Death of an Avid Reader

by Frances Brody

  I looked round for Mr and Mrs Castle. He has a healthy head of white hair and wears gold-rimmed spectacles. She has a taste for extravagant hats in plum or navy. Mr Castle and Dr Potter held each other in high regard. Mr Castle told me so once, at a library Christmas sherry do, when he was marvelling at Potter’s mathematical genius. At the same do, Dr Potter told me that Mr Castle was a very clever man, the glue of the library and one of those men whose presence on a committee ensured that it ran smoothly.

  I could not see the Castles, but that was probably because they were near the front of the chapel. Now that I was here, the misgivings set in. Mr Castle may not yet know that Umberto Bruno had been charged with murder. The service ended as I was trying to decide how best to break the news, and ask for his intervention.

  I stood to allow the people in my pew to leave, all the while keeping a watch for the Castles. Filing out was a slow business because many stopped to shake hands or exchange a word with the minister. Eventually, Mr and Mrs Castle appeared. She is in her late sixties, a little younger than he. Both are well preserved. He wore a good alpaca overcoat. Stately Mrs Castle linked his arm, her lambswool brushing his alpaca. She sported a maroon hat with high crown, broad brim and veil, the kind of hat you would hate to sit behind in a theatre. Both have a healthy look that comes from a lifetime of good food, leisure, and holidays in Switzerland.

  I smiled, as if it was my habit to accost people as they left chapel.

  ‘Mr Castle, Mrs Castle, good morning.’

  She glared at me suspiciously, giving a royal nod.

  He was charming, as always. ‘Mrs Shackleton. You have decided to join our congregation?’

  ‘Not exactly. I came hoping to have a word with you.’

  Mrs Castle, not a person likely to win an award for subtlety, scowled.

  ‘Of course.’ He ignored the squeeze his wife put on his arm. ‘My sympathy over the terrible shock you had on Friday evening.’

  ‘Dearest, the children are coming, and the grandchildren.’ She looked at me. ‘And the great-grandchildren,’ she added with a note of triumph befitting the fertile matriarch.

  ‘Then I wouldn’t dream of detaining you. But Mr Castle, I am wondering whether…’ We were by the door, and there were still people passing. I adopted a conspiratorial tone to encourage him to step aside with me, which he did, releasing his wife’s steely grip. ‘Have you heard that the man found in the library on Friday evening, Umberto Bruno, has been charged with murder?’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  It suddenly occurred to me that none of them knew I had been at the man’s bedside. ‘I was at the infirmary this morning.’

  ‘You were at the infirmary?’

  ‘I went with him in the ambulance on Friday evening. You know I was a wartime nurse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He is dangerously ill, but handcuffed. I don’t believe for a moment that he killed Dr Potter, and the handcuffs are inhumane. People listen to you, Mr Castle. I wonder if you might intervene.’ There was a subtle change in his posture and that glance some people give when one makes an appeal, a mixture of reluctance and vanity.

  ‘Perhaps he is handcuffed to prevent escape, or self-harm.’

  ‘He can barely move without help, and there is a policeman on the door of the ward.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  Mrs Castle was suddenly beside us and must have been listening. ‘My husband has his professional reputation to consider, as well as his duties as library president. A solicitor cannot act in a way that would be contrary to a police investigation, especially when Mr Castle saw the vagrant follow Dr Potter into the alley.’

  I stared at Mr Castle. ‘You did? It was you who saw him?’

  ‘I thought nothing of it at the time. Dr Potter was such an eccentric. There was no accounting for his whims, and the vagrant was some distance behind him.’

  ‘When? What time?’

  Mrs Castle stepped between us. ‘Mrs Shackleton, we all know about your hobby, but please to practise it elsewhere.’

  Castle said, ‘It’s all right, dear. Mrs Shackleton has had a shock. We all have.’

  Mrs Castle was not easily put off. ‘We have prayed for the repose of poor Dr Potter’s soul.’ There was a challenge in her voice. She suspected I had not prayed for anyone’s repose. ‘Come, Edwin!’

  ‘I’ll be with you in a moment, dear.’

  She drew back her shoulders and threw out her chest. ‘On this date in 1768, the library opened its doors for the first time. It is disgusting to commemorate that date with talk of murder.’

  She strode out of the chapel.

  Slowly, Mr Castle and I followed her. ‘If you can spare just another moment, Mr Castle…’

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘It would be wrong of me to talk about a police investigation when I may be called as a witness.’

  Mrs Castle was at the gate, turning, marching towards the row of cars.

  Mr Castle exchanged greetings with several important looking men as we moved away towards the farthest tree. A sharp wind brought down a leaf that landed on his hat.

  ‘I’m most grateful for everything you did on Friday, Mrs Shackleton. Lennox was very sorry afterwards that he lost his nerve a little, and of course Father Bolingbroke apparently had another engagement, visiting the sick I believe. I thought you had left, or I would have made sure you reached home safely.’

  ‘Thank you, there was no need.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I did know about Bruno. Inspector Wallis telephoned to me. It has not been made public yet.’

  ‘I believe the police are wrong.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘There are too many unanswered questions, Mr Castle. What motive could Bruno have had for such a deed?’

  ‘That is for the police to find out.’

  ‘Bruno did not do it. He needs legal representation.’

  ‘My practice does not handle criminal matters.’

  ‘But you could look into it. Someone else must have been there. Do you know of any enemies that Dr Potter may have had, or of any possible connection between his death and thefts from the library?’

  ‘Thefts?’

  ‘Dr Potter suspected books had been stolen.’ I was exaggerating a little, but something in Castle’s manner told me I had touched a nerve. ‘I can’t imagine the organ grinder would have been a book thief. There must be something the police are missing.’

  Mr Castle’s face was a picture of surprise. ‘It never occurred to me that the police could have made a mistake. It seems such an open and shut case, but if you believe there is cause for concern…’

  ‘I do. Apart from lack of motive, Dr Potter was well-built and fit. Umberto Bruno is skin and bone, and besides, I have this feeling…’

  ‘Ah, a woman’s intuition.’

  ‘If you want to call it that, but really to do with physical disparity between the men. I should like to take another look around the basement.’

  ‘The police are not allowing us down there just yet. If it will set your mind at rest, I will ask them when we are allowed access.’

  We walked out of the grounds together. Most of the cars had gone. Castle stood and stared. ‘Oh dear. My wife misunderstood me, I think.’

  There was only my car left, on the other side of City Square. Mrs Castle had deserted her husband.

  ‘Let me offer you a lift. Mine’s that blue Jowett over there.’

  It would give me an opportunity to ask him a few questions on the journey.

  I began with the most innocuous. ‘Have you historic connections with the library?’

  ‘Oh no, not like Potter. I purchased a share in the library as a young man, when I qualified as a solicitor. A professional man has a duty to become part of the life of the city.’

  Mr Castle made no attempt to staunch my queries but in his calm lawyer’s manner carefully deflected every question. He was cautious, unwilling to commit himself, and reluctant to believe that Inspector Wa
llis could be mistaken. ‘We must remember, Mrs Shackleton, that this is a police matter.’

  Of course he was right. This was not my case. But I had one more idea. The person who may know whether Dr Potter’s suspicion about thefts was correct was the librarian, Mr Lennox.

  * * *

  There is no great distance between Meanwood and Chapeltown. Mr Lennox lived at Grange Villas, Chapeltown. I knew this because he and his late wife once held a sherry party for committee members.

  It was possible that Lennox would visit his wife’s grave in the afternoon and that if I called now, I may find him at home.

  Within a quarter hour of dropping off Mr Castle, I drew up outside Grange Villas, a fine stone-built mansion that sometime in the previous century had been turned into flats. I do not always look through windows before ringing a doorbell but on this particular day I did, and a good thing too.

  There, seated at the breakfast table, was Mr Lennox, in his dressing gown, Sunday papers on the table. Opposite him was Mrs Carmichael, deputy librarian, also in her dressing gown.

  They had not seen me as they were gazing at each other.

  Time for me to give up and go home.

  As I drove, I considered asking Sykes to come with me to the library and bring his skeleton keys so that we could gain entry, but I could hear his arguments. The front is too exposed and with iron gates. Change Alley attracts vagrants, prostitutes and the attention of the beat bobby. Sykes would question my judgement, remind me that I have not slept, tell me that although it is Sunday, people will be out walking to and from church, and window shopping. He would tell me that police are keeping an eye on the place.

  Besides, I had already interfered with the Mr Castle’s Sunday mornings. Sykes must be allowed his day off.

  Feeling in low spirits and the tiredness of a sleepless night beginning to creep up, I set off for home.

  As I drove, words popped into my head. The Big Bothy, Weetwood: Dr Potter’s address.

  As if it had developed a mind of its own, my motor sped on, beyond Headingley, in the direction of Weetwood.

  Fifteen

  Big Bothy, Dr Potter’s dwelling, was in one of those out of the way nooks. If I had not happened upon a couple of girls exercising their ponies, I might be looking still.

  Leaving the car in a narrow lane, I walked along a track. On the curve of a bend, I saw the dwelling, a single storey, octagonal house with two chimneys, a roughcast finish and latticed windows. It stood in a meadow that in spring and summer must be glorious but now looked a sorry sight. Close by were two outhouses, presumably one of them housing the earth closet and the other a shed. A little way beyond was a paddock and stable.

  Close up, I saw that the roughcast finish on the walls of the house had been decorated with tiny pebbles and fragments of coloured glass, giving the building an idiosyncratic appearance.

  When no one answered my knock on the firmly shut oak front door, I peered through the nearest of the latticed windows into a library. Under the window, a sturdy desk held an oil lamp and cut glass pen and ink stand. The surface was strewn with notebooks and sheets of foolscap paper. An exceedingly large tabby cat leapt onto the desk and stared at me.

  Through the next window I looked into a kitchen-cum-dining room. The window after that revealed a bedroom, furnished with a walnut bedroom suite. Beside that was a parlour or sitting room where a low fire burned. This room was comfortably furnished with large Persian rug, and well-worn chintz-covered chairs and sofa. Alcoves on either side of the fireplace housed bookshelves. In front of one set of bookshelves to the right of the fireplace, an ornate cage on a stand held a handsome parrot. Through the last window, I saw a small bedroom with cast-iron single bed, chest of drawers with jug and bowl, shaving kit, hair brush and clothes brush. On a wicker chair, lay an open book.

  Every room had at least one oil lamp. Neither gas nor electricity had been brought to this spot.

  I waited a few more moments, looking about to see whether anyone would return. No one did.

  Following a well-trodden path to a gate in the fence, I crossed the paddock, towards the stable.

  Through the half-open stable door, I heard a sound and peered inside, ready to introduce myself.

  A man of heavy build and medium height had his back to me. He was hatless and wore a dark coat that was a little on the small size, pulled tightly across his shoulders. A pony stood beside him, flicking its tail. In front of them was a freestanding blackboard, the kind normally seen in a schoolroom. It was covered in large, boldly-written numbers, some of them simple, the kind children might learn in their first year at school, and others more complicated, including equations that meant nothing to me.

  The man whispered into the pony’s ear.

  He waited.

  I watched.

  He whispered again, and waited.

  I waited.

  Nothing happened.

  After a moment I backed away from the stable door, returned, and made a show of knocking on the door and pushing it open.

  I cleared my throat and made myself known, apologising for interrupting him.

  Man and pony turned their heads.

  ‘Hello, sir.’

  ‘Hello.’ The man gave a deep sigh. ‘Be with you in a moment, madam.’ He spoke in a soft Welsh lilt to the pony as he led it back to the stall and gave it a pat.

  The pony nudged his pocket.

  ‘Right you are, Archie, though you don’t deserve it, mind.’ He produced an apple and held it towards the creature who took it from his hand.

  As the man walked towards me, I saw that he was smartly dressed, his coat well-brushed, brown boots polished to a high sheen, his trousers a little too short. Ample grey wavy hair, centre parted, and one of those melancholy drooping moustaches gave him the appearance of an inventor of improbable machinery. He could have been any age between thirty-five and fifty.

  ‘I’m Mrs Shackleton from the library. We were all shocked and sorry about Dr Potter’s death.’

  ‘That is kind. Thank you. I wondered if someone would come.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘I beg your pardon. I forget my manners. I am Richard Morgan, Dr Potter’s manservant, man and boy, my service interrupted only by the business that interrupted us all.’

  He closed the stable door and we fell into step together on the path that led towards the house.

  ‘Is there anyone else here with you? I’m sorry that I don’t know Dr Potter’s circumstances. We were acquainted through the library but I realise now how little I know about him.’

  ‘Just the two of us here it was and powerful well we were suited.’

  ‘It’s very peaceful here.’

  ‘Out of the way some would say, but there is a bicycle in the outhouse, see you, which takes me where I need to go. And sometimes Dr Potter pedalled his way to the university or walked to the road as far as the tram stop. That is what he did on Friday. I told the police when they came to break the terrible news and ask their questions.’

  ‘You must have worried when he had not come home.’

  ‘Well I did not worry, Friday night being so heavy with the fog. I was not surprised when the doctor did not return for supper. I thought the fog had pressed him into stopping at his gentlemen’s club and that I would see him on Saturday. No cab driver would have inclined himself to drive up here on such a night.’

  ‘He sometimes came home by cab?’

  ‘Heavens no, not as a rule, but on Friday morning he let it drop that he would be coming in style, see you, and he seemed very pleased about something.’

  ‘He must have relied on you a great deal.’

  ‘I like to think so.’

  Ingratiating oneself into a person’s confidence is a despicable habit but on occasions useful. I shamelessly invented a courtesy aunt who had relied for forty years on a companion who would then have been left bereft without some assistance as to how she might find her way from her lonely situation.

  He i
nvited me indoors.

  We entered a spic and span hallway with polished floor, threadbare carpet and a vase of evergreens on the table.

  ‘Please step into the parlour. I am just about to make tea.’

  I sat down on one of the chintz-covered chairs that I had seen through the window. As I did so, the giant cat stalked into the room and leapt on my knee, its weight cracking my thighbones. I stroked its head. As if in protest, the parrot by the bookcase began to squawk. The cat purred.

  The parrot’s squawk turned into a low chant. ‘Ones two is two, two twos four, three twos six, how’s your father?’

  The cat’s purr mounted to a deafening crescendo.

  ‘Two and six,’ the parrot squawked, ‘stupid bird, stupid bird, three and four.’ It then lapsed into silence, broken only by the rattle of the cage as it pecked seed.

  The volume of the cat’s purring increased so much that I found it disconcerting. I stopped stroking its head. It butted my hand and continued its high volume signals of contentment. Never in my life have I heard even a baritone reach such a pitch. It was the kind of unearthly sound that might make one believe in reincarnation, the reincarnation, in a single creature, of a Welsh male voice choir.

  ‘Eleven twelve,’ the parrot said, just as Mr Morgan arrived with the tea tray. He set it down, picked up a damask cover from the back of a chair and placed it over the cage.

  He then turned to the cat. ‘Down, Dunce!’

  Dunce ignored him.

  I lifted the cat gently to the floor. It weighed as much as a trunk packed for a month’s voyage. ‘Why do you call him Dunce?’

  ‘His name is Toby. We call him Dunce because he pays no heed. He doesn’t try. Oh, he sits on the desk as though pretending great interest but there’s nothing behind it.’

  ‘I see.’

  I did not see. Not one little bit did I see.

  Mr Morgan drew up a low table, set it with a china cup and a plate of homemade biscuits. ‘How do you like your tea, Mrs Shackleton?’

  ‘As it comes, Mr Morgan.’

  ‘One lump or two?’

  ‘None, thank you.’ Having become used to going without sugar when it was in such short supply, I had lost the taste for it.