Death Overdue (Librarian Mysteries)

by Kirwin, Mary Lou

  The young officer who had escorted me took me to a small room with a small window that looked out onto a city street. He told me to sit by a table and that Inspector Blunderstone would be with me shortly.

  I had not had time to look myself over before we left the B and B. I ran my hands through my hair, sure that I was only making matters worse, and wondered if I should try to apply some lipstick, but decided against it. I was going to be questioned about a death, not having a job interview.

  Blunderstone walked in, holding a sheaf of papers in his hands. He sat down, put the papers into an open file folder, and gave me a nod. A young woman police officer came in behind him, shut the door, then stood up against the wall. I wondered if she was there for my protection or so, later on, I couldn’t claim that Blunderstone had had his way with me. Whatever the reason, I was glad of her presence, although she did not look much friendlier than the inspector.

  “How long have you known Caldwell Perkins?” he asked, still looking down at the papers in his lap.

  I didn’t have to think but a moment to answer that question. I could have answered it almost to the hour, but I resisted. “I met him last fall. We’ve known each other for nearly six months.”

  “How did you come to meet him?”

  “I was a guest at his B and B.”

  “Just yourself ?” He lifted his head up and squinted at me.

  “Yes, my traveling companion bowed out at the last minute.”

  “I see,” he said.

  I knew he didn’t. The calmness of my voice in no way acknowledged the trauma of that event. My boyfriend had dumped me hours before we were to leave for my first trip to London. And then things had proceeded to get worse. But I didn’t think now was the time to mention the other deaths.

  “And you’ve become close with Mr. Perkins?” he asked.

  “Yes, quite close,” I acknowledged proudly. “We have so much in common. We both love books.”

  He humphed, and I took that to mean that he didn’t need the gory details of our bookish romance. “What do you do, Ms. Nash, when you are not visiting our lovely city?”

  “I’m a librarian.”

  I thought I saw a flicker of a smile cross his face. “And you’re from where in the States?”

  “Minnesota. Sunshine Valley, which is a suburb of Minneapolis.”

  “Minnesota?” He thought for a moment, thumping his lip with a forefinger, then smiled. “Jesse Ventura, the wrestling governor.”

  Of all the things to be known for. I forced a smile. “Yes, our former governor. I didn’t vote for him, but I actually agreed with him on a few issues.”

  “How well did you know Ms. Burroughs?”

  “Not at all. I had only just met her the afternoon before . . .” I waved my hand to encapsulate all that had happened.

  “And am I to understand that she was Mr. Perkins’s former partner—both business and otherwise?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And that she had come back to claim her share of the B and B?”

  “Well, she said that’s what she wanted. But she had left the business to Caldwell when she deserted him.”

  “How did she desert him?”

  “From what he’s told me, Sally cleaned out their bank account and left without a word. Just a note saying he could have the B and B.”

  “Have you seen this note?”

  “No, but I believe Caldwell.”

  Blunderstone made a slight snorting noise through his nose. “And how did you feel about Ms. Burroughs’s reappearance, reclaiming the B and B?”

  Here I stopped for a moment to collect myself. I was worried and tired. I didn’t want to say anything wrong. I decided to just tell the truth and not to try to figure out what Blunderstone might make of it. “I thought it was preposterous. She had been gone nearly seven years, during which time Caldwell had made a success of the business. Without any warning she descends on us and claims that he owes her half the B and B. I think not.”

  “Did they have any legal documents drawn up when she left?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. I doubt it, since Caldwell didn’t even know she was leaving him.”

  For the first time he made a note of something on a piece of paper sitting in his lap.

  “And what exactly is your relationship with Caldwell Perkins?”

  The question of the hour. “We are trying to sort that out. Caldwell would like me to move over here. We had talked of selling the B and B, then starting a bookshop together.”

  “So it would be in your best interest if Ms. Burroughs hadn’t come back or if she would just disappear.”

  “I see them as two separate issues. I don’t feel that Sally has much of a claim on the B and B, and, even if she did, Caldwell and I might still go ahead with our plans to start a new business.”

  “Did you feel threatened by her?”

  I thought of how I had felt when she showed up, looking so lovely and pulled together. “I wouldn’t say that. More in awe. I always envy women who are taller than I am. She was a stunning woman, very sophisticated. More I felt irritated by the wrench she was throwing into the works.”

  “I’ve been told that you were the last person to be in the library that afternoon. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, as far as I know. I had started organizing Caldwell’s books. I was working on them when Sally arrived.”

  “And Mr. Perkins told me that the door to the library is usually kept locked.”

  “Yes, there are many valuable books in there, first editions and whatnot. But I think I forgot to lock the door when I ran to let Sally in.”

  “And you never went back to the library.”

  “No. It was a very upsetting day—what with her wanting the B and B back and her lover showing up—and I simply forgot.”

  “Who knew about the library?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who knew the library was there?”

  “Well, I guess just about everyone did—except Alfredo. But he might have too. Sally could have told him. The library was no secret. Caldwell just didn’t want people going in there without him. He had collected many first editions worth many hundreds of pounds.” I didn’t feel I needed to mention the very valuable book Caldwell had just found; it could have nothing to do with this death.

  “Why do you think Ms. Burroughs went into the library? Odd to do it in the middle of the night.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Might she have been there to take one of these valuable volumes?”

  “That’s a possibility, but I doubt it. I don’t think she knew which ones they were. She had so little interest in books.”

  “Caldwell wouldn’t have told her when they were living together?”

  “You’d have to ask him, but I doubt it. He has said that she was rather jealous of his books, all the attention he paid to them. I’d be surprised if he brought them up much at all.”

  “Tell me what happened that night,” he said.

  “Well, Sally and Alfredo went out. Caldwell and I ate in. Penelope went to her room. Caldwell and I went to bed rather early. We always read in bed together. We both fell asleep. A while later I heard Alfredo and Sally coming up the stairs. They were rather loud and sounded like they were drunk. I went back to sleep. Then there was a huge crash.”

  I stopped for a moment to remember and felt a wash of fear sweep over me again. “Since Caldwell wasn’t in bed I was afraid something had happened to him. I ran out into the hallway and saw him standing in the open doorway of the library. Horror was on his face. You know the rest.”

  “When had Caldwell left your bed?”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. “That I can’t tell you because I’m not sure. I didn’t wake up.”

  “When did you first notice he was gone?”

  “When I heard the loud crash.”

  “So he could have been gone for some time?”

  “I guess.”

  “Do y
ou know why he left the bed?”

  “I would have assumed he went downstairs to get a glass of juice—or even more probably, to pee. He does that sometimes in the night.”

  “Who appeared next on the scene?”

  “I think Penelope. She was right down the hall. She helped us lift the bookcase off Sally. Then Bruce came into the room, but he wasn’t much help. He kept wanting to look at the books. Brenda appeared and screamed. I think all the noise we were making awakened Alfredo, because he came stumbling out of their room, looking very sleepy.”

  The inspector was taking notes. “And what is the relationship of all these people to each other?”

  I was surprised he was asking me these questions—didn’t he already know the answers? But maybe he was checking what each of us said against the others. “Penelope was Sally’s sister, Alfredo was her fiancé, Brenda worked for Caldwell and had known Sally quite well, and Bruce was just a guest, a book collector who had heard of Caldwell’s collection online.”

  “What about you and Mr. Perkins? Is it true that you are considering being more than business partners? Life partners, shall we say?”

  “We haven’t decided. I love my job, but we have become close. I was here to see how I might fit into his life in London.”

  “I expect then that Ms. Burroughs showing up might have put the kibosh on all your plans?”

  I stayed steady. “Not necessarily. You’re assuming that she would have gotten what she wanted.”

  “And what would you have done to prevent that?”

  “Nothing untoward. We would have worked within the legal system.”

  “As you might have gathered, Ms. Nash, we are beginning to suspect that Ms. Burroughs’s death was not accidental. It is looking more and more like someone purposefully pushed the bookcase over on top of her. I won’t go into the details here, but what do you think of that?”

  I started to go cold in my feet. The icy feeling moved upward. I was afraid if it reached my heart, it would just stop. I found myself forced to say, “Caldwell would never do a thing like that. He is a truly gentle man.”

  Blunderstone nodded and shut his folder. “But what about you, Ms. Nash? Could you have done it?”

  FIFTEEN

  Too Little

  “I’m sure they think she’s been murdered,” I told Caldwell as soon as I walked in the door. He pulled me to him and held me tight. His warm hug was exactly what I needed. I could feel my breathing slow and my sense of the real world returning. I was where I was supposed to be.

  “Yes, I got that feeling too when I was questioned,” he said after a few moments. “We’ll just have to wait for the inquest. But we have nothing to worry about as neither of us had anything to do with it.”

  As he said that it occurred to me that Caldwell might suspect me of having pushed over the bookcase—like the chief inspector had insinuated. I was the last one in the library, I was the one who was organizing everything, Caldwell wasn’t with me when the bookcase fell.

  I pulled out of his arms and said, “I didn’t do it.”

  He gathered me back in and said, “Of course you didn’t, Karen. I know that. You were sound asleep in our bed when it happened. Plus, why would you want to hurt Sally?”

  “Oh, I can think of lots of reasons: jealousy, fear, anger, money, love.” I counted them off on my fingers. “All the usual reasons for homicide.”

  He took my hands in his and tried to calm me again. “But you didn’t. You’re my logical librarian. You work things out with your intellect, not by taking action and doing violence.”

  He was right. The thought of pushing a bookcase over on someone, even someone I didn’t particularly care for, did make me feel revulsion.

  “If the police are looking seriously at either one of us, it’s me,” Caldwell continued. “The scorned former lover, not wanting her to have any part of the B and B, possibly even hiding some deep, dark secret she held over my head.”

  “A secret?” I asked.

  “I’m just surmising.”

  “Where had you gone that night?” I felt it was time I asked that question as long as we were clearing the air.

  “Oh, my stomach was feeling quite queasy from all the stress of the day, so I went down to have some bicarbonate of soda water to settle it. I was in the kitchen when I heard the bookcase fall.”

  “I’m sorry for even asking you that.”

  “No, don’t be. We need to be truthful and clear with each other. There should be nothing we can’t tell each other.”

  “Well,” I said. “I’m not sad Sally’s dead. I certainly didn’t feel any animosity toward her, although I didn’t like that she was upsetting you. But I’m so sorry it had to happen in your B and B.”

  “Surprisingly, I feel rather sad, not so much for the Sally who appeared in our lives two days ago, but for the Sally I fell in love with ten years ago. She was so full of life. I guess it’s hard to imagine her completely gone.”

  “I know how that feels.”

  He pulled me in tight and we had a gentle kiss. Then he held me away just enough so he could look down at me and say, “Let’s get out of here. I have another shop that’s up for lease that I would like to show you. Then let’s go out to dinner. I think not Italian. How about Chinese?”

  *

  I went up to our room and changed my clothes, not that they were inappropriate, but I wanted to get rid of the police station smell in them. I scrubbed my face, combed my dark hair back, put on enough makeup to add some color to my cheeks, applied a soft shade of lipstick, and then grabbed a scarf I had bought a few days ago—a Laura Ashley with a rose print on it.

  When I came down the stairs, Caldwell was standing at the bottom, patiently waiting for me. “There. You look lovely. Is that a new scarf?”

  “Yes, I bought it when I arrived.” I was so surprised he noticed. Truly an unusual man.

  “This shop we’re going to look at today is more out of the way but very reasonable,” he told me as we climbed into his smart car.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  He paused a moment, then said, “Newington Butts.”

  “What a wonderful name,” I said, adding it to my growing list of weird and wonderful London place names. Spitalfields was still at the top, but Newington Butts was awfully good. “What exactly is a butt?”

  “Well, I’d say it is just a stray piece of land, a corner of a field that abuts something else. Thus, the butts.”

  The drive took us past Westminster Palace. We both saluted as we drove by, Caldwell mentioning that he believed Parliament was in session. Even though I knew that much of the building had been renovated in the late 1800s, the palace still seemed to have come from the Middle Ages.

  “Have you ever visited Westminster?” I asked.

  “Of course. Every child of London makes many school visits. And we learn all about the rules and traditions of the place. My favorite one is that no one may eat or drink in the chamber. However, the exception to this rule is that the chancellor of the exchequer—you know, the accountant cabinet member—may have an alcoholic drink while delivering the budget.”

  “As well he should. That’s one difficult job,” I said, thinking of going over the finances of the small library I worked at and what a headache it could give me. Maybe a drink was the answer.

  After driving over the Westminster Bridge and swirling through a very busy roundabout with cars whizzing by us as if in a tilt-a-whirl, we arrived at the street we were looking for: Iliffe Yard, which featured an artists’ cooperative. Actually, the shop we were looking for was right around the corner and was still being run as a millinery goods shop.

  When we walked into the very small storefront, I feared we would be suffocated by trim and ribbons. The walls were covered, floor to short ceiling, with boxes of buttons and rolls of fabric.

  At first there appeared to be no one there, but as we moved farther back into the store, we saw a small, oldish woman perched on a high wingback chair and s
ewing something. Her feet didn’t touch the floor, and she swung them back and forth as she sewed.

  “Hello,” I said quietly, not wanting to startle her.

  “Yes, yes. Just a minute, just a minute. Let me finish this seam.”

  Her face was like a well-worn chamois cloth, soft with the fuzz of old age. She made the last stitch, brought the thread up to her mouth, and snapped it off with her teeth. It hurt my mouth to see her cut the thread that way.

  When she looked up from her work, her blue eyes were like jewels in her soft face. “What can I help you with today?” she asked.

  Caldwell said, “Mrs. Gubbins?”

  “That’s right.” She nodded.

  “We’ve come to see about the shop.”

  “Oh, yes. My son is forcing me to sell this place and I suppose you’re in cahoots with him.”

  “Not at all. I’ve never met your son. Just spoke with him by phone. He suggested I come to see you.”

  “Well, I don’t want to go.”

  I looked around. I could see why she didn’t want to leave. How would it ever be possible to undo this feathered nest she had created, where she perched in the deep center like a small bird on its eggs?

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying.

  “It’s not your fault. Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked. She had to slip off the chair to let her feet touch the floor and, instead of growing taller when she stood, she actually shrank. “It’s about that time.”

  I had noticed that wherever you went in England, it was almost always teatime.

  “That would be lovely,” I said, even though Caldwell shot me a look.

  While she went away, we turned around in a circle, taking in the crammed and cramped quarters. The place couldn’t have been much larger than the small bedroom on Caldwell’s first floor, but there was much about it I liked: the coziness, the south-facing front window, the worn wooden floor scattered with old Persian rugs.