Death of an Avid Reader

by Frances Brody

‘There can’t be any connection between these threatening messages and Dr Potter’s death, not if the two of them were on different sides on just about every question. Why would someone want to kill both of them?’

  ‘I don’t know, unless it is someone who dislikes university men.’ Once Miss Merton begins, she keeps up the momentum. ‘My brother is a dear man, but difficult. He thinks too much. It is like living in the midst of an electrical storm – unless an electrical storm is what we mere mortals call a storm. Is it? I don’t know, but I should imagine the prickly tension, the oppressive sense of thunder about to clap, the expectancy of lightning, is much the same as living with a man who permanently thinks on a high plane. He loses things and accuses me of moving them – papers, lumps of metal, measuring devices, lengths of wire, never fossils, of course, which he keeps under lock and key, as if they were diamonds.’

  ‘He brings his work home?’

  ‘And carries it back. Back and forth, hither and thither, sometimes trotting across to the university in the middle of the night. And as if geography wasn’t enough now it is wireless sets. He is very interested in the latest developments in broadcasting, but he hates it as well. It will deteriorate into endless chatter, he says. No one will be able to think for the noise and the self-congratulation of nonentities who will creep into our living rooms across the wires. I ignore him most of the time. I have my kitchen, my favourite chair, my G K Chesterton.’

  There is no point in trying to hurry Miss Merton. After a deviation in which she related the plot of a story she had just read, in which a Catholic priest turned out to be a fraud, Miss Merton finally said, ‘I can see you wonder what I am building up to.’

  ‘It crossed my mind that you may have something to tell me.’

  ‘You are correct.’

  ‘About your brother?’

  ‘Not exactly, or at least not only about him. About the discussions between him and Dr Potter about possible changes at the library, a removal to new premises. They were at loggerheads over whether the library should stay in its present premises or remove.’

  ‘Yes I did hear something about that. I thought they were of one mind.’

  ‘So they were, in the beginning. They were trusted to recommend a reasonable course of action, which would be to do nothing. Theodore was all for staying. At least he was consistent. Dr Potter changed his mind and became an enthusiastic remover. I am afraid people may draw the wrong conclusions and believe that their rivalry and disagreements may have led to violence. They were at daggers drawn over the matter.’

  She had given me something to think about. In real life, no one would kill to have their way about a library staying where it is, or removing. Academics and people who work in libraries have a different set of priorities. I tried to allay her fears, even while my own increased.

  ‘Surely they were friendly rivals. Academic men are like that are they not?’

  ‘Good heavens no. Believe me, Mrs Shackleton they are not. It became very bitter, the question of staying in the present library building or removing. Dr Potter tried to persuade Theodore. He came and ate with us one evening, mutton pie. They started arguing before I brought in the jam roly poly and of course being so caught up in their own ideas, they forgot my presence. And then they went into the study, to talk, and raised their voices too.’

  ‘When did Dr Potter change his mind?’

  ‘I don’t know. But this is written by Dr Potter. It was screwed in a ball. Theodore had thrown it in the coal scuttle.’

  She placed a sheet of paper between us on the kitchen table. It was written in a crabbed hand.

  Reasons for removal

  Premises outlived usefulness 50 years ago.

  Commercial Street now Leeds equivalent of Piccadilly, no longer suitable for professional purposes

  Offer of moving expenses by prospective purchaser

  Albion Place site perfect

  Present building will never provide sufficient shelf space; lady proprietors must have novels. What abt yr own sister and G K Chesterton?

  A look of deep sadness came into Miss Merton’s eyes. ‘I never knew I told Dr Potter about my love for G K Chesterton.’

  ‘Oh I’m sure you did.’ I had no other basis for this statement, except knowing that she told everyone a great deal about a whole manner of subjects.

  She folded the paper and put it in her pocket. ‘Theodore was surprised that Dr Potter changed his mind so thoroughly.’

  ‘Why were they chosen, your brother and Dr Potter? I know they are clever and well thought of, but so are many of the proprietors. Some have far more leisure for committees.’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, you know, my brother is a geographer so can be expected to be aware of shapes and how many shelves fit in a room, though in truth he is better about land, sea and rocks, and how many strata it takes to create a coal field. Dr Potter was a mathematician. It is surprising how many people think that subject qualifies a man for making pronouncements in relation to finances.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘What are you thinking, Mrs Shackleton?’

  ‘It may be nothing, but the real reason Mrs Sugden and I came over was because we saw someone look through your front window and come into your back garden. He ran away when we came.’

  She laughed. ‘Is that all? Some naughty children have been helping themselves to our logs. Theodore has locked the logs in the shed so we should be all right now.’

  ‘This was a man, a young man I think.’

  ‘You don’t surprise me. They never grow up, not when it comes to making a bonfire. There’s a lot of competition as to who will have the best fire.’ She was trying to make light of the intruder, but I could see that she was upset.

  If she wanted to make light of it, so would I. ‘You’re probably right. We’re all a little on edge after what has happened.’

  I crossed back to my own house wondering about her brother, the professor. Was he a potential victim, or a killer?

  * * *

  I must have raised my voice much higher than I imagined because the monkey, entertaining itself by sliding down the banister, Umberto’s waistcoat under its abdomen, pricked up its ears and looked at me with saucer eyes.

  Mrs Sugden called from the kitchen. ‘I’m in here.’ She was standing at the table, slicing a very big potato. ‘Thought I’d do egg and chips.’

  ‘I don’t want egg and chips.’

  ‘You have to eat.’ She continued slicing.

  ‘Get rid of that gun. I want it out of the house.’

  ‘Wasn’t in the house. Was in my quarters.’

  ‘Your quarters? This is my house. I will not have the place used as an arsenal.’

  ‘I saw him off didn’t I? Saved us all from being slaughtered in us beds.’ She let out a cry of alarm.

  She had sliced into her finger. Blood spurted across the chipped potatoes. I turned on the tap and manoeuvred her to the sink. ‘Stick it under there.’

  Blood and water swirled into the basin. ‘The man was unarmed.’

  ‘He had a big stick. It looked like a rifle.’

  ‘If your eyesight is so bad that you can mistake a stick for a rifle you need a white stick yourself.’

  ‘It was dark.’

  ‘All the more reason to be cautious. You could have killed him.’

  ‘I shot his leg. If I’d wanted to kill him, I’d have aimed at his head.’

  ‘For all I know you did, and missed.’

  ‘I did not. I know how to shoot.’

  ‘Oh do you?’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘Where did you learn?’

  ‘I’m not telling.’

  ‘Secret is it? Something you did in the war. Go on, tell me you’re of Russian ancestry and you enlisted with Maria Bochkareva’s Women’s Battalion of Death.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

  ‘What then? No wonder you never talk about your past.’ I produced a hanky and handed it to her. ‘Wrap
that round.’

  She made a poor fist of folding the hanky.

  ‘Give it to me.’ I refolded the hanky. ‘I took you on trust and now you pull out a gun.’

  ‘You took me because I was the first one through the door and you were that busy listening for the telephone, waiting for a footstep on the path, you didn’t pay attention to no one. You only set me on because your mother wanted to scoop you up and take you to Wakefield. This place was a pigsty.’

  ‘You’re avoiding the question.’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Where did you get the gun and where did you learn to shoot?’

  ‘My husband Ronnie brought it back from the war.’

  ‘Lots of people brought guns back. They don’t all carry bullets in their apron pocket and take pot shots.’

  ‘It wasn’t a pot shot. Ronnie taught me, when we lived beyond Ripon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think? We were planning to rob a bank if you must know.’

  ‘I can believe that, after tonight.’ I pulled out a chair. ‘Sit down for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Anyone else would give me smelling salts.’

  ‘Anyone else would throw you out without notice. You probably did rob banks.’

  ‘Oh aye. That’s why I’m still here. I’m waiting for people to calm down over the gold bullion I took from the Bank of England. Once they stop looking, I’ll be off.’ She stared at her finger. ‘If I was a destitute organ grinder, you’d apply lint and a bandage.’

  ‘And if your victim bleeds to death, the hangman will apply a rope to your neck.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing with a gun. Ronnie taught me to shoot rabbits.’

  ‘You don’t shoot rabbits with a pistol.’

  ‘Never said you did. The pistol were an additional skill, to come in handy if we were waylaid by outlaws.’

  ‘In the North Riding?’

  ‘We had it in mind to emigrate, and to have some land of our own. I was saving for our passage. That’s why I went to work in munitions.’

  ‘I didn’t know you worked in munitions.’

  ‘I was at Barnbow, number two filling station.’

  ‘That was where Mrs Bradshaw worked, Sophia’s mother.’

  ‘Well before you ask, I didn’t know her. That place was bigger than a small town.’

  ‘Is that where you got your supply of bullets?’

  ‘No. Ronnie and his pal Fred brought them back.’

  She looked so pale that I went into the dining room and brought a bottle of brandy from the cabinet. I poured her a glass. ‘When did Ronnie die?’

  ‘Two weeks before I came to see you about this job. Influenza.’

  ‘I had no idea it was so recent.’

  ‘I thought it best not to say, to give the impression it was in the past.’

  That explained why for that first year I sometimes thought I had employed a silent ghost.

  Taking a taper from the mantelpiece, she held it to the flame of the fire, crossed the kitchen and lit the gas ring. It popped into blue life. She put the chip pan on the ring.

  I went across and switched off the gas. ‘Sit down. Tell me how you found your way to somewhere beyond Ripon after you’d worked at Barnbow.’

  She wound the white hanky tighter round her finger. It was turning red with blood. ‘By the time Ronnie was demobbed, I’d been given notice at Barnbow. Neither of us could find work. His pal said why not do some potato picking for this farmer he knew, and that there was a caravan he had use of, a battered old thing on the edge of a field. It let in the rain. But we enjoyed it, being out in the open, picking spuds.’

  ‘It’s a big jump from picking potatoes to robbing a bank.’ I went to the sink, turned on the tap. ‘Give your finger another rinse.’

  She let the water run over her finger, leaving swirls of red in the sink. ‘They lost money on a horse. We were on our uppers. Again. After a fine week or so, it did nowt but rain, chucking it down day after day. Fields turned to mud. Summat in Ronnie snapped, as if it’d been waiting to snap, and then it did. I think it was Fred, to jolly him along, said what about robbing a bank. One of them things a person might say.’

  The water was running clear. I turned off the tap, and took the iodine from the cupboard.

  As I dabbed the iodine on her cut, she winced. ‘Fred had meant it half in jest, about the bank, but Ronnie took it to heart. So Fred started to plan. Picked his bank, this bank in Ripon. He picked his day, the morning after market day. He and Ronnie would be there when the manager opened the door. They’d pull on balaclavas and be right behind him, gun in his back, not to hurt him, but to make him open the safe. I told them it was stupid, but they wouldn’t stop talking about it, drawing diagrams. It was all that kept Ronnie going. He said my part was to be nearby with a shopping basket and take the money. No one would suspect a woman with a shopping basket.

  ‘At first I wasn’t sorry when he took poorly, thinking it would shut him up, thinking at least he won’t end up in prison. The farmer sent for a doctor to come to the caravan, but it was no use.’ She lifted a hand to her hair. ‘It turned me grey. I was pure dark brown before that. Afterwards, a week after he was buried, I came back to Leeds, spruced myself up and went to see about a job.’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Well, none of us does know another’s story, not really. You told me nowt. I worked it out.’

  ‘What happened to Ronnie’s friend, Fred?’

  ‘Stayed on as a farm labourer, patched up the caravan. He kept the rifle and give me the pistol, said it might come in handy. It was my memento of Ronnie, and his big plans.’

  There was a loud knock at the front door. It was a policeman’s knock, forceful enough to put the panel through.

  Mrs Sugden stood up, almost knocking over her chair. ‘Oh my God, they’ve found him. He’s bled to death in someone’s back garden.’

  ‘You stay here.’ I walked along the hall. The knock had startled Percy. He hid behind the hall stand. I held out a hand. ‘Come on.’ He let me push him into the safety of the drawing room.

  I opened the door. It was PC Hodge, the beat bobby who had come to the infirmary to stand guard over the hapless organ grinder.

  ‘Mrs Shackleton, if I might have a word.’

  The night was too dark and cold to speak on the doorstep. ‘Of course, Constable. Come in.’

  He stepped across the threshold. In the hall, he took off his helmet, clutching it to his chest, looking a little sheepish. ‘I’ve something to collect I believe.’

  For a moment I could not think what he meant, and then I remembered. Inspector Wallis had asked for Umberto’s sovereigns.

  ‘I’ll get the bag.’

  ‘Right you are.’ He waited in the hall for the moment it took me to fetch the hessian bag.

  I handed it to him.

  ‘Thank you. There’s something else, Mrs Shackleton. Can we sit down a minute?’

  ‘Yes. Come through.’

  I led him into the kitchen. Mrs Sugden might as well hear if an injured man had blamed some crazy woman for shooting him in the leg. She was standing by the gas stove, having relit the jet.

  The constable nodded to her.

  We sat down.

  He placed his helmet on the kitchen table. ‘It’s about Umberto Bruno. He’s took a turn for the worse. He’s not long for this world.’

  ‘Poor man. I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘The thing is, I thought you’d want to know. I’m right sorry, Mrs Shackleton. You did your best for him.’

  ‘It was too late. Something should have been done for him much sooner.’

  ‘That’s true of a lot of people. It’s a sad fact of life, of the world as it is.’ He stared at his helmet, waiting for me to stand, to thank him, to let him go.

  ‘Is anyone sitting with him?’

  ‘No. I’ve been stood down. I’m off duty but said I’d call for this bag.’

  I glanced at Mrs Sugden. ‘Oh dea
r, poor fellow.’ Showing the makings of a good character actress, she hid her relief that the constable was not here to arrest her for unlawful shooting.

  ‘Stay and have a cup of tea, Mr Hodge. Mrs Sugden was just making one.’

  ‘The kettle’s on.’ Mrs Sugden rewound the handkerchief around her bloody finger.

  ‘I’m going to the infirmary to see Mr Bruno.’

  The constable nodded. ‘I told the sister you might come. The priest has been.’

  ‘Mrs Sugden, I won’t eat, but you should. Perhaps the constable would like egg and chips.’

  ‘Oh I couldn’t,’ he said, but his eyes lit up.

  ‘I’m sure Mrs Sugden will rinse her blood off the potato.’

  ‘Well as it happens, mi stomach thinks mi throat’s cut.’

  Mrs Sugden and I exchanged a look. If the constable was here in the kitchen, he would not be bumping into a man with a bullet in his leg.

  As I stood in the hall, putting on my coat, Constable Hodge was saying, ‘That finger needs a bandage.’

  ‘They’re in yon cupboard. Can you reach one?’

  ‘Aye.’

  As I left the house, a sense of failure flooded over me, such as I rarely feel. What a great nurse, refusing to face up to the inevitable. What a great detective, to know nothing about her own housekeeper.

  * * *

  Umberto had been given a dose of morphine. His breathing was laboured and loud, but I knew that he would by now be feeling no pain. There would be no last words, but perhaps he could hear me.

  I took his hand in mine, and placed my other hand on his brow. ‘Rest. Don’t fret about anything. It’s all taken care of, and Percy too.’

  There was the slightest pressure on my hand. I liked to think he knew I was there.

  His rosary was on the bedside cabinet. When I put it in his palm, his fingers curled around it.

  He would want to die in his own language. If words were forming somewhere in his brain, they would be in another tongue, a different voice, from faraway and long ago, so I spoke very little, just his name, a few words. But we held hands for hours, until all light fled. Finally, his grip loosened. Still, I held his hand until, when the sky was streaked with dawn, he died. I opened the window for his soul to fly away.

  For a long while, I sat by his bed. The accusation of murder still hung over him, and would until Dr Potter’s killer was found. During the night, time seemed both endless and still. I wondered about who might have murdered Dr Potter, and left Umberto helpless in a corner. Professor Merton seemed unlikely. It is hard to imagine one’s neighbour as a killer. But there was something strange going on, and it would be good to find out who was the intruder into the Mertons’ garden.