in front of my eyes, gently landing on the path where they’d soon be ground into leaf mold. I zigzagged down the hill and came out at the bottom and onto The Paragon. That road took me south and, conveniently, quite near to Waitrose. I cut across to Walcot Street and climbed the stairs to the café for a coffee and a raisin bun. I sat near the window and searched the shoppers scurrying in and out on the street below, half expecting to see Val. My feelings about this possibility sloshed back and forth between hope and worry. Eventually, I made it to the police station nearing eleven o’clock.

  Five or six people milled about near the desk in the lobby, and four more sat in chairs against the wall. I didn’t relish having an audience for my request, but, as the officer behind the desk didn’t seem to remember me, I had to begin at the beginning.

  I leaned over the counter and spoke quietly. “Hello, I’m Hayley Burke, curator at The First Edition Society. We had an incident there last week—”

  “Do you need to fill out a complaint form?” the woman asked, reaching over to a stack of papers.

  “No, I’m not complaining, it was . . . that is, the incident, you see . . .”

  “Ms. Burke?”

  Saved by Detective Constable Kenny Pye, who had emerged from a door behind the desk.

  “Constable Pye, hello. I’m here to talk with Sergeant Hopgood.”

  He gave me a quizzical look. “Is he expecting you? Do you have something for us?”

  I had little to give. I had hoped rather to solicit information, but I didn’t care to be lumped with the writers. “There are a few things I need to go over with him.”

  “Right, well, come through.”

  Pye escorted me from the lobby to a room labeled Interview #1.

  “I’ll let him know you’re here—would you like a cup of tea?”

  I declined and waited. And waited, beco
ming convinced that these dark, sterile rooms were designed to make people nervous. I drummed my fingernails on the table and tapped my toes, and jumped an inch off my chair when the door opened.

  “Ms. Burke.” Sergeant Hopgood swept into the room. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Did you want tea?”

  “No, thank you. I don’t mean to take up your time, but I did want to clear a few things up.”

  The DS settled across the table and offered me a benign smile, as if he were a friendly uncle sat down for a chat. Although, I didn’t think he could be that many years my senior.

  “Well, then,” he said. “Is this about Mrs. Woolgar?”

  “No, no—” Although it could be if he wanted to tell me anything. “I’m sure you realize that an event like that so far in her past isn’t relevant to Trist’s murder.”

  “I’ll say what’s relevant and what isn’t,” Hopgood said, a sharp point poking through his soft demeanor.

  “Yes, of course. Well, the thing is—I’m afraid I, too, have forgotten to tell you something.” Hopgood’s eyebrows shot up in anticipation. “The Friday afternoon before he was killed, Trist stopped by Middlebank. He told me there were complaints against him, but that they weren’t warranted. He didn’t go into detail, and at the time, I didn’t think it was my place to pursue the matter, and so I let it slip from my mind. But then, just this past Monday, Peter stopped in to tell me that I should ignore any complaints Trist made about the . . . complaints.”

  The DS leaned back in his chair and studied me. “Power struggle or artistic argument? Perhaps a long-standing feud?”

  I hurried on, zeal clouding my judgment. “The thing is, Sergeant, when you get right down to the heart of the matter—it’s The Body in the Library, just as you first observed. It’s Christie.”

  “Ah, Ms. Burke—you, too?”

  “He wasn’t killed in the library, someone put him there. Was it on purpose or for convenience? Although, in the book, a window was forced, and we found no evidence of a break-in. Did we?”

  “We—that is, the police—are looking into every possibility.” Duly chastised, I sat back and dropped my gaze to my lap. “And yes,” the sergeant added, “the parallels have not escaped me.”

  Any second, he may tell me to mind my own business, but until then—“Did they all go home after the pub that night?”

  Hopgood chewed his lip for a moment. “CCTV along Northumberland Place shows the five of them dispersing.”

  “Northumberland Place? They go to the Minerva?”

  “You didn’t know that? So now I’m sure you’re aware of the connection—the person who works at the pub and also works for you?”

  I had not known the writers frequented the Minerva, and so was unaware of the potential connection. And yet, what did I know about Pauline? She’d seemed friendly, kind. Although now I knew she had trouble with at least one of the women who worked for her—I’d seen them arguing at the pub, and Pauline had taken a hard line.

  “Do you believe Pauline had something to do with Trist’s murder?”

  “Belief does not come into the matter.”

  “What about intuition? Don’t you get ‘feelings’ about people?”

  Hopgood grunted, and I took that to mean that perhaps policeman’s intuition did exist. That could be good or bad, I suppose.

  “Does Pauline know any of the writers? Do they know her?” I asked.

  “She was working at the pub on Wednesday evening, and the next morning she found Mr. Cummins’s body. And remember, she’s the only other person with a key and the security code.”

  “You said keys and codes were playthings to some people,” I reminded him. “Do you know where they went after they left the pub?”

  “CCTV across the lane shows Ms. Amanda Seabrook left on her own, Ms. Harry Tanner and the victim walked off together, as did Mr. Talbot and Ms. Vine. Right now, we are checking feed from an ever-broadening area, but I can spare only one PC for the job, and I fear the fellow’s eyes are glazing over.”

  “Why are Peter and Mariella always together?”

  “They’re neighbors—Mr. Talbot works with Ms. Vine’s husband at a local machine shop.”

  These were details I’d never asked the writers. I really needed to pay more attention to people.

  “But why would any one of them kill Trist?”

  “You’re asking for motivation—now we are bordering on the philosophical. Something that may seem trivial to one person could mean the world to someone else. And here’s a difference from your mysteries—in real life, murder changes people.”

  “And so,” I said, “you are saying that no one has been eliminated from your enquiry. That means I’m on your list of suspects”—I had hoped for a denial, but he offered nothing—“as well as Mrs. Woolgar, Pauline, and the entire group. But if the writers are suspects, why do you keep fobbing them off on me?”

  “Because for every question I ask them, they ask me two—and they offer nothing useful. Therefore, Ms. Burke, as you are a curator by profession, you may look on this as curating the enquiry—at least as far as those four are concerned. It will let me alone to do my job.”

  Two raps at the door, and DC Pye put his head in.

  “She’s there again, boss.”

  Hopgood rubbed his face and sighed. Then, his eyebrows lifted. “Well now, Ms. Burke—here’s your chance. It seems Ms. Tanner has adopted us.”

  “Harry?”

  “She’s given up coming into the station, but has, for the last three days, taken up a post sitting on that low wall across the road. My DC went out to chat with her, and she said she was waiting in case we needed her again.”

  “Did Harry tell you about her relationship with Trist?”

  “She did, in rather sketchy and benign terms. Do you have further details? Do you believe he might’ve abused her?”

  “No, I . . . well, it didn’t seem so.” When Harry told me about Trist, it was with sadness, not anger. “Would you like me to talk with her?”

  “Indeed I would.”

  I rose to leave but stopped at the door, snagged by a thought.

  “Sergeant, that little incident with Mrs. Woolgar five years ago, when she hit Trist with her handbag. Charges were never brought against her, so who told you it happened?”

  Hopgood chewed on the corner of his mustache for a moment, and then, instead of answering my question, he went off in a different direction.

  “Ms. Burke, I think it wise to let you know that the victim had health problems—limited lung capacity. Weakened him, you see.”

  14

  The low stone wall across the road from the police station ran along the front of a car park. Shade was creeping up the road—at the moment, Harry, clutching her laptop to her chest, sat on the sunny end, but that wouldn’t last. I gave her a little wave as I waited for traffic to clear, and when I’d made it across and approached her, she looked up at me hopefully.

  “Do they know something, Hayley? Have they caught the person who murdered Trist?”

  Harry had changed. She looked dreadful, her eyes hollow, her usually exuberant frizzy blond hair hanging listlessly. I dropped down beside her on the wall. Sun or no, the stone was cold on my bottom. How could she sit here for hours?

  “I have no news, but DS Hopgood is concerned about you being out here every day. Don’t you want to go home? Or, should you be at . . . sorry, I don’t know where it is you work.”

  “Avec Fleurs—the florist across from the rail station. But the owner suggested I take a few days off. She could see I was”—she gave a weak laugh—“well, I think I was frightening the customers.”

  “And you’ve no one at home?”

  Harry shook her head. “Lost my flatmate last month. She moved to Bristol.”

  We sat quietly for a moment as I planned my next move.

 
“The group has been together for a while now,” I said. “You must know a fair bit about each other, and I know so little. Amanda, for example.”

  “Amanda’s taken over managing the group, and as it turns out, she’s just as bossy as Trist was. I told her someone needed to mourn him, and that’s part of the reason I wait out here every day—to show him respect. Her only response was to tell me to be careful or I’d look guilty.”

  “Do you know much about Peter and Mariella?”

  “Mariella’s all right. She reads a lot of fantasy, though—comes through in her writing.”

  “Trist wrote about zombies.”

  “Zombies are a metaphor for the disintegration of society,” Harry said, sounding as if she were repeating the company line. “Trist looked at his writing as crossing genres—traditional mystery with the dystopian. You can’t deny it was an interesting concept.”

  “Mmm. Certainly a world apart from Amanda’s story with Tommy and Tuppence.”

  “It was an odd choice, wasn’t it? I don’t think those two detectives suit her. That’s probably why she has writer’s block.”

  I ventured further. “You had some strong arguments in the group.”

  “Strong? Oh, you’re talking about Trist and Peter, aren’t you?”

  I threw the suspect spotlight on Peter. He was burly and could easily have thrown Trist against that wrought-iron post and then carried the body up to the library. But with the information DS Hopgood had just handed me—Trist was weak from lung problems—perhaps anyone could’ve done it. I gave Harry a sideways glance, sizing up her ability.

  “I can’t see Peter killing Trist,” she said. “Although they have had their moments—that’s why we were turfed out of the coffee shop. Lucky you invited us to Middlebank.”

  Yes, wasn’t it?

  Harry’s eyes puddled with tears. “It was cruel—mocking him like that, by taking him up to the library.”

  “How did Trist treat you when you two were together? Was he . . . that is, did he . . .”