How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (2 page)

The brigadier, adhering rigidly to the principle that punctuality is the eleventh commandment, was always first to arrive for these meetings, which were held in the reading room. He had taken upon himself the responsibility of percolating the coffee and setting out the cups and saucers. He had even on one occasion brought with him a packet of ginger nuts. This treat had been much appreciated by the group—excepting Mr. Gladstone Spike (our clergywoman’s husband) who more often than not turned up with one of his feathery-light sponge cakes.

It is my understanding that in years gone by, before the advent of the wireless, let alone the television set, the Library League had numbered as many as thirty persons. Nowadays Brigadier Lester-Smith might optimistically expect to find himself in the company of seven fellow members on a Thursday night, including myself.

On a wintry evening in what was supposed to be spring, he rounded the corner to the Spittle Lane entrance, only to collide with me as I was about to mount the library steps. The impact knocked me off balance, causing me to drop the stack of books I was carrying. Nothing short of an army tank could have made a dent in the brigadier’s ramrod posture, however.

He was a sturdily built man with a fresh complexion, a steady gaze, and crinkly hair, with enough red still showing among the grey to pass for ginger in the glow from the street lamp. His khaki raincoat was of a military cut, its belt being threaded squarely through the buckle with the end tucked through not one but
both
loops. As always, he carried a leather briefcase (rumour had it the brigadier took it to bed with him) and it was polished to a mirror gloss, equal to that of his shoes. A quick peek at my own reflection was not consoling. Most of my hair had escaped from its French twist. I was minus an earring and the string from a baby’s bib dangled from my pocket. Even worse, I was certain I had picked up weight since leaving home. Why else would I need to scan
both
the brigadier’s shoes to get a good look at myself?

“My excuses, Mrs. Haskell.” His voice was as precisely tailored as the rest of him. “I’m afraid I wasn’t watching my step. My mind was already inside the library.”

“It was my fault.” I stood dithering with a foot half on, half off the bottom step, while one of the books did a belated bounce onto the pavement, as if no longer sure whether it was coming or going. “I was concerned I was going to be late, but that can’t be the case, not with you arriving at the same time.” I looked askance at my watch, which should on several prior occasions have been subjected to a polygraph test.

“How’s the husband, Mrs. Haskell?” the brigadier asked kindly as he gingerly set down his briefcase on the pavement and picked up my books.

“Ben?” I spoke the name as if suddenly remembering a letter I had forgotten to post. “He’s fine. Busy as always: But that’s the way it goes with the restaurant business.” It wasn’t that I didn’t adore my princely spouse, you understand, but what with the children and the shopping, to say nothing of my civic responsibilities, there tended to be hours on end when I did not think of him except as a dinner to be prepared, or a bundle of shirts to be collected from the laundry. But all that would change when the Swiss au pair arrived.

“And how are the little ones, Mrs. Haskell?”

“Abbey and Tam are my pride and joy!” The glow I shed upon my kind inquisitor was of a higher wattage than the street lamps.

“Being an old bachelor, I can’t begin to think how you cope with twins.” The brigadier’s cheeks flushed a peachy pink as the wind made a sudden charge around the corner. It also started to rain at the same moment, a slow drop at a time, as if testing our patience. Handing me the neatly aligned stack of books, Brigadier Lester-Smith picked up his briefcase and checked it for scuff marks. “I hope you are finding things a little easier now that your offspring are getting up in years.”

“They’re halfway through the terrible twos.” I was unable to conceal my pride as we marched up the brick steps in time to the quickening beat of rain upon the rooftops. “Tam’s all boy and Abbey thinks she is too. Don’t
worry, Brigadier Lester-Smith: They’re not having to fend for themselves tonight,” I hastened to add in case he was picturing my delightful progeny whiling away the evening with a couple of cigars and a bottle of port. “Ben had to work tonight at Abigail’s. But Mrs. Malloy, who helps me out a couple of days a week, agreed to watch them until I get home. Usually I can count on my cousin to baby-sit if he isn’t working the evening shift with Ben. But Freddy left yesterday for a fortnight’s holiday touring Scotland and Wales on his motorbike. He took Jonas with him.” I pushed open the library door with my free hand while miraculously maintaining a steady hold on the books and my smile.

“Jonas Phipps?” The brigadier raised a gingery eyebrow. “Your gardener? But surely, the man’s even longer in the tooth than I am.”

“Mr. Phipps has a wild streak in him.” I adroitly avoided slamming the door and knocking off the brigadier’s nose. “The prospect of camping out and eating off tin plates for days on end, to say nothing of sleeping in his clothes, undid every one of the values I have been at pains to instill. The only thing that might have dissuaded Jonas from hopping on the back of Freddy’s motorbike was my mentioning that Ben and I have decided to hire a mother’s helper. But I refused to resort to bribery. And, to be frank, I am not sure that even the thought of inviting her to admire the prize roses on his bedroom wallpaper would have kept Jonas from donning his goggles and black leather jacket.”

“Looking to cut quite a dash, by the sound of it.” Brigadier Lester-Smith followed me into the library vestibule.

“Mrs. Malloy certainly thought so! She told him he could put Karisma out of a job if he would just let the hair on his head grow and shave the scruff on his chest.”

“Karis-who?”

“Him!” I plucked a book from my pile and held it out to the bewildered brigadier as he drew the door shut behind us. “Behold the face that has launched billions of romance novels.” Being a woman of some refinement, I did not draw attention to the way Karisma filled out his loincloth.

“You’re saying he and the woman in that extraordinarily convoluted embrace are real people, not some artist’s idea of what the characters in the book look like?” Brigadier Lester-Smith appeared awestruck, as well he might. The heroine of
The Last Temple Virgin
, by Zinnia Parrish, was clothed in little more than her virtue as she swooned in the arms of the gods’ gift to women. Her breasts were round and smooth as wine goblets, her lips soft and dewy as rose petals after a rainstorm, her hair a rippling waterfall, her eyes smoky with desire. But who wouldn’t look like that, including Ellie Haskell, if given the opportunity to recline upon Karisma’s sun-bronzed chest and gaze enraptured upon his glorious physiognomy? So close that one’s eyelashes entwined with his! So near that his heart pumped the lucky female’s lifeblood and set her pulses throbbing with forbidden passion.

“We all have to make a living,” the brigadier said doubtfully as we stood in the shadowy vestibule lit by one minuscule lightbulb dangling from a cord high above our heads.

“There is more to Karisma than raw sex appeal,” I assured him. “My husband, if you will excuse the boast, has the kind of dark good looks that turns heads in Marks & Spencer. But never in a million years could I picture Ben on a book jacket. He lacks that untamed … 
unmarried
look, for starters.” I shuffled through my stack of books while my companion completed the all-consuming task of sponging the raindrops from his briefcase. When he was done and his handkerchief refolded and hung neatly over his belt to dry, I held out
Where Eagles Fear to Fly
. “Karisma has such incredible versatility. He can be anyone, anything the camera asks him to be!” I knew I was babbling away like a mindless brook, but a stay-at-home mum is occasionally overwhelmed by the need to show herself conversant with current events. “See for yourself why the tabloids hail him as the king of the male cover models!” I held out another book, a paperback this time, brilliantly packaged with foil and raised letters.

The brigadier made a well-bred endeavour to show interest. “Fascinating, Mrs. Haskell! The castle in the background puts me very much in mind of Merlin’s Court.”

I accepted the compliment and kept to myself the belief that my home had far more going for it by way of turrets and battlements than the one on the cover. “Here we have Karisma,” I said. “Behold him at one with the elements. He is the uncharted sea, the unbridled wind, the promise of sunrise upon the horizon. He is the Earl of Polmorgan—his hair streaming like victory’s banner. A nobleman ousted from the ancestral home by the cruel machinations of his impecunious stepmother and forced to turn smuggler along the Cornish coast. His innate gallantry dictates that he provide for the lovely young woman who was his father’s ward. She has gone into a decline after being forced into marriage with an odious man who terrified her on the wedding night by unsheathing his sword and …”

Brigadier Lester-Smith took advantage of the emotional break in my voice to interject hastily, “It must take him a month of Sundays to dry his hair. And speaking of time marching on, Mrs. Haskell, I do think we should be making our way upstairs to the reading room. The other members of the league expect me to have the coffee on the perk, and the minutes from the last meeting”—he patted his briefcase—“laid out on the table, ready for review.” Crossing the mosaic tile in two measured steps, the brigadier opened the door into the library proper.

The arrangement inside was unapologetically old-fashioned. No little turnstiles by which to enter and exit and send one into a tailspin. No revolving magazine racks. No magnifying mirrors installed for the purpose of assisting in the apprehension of book nabbers. No computers pretending to mind their own business even as they secreted away information on the reading habits of each and every library-card holder.

The brigadier and I might have been standing on the threshold of a household library, the kind guaranteed to lend just the right touch of snob appeal to a gentleman’s country retreat. There were no other patrons about because it was after closing hour. And by some quirk of shadow and light the free-standing bookcases turned the room—partitioned by archways—into a maze that would appear to have been set up for the express amusement of his lordship’s children. Two or three worn leather chairs
were drawn conversationally around an oak table positioned in front of the leaded windows overlooking Spittle Lane. A pair of hunting prints echoed the muted tones of the Jacobean-patterned curtains. A hammered brass screen stood guard in front of the stone fireplace. The marble bust of Shakespeare sat on a pedestal above the archway leading into the nonfiction area, which in turn opened onto the children’s section.

Perhaps, on second thought, the fact that the books were not uniformly bound in gold-tooled leather did hint that this was not a private collection. There was also the reception desk—the size of Amelia Earhart’s practice runway—to clinch one’s suspicions that we were in a lending institution.

Miss Bunch, our stalwart librarian, lived at that desk. Rumour had it that she had been born there—fully grown, already stout, red-faced, and with her hair cropped to an uncompromising bob. I had it on good authority (from Mrs. Malloy) that Miss Bunch did not possess a first name. Doubtless her parents had instantly realized the impropriety of attempting to become too familiar with their offspring.

My knees had a tendency to knock on those occasions when I approached Miss Bunch at her desk—my arms loaded with books whose overdue status would momentarily be calculated down to a percentage of a second. Being an accomplished coward, I had on occasion brought along a doctor’s certificate to excuse my disregard for timely returns, but this evening I did not feel the full force of Miss Bunch’s bull’s-eye stare as I tiptoed forward with my eight volumes of riveting romance novels. My engrossing conversation with Brigadier Lester-Smith had blinded me to the obvious.

For tonight our librarian was conspicuous by her absence.

“Surprising!” The brigadier glanced from me to the door marked Private and shook his head. No need for him to expound. The concept of Miss Bunch abandoning her post in order to indulge in a cup of tea and a cream bun or—heaven forbid, go to the loo—was not open to discussion. Miss Bunch would have handed in her date stamp sooner than exhibit such human frailty. That she might be
stacking books in the far reaches of nonfiction was equally unlikely. A time for every job was Miss Bunch’s sacred maxim. Books were always returned to their allotted shelves between the hours of ten
A.M
. and noon.

“I expect she went upstairs to turn on the lights for us in the reading room,” I said while scanning the room uneasily out of the corner of my eye. Surely it was the patter of rain on the windows and the ghoulish gurgle of the wind that made the library seem suddenly forlorn?

“You cannot be serious, Mrs. Haskell.” Brigadier Lester-Smith looked suitably grave. “Turning on the lights, along with plugging in the percolator, has always been my job. I do not imagine that for all her industriousness, Miss Bunch would overstep that particular line.”

It was my opinion that Miss Bunch would do precisely as she chose in her own library, but I kept mum as I planted my books on the eerily deserted desk. For the moment I was freed from the obligation of confessing that I had left an indelible coffee cup ring on page 342 of
Speak Her Name Softly
by the prolific Zinnia Parrish. So with my mind determinedly focused on the evening’s meeting, I stood behind the brigadier as he opened the door that gave access to the staircase.

“After you, Mrs. Haskell.”

My gasp made us both jump.

Misunderstanding my reaction, the brigadier’s cheeks turned a peachy pink that complemented his fading ginger hair nicely as he hastily made his apologies. “You’ll have to forgive me, Mrs. Haskell; being an old-fashioned chap I forget once in a while that what used to pass for common courtesy is now perceived as an insult to all womankind.”