Murder in the Reading Room

by Ellery Adams

  “What you’re about to see and hear will feel quite real,” he added with a touch of pride. “You will see men fighting. You will see them running for their lives. You will see them fall. Some may call for medical attention. Some may shout out for their mothers. This is all a part of the reenactment. Not every soldier will make it across the field. For one side to be victorious, the other must lose. That means you will see casualties. Men will die today. Fortunately, their death is temporary.”

  One of the fourth-grade boys raised his hand as if he was in class. He waved his arm back and forth like a flag blowing in the wind.

  “Yes, son?” Clarence asked, amused by the boy’s eagerness.

  “How do the soldiers know if they should die?”

  Clarence smiled. “An excellent question, young sir. There are several answers. If a soldier comes too close to an enemy, he’ll realize that he’s been shot and will fall on that spot. Sometimes, soldiers fall if they’re too hot, too tired, or are just ready to be done with the battle. Quite a few enjoy the act of dying, especially if they have an audience.” He winked. “Because we have many new recruits in today’s battle, we decided to assign casualties. The soldiers who will fall in today’s battle already know who they are.”

  A girl now raised her hand, and without waiting for Clarence to call on her, asked, “Are you using real bullets?”

  “No, Miss. We use soft air weapons. They look and sound real, but nothing comes out of them. We call these blanks. Believe it or not, injuries can still occur with blanks. That’s why it’s important that all of you stay far away from the battlefield. Trust me, things are about to get very wild and very loud.” He pointed toward the apple orchard. “The Allies will be at this end of the field, and the Central Powers will be at the opposite end. You will see horses, machine guns, mortar shells, and exploding grenades. We will begin with music. There will be two patriotic marches. This is when the soldiers will take the field. The battle is over when you see the white flag of surrender. Are you ready?”

  Though most of the spectators shouted and clapped with excitement, others looked rather nervous. Jane was among the latter. Despite the autumnal sunshine, the golden hills rising around the field, and the looks of bright anticipation on the children’s faces, she felt a sense of foreboding.

  “There are so many people,” she murmured to Eloise. “I hardly recognize any of them in their uniforms.”

  Eloise squinted across the field. “I saw Nandi earlier,” she said, referring to Storyton’s postmistress. “She looked pleased as punch to be fighting alongside the Hogg brothers.”

  “My Bob is in the trench closest to us,” Betty said. “He wants to show me that he’s still fleet-footed and nimble. Those are his words, mind you. Bob has never been either of those things, but I’ll let him have his fantasies.”

  Phoebe nodded. “We all need those. My fantasy is that one of these dashing soldiers will trip over a root or step in a hole and find himself in need of a Great War Florence Nightingale. I’ll rush out to the battlefield and offer him a cool drink of water. He’ll gaze into my eyes and think—”

  “That you’re breaking the rules,” Mabel interrupted. “You heard the man with the bullhorn. We need to keep our rumps in our chairs.”

  Betty turned to Mrs. Pratt, who was sitting between Violet and Eloise. “Have you spoken with Roger today?”

  “Briefly,” said Mrs. Pratt. “I know he’s fighting under the British flag and has a reputation for his ability to break through enemy lines. He’s quite famous among the reenactors.”

  Violet glanced around the peaceful field. “It’s all so serious that I’m feeling pretty nervous. I don’t know a thing about war or battles, and now that I’m about to get the smallest taste, I’m kind of scared.”

  Mrs. Pratt gave Violet’s hand a maternal squeeze. “Just think of the insight we’ll gain about the books we’ll be discussing tonight. This whole experience will add a dimension of realism to our fiction.”

  “Indeed,” Eloise said in an exaggerated British accent. “Keep calm and carry on.”

  Jane grinned at her friend. “Nice sentiment. Wrong war.”

  Eloise shrugged. “I’ve never been good at history. I get details from the two wars mixed up all the time. There were so many battles. So many people fighting.” She pointed at the soldiers amassing on the field before them. “I get what Vi means. When I look out there and see Rufus Hogg or Captain Phil, I think of what it must have been like when our village was nearly empty of men because they’d all gone off to fight.”

  “There would have been a helluva lot less laundry,” Mrs. Pratt declared, clearly trying to break the tension building around them.

  “I like that there are female soldiers in today’s battle,” said Phoebe. “It might not be historically accurate, but I bet those gals can fake shoot and fake die as well as any man. I just wish Anna could be here. She’ll hate having to live vicariously through us.”

  Mabel was about to reply when music floated over the field. As Clarence Kelley had explained, this was the march signaling the start of the battle. A dozen horses burst from the cover of the overgrown orchard, and Eloise drew in a sharp breath.

  “Is that Sam on the chestnut horse?” she asked.

  “Oh, Anna will really be sorry she missed this! He looks dashing,” Phoebe said.

  She and Mrs. Pratt exchanged additional comments about the horses and their riders, but Jane tuned them out. She was trying to listen to the second piece of music. It was like the first, but with a stricter tempo and more percussion. This song came from the opposite end of the field.

  “There’s a German flag.” Mabel pointed in the direction of the music. “What happens next? I wonder how one starts a battle.”

  This was the last calm remark any of the Cover Girls could utter for a long time.

  At first, the noise wasn’t overwhelming. A group of Germans edged around the right flank of an Allied-occupied trench and the two groups exchanged a wave of gunfire. The schoolchildren whooped and hollered with glee while the anxious spectators seemed to relax a little.

  This isn’t so bad, Jane thought, foolishly assuming that the rest of the battle would be more of the same.

  She was wrong.

  After several rounds of gunfire between small groups, the noise quickly escalated. Grenades were thrown. When these hit the ground, clumps of dirt and grass exploded in every direction.

  Eloise jerked back in her chair, her eyes wide with surprise and fear. Glancing at her friends, Jane saw similar expressions on all of their faces. Even the twins, who’d been bouncing with uncontained excitement a few minutes ago, were shocked into stillness.

  The clamor of detonating grenades was joined by the staccato of artillery fire, the blasts of mortar shells, and a cacophony of shouts. Sinclair had said that reenactments typically lasted for hours, with many of the participants spending the whole day on the field. Though today’s event was to be much shorter, Jane didn’t know how anyone could tolerate this much noise hour after hour.

  The real soldiers of the Great War had no choice, she reminded herself. They were hungry, thirsty, dirty, exhausted, and they witnessed horrible things. But they kept going. For years. They knew the true meaning of hell on earth.

  It felt incredibly odd to sit comfortably on the sidelines, cradling a thermos of coffee. Jane watched and tried to make sense of the chaos on the field. This was more difficult than she ever could have imagined, especially since clouds of smoke and dust had begun to obscure parts of the field. On top of that, soldiers kept popping in and out of trenches. After a while, Jane had a hard time distinguishing their uniforms.

  “Is that a French unit?” she asked Eloise, pointing at a cluster of men along the tree line on the opposite side of the field.

  “I have no idea!” Eloise shouted back.

  Suddenly, a grenade detonated close to the spectators. One of the village ladies let out a terrified shriek. Jane got up, intending to assure the woman t
hat all was well when a pair of soldiers in German uniforms popped out from behind a tree and fired their weapons. Three American soldiers dropped to the ground. Two of them went still, but the third cried out in a pretense of pain. A medic and a chaplain rushed toward the men. Even over the battle din, Jane could hear the distinct sounds of children crying. She looked to where the students were seated and saw that a girl in the twins’ class was visibly upset.

  “This is no place for children!” yelled a man in the crowd.

  The teachers had apparently come to the same conclusion. They were gesturing for the students to line up with their backs to the battlefield. Instead of obeying, Fitz and Hem were protesting. Jane watched in horrified embarrassment as they pointed at her. The teacher followed their gaze, shook her head, and motioned for the boys to fall in line.

  Good woman, Jane thought.

  A handful of adult spectators departed at the same time as the children, and though Jane wanted to join them, she thought it was more important to honor the efforts of the reenactors. After all, they were the ones running, jumping, ducking for cover, and dying all over the field. They were getting covered in muck and were undoubtedly hot and thirsty.

  “We’re going to make a killing at the pub tonight!” Betty exclaimed. “Every villager will want to outdo the next man in telling the story of today’s events. I hope Bob is saving enough energy to change out a bunch of kegs.”

  “Can you see him?” Mabel asked.

  Betty squinted. “A few minutes ago, he was standing near a mounted officer. The officer is riding Ajax, that stunning gray gelding.”

  Violet spotted the horse racing toward enemy lines. “There!” she cried. “They must be charging that bunker. Isn’t that how they score points? By collecting enemy flags?”

  The women watched, enthralled, as the small group ran straight into a volley of gunfire.

  Jane tensed, momentarily forgetting that no bullets were flying through the air. Eloise had gone rigid, and Betty was clinging to Mrs. Pratt like a vine.

  Suddenly, grenades exploded right in front of the line of soldiers. The soldier riding Ajax pulled on the horse’s bridle, directing him away from the bunker. Jane clenched her fists, hoping that Ajax wouldn’t panic and throw his rider. She trusted Sam’s instincts when it came to his horses, but everything about this scene felt unpredictable. There was no telling how a horse would react to a loud explosion or to men popping out of trenches like overgrown meerkats.

  “Ajax’s rider has been shot!” Phoebe yelled. “Look!”

  Straining to see through a cloud of dust, Jane saw Ajax heading back to the orchard. His saddle was empty.

  “I hope that was intentional,” Betty said. She was on her feet now, her eyes scanning the field. “Oh, dear. I guess everyone in Bob’s regiment or unit or whatever you call it is dead. None of them made it to the bunker.”

  Eloise frowned. “Wait. One of them got through. See the guy running away with the flag? The one with the bright red hair? Guess he lost his helmet in the fray.”

  “Isn’t that’s your cooking partner, Jane?” Mrs. Pratt asked. “He’s quite fast. Looks more like a track-and-field star than a history professor.”

  Jane had to agree. Michael Murphy was flying. As the women looked on, he leaped over a fallen tree, darted around a supply wagon, and returned to base camp to receive a triumphant pat on the back from Clarence Kelley.

  Clarence signaled to a French soldier, a thin man in his twenties, and the man darted off. In no time at all, he’d caught Ajax by the bridle and was walking the horse to one of Sam’s trailers.

  By and by, Jane and her friends grew accustomed to the noise. The battle had its ebbs and peaks, but after two hours, the Allies had captured more flags than the Central Powers. To the relief of all the Cover Girls, the action began to wind down.

  Sweeping her arm over the field, Mrs. Pratt said, “I wonder if it felt like this to be a Roman citizen at a gladiator match. Entertainment equaled carnage. It’s a relief to know that these corpses will rise again.”

  “Sounds more like Dracula than Ben-Hur,” teased Phoebe.

  Violet looked at Eloise. “Is Ben-Hur a novel? I’ve seen the movie, which was so-so. If there’s a book, it’s probably better.”

  “Repeat after me. The book is always better,” Eloise said. She got to her feet and stretched. “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ was written by Lew Wallace in the 1880s. I haven’t read it either. After the books we read for tonight’s discussion, I need a light read. I’ll bring a list of recommendations with me.”

  “I can think of some,” Mrs. Pratt offered. “I know several books that feature sexy, saucy gladiators.”

  “I thought you preferred your men in kilts,” Mabel said.

  Mrs. Pratt shrugged. “I’m not fussy. Kilts. Loincloths. I care more about their—”

  “Depth of character.” Jane winked at her. “Listen, ladies. We need energy to talk about characters tonight, so we’d better fortify ourselves with treats from Mrs. Hubbard’s Victory Tea.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Betty. Taking one last look around the field, she added, “In the real battlefields, there weren’t winners or losers. Only losers. Lost lives, lost loves, lost years. Even the earth is scarred by war.”

  Jane put her arm around Betty’s shoulders. “I know how you feel. But we get to welcome our soldiers home. Every one of them. They might be a little tired or sore, but the only injuries they sustained today were to their pride.”

  “How long do they stay dead?” Mabel wanted to know.

  Jane had no idea. “Until they’re ready to live again, I suppose. Some are probably taking a well-deserved rest.”

  The women carried their chairs to a Storyton Hall pickup truck, their thoughts already turned to tea and pastries.

  The men who’d fallen closest to the spectators saw their audience departing. They waited until the nonparticipants were out of sight before slowly getting to their feet. Over the next fifteen minutes or so, all the dead soldiers were heading back to the base camp.

  Except one.

  * * *

  After indulging in another impressive tea spread, most of the reenactors went to their rooms. The day after tomorrow, the participants were invited to the Victory Banquet, which would feature food and music from postwar America.

  There was a seemingly unending list of tasks to complete for this event, and Jane checked off as many as she could. She thought of Ramsey Parrish as she worked, wondering how he was finding his new accommodations and if she’d been right to force his hand.

  Jane wanted to ask the Fins about Parrish, but before she knew it, the twins were home from school. After wolfing down an afternoon snack, they asked Jane if they could play on the battlefield.

  “Why not? I’ll drive you over in a Gator,” she said. “I want to be sure that all the weapons have been picked up.”

  Though the boys were disappointed that they were unlikely to find a grenade, helmet, canteen, or other military treasure, they dashed to the garage and hopped into a Gator. Jane was collecting the keys from a wall box when Sinclair appeared from the small room Sterling used as a lab.

  “How is our special guest?” she quietly asked.

  Sinclair waved at the twins before returning his gaze to Jane. “Where are you heading?”

  “The battlefield. The boys had to miss some of the action because some of their classmates weren’t as captivated by today’s event as they were.”

  Sinclair nodded. “I can understand that. Even with the doors closed, the sounds of battle carried into the Henry James Library. These things are not my cup of tea, but I believe Mr. Butterworth enjoyed himself immensely.”

  “Would you like to ride down to the field with us?” Jane asked.

  “I would.”

  Sinclair climbed into the passenger seat and asked the boys about their day. Fitz and Hem tripped over each other to talk about their classmates’ reactions to the reenactment. At one point, Hem mocked the littl
e girl who’d burst into tears. After listening to her son’s scoffing tone, Jane stopped the Gator. She turned around and glared daggers at Hem.

  “Never tease someone for being afraid,” she said. “We’re all afraid at one time or another.”

  When Hem apologized, Jane told him that he should be apologizing to the girl, not to her.

  The boys were somewhat subdued when they arrived at the destination but quickly perked up after climbing into one of the trenches.

  “Can you tell me about Parrish now?” Jane asked Sinclair when the boys were out of earshot.

  “Mr. Parrish is neither surprised nor perturbed by his change of scenery,” Sinclair said. “Honestly, I find his composure unsettling.”

  Jane gazed across the field. Days ago, it been covered by long, gold-green grass. It was now almost unrecognizable. Depressions, shallow craters, trampled grass, boot prints, and scraps of debris had completely changed the landscape.

  The sun winked off a piece of metal in the distance, and Jane pointed at it.

  “Do you see that? I wonder if someone forgot their helmet.”

  She and Sinclair began walking toward the object.

  “I don’t know what to do about Parrish,” Jane confessed, picking her way over a cluster of stones.

  “I don’t think there’s anything more to be done but wait,” Sinclair said. “I can find nothing pertinent on the man, and I’ve exhausted all of my sources. The obvious details are available for the finding—Social Security number, birth certificate, driver’s license, tax records, real estate records, but that’s all. I can’t find a single photo, a family connection, or any other mark of his presence in cyberspace. It’s as if he’s successfully avoided leaving a footprint. He’s nothing but the sum of a dozen documents.”

  Jane shook her head in amazement. “I didn’t think it was possible to be invisible anymore.”

  They spoke in low murmurs until they came upon the mysterious metal object.

  Jane was correct in her assumption that it was a helmet. She picked it up, remembering how she’d seen Michael Murphy without his.