How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (39 page)

I heard my feet running down Market Street towards Barberry Road and realized that I had only to turn the corner and cross an alley and I would be there. The tall, narrow house with its front door only inches from the street came towards me at a fast clip, and before I knew it I was standing on the scrubbed stone step and ringing the bell.

It was probably only thirty seconds, although it seemed like a year, before the door was opened by a woman in a print apron. Grey hair poked out from the rim of her knotted scarf.

“Hello …” I tried not to sound too breathless. “Is Brigadier Lester-Smith at home?”

She looked me up and down warily. “He is.”

“May I come in and speak to him for a minute?”

“Well, I don’t know …” She sounded as though this were anything but a run-of-the-mill question. “He pays his rent regular as clockwork and isn’t one to cause any sort of rumpus. But he’s already got a lady upstairs with him, and that’s not like the brigadier, let me tell you.”

“Well, actually it’s her I wanted to see,” I said.

“Oh, that’s different, then. You’re not likely to make a habit of showing up on the doorstep.” She stepped back and pointed to the stairs. “His rooms are first on the right, and I’d appreciate you not making a lot of noise going up because my other lodger will give me an earful if you do.”

“Thank you,” I told her, and conscientiously endeavoured to keep my heart from thumping too loudly as I tiptoed up to the small landing. My hand felt like a five-pound bag of flour when I raised it to knock on Brigadier Lester-Smith’s door. He opened up before I managed to bring it back down to my side and peered out at me with an expression of mild surprise on his face.

“Why, good evening, Mrs. Haskell!”

“I’d like to talk to you,” I said.

“Certainly.” He ushered me into an immaculate sitting room which managed to look inviting even though every piece of furniture was arranged with military precision. “Is it about the decorating for the house?”

“No.” I took the chair he offered me. “It’s about Karisma’s
death. I’m sorry to say this, Brigadier Lester-Smith, but I’m inclined to agree with Mrs. Swabucher that it wasn’t an accident.”

“I see.” He sat down across from me and adjusted the knees of his trousers with great care. “Evangeline is in the bedroom.” He nodded towards a door to the left of the fireplace. “She’s been resting for the past few hours. And I doubt she’ll hear us.”

“That’s good.” I held on to my handbag with both hands.

“Are you here to tell me”—he smiled with infinite sadness—“that you think I murdered the lad?”

“No.” I blinked back tears. “I think Mrs. Swabucher ended Karisma’s life. When she stood on the stairs and said that he had been murdered, I thought she was making an accusation. But a little while ago at the library, Ione Tunbridge turned up and said that when people … do something like this they have an intense need to confess. She’s a very odd woman, and I don’t believe her theory holds water most of the time, but I found myself thinking about what Mrs. Swabucher said in a new light. I remembered the look in her eyes when she said ‘He was murdered,’ and I have this feeling that she wanted me to know the truth because holding it inside—being all alone with the terrible knowledge of what she has done—was anguish.”

“Evangeline loved him.”

“That’s why she did it,” I told Brigadier Lester-Smith. “She was afraid for him. She had watched him lose the opportunity of doing the cover for
A Knight to Remember
and I think all of a sudden she looked ahead to the day when he would no longer be the man of so many women’s dreams. And she couldn’t bear that to happen to him. She had watched her husband die a slow, undignified death, she told me so the other day.”

“So you think”—the brigadier stared into the sootless grate—“that Evangeline picked up that bust of Shakespeare and hit him over the head?”

“No, she wouldn’t have done that.” I shifted in my chair. “I’ve been putting other bits and pieces together, such as Eudora saying, after breaking the news to me that Karisma was dead, that when she found his body she had
trouble breathing. And tonight, just before I left home for the exorcism, I was about to look through books on duvets to find one with a good synthetic filling, because when I talked to Eudora about redoing her bedroom she mentioned that she was allergic to feathers. Do you see what I’m getting at, Brigadier?”

“Evangeline’s feather boa.”

“Eudora was wearing a pink cardigan this afternoon and I remember that as she stood telling me about Karisma, she was pulling at what I supposed was a loose thread, but what if it were a piece of down, one of several that may have been in the air when she bent over the body, and that her breathlessness was not due to hock but to an allergic reaction? Mrs. Swabucher wasn’t wearing her boa while Karisma was autographing. She had left it in the reading room the other night and I told her where it was when I was pouring lemonade for the refreshment part of the benefit.”

“So you are saying, Mrs. Haskell, that Evangeline must have come downstairs wearing the boa
after
she had spoken to you.” Brigadier Lester-Smith straightened himself in his chair. “But that is hardly evidence that she smothered him with it.”

“I don’t think she did,” I said slowly. “I think she …”It was difficult to get out the word. “
Strangled
him with it, because he already had a red mark on his throat. And, not thinking at all rationally, she hoped that the new injury would be taken for the old one.”

“Did he look like a man who had been strangled?” Brigadier Lester-Smith asked with a wistful mockery.

“He looked like Apollo resting up for the sunrise, but I don’t suppose Mrs. Swabucher had to do more than pull the ends of that boa tight for a few seconds if he were already unconscious from being struck on the head by Shakespeare. And that is what happened, isn’t it, Brigadier? You were there and you saw it all, didn’t you? That’s why you begged her to come home with you and finally persuaded her to agree.”

“I wanted to protect her.” Brigadier Lester-Smith walked over to the window and continued speaking with his back to me. “I knew it could be for only a little while, but I felt I owed her that because she was once my wife,
for one day at least. I went upstairs for a while after the autograph session, but I kept seeing Evangeline, from wherever I was standing. We’d talked a bit earlier, and I’d thought I’d overcome my distress at meeting her again, but I realized I was fooling myself. I went back down into the library. Karisma was still sitting at the desk, looking through the books with himself on the cover. But as I crossed in front of the reception desk he got to his feet. He took a couple of steps before that bust of Shakespeare came flying off the wall and hit him on the head. Maybe the bracket on which it had been sitting had been knocked loose. But that would seem unlikely because it always looked a very solid piece. The sound of the crash was blotted out by the howling of the dog.”

“Yes,” I said, “he did make the most unearthly racket.”

Brigadier Lester-Smith continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “For a moment Karisma stood absolutely still. Then he staggered before falling backwards. I was about to go over to him, Mrs. Haskell, when I saw Evangeline hurrying towards him with her arms outstretched. And immediately the bitterness stuck in my throat again, and I thought she’s going to blame me for this, it would be my fault just as it was on our wedding night. She’ll accuse me of attacking the lad as a way of getting even with her. So I hid in the stacks, Mrs. Haskell, like the coward I am. And I saw her kneel beside him and touch his cheek. It was too much! I closed my eyes. And when I could bring myself to look again, she was lifting that feather boa from his face.”

“Perhaps she believed that’s what he would have wanted. Suppose she knew he dreaded growing old? I’ve heard those snide remarks about him being the only man in the world to look at his reflection in his dinner plate. If it’s true, maybe the reason was that he felt a need to keep checking that his looks weren’t beginning to dim.”

“What she did was terribly wrong”—the brigadier came slowly towards me—“but she wasn’t a wicked woman. She was a girl who never completely grew up, just like the Rigglesworth daughters, so that the only man she could ever love with her whole heart and soul was one who would never destroy the magic by making himself attainable.”

“What’s going to happen now?” I asked.

“Why don’t we go in and take a look at her?” Gently, Brigadier Lester-Smith led me towards the bedroom door. “Evangeline told me she was going to take something to help her sleep for a hundred years until her Prince Charming wakens her with a kiss.”

It was a couple of months later and another meeting of the Library League was taking place in the reading room. Sylvia Babcock was no longer with us, for reasons we rarely discussed these days. Mrs. Malloy, however, had joined our little group, and the mood was cheerful that evening. Brigadier Lester-Smith presided over the coffeepot, whose cord was now flagged with a bright red label proclaiming it to be Library Property. Mr. Poucher had not hidden Heathcliff behind the corner cupboard this evening, but we heard news of him on this occasion, as we always did. Far from bringing doom and gloom to his current master, the dog had acted as a matchmaker. One day when Mr. Poucher was taking him for a walk in the pet cemetery—Heathcliff having professed an interest in searching out the graves of his illustrious forebears—they had met a woman who was mourning the recent demise of her beloved corgi. Heathcliff in actual fact made the introduction by absconding with the wreath recently laid beside dear Toffee’s tombstone, and romance had bloomed for Mr. Poucher. Sir Robert and Mrs. Dovedale still kept me hopeful that they would one day tie the knot. Bunty Wiseman was talking about giving Lionel another chance. Gladstone Spike continued his secret writing career as Zinnia Parrish. So,
all in all, Romance flourished in the Chitterton Fells library environment.

With the murder of Karisma, the ghost of Hector Rigglesworth would seem to have been laid to rest. Some of us believed he had felt himself sufficiently avenged against the library and had taken himself off of his own accord. Others thought that the exorcism had done the trick. Mr. Poucher maintained that he had never believed in the Rigglesworth rubbish. It was an opinion that was put to the test on the evening in question when Brigadier Lester-Smith rose to make his presentation to the members.

“As the treasurer’s records will show”—he opened his briefcase and produced a sheaf of official-looking papers—“we were successful in raising a substantial sum of money with which to commemorate the memory of our late lamented librarian. The original plan was to commission a bronze statue of Miss Bunch. But it has recently been brought to the league’s attention that the library has serious problems with dry rot and woodworm, which have caused some shifting of the building. With the result that”—the brigadier paused and lowered his head—“books have fallen off the shelves and one heavy object is known to have tumbled off its pedestal. It is, therefore, my proposal we would do best to honour the memory of Miss Bunch by righting structural decay. Shall we vote on the matter?”

It was unanimously agreed that Miss Bunch would wish to sacrifice her bronze statue for a better cause, but before we went on to other matters of business, Mrs. Dovedale whispered audibly to Sir Robert, “Dry rot and woodworm, that’s what Hector Rigglesworth promised when he laid the curse on the library!”

“I didn’t leave my dog home to see to his own dinner,” growled Mr. Poucher, “so as to come here and listen to a load of tripe.”

“I won’t voice me opinion on Mr. Rigglesworth”—Mrs. Malloy leaned her black taffeta elbows on the table—“because I haven’t been a member long enough to know much about him except what I’ve heard from Mrs. H., and it wouldn’t do to take that as gospel. But as sure as I’m sitting here, there is something, a presence, if you like, as I feel every time I come into the library these days.”

“I agree!” Bunty opened wide her cornflower-blue eyes. “I feel it too, but I’m sure it’s not old Hector, because it gives me such a warm tingle all over, like I’m glowing from the inside out, and I always go out of here feeling absolutely beautiful.”

“Worshipped, that’s the feeling I get,” said Mrs. Dovedale.

Sir Robert, not surprisingly, tugged at his moustache, said “What! what!” several times, and suggested we proceed with the matters at hand. Brigadier Lester-Smith hastily produced another batch of closely typed papers, and the meeting proceeded smoothly until it was time to call it an evening. When I reached the bottom of the stairs I hesitated for a moment to see if I felt anything such as the other women had described. But nothing brushed up against my soul. And after saying good night to those of the group who had straggled down with me, I headed for my car.

“I’ve been wanting to have a word with you for some time,” Mr. Poucher said, appearing out of the shadows. “It’s about the day of Miss Bunch’s benefit and me not being around when Heathcliff misbehaved himself in the reading room.”