Bells, Tails, & Murder: (A Dickens & Christie Mystery)

by Kathy Manos Penn

  “Well, I’m going to keep looking,” said Wendy. “And you know, after all this, I’ve a hankering to go through Gran’s letters with Mum. I’d love to hear her reminisce as we look at them.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” I said. “I understand now why Dave Prentiss got so excited when he saw your mum’s Winnie-the-Pooh books. Here’s a photo of a notepad I saw when I was cleaning his room: Poe book, one of 50 copies, sold for $600,00 and Winnie-the-Pooh signed first edition--$6500. And he had this book, Rare Books Uncovered: True Stories of Fantastic Finds. I guess as a writer for The New York Review of Books and The Strand, he’s pretty knowledgeable on the topic.”

  “Gee, maybe as two retirees with English degrees, we should take up book collecting,” said Wendy. “With that jingle, we could hire out, dontcha think? And on that note, we’re still going to Oxford, right?”

  “I’m looking forward to it. It’ll take our minds off all this unpleasantness. Boy, that’s an understatement if I ever heard one—unpleasantness. It’s so much more than that. Now, before you leave, can you come upstairs and help me decide what to wear tonight?”

  “Sure. Where is Dave taking you?”

  “I don’t know. He was going to ask Gavin, but you know nothing is all that dressy around here. I’d just like to wear something a step above jeans or cords. I thought maybe a skirt and boots.”

  Wendy looked through my closet. “It’s so funny,” she said. “There’s not a color in here that would look good on me. It’s all black, white, and jewel tones. Even your gazillion scarves are in that color scheme. I mean, look at this purple next to my platinum hair. Ghastly! That’s why my closet is filled with winter white, shades of taupe, and lots of pastels.”

  I laughed. “You’re right, and not a one of those colors does a thing for my olive complexion. What do you say we start with this black skirt? It’s mid-calf length, and I like the way it swirls when I walk.”

  It was Wendy’s turn to laugh. “You crack me up. You have four black skirts, each one a slightly different style, and I see several pair of black pants and leggings. And, for goodness’ sake, how many black belts do you have?”

  “I don’t know what’s so funny. Different bottoms require different style belts. If we stick with the swirly skirt, as I call it, I can wear my black suede knee-high boots. Should I go with a white top, or maybe a red one?”

  Wendy pulled out a crisp white top with thin, vertical silver stripes. “I like this one. Pair it with that wide belt and your red and purple scarf and you’re set. So, are you going to put this much thought into what you pack for Oxford?”

  “Already done,” I said. “Cords for the drive up and the Library tour, my favorite red dress for the play, and a different sweater to pair with the cords for the return trip. And, of course, a hat or two. I’m betting you’ll be in winter white, and we’ll make a smashing duo.”

  “Right on both counts. Who’s going to take care of Dickens since the hotel won’t let us bring him?” she asked.

  “Yikes, I meant to ask your brother if he could ride by Thursday night and again Friday morning. That’s all Dickens really needs, and you know Christie will be fine on her own for an overnight trip, but it’s possible I can also get Peter to give her a dab of milk while he’s here. I’ll ring him at the garage as soon as you leave.”

  Peter was happy to help me out.

  My next call was to Libby to ask if she’d like my help again. “Wendy and I will be in Oxford two days,” I said, “but I can come by tomorrow if that would help, and again on the weekend.”

  “Oh, I wish I could go with you two, but there’s not a chance. I didn’t realize how much work Alice did around here until I started doing it myself. I’m already going to owe you,” she said, “but I could really use you tomorrow, and again on Sunday.”

  Now all that was left on my to-do list was to prepare for my dinner with Dave. I chose not to use the word date. That was too scary to contemplate.

  Chapter Nine

  By the time Dave arrived, I’d done a bit of light housekeeping, prepared a plate of grapes, hummus, and pita chips, and had a bottle of wine chilling. I let Dickens out the door when I heard the car pull up.

  “Hey, boy,” I heard him say. “How you doing?”

  Dickens eyed him and barked, “Nice of you to ask. I’m doing fine.”

  I chuckled as the two came toward the door. “I think he just told you he was fine,” I told Dave.

  I admired his tweed sport coat and was glad I’d chosen dressy casual for the evening.

  He handed me a small box as he came in. “I explored the village of Broadway today and couldn’t pass up the chocolate shop,” he said. “I hope you like chocolate.”

  “Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, I like chocolate and most sweets,” I replied. “Let me open some wine and I’ll show you around the cottage. Would you prefer red or white?”

  We settled on red, and I poured two glasses before I took him back outside to start the tour. “I fell in love with this place when I saw the pictures online,” I said, “but the fact that it had been a schoolhouse in the 1800s pretty much sealed the deal for me. Thankfully, it was in great shape and had the space I needed. The appliances have been upgraded, and the garden is a dream.”

  “Look, it even has a school bell,” Dave observed. “And the mullioned windows are a nice touch. You’re going to have to tell me the story of how you decided to move to England and the Cotswolds in particular, plus how one goes about finding a fairy-tale cottage like this one.”

  As we returned to the kitchen, I suggested we save that story for dinner. I gave him the indoor tour, pointing out that the two very large rooms downstairs were originally classrooms but had been turned into a sitting room and extra-large playroom when the school was converted to a cottage.

  I’d added bookcases on either side of the fireplace in the sitting room and a comfy cushion to the window seat in the other room, now my office. In there, I’d positioned my desk to see out the large picture window to the garden. Slowly filling the bookcases put in by the previous owners with books and local pottery was one of my great pleasures.

  Next was a quick tour of the two upstairs bedrooms, where Dave was as enchanted with the mullioned windows of leaded glass as I was. Returning to the kitchen, we grabbed the snacks and the bottle of wine and settled in the sitting room. He was admiring my collection of books when Christie made her entrance.

  “Pffft,” she hissed. “I’m not sure about this one. I much prefer Peter.”

  Dave laughed. “Uh-oh, I suspect that sound means she doesn’t like me. Or does she greet all newcomers like this?”

  The answer to his question was no, she didn’t usually have that reaction, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I told him she hadn’t adjusted to her new home yet.

  “Leta, you know you’re lying to the poor man, don’t you?” she meowed. “I’ll grant you there haven’t been many men around since Henry left us, but there’s something about him I don’t care for. For sure, he’s not a cat person.”

  I picked her up and carried her upstairs. “Enough of that, young lady. He’s my guest, so behave yourself. First Dickens judges my friends based on the food they sneak him, and now you’re not giving poor Dave a chance.”

  Of course, when I came downstairs, Dickens was getting a belly rub from Dave. My boy was relentless when it came to demanding belly rubs.

  “Well, Christie may not have taken to you, but Dickens sure has,” I said. “Did he beg for a pita chip too?”

  Both man and dog looked at me innocently. Dave nodded yes with a smile and Dickens barked, “How’d you know?”

  Gavin had suggested a restaurant in Northleach, so I put the plate of snacks in the fridge and we headed out. Northleach was a picturesque village, not quite as large or touristy as Bourton-on-the-Water. Dave said Gavin had been able to reserve us a table by the fireplace.

  We agreed on a bottle of red for dinner and skipped the a
ppetizer course, since we’d indulged at my cottage. I chose the lamb, Dave the beef tenderloin, and we asked the waiter to hold the main course for a bit. Dave was a good conversationalist, and I enjoyed hearing tales of the authors he’d interviewed. Some had been charming and some temperamental.

  He seemed genuinely interested in how I’d wound up in Astonbury, so I reflected on how to shorten the saga of my twenty-year marriage, Henry’s bicycle accident, and my decision to throw caution to the wind and make a major change. He certainly didn’t need to hear every step along my two-year journey.

  After the accident, I was inconsolable and I’d taken a leave of absence. I’d find myself up in the middle of the night going through photo albums, standing in front of Henry’s clothes in the closet, or staring unseeing at the television.

  About the time I felt emotionally prepared to return to work, I sat down with our financial planner to discuss selling the house and downsizing. Ever a practical person, I couldn’t see living in a five-bedroom house that had been too big even when Henry was alive, and I wanted to get some of these major decisions out of the way before returning to my demanding career.

  I was taken aback when, after going over the numbers, she asked, “Have you given any thought to retiring?” I must have looked dumbfounded because she paused before continuing. “I mean, have you considered that with Henry’s substantial life insurance and pension, you don’t have to work?”

  Almost speechless, possibly a first for me, I left the meeting with a list of questions to answer—questions that pretty much amounted to laying out things I’d always thought of as pipe dreams. Henry and I were similarly practical, so our dreams had never run to mega-mansions, around-the-world cruises, collecting antique cars, or owning vacation villas around the globe.

  The one pipe dream that kept resurfacing was retiring to England. I was a lifelong Anglophile. I’d taken as many British Lit courses as possible while pursuing my English degrees and especially loved British mysteries by authors like Elizabeth George, Deborah Crombie, Peter Robinson, and others.

  Where in England was easy—the Cotswolds. I’d fallen in love with the area on our first trip to the UK. Once I got rolling with the idea, the possibilities seemed endless.

  “. . . and yet, and yet, I couldn’t make the leap,” I told Dave. “I went back to work, I sold the house, and I continued to grieve, but it wasn’t until one too many late-night calls from the boss from hell that I said, ‘The heck with this, I’m outta here.’ I completed my retirement paperwork in no time flat, and here I am.”

  “Whoa, that can’t have been easy,” he said. “Did you find yourself wanting to bounce ideas off Henry at every turn?”

  “How did you know?” I said in surprise.

  “I’ve never been married, and I’ve never lost a loved one, but I was in a long-term relationship once—ten years. When we split up, I kept wanting to run article ideas by her like I always had, even though I was in New York and she’d moved to the West Coast. I’d find myself wanting to tell her about some arrogant author or ask her opinion about a chair for my apartment. I think it’s just natural.”

  “Yes, and it still happens, but not as frequently,” I said and laughed. “Now that Dickens and Christie are here, I just talk to them. Sometimes they give me ideas for my columns.” Dave had no idea how serious I was.

  “You write columns?” he asked. “For what paper?”

  “Oh, they’re not major papers, just small weekly publications, one in Atlanta and another in North Carolina,” I explained.

  He smiled. “Hey, no need to be so modest. A column’s a column. How long have you been a columnist?”

  I had to think for a minute. “I was still working for the bank . . . it must be seven or eight years now. It’s funny, I really loved my corporate job, but writing? I think I’ve found my passion. My day isn’t complete if I haven’t written something.”

  Said Dave, “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Even though writing is a job for me, I love it. Nah, I didn’t say that well. What I’m trying to say is not everything I write about is fun and exciting or inspiring, but for the most part, my job is a blast.”

  So, we have that in common, I thought, even if it’s on a slightly different scale.

  “So,” Dave continued, “tell me more about life here. I feel like it’s harder and harder to make friends the older I get, but I can tell you’ve made a few here, and you and Wendy especially seem to have lots in common.”

  “Yes, Wendy and I are both English majors and avid readers, and we both lived in the South—as in the Southern US. And I didn’t teach as long as Wendy, but I taught high school English for a few years before I went into banking. So we’ve really hit it off. I have to admit I get lonely for my long-time friends back home, but we’re pretty good about staying in touch. I’m hopeful some of them will come visit now that I have a place for them to stay.”

  Our talk shifted to books we’d enjoyed and eventually to the authors who’d summered near Astonbury. “Did you get a kick out of hearing Belle’s story?” I asked. “I sure did. It even prompted me to pick up a Barrie biography. In fact, Beatrix had a first edition available.”

  “Really?” he said. “I have a few first editions, though nothing like what some of the major collectors have. My budget doesn’t run to spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on a book. I read that someone had paid $600,000 for an Edgar Allan Poe book recently. Amazing.”

  I acted surprised and didn’t let on that I’d seen the note in his room. “Why would anyone spend that much money on a book?” I asked.

  “Collectors are a breed unto themselves,” he said. “One reason I was so interested in Belle’s Winnie-the-Pooh books was that I’ve seen first editions of A. A. Milne books offered for upwards of a $1,000. And Belle has not one but all four of the books—all signed first editions. The right collector would buy them in a heartbeat.”

  “How do they locate the books?” I asked. “Think about Belle. Those books have been sitting on her bookshelf for decades, and she had no idea they were valuable until you told her, so how do collectors find out? Do they wander the globe visiting little old ladies?”

  Dave laughed. “That’s quite an image. Can’t you see a bespectacled old man in a tweed suit carrying a large black portmanteau from house to house? The reality is books like Belle’s usually wind up in a used bookstore, and if the owner of the store knows his stuff, he’ll put the word out.”

  “And what do collectors do with the books once they buy them? Sit and stare at them?” I asked.

  “You know, that’s a good question. Sometimes rare books disappear into a collector’s private library, never to be seen again until he or his heirs donate it to a university or museum. You most often hear about the books when someone donates an entire collection to his alma mater, like the Ransom Collection at the University of Texas in Austin. An unpublished J. M. Barrie play was found there not long ago. Maybe it’s all about getting your name on a building or an exhibit.”

  “Ah, well, this is all too rich for my blood,” I said. “I’ll stick to reading my mystery novels and donating them to the thrift shop when I’m done.”

  I took a final sip of wine and reluctantly said, “This has been a wonderful evening, but I promised Libby I’d help her at the inn tomorrow, so I’ll need to be up early.”

  “You really are a good friend. I want to make an early start tomorrow too. I’m checking out and driving to Plymouth and Portsmouth to do a bit more research on Arthur Conan Doyle. I’d also considered going to Edinburgh where he was born and attended university, but I can’t do it all, and I’ve already stayed in the UK longer than I’d planned.”

  “I’d love to read the article when it comes out. I’m always looking for the next Sherlock Holmes variation, and I’ve enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey, Jr., though I suspect a purist might not approve.”

  “Well, the modern novels and movies may not be true to Doyle’s vision for Sherlock, but they’
ve kept the story alive. And that means there’s still interest in the character and the author, so people like me get to write about both. I bet you didn’t know the first Sherlock Holmes short story—“A Scandal in Bohemia”—was published in an 1891 issue of the Strand Magazine. And it’s the Strand I’m writing this article for.”

  By then, we’d pulled up to my cottage. Dave walked me to the door and gave me a peck on the cheek as I thanked him for a lovely night out. Dickens joined me outside as I waved goodbye, and then the inquisition began.

  “Where did you go? What did you eat? Do you like him? Are you going out again?” asked my curious dog.

  I was explaining that I’d had a marvelous time, but Dave was just a friend, when Christie strolled into the kitchen. “Friend, indeed,” she said. “Let’s invite Peter back for dinner. He’s tall and slim like Henry, and he rides bicycles too. He’s more your type.”

  “Enough, you two. Can’t I have male friends without you comparing them and playing matchmaker?”

  I woke up smiling Wednesday morning and knew it was because of Dave Prentiss. I hadn’t enjoyed an evening that much in a long time—possibly since Henry had passed away. It seemed the perfect time to email my sisters and avoid any discussion of murder and mayhem, so I took my cup of coffee to my office, where I was joined by Christie and Dickens.

  “So, who’s coming to dinner tonight?” asked Dickens. “Or is someone else taking you out?”

  “Yes,” meowed Christie, “You’ve suddenly become very popular, or has it been like this the whole time you’ve been here?”

  “Funny, funny,” I said to them. “This has been an unusual week. Most nights, I’m at home reading a good book . . . by myself.” I wasn’t sure they were buying my story, but it was the truth.