Death of an Avid Reader

by Frances Brody

  ‘By the lake, when we talked about Marian, and he realised she was no thief, he wallowed in self-pity about his “mistake”. He wanted to make amends. I would have sworn he meant it. At the library meeting, he had completely changed, almost a different person, a man in a daze. I don’t believe he knew that Marian was supposedly dead and buried, not until Castle told him, just before that meeting.’

  ‘Surely Lennox must have known. Why would Castle have taken it upon himself to have Marian murdered?’

  ‘He called her the whore of Babylon. The man has a warped mind.’

  ‘Even if you are right, and Lennox didn’t know until yesterday, or today, do you really think he will tell all, just because we turn up on his doorstep unexpectedly?’

  For a moment, neither of us spoke.

  ‘Sleep on it, Mrs Shackleton. This isn’t the right thing to do.’

  ‘Mr Sykes, it is the only thing to do. Lennox is not going to murder me, is he?’

  ‘Am I expected to answer that?’

  ‘Let’s go. It’s late. I don’t want to drag him from his bed.’

  Sykes started the engine. ‘This is a bad idea.’

  ‘Grange Villas, up Chapeltown Road, and I must go in on my own, and take him by surprise.’

  ‘I should think you will, arriving at this time of night.’

  ‘It’s not nine o’clock yet.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s all right then.’

  It did not take long to reach our destination.

  Sykes said, ‘What if your nemesis, Castle, is with him, or the inspector?’

  ‘We would see the car.’

  ‘And someone will see ours. I’ll find a quiet spot to park.’

  He turned right and right again, into a street with few houses and high walls.

  ‘Come on then, wounded soldier, I’ll walk you round.’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘I hate to tell you this, but under that cape, your arm in a sling looks exactly like an arm in a sling.’ He took my other arm. ‘I’ll walk you to the gate.’

  ‘All right, but then make yourself scarce.’

  ‘Which is his flat, in case I need to come to the rescue?’

  ‘It’s the ground floor, but don’t barge in. I’ll be all right.’

  The broad gate stood open. I had a feeling that Sykes would not stray far.

  I walked to the main door. Surprised to find it slightly ajar, I stepped inside.

  The shared entry was well kept, with a gleaming black and white tiled floor. The balustrade and banisters shone and a scent of lavender polish permeated the dark hall. An occasional table held a plant. I could just make out the shape of a telephone on the wall.

  Mr Lennox’s door stood open.

  I stepped into the room, where only a low fire in the grate gave off a glimmer of light. ‘Mr Lennox!’

  There was no answer. I felt for the electric switch by the door.

  At first I could not find it, but tried again, slowly sliding my hand from the door jamb until I felt the ribbed brass protrusion, and flicked the switch.

  The sight made me gasp. I must have seen him straight away but my eyes refused to acknowledge the body. Instead, I stared around the room, my back to the wall, fearing someone might jump out on me.

  Drawers had been pulled out, cupboards thrown open, papers and books were strewn about the floor. Finally, I allowed my eyes to rest on the figure sprawled face down on the hearth rug, one leg at a peculiar angle, as if about to mount a bicycle. Lennox’s arms were raised, as though in an instinctive reaction to break a fall. The back of his head was smashed. Blood seeped onto the collar of his dressing gown. Something pink lay on the hearth rug. Bloody brains. Near him was a heavy brass poker. As if to add to the horror of the sight, a coal split and gave off a sudden blaze. Already, a faintly unpleasant smell filled the room.

  How long I would have remained, staring, I do not know. Rooted to the spot, I looked all around the room. Was that a movement behind the curtain? I stared at the piano. Was someone crouched there?

  A sound snapped me into life: the front door closed.

  A voice said, ‘Mr Lennox! You’ll let all heat out of the place.’

  My reaction was instant. I crossed the room, hurrying into the kitchen. There, I leaned against the wall and held my breath.

  The voice came closer. ‘Were you born in a field to leave the door … Oh, my God!’

  There was a long silence, and then the heavy breathing of panic. Footsteps retreated into the hall. I heard the telephone receiver being lifted.

  In the gloom, I could make out the back door. Blindly I walked towards it, praying no fiend lurked in the shadows, and that the back door would be open. It was locked. I felt for the knob, and the key. Turning the key, I let myself out.

  There was nothing I could do here, except tell the same story as the neighbour, and in doing so complicate the police investigation and delay my own.

  Seeing no way out from the back of the house, save a high wall that I was not tempted to climb, I hurried round to the front, hoping the neighbour would be too concerned about being put through to the police and would not see me. He had closed the outer door.

  There was no sign of Sykes.

  I walked back the way we had come, trying to keep a measured stride, fighting the urge to run, run far away from the horror.

  As I turned the corner, I heard footsteps behind me; recognisable footsteps. When Sykes makes haste, he does so by taking long strides so that he appears to be in no hurry at all.

  ‘You came out of there like a bat out of hell.’

  ‘Let’s just go.’

  Without another word we strode to the car, Sykes gripping my good arm through the cape. I tried not to shake, but it is not something easily brought under control.

  Not until we were in the car and had driven about a mile did Sykes pull in by the side of the road.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘He’s dead.’ I described the scene. ‘A neighbour saw him moments after I did. He was calling the police.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  ‘It did not need two people to report the death. We have work to do, Mr Sykes.’

  ‘Could it be a burglary gone wrong?’

  ‘No. A burglar would look in the places people hide money, jars, vases. The vase on top of the piano was untouched, and so were the jars on the mantelpiece.’

  ‘Perhaps he was disturbed.’

  ‘Then he would have run away, as I did, not smashed in Lennox’s head with a poker.’ Sykes let out a loud breath. ‘And don’t say I should tell Inspector Wallis. I have no great faith in Wallis’s crime solving abilities.’

  ‘Leeds Police will call in Scotland Yard on this one.’

  ‘Not if it’s up to Wallis. He has a high opinion of himself. Either that or…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘… he is prepared to cover up for people in high places. This is all connected, and no one wants to see the connections.’

  ‘We don’t know that. Just because he has not confided in you, doesn’t mean he isn’t doing his job. A police inspector won’t share information with a private detective.’

  ‘I don’t trust him. Go see my father. Tell him what happened to Dr Potter, and about Marian disappearing. I can’t give Peter Donohue away, but Marian might be brave enough to say her life was threatened.’

  ‘Your father won’t intervene. There’s no love lost between Leeds City Police and the West Riding Constabulary.’

  ‘He’ll think of something. The two chief constables met at a garden party. Their wives are friends with my mother. There’ll be ways and means.’

  ‘Then you go. He’s your dad.’

  ‘Go to see them, looking like this?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  Sykes drove us back in silence.

  He opened the gate for me.

  I stepped inside. ‘Will you go to Wakefield? Talk it over with my dad.’

  ‘All right. If that�
��s what you want.’

  ‘I can’t think of a better idea.’

  He walked me up the path to the door. Percy was watching from behind the curtain. I put my hand in my pocket for the door key, and there was the address that Mrs Carmichael had given me. 18 Dorset Avenue, downstairs front room.

  I turned the key in the lock and went inside. From the window, I watched Sykes go. Mrs Sugden had not heard me come in, so my only explanation was to Percy.

  ‘I’m going out again, Percy. Amuse yourself on the banister, or go back to sleep.’

  The monkey, most disconcertingly, gave me a look teeming with reproach.

  * * *

  Doing a little manoeuvre with my left arm, I realised that I should easily be able to hold the steering wheel steady with that hand, and steer the car with the other.

  I had been to Mrs Carmichael’s house once before, in the spring when she was ill and Miss Heaton had taken a collection for flowers. We had driven over to deliver them. Now I realised that Mrs Carmichael’s illness must have coincided with the trip that Sam Lennox and Marian Montague took to Whitby.

  Dorset Avenue is a hill, and the house was about halfway up. The high privet hedge was neatly trimmed, as I remembered.

  Driving had not been too difficult, but climbing from the car I made an awkward movement and sent shooting pains up my arm.

  I clicked open the cast iron gate and climbed the steep steps to the front door.

  Not wanting to disturb the whole house, I tapped on the bay window, where a light glowed. The curtain moved. Mrs Carmichael’s face appeared. She stared at me, taking a while to puzzle out who had called. I had a sudden image of her thrusting her address into the pocket of every person she met. The curtain fell. A moment later, the key turned and the door opened.

  ‘Mrs Shackleton, do come in.’

  ‘I’m sorry to call so late.’

  She opened the door wider. I stepped inside and waited until she had locked it behind me. At the far end of the hall there was a sound. Mrs Carmichael called, ‘It’s all right. It’s for me.’

  A brief smile lit her sad face. I guessed she did not receive many callers and this would intrigue her landlady.

  She had covered her work clothes with a cotton robe. ‘Come through. This is my room, and I’m a bit all over the place.’ She picked up a newspaper from the chair and tossed it onto the table under the window.

  There was a bed by the wall opposite the window. At its foot was a single wardrobe that looked as if the door would not have enough space to open fully. A rocking chair stood by the fireplace where a fire burned, comprising a coal brick and three cobs. On the chair lay knitting needles and a partially done cable stitch cardigan.

  ‘Sit down.’ She moved her knitting to the table, beside a half-finished jigsaw puzzle and a book.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind an aspirin and a glass of water, please.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She disappeared from the room.

  I stared into the fire. The image of Lennox came back to me, his head so close to the fender, the smell, and the mess in the room. Now here I was with a woman who had loved him, still did for all I knew, and I could not tell her what had happened.

  Lennox’s death was the kind of deed Peter might be blamed for. Castle was behind it, I felt sure, but that would not be up to me. None of this should concern me. But it did. Dr Potter, Umberto Bruno, and now Lennox. Who would be next?

  Mrs Carmichael returned with a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water. It was a pretty glass, delicately engraved with flowers and leaves; a best glass.

  I took a couple of aspirin. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s no trouble. My landlady is very obliging. We keep up the pretence that I am a cousin on her mother’s side. This is a very respectable area. She does not want to be regarded by her neighbours as a person who takes in a lodger.’ She picked up the poker. My hand shook. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. I watched her as she split the coal brick down the centre. ‘That’s better, bit more warmth.’

  ‘Yes.’ I now felt hot and loosened my cape with my good hand. ‘Have you been out this evening?’

  ‘No, just doing my knitting and pottering about. Let me help you.’ She took the cape and hung it on a hook at the back of the door. ‘It’s nice to have someone else sit in this room for once.’

  She seemed so different here, in this small space, with her knitting, her reading and her jigsaw puzzle. I waited for her to speak.

  She took the glass from me. ‘What happened in the basement today? You looked terrible when you came back upstairs with the inspector and Mr Castle behind you.’

  ‘The story is that I tripped. I will stick to that for now.’

  ‘Castle.’

  ‘Has he ever done anything like this to you?’

  ‘Not to me, no.’

  ‘To others?’

  She looked at me steadily before replying. ‘I believe he has, though I would not be able to prove it. I shouldn’t have asked you to come here. You don’t look well, but I had a feeling that you wanted to know something, and I wondered whether I might help.’

  ‘I am not having much luck, to be frank.’

  ‘I am guessing you were looking for some trace of Marian Montague.’

  ‘I was but I am not now. I mistakenly thought she was the person I have advertised for, Miss Sophia Mary Ann Wells. I know the name is different but I had reasons for assuming the two might be one and the same. Miss Wells also works in a library, though I do not know which.’

  ‘Where did you look for Miss Wells?’

  ‘My assistant has checked the central library and they have no knowledge of her there, or at any of the branches. Her mother worked at Barnbow but has moved from her previous address. There is a register of city authority employees that Mr Sykes managed to see, but she was not on it.’

  ‘Does she have a library qualification?’

  ‘I don’t know. She has a school leaving certificate.’

  ‘Come into the library in the morning. I’ll make some telephone calls. One becomes acquainted with a world of people over thirty years, and there is a certain fellow feeling. Library staff may be unwilling to give information to an outsider, but I am well known, and well thought of.’ She spoke rather defensively.

  ‘I am sure you are. I did not know it was so long.’

  ‘I was twenty when I started at the library, long before Mr Lennox came.’

  As she spoke his name, once more that dreadful image of Lennox played itself before my eyes. But her words gave me an opening. ‘Something puzzled me today, at the meeting. Mr Lennox had previously been so enthusiastic for the library to move premises, and also – I’m sorry to say this if it pains you – hoping to make up to Marian Montague for dismissing her unfairly. Yet today, he seemed like a beaten man. What changed?’

  She leaned forward a little and folded her arms across her chest. ‘I and the staff never had a fixed view about the library’s future. We left that to Mr Lennox, as librarian. I don’t know why or how he changed, only that he and Mr Castle had been ensconced in the office before the meeting.’

  So I was right. Castle had told Lennox about the body in the basement, but why? If it were for the purpose of changing Lennox’s mind about removing from the premises, it had worked. New owners would have made alterations for the menagerie in the basement. The body would be found. I could think of only one reason why Castle had ordered Marian’s death, and it was not to protect Lennox from the clutches of a whore. He was covering some crime of his own.

  Mrs Carmichael waited for me to speak. She hugged her legs and rocked a little back and forth.

  I did not know what to say. Was it my imagination, or had she spoken Castle’s name with loathing?

  Suddenly she sat up straight, as if she had made up her mind about something. ‘Mrs Shackleton, why did you tell Mr Castle about that old magazine? He did not know it was in the library.’

  ‘H
e asked me what Dr Potter said to me on the day he died, and what he gave me. Once he knew, he seemed anxious to have the magazine.’

  ‘And did Dr Potter say anything of importance to you?’

  ‘No. I wish he had. It was only about articles he had written, concerning the haunting, and a story of embezzlement.’

  There was a tap on the door.

  Mrs Carmichael opened it and took a cup from her landlady. ‘Do you think we might run to a second cup, Mrs Harrison? My friend from the library has called to bring me a particular book.’

  I exchanged how do you dos with the landlady who agreed on a second cup of cocoa, but regretted that there was only one biscuit.

  Mrs Carmichael gave me her cup. ‘I think this is the kind of cocoa prisoners drink. Perhaps Father Bolingbroke is enjoying his at this very moment.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be lights out in the prison by now.’

  She watched me take a sip of cocoa. ‘You found out who was stealing books. Who do you think killed Dr Potter? The library is beginning to feel rather dangerous.’

  So that was why she had asked me here.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you have a suspicion?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you say?’

  ‘I’m sorry. It would be wrong to voice a suspicion.’

  ‘I also have a suspicion.’

  ‘Can you tell me?’

  She shook her head. ‘You won’t, and so I won’t. I only wish I could feel confident about Inspector Wallis.’

  That made two of us.

  I drank my cocoa, feeling we had disappointed each other. She wanted information I could not give. In turn, she was withholding something, but what?

  When she walked with me to the front door, she seemed a little agitated. ‘Be very careful, Mrs Shackleton.’ She spoke as if genuinely concerned for my safety.

  To make light of how I felt, I tapped my satchel and made a joke. ‘Don’t worry about me. I am carrying a pistol.’

  She did not smile. ‘Then you should have it in your pocket.’

  I was not carrying a pistol, but suddenly that seemed a very good idea.

  Twenty-Nine

  I had slept badly, dreaming a grinning Lennox into ghastly life. With that terrible dream logic, I knew that his eyes held the image of his murderer. He was edging towards me, willing me to look into his eyes. His lips moved but I could not make out words. He was asking questions, and then telling me something. I woke feeling a cold terror and hearing a voice say, Men can breathe, eyes can see, life to thee.