8
That went quite well,” I said to Bunter after I’d finished my calls to the board. “All things considered. My plan for the literary salons—they could never think that ‘mischief,’ could they? And it isn’t as if I’ll need the board’s approval for the idea. I have powers as curator, and I can do these things.” Bunter yawned.
The front-door buzzer went off, and I heard Mrs. Woolgar answer. After a brief exchange, she brought Amanda to my door and left without a word.
“Hi, Hayley.” Amanda twisted the belt of her shapeless jacket round one finger. “I was hoping you had a minute.”
“Yes, of course.” I gestured to the wingback. “Bunter—could you . . .”
The cat hopped off and strolled over to the fireplace rug. Amanda took the vacated chair, perched on the edge of the seat, and looked at the floor. “I don’t know what we’re going to do without him.”
“You mean about meeting here next Wednesday? I don’t know yet if we can carry on the way we have.”
“No, not that. Well, in a way, I did come about the group. It occurred to me that you don’t know us well, and you may not be aware that some of us have . . . history with each other.”
I had known next to nothing about the group before I had let them in the door—my mistake.
“Have you been meeting long?”
“About six months. Trist had posted a notice online about forming the group, so you’d think we’d’ve all been strangers coming together that way, but it wasn’t the case. Turns out Trist and Harry had been previously . . . involved.”
“Involved?”
“It’s long over—two, three years ago, I think—and they had become friends, I suppose. But, I believe Harry still harbored a great deal of hurt. And you saw how Trist could be with people. Still, that’s no excuse for—” A brief pause and then she hurried on. “It isn’t that I suspect Harry of anything, it’s only that the police should have every detail in an enquiry, but I’m not entirely sure she mentioned this to them. And so I thought you could let them know.”
“But why don’t you tell the police?”
“How would that look—a fellow writer grassing her up? And really, it would be better coming from a third party. I can’t tell you the number of times Tommy and Tuppence were the ones to take evidence to police. Not that this is evidence, of course.”
“And won’t police want to know how this ‘third party’ got hold of the information?”
Amanda wrinkled her nose as she considered the problem. “Well, you’ve made friends with us in the group”—Untrue—“and so, of course you’d know a bit about our personal lives.” Also untrue. “And maybe you could assume that the police are already aware of their past, and so you could mention it casually. Because, perhaps they do know. They would’ve searched Trist’s flat and found his journal and read it.”
“Would Trist have kept notes on a relationship from three years ago?”
“He’s a writer—we keep notes on everything.” Amanda popped up and flipped her blond braid over her shoulder. “Sorry, Hayley—I’ve got to dash.”
She scooted out the door, leaving me trying to imagine a man pouring out his heart about a former relationship. Would he put his thoughts in a leather-bound diary with a tiny heart-shaped lock? No, I couldn’t quite see it.
I sat back in my chair and considered the assignment Amanda had dropped in my lap. I didn’t fancy the role of clearinghouse in this enquiry, but eventually, I dug out DS Hopgood’s card and reached for my phone. Once again the buzzer went off, and Mrs. Woolgar answered. This time, she came to my door alone.
“It’s two more of them.”
I found Peter and Mariella on the doorstep—and the baby, wearing a blue Bath Rugby jersey, in his pushchair.
“I’ve been by the station and had my fingerprints taken,” Mariella said in a pained voice. “The detective sergeant was quite short with me when I asked how the enquiry was going and if they’d found any untoward fibers on the rug in the library.” She accompanied her complaint with jiggling the handle of the pushchair so that it bobbed up and down.
“I had been in just before Mariella and asked if the ME had finished the autopsy yet and received the same sort of response,” Peter said. “We’ve a right to ask, but instead of answering, the sergeant only asked us more questions, and then referred us to you. Why?”
Because he’s appointed me your minder, that’s why.
I didn’t invite them in. “I’m sorry, but no one’s told me anything. I’d say we should let the police do their job, don’t you think?”
“Early days yet, I suppose,” Peter said.
“Did you two know Trist?” I asked, unable to stop myself. “Is that how you joined the group?”
They exchanged looks. Then Mariella said, “Trist fancied himself a book doctor. I had contacted him a couple of years ago about the format for my version of Murder in Mesopotamia.”
At this comment, Peter sighed and dug his hands in his pockets. Mariella continued. “My Hercule Poirot’s superpower is that he sees a suspect’s thoughts as the person is speaking. The thoughts appear in a dialogue balloon like you see in old comics.” She waved her arms in the air above our heads. “All the suspects’ balloons are in green, except for the murderer—he sees that one in red. I’m considering publishing it as a graphic novel.”
With a self-satisfied smile, she dropped her arms.
“That’s quite . . . clever,” I replied. “But then, wouldn’t he—and the reader—know who the murderer was immediately and wouldn’t that bring the end of the book rather too soon?”
Mariella’s smile vanished. “I’m sorting out the problems—despite Trist’s scathing comments.”
“He didn’t care for innovation,” Peter said. “I’m rewriting The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and replacing all the characters with present-day celebrities. He told me I was mad as a box of frogs. And this from a man who wrote about zombies.”
“But if he was in charge of the group and you didn’t like his feedback, why did you stay in?” I asked.
Mariella shrugged. “He could come up with the occasional sharp insight into character.”
“He understood pacing quite well,” Peter added.
“And so, really,” I continued, trying to get this straight, “you were all friends.”
Peter snorted. “Yeah, right, best mates. Well, see you on Wednesday.”
“What? No—that is, perhaps. I’m not sure. You’ll hear from me about that.”
After I offered the empty promise—to pass along anything I heard from the police—they left and I headed back to my office, pausing in Mrs. Woolgar’s doorway.
“I don’t know how they think I could know anything,” I said.
“Perhaps they believe you’ve mounted your own enquiry,” she replied.
When I was back sitting at my desk, I thought about what she had said and only then decided she’d meant it as an insult—suspecting, quite correctly, that I knew nothing about mysteries, murders, and detecting. I harrumphed loud enough to wake Bunter from his nap.
“Perhaps I should carry out my own investigation—that would show her,” I whispered to him, knowing that I would do nothing of the kind.
When the buzzer sounded once more, I leapt to my feet and hurried to the door, calling, “I’ll take care of it, Mrs. Woolgar.”
I was not surprised to find Harry on the doorstep, laptop clutched to her chest.
“I’ve had my fingerprints taken,” she stated.
“You took your computer along?”
She looked down at it. “I thought they might want to see my work in progress. Sort of prime the pump of their enquiry.”
I sighed. “Come in, Harry.” I led her to my office and the chairs by the fireplace. Bunter remained on the rug, and we were a threesome.
“Did they tell you anything?” I asked.
“I didn’t see them—both DS Hopgood and DC Pye were otherwise engaged.”
Or hiding. “Harry, did you know any of the other writers before you joined the group?”
It was an innocent-sounding question—at least I hoped that’s how it came across. Harry didn’t speak for a moment, but her eyes grew wide and filled with tears that threatened to overflow their banks.
“Trist and I . . . for about a year . . .” Her voice drifted off, weak and watery. “But it was ages ago. I ended it—I didn’t feel it was a healthy relationship for me.” She sniffed, blinked rapidly, and, miraculously, no tears fell.
“Still, his death must’ve come as quite a shock. You did tell the police about knowing him, didn’t you?”
Harry cocked her head, as if listening to an echo of the question. After a moment, she said, “No, I didn’t. There was no reason, really—it was over so long ago. And we remained friends, and so it was no bother to either of us to be in the group together.”
“Isn’t it the sort of thing police would prefer to know than not know? Even if it has no bearing on the enquiry?”
Harry stared at the cold fireplace for several seconds and then jumped up.
“Right, I’ll go straight back to the station and tell them the entire story.”
“And won’t you feel better for it?” I asked, following her out.
Pausing at the open front door, Harry became wistful. “He had a keen ear for dialogue, did Trist—although we tried to joke with him that his Miss Marple could be switched out for Miss Silver and no one would ever know it.”
I certainly wouldn’t have—who was Miss Silver?
As I returned to my office, I recalled Harry and Trist’s squabble on the last night of the group—something Trist had said edged too close to criticism for her. That must’ve been an old issue for them. But I hadn’t long to think about it—I’d been back at my desk two minutes when the front door buzzed. For one second, I considered tearing it off the wall, but instead, I hurried out, noticing Mrs. Woolgar hadn’t moved an inch from her desk, and flung open the door to Detective Sergeant Hopgood.
“Hello, good morning, Sergeant.” I stepped aside to let him in.
“The end of a morning, Ms. Burke, which I have spent fielding questions from those writers.”
I believe that avoiding those writers would be more correct, but it wasn’t for me to say.
“Please come through.”
As we passed her door, Mrs. Woolgar looked up and Hopgood nodded, and then stepped out of Bunter’s way as the cat trotted up the stairs. He had several hiding places in Middlebank, and at that moment, I longed to follow him to one.
“I don’t suppose you saw Harry Tanner outside?” I asked.
Hopgood stood in the doorway to my office, his eyes darting round as if expecting an ambush. “Ms. Tanner—was she here?”
“She dropped in. I believe she has something else to add to what she told you yesterday. We were all under a great deal of stress,” I explained, not really sure why I felt the need to excuse Harry. “And that can make it difficult to remember everything one should say. Haven’t you found that the case? Please, sit down, Sergeant. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you.” Hopgood settled in one of the fireplace chairs and I in the other. He pulled a small notebook and pencil out of his breast pocket. “Ms. Burke, who has access to your keys and the security code for your alarm system?”
I felt sure we’d been over this the day before. “No one—apart from me and Mrs. Woolgar. I don’t think even the solicitor has a key. Oh, Pauline, our cleaner, has a key and the code.”
“Ah, Ms. Lunn.”
“But she’s worked here since just after Lady Fowling died three years ago. She’s completely trustworthy. Plus, I’m sure she knows the books in the library are not all that valuable. Did you ask her about the key yesterday?”
“And will continue to do so—police work is nothing if not repetitive. You can be sure Mrs. Woolgar will get the same question again before I leave.” His mustache twitched. “Does Ms. Lunn have keys to your living quarters?”
“No, there didn’t seem to be a need, as we were always here. We leave our flats unlocked for her on Thursdays. It’s different getting her in the front door—I’m often out early in the morning, and Mrs. Woolgar hasn’t come up from her flat yet when Pauline arrives.”
“As you are in the same house, why do your flats have their own locks and keys?”
“Our flats are our homes,” I explained, “and the rest of Middlebank is The First Edition Society. We didn’t want to confuse Society members—or potential members—who come here to see the library and learn about Lady Fowling, as to which part of the house they had access to.”
“And do you have many of these visitors?”
Just a routine question, I told myself, but still my face burned. “Not at present, but we have great plans.”
He jotted something down, and then asked, “Now, Ms. Burke, your relationship to this writers group.”
“I have no relationship to them—it was an arrangement. Have they been able to tell you anything?”
“Nothing useful as yet. What they most want to do is advise me.” Hopgood drummed his fingertips on his knees. “I spoke too soon yesterday—about how the body was moved. It’s been pointed out to me that it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that one person—woman or man—could’ve picked the victim up and carried him in a fireman’s lift with little problem.” His eyebrows rose. “Do you know what that is?”
Did it make me a suspect if I did?
“With the person horizontal across both shoulders, is that right?”
“Mmm. The arrangement for the group to meet here—was it to continue?”
I squirmed. “I had started to reconsider the offer—I’m not sure they were a good fit for the Society. But I would hardly murder one of them to accomplish that—I only needed to tell them.”
“Did they get along?”
“They had their differences of opinion, but at the end of an evening, they usually headed off to the pub together.”
“Yes, so they tell me. We’ve got the CCTV from the pub and can see who left when and which way they went.”
“Do you know what time Trist died?”
“Between two and four in the morning. I don’t like having such a wide window. The temperature in the house is fairly stable, but if he lay outdoors for any length of time, the cold would’ve delayed the normal process the body goes through when—”
The DS held up, mid-thought, and I appreciated it, suspecting that he was nearing details I might not like to hear. But I did wish he would have caught himself just a wee bit earlier.
“So, Ms. Burke. A person such as yourself—curator of a society dedicated to first-edition mysteries and, I’m sure, a fan of Mrs. Christie and her detectives—you can’t tell me you haven’t come up with a few ideas of your own.”
Here’s the sum total of what I knew about Agatha Christie’s sleuths—Miss Marple was a little old lady and Hercule Poirot a finicky Belgian. I’d never heard of Tommy and Tuppence until the writers group arrived.
“I don’t know how you could think that.”
“Oh, come now—all those detectives in books. You must’ve picked up a few pointers.”
I shifted in my seat, unable to keep still as I sought a plausible excuse. “I’ll have you know, Sergeant, that I understand the difference between my responsibilities and yours. It is not for me to dig into people’s lives and ask a lot of unpleasant questions. I would not presume to do the job of the police. Why would I even want to?”
Hopgood held up his open hands in surrender. “All right, all right—keep your hat on. But you must see it’s a bit odd that the mystery expert in our midst is the only one not trying to horn in on my enquiry.”
“It isn’t my place,” I said, nose in the air. But as he had brought it up, I added, “Is it possible that it could be one of those accidents where Trist hit his head, but got up and came inside Middlebank and up to the library, and only then collapsed and died?”
“Aha!” Hopgood stabbed a victorious finger in the air. “I knew you would come up with something.”
“It’s only a thought,” I said weakly. And not my own—it was Adele’s.
“Sadly, no,” the sergeant said. “You saw the wound at the back of his head, and you saw the topper on the railing—like a cannonball. Mr. Cummins would have had to be fair flying backward to crack his head that hard. It wasn’t only an internal injury—his skin was broken. If he’d lived for even a few minutes, he would’ve bled profusely. No, he was shoved against that railing—and shoved with a great deal of force. Died instantly.”
I sighed. Trist dead outside on Gravel Walk, then transported upstairs to the library—along with his . . .
“Sergeant, what about Trist’s leather case? He always carried it.”
“No sign of a case, Ms. Burke. Had you ever seen its contents?”
I shook my head. “So it was robbery?”
“The other writers—when I can get them away from advising me about the enquiry—say they had only ever seen printed pages of his book inside. And he had his wallet and identification with him, along with eighty-three pounds forty pence. The murderer didn’t care one whit about that.”
“Fingerprints anywhere?”
“Not a single dab,” Hopgood said, then took note of my blank look. “That is, we found fingerprints around the library from you, Mrs. Woolgar, Ms. Lunn, and the writers. Except for the door—that had been wiped. A proper job of it, too.”
Was that an oblique reference to the person who cleaned Middlebank? I made no comment.
“Well, I’ll have that word with Mrs. Woolgar, and that’ll be me away.” The sergeant rose and I followed him out.
But Mrs. Woolgar was not in her office.
“She must be downstairs in her flat for lunch,” I said, checking the time.
“Right, I’ll catch her up later. Meanwhile, Ms. Burke, if you do think of anything, you will let us know.”
It was high time for me to have a bite of lunch, too. I went to my flat, stood at the kitchen sink, and ate cheese and crackers and grapes, considering what sort of busywork I could assign myself for the afternoon. Ah, yes—the cellar. Changing into old denims and a sweater with a hole in the sleeve, I headed for the lower ground floor, looking into Mrs. Woolgar’s office on my way, to find she had returned to her desk.
“Sergeant Hopgood wanted to have another word with you,” I said.
“Did he say why?”
“It’s about the keys, I think. He asked who would have access to the keys and the alarm code.”
“I’ve told him already.”
“Yes, well”—this was not my battle to fight—“I’ll be below continuing with the cellar.”
But my heart was not in it, and my work consisted only of shifting a few more bits of furniture, and then resting on a side chair. Chippendale—it matched the one on the library landing. I had reached the first carton and found it full of old copies of Vogue—really old—and settled down to peruse the June 1953 issue, brimming with stories and photos of the Queen’s coronation. That’s how Mrs. Woolgar found me when she appeared at the door.
“I’m staying elsewhere again tonight, Ms. Burke—I hope this won’t be a problem.”
“Thank you for telling me. I’ll be perfectly fine here this evening, and I’ll be off to Liverpool tomorrow morning as usual. I’ll see you—”
“Monday morning.” She didn’t leave, but instead looked down at the key where I’d left it in the door.
“I will be sure to lock the cellar and keep the key in a safe place,” I told her, and went back to my magazine.
But she’d broken the spell—my pretense that nothing was wrong and I always sat in cellars looking at decades-old magazines. I flipped a few more pages, but when I heard Mrs. Woolgar leave her flat and the front door upstairs close, it dawned on me that I was alone in Middlebank. I checked the time—just gone four o’clock. I needed to do a bit of shopping, and so closed up the cellar, retrieved my handbag from my flat, and was at the front door when Bunter reminded me about his dinner.
I fed him and left as he tucked into a dish of fish-in-gravy.