How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (36 page)

I explained to Mrs. Malloy that I had merely been keeping her company in the queue and that it was time for me to assist my fellow library members in seeing that the refreshments would be ready when Karisma finished autographing. Far from begging me not to leave her, she displayed no emotion whatsoever, which is more than could be said of me when I bumped into Sylvia Babcock a couple of seconds later and saw who was standing next to her.

“Gerta! What made you decide to come?”

“This morning I am making strudel in the kitchen at the cottage, Frau Haskell”—she stood with her braided head held high and a glow on her face that could not be purchased at any cosmetics counter—“and I know there has to be more to life than standing in one place. The tears they are all used up. I have to accept the truth that my marriage is over and put Ernst behind me. But before that is possible, I must to face the memory of him one last time. To see him in his new life”—she spread her hands—“that is too hard, and looking at photographs is not enough.”

“So you decided to take a close-up look at Karisma who,” I added for Sylvia’s benefit in case she wasn’t in the know, “reminds you so much of your husband. That was very brave of you.”

“It is not so hard after all.” Gerta smiled, showing dimples I had never before seen. “Not nearly so bad as what Frau Babcock suffers, and yet she is here.”

“I had to get out of the house!” Not one of Sylvia’s pin curls was out of place, and there wasn’t a crease in her green-and-white-striped frock despite the crush of people, but her voice trembled on the brink of hysteria. “I thought I’d feel better if I was around people, but half the time I can’t stop shaking. I keep hearing people talking about it—how Albert died so soon after we got married … I don’t know how much more I can take without going completely to pieces and shouting at them to shut up!”

“People can be insensitive. Why don’t I go and get you a glass of lemonade?” I suggested, and hurried towards the
door that opened into the little corridor with its staircase leading up to the meeting room. In my haste I barely acknowledged handsome, silver-haired Lionel Wiseman’s greeting. Nor did I waste much time on a double take when I noticed Mrs. Swabucher, looking quite smart in a pale rose suit, standing up against the fiction stacks in conversation with Brigadier Lester-Smith. So he had changed his mind about coming! Splendid. But knowing him to be a man who would strive to do his duty under the most difficult of circumstances, I wasn’t greatly surprised.

When I was halfway up the stairs I saw Mr. Poucher start down from the top and in passing him—something that Mrs. Malloy, who was given to her superstitious moments, had told me brought the worst of bad luck—I asked him if he had remembered to bring back the coffeepot cord.

“It’s in my raincoat pocket,” he muttered as he rushed down the last of the steps. “I don’t have time to dilly-dally, Mrs. Haskell, I just looked out the window and saw Heathcliff sitting next to the dustbins outside the back door.”

“You mean he followed you here?” My knees trembled out of all proportion to this latest doggy escapade as I leaned over the banister. And in a weak attempt at hiding my ridiculous fear that Heathcliff had all along been an emissary from beyond the grave, I said I hoped Mrs. Poucher had put him in a taxi rather than let him make the long walk from the farm.

“I reckon she purposely forgot to feed the old lad.” Her son’s bitterness wafted up to me in almost tangible form, rather like stale air released from a room that has been locked up for too many years. But seconds later sunlight—along with Heathcliff—rushed into the corridor when Mr. Poucher opened the door. To give credit where due, the dog restrained himself from raucous barking. Indeed, he did no more than whimper piteously as he wound himself around his master’s legs.

“Do I have your solemn promise to behave yourself if I let you come upstairs with me?” Upon receiving a woof of acquiescence from the black beast, Mr. Poucher’s glum expression softened. He looked up at me. “If you’ll agree to keep mum, Mrs. Haskell, there’s none as will be the
wiser if I tuck him away behind that little cupboard in the corner of the reading room.”

“My lips are sealed,” I assured him, having fought off my attack of silliness. “But if Mrs. Harris finds him, we’ll all be in the soup.”

Fortunately for Heathcliff, we encountered no problem in spiriting him upstairs. Sir Robert and Mrs. Dovedale were positioned squarely in front of the long table that was laid out as if in readiness for a wedding banquet. But they posed no problem, being locked in an embrace that showed no sign of unclenching as Mr. Poucher and Heathcliff tiptoed across the reading room. It was as well, however, that they acted speedily. Within seconds of the dog disappearing behind the cabinet, on the top of which lay Mrs. Swabucher’s feather boa, the kissing couple was jolted apart by the sound of footsteps thundering up the stairs. Before Mr. Poucher and I had finished exchanging a relieved glance, people poured into the room as if eager to seize it for king and country. And I could see that the corridor was jampacked with those who had not made the first rush to the stairs.

For at least ten minutes I was kept occupied alongside Mrs. Dovedale pouring lemonade until the last jug ran dry. The first person to whom I handed a cup was Mrs. Swabucher. I asked her if she would like an extra one for Karisma.

“Better not, Giselle; I’m not sure where he is.” She attempted a smile. “And by the time I find him, I expect I would have spilled it in this tight squeeze.”

“The turnout has been spectacular and”—I lowered my voice—“despite what I said this morning, I am still very grateful to you and Karisma for making it possible to raise the money for Miss Bunch’s statue.”

“That’s nice to know, dear.” There was a constraint to her manner, but it was for Mrs. Swabucher to know and me to guess whether that was due to my failure to live up to expectation in bringing off a meeting with Gladstone Spike, or because she remained uncomfortable at having been thrust into another meeting with Brigadier Lester-Smith. As she was about to depart with her cup of lemonade, I told her that her feather boa was on the cabinet in the corner.

“I don’t see it, Giselle”—her eyes followed my gaze—“perhaps someone moved it out of the way; I’ll go and look.”

“Good luck!” I called after her, and slipped in a silent prayer, while pouring more lemonade for women who could only gasp “Karisma!”, that Heathcliff had not reared up from behind the cabinet to snatch up the downy pink boa in his capacious jaws and retreat with it into his lair. But I was probably worrying unnecessarily. Mrs. Swabucher would find her prized piece of apparel safe and sound. Poor visibility was the problem. With the room ready to burst at the seams, I got the feeling that I was looking through a kaleidoscope. Objects and people became triangular quivers of stained glass colours that shifted by the split second into different patterns. I found myself straining to piece together a familiar face, but after a few minutes even the people standing right in front of me, with their hands out for lemonade, became the nose or the eye of some patchwork entity.

Ben suffers from claustrophobia. We don’t talk about it very often and it took me several minutes to realize what was wrong with me. Just at the moment when I decided it was time to escape to a place where oxygen was not in critically short supply, the room exploded into a cacophony of undeniably canine barks. And two life forms came simultaneously into focus. One was Heathcliff, who leapt onto the table, knocking the lemonade jug out of my hands and trampling cream cakes and sandwiches under his giant paws. The other was Mrs. Harris, the kamikaze librarian, who demanded in a voice that rose above the dog’s unearthly howls to know who was responsible for this outrage.

I was surprised that Mr. Poucher had not rushed forward to soothe his pet and the furious woman. Was it possible that he was out in the corridor, so engrossed in conversation that he had failed to hear the uproar? Feeling it incumbent on me, as his accomplice, to find him before Heathcliff took a chunk out of the dragon lady or vice versa, I edged away from her glare and slipped through cracks in the crowd to reach the doorway. There I ran smack into Sylvia Babcock. And after apologizing for not looking where I was going, I felt compelled to chew up
another moment or two telling her I was sorry I had forgotten to bring her the glass of lemonade I had promised.

Sounding painfully out of breath, she grabbed at my arm. “It doesn’t matter, oh, God, my heart’s beating so fast, I’m seared it’s going to explode. That horrible dog! I never wanted to see him again, but here he is—appearing out of nowhere and howling in that bone-chilling way as if … as if he’s seen a ghost!”

“Sylvia,” I said with all the conviction I could muster, “the dog must have heard something—an ordinary, everyday sound that scared him, perhaps a door slamming or a floorboard creaking. An animal’s ears are so much sharper than ours. Listen! He’s quieting down and he’ll be even better when I find Mr. Poucher, who very kindly gave him a home.”

“Gave him a home after I killed my husband, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” Sylvia’s voice faded into a whimper. “It’s what everybody is thinking?”

“That’s rubbish,” I assured her. “You’ve got to stop blaming yourself for getting upset when the dog raced out of the house with the roast beef. If the same thing had happened to me and Ben was in the house, I would have yelled at him to chase down our Sunday dinner. But I do see it’s not a good idea for you to be anywhere near Heathcliff; so why don’t you come out into the corridor with me while I look for Mr. Poucher?”

Sylvia did trail after me for a few yards, but when I saw no sign of my quarry and said I would go downstairs to look for him, she huddled up next to Gerta, who was standing under a picture of the librarian whom Miss Bunch had replaced decades ago. What had caused Heathcliff to practically leap out of his fur? I wondered. Was it possible he had seen something—or
someone
—who was not of our time? Sylvia, I was certain, had been thinking of the late Mr. Babcock, but … no, I resolutely set my foot on the bottom step, I would not allow myself to sink back into the bog of superstitious folly.

A courageous decision which did not save me from leaping a foot in the air when Eudora came out from the toilet to the left of the staircase. Our vicar was as white as the walls and her eyes had a glassy stare as she stood
plucking at a loose thread on her pink cardigan. She was trembling.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Did you hear all that noise upstairs and panic that something was dreadfully afoul? It was nothing,” I assured her. “Mr. Poucher smuggled Heathcliff into the reading room and the dog went a bit wild, that’s all.”

“No, that isn’t all.” My friend drew a ragged breath. “Please give me a moment, I’ve been having trouble getting air into my lungs. I suppose it’s the shock, although a crisis doesn’t usually take me this way. Ellie, there’s been a terrible accident. And I can’t think of any way to break the news to you gently.
Karisma is dead!
”

“That can’t be!” I staggered backwards and leaned against the wall facing her.

“He’s lying on the library floor.”

“Then he’ll be meditating.” My voice spiralled around my head. “People who are really good at it go into a deep trance state.”

“There is no mistake.” Eudora pressed a hand to her forehead. “I came downstairs after looking for Karisma and not finding him in the reading room or in the upper corridor. I intended to tell him in a straightforward manner why Gladstone had not wanted him to do the cover for
A Knight to Remember
and that I resented his attempt to put pressure on my dear and gentle husband. But I didn’t get to speak to him. I found him sprawled within a few feet of the desk where he had been signing books. That bust of Shakespeare was also on the floor. It must have fallen off the wall bracket and struck him on the head.”

“You’re saying it was an accident?” I stammered.

“Ellie”—Eudora took a halting step towards me—“what else could it have been?”

“Murder!!!”

The voice rained bitter anguish down upon us, and we looked up to see Mrs. Swabucher sway in slow motion against the banister before crumbling into a merciful swoon.

Mrs. Mailoy said that even in death Karisma posed like a dream and someone should take a photo to make sure he got to be on one final book cover.” My voice broke as I looked up at my husband, and he pressed a glass of brandy into my hand. “He did look incredibly fabulous, Ben. It was hard to believe he had not been told to lie on the floor with his hair spread around him like a river soaking up sunlight while the camera closed in for an adoring farewell.”

“Drink up, sweetheart.” Ben joined me on the sofa. I had cried so much since getting home that my face was damp from forehead to chin. It was seven o’clock in the evening, but I couldn’t face the thought of food, even though I knew a sandwich or two would do more than a brandy to buck me up.

“I’m sorry to be carrying on like this.” I risked spilling the glass when I leaned back against the cushions and closed my eyes. “Perhaps I should go and telephone Mrs. Swabucher at the Hollywood Hotel, the one that opened recently after being converted from the Wisemans’ former home. I keep thinking that had I tried a little harder, I might have been able to persuade her to come back here for the night.”