by Ellery Adams
“Yes, but before I do, could you also bag those?” Jane gestured at the purple gloves. “I can’t say for sure, but they might be important.”
Once Phelps completed this task, Jane reviewed the evening’s events. She started with the moment Bart requested a private meeting in the Henry James Library and ended with her helplessly watching his body jerk and thrash on the floor.
“And just like that, he was gone,” she concluded while blinking away the tears moistening her eyes.
Sheriff Evans tapped his pencil against his notebook and frowned.
“Any thoughts on the white powder?” he asked the paramedic. “Sounds like something was transferred from inside the gloves to Mr. Baylor’s lips. What are those gloves normally lined with?”
“Cornstarch,” the paramedic said. He opened Bart’s mouth and pointed his penlight inside. “Though you won’t find powder-lined gloves anymore. FDA banned them in 2016. Either this guy has old gloves or they’re lined with something else.” He looked at Jane. “Was his face flushed earlier in the day?”
“Like he had a sunburn? No,” Jane said. “He’s normally pale skinned. Look at his arms.”
The paramedic turned his back to Jane and murmured to Sheriff Evans, but not quietly enough. She heard him say, “I’d put my money on cyanide. Between the bright red skin and the traces of black vomit in the victim’s mouth, it’s the likely culprit. The ME will tell you for certain.”
The sheriff thanked him and swung around to face Jane again.
“Has anyone threatened Mr. Baylor since his arrival here? Or expressed any ill-will toward him whatsoever?”
“No. Quite the opposite, in fact,” Jane said. “Everyone seemed to either like him or, at the very least, admire his work. Mr. Baylor was known as the Book Doctor because he repaired rare books.”
The sheriff glanced at the inert form on the floor. “All right. It’s time to give us the room now, Ms. Steward. At some point, we’ll need to speak with everyone who interacted with Mr. Baylor tonight. I realize that’s a tall order, but you and your staff have been invaluable to our department in the past and we could use your cooperation again. However, we can’t proceed without learning what was inside those gloves. That’s our top priority, so Deputy Phelps will accompany Mr. Baylor over the mountain. After I’m done here, I’d like to see Mr. Baylor’s room.”
“Over the mountain” was the local’s way of referring to any town outside Storyton. Storyton was a sleepy village surrounded by hills. It had no strip malls, no car dealerships, and no hospitals. This meant that people had to go “over the mountain” for many of life’s modern conveniences.
“Of course. Just call me on the house phone if you need anything,” Jane said, and waited for Sinclair to follow her out of the Henry James Library.
Sinclair didn’t follow right away. “Sheriff Evans. When you’re finished documenting the scene, may I return the excavated book to its secure location? Doctor Wallace entrusted it to me, and I’d like to assure her that it has met with no harm.”
“Yes. For now, we’ll keep the book at Storyton Hall,” the sheriff said. “And for now, Ms. Steward and Mr. Sinclair, we’ll refer to Mr. Baylor’s passing as an accidental death. There’s no sense in raising an alarm.”
“I agree,” Jane said before slipping out of the library.
Never before had she wanted to escape a library. Libraries had always been places she’d wanted to escape to, not from. This realization almost brought fresh tears to her eyes, but she blinked them back. Her cell phone vibrated and, seeing the caller’s name, she immediately answered the call.
“Lachlan?”
“Your family is fine. The twins are asleep. Ned’s reading on the sofa,” he said, referring to the young Storyton Hall employee who watched Jane’s boys whenever she had to work late. “I just came from upstairs, where your great-uncle is also reading and your great-aunt is watching a rerun of Downton Abbey. She thought you’d sent me to count the number of scoops in her ice cream sundae.”
Normally, this would have made Jane smile. Now, because she’d gotten to know a man named Bart Baylor, she wondered if Aunt Octavia’s bowl had contained an odd or even number of scoops.
“Tell the other Fins to meet me in Sterling’s office,” she said into the phone. “I want to make a list of everyone Bart spoke with in Milton’s Gardens. Someone must have swiped his room key. If we’re lucky, one of the cameras captured the footage.”
Jane pocketed the phone and headed for the staff corridor when Sinclair grabbed her hand and said, “I have an alternative plan.”
Without releasing his hold, Sinclair led Jane into the Ian Fleming Lounge. “Two coffees with whiskey,” he told the barkeep. To Jane, he said, “You need this. We both do.”
Jane knew that her old friend and mentor was right. She needed the steadying influence of the hot coffee and the calming effects of the whiskey. The way her hands trembled as she picked up her coffee cup proved that her body was still processing her shock.
“Tell me about Bart,” she said to Sinclair, several sips later. “Do you remember anything unusual about his background report?”
“Only that he’s very wealthy,” Sinclair said. “After we finish our coffee, we’ll go to Sterling’s office. I’ll access my files and print out copies of the report. We can review it together.”
Jane reached out and straightened Sinclair’s bow tie. The head librarian was always impeccably dressed and wouldn’t want to be seen with a crooked tie. For some inexplicable reason, Jane thought of how challenging it would be for Sinclair and Celia to share a closet. For the most part, Sinclair’s wardrobe consisted of his tailored suits, bow ties, and pocket squares. Celia’s was most likely comprised of jeans and whatever tops the weather called for.
It was ridiculous, Jane knew, to be thinking of such a thing at this moment. But Bart Baylor had died alone in a locked library in the company of two relative strangers. She didn’t want Sinclair to have only his duty to Storyton Hall and a room full of books when his time came. Jane wanted him to be with someone as wonderful as he, and she had a strange feeling that Celia Wallace might be that someone.
Jane swallowed the last of her coffee. It heated her body and helped create a sense of normalcy in a world that had once again been turned upside-down.
She and Sinclair put down their cups, thanked the barkeep, and took the staff corridor to Sterling’s office.
Lachlan and Butterworth were already inside and had started reviewing the feed from the security cameras covering Milton’s Gardens. Of course, the coverage was limited, so if Bart had spent part of his evening in a secluded nook or conversing next to topiary where one of the gravel paths came to a dead end, they’d be out of luck. Years ago, when their surveillance system was installed, Jane had insisted that the cameras be hidden. She didn’t want guests to feel like they were being spied on. Not only that, but too many cameras could also send a message to outsiders that there was something inside Storyton Hall worth protecting. Which, of course, there was.
“Mr. Sterling will join us shortly,” Butterworth told Jane. “He’s testing the piece taken from Mr. Baylor’s gloves. I removed a pair from the box in Mr. Baylor’s guest room to use them for the purpose of comparison. There was also a box of white cotton gloves and I took a pair of these as well. I thought it was prudent to examine the room before Sheriff Evans conducted his search.”
“And?” Jane tried to read Butterworth’s face. As usual, it was an inscrutable mask.
“Though I didn’t have the time to search as thoroughly as I would have liked, I do not believe that Mr. Baylor felt threatened. In short, I believe his death was as much a surprise to him as it was to you and Mr. Sinclair,” Butterworth said somberly.
Jane was puzzled. “What led you to that conclusion?”
“Mr. Baylor’s laptop was left open on his desk. I was able to log on because the password was disabled. I checked the activity log to determine whether this was a recent occurrence, but
it wasn’t,” Butterworth continued. “Mr. Baylor didn’t feel the need to protect his device. Therefore, I must conclude that he wasn’t concerned about having his privacy invaded.”
“Maybe he didn’t keep sensitive material on his computer,” Jane suggested.
Butterworth nodded. “That’s quite plausible. I glanced briefly through his files and saw no personal or financial information. Everything was book related. As were his most recent Internet searches. The last thing Mr. Baylor did on his computer was visit a website showing an artist’s rendering of the cover of an early nineteenth-century cookbook called The Devil’s Receipts.”
“Which was officially published as Mrs. Tanner’s Everyday Receipts,” Sinclair said.
Butterworth’s brows twitched.
“I don’t get it,” Lachlan said, swiveling in his seat. “How does the devil figure in? Did Mrs. Tanner recommend that every woman should stir poison into their husband’s tea or something?”
Sinclair shook his head. “We don’t know the exact meaning behind the title yet. Mr. Baylor died before he had the chance to fully explain the book’s history. However, he was able to tell us two significant facts. The first is that a reversible chemical process may have concealed the typeface on the pages. Secondly, the book was considered a public health hazard at the time of its publication. That’s why it was intentionally destroyed.”
“A health hazard?” Butterworth asked.
“Some of the ingredients listed in the cookbook could make people very sick,” Jane said.
Butterworth inclined his head toward his seated colleague. “It sounds like Mr. Lachlan wasn’t far off the mark.”
Someone knocked on the door three times in quick succession and, a second later, Sterling entered the room. In the original manor house, this space had been a butler’s pantry. Now, Sterling’s office doubled as the center of hotel security and the home of the copier machine. With all the bodies added to the mix, it felt rather cramped.
“The powder in Mr. Baylor’s gloves is cyanide,” Sterling said without preamble. “I ran the test twice. Iron sulfate combined with the sample of the suspected cyanide. Next, I added mineral acid. Both times, I ended up with Prussian blue. A positive result for cyanide.”
“Prussian blue? As in the pigment Van Gogh used in his Starry Night painting?” Jane asked.
Sterling nodded. “It’s a chemical—one with many uses. As for the glove, it matches the others from the box in Mr. Baylor’s room.”
This news baffled Jane. “Wait. The gloves were latex free?”
“Yes.”
Jane let this sink in. “If Bart wasn’t reacting to the latex, then the sole source of his physical distress was the cyanide.” She stared in the middle distance and replayed the horrible scene from the Henry James Library in her mind. “After he took off his gloves, he tapped his lips. I saw a white smudge on his mouth and assumed it was cornstarch from the gloves. Oh, Sterling.” Jane struggled to control the quaver in her voice. “Could I have saved Bart’s life simply by handing him a tissue?”
“I don’t think so. And if anyone in this room is responsible for his death, that person is me,” Sterling said. “I believe the killer correctly guessed that we’d react to Mr. Baylor’s symptoms by utilizing his EpiPen. By injecting him with adrenaline, we increased his heart rate.”
“His heart would have already been operating at an accelerated rate following the absorption of the cyanide powder,” Butterworth said, understanding at once.
Sterling shook his head in dismay. “We were manipulated like marionettes on strings.”
“Show me the video feed,” Jane said, her shock and grief giving way to anger. “It’s time to hunt for our puppet master.”
Chapter Eight
Jane sat down to watch the video feed.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have a clear shot of the buffet,” Lachlan said.
Because Sterling had been busy in his garage lab, Lachlan had already begun reviewing the footage from the security cameras and now gave the group a rundown of what he’d seen so far.
“Unfortunately, I was only able to start tracking Mr. Baylor after his meal.”
“I saw him on the buffet line,” Jane said. “He stood out because he wasn’t first, and he preferred to be the first person in line because he liked to know that no one else had handled the serving utensils. I guess he was late because he was up in his room, researching our infamous cookbook. Bart didn’t see me because I was up on the terrace. Otherwise, he probably would have skipped his meal altogether in his haste to tell me what he knew.”
“Did he speak with anyone on the buffet line?” Butterworth asked.
Jane thought back on the charming scene, of Mrs. Hubbard’s amazing book-themed decorations and the wonder and delight on the faces of her guests. How could it have been one of Bart Baylor’s last meals? Why would anyone want him dead? He seemed utterly harmless.
No one is harmless, she reminded herself. Everyone is capable of hurting others.
“The people I can identify that I saw Mr. Baylor interact with tonight include the members of the Robert Harley Society, Eloise, Barbara Jewel, Sandi and Captain Phil, and Randall Teague of Storyton Pharmacy. I doubt I interrupted a conversation between Bart and Randall. It would be more accurate to say that Randall was delivering a monologue on ragweed while Bart was looking for a means of escape.”
“Do you recognize this man?” Lachlan asked, pointing at the frozen image of a man with a cloud of white hair streaked with gray, bushy eyebrows, and a rotund belly.
Jane peered at the video screen. “I do. He’s a book dealer named Mr. Rolf.”
“He also had an exchange with Mr. Baylor,” Lachlan said. “And though we can’t hear it and I’m not very good at reading lips, it’s pretty obvious that it wasn’t friendly.”
Jane and the rest of the Fins watched in silence as Lachlan played the footage.
A camera mounted to the roof of the Anne of Green Gables Gazebo showed Bart’s approach along the gravel path. His body was stiff, and though he smiled at his fellow conference-goers, the smile was brief.
“Mr. Baylor’s expression, lack of eye contact, and posture send a message that he doesn’t wish to engage in conversation.” Butterworth, who was adept in reading body language, peered intently at the screen. “He appears to be focused on finding someone. I suppose that someone was you, Miss Jane.”
Before Jane could voice her agreement, Mr. Rolf scurried out from inside the gazebo. He was just a blur at first, and his sudden appearance startled Jane. He’d apparently startled Bart too, because he reared backward in surprise.
Mr. Rolf immediately made a series of apologetic gestures, and Bart quickly recovered and seemed eager to continue on his way. However, the book dealer stood directly in the center of the path. Mr. Rolf’s lips moved rapidly as he reached into his jacket pocket and produced an object wrapped in tissue paper.
“A book, I assume,” Sinclair said.
Mr. Rolf barely had the book unwrapped when a group of Word Search participants meandered down the path. He shot them a nervous glance and beckoned for Bart to follow him into the gazebo.
Bart shook his head and remained where he was.
His refusal clearly angered the book dealer. His furry eyebrows drew together and he took a menacing step toward Bart.
Watching the feed, Jane could almost sense Bart’s acute agitation and she found that her own fists were clenched. Was Mr. Rolf on the verge of touching Bart?
Stop! she shouted internally. Aloud, she said to Sinclair, “We’ll need to hear two background reports before we leave this room. Mr. Baylor’s and Mr. Rolf’s.”
Onscreen, the arrival of the other conference-goers gave Bart the opportunity to skirt around Mr. Rolf. As soon as he made it past the book dealer, Bart continued deeper into Milton’s Gardens. His pace was brisk and he kept his head down.
After she uncurled her fists in relief, Jane realized that the gazebo camera had recorded something
that could have escaped their notice had they not been watching very closely. It had captured Mr. Rolf’s chameleonlike nature.
One moment, he was furious with Bart. It was easy to imagine a cartoonist’s black cloud hovering over his head. In a flash, his expression cleared and he was smiling and exchanging pleasantries with the partygoers. Once they’d moved along and he was alone on the path again, his smile vanished and his shoulders drooped. He looked tired and defeated. When he turned and slunk off toward the main hall, he reminded Jane of an injured animal retreating to its den.
Lachlan paused the feed on Mr. Rolf and tried to locate Bart again. With no cameras near the koi pond, there was no record of the people Bart had spoken with between the time he was ambushed by Mr. Rolf and the time Jane rescued him from Randall’s lecture.
“I’ll continue to review the footage while we talk,” Sterling assured Jane, and took the controls over from Lachlan.
“Good. I’d like to examine the background information. I need a more complete picture of Bartholomew Baylor, because right now, I don’t understand why anyone would want him dead. In my view, he was a smart, interesting, and unusual man whom we failed to protect.”
Sinclair bowed his head. When he looked up again, his eyes met Jane’s. “We will not fail to bring him justice.”
They had to wait a short interval while Sinclair made copies of the reports, and Butterworth, who somehow always managed to act as both Fin and butler, ordered a coffee tray from the kitchen.
“Please ask the staff to put some nibbles on our tray too,” he said before replacing the receiver.
Lachlan tried not to grin, but failed. “Nibbles?”
This was one of Aunt Octavia’s code words for sweets, and Jane was touched that Butterworth had used it, knowing the silly term might make her feel better.
“As you can see from your printouts, Bartholomew Baylor was very wealthy,” Sinclair said after distributing sets of papers. “Mr. Baylor was the only child of Leo and Penelope Baylor of Lilyfield Farms, Inc.”
Sterling reacted to the name immediately. “Isn’t Lilyfield one of the largest food manufacturers in the United States?”