“Better not, Giselle; I’m not sure where he is.” She attempted a smile. “And by the time I find him, I expect I would have spilled it in this tight squeeze.”
“The turnout has been spectacular and”—I lowered my voice—“despite what I said this morning, I am still very grateful to you and Karisma for making it possible to raise the money for Miss Bunch’s statue.”
“That’s nice to know, dear.” There was a constraint to her manner, but it was for Mrs. Swabucher to know and me to guess whether that was due to my failure to live up to expectation in bringing off a meeting with Gladstone Spike, or because she remained uncomfortable at having been thrust into another meeting with Brigadier Lester-Smith. As she was about to depart with her cup of lemonade, I told her that her feather boa was on the cabinet in the corner.
“I don’t see it, Giselle”—her eyes followed my gaze—“perhaps someone moved it out of the way; I’ll go and look.”
“Good luck!” I called after her, and slipped in a silent prayer, while pouring more lemonade for women who could only gasp “Karisma!”, that Heathcliff had not reared up from behind the cabinet to snatch up the downy pink boa in his capacious jaws and retreat with it into his lair. But I was probably worrying unnecessarily. Mrs. Swabucher would find her prized piece of apparel safe and sound. Poor visibility was the problem. With the room ready to burst at the seams, I got the feeling that I was looking through a kaleidoscope. Objects and people became triangular quivers of stained glass colours that shifted by the split second into different patterns. I found myself straining to piece together a familiar face, but after a few minutes even the people standing right in front of me, with their hands out for lemonade, became the nose or the eye of some patchwork entity.
Ben suffers from claustrophobia. We don’t talk about it very often and it took me several minutes to realize what was wrong with me. Just at the moment when I decided it was time to escape to a place where oxygen was not in critically short supply, the room exploded into a cacophony of undeniably canine barks. And two life forms came simultaneously into focus. One was Heathcliff, who leapt onto the table, knocking the lemonade jug out of my hands and trampling cream cakes and sandwiches under his giant paws. The other was Mrs. Harris, the kamikaze librarian, who demanded in a voice that rose above the dog’s unearthly howls to know who was responsible for this outrage.
I was surprised that Mr. Poucher had not rushed forward to soothe his pet and the furious woman. Was it possible that he was out in the corridor, so engrossed in conversation that he had failed to hear the uproar? Feeling it incumbent on me, as his accomplice, to find him before Heathcliff took a chunk out of the dragon lady or vice versa, I edged away from her glare and slipped through cracks in the crowd to reach the doorway. There I ran smack into Sylvia Babcock. And after apologizing for not looking where I was going, I felt compelled to chew up another moment or two telling her I was sorry I had forgotten to bring her the glass of lemonade I had promised.
Sounding painfully out of breath, she grabbed at my arm. “It doesn’t matter, oh, God, my heart’s beating so fast, I’m seared it’s going to explode. That horrible dog! I never wanted to see him again, but here he is—appearing out of nowhere and howling in that bone-chilling way as if … as if he’s seen a ghost!”
“Sylvia,” I said with all the conviction I could muster, “the dog must have heard something—an ordinary, everyday sound that scared him, perhaps a door slamming or a floorboard creaking. An animal’s ears are so much sharper than ours. Listen! He’s quieting down and he’ll be even better when I find Mr. Poucher, who very kindly gave him a home.”
“Gave him a home after I killed my husband, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” Sylvia’s voice faded into a whimper. “It’s what everybody is thinking?”
“That’s rubbish,” I assured her. “You’ve got to stop blaming yourself for getting upset when the dog raced out of the house with the roast beef. If the same thing had happened to me and Ben was in the house, I would have yelled at him to chase down our Sunday dinner. But I do see it’s not a good idea for you to be anywhere near Heathcliff; so why don’t you come out into the corridor with me while I look for Mr. Poucher?”
Sylvia did trail after me for a few yards, but when I saw no sign of my quarry and said I would go downstairs to look for him, she huddled up next to Gerta, who was standing under a picture of the librarian whom Miss Bunch had replaced decades ago. What had caused Heathcliff to practically leap out of his fur? I wondered. Was it possible he had seen something—or someone—who was not of our time? Sylvia, I was certain, had been thinking of the late Mr. Babcock, but … no, I resolutely set my foot on the bottom step, I would not allow myself to sink back into the bog of superstitious folly.
A courageous decision which did not save me from leaping a foot in the air when Eudora came out from the toilet to the left of the staircase. Our vicar was as white as the walls and her eyes had a glassy stare as she stood plucking at a loose thread on her pink cardigan. She was trembling.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Did you hear all that noise upstairs and panic that something was dreadfully afoul? It was nothing,” I assured her. “Mr. Poucher smuggled Heathcliff into the reading room and the dog went a bit wild, that’s all.”
“No, that isn’t all.” My friend drew a ragged breath. “Please give me a moment, I’ve been having trouble getting air into my lungs. I suppose it’s the shock, although a crisis doesn’t usually take me this way. Ellie, there’s been a terrible accident. And I can’t think of any way to break the news to you gently. Karisma is dead!”
“That can’t be!” I staggered backwards and leaned against the wall facing her.
“He’s lying on the library floor.”
“Then he’ll be meditating.” My voice spiralled around my head. “People who are really good at it go into a deep trance state.”
“There is no mistake.” Eudora pressed a hand to her forehead. “I came downstairs after looking for Karisma and not finding him in the reading room or in the upper corridor. I intended to tell him in a straightforward manner why Gladstone had not wanted him to do the cover for A Knight to Remember and that I resented his attempt to put pressure on my dear and gentle husband. But I didn’t get to speak to him. I found him sprawled within a few feet of the desk where he had been signing books. That bust of Shakespeare was also on the floor. It must have fallen off the wall bracket and struck him on the head.”
“You’re saying it was an accident?” I stammered.
“Ellie”—Eudora took a halting step towards me—“what else could it have been?”
“Murder!!!”
The voice rained bitter anguish down upon us, and we looked up to see Mrs. Swabucher sway in slow motion against the banister before crumbling into a merciful swoon.
Chapter
17
Mrs. Mailoy said that even in death Karisma posed like a dream and someone should take a photo to make sure he got to be on one final book cover.” My voice broke as I looked up at my husband, and he pressed a glass of brandy into my hand. “He did look incredibly fabulous, Ben. It was hard to believe he had not been told to lie on the floor with his hair spread around him like a river soaking up sunlight while the camera closed in for an adoring farewell.”
“Drink up, sweetheart.” Ben joined me on the sofa. I had cried so much since getting home that my face was damp from forehead to chin. It was seven o’clock in the evening, but I couldn’t face the thought of food, even though I knew a sandwich or two would do more than a brandy to buck me up.
“I’m sorry to be carrying on like this.” I risked spilling the glass when I leaned back against the cushions and closed my eyes. “Perhaps I should go and telephone Mrs. Swabucher at the Hollywood Hotel, the one that opened recently after being converted from the Wisemans’ former home. I keep thinking that had I tried a little harder, I might have been able to persuade her to come back here for the night.”
“Obviously�
�—Ben smoothed the hair back from my brow—“Mrs. Swabucher felt a need to be on her own.”
“Then I’ll go upstairs and look in on the twins.”
“They’re sound asleep,” Ben assured me, “and Vanessa promised to make periodic checks on them.”
“She’s been wonderful.”
“Our leopardess would seem to have changed her spots.”
The enthusiasm with which he said this did not settle well on my empty stomach. For a moment I forgot about Karisma’s sad fate and wondered how Ben and Vanessa’s afternoon at the vicarage had gone. Naturally the subject had not come up, given the bad news I had brought home. But I thought an inquiry might be appropriate now, to let my husband know that even in times of tragedy I was first and foremost a considerate wife.
“Are you and Vanessa going to do the cover of A Knight to Remember?” I put down my glass and reached towards the plate of salmon and tomato sandwiches on the coffee table.
“Gladstone’s editor was very enthusiastic, but we’ve plenty of time to talk about that later. Unlike poor Karisma”—Ben went back to stroking my hair—“we have our whole lives ahead of us.”
“That’s true.” I withdrew my hand from the sandwiches without taking one. “It does seem incredible to realize he’s dead.”
“Is it equally hard, Ellie, to believe Mrs. Swabucher’s accusation that he was murdered?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Everything happened so quickly after she passed out on the stairs. Mr. Poucher appeared on the scene and carried her to one of the sofas in the library. And while Eudora was trying to get her to drink some water, Brigadier Lester-Smith was suddenly there, insisting on taking over Mrs. Swabucher’s care. Then the scene became wall-to-wall people, with so much screaming and wailing that I thought the ambulance had arrived before it did. Sir Robert Pomeroy did the telephoning, and the new librarian did a great job of keeping the crowd back from … the body. That’s pretty much all I’m clear about. Everything became a major blur with men rushing in with a stretcher and lots of questions being asked, particularly of Eudora, because she was the one who found him. It seemed hours before we all got to leave. There’s to be an autopsy, of course, but I’m pretty sure Karisma’s death is being officially viewed as accidental.”
“But you don’t think it is?” Ben put a sandwich in my hand and told me to finish it before answering him.
“I’m not sure.” I swallowed dutifully. “Under different circumstances it would seem unlikely for that big marble bust of Shakespeare to take a flying leap off the wall, but despite all my determination to be sensible on the subject, I can’t completely dismiss the possibility that Hector Rigglesworth was involved.”
“The ghost?”
“He is said to have vowed to haunt the Chitterton Fells library until he was finally avenged for a life spent in slavish attention to his daughters’ obsession with romantic fiction. And Karisma is … was the living representation of the heroes in those books.”
“Ellie”—Ben shook his head—“you’ve suffered a nasty shock and you’re not thinking straight.”
“I’m trying to look at the facts objectively,” I told him. “This year is the centenary of Mr. Rigglesworth’s death. And think about this, Ben: On the actual anniversary date, Miss Bunch, an apparently healthy woman, dropped dead in the library with a copy of a book titled The Dream Lover lying beside her. Then Mr. Babcock, the newly-married husband of a Library League member, meets his end. And”—I fortified myself with another sandwich—“there are other odd happenings to be taken into account, such as the members of Karisma’s staff being struck down by food poisoning, which prevented them from coming down here and keeping a protective eye on him.”
“He had Mrs. Swabucher in attendance.”
“Agreed,” I said, “but she wasn’t her usual redoubtable self because she was distressed at meeting the man she’d abandoned on their wedding night years ago. And that upset caused her to leave her prized feather boa at the library.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Ben went to pour himself a glass of brandy.
“She was in the reading room”—I tried not to sound exasperated—“looking for that boa, perhaps at that very moment when she should have been downstairs with Karisma and able to throw herself between him and that bust of Shakespeare when it came off the wall. I haven’t a doubt in the world that she would have given her life to save his. But Mrs. Swabucher wasn’t the one Hector Rigglesworth wanted today. It had to be Karisma.”
“If any of this were to make sense”—Ben resumed his seat beside me—“it would seem to me your ghost had equally good, if not better, reason to strike down Gladstone Spike. After all, he writes the very kind of book the Rigglesworth daughters spent their lives reading.”
“I had thought of that,” I admitted. “But it could be old Hector means to exact a different kind of vengeance on our friend Gladstone. One which would be worse than death.” I had difficulty continuing. “If Eudora were to be accused of Karisma’s murder and—incredible as it sounds—found guilty, I don’t know that Gladstone would want to live.”
“Now you are looking for trouble.” Ben spoke in his most soothing voice. “You’re the one who said that it seems rather improbable that Shakespeare just took it into his marble head to leap off the wall and land on Karisma’s skull.”
“But that doesn’t mean I’d think for a moment that Eudora lent a helping hand.”
I rubbed my forehead to ease away the beginning of a headache. “I’m sure she didn’t. But I don’t know how the police, who have such nasty, suspicious minds, might view the fact that I found her close to the scene of the body, when everyone else—to the best of my knowledge—was upstairs. And she was in such a state that she’d gone into the loo to recover rather than immediately reporting the bad news.”
Ben studied my face closely. “I find that entirely understandable. And I don’t know why you’re so worried.”
“Because something could be made out of the fact that Eudora and I discussed the moat accident earlier at the library and she made a couple of joking remarks that could be misconstrued if they were overheard. Also, she would readily admit if questioned by the police that she went looking for Karisma to tell him off for pressuring Gladstone about the cover of A Knight to Remember.”
“So she had a grudge against him,” Ben said. “I don’t suppose for one minute she was the only one.”
“Not by a long shot,” I answered in a low voice.
“Don’t tell me, Ellie, that you’re worried about coming under suspicion should it turn out that Karisma’s death was not accidental?”
“It’s bound to come out that I had an argument with Mrs. Swabucher this morning over my feeling that I had been used by her and Karisma. Mrs. Malloy heard my raised voice and wanted to know what had been going on. And … the whole thing could be blown out of proportion so that it would sound as if I’d had a major crush on Karisma and had gone berserk at the thought of his betraying me.”
“Did you?” asked Ben in a neutral voice.
“Go berserk and kill him?”
“No—have feelings for the man?”
“How could I, when I hardly knew Karisma?”
“And are a happily married woman.”
“I don’t suppose that I would have thought about the possibility of my becoming a suspect if Mrs. Swabucher hadn’t made her accusation. She looked right into my eyes when she said Karisma had been murdered, and I felt such a chill go through me that I wanted to turn and run.”
“Come here, my silly one.” Ben drew me into his arms and I rested my aching head against the comfort of his shoulder.
“Believe me, I don’t want Eudora to be dragged down to the police station,” I whispered, “but the thought of my being locked up for life, away from you and the twins, is at the front of my mind. It’s awful to admit that the reason I couldn’t stop crying when I got home didn’t have nearly as much to do with Karisma’s death as w
ith not being able to forget that look Mrs. Swabucher gave me.”
“You can’t make much out of that,” Ben said reasonably. “The woman was in shock.”
“That’s true.” But I sounded uncertain.
“My guess, Ellie, is that if she were thinking of anyone in particular, it would be Brigadier Lester-Smith. The man has to harbour feelings of bitterness; and she may have leapt to the conclusion that he’d found a way of punishing her for the blow she had inflicted years ago on his male ego.”
I sat up straight. “Oh, but he’s such a dear, it’s difficult to imagine him resorting to brutality.”
“If you don’t want it to be him,” said Ben obligingly, “then how about Mrs. Malloy? She was on the spot. And Vanessa was telling me on the way to the vicarage that her future mother-in-law had gone off Karisma a bit when she thought he might be trying to cut George out of the picture.”
“Oh, we’re starting to talk nonsense!” I stood up and immediately sat down again.
“I disagree. It seems to me that I’m making a valid point, Ellie. When someone is murdered, and we don’t even know that is the case here, almost everybody who has any connection—however remote—with the victim can be found to have some reason for committing the crime.”
“It did cross my mind,” I admitted, “that Mr. Poucher might be the guilty party, if, as you say, there is one. He was extremely upset when he told me his crotchety mother had rebounded back to top-notch health after meeting Karisma yesterday and doing a photo session with him. And he was decidedly evasive about where he was when Heathcliff practically tore the reading room apart.”
“You see.” Ben smiled fondly at me. “The list of people with motives is infinite. But we won’t explore them all. I think you should go upstairs and have a nice relaxing bath, sweetheart, while I heat you up some soup. And afterwards you might like to get into bed and take things off your mind.”
This suggestion was not without appeal, but I had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Ben went on to suggest that I take some of my interior decorating books with me and snuggle down with them under the blankets.
How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams Page 28