5 Gossip In The Library

Christie’s Detective Agency Two Part 5 THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY

Newly renamed as Poiry by his boss, Horace made his way out of the office, telling Jenny that he was popping to the library to see what might be seen.

“There’s not much on-line about the library,” he told her, but I have discovered that someone called Damsel Eagerhill is the librarian’s number one assistant, and according to your friendly policeman I believe he said it was she who discovered a corpse in a chair sitting at a table and perving at a portrait of a rugby player.”

“Then you’d better see what she has to say,” suggested Jenny Marple.

“Will do, boss,” he replied cheekily, and made his way down the stairs and out onto the street.

It was the kind of day that he liked. It was warm, but not too hot, there were a few white clouds in the sky, but not too many; there were people around, but not huge crowds and there was only one police car outside the library, which was open.

He sauntered in.

At the far end a section had been taped off by the police as a crime scene, and one officer was there making sure that nobody ventured close enough to where the elderly Lauren Foster had been sitting to interfere with any evidence that might be lying around. Not that there was much. It was a library, and people don’t usually discard their rubbish or cigarette ends onto the sacred floor of a repository for knowledge and learning.

Although not by any means a regular visitor to the library, Poiry recognised the assistant from his school days when a need for knowledge not available easily on-line had sent him once or twice to the reference section of the library.

The assistant and her almost (to him) familiar over-red lips was behind her counter talking in an animated way to a well-stomached woman about her experiences of earlier that day.

“I’ll tell you everything I know, Alice,” she began.

Poiry situated himself where he could hear what she was saying without being noticed, or if his proximity to the counter was noticed it would be put down to the fact that he was reading a leaflet on a notice board. He wasn’t interested in the history of pig farming in the county, but it did provide him with a disguise of sorts.

“It must have come as a shock my dear,” the overweight Alice was saying, “coming in at that time of day and discovering such a horrible thing. Was the sitting in a chair, dear?”

Damsel Eagerhill nodded. This was’;t the first time she’d recounted her experiences once the library re-opened, but even though she had merely discovered a dead body and notified the police, she was basking in a kind of reflected glory.

“You could have knocked me down with a feather,” she said in a voice loud enough to reach well beyond where Poiry was standing, “and I wasn’t supposed to be opening up, not this morning, it’s supposed to be my afternoon and evening shift, but old pompous Dorian Leslie phones me up and said he was stricken with the flu. I ask you the flu! Anyway, he says, can I open up. He even sent the keys to me, a little kid on his way to school stopped by and said as the bald bloke from the library had sent him with the keys.”

“That’s mysterious,” said the listener, nodding.

“Oh, he’s done it before. He gets migraines, or so he reckons, and needs to lie in a darkened room with a cloth on his face, but this time he said it was flu. Anyway, even though it’s not my time to be there, I shouldn’t have been here until two, I scurried off to the library to open it by eight, and I walked in. And there she was, in her chair, right down there.” She pointed to where a section had been taped off.

“Bleeding, was she? Blood everywhere? A right mess?” asked the other.

Damsel shook her head. “No, Alice, you’d have thought it might have been, but it wasn’t. In fact at first I thought the old biddy, I knows her because she seems to live in this place, nose in books as if there’s nowt else to do in life, Lauren she was called, anyway at first I thought she was dozing off over the book she seemed to be reading. ‘Ow did you get in, Miss Foster? I calls out as I hangs my coat up, and you know what? She don’t answer. She don’t say owt, but I knows she’s a mite deaf so when I’ve put the kettle on and waiting for it to boil I goes over to her, and then I sees it.”

“Sees what?” Alice opened her eyes so wide that from where he stood Poiry thought there was danger of them popping out and rolling on the floor like a couple of soft marbles.

“I sees that cruel dagger stuck in her back! There is was, black handle and buried right in! Went straight to he heart, it did, and poked a hole in it, they said. The copper says as she will have died at once, would have known nothing about it, poor soul.”

“And there weren’t an ocean of blood? What was it? A spirit of the dead stabbin’ her? Surely she would have bled out, caused a pool on the floor near where she was sitting?”

“Nah. I asked the copper. Where’s the blood? I asked that straight out, and you know what he says?”

“No: you tell me!”

“He says as you bleed when your heart pumps the blood, but when your heart stops there’s nowt to pump it out so you don’t bleed over much. That’s what the copper said, and the proof was there where the old lady was sitting. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“Well stone me!”

“So who did it? Did the copper say who did it?”

Damsel shook her head again. “They ain’t got a clue,” she said, “but the copper I spoke to says as it must have been someone who hid behind the shelves or somewhere until the place was locked up, and then sneaked up on her and whoosh! Stabbed her!”

Alice looked around. “There’s plenty of corners where a soul could hide,” she said.

“They had forensic blokes in white suits looking everywhere, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. It was as if it was an act of the good Lord.”

That seemed, to Poiry, to be all he was likely to learn from the conversation, so he sidled away and decided to take a tour of the floor, hoping to see something that the police forensic team had missed. He had no idea what it might be but he was looking for it anyway. And there was nothing unusual anywhere, which was probably why he failed to find anything.

Before he left he had an idea.

He could see the security cameras, one looking at the desk where Damsel was still standing, though the overweight Alice had waddled off by then. He guessed there might be one or more cameras elsewhere as well.

“Excuse me,” he asked Damsel.

“I saw you tab-hanging,” she said, looking at him, “while I was telling Alice all about it. What do you want?”

Well I’m blowed, he thought, I could have sworn I was being inconspicuous!

“I just wondered about your security cameras,” he said, “wouldn’t they have caught whoever did it? Caught him in the act, I mean? And maybe showed you where he was hiding?”

Damsel shook her head. “That’s what the coppers asked,” she said, “but old Dorian Leslie, my boss, switches them off when he leaves. Every time, he does. He’s got a thing about wasting electricity.”

“Not much point having them then, is there?” he murmured.

“I reckon you’re right there, but he’s the boss and knows best,” she said, “and if you want to have it out with him he reckons he’ll be rising from his sick bed and coming in tomorrow. See him then if you want, and ask him!”

He smiled at her, told himself that no woman needed to use anywhere near that amount of lipstick in order to look desirable, and nodded.

“I might do that,” he murmured, and slowly wandered out into the street and back to the office.

© Peter Rogerson 29.09.21

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