Murder in the Locked Library

by Ellery Adams

  Jane scanned the onlookers as she moved, and she quickened her pace when she spied two smaller figures among the construction workers.

  “Why are Fitz and Hem here?” she asked, her voice tight with anger. “They hardly need to see a corpse at their age.”

  “There was no avoiding it, Miss Jane,” Butterworth replied. “The twins raised the alarm in the first place.”

  Jane suppressed a groan. She hated to think of her sons having been exposed to a gruesome vision.

  But when she reached Fitz and Hem, it was obvious that they weren’t the least bit upset. On the contrary, they seemed quite jubilant.

  “Mom! We’re the ones who found him!” Fitz shouted, thrusting out his chest with pride. “Wait until Mr. Lachlan hears. He’ll say we have falcon vision!”

  “We were just sitting on the wall when we saw the head pop out!” Hem added. His face was shining.

  Mortified by thoughts of a desiccated head, Jane glanced down into the fresh hole and met the empty stare of a skull.

  She felt an immediate sense of relief. She hadn’t known what to expect, but she’d anticipated a body—something that still resembled a human being. Not a skull and a scattering of bones. This sight, though unpleasant, wasn’t grisly or gruesome in the slightest.

  Jane turned to Butterworth. “Why would someone be buried here?”

  “I don’t know, Miss Jane.”

  Sinclair joined their ensemble several minutes after Jane as he’d had to lock the Swift books in his office. While the twins babbled excitedly to him, Jane’s relief gave way to other feelings. The skull’s vacuous stare inspired pity. And dread. It was as if another universe—a cold and lonely place—existed in the dark voids of its eye sockets.

  I don’t even know if you’re male or female, Jane thought.

  After a long moment, she looked at Sterling, the head chauffeur and another Fin. “Sterling, would you call the sheriff? He’ll need to see this right away. We should probably contact Doc Lydgate too.”

  “I’m on it,” Sterling said. Before he left, he put a hand on each of the twin’s shoulders and squeezed. “Listen to your mother, gentlemen. Things are going to get a little crazy. You’ll need to help her maintain order, okay? It’s time to use your training.”

  Hem and Fitz responded by nodding and moving to Jane’s side. “What can we do, Mom?” they asked in unison.

  Jane wanted to enfold them both in a tight embrace, but she knew they’d prefer to be given a bona fide assignment. After all, they were being groomed as future Guardians, and she didn’t want to undermine the importance of that role. “We must keep the guests away from the bones,” she said. “We have no idea what we’re dealing with and we can’t have them trampling the area. I know we already have the construction fence, but once the word gets out that a body’s been discovered, people will move mountains to see it.”

  “We should put up a tent,” Fitz suggested. “That’s what they do on TV.”

  Jane wasn’t sure how Fitz had gained this television crime drama knowledge, but she suspected that he and Hem had watched such programs at one of their summer sleepovers with Uncle Aloysius and Aunt Octavia. The octogenarians were prone to falling asleep in front of the TV well before eight o’clock, and Jane could easily picture the twins enjoying shows with more mature ratings than Jane permitted while their older relatives dozed away in blissful oblivion.

  “That’s a good idea, Fitz,” Jane said.

  Butterworth inclined his head in agreement and reached for his cell phone. “Billy and I will see that a covering is erected immediately.”

  “I guess I should send the workers home,” Jane muttered. “I can’t afford to have them standing around with nothing to do, especially when there’s no telling how long it’ll be before construction can continue.”

  “All will depend on what the sheriff finds when he climbs into that hole,” Sinclair said. “At least this happened late on a Friday afternoon leading into a long weekend. It gives Sheriff Evans several days to investigate and make a ruling. The construction would have been paused until Tuesday in any case.”

  Though Jane was also aware of this, it didn’t make her feel any better. Neither did standing around, idly waiting. Tugging on Hem’s sleeve, she said, “See if Mr. Lachlan is at the Recreation Desk. If he is, ask him to bring us several pairs of binoculars. If he’s not there, just borrow the binoculars.”

  “Why don’t you call him?” Hem wanted to know.

  Tamping down her impatience, Jane said, “Because he might be training a falcon. You know how sensitive they are. Fitz, go with your brother.”

  “I’ll speak with the foreman,” Sinclair said once the boys were gone.

  As Jane stepped closer to the edge of the hole, she heard Sinclair say the words, “sheriff” and “temporarily cease work” before she stopped listening. The skull, what appeared to be a femur, and several small bones that Jane couldn’t identify, had completely captured her attention.

  Who are you? she silently wondered.

  Jane didn’t know how long she stood there, but when she eventually looked around, the construction team was gone and the twins were ducking under a section of the orange netting with Landon Lachlan in tow.

  Lachlan, head of Recreation and Storyton Hall’s Falconry Program, approached the hole wearing a guarded expression.

  A former army ranger, Lachlan had seen terrible atrocities during his two tours in Afghanistan. Though he’d retired from active duty, he hadn’t managed to escape violence, for it was as a civilian that he’d witnessed his brother’s murder.

  Jane believed that Lachlan suffered from PTSD, and though the other Fins—all former military men—shared their methods of coping with stress and anxiety with Lachlan, there were moments when he withdrew deep inside himself. Jane noticed that it could be difficult for him to resurface.

  Watching him, Jane wondered if the skull in the freshly torn ground would trigger one of Lachlan’s traumatic memories, but it was evident that his concern was more for the twins than for himself.

  “Miss Jane,” he said, hurrying to her side. “The boys told me it was okay for them to be here. But . . .”

  Lachlan was too polite to say that he thought Fitz and Hem might be stretching the truth.

  “It’s okay,” Jane assured him. “They spotted the bones first, so there’s no keeping them out now.” She gestured at the backpack slung over Lachlan’s shoulder. “You have the binoculars?”

  In reply, Lachlan reached into the pack and handed her a pair.

  Most people would have bombarded her with questions, but that wasn’t Lachlan’s style. He used words sparingly—a trait that Eloise Alcott of Run for Cover Books, his girlfriend and Jane’s best friend, often found exasperating.

  “What are we looking for?” Lachlan asked as Jane adjusted the focus on her binoculars.

  “Anything that could tell us more about this poor soul,” Jane said. “If all that’s left of this person is bones, then he or she might forever remain a mystery.”

  Fitz jiggled Jane’s arm to get her attention. She frowned because the movement prevented her from training her binoculars on the area near the skull. “What is it?” she snapped, without bothering to see which boy she was addressing.

  “Mom,” Fitz whispered. “We think we saw the driver pick something up.”

  “Yeah,” Hem added, echoing his brother’s secretive tone. “When we yelled at him to stop digging, he turned off the engine and got out of the truck. He was really mad that we were on this side of the fence. His face was as red as a candy apple.”

  Fitz nodded vigorously. “I don’t think he could hear what we were saying—about the skull—because he was wearing headphones. But when we pointed—”

  “At the bones, he finally got it,” Hem finished his brother’s sentence. “He walked to the front of his truck and saw the bones. We thought he’d call someone, but he didn’t. He just jumped into the hole.”

  “And then he bent down and
moved some dirt,” Fitz said, rounding out the narrative. “That’s when we saw him put something in his pocket.” He paused before tacking on, “Well . . . maybe.”

  Jane fixed her sons with her most intense stare. “This could be very serious, so you need to be sure.”

  Lachlan raised his index finger, signaling that he had an idea.

  “Why don’t you show us?” he suggested to the twins. “Repeat exactly what you saw the man do.”

  Hem gestured at the hole. “You want us to go in there?”

  “No,” Lachlan said. “Just copy the man’s actions. Like you were playing a game of Simon Says in slow motion.”

  The twins nodded in understanding. Turning their backs on Lachlan and their mother, they squatted on their heels and brushed the top of the grass with their right hands. Their movements were like a synchronized dance, and there was no mistaking the furtive behavior they were replicating as they pretended to pinch something between their fingers before hurriedly standing and slipping the same hand into their pocket.

  “That’s what we saw,” Fitz said when he and Hem were done.

  Lachlan glanced into the hole. “If he took something, the object must have been small. Did you see it at all?”

  “No,” they said, clearly wishing that they had.

  “All right,” Jane said. “Thank you, boys.”

  Having listened to her sons, Jane didn’t feel comfortable confronting the driver. Though they believed they might have seen him pocket something, they simply weren’t positive, and Jane could hardly accuse the man based on a possibility. At the moment, her main goal was to examine the ground before the sheriff arrived. She had plenty of experience with Rip Van Winkles—as well as less peaceful deaths—at Storyton Hall, and she knew that once the authorities showed up, there’d be few opportunities for quiet observation and reflection. Or stealthy searches.

  Jane and Lachlan began their sweep of the ground surrounding the visible bones. The twins followed suit, but as soon as Sinclair returned from speaking with the foreman, Fitz passed him the binoculars he’d been using and shared with his brother instead.

  “I can see a few more bones,” Jane said.

  Lachlan mumbled in agreement. “There’s something else too. Just behind the skull and to the right. It looks like the edge of a piece of metal.”

  “Rusted.” Sinclair lowered his binoculars and faced the twins. “Gentlemen. You have the sharpest eyes. After Mr. Lachlan, that is. Can you spy anything else?”

  To their great disappointment, the boys couldn’t.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jane said. “If there’s anything near the surface, the sheriff and Doc Lydgate will find it. Here they are now.”

  Two brown sedans emblazoned with the county seal pulled up next to the maintenance shed. Sheriff Evans and Doc Lydgate alighted from one car while Deputy Phelps got out of the second. Butterworth and Billy stopped to greet the lawmen and, Jane assumed, to explain why they were taking one of the white folding tents traditionally used for outdoor weddings into the construction zone.

  As Butterworth escorted the officials toward what Jane now thought of as the grave site, she was struck by the differences between the five men.

  Deputy Phelps, who was quick and lean, trod over clumps of dirt and rocks with the easy confidence of a man in his prime. Doc Lydgate stepped with more care. He kept a firm grip on his kit with one hand and held the tip of his white beard with the other as he picked his way to the edge of the hole. Sheriff Evans and Butterworth were both in their late fifties. But while the sheriff was fair haired, stocky, and had a slight paunch, Butterworth was tall, fit, and commandeering. He’d chosen an apt partner in Billy the bellhop, who was compact, strong, and had an unending supply of energy.

  “Just leave the tent here, Billy,” Butterworth told his fellow staff member. “Mr. Lachlan can assist me when the sheriff is done with his initial investigation. Would you keep an eye on the new arrivals in my place?”

  “Yes, sir!” Billy cast a wide-eyed glance at the skull before hurrying back toward the kitchen entrance.

  Sheriff Evans made a beeline for Jane. Tipping his hat, he said, “I see you’ve been gardening, Ms. Steward.”

  “Bumping into you in the village every so often isn’t enough, so I had to come up with a reason for you to visit.” Jane smiled at the sheriff and then extended her hand to Doc Lydgate.

  Setting his kit on the grass, the village doctor took her hand in his. “Jane, my dear. How are you?” Releasing her hand, he turned to beam at the twins, who’d been his patients since birth. “Boys! I see you’ve made a new friend.”

  The twins giggled, and Jane guessed that Doc Lydgate had made his silly remark to ascertain whether her sons were upset by the discovery of the skeleton. Satisfied that they weren’t the least bit distressed, he looked at the sheriff and said, “I’ll wait here until you call me.”

  The sheriff and his deputy spent fifteen minutes photographing the site from every angle before pulling on gloves and scrambling down into the hole. When Evans was within reach of the skull, he motioned for Phelps to hang back and for Doc Lydgate to come closer.

  Using two hands, Evans carefully picked up the skull and carried it to the edge of the hole where he passed it up to Doc Lydgate. Next, he and Phelps began collecting and bagging the other bones. Jane, the twins, and Lachlan gathered around Doc Lydgate while Butterworth and Sinclair took up sentinel positions just inside the construction fence.

  “He doesn’t have very nice teeth,” Hem said, studying the skull with fascination.

  Doc Lydgate made a noise of assent. “No, he doesn’t. This poor fellow is missing a few choppers—because of time or decay I couldn’t say—but he has cavities in three teeth. Look here.”

  Very gingerly, the physician cradled the skull in his palm and pointed at the deep craters present in two molars and one incisor.

  “Is it a man?” Fitz asked.

  Doc Lydgate shook his head. “I don’t know. I certainly couldn’t tell you by looking at the skull. If the sheriff or Deputy Phelps finds an intact femur or pelvis, then I might be able to say if you’ve unearthed a John Doe or a, er . . .”

  Jane put a hand on the doc’s shoulder. “If she’s female, we’ll find something else to call her.” The skull rested in the doc’s hand like a Halloween prop, and Jane had to look away because it suddenly seemed so small. So fragile. When her gaze landed on the sheriff, she saw that he was brushing dirt from around the metal edge Lachlan had spied through his binoculars.

  Looking through her own pair again, she watched Evans carefully shift dirt until he was able to wriggle the rusty metal object free from the ground’s firm grasp. The object, which was rectangular in shape, turned out to be a padlocked box.

  “Sinclair—” Jane began, but the head librarian was already in motion.

  “Sheriff?” Sinclair called from the edge. “Perhaps we could open the box in the garage? We have the necessary tools, as well as a sink, should you require one.”

  The sheriff passed the box to Deputy Phelps. “Fine by me. I’ll give everyone a pair of our fashionable regulation gloves. I’ve bagged all the bones I found near the surface.” He made a sweeping gesture at the area where the skull had once sat. “Doc Lydgate can examine the findings in the shed while Phelps digs around with a trowel. In case I missed something.”

  “Mr. Lachlan can lend Deputy Phelps a hand,” Jane said, and the sheriff readily accepted her offer.

  Instantly, two arms shot in the air. “Can we help too?” Fitz and Hem pleaded.

  Evans was clearly torn. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Tell you what. Why don’t I give you some of our special gloves and put you both in charge of bagging any evidence found by Deputy Phelps or Mr. Lachlan? You won’t be in the hole, but it’s a very important job. Can I trust you with something this important?”

  “Yes, sir!” the boys said in unison.

  For the next thirty minutes, Phelps and Lachlan used garden trowels an
d rakes to shift through the soil. Both men managed to retrieve additional bones and bone fragments from the ground. The twins swelled with pride each time they were allowed to seal an evidence bag and place it with the others grouped inside the body bag the sheriff had brought along. Jane avoided looking at the body bag. She’d seen more than one guest wheeled away from Storyton Hall on a gurney and knew that they’d all ended up in identical cocoons of plastic at the morgue.

  “That’s not a bone!” Hem exclaimed, breaking Jane out of her macabre reverie.

  Fitz peered at the bag in his brother’s hand. “Maybe it’s money. Like a coin?”

  “It’ll have to be cleaned,” Jane said, reaching for the evidence bag. She gave the disc inside a jiggle, and though some loose dirt came off, the object was too encrusted with dirt to be identified. “We’ll bring it to Mr. Sterling. He’ll know what to do. Unless you’d prefer to clean it at the station, Sheriff?”

  Sheriff Evans paused in his digging. “No, I’d rather ask Mr. Sterling to take care of it now. If it is a coin and we can read its date, we might get a clue as to our skeleton’s age. Mr. Lachlan, let’s stop and join the others.”

  With the boys proudly toting the evidence bags, the hot and perspiring party gratefully entered the cool garage.

  Someone had brought a pitcher of ice water and glasses down from the kitchens, and after Jane washed her hands and splashed her face with cold water from the sink, she poured water for Lachlan and the sheriff and gestured for the boys to hand over the evidence bags and hydrate.

  In the short time Jane and her group had been outside, the skull and the other bones exposed by the earthmover had been spread out on a folding table covered by plastic sheeting. Doc Lydgate was turning what looked like a femur over and over in his hands. His bushy brows were nearly touching and multiple furrows creased his forehead. His concentration was so intense that he didn’t respond when Jane asked if he’d like a glass of water.