Murder Is a Must Read online

  We also needed an exhibition manager.

  When I’d announced my firm intention to go forward with the exhibition, Mrs. Woolgar acted as if I were mad as a box of frogs. The board of the First Edition Society lined up on their usual sides. Mrs. Jane Arbuthnot and Ms. Maureen Frost stood with the secretary—although I sensed Maureen edging toward the fence. On my side were Mrs. Sylvia Moon and Mrs. Audrey Moon, who were both in their eighties and game for almost anything, and my good friend Adele Babbage—by far the youngest board member. In Lady Fowling’s later years, she and Adele had enjoyed an affectionate mother-daughter-like relationship—or more accurately, considering the decades of difference in their ages, grandmother-granddaughter. This was something Adele had never known growing up. But on the subject of an exhibition, even Adele thought I might be doing too much too soon.

  At least they’d all agreed to attend a meeting about the exhibition, and so I’d scheduled one for the next afternoon—Wednesday. When it came to meetings at Middlebank, the agenda hardly mattered to the board members—they looked forward to a jolly good time with tea and pastries and the sherry decanter on the table. It reminded them, so I was told, of when Lady Fowling was alive and they spent many an afternoon laughing and sharing stories either in the library at Middlebank or at the Royal Crescent Hotel.

  Tomorrow afternoon’s board meeting would be my second go-round on the exhibition. The Society was on a roll, and we needed to follow up the salons with the announcement of an exciting event in order to keep everyone’s attention. I admitted—with great reluctance—that it was possible I still felt the need to prove myself. I’d got the job as curator when the Society had desperately needed someone—anyone—to fill the role, and I’d not yet shaken the thought that I had been only a stopgap measure.

  Work had to begin immediately—it would take a year to mount a show of even a modest size, and when I considered the scope of the undertaking, I couldn’t breathe. Scheduling enough time for move-in and buildup, handling of delicate books, protective lighting, promoting the event through the right channels, coming up with ideas for the actual displays—signage that read Here’s a Book wouldn’t cut it—those jobs were only the tip of the iceberg.

  Val was in on the planning, of course, and he brought with him the backing of Bath College, the adult education school in the city. We were a good team, Val and I—in the business sense as well as personally, although that side of the relationship hadn’t moved quick enough for either of us. Still, his support meant the world to me.

  But we couldn’t publicly announce the exhibition until we had secured a venue. I was reminded of this now as I walked down Julian Road and stopped alongside the Assembly Rooms. The building’s entrance did not face the road, but sat at a ninety-degree angle, the doors opening onto a large courtyard where tour and school groups could gather as they waited to go in. A popular and exquisitely kept historical venue, but the spaces within—the Great Octagon, for example—were hired for weddings and receptions and the odd two-day trade show. It was the same all over Bath. We needed a place that could accommodate us for a two-week run. We needed the Charlotte.

  The Charlotte sat just across the road from the Assembly Rooms and at the corner of a terrace block. It had been created by combining two houses. On the ground floor, the wall between had been knocked down, providing a comfortably large event space with offices up on the first floor. Parts of the second house—the corner one—had not been refurbished.

  The exhibition area had been restored in the Georgian style so loved in Bath. When I had worked at the Jane Austen Centre, we’d held a week-long show there—Jane and Siblings: The Austens at Home— and so I knew the place well. For a long-term event, it was perfect. Sadly, it was perfect for many other organizations—its calendar booked solid for the next three years. Unavailability only made it all the more desirable.

  And so, instead of the Charlotte, I had an appointment to look at rooms with an address along the Lower Borough Walls, above a mobile-phone shop.

  Turning my back on the Charlotte, I hurried along St. Andrews Terrace before dashing across George Street and striding down Milsom into Union Street—I always made better time going downhill. As I passed Lush, my phone rang, and I saw it was a call from my daughter.

  “Dinah, sweetie, how are you?”

  “Hi, Mum, just running to class, but I wanted to find out about Gran’s appointment with the surgeon yesterday.”

  “Promising. He said she’d definitely walk better when he finished with her. She’s down for surgery.” My mum had been in a car crash almost three years ago. She now used a walking frame in her flat, and a wheelchair elsewhere. She’d had a fall in November—no broken bones, but her doctor had referred her to an orthopedic surgeon, and he had given her hope. “But it’s not life-threatening, so she’s on the bottom of the list. How are you? Your job isn’t distracting you from classes, is it?”

  My daughter, just shy of her twenty-third birthday, studied the history of everyday life at Sheffield. We never brought up what job she might get when she graduated—after all, what sort of a role model was I with a degree in nineteenth-century literature? And yet I had turned out all right. Finally, at age forty-five.

  “It’s only pub work, Mum, and it’s only every other weekend—studies are fine.” I heard a nanosecond of hesitation—a length of time only a mother could detect. “Dad says he can get me on answering phones at some car-hire business, and I’d get double the pay.”

  “Did he?” I asked brightly, silently cursing my ex.

  “Apparently, he knows someone.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t want to give up your pub job before you knew for certain he could do that, would you?”

  “You’re right,” she said with relief. “I’ll stick with this. He does get a wild hair sometimes.”

  With my job as curator and Dinah’s ever-so-part-time pub work, I’d only just got on an even keel financially. Now, with the promise of my mum’s leg being sorted, came the realization that although the cost of Mum’s surgery would be covered, there would be other related expenses. I didn’t need Roger’s weak, empty promises to lead our daughter astray.

  “Look, sweetie, I’d better go. I’ve an appointment and just arrived.”

  “An appointment with Val?” she asked, a bit of tease in her voice.

  “No, it’s work. Although—”

  “I’m off, Mum. Class.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I made short work of viewing the potential venue—narrow stairs for access and a decidedly dreary look to its two small rooms, which showed remnants of a previous exhibition on the history of felt markers. No storage, no kitchen, no loo—no thanks.

  Leaving the Lower Borough Walls behind me, I heaved several huge sighs. I needed something concrete to present to the board the next afternoon, and not only about the venue. What of an exhibition manager?

  “What about you?” my mum had asked when I’d told her my idea.

  “Me?” I laid my hand on my chest and felt my heart race. “Manage the entire exhibition—design and all? No, Mum, I couldn’t do that. We need a proper person. Someone with qualifications and experience.”

  Mounting this sort of show was a job for a professional with specific talents. I, as curator, would be there every step of the way, of course, and perhaps someday in the future I could do it myself, but not now. Lady Fowling: A Life in Words was too important for a first-timer. A truly impressive event required a person who could see a space, know the material, and build a visual experience that would draw the public into Lady Fowling’s world.

  Exhibition managers were thin on the ground, I can tell you that. I had an appointment with one the next day here in Bath—Zeno Berryfield, whose company was called Make an Exhibition of Yourself!—the exclamation point his. I swallowed hard, hoping and praying he hadn’t been the one to put on the felt-marker event.
/>   When I turned up Bath Street—quiet and empty—my spirits rose. There was Val standing in the shadow of the colonnade with his hands stuck in the pockets of his duffel coat. I hurried over, and he wrapped the coat round me as my arms circled his waist.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I said.

  The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Oh, I’m all for that.”

  We kissed and kissed again, the warmth of his lips spreading down to my toes. I drew one arm out and brushed my fingers through his chestnut hair.

  “I could use a bit of good news,” I said. “Do you have any? Doesn’t matter what it’s about—has one of your students been offered a publishing deal, or is Waitrose carrying a new line of ready meals?”

  “As it happens,” he said, “I do have good news. I’ve booked us a place for next weekend.”

  It was an announcement of some import. Val and I had met in October, and there had been no denying our mutual attraction, but our timing wasn’t the best. Life had intervened—beginning with my daughter, who arrived in Bath unannounced for a week’s visit. To say we were surprised would be an understatement. I had invited Val to dinner that evening, but five minutes after he arrived, we had decided dinner could wait. Two minutes after that, there was Dinah, waiting downstairs at the door.

  The three of us had shared the lasagna—yes, it was from Waitrose—and Val had left soon after, wanting to give us mother-daughter time. Dinah had thought him sweet and “quite taken with you, Mum.”

  After that week, Val’s twin twenty-four-year-old daughters arrived for a visit—I had yet to meet them, because my mum had had her fall and I had gone to Liverpool for a week, followed by Christmas and all that entailed, and then Dinah had come back to Bath for a few days—the obstacles to getting on with my relationship with Val seemed never ending. Finally, we’d given up.

  Not totally, but we’d decided to act like adults and plan a proper weekend away, just the two of us. Things like this mean more at our age, and so with the prospect of a romantic getaway, we remained celibate. And frustrated.

  We had redirected our energies into collaboration of another kind, focusing first on the salons, and now, the exhibition. And we were doing all right. Fine. After all, that weekend was less than a fortnight away.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, thrilled that I’d had no hand in the planning.

  “Woolacombe—North Devon.”

  I gasped. “Woolacombe?”

  “We’ve got a room on the second floor of the hotel that looks out to the seafront.”

  The seaside—January or no—was where I most wanted to be, and he knew it. I kissed him again. “Did you do that for me?” I asked. “A deluxe room?”

  His green eyes twinkled. “Yes,” he said, and I laughed. “And because if we can look out at the sea any old time we want, perhaps we can spend a bit more of the weekend in the room.”

  For a moment, we looked deep into each other’s eyes, and then it became too much.

  “Coffee.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Morning coffee in the Pump Room, with its high ceilings and white tablecloths, was the perfect place to calm my nerves about that evening’s salon while, at the same time, I came to terms with my disappointing venue search. Our orders arrived and we dived in—Val spread brown sauce on his bacon roll while I slathered my Bath bun with cinnamon butter. I licked a finger and, while I stirred the foam down in my cappuccino, described the space above the mobile-phone shop.

  “So,” I said, “we can tick that place off the list.”

  “Admin at the college regrets turning Wood Hall into offices now.”

  Val had done his part to search for a venue, and we had both come up empty-handed. But I pushed those troubles to the side. For the moment, I wanted to think happy thoughts.

  “Which author should I read next?”

  I had asked Val, a writing teacher who specialized in genre fiction, to guide me in my quest to learn about the Golden Age of Mystery authors and their detectives.

  “Well, you’ve got Christie under your belt,” he said. “You might move on to Sayers.”

  “Ah, Dorothy L. Sayers—her sleuth is Lord Peter Wimsey. On one of my paperbacks, he’s wearing a monocle.”

  “His trademark.”

  “Why? Does he have poor eyesight, or is it because he wants to look like a toff?”

  “Or could there be another reason?”

  “Hmm,” I said, picking up the second half of my Bath bun. “Yet another mystery to solve.”

  When we were nearly finished with coffee, our phones pinged with texts. As Val dug in his coat pocket, I saw my message.

  “What?” I fumbled my password, hurrying to reread what I hoped I hadn’t seen.

  Val got to his message first—but it was the same as mine. “Bloody hell,” he said.

  The text came from Arthur Fish.

  Paddington Station shut down. I don’t drive. Don’t think I’ll make it for this evening.

  2

  Shut down?” I shouted. Heads turned, and I dropped my voice to a furious whisper. “They can’t shut down an entire train station. Can they? Wait, you don’t think it’s a—”

  A man at the next table leaned over. “Electrics.”

  “Sorry?” Val asked.

  “No trains out of Paddington, because a high-speed test train damaged overhead power cables.” The man lifted his phone. “I’ve got the National Rail alert app.”

  Val and I looked up the news on our own mobiles. I couldn’t take it in. No trains, no speaker. Our inaugural literary salon canceled? With a lurch, my mind began moving again.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked. “Who is next week, I can’t remember? Could we switch?”

  “It’s the American on Poe.”

  One of the international members of the Society—and the only week she would be in the country. “No, that won’t work.”

  Silence again. I swallowed hard against a rising sea of tears and slapped my hand on the table. “Well, we’re not canceling. We must begin as we intend to continue—with quality lectures or readings that suit our audience and our mission. I don’t suppose we can ask Maureen Frost to act out all the parts in The Mousetrap?”

  “She’d be dead keen on that,” Val said, and I saw his green eyes harden to jade. “No, we’ll book her for another time. This evening, we are going to hear Arthur Fish. I’ll go fetch him.”

  “You what?”

  “What can it be—two hours there and two back? He lives in Richmond—at least it isn’t central London. Look, it’s eleven now. I’ll drive up and collect him and bring him down, and we’ll arrive in plenty of time. I’d already arranged for another lecturer to take my afternoon class, I might as well put myself to good use.”

  “Val, no,” I said, “that would be a terrible day for you.” I frowned. “I should go with you. And I would do, but . . .” I glanced at my watch. “What time can you leave?”

  * * *

  * * *

  With Paddington Station closed, hundreds of thousands of people who would normally take a train turned to cars, clogging not only the Great West Road into and out of London—but also every other major and minor route. It took Val three hours to get to Richmond, and after a quick turnaround, he and Mr. Fish started the journey back through thick traffic.

  I had spent the first half of my afternoon unable to settle on anything, while attempting to keep a positive outlook as I made pointless trips up to the library and down again, talking to myself. Bunter sat on the Chippendale chair on the first-floor landing—out of the fray—and watched. Twice Mrs. Woolgar came out of her office, thinking I had spoken to her.

  I had to admit, she was taking this turn of events better than I thought she would. “Ms. Burke, what else can we do but wait and hope Mr. Moffatt and Mr. Fish arriv
e in time?” she asked. “Now I believe I’ll go down to my flat and rest. You’ll let me know if you hear anything—one way or the other?”

  “They’ll be here, Mrs. Woolgar, I know they will.”

  Val rang at four o’clock when they stopped for coffee at a roadside service on this side of Reading.

  “He’s got two cartons of books,” he said in a quiet voice. “I don’t know how he was going to manage those on the train.”

  More to the point, who did Fish think would buy them all?

  * * *

  * * *

  I went up to dust the shelves in the library, knowing they didn’t need it, and then distracted myself by admiring the many different editions Lady Fowling had acquired. Perhaps I would read the first page of a few of them—that would keep my mind off Val and Arthur Fish and the long journey from Richmond to Bath.

  Bunter busied himself with the contents of the coal bucket while I shifted the short library ladder over and climbed its two steps to reach the top shelf but one, where I found part of the Dorothy L. Sayers collection. I ran my finger along the spines and thought yes, Lord Peter Wimsey would be my next read—and why not a book from our own library instead of one of the musty old paperbacks I’d gleaned from charity shops around town? I skimmed the titles in front of me. Here were three editions of Strong Poison, each with a different cover. Farther along the shelf, The Nine Tailors—in English and the German translation, Die Neun Schneider. Next, Murder Must Advertise. Being careful not to pull it out by its spine, I slid this one off the shelf. It had a yellow dust jacket—many Sayers books did—and at the top of the cover in words almost as large as the title itself: 4’6 Cheap Edition on thin paper.