The Liar in the Library

FOURTEEN

A few years before, Carole would have known nothing of what went on in Fethering Library. But, thanks to the enrolment of her granddaughter, it had become a familiar venue for her. And Carole herself had become a sufficiently familiar face for her to be greeted by name when she arrived there the following day.

The greeter that Saturday morning was Eveline Ollerenshaw, who was standing by the issue desk, performing some vague function Di Thompson had invented to give her the illusion of usefulness. (Evvie didn’t actually check the books out; that was now done automatically.)

‘Carole, how nice to see you. Not got Lily with you then?’

‘Not today.’

‘Because you often bring her on Saturdays. For all the children’s activities.’ The noise level in the library indicated that those activities had already started.

‘Yes, I sometimes do. But she’s with her parents in London today.’

‘Nice for you to have her sometimes, though, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And of course she’s got a little sister now, hasn’t she? Remind me what her name is?’

‘Chloe.’

‘Lovely names, both of them. Of course, I didn’t have kiddies myself. Gerald and I had hoped that one day … but it just didn’t happen. I suppose—’

Carole was not in the mood for one of Evvie’s monologues. ‘Is Di about?’ she asked crisply.

‘Oh, she was over by the …’ The old woman looked across the library and, just at that moment, Di Thompson emerged from the staff room, pushing a trolley. Carole made a fairly polite escape from Eveline Ollerenshaw, and greeted the librarian.

‘Haven’t seen you for a while, Carole,’ said Di Thompson. Her dark hair looked even shorter in the daylight. On the sloping shelves of her trolley, rows of books stood up like bricks on a builder’s hod. She started to check through them as she too observed, ‘No Lily?’

‘Not with me today.’

‘Ah. Well, as you see, she’s missing the usual Saturday morning chaos.’ Di gestured across to the children’s section, from where enough noise emanated to destroy forever that cartoon image of librarians always having fingers to their lips and saying, ‘Ssh.’ Children of all sizes, monitored by parents lying uncomfortably on the floor or perched on tiny chairs, scampered about. One or two sat unmoving, immersed in their storybooks. Others were being encouraged by a couple of twenty year olds to make face masks out of paper plates. The white surfaces were decorated with scribbles in coloured crayon, stickers and bits of post-Christmas tinsel attached by glue-stick.

‘They seem to be having fun,’ Carole observed.

‘Oh yes. Do you mean the kids or the grown-ups?’

‘Both.’

They looked across. The twenty year olds had both donned masks and were improvising some kind of slapstick routine which their junior audience was finding hysterical.

Carole grinned. ‘Were such activities part of the job description when those two applied to become librarians?’

‘They’re not librarians. Sadly, I haven’t got enough staff to do that kind of thing. We can just about manage running the children’s story-time sessions on Wednesdays, but otherwise we have to rely on volunteers – God bless them.’

‘Ah.’

‘People like Evvie.’

Di Thompson didn’t put any critical intonation into her words, but Carole knew exactly what was meant. ‘Ah,’ she said.

The librarian pointed back to the children’s area. ‘Those two deserve some kind of sainthood, or a medal at the very least. Both primary school teachers. Not content with spending their working weeks corralling the little bastards, they actually volunteer to come here and do more of the same on their Saturday mornings.’

‘You’re lucky to have them.’

‘You can say that again.’ All the time she was talking, the librarian was working, picking up books from the trolley, checking them through and, according to their condition, placing them on one or other of the lower shelves. ‘Without my volunteers and my part-timers,’ she went on, ‘this place’d close even sooner than it will do anyway.’

‘Is it going to close?’ asked Carole.

Di Thompson shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Government cuts are hitting all the local amenities. And libraries are currently in a pretty vulnerable state. Borrowings down, people find it so easy to read e-books or order real books on Amazon. Then kids spend all their time playing computer games rather than reading, people who used to rely on the library for computer services seem mostly now to have their own laptops or tablets. The reference information we used to provide is all available at the touch of a button from Wikipedia … I could go on. The effects of all that are already being felt – even here in West Sussex. In other parts of the country there are a lot of libraries reducing their opening hours, stopping their mobile library services, some closing down completely. And a few continuing as community libraries, all run by volunteers. It’s not a great time for us.’

‘But libraries are part of our heritage,’ said Carole piously. ‘There are people whose entire education has come from their public library. Surely they can’t be allowed just to disappear? Somebody must do something about it.’

‘What, though? And, more importantly, who? Who’s going to do something about it?’ Di Thompson looked Carole straight in the eye. ‘It’s the old “use it or lose it” syndrome. And I often wonder whether the people who do say how terrible it is, who write letters to the papers saying we mustn’t lose our libraries, saying that an efficient library service is an essential part of a civilized society – do they actually use their local branch as much as they should?’

Carole looked away. She didn’t know whether Di was actually getting at her or not, but she still felt guilty.

‘We keep trying to drum up more interest in this place, but it’s an uphill struggle. Special events, all that …’

‘Library talks?’ Carole suggested, seeing a way of getting to the subject she really wanted to talk about.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Di. ‘They can be quite popular, but the trouble is, it’s always the same people who attend. The Fethering stalwarts, mostly female, mostly over seventy. Very loyal, but as they die off, who’s going to replace them? What I do these days is rather similar to being a vicar, watching my congregation slowly slipping away to nothing.’ As she spoke, her hands were still busily sorting the books.

Carole decided to take the direct approach. ‘And does a library talk attract more interest if the evening ends in a murder?’

Di Thompson let out a small, sharp laugh. ‘Well, it would appear to, yes. Certainly had more people joining the library this week than we have had for some time. I think that’s maybe something to do with them wanting to visit the scene of the crime.’

‘And was this the scene of the crime?’ asked Carole.

It had been a half-hearted attempt to see whether Di might reveal that she knew more detail about Burton St Clair’s death than the rest of Fethering. As such, it failed. The librarian replied, ‘The scene of the crime was actually in the car park. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard that.’

Carole covered up. ‘Oh, there’s been so much gossip in Fethering during the last week, it’s hard to pick out the truth from the speculation.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Di Thompson let out a jaded sigh. ‘I’ve heard more theories about whodunit than you’d find in the entire crime section.’

‘Any convincing ones?’ asked Carole hopefully.

‘No. Each one sillier than the next.’ The librarian gave her a sharp look. ‘Why, are you about to inflict yet another one on me?’

Carole had been offered an opening, and she knew she had to use it with caution. ‘Well, I was talking about it with Jude, my neighbour, you know, who was here on Tuesday night …’

‘I know Jude.’

‘… and the police had spoken to her …’

‘Detective Inspector Rollins and her sidekick?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have sympathy for her. They’ve taken up a lot of my time this week.’ She gestured to her trolley. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be sorting out this lot on a Saturday.’

‘Jude said the police told her Burton St Clair was killed by anaphylactic shock after eating something containing walnuts, to which he was allergic.’

Di Thompson looked at her with new respect, realizing she was dealing with a Fethering resident who actually knew some of the facts in the case. Which was quite a novelty. ‘Yes, that’s what they told me. And I had to close the library on Thursday while they searched the place. Kept the staff room shut up yesterday too. Which was very inconvenient, because they gave me so little notice about it.’

‘Presumably,’ said Carole, hoping to channel the librarian’s resentment of the police towards further revelations, ‘they checked the staff room where the wine had been kept for drinks after Burton St Clair’s talk?’

‘Yes. Looking for traces of walnuts, I suppose.’

‘And did they find any?’

That was greeted by a cynical laugh. ‘Well, if they did, they weren’t going to tell me about it, were they?’

‘Of course not.’ Carole knew all too well how reticent the police could be when it came to sharing their findings with amateurs. ‘You were actually there when the bottle was broken?’

‘Yes.’

‘From what Jude said, you’d poured a glass for Burton St Clair from the last remaining bottle in the staff room?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And then when Steve Chasen went to pour a glass for himself, you reached out to stop him and that’s how the bottle got knocked over?’

‘Yes. Vix Winter, my junior librarian, was there too.’

Carole looked around the room. ‘Is she here today?’

‘No. She should be.’ There was a lot of resentment in Di’s voice. ‘She called in sick.’

‘Are you suggesting she’s not sick?’

‘I just think, for a girl of her age, she suffers from a remarkable amount of illness.’

‘Right.’ That, clearly, was an ongoing staffing problem which did not concern Carole. ‘So, going back to the bottle getting smashed, it could be any one of the three of you who knocked it over?’

‘I suppose so. But it wasn’t deliberate. It was an accident.’

‘But if it had been deliberate, any one of you could have ensured that it fell on to the floor?’

‘Perhaps, but why would we want to?’

‘To destroy the evidence that chopped walnut had been infiltrated into the bottle?’

‘Oh, I see, right. Well, I can assure you, Carole, I haven’t been infiltrating chopped walnut anywhere.’

‘I wasn’t suggesting you had been.’

‘No? You are aware, aren’t you, that you and Jude have got a bit of a reputation around Fethering for seeing yourselves as amateur sleuths?’

‘Have we?’ asked Carole innocently.

‘Very definitely. Why else do you think I’m answering your questions?’

‘Oh.’ Carole felt her face colouring. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Anyway, I didn’t like that Detective Inspector Rollins’s attitude. If anyone’s going to solve the case, I’d much rather it was the local amateurs.’

‘That’s also very kind of you.’

For the first time that morning, there was a twinkle in the librarian’s eye as she said, ‘I think I’ve been spending too much time in the crime section. I’m afraid I’m a sucker for those Golden Age books in which the baffled PC Plods have rings run round them by brilliant amateurs.’

‘Does this mean you’re giving me carte blanche to ask as many questions as I wish?’

‘Mm.’ Di pointed down to the few remaining books on the top shelf of her trolley. ‘Not too many. When I’ve finished this lot, I must go and once again engage with the public.’

‘Fine. Just a few quick questions then. Jude got the impression that the remains of the broken bottle in the staff room had been cleaned up by your junior?’

‘Vix, yes.’

‘Do you know how she did it?’

‘I asked her that. She told me she got some kitchen roll and picked up the larger bits of glass with that over her fingers, so that she didn’t cut herself. She put those in the pedal bin by the sink. She swept up the smaller shards with a dustpan and brush, and put them in the bin too. Then she mopped up the wine and remaining tiny bits of glass and washed the mop out under the tap over the sink.’

‘The dustpan, mop and what-have-you … where were they kept?’

‘There’s a broom cupboard just next to the staff toilets. When she’d finished, Vix put everything back in there.’

‘And was the pedal bin emptied subsequently?’

‘It would normally have been. That’s part of the cleaners’ duties. They come in at nine, but only two days a week. Their next day would have been Thursday, but of course with the library being closed …’

‘So the police have presumably got the remains of the wine bottle?’

‘They’ll be pretty inefficient if they haven’t. No sign of the pedal bin contents this morning. Nor, come to that, of the dustpan and mop from the broom cupboard. Which is another inconvenience.’

‘Taken away for forensic analysis?’

‘Assume so. That’s what happens in all the television police shows, doesn’t it? So they can be examined by some guest star playing a scientist way out on the extreme edge of the Asperger’s spectrum.’

Carole grinned. Behind her quiet exterior, Di Thompson was a sharp and highly intelligent woman.

‘So soon the police will have proof that it was walnut extract in the wine bottle that killed Burton St Clair?’

The librarian shrugged. ‘That would seem to be the logical conclusion. But, as I said before, I doubt if that’s data they’re likely to share with us.’

She looked down at her watch, but before she had time to say anything, Carole got her oar in. ‘Steve Chasen …’

‘Yes?’

‘According to Jude, he was badmouthing Burton St Clair after his talk.’

‘True enough.’

‘And he would have had a chance to put something in the wine bottle?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t watching his movements all evening.’

‘But he could have deliberately ensured that the wine bottle got smashed?’

‘I suppose he could.’ The librarian sounded reluctant to accept the suggestion. ‘I’m sorry. I know Steve’s a pain, and on more than one occasion I’ve had to ban him from the library, but there is something about him I respect.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, I know he gets pretty unmanageable when he’s been drinking, but he’s completely self-taught. He’s one of those people who’s got all of his education from the public library.’

‘An autodidact?’

‘Yes, the exact word. And not one that’s heard very often these days. Nor do we get a lot of people in the library these days, educating themselves. Most now seem to learn stuff from YouTube videos. So, though I can’t condone a lot of Steve’s behaviour, I do think he’s one of those people for whom the library service was set up and, I fear, one of a dying breed.’

‘Admirable,’ said Carole crisply. ‘But, of course, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that he’s also a murderer.’

‘No, I’ll concede that.’

‘And what about your junior – Vix Winter, is it?’

Di Thompson’s face tightened up. It seemed that her junior was not the most co-operative of colleagues. ‘What, do I think she’s a possible murderer? I can’t see it. Planning something like that would be too much like hard work.’

‘Ah. Would you have a contact number for her?’

Di provided it. ‘But I wouldn’t try her today. Remember she’s ill.’ The last word was loaded with a wealth of cynicism.

‘Thanks, anyway. Ooh, one other thing …’

A weary ‘Mm?’

‘I’ve been trying to contact other people who were here for Burton St Clair’s talk. Jude mentioned some tall American woman, who was something of an expert on crime fiction?

‘Nessa Perks. Possibly Professor Nessa Perks. Don’t know what her proper title is, but she’s involved in the English Department at the University of Clincham. She helped out on a few sessions for the library’s Writers’ Group.’

‘Oh yes, Oliver Parsons mentioned that.’

‘Mm. He used to come along for a while. Mind you, we don’t run it any more.’

‘Funding?’

‘Partly. More lack of interest from the good people of Fethering. Same problem that’s scuppered a good few other initiatives I’ve set up to prove the relevance of this library in the twenty-first century. Book group’s still running, but the rest of them …’

With an air of finality, Di Thompson moved the last book from her trolley’s top shelf to a lower one. ‘There. I must—’

‘Just one more question.’

‘Yes.’ There was now a put-upon edge to the librarian’s voice.

‘Jude said that when Burton St Clair put his arm round you, you flinched.’

‘I don’t deny it.’

‘Any particular reason? Or just general dislike of men you don’t know well putting their arms around you?’

‘Well, there was more of a reason with Burton St Clair. The bastard had just come on to me in the staff room.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, pushing me against the wall, one hand on my breasts, the other up my skirt. I had to fight him off.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not the first time it’s happened with an author. A lot of them seem to have some feeling of entitlement when it comes to groping librarians. And groping members of their publishers’ publicity departments, come to that. One of the clichés of publishing life, I believe – authors having it off with publicity girls.’

‘Oh? Then, if he came on to you, you did have a strong reason to dislike Burton St Clair?’

‘Yes,’ said Di, with a sardonic look at Carole. ‘What I didn’t have, though, was time between his groping me and my getting him a glass of wine, to research the fact that he had a walnut allergy, to source some chopped walnuts, and to infiltrate them into the bottle of red wine in the staff room.’

‘I can see that,’ said Carole, feeling a little put down.

‘Now I’m afraid I have—’ A cacophony of infantile screaming had suddenly broken out in the children’s section. The two twenty year olds in paper-plate masks were faffing around, clearly not up to resolving the situation. Carole saw two toddlers locked in a boxer’s clinch, bawling and pulling each other’s hair out. Worse than that, the two toddlers’ dads were also squaring up to each other.

‘I must go and sort things out,’ said the librarian.