1 Killer Librarian (7 page)

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured.

She looked at me. “You’re the one who found Howard, right? How did he seem? Peaceful?”

“Very.”

“I tried to make him come to bed, but he insisted on another cup of his noxious tea and a little read. He never sleeps much. I was going to try to come down and get him, but I was exhausted and fell right to sleep. I should have insisted he come
to bed.” A grimace passed over her face; then she cried, “It’s all my fault.”

I have to admit I jumped to the conclusion that she was confessing something to us, but Caldwell saw it otherwise.

“I doubt anything could have prevented his heart attack. It was inevitable,” Caldwell said.

“That’s what they all say once it’s happened. But Howard was doing so well. I had him on a really good regime and he was feeling so much better. I would never have let him come on this trip if I thought it would be too much for him. I was sure he’d live a good many more years. He deserved better.” She collapsed on the couch, her head tucked into her arms, and sobbed.

“Well, the autopsy will give you some answers,” Caldwell assured her.

“Oh, I wish they didn’t have to do an autopsy,” Annette said. “Howard would not have wanted to be dissected like one of his plants.”

“However, in cases like this, it’s usual . . .” Caldwell started to say and then thought better of it. “I’ll get some tea.” He left me in the room with a sobbing woman I didn’t even know.

I, too, wondered why Annette would not want an autopsy, but I knew some people were squeamish about such things. I’ve never been that good with
sympathy, but I figured I’d better try with Annette. I went over and patted her on the back. In a way, we had something in common—we had both lost our men. After quite a few pats, she finally sat up again, wiping her face.

I knew I should say something. “Did your husband love Winnie-the-Pooh?”

Annette looked at me as if I was some crazy old lady. “No, he hated that dopey bear. Called him Whiney the Poop. Why?”

“Oh, I just wondered.” Strange that he’d ended his life reading about the bear. This bothered me.

I went back and curled into my chair and felt like I was one of the characters in
Winnie-the-Pooh
.

How I wished I was Pooh himself, with his immeasurable optimism, but at the moment I was more like Eeyore. With my sad tail dragging behind me as I sat, not knowing what to say, I couldn’t help wondering what I was doing all by myself in this melancholy country.

ELEVEN

Biting Dogs

H
e was to get an award, and now I’ll have to get it for him. I hate that kind of thing,” Annette said. “No one knows this, but I hate flowers.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say to this revelation. “Not everyone has to like flowers,” I tried.

“Howard thought they did. He spent more time on his roses than he ever spent with me.”

Annette said no more and I excused myself and went to my room. I knew that anger was one of the steps of grieving, but I hadn’t realized it could come
so soon after a death. Annette had sounded positively mad at Howard. How strange.

I needed to get out of the B and B. Because of the rain, it would be a good day to go to the National Gallery, one of the many museums on my list.

While I wasn’t crazy about ships or trains, I wanted to see my favorite painting by Turner:
Rain, Steam and Speed
. I loved what he did with the vehicles, how weather and emotion swirled around them in his work. I had been looking forward to taking Dave to see it. I’d thought the trains and boats might grab his attention.

The museum was open until six, which would give me plenty of time to wander and have tea in their café, which had a very good reputation. Funny how the thought of tasty pastries and tea could cheer me up. I patted at my hair, swabbed some lipstick on my face, and set out to brave the London transportation system.

I took only two wrong turns in finding the tube, as they call it; then I couldn’t quite figure out how to work the machines to get my tickets. A sweet woman helped me, even though I didn’t understand a word she said. I could have sworn she was saying something about an oyster card. So much for my work on the British accent.

As I seated myself in the car, I couldn’t help
being excited about riding in the tube, surrounded by people of all skin types and hair configurations. I knew I must look quite odd to them in my royal blue raincoat with my short bobbed hair. I wondered if they could tell I was a librarian from America—or if they might possibly think I was a mystery writer.

When we were let out at the Charing Cross stop, I emerged from the underground right in front of a huge stone building on Trafalgar Square. I had to remind myself several times which way to look as I crossed the streets. No wonder the Brits literally wrote on the street, right next to the curb,
look right,
so those backward Americans wouldn’t get hit by a vehicle.

I forced myself to skip the bookstore and gift shop. The bookstore was usually where I started a tour of a museum. It drove Dave crazy that I wanted to see what I was going to see before I saw it.

The feel of the Gallery was distinctively different from that of an American museum—the rooms were somewhat small, much more filled with paintings than at home, and the walls were dark—which made it feel more like I was wandering through an art lover’s home rather than a museum. As I stepped through each room, I felt a deep intimacy with the works of art.

I walked from room to room, letting a painting
I could see through an archway pull me on. Many Madonnas gazed down from the walls—wide-faced Belgian Madonnas; sallow, long-faced Spaniard Madonnas; even the small and lovely
Madonna of the Pinks
by Raphael.

But what struck me again and again as I wandered from room to room were the dogs. They were usually tucked into the corner of a painting, under the edge of their master’s robes. They were what I would call curs. Small, odd, no-breed dogs that looked stocky and tough. You had a sense that if they decided to grab onto your ankle and shake, you might be in serious trouble.

Finally, I could wait no longer and took myself directly to the room that housed the Turners. The paintings were much smaller than I’d thought they would be. In reproductions, they seemed magnificently large. My second surprise was that this in no way diminished their power.

My third and most surprising surprise was that standing in front of the one painting I most wanted to see,
Rain, Steam and Speed,
was the one person in the whole wide world I did not want to see.

Yes, Dave the plumber had somehow managed to ferret out my favorite painting and was standing staring at it. It shouldn’t have surprised me so much. I had talked about it quite a bit as we were
planning our trip. I just hadn’t thought he was listening to me.

I was rooted in the doorway to the room, hoping that he wouldn’t turn and see me, but stapled to the spot. He was standing where I should be.

In that moment I saw Dave as if he was someone else’s boyfriend (which he was), a schlumpy American in a sodden beige raincoat, the little remaining hair he had plastered to his glistening pate. His posture was slumped—belly forward, shoulders down, chest concave. He was no prize.

I had the overwhelming urge to run at him and push him in front of Turner’s speeding locomotive, but I controlled myself and stepped back around the corner into the previous room.

As I leaned against the wall, my head was spinning. What did it mean that he was looking at my favorite painting? Was he still thinking about me? Where was his Honey? I wanted to make like the Wicked Witch of the West and melt away.

I happened to glance across the room at a large painting of a dolled-up man in a ruffled collar and his snarling dog. The dog looked so vibrant I believed it could have jumped out of the gilded frame.

In that moment I decided I would become that dog, that happy, snappy dog. I would stand my ground, wherever that happened to be.

Pushing off the wall, I turned back to the Turner room, just in time to see Dave shake his balding head at my favorite painting and walk off, disappearing through the opposite doorway. I waited a few beats to make sure he was really gone, then walked over to the Turner painting and planted myself right in front of it, ready to claim it as my own.

The locomotive was steaming toward me in diaphanous and glistening light.

TWELVE

Clotted Cream

T
he National Café was enormous—cheery and clattery. The waitstaff bustled around and people came and went with a sort of flair. A soft fog of light drifted in from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

I asked to be seated way in the back, near one of the tall windows, out of the way so I could hide behind a menu if I saw Dave or Honey coming in.

After glancing out at the drizzling rain, I gave myself over to watching the people around me: women in flowing red and gold saris, men in tweed jackets, girls with pierced eyebrows, and red-cheeked boys
in school uniforms. I kept reminding myself that I was one of them: I was now a world traveler.

I pored over the menu, wondering what I should have, knowing full well that it was the afternoon tea I would splurge on, with its finger sandwiches and its clotted cream, but I considered fish and chips and even some oddly named desserts like Eton mess and treacle tart.

The waitress came, a whip of a girl with dark black hair spiking out from a topknot on her head, and asked, “Wha’jou like?”

I said, “The full cream tea, please,” in my most perfected English accent and she did a double take.

“Cor, I could have sworn you were an American and you’d want a hamburger.”

I just dipped my head, not wanting to risk saying another word. When she scurried away, I had to give a little laugh. Maybe I did belong here after all.

Even though I hated people who did this, I decided that since I was off in a corner by myself, I would call Rosie on my cell phone. I was wondering how she was doing without me, but also, I needed to talk to someone I knew.

Since it was five in the afternoon here, it would be eleven in the morning in Minnesota and she would be at work. I dialed.

Rosie answered, “Sunshine Valley Library. How can I help you?”

“Hey, Rosie.”

She squealed when she heard my voice. It wasn’t hard to make her squeal, but I was glad to hear the sound just the same.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“London, England.”

She squealed again.

“Specifically,” I went on, “having tea in the National Gallery café. I’ve been wandering through the museum.”

“How I’d love to be there,” she whispered. “How’s it going? Did you get jet lag? Are you doing okay—by yourself and everything, I mean?”

“I guess I’m fine. It’s been a weird day. I found a dead man at the B and B last night. It’s assumed he died of natural causes and all, but I’m not sure, and it’s still very unsettling, and then I almost ran into Dave in this museum. Oh, I didn’t tell you—he and his new girlfriend were on the same plane as me. I feel jinxed.”

“Wow. You
are
having adventures, aren’t you? How did the dead man die?”

“He was older, in his seventies, and I guess his heart gave out. But he was holding a book upside down and for some reason that has me thinking
there might be more to his death than meets the eye.”

“You do love your mysteries,” she said, then asked, “What would you have said to Dave?”

“I’m not sure I would have said a thing. I feel like he doesn’t belong here. This is my country. I’m claiming it for my own.”

“Good for you.”

“Oh, the one good thing. I went out with a fellow to a pub last night.”

“You went out with a fellow? My, aren’t you the fast worker? What’s he like? Don’t you just love a British accent?”

“No, it wasn’t like that. It was only Caldwell, the man who runs the bed-and-breakfast I’m staying at. I had fun, but I also had a little too much to drink. Actually, I had gallons too much to drink.”

“Even better. Is he cute?”

I thought about Caldwell. “Yes, I’d say he’s cute. But better than that, he has a lot of books. If I had known, I wouldn’t have had to bring any.” I oddly felt uncomfortable talking about Caldwell. “How’s it going with your sci-fi guy?”