19 A Gathering in the Library

Christie’s Detective Agency Two Part 19 THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY

It was quiet in the library. The few readers in there were standing in a sparse scattering by the shelves of books, and Mr Leslie was on his high stool holding the date-stamp and doing his best to look both important and busy. Jenny and Horace walked quietly in and both of them couldn’t help noticing the wan with a walking frame sitting at the table where his sister Lauren had been killed, and he was quietly and inobtrusively weeping. Jenny wondered how he had got there, and why. He hadn’t struck her to be a great reader.

She looked at Mr Leslie and his date stamp, leaving thoughts of the tearful deceased Lauren’s brother to be dealt with later.

Many libraries, thought Jenny, must surely have gone over to an electronic way of recording who’s reading what, but not good old Brumpton…

“Mr Leslie,” she said, quietly, “My name is Jennifer Marple and this is Horace Sorsse. Could we possibly have a word with you?”

The librarian looked suddenly tense, as if he’d like to do anything under the sun but have any words with the two standing at his counter.

“I know who you are,” he growled, “nosey parkers, that’s who you are, poking around in matters that don’t concern you!”

“We investigate matters on behalf of our clients,” Jenny told him, “and at the moment one of our clients is the Brumpton Police Force!” She knew that wasn’t strictly true, but at the same time she knew that Mr Leslie didn’t know that.

“Well?” he asked “it’s come to something when the forces of law and order have to delegate important investigations to tin pot businesses like Christies!”

Jenny didn’t liked that insulting reference to her family firm and couldn’t help launching straight into the one thing she had planned to keep back, the video tape .

“We have had our hands on a video tape,” she said, smiling, “a quite extraordinary piece of sleaze if ever I saw one, with a man cavorting in dodgy boxer shorts, but first we thought we recognised the lady because it was the one who was standing where you are now until a few days ago, until someone gave her a strychnine cocktail. She was wearing, let me see, no clothes at all for most of the action and very little for the rest … and what she did wear I think is called a g-string. A very pretty one as my associate here will confirm because he saw it too. She was a great deal younger, of course, I could tell that because the video was on a VHS tape, which must make it a few years old. Tell me, did you know she had a birth mark?”

“Get out!” he shouted, suddenly and with violence, “get out and never darken these doors again!”

“Get out?” murmured Jenny, “of course, if you insist. But I’d call your reaction quite extreme. Not what I’d expect from the younger you in the video, the one taking off his lurid boxer shorts when she asked him to…”

“I never did!” he yelped, “I kept them on all the time!”

“You? Was it you?” asked a smiling Jenny, “well, it’s not a crime, there’s nothing wrong with having a dodgy little pastime unless you’re betraying someone else, and you’ve never been married, have you? So you at least had nobody to betray. But, I mean, performing some of the antics on that fascinating tape with the young female teenager, under age at a guess, was a tad distasteful. You know the lass I mean, the girl who grew out of her teens and became too old for whoever held the camera. The cherub who eventually came to work here as soon as she could, twisted your arm no doubt, promised to keep your film stardom quiet if you gave her a date stamp to hold... the one who had one toxic cocktail too many.”

“How did you…” His attitude had changed when it crossed his mind that this Marple woman might actually have watched one of what she referred to as his little sidelines.

“How did I get hold of your tape? Well I spotted it in a charity shop and I thought that my young assistant here might benefit in a few lessons in lurve, but there wasn’t any love in the tape, just a man having his trousers removed several times in a variety of fascinating ways, and then a woman doing things it’s hard to believe… you know all about it, I don’t think I need to continue.”

“I’ll buy it back off you,” offered the librarian, sounding flustered, “I don’t know what you paid for it, but fifty pounds?”

“Now that would be profiteering on my part,” decided Jenny, “but you can have it back for free when the police have finished with it.”

“The police? What’s it got to do with the police?” asked Dorian Leslie, his face by then as white as a sheet and growing paler.

“Well, I thought it might be significant seeing as the girl on the tape was murdered in this very library and exactly where you’re sitting very recently. It might have a bearing on it. Especially as most people who like to socialise will have seen that delicious birth mark of hers. She had never been shy about it, never kept it hidden. Anyway, when they let me have it back it’s yours, for free, if you still are.”

“If I’m still what?” gabbled the librarian.

“Free,” said Horace, “because that video might suggest something you don’t want to hear. It might be thought to provide a motion for the aforementioned cocktail of strychnine and, what was it, coffee?” Something with a strong flavour, anyway.”

At that moment the door swung wildly open and Gorgeous Will staggered in, obviously much the worse for drink, and he was dragging the young cleaning girl Rosie Buxton, who was struggling to be let go.

“Get off!” she shouted, “let go of me, you idiot!”

“Shush,” Will said with an exaggerated wave of his arms, “thish ish the library, sho shush…”

The librarian, still white and shaking, sighed and shut his eyes as if to shut out the world. He held rigidly onto his counter as if to let go would be to cause him to collapse onto the floor.

“Let go of that young woman!” ordered Horace, and he made every attempt to look menacing, “or I’ll have to knock you into the middle of next week!”

“I shaw thish wench, I did, an it’sh she who had a dagger in her handsh! It’s she who did for the ole woman, did for her good and proper!” enunciated the drunken Gorgeous Will.

“I shouldn’t think you’ve any idea if you saw anyone!” snapped Horace, “now let her go before I march you down to the police station and insist they arrest you for assaulting her!”

“I ain’t toushed ‘er.”

“You’re touching her now!” pointed out Horace, quite correctly, “and I should think that Rosie here has a concrete alibi for any time you care to mention!”

Before anyone else could say anything or make the confusion any worse the library door opened again, and this time the familiar figure of Detective Inspector Cyril Hodbur ably supported by a grimacing Police Constable Bob Grungeworthy marched into the place.

“Everyone stay where you are!” snapped the D.I. “There have been two murders in this place, and I’m here to stop a third!”

“There won’t be a third, Cyril,” said Jenny quietly and seriously, “but seeing as everyone’s here I think we can put this matter to bed once and for all. Everything’s slowly becoming as clear as day.”

She looked around and nodded her head.

“It all started half a century ago or thereabouts when Lauren Foster was in her bridal dress and ready to get wed…” she began.

© Peter Rogerson 14.10.21

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