“Right,” she echoed.
* * *
* * *
So you see, Charles Henry Dill is not what he seems.”
I sat across the table from Detective Sergeant Hopgood and Detective Constable Pye in Interview #1 and toyed with the cup of tea I had mistakenly accepted. I’d not had long to wait in the lobby of the station—not after I’d told the officer at the desk that I had a “significant piece of evidence” about the Trist Cummins murder case. DC Pye had appeared almost instantly, and before I knew it, I was telling my tale to both officers on the enquiry.
Sergeant Hopgood listened, but as I spoke, his eyebrows migrated until they met in the middle. “Ms. Burke,” he said at last, his stern voice matching his expression. “You do realize that on the day we met and I made reference to you having your own ideas about the enquiry, I was not serious. And as I recall, your reply was that you are a curator, not a detective. Do I need to remind you of our respective roles?”
“As I recall, I warned you about Charles Henry Dill yesterday, and you brushed me off.”
Hopgood’s eyebrows broke apart and leapt to his hairline.
“That is,” I said apologetically, “it’s only because I recalled what Linda Carlisle at the hotel had said about where his bags had been collected.”
“And I commend you for your fine memory,” the sergeant replied. “But that is as far as you should’ve taken it. You are not expected to set up your own surveillance—that’s for the police to manage.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you for the information, and be assured we will take it from here.”
“Of course.”
* * *
* * *
I left the police station on autopilot and made my way to Waitrose. My story of Dill and how I’d followed him had not gone over well with DS Hopgood and DC Pye, and so I had thought it best not to mention my encounter with Lulu or my suspicion about her, Leonard, or, of course, Pauline. Why? I would examine my reasons later. For now, I told myself as I shopped the ready-meal aisle, I needed to be content with knowing the police would find out exactly where Charles Henry had been staying and for how long. And with whom. Where that led, Sergeant Hopgood had reminded me, was none of my business.
* * *
* * *
Mrs. Woolgar was gone by the time I returned to Middlebank— on her own investigative mission to learn what Dill had said to Mrs. Arbuthnot and Ms. Frost. Would she uncover anything significant? Would it get us in hot water with the police? Would I spend the rest of the day worrying about it?
No, I would not. I put away my groceries and changed into denims and a sweater, and headed down to the chilly cellar. I squeezed by the furniture I’d dragged out and left in the corridor, and when I unlocked the door, Bunter, like a tortiseshell shadow, slipped past me and disappeared into the mass of boxes and furniture.
“Well, cat—where shall I start today?” I asked with hands on hips. I glanced behind me into the dim corridor, the thought occurring to me that I was alone at Middlebank.
“That’s silly, isn’t it?” I asked the unseen Bunter. “There’s nothing to feel nervous about.” Still, no harm in securing my position. I took the key out of the lock, closed the door, reinserted it on the inside, and locked myself in.
I decided my goal for the rest of the afternoon would be to reach the stacked cartons along the far wall. It was slow going—I shifted furniture a few inches this way and that to create a path. Occasionally, I heard a scrabbling from deep within the room’s contents. “Did you bring one of your catnip mice with you?” I asked. At least, I hoped it was of the catnip variety.
As I worked, I carried on a one-sided conversation with Bunter. Not about murder or clues or evidence or writers—instead, I tried to sort through the confusion that was or was not my love life. I found it comforting, and the cat made no objections.
“The thing is, when Wyn and I started up, I didn’t mind that he lived in London and I lived here in Bath. It was fun and exciting, and we neither of us asked for more. I felt rather lucky to have an even occasional boyfriend. I don’t mind telling you, Bunter—because I know it won’t go any farther than this cellar—there had been a fairly long dry spell before I met Wyn. But now the idea has entered my head that the odd weekend or flying visit doesn’t quite pass muster. I want more. And it is possible that . . . oh, I don’t know, am I reading too much into Val’s behavior? Am I imagining it? Bunter, what are you after?”
The cat had emerged from under a chair and leapt from floor to table to highboy to the top of a long-case clock, which shook, causing the chimes to sound faintly. He then hopped down to another table next to one of the stacks of cartons. The tape on the third box from the top had long since lost its stickiness, and now hung like a ringlet down the side, and Bunter had decided to attack. He batted the tape over and over and meowed—not a complaining yowl, but as if he were calling to me.
“Yes, yes, all right—I’ll come and look.” I squeezed past a walnut sideboard and removed the top two cartons. They were labeled in block letters: UNNECESSARY KITCHEN ITEMS and JOHN/BUSINESS ACCTS 1920–21. I had to turn the third one round to read its contents. NOTEBOOKS.
And so it was. When I opened the carton, I found it packed to the gills with ordinary school exercise notebooks, the sort with the marbled covers. I took out a handful. They appeared well used—worn corners and the occasional ring where a cup of tea or a glass had been set. In the upper-right-hand corner of each, spidery handwriting identified the owner: Georgiana Fowling.
I flipped through a few pages and found every one filled—not a line left blank—with all manner of thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Here was a heading of My Favorite Poirot—a numbered ranking of the stories starring the Belgian she liked best. She had apparently changed her mind several times, crossing out, renumbering, or drawing arrows to move a title up or down.
I turned the page and found a short essay she’d written titled “John and Georgiana Go for a Walk,” centered on Sir John’s forgetting his handkerchief and therefore being unable to clean off a park bench for them. There was a bit about a bossy blackbird that made me laugh.
That was followed by a schedule of window washing at Middlebank, and after that, a short story—two pages long—about a tortoiseshell cat. “Not you, I don’t think,” I said without looking up. “Must’ve been an earlier Bunter.”
Her scrolly handwriting was quite legible, and she wrote in complete sentences, even for her shopping lists. I was amazed—here was a life in lined exercise books.
I picked up a handful of them and looked round for a place to sit, finally edging over and throwing a sheet off what looked to be a Victorian fainting sofa, upholstered in burgundy velvet with heavy ornate carvings of elephants marching along the ridge. “No wonder she covered it up.” I stretched out and got stuck in, reading selections aloud to Bunter, who listened patiently.
I had not known these existed. Had I? I stared at a page on which Lady Fowling had assembled all Christie’s murder methods and my eyes became unfocused. Perhaps I had seen one, but I couldn’t quite remember where or when. It was one of those moments of déjà vu when you can’t be sure if your memory is real or not.
But I knew one thing for certain—I beheld a cornucopia of material for the Society’s newsletter. I could see the headlines now—LADY FOWLING’S FAVORITE PRIME SUSPECTS, LADY FOWLING ON THE WEAPON AT HAND—that sort of thing. I don’t see why I couldn’t also get a few scholarly articles out of them.
“Thank you, Bunter,” I said to the cat, who had settled like a sphinx atop the highboy. “Thank you, Lady Fowling,” I whispered.
I had struck gold. These notebooks were the way to bring the Society back to the wider audience of both authors and readers of mystery, and keep Georgiana Fowling’s dream alive.
“Oh, I like that.” I repeated the sentence aloud, and then called
out, “Bunter, I need a pen—I want to write that phrase down and use it.” I had no pen, of course. Why would I need a pen in the cellar? I hadn’t even brought my phone—and so I repeated the phrase over and over, searing it into my brain.
“Never mind about the pen, Bunter,” I said, reaching for another notebook. “But you wouldn’t go and make us a cup of tea, would you? I’m gasping.”
The cat watched me with golden eyes, and then yawned. I yawned back.
I pulled the band off my ponytail, rested my head against the sofa, and closed my eyes. I would show the notebooks to Val—he would be amazed, wouldn’t he? We might write something together, perhaps a series of articles about Lady Fowling. Our literary salons would become famous. We might be interviewed by the book reviewer in The Guardian.
My mind let go of Lady Fowling but kept hold of Val as I drifted off into a lovely scene. We had escaped our busy lives and gone to the seaside, and now we stood on the sand, his arms enclosing me, shielding me from a chilly wind. We were quiet and content and I looked up at him, and his green eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled at me.
“Did you ever think this would happen?” I asked him.
Voices answered me. Too many voices.
Bam bam bam
I bolted upright, and notebooks scattered across the floor. Bunter jumped off the highboy and disappeared.
Bam bam bam
“Hayley?”
My heart sang! I knew that voice—it was Val.
“Ms. Burke? Are you in there? Are you all right?”
I knew that voice, too—Detective Sergeant Hopgood.
“Yes, I’m here!” I called out, navigating furniture and boxes like a rat in a maze as I rushed to the door before they knocked it down. “Wait now, let me reach the key.”
Flinging the door wide, I found a queue. The corridor, squeezed with furniture, was wide enough for only one abreast, and so they had lined themselves up. Hopgood stood at the head with Val behind him, followed by Adele, Detective Constable Kenny Pye, and—peering round the DC’s shoulder—Mrs. Woolgar.
My hand went to my throat. “Oh no, what’s happened?”
Their collective sigh nearly knocked me off my feet.
“You were suspected of being missing, Ms. Burke,” Hopgood said. “No one could get in touch with you, and until Ms. Babbage contacted Mrs. Woolgar and she met us out front, I thought we might need to break the door of Middlebank down.”
“But I was only here in the cellar,” I offered weakly.
“Yes, well.” The sergeant turned to Val. “It’s all right, Mr. Moffatt—under the circumstances, it was a wise thing to contact us.”
Mrs. Woolgar, at the back of the queue, said, “Well then, now that a crisis has been averted, I believe I’ll retire to my flat. It’s been a tiring day.”
The end of the day meant I’d been holed up in the cellar for three or four hours.
“Mrs. Woolgar, wait.” I pushed down the line of people, brushing Val’s hand as I did so. “I’m sorry I caused such an uproar.” On closer view, I noticed the hollow look round her eyes and her pinched face.
“No matter, Ms. Burke. It’s only that I’m a bit weary.”
“How was”—I glanced over my shoulder at the attentive queue and lowered my voice—“your afternoon?”
“Perhaps that’s better left until our Monday briefing. You are away the weekend?”
“Yes—are you sure you’ll be all right?”
The secretary bristled, replying with a snappy “Fine”—a sure sign she was no worse for her afternoon with Mrs. Arbuthnot and Ms. Frost.
The crowd dispersed. Mrs. Woolgar shut the door of her flat in our faces, and Adele followed the police upstairs, chatting with DS Hopgood about his daughter, who apparently went to the school where Adele taught. Only Val was left standing at the cellar door. I went back to him.
“I sent you a text and got no answer,” he said, looking both relieved and vexed. “I rang and got no answer. So I came round here and no one answered the door. I didn’t know what to think. I phoned Adele and she got hold of Mrs. Woolgar, and then . . . I rang the police, too. Because, after what happened—” He swallowed. “Well.”
I smiled at him. “You saved me.”
His frown deepened, and then he barked a short laugh. “You didn’t need saving.”
“That’s hardly the point,” I replied. Shreds of my dream lingered as if his arms were still round me. “You had my back. I can’t tell you when I’ve ever felt that way.” The voices upstairs faded. It was only the two of us. “I’m sorry,” I said. “About how I acted the other evening.”
“No.” Val shook his head vehemently. “I’m sorry. What’s between you and your boyfriend is your concern. It’s none of my business.”
He locked his eyes on me, and I heard his statement for what it was—a challenge, a plea. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me it is my business.
It was, but I couldn’t say the words aloud. Not yet.
Instead, I overcompensated, saying with manic cheer, “Wait till you see what I found here in the cellar—a carton full of Lady Fowling’s notebooks!”
My words threw cold water over the moment, and Val took a step back.
“Will you stay?” I continued. “We’ll take the box up to my flat and look through them. It’s really quite exciting.” I ran to the bottom of the stairs and called up. “Adele! Adele!”
She came halfway down and peered at us, her red curls tumbling over the railing.
“You’ve nothing on this evening,” I said, praying that was true. “Stay, won’t you? Val is staying—I have something I want to show you both. I’ll order pizza!”
Adele’s gaze went from me to Val and back.
“Do I look like a gooseberry?” she demanded.
Val crossed his arms tightly, his face like thunder. “We don’t need a chaperone, Adele. We’re going to look at scrapbooks.”
“They aren’t scrapbooks,” I said, hurrying back into the cellar and scrambling to gather notebooks from the floor and repack the carton. “Here.” I shoved the box in Val’s arms. “Bunter, where are you?”
The cat scooted from under a dresser, out the door, and up the stairs. I locked the cellar and Val marched off without speaking.
I followed, pulling on Adele’s arm and whispering, “Come along. Please. I don’t want it to be awkward.”
“Don’t you mean ‘more awkward’?”
I thanked the police and they left, after which the three of us continued to my flat. Inside, I switched the kettle on, ignored Val’s pout and Adele’s eye rolling, and revealed my find.
They were amazed, as I knew they would be. Even Val melted a bit as we dug out notebook after notebook, scanning the contents. Eventually, we began checking the dates, and putting the notebooks in chronological order.
“I wonder, did she know about Agatha Christie’s notebooks?” Val asked. “Although, they only came to light a few years ago. Also, I don’t think Christie’s notebooks were nearly this legible.”
Adele’s eyes sparkled with tears as she ran her hand lightly over the pages. “Georgiana had lovely cursive writing—it’s becoming a lost art.”
“Do you think she would mind if we used them?” I asked.
“No, Hayley—she’d love it, I’m sure. It’s like she’s here again.” Adele gave me a sly look. “You say Bunter showed you where they were—I have a feeling Georgiana wanted you to find them.”
First Linda Carlisle and now Adele. I blushed and shrugged as a warm thrill ran through me. Although I wouldn’t say so aloud, I had come away with the unaccountably pleasant feeling that Bunter and I had had company in the cellar.
21
We took turns reading out interesting pieces of Lady Fowling’s writings. Val, particularly taken with her mock interview titled “Meet Jane Marple,” thought
we might reenact it for the salons. “One of the women on your board was an actress,” he reminded me.
“Maureen Frost,” Adele offered. “I saw her about ten years ago in a production of She Stoops to Conquer during a Restoration comedy summer. She was good.”
I envisioned Ms. Frost—her gray pageboy swept back into a tidy bun. “Well, there’s our Jane Marple,” I said. “Unless she’d prefer to be Lady Fowling.”
Adele looked up from one of the notebooks. “Here’s something Georgiana wrote about her own detective, François Flambeaux.”
“François Flambeaux? He wasn’t French, by any chance?” I asked helpfully, and Val sputtered into his tea.
Adele threw us a look and replied, “He was from Dorset.”
That set both of us off. Adele giggled, too, but added, “You should read some of her books—they’re quite fun. Listen to this: The detective held his breath and peered through a slit in the heavy velvet draperies sewn from a depressingly busy paisley print in heliotrope and trimmed in gaudy gold fringe with tassels as big as school bells. A movement in the room pulled his attention away from the window coverings to the nurse, attired in a crisp aquamarine blue uniform with snow-white starched apron and cap.”
“But what color were her shoes?” I asked. Adele ignored me and continued.
“She eyed her patient, who slept peacefully on a sateen pillow as green as a cricket lawn and edged in knotted lace said to have come from the nuns in Ireland. He lay unaware that the concoction being prepared for him would be the last thing to pass his lips. Flambeaux watched as the nurse filled a small glass halfway with water, then drew a chestnut-brown vial from her pocket, took the cork stopper between her teeth, and wrenched it out like a cowboy desperate for a slug from his bottle of whiskey. She raised the glass and vial and poured out—hang on, now.” Adele fumbled turning the page. Both Val and I leaned forward, waiting until she continued, “—one tablespoon of Fairy washing-up liquid. Spray this on the roses every few days to get rid of green fly.”
The Bodies in the Library Page 19