Welcome to Nevermore Bookshop

by Steffanie Holmes

  Stop putting off the inevitable. Just get over to the bookshop and ask them. Make it sound so awful they’ll have no choice but to refuse.

  “Ja. The pasties are fresh out of the oven.” Greta moved down the cabinet, placing my purchases into paper bags. “You are okay? You look upset.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Just… stressed. You know, I moved back here from New York City. I thought Argleton would be slow, but between the boy problems and the dead bodies and that bloody mouse, I feel like I can’t catch a break.”

  “Do not get me started on that mouse,” Greta shook her head. “It ruined an entire batch of pumpernickel! But that is not your problem. I heard Gladys Scarlett was taken ill at your book club yesterday.”

  “Not taken ill,” a distraught voice behind me cried. “She’s dead!”

  I whirled around. Mrs. Ellis stood in the doorway, her face blotchy and streaked with tears. She clutched her carpet bag with white knuckles.

  I rushed over and guided her to one of the tables by the window. Greta came around the front of the counter and placed a cup of coffee and a packet of tissues on the table. I nodded my thanks. She disappeared behind the counter again, leaving us to talk.

  “The police came around to speak with me yesterday,” Mrs. Ellis sobbed. “They asked me all these questions. Poor Gladys was poisoned.”

  Greta’s head snapped up. “No, no. My food would not make her sick. I use only the freshest ingredients—”

  “Not food poisoning, Greta,” I said. “Actual poison. They said she’d ingested a fatal dose of arsenic.”

  As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Jo told me I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. It had barely been twelve hours and I’d already failed her.

  Mrs. Ellis sobbed.

  Greta paled. “That’s horrible. Who would do such a thing?”

  “The police believe it’s someone in the Banned Book Club.” Mrs. Ellis wrung her bag between her hands. “But I just can’t believe it. I’ve known most of those ladies for decades. Well, except for Ginny Button, but she’s a lovely girl, and so respected in the community. She works at the council.”

  “It must be so upsetting,” I said. To Greta, I handed over a twenty-quid note. “Could you add one of Mrs. Ellis’ favorite cream doughnuts to my order please?”

  “They had better find the murderer soon,” Greta said, speaking slowly and carefully, like she was trying to find the right words in English. “People will think my food is poisoned. They will not buy from the bakery, and I will go bankrupt and my brother and I will lose our home.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Mrs. Ellis and I will tell everyone we see that it’s not your fault,” I assured her. Mrs. Ellis nodded unhappily.

  While Greta went back behind the counter to finish my order, I leaned across the table and took Mrs. Ellis’ shaking hands in mine. “You told me yesterday that Cynthia Lachlan was angry with Gladys because she blocked the King’s Copse development.”

  “I don’t know if Gladys actually blocked the application, but she blabbed Cynthia’s secrets. That was wrong of her, but she felt it was her moral duty to let the committee know what kind of a man was trying to build at King’s Copse.”

  “Did you tell that to the police?”

  Mrs. Ellis shook her head.

  “I know you don’t want to speak ill of your friend, but it could be important. Mrs. Lachlan might’ve been the one who poisoned Gladys to get her out of the way!”

  “I just can’t believe that Cynthia would do such a thing. She and Gladys have been friends for so long. Gladys was her bridesmaid when she married Grey! Friends don’t go around killing each other just because they have a falling out.”

  “I know they don’t.” That was exactly what happened with Ashley and I. When she turned up dead in the shop, the police assumed I was the murderer. “But the police really need to know all the information.”

  Greta slid my box of goodies across the table. I handed Mrs. Ellis a bag containing a delicious-looking cream doughnut dusted with icing sugar. She bit into it gratefully, smearing a dab of cream on the end of her nose. “You have to help us, Mina. You’ve got to find the real murderer.”

  I slid a napkin across to her. “Huh?”

  Mrs. Ellis clutched my wrist, her eyes wide and earnest. “You’re such a clever girl. You were one of the brightest students I ever taught. And you figured out who killed the Greer girl before the police even had a clue. I can’t stand it if they take Cynthia in without considering another theory. Please, help me find out who killed my friend!”

  Chapter Ten

  Still reeling from my discussion with Mrs. Ellis, I stopped by the charity shop on the corner to pick up a standing lamp I’d seen in the window yesterday. I emerged a few minutes later, three pounds poorer but with a large oak stand and cream lace shade under my arm. The lamp would go perfectly in the dark corner on the first floor beside the Folio Society shelves. I wondered how many lamps I could stash in the shop before Heathcliff noticed.

  I set the lamp down to open the front door of the shop, flipping the sign around so it read ‘OPEN’. Unlike the last murder, there wasn’t a crowd of onlookers outside. It appeared news of Mrs. Scarlett’s death hadn’t made it around the village yet.

  I left the lamp in the hallway and took Heathcliff his breakfast. “This coffee is cold,” he muttered as I handed him the cup across his desk.

  “Sorry. I was talking to Mrs. Ellis at the bakery.” Quickly, I filled him in on how she begged me to help solve the murder.

  “I told you that book club was going to be nothing but trouble,” Heathcliff growled. “Don’t have any more bright ideas about how to improve the shop. You attract murderers the way Grimalkin attracts fleas.”

  I thought of my lamp in the hallway and smiled. “It’s fine. I’ll do a little snooping for her. I want to see the killer brought to justice just as much as she does.” I shuddered at the memory of Mrs. Scarlett’s reddened face.

  “Does this mean the bloody police are going to be poking around my shop again?”

  “It certainly does, Mr. Earnshaw.”

  I whirled around. Inspector Hayes and DS Wilson stood in the doorway, coffee in hand. Behind them a small SOCO team pulled on protective gear.

  “I bumped into Mrs. Ellis this morning and she told me Mrs. Scarlett was poisoned,” I said quickly, to avoid getting Jo in trouble. “I’ll show you the room, but I’m afraid we cleaned up after the meeting, so there might not be much of use.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wilde. It’s a pleasure to see you again,” Wilson’s expression was stormy. She was still fuming after we solved the last murder before her.

  I stood in the doorway of the World History room while Wilson and Hayes inspected the scene. “She was sitting in that red wingback chair when the mouse darted across the floor. She wheezed and heaved and clutched her stomach, and then she fell into the Victoria sponge cake.”

  Hayes inspected the surface of the table. “We’ll get the team to go over this whole area. Did you vacuum the rug?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. We’re all shocked to discover this was a murder.” Hayes inspected the windowsill while Wilson crouched to peer under the table.

  “I can’t believe any of the Book Club ladies would do something this malicious,” I said quickly. “They seemed like such good friends—”

  “My colleague and I will do the detecting this time, Miss Wilde.”

  “Found a feather,” Wilson announced, holding up a black plume between a pair of tweezers.

  “That’s from Heathcliff’s pet raven,” I said. “He was watching the meeting, but when the mouse ran across the room he dived after it. He hit the bookshelf at one point, so you might find more feathers over there.”

  The SOCO team roped off the door with crime scene tape and started making a systematic grid to search the room. Hayes peeled off his gloves. “Where are the dishes you used for the food?”

  “I’ll sho
w you the teacups upstairs. We washed them, though. The platters belonged to Greta from the bakery. I can also introduce you to Allan. He was helping me at the meeting.”

  Hayes and Wilson followed me upstairs. I showed them the rows of teacups and saucers lined up in on the drying rack. “Mrs. Scarlett had that one,” I pointed to the cup covered with hyacinths. Wilson slipped it into an evidence bag.

  I went to the stairs in the hall and called up. “Allan? The police are here. They want to talk to you about the Banned Book Club meeting.”

  A few moments later, a muffled voice called back, “I’ll be right down.”

  “He has his art studio up there,” I explained to DS Wilson, who was frowning at the steep steps. “He likes the solitude.”

  Quoth appeared at the top of the stairs, his hair streaming down his back in glorious waves. DS Wilson’s eyes widened. Even she wasn’t immune to his beauty. Under the dim hall light, his skin appeared to shimmer, and the paint splatters across his sharp cheekbones only enhanced his allure. Quoth gave a shy smile, which I knew covered his nerves. He’d have to get through the whole interview without shifting.

  “If you’ll come through to the living room, Mr. Poe, we can corrupt the intercourse… I mean, conduct the interview.” DS Wilson’s skin burned a deep scarlet. She spun on her heel and stalked out. Quoth gave me a shaky smile and followed her.

  “What’s in this room?” Hayes asked, jiggling the locked door at the end of the hall.

  My heart hammered. Just a wormhole through space and time, no biggie. “It’s extra storage for the bookshop.”

  “Can I see?”

  No, no you can’t. I had no way of knowing what we’d be looking at when I opened the door. Would it be the dusty, empty room from our current time, or the Victorian master bedroom, or the Tudor reading room, or any of the other permutations of the shop’s history?

  I shook my head. “The floorboards are rotting. Heathcliff’s under strict orders from the HSE inspector that he’s not to allow anyone in there. You’ll need to speak with him about it.”

  Hayes dropped the doorknob. “Mr. Earnshaw doesn’t strike me as the conscientious type.”

  I shrugged. “He’s been a fine employer. A little surly, but perfectly above board.”

  Except for that one time he kissed me. Hayes didn’t need to know about that.

  “Do you know anything about Mr. Earnshaw’s history? He hasn’t been very forthcoming.”

  “As far as I know, he was an orphan found on the streets of Liverpool, raised in a farmhouse in the North, and he’s not aware of his own heritage beyond an Eastern-European origin. Ask around the village, people have all sorts of tall tales about him they’d love to impart.” I forced a laugh. “Hell, I’ve even heard people say he’s really the Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights come to life.”

  Hayes didn’t even crack a smile as he scribbled notes. “Did Heathcliff enter the World History room at any time while you were setting up the meeting or while it was in progress?”

  I shook my head. “No. Heathcliff didn’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Why not? It’s an event in his shop. I would think he would want everything to be in order.”

  “Hosting the meeting here was my idea. Heathcliff was against it. You’ve met him. He doesn’t exactly like customers or anything that encourages more of them.”

  “Did you leave the room unattended at any time before or during the meeting?”

  “No. Quoth and I arranged the furniture, and then Greta showed up with the food, and the ladies arrived after that – Mrs. Ellis first, then Mrs. Winstone, followed by Ginny Button, Sylvia Blume, Cynthia Lachlan, and Mrs. Scarlett was last.”

  “Who’s Quoth?”

  Shite. “Oh, that’s what we call Allan. It’s a nickname, because his last name is Poe and he’s so goth.”

  Hayes made some more notes on his pad. “Thank you for your cooperation. We may return with further questions. In the meantime, if there’s anything you remember about the meeting, no matter how unimportant it might seem, please give us a call.”

  He met Wilson in the living room, and they clattered back down the stairs. As soon as they were out of sight, Quoth fell into my arms. “That was scary,” he said.

  “I know. It’s one of those times I’m glad Morrie is… who he is.” I wiped a strand of hair from his face. “You did good. You didn’t even sprout a single feather.”

  “I need to go do bird things for a while,” Quoth ran a hand through his hair, which turned to feathers under his touch.

  “Don’t let me keep you. Go. Do what you have to do.”

  Quoth dived for the hallway. He grabbed the balustrade, his knuckles white as he half crawled, half hopped up the stairs.

  “Quoth?”

  He froze, his body stiffening. He turned back to me. Feathers stuck out of his cheeks. His nose had already fused to his upper lip as his beak formed.

  “I’m so sorry I pushed you to show off your art and interact with people. It’s my fault you had to go through that.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” His words rasped as his lips dried into a beak. “You are the best thing to happen to me since I arrived in this world.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is.” Quoth backed down the staircase until he could reach out and touch me. He wrapped his fingers around my arm, his skin hardened, the tips of his fingers already sharpened into talons. Sad brown eyes bore into mine. How was he so utterly perfect and yet so, so broken? “I thought hiding was the only way I’d be able to survive in this world. I thought at least as a bird I had some semblance of freedom. But now that I met you, I don’t want to hide anymore.”

  “Good.” I nuzzled my head against his feathered chest. “I don’t want you to hide either.”

  Quoth let out a sad croak. The air between us sizzled. I listened through his chest at his heart beating, faster and faster. His feathers tickled my skin. He should have transformed by now, but something held him in this half human, half bird state.

  Me.

  “Quoth,” Heathcliff’s heavy footsteps clattered on the stairs. “There’s a customer who wants to know if I’ve got any pop-up books on sex education. I need you to defecate on his head.”

  And just like that, the spell broke. Quoth drew away, his eyes sad. “Duty calls,” he said, and poof, his clothes crumpled to the floor and a black raven disappeared down the stairs.

  Chapter Eleven

  The SOCO team finished up their examination around lunchtime. Inspector Hayes even took our rubbish bin away for sorting (I pity the officer who got that job) and questioned me some more about the position of each of the women in the room, and if I knew anything else I thought might be important.

  I hesitated, remembering Mrs. Ellis’ horrified face as I mentioned telling the police about Mrs. Lachlan’s grudge against Mrs. Scarlett for the lost development contract. But if someone in that room really had poisoned Mrs. Scarlett, the police needed to know. That didn’t mean I couldn’t keep looking for my own explanation.

  “Cynthia Lachlan and Gladys Scarlett had a falling out,” I blurted out. “It was over the King’s Copse development. Mrs. Scarlett told the town planning committee about Cynthia’s husband’s old debts and she thought that swayed their decision to refuse his latest planning application.”

  Hayes scribbled this information down. “Thank you, Mina.”

  They left. People trickled into the shop. A forty-something man in a horrific sweater purchased two hundred pounds worth of railway books. One lady forgot her reading glasses and made me read the first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath out loud to see if she liked it, then refused to pay two-pounds-fifty for it and instead brought it on her e-reader right in front of me. Heathcliff got into another argument with The-Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named and karate-chopped the armadillo which, thankfully, survived. Morrie came home from another mysterious outing around three p.m. and pulled me into the storage room, bent me over a box of aviation magazines,
and made me feel really, really good. Quoth pooped on two people who quoted ‘The Raven.’ Toward the end of the day, villagers crowded in to peer over the crime scene tape at the spot where Mrs. Scarlett had expired. Basically, it was a typical day.

  We closed up at the usual time. I texted Jo and told her to come for dinner and a drink after she finished work, then walked over to the off-license and picked up a couple bottles of £2.99 wine. When I entered the living room of the upstairs flat, the fire had been lit, the curtains drawn, and the lights dimmed. Heathcliff settled in his armchair, his unruly hair falling over his eyes as he devoured a book. Grimalkin sat in his lap, her paws curled beneath her like a sphinx. Quoth set up an easel in the corner closest to the hall, adding rolling hills to a birds-eye-view landscape of the village.

  Morrie frowned as he pulled the bottles out of the brown paper bag and lined them up on the mantelpiece.

  “Can’t you choose something French? I have my doubts as to the grape quality in the ‘famous wine region of Suffolk.’”

  “I’ll get the fanciest wine they offer when Heathcliff gives me a raise.”

  “No,” Heathcliff muttered from his chair, without looking up from his book.

  “Look at this one.” Morrie jabbed his finger at the label. “‘Bouquet’ is spelled wrong. That’s it, gorgeous. I’m officially banning you from all alcoholic choices hereafter.”

  Morrie tossed my unopened bottles into the recycling and disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later, he returned with a dusty bottle bearing a label in what looked suspiciously like medieval Latin.

  “This is more like it,” he grinned, pouring five glasses and handing them around.

  “This looks old.” I sipped the wine. My mouth exploded with sensation – caramel, honey, almonds, and citrus compote blended together into a sweet, heady taste that clung to my throat. “Wow, it’s amazing. Do I want to know where this came from?”

  “You do not.” Morrie lifted his glass at me and winked.