“Mina Wilde,” Hayes said. “I thought I said that I never again wanted to see you mixed up in a murder investigation.”
“You did, and I agreed. I promise this is my last one.” I opened the door. “Come in. Brenda is in the living room. She has much to tell you.”
The officers sat on the floral sofa and started their formal interview. Mrs. Ellis held Mrs. Winstone’s hand while she poured out the sad tale again. Jo pulled me into the hallway.
“Well done on figuring this out and getting a confession out of the old lady. Are you sure you aren’t interested in becoming a police detective? The work is hard and the pay is shite, but we could work together.”
I smiled. “I think I’ll leave all the dead bodies to you, if you don’t mind. Besides, I wouldn’t have gotten this far if it wasn’t for you answering all my odd questions, and Morrie and Quoth and Heathcliff being their usual selves.”
“Speaking of a team effort, what have you got to tell me about the guys?” Jo’s eyes twinkled with mischief.
“Morrie said something, didn’t he?”
“He might’ve let a few details slip.” Jo elbowed me in the ribs. “Go on, spill.”
“Um, don’t you have a scene to investigate?”
“Oh, right, that.” Jo held up her bag. “First, I hunt for evidence to convict this nice old lady. Then we talk about the handcuffs.”
Another whiff of rot wafted past my nose, worse than before. I gagged. “Can you smell that?” I sniffed again. Yup, definitely rot.
“Don’t try and change the subject—” Jo’s face wrinkled. “You’re right. There’s definitely something putrid in here. In fact, it smells distinctly like a dead body.”
A dead body… oh no.
Mrs. Winstone must’ve seen us from the living room. “You two, stop snooping in my house!” she cried out.
Suspicion flickered in Jo’s eyes. I spun around, searching the hallway for something Mrs. Winstone didn’t want us to see. My gaze landed on the linen cupboard. I leaned close to the doorframe and sniffed.
“Oooh,” I pinched my nose. “That smell is definitely coming from here.”
Mrs. Winstone leapt to her feet. “No. Don’t open that—”
I flung the door open. Something heavy slid from the gloom and tumbled across the floor. A cold arm flopped against my boots.
Even though he was older now and one side of his head was smashed in, I recognized the features from Mrs. Winstone’s photograph. I was looking at the dead body of her husband, the famous historian Harold Winstone.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Guys,” I banged the shop door open so hard it hit the bookshelf on the other side, rattling one of Quoth’s rat trophies off its tiny wall hook. “You won’t believe what just happened. Mrs. Winstone admitted to killing Ginny Button and hurting herself in order to frame Dorothy Ingram. And she had the body of her husband Harold stuffed in her linen cupboard. She’s just turned herself in to the police. But she says she didn’t kill Mrs. Scarlett so we—”
I stopped short. Heathcliff and Morrie stood in the middle of the hallway, staring at something on the floor. Heathcliff held a squabbling Grimalkin in his arms.
“What’s going on?”
“Nature has triumphed where we have failed,” Morrie declared. Quoth and I rushed over, and I followed his gaze down to the tiny shape on the carpet.
It was the little white mouse with the brown spot on his leg. The Terror of Argleton. Only it wouldn’t be terrorizing anyone again. It lay on its back, tiny feet turned toward the ceiling, completely dead.
I slapped Quoth on the shoulder. “Took you long enough.”
“Don’t look at me,” Quoth said. “I came inside and found him like this.”
“Grimalkin didn’t do it either,” Heathcliff growled as the cat slashed at his eyeballs. He dropped her and she lunged for the mouse. He shoved her away again. “I don’t want her to touch that animal. It looks like it’s been poisoned.”
Poisoned. A nagging feeling tugged at my mind, a connection between the mouse and the murders. It was the same sensation I’d had when I picked up Ginny’s necklace. I bent down and peered closely at the mouse. I caught a faint whiff of something in the air.
Garlic.
Grimalkin shoved her way past me and tapped the mouse with her paw. I scooped her up and stumbled away. “Heathcliff’s right. Don’t touch it, girl. None of you touch it.”
“Hallelujah,” Heathcliff muttered. “I’m right. Someone acknowledges my genius.”
I tossed Grimalkin into the Children’s room and slammed the door shut. Next, I went to Heathcliff’s desk and pulled out a plastic sleeve – we kept a stack of them for protecting Quoth’s art prints. I held it over the mouse and scooped the tiny body inside.
“Mina, what are you doing?” Morrie’s eyes bugged out of his head.
“Can’t you smell that?” I held the bag open and sniffed again. No, I’m definitely not imagining it. The faintest whiff of garlic, the same smell I’d caught on Mrs. Scarlett’s breath before she died. I held the bag out to him, but he wrinkled his nose and backed away.
“I’ve taken some interesting drugs in my time, but no way is my nose getting anywhere near that bag.”
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll tell you that it smells like garlic. I think this mouse has eaten arsenic.”
“That’s the poison that killed the old bint,” Heathcliff glared at me.
“Exactly. I think our little friend Terror here has had a nibble of the same supply. Which means I know who killed Mrs. Scarlett.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Can I help you?” Greta looked up as I entered the bakery.
“Hi, Greta. I just wanted to tell you that we got the mouse,” I said. “The Terror of Argleton won’t be troubling you again.”
“Danke. That rotten creature chewed a hole in one of my flour bags. It made a mess everywhere!” Greta beamed over the display. “I was afraid the health authorities would have stern words for me. Please, could I offer you a treat? It will be free for you.”
“Oh, no, that’s okay. I have somewhere I need to get to.”
“Please. I insist.”
“Oh, well…” My tastebuds watered as I took in the cakes and slices in the display cabinet. No, Mina, be strong. “Sure. One cream doughnut, please.”
Greta picked up the tongs and expertly slid one of the creamy treats into a paper bag. “Anything else?”
“Yes, actually. I was wondering, do you have any of those special gluten-free doughnuts you gave Mrs. Scarlett? I’m visiting a friend who’s a health food nut and I know she’d appreciate it.”
Greta shook her head. “Nein. I have stopped making them. They were so expensive, all those special flours! Now that Mrs. Scarlett has passed away, no one wants them any longer.”
“Fair enough. You sure treat your customers well, going above and beyond to make food everyone can enjoy. Every morning Mrs. Ellis and Mrs. Scarlett came in and bought their doughnuts. Mrs. Ellis said you even put their treats aside for them to make sure they didn’t sell out before they got there.”
“It is what you should do for loyal customers.”
“Really?” I leaned forward and glared at her. “You should poison them with arsenic?”
Greta’s smile drooped a little. “What did you say?”
I held up the doughnut. “Every morning you dusted Mrs. Scarlett’s doughnut with arsenic. It would have looked exactly like icing sugar. A little bit every day, not enough to raise suspicion. And eventually, she’d drop dead.”
“I did not do this thing,” Greta scowled. “How dare you accuse me without proof.”
“I have all the proof I need,” I held up the bag containing the dead mouse. “The Terror of Argleton was brought down by the same poison that killed Mrs. Scarlett. You told me the other day that you put out poison to trap the mouse. Your mistake was using the same poison.”
“Nonsense. I would not know the first thing about arsenic.”
“That’s a lie, too. Your brother Helmut extracts and smelts his own ore in his forge behind King’s Copse. I know that the ore around that area contains a high quantity of arsenic deposits. The arsenic would dry in the chimney of Helmut’s forge, where you could easily scrape off the powder.”
Greta’s mouth wavered. I drew the bag containing the Terror of Argleton from my purse and waved the mouse in her face.
“This mouse smells of garlic, exactly as Mrs. Scarlett smelled in the days leading up to her death. I’m taking it to the lab now, where a simple test will confirm if arsenic was the poison that killed him, and the source of that arsenic. The only thing I can’t figure out is why. Apart from as a customer, you hardly knew Mrs. Scarlett.”
“She is rotten woman!” Greta yelled. “She holds up the development because of her petty vendettas. My brother and I, we have been waiting to build our new home for four years! She wants to make us miserable because she hates the Germans. Well, I showed her. I did!”
Of course. It’s about the money Greta and Helmut would get for their tiny cottage from the developers.
“You did show her. You poisoned her.” I held up the mouse’s body. “And I’ve all the evidence I need to convict you right here.”
“Give me that mouse!” Greta lunged across the counter, grabbing a knife from the rack. I backed toward the door, but she was faster. She flung her body between me and the door and raised the knife, her eyes glinting with malicious purpose.
“You know the truth. You will go to the police. I must kill you.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Greta, no.” I held up my hands. “It’s over. You’re only going to make things worse for yourself.”
“Give me the mouse, Mina.” Greta stepped toward me.
“No.”
I stumbled backward as Greta lunged with the knife. My thigh crashed into the edge of a table. I tossed a chair into the room, trying to put obstacles between me and Greta. This is my life now, avoiding stabbings.
A dark figure came out of the kitchen. “Sister, what are you doing?”
Greta froze, knife held aloft. “Helmut?”
Helmut set down a dish on the counter and rushed around to the front. “You are threatening this woman with knife?”
“She sure is,” I piped up, inching toward the door.
“She’s going to go to the police,” Greta spat. “She will take me away from you.”
“I heard everything, your whole conversation. She says you are a murderer, but this is not true. This cannot be true.” Helmut stepped toward his sister, holding out his hand. “Give me the knife, Greta.”
“That nasty woman was ruining us! She did it deliberately because we are German. And she had the nerve to come in here and demand doughnuts made for her stupid diet!”
“I know.” Helmut shuffled closer, his eyes fixed on her. His hand didn’t waver as he reached for the knife handle. Greta’s wrist jerked, but she didn’t lower the weapon, only continued to stare at her brother with those flint eyes.
“I scraped the arsenic from the chimney in your forge,” she whispered. “I thought, a little bit on her doughnuts every day, it will make her sick, and maybe she will see reason.”
“Oh, Greta.” Helmut wrapped his arms around his sister. I backed through the door, coming to stand beside Morrie, who had his phone pressed against his ear, talking to the police.
“At this rate, we’re going to need to keep Inspector Hayes on speed dial,” I mused.
“Not if I can help it,” Morrie sighed, ringing off the call and sliding his phone back into his pocket. “I’d prefer if in the future you could keep the police as far from my affairs as possible.”
I grinned up at him. “Are these pesky murders putting the kibosh on your criminal plans?”
“It’s disgraceful,” Morrie agreed, pulling me into his chest and crushing me in his embrace. “It’s no time to be the Napoleon of Crime. I shall have to settle for being Mina Wilde’s most handsome and clever boyfriend instead.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Are you saying that with this dictionary, you were able to figure out the mouse had a particular fondness for Havarti cheese, and by using that particular cheese with the poison, you finally ended his reign of terror?” The reporter’s eyebrow rose so far up her face it practically slid off her forehead.
“I said it the first time,” Heathcliff growled, slamming Mouse Language for Humans down on the desk. “Can we take the photograph now?”
“Just one more question. What are you going to do with the reward money?”
“It’s going into a fund to help with baby Button’s care and adoption,” Mum said, tossing her hair over her shoulder like a movie star. “That was my idea, of course. I’m very community-minded. Can you take the picture from this side? Sylvia Blume tells me this is my best side.”
“Of course.” The photographer made a final adjustment to his setup and clicked the shutter. Mum beamed from over Heathcliff’s shoulder as the photographer snapped the picture. On the desk in front of them stood stacks of pet language dictionaries, with a handwritten sign proudly displaying the price (which I noted Mum had raised by two quid because of her new ‘social proof’).
“This is going in tomorrow’s paper, under a big headline, ‘The Terror of Argleton Is No More,’” the journalist said, snapping her notebook shut. “Thank you so much for your time.”
“Do you have any of those books for dogs?” the photographer asked, pawing through the stack. “I’d love to know what my little Binky is barking about.”
“Of course.” Mum handed him the dictionary, elbowing Heathcliff out of the way in her haste to get to the register. “Now, will that be cash or credit card?”
Heathcliff rolled his eyes. I stifled a laugh as I watched the scene. Of course Mum got her way in the end. She’d weaseled into life at Nevermore Bookshop.
Like someone else I know, Quoth teased inside my head. I glanced over to where he sat on top of the armadillo, and shook my fist at him.
It was two days after Helmut convinced Greta to turn herself in to the police. A quick talk with Sylvia Blume had cleared up the remaining threads of the mystery. Her husband had died from eating hemlock, but it was a terrible accident. They’d foraged for wild celery, which they’d both eaten in a stew that evening. The next day, numbness crept from her husband’s toes through his body, eventually reaching his heart. Sylvia hadn’t eaten as much of the stew, and she’d recovered. However, what hadn’t recovered was her reputation. She was already the local ‘witchy woman,’ and now her husband had died of poison. Her herbalism business dried up overnight. She changed her name, moved to Argleton, and made a new start for herself.
Sylvia explained to the police and to us that Ginny had discovered her true identity by accident while digging for more dirt on Dorothy Ingram. She’d been helping Harold Winstone with his hospital history project, which was how they met, and so she had access to all the old hospital records, including death certificates.
Sylvia also explained that Mrs. Winstone had purchased one of her walking sticks a couple of weeks ago as a gift to Harold for when he returned from a research trip to London. Analysis by Jo revealed the dried blood on the stick belonged to Harold. It was the murder weapon, which Brenda Winstone had also used to beat herself and then thrown in the bushes in the hope it would incriminate Dorothy Ingram when the police discovered it. Since they overlooked her carefully-planted evidence, she’d had to direct me toward it.
Jo said Mrs. Winstone would be unlikely to go to jail. Her lawyer would be arguing for insanity, and the jury would be sympathetic, given her age and state of mind.
As for Greta, she wouldn’t get off so lightly. A search of her home revealed some containers and equipment with an arsenic residue. The chimneys in Helmut’s forge were scraped clean, and the collected powder compared to the poison found in Mrs. Scarlett and the Terror of Argleton. They matched perfectly.
That was that. Anoth
er mystery solved, another couple of murderers brought to justice. All in a day’s work at Nevermore Bookshop.
If only we were closer to solving the biggest mystery of all. The mystery I cared about most, because it involved three people I adored. Why did Nevermore Bookshop bring fictional characters to life? What did the time-traveling room upstairs have to do with it? And why did Mr. Simson instruct the guys to protect me, and from what?
I slipped into the shadows of the first floor, clicked on my newest purchase – a fuzzy Snoopy lamp with a glowing red nose – and returned to the stack of books I was shelving in the Aviation section. I nearly reached the end of my stack when a noise behind me made me look up.
At first, I couldn’t see anything amiss. No one was up here snapping pictures of book covers to buy on their e-reader later, no kids climbed up the bookshelves, no cheeky shop cats darted between the stacks. “Hello? Is someone there?”
No one answered. I squinted into the room beyond. In the middle of the floor sat a small leatherbound book.
My skin prickled. The air in the room chilled, raising goosepimples along my arms.
Did one of the guys leave it here or something? I hadn’t left that book there, and it was a weird place for it to have fallen – the shelves weren’t close enough for it to have toppled into the center of the room. It sat at an exact right angle to the door, facing me so I couldn’t help but notice it.
It looked… as if it had been placed there.
But by whom? And why?
“Hello?” I called again, crawling across the floor on my hands and knees to stare down at the book. The prickling along my spine increased as my fingers traced a stamped design in the leather. The same design on the cover of that empty book in the occult room. The spine had been hand-stitched, and the edges of the pages were rough and yellowed. This book was old. Antiquarian. Maybe valuable.
Welcome to Nevermore Bookshop Page 42