“If you search under his bed, you’ll find a folder of Marcus Ribald’s pictures,” I added. “And probably some weird stalker photographs of Ashley.”
“I bet he keeps a whole box of her used handkerchiefs,” Heathcliff added.
“Mate, no one uses handkerchiefs anymore,” I grinned at him. To my surprise, the edge of Heathcliff’s scowl turned up, ever so slightly.
“Er… right you are, then.” Inspector Hayes scratched his ear. He clicked play on the audio file again. Darren’s tinny voice filled the room. When the confession finished, he turned to Wilson.
“Get a search warrant for this man’s home. Find those drawings. Ms. Wilde, it looks like we owe you an apology.”
“But… but she broke out of prison!” Wilson stuttered.
Heathcliff strode over to the sergeant, towering his impressive bulk over her. “My client is duly remorseful about fleeing from the law,” he said. “But I think, given the circumstances, and the fact we solved the murder and did all your work for you, that you might overlook Mina’s transgression. She is, after all, a woman, and prone to fits of hysteria.”
“Hey!” I growled. Did he even realize what century this was? I made a mental note to make a stack of feminist books for Heathcliff to read.
“Watch yourself, Moriarty,” Wilson said. “That’s not how the law works.”
“The alternative is that our friend Mr. Earnshaw here, expert legal mind that he is, makes a lot of trouble for you in regards to the mistreatment of his client,” Morrie piped up. “And since you’re up for promotion in the next couple of months, I don’t think you want that.”
“We never mistreated her!”
“It’s not about what actually happened,” Morrie said. “It’s about what a court of her peers believe happened.”
Wilson paled. The inspector shoved her toward the door. “We’re sorry about arresting you, Ms. Wilde. You understand there was evidence that suggested—”
“It’s cool” I grinned. “We’re good.”
The officers followed. Jo lingered at the doorway, her laughter finally breaking through. “A court of her peers? You really are something, Morrie. I don’t know how you convinced them to let Mina go, but I’m bloody glad you did.”
“Mina was the real hero,” Morrie said. “She’s the one who figured out how Ashley was getting word about the drawings to her buyer, and that led us to Darren.”
“It sounds like she’s just the girl to keep you on your toes, then.” Jo gave me a wave. “It looks like I’ll be working tonight if they remove more evidence from Darren’s room, but how about I call tomorrow and we can grab that coffee?”
“It’s a date,” I beamed.
Jo whistled a Clash song under her breath as she followed the officers out the door. As soon as it slammed shut, Morrie grabbed me around the waist and lifted me off the ground.
“You’re free, Mina,” he beamed. “The British criminal justice system triumphs again!”
“I can’t believe it,” I grinned back, the weight of the last few days lifting from my body.
Morrie planted a breathtaking kiss on my lips. “As an old colleague of mine always said, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ We none of us predicted the true motives of the killer, and yet, the clues were right there. The beer cans in the garden outside, the ring in her pocket, and the fact the killer left behind the images.”
“It’s going to take a mighty scrubbing to get those bloodstains out of my desk,” Heathcliff growled.
“Leave them.” Quoth transformed from his bird form. “As a warning to anyone who dares cross you.”
“This calls for celebration. I’ll get the wine.” Morrie bounded up the stairs, Quoth following close behind.
Heathcliff rubbed at the bloodstain. An awkward silence descended.
“Mina…” Heathcliff’s head whipped up, staring at a spot behind my shoulder. “About the other day—”
“You mean when you kissed me? You can say it, you know. I’m not a prude.”
“Yes, well,” he muttered. “I was wrong.”
“The mighty Heathcliff admits he was wrong. Well, what were you wrong about?”
“I was wrong to kiss an employee. Now, you answer me something. If I wasn’t your boss, what would it mean then?”
If I wasn’t your boss…
What is he saying?
The air between us thinned. Heathcliff’s breath hitched. My body thrummed with energy. I stepped toward him, my body pulled by some invisible force.
Heathcliff snarled and yanked himself away. “It is not something we should think of,” he said.
“You seem as though you’re thinking of it right now.”
“Infuriating woman.”
“If you have a problem with me, then you should fire me.”
“I should fire you,” he growled. “Come upstairs and have a glass of wine with us.”
A wide grin stretched across my face. I held out my hand and Heathcliff took it, the heat of his fingers shooting through my body. “You’re on.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“I’m stoked you’re not the murderer.” Jo poured wine into two glasses and pushed one across to me. “Now I can hang out with you without worrying I’ll end up with a knife in the back.”
We were sitting on either side of Heathcliff’s desk, holding the fort while Sir Grumpy went to yell at a poor defenseless bank teller over a check mix-up, as if it was her fault he couldn’t use the online banking app like the rest of the universe.
I clinked my glass against Jo’s. “I’m glad, too. Although I’m not sure you’re the best influence on me. I’ve officially become a day drinker.”
“You work in a bookshop in the age of digital media. I don’t think there’s anything to do but drink.”
I laughed. “I’ve heard that joke before.”
“I’m not sure it’s a joke so much as a universal truth.”
It was two weeks since we caught Darren, and Jo and I had been hanging out every few days, mostly drinking wine over lunch. She loved to regale me with grisly tales of life in the lab, and I stored up all the stories of Heathcliff’s customer interactions for her. She was the complete opposite to Ashley in nearly every way, but I had a feeling I was making my next girl-friend.
Jo left after we finished our glass. She had two autopsies to conduct in the afternoon. As I stared at the neatly stacked and dusted shelves (my handiwork) and tried not to think about Jo squishing around in someone’s organs, my fingers trailed along the edge of the Doomsday Book that sat on the desk.
Heathcliff’s discovery came back to me, about how the building had been in the book trade for hundreds of years. I’d been thinking about the room upstairs, and how pristine it was, as if it had only been abandoned a few months. But the furniture was old – Victorian, or maybe late Georgian. It seemed impossible that it should remain in that state, undisturbed, for all these years.
I turned over the edge of a page. I thought back to the occult room, and the old, dusty bindings on some of those books. I wonder if anything in there was from when the shop was first established.
I opened the top drawer of Heathcliff’s desk. There, nestled under a package of squashed Wagon Wheels biscuits, was an old-fashioned ring of keys. I shoved the keyring into my pocket.
“Watch the desk for me,” I called up to Quoth. “I just need to check something on the first floor.”
Quoth nodded from his perch on the armadillo. I bounded up the stairs and slipped into the storage room. Heathcliff had pasted a large DO NOT ENTER sign on the door and it was locked tight. I tried the keys until one turned. The door clicked open, and I entered.
This time, I ignored the book on the plinth and headed for the shelves, pulling books out at random and checking their inside flaps. Many of them weren’t in English, and it wasn’t as though copyright had been invented when they were written, but after a few volumes I found one that was
dated to the fourteenth century. Of course, it was in Latin.
Why didn’t fashion school have a Medieval Latin class? Bloody hell.
“Morrie!” I grabbed the volume and brought it upstairs.
“Yes, gorgeous?” Morrie poked his head around his alcove, his face lit by the glow of his screens.
I thrust the book under his nose. “What does this say here, on the first page?”
Morrie peered at the volume. “This is the title of the work, which is a fascinating book on demonology, and here’s the name of the bookseller where it was copied – Herman Strepel.”
I knew it. “This is the same guy who used to have a shop right here. Is there any way to find out more about this Strepel? Ideally, a list of texts he had for sale.”
“Antique books aren’t really my thing, unless we’re talking about stealing them. But I’ll talk to some people.” Morrie grinned at me.
“This could be big. It could be a major clue as to why the shop does what it does. But Morrie, if I’m to have any hope of figuring this out, I need to know what the deal is with the master bedroom.”
“You have to ask Heathcliff—”
“I’m asking you.” I gave him my sternest expression.
Morrie sighed. “Mr. Simson told Heathcliff never to enter that room. He obeyed, but I didn’t. The first night I was here I stole the key from his desk and opened the door. Inside I found a forest.”
“A…”
“Forest. Trees, weird palm-frond things. Dirt. It completely ruined my first pair of brogues.” He wrinkled his face at the memory.
“But that’s impossible.”
“Not necessarily. I’ve run some calculations and I believe the room functions as a kind of wormhole through space-time. In this case, time. I believe it shows past and perhaps even future permutations of the bookshop. What was and was will be on this very site. After I escaped the forest, I told Heathcliff what I saw. After yelling at me for a solid three hours, he and I looked in the room again, and this time it was a dusty, empty room. No furniture at all. The only thing inside was a large, empty leather book with a gold symbol on the cover. That same book sits in the occult room downstairs.”
“I saw it.”
“Yes, and you saw a Victorian master bedroom, after the door opened to you of its own accord. The occult room opened for you, as well. I don’t know what it means, but I do know that the bookshop wants you to discover its secrets.” Morrie grinned, and pinched my bum. “That’s good. Secrets are fun. I’m enjoying discovering your secrets, Mina Wilde.”
I grinned back. Maybe we still had no idea why the guys were here or what kind of magic the bookshop possessed, and maybe Quoth was sort of trapped here, and maybe I was kind of sort of infatuated with all of them, but for the first time in a long time, I felt okay about the future. I felt settled. I felt like I might have the strength to deal with my eventual blindness.
In Nevermore Bookshop, I felt as though I’d come home.
TO BE CONTINUED
* * *
Every Who down in Who-ville likes Christmas a lot . . . but Heathcliff, the surly bookstore owner and fictional bad-boy, does NOT! Dive into the Nevermore holiday mystery – How Heathcliff Stole Christmas.
* * *
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Of Mice and Murder
“There are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops.”
– George Orwell, Bookshop Memories, 1936.
Chapter One
“How does it look?” Morrie yelled from his precarious position atop the wooden ladder as he held the painting of a rampaging Godzilla cat terrorizing a town filled with fleeing mice against the dark paneled wall above the staircase.
“Like the entrails of one of Grimalkin’s eviscerated mice,” Heathcliff growled.
“Meow,” Grimalkin echoed from her perch on Heathcliff’s shoulder.
“Hey,” Quoth pouted. He sat on the bottom step, his black hair hanging over his face, draping him in shadows. “I worked hard on that painting.”
“Ignore Heathcliff, he’s no bloody help.” Morrie steadied himself against the wall as the ladder wobbled. “Mina, your thoughts?”
“I think that ladder doesn’t look structurally sound.”
Morrie gritted his teeth as his arm muscles strained from holding out the canvas. “I’d like to remind you that I’m risking my beautiful neck up here for your genius plan. We don’t have to hang Quoth’s paintings all over the shop—”
“Fine. Move it over two inches so it's centered on the panel.”
Morrie leaned out, his arms stretching the last inch. I nodded and he reached for his hammer and—
Something warm streaked across my boots. A tiny white shape darted up the staircase and along the frame of the ladder. A twitching nose sniffed the air as the mouse surveyed its next move.
“Yeooow!” Heathcliff moaned as Grimalkin’s claws dug into his shoulder. She launched herself across the room, flying up the staircase and landing on the bottom rung of the ladder just as the mouse darted up Morrie’s trouser leg.
“Help, it’s in my trousers!” Morrie lurched forward, hopping from foot to foot as he swung the painting at his leg. The ladder wobbled across the step and lurched toward the edge of the staircase.
“Morrie, watch out!” I yelled. Morrie leapt off the top of the ladder just as the leg went over the edge of the step and the whole thing crashed down the stairs. The painting flew from his hand and sailed through the air.
Feathers flew in all directions as Quoth transformed into his raven. He darted out of the way just as the ladder slid over the bottom step. I sucked in my breath.
Quoth soared overhead and captured the frame between his talons just before it hit the ground. He flapped his wings and set it down against the wall.
The mouse streaked past him. Grimalkin bounced back down the stairs and bounded after it. Quoth stuck out a talon to capture the critter, but the mouse slipped through his grip and disappeared under a shelf.
Grimalkin’s front paws slid on the floorboards. She howled as she skidded into Quoth, sending the pair of them tumbling across the room in a furious ball of fur and feathers.
I raced up the staircase, my heart pounding as I wrapped my arms around Morrie, who was still frantically beating at his trouser leg.
“Get it out, get it out, get it out!” he howled.
“It’s gone.” I grabbed him under the arms and hauled him to his feet, surprised to feel wet patches under his arms. Is James Moriarty, criminal mastermind and eminent mathematics professor, afraid of a tiny mouse?
It appeared so. Morrie buried his face in my neck. “It had little scratchy legs,” he whispered into my hair.
“Don’t be so dramatic. Where’d it go?” Heathcliff wrenched Grimalkin and Quoth apart.
“Into the stacks. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. It’s just a wee mouse.” I wiped a strand of hair out of Morrie’s face. His lower lip quivered, and it was totally adorable. “Judging by the row of tiny trophies along the perch over the door, Quoth and Grimalkin will make short work of it sooner or later.”
“That was no mere mouse,” Heathcliff growled. “He is the White Fury, the Mouse of the Baskervilles, the Demon Mouse of Butcher Street.”
“Now who’s being dramatic?”
“Didn’t you read the paper?” Morrie slumped onto the front step, folding his hands over his long legs. “This little fellow has been doing the rounds of all the shops in town, chewing his way through power cords and ductwork, terrifying customers, creating health code violations. It looks like the blighter has decided to take up residence in our shop. I don’t like this. I don’t deal well with vermin.”
“A mouse made headlines in the Argleton Gazette?” Four years in New York City had made me forget the insanity that was village life.
“
Not just the headlines. Front page.” Morrie winced as he pulled himself to his feet and dusted off his trousers. “These trousers are contaminated now. I’ll have to throw them away, and they cost four hundred pounds.”
“You have four hundred pounds to spend on trousers?” I don’t think I’d ever had four hundred pounds in my life.
“Forget his bloody trousers. Look what you’ve done to my shop!” Heathcliff folded his arms and glared at the ladder, which had smashed a wooden panel and left a long scratch along the balustrade.
“It wasn’t me,” Morrie protested. “It was the mouse!”
“Meeeoooow!” howled Grimalkin.
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