How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams (37 page)

“Obviously”—Ben smoothed the hair back from my brow—“Mrs. Swabucher felt a need to be on her own.”

“Then I’ll go upstairs and look in on the twins.”

“They’re sound asleep,” Ben assured me, “and Vanessa promised to make periodic checks on them.”

“She’s been wonderful.”

“Our leopardess would seem to have changed her spots.”

The enthusiasm with which he said this did not settle well on my empty stomach. For a moment I forgot about Karisma’s sad fate and wondered how Ben and Vanessa’s afternoon at the vicarage had gone. Naturally the subject had not come up, given the bad news I had brought home. But I thought an inquiry might be appropriate now, to let my husband know that even in times of tragedy I was first and foremost a considerate wife.

“Are you and Vanessa going to do the cover of
A Knight to Remember
?” I put down my glass and reached towards the plate of salmon and tomato sandwiches on the coffee table.

“Gladstone’s editor was very enthusiastic, but we’ve plenty of time to talk about that later. Unlike poor Karisma”—Ben went back to stroking my hair—“we have our whole lives ahead of us.”

“That’s true.” I withdrew my hand from the sandwiches without taking one. “It does seem incredible to realize he’s dead.”

“Is it equally hard, Ellie, to believe Mrs. Swabucher’s accusation that he was murdered?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Everything happened so quickly after she passed out on the stairs. Mr. Poucher appeared on the scene and carried her to one of the sofas in the library. And while Eudora was trying to get her to drink some water, Brigadier Lester-Smith was suddenly there, insisting on taking over Mrs. Swabucher’s care. Then the scene became wall-to-wall people, with so much screaming and wailing that I thought the ambulance had arrived before it did. Sir Robert Pomeroy did the telephoning, and the new librarian did a great job of keeping the crowd back from … the body. That’s pretty much all I’m clear about. Everything became a major blur with men rushing in with a stretcher and lots of questions
being asked, particularly of Eudora, because she was the one who found him. It seemed hours before we all got to leave. There’s to be an autopsy, of course, but I’m pretty sure Karisma’s death is being officially viewed as accidental.”

“But you don’t think it is?” Ben put a sandwich in my hand and told me to finish it before answering him.

“I’m not sure.” I swallowed dutifully. “Under different circumstances it would seem unlikely for that big marble bust of Shakespeare to take a flying leap off the wall, but despite all my determination to be sensible on the subject, I can’t completely dismiss the possibility that Hector Rigglesworth was involved.”

“The ghost?”

“He is said to have vowed to haunt the Chitterton Fells library until he was finally avenged for a life spent in slavish attention to his daughters’ obsession with romantic fiction. And Karisma is … 
was
the living representation of the heroes in those books.”

“Ellie”—Ben shook his head—“you’ve suffered a nasty shock and you’re not thinking straight.”

“I’m trying to look at the facts objectively,” I told him. “This year is the centenary of Mr. Rigglesworth’s death. And think about this, Ben: On the actual anniversary date, Miss Bunch, an apparently healthy woman, dropped dead in the library with a copy of a book titled
The Dream Lover
lying beside her. Then Mr. Babcock, the newly-married husband of a Library League member, meets his end. And”—I fortified myself with another sandwich—“there are other odd happenings to be taken into account, such as the members of Karisma’s staff being struck down by food poisoning, which prevented them from coming down here and keeping a protective eye on him.”

“He had Mrs. Swabucher in attendance.”

“Agreed,” I said, “but she wasn’t her usual redoubtable self because she was distressed at meeting the man she’d abandoned on their wedding night years ago. And that upset caused her to leave her prized feather boa at the library.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Ben went to pour himself a glass of brandy.

“She was in the reading room”—I tried not to sound exasperated—“looking for that boa, perhaps at that very moment when she should have been downstairs with Karisma and able to throw herself between him and that bust of Shakespeare when it came off the wall. I haven’t a doubt in the world that she would have given her life to save his. But Mrs. Swabucher wasn’t the one Hector Rigglesworth wanted today. It had to be Karisma.”

“If any of this were to make sense”—Ben resumed his seat beside me—“it would seem to me your ghost had equally good, if not better, reason to strike down Gladstone Spike. After all, he writes the very kind of book the Rigglesworth daughters spent their lives reading.”

“I had thought of that,” I admitted. “But it could be old Hector means to exact a different kind of vengeance on our friend Gladstone. One which would be worse than death.” I had difficulty continuing. “If Eudora were to be accused of Karisma’s murder and—incredible as it sounds—found guilty, I don’t know that Gladstone would want to live.”

“Now you are looking for trouble.” Ben spoke in his most soothing voice. “You’re the one who said that it seems rather improbable that Shakespeare just took it into his marble head to leap off the wall and land on Karisma’s skull.”

“But that doesn’t mean I’d think for a moment that Eudora lent a helping hand.”

I rubbed my forehead to ease away the beginning of a headache. “I’m sure she didn’t. But I don’t know how the police, who have such nasty, suspicious minds, might view the fact that I found her close to the scene of the body, when everyone else—to the best of my knowledge—was upstairs. And she was in such a state that she’d gone into the loo to recover rather than immediately reporting the bad news.”

Ben studied my face closely. “I find that entirely understandable. And I don’t know why you’re so worried.”

“Because something could be made out of the fact that Eudora and I discussed the moat accident earlier at the library and she made a couple of joking remarks that could be misconstrued if they were overheard. Also, she would readily admit if questioned by the police that she
went looking for Karisma to tell him off for pressuring Gladstone about the cover of
A Knight to Remember
.”

“So she had a grudge against him,” Ben said. “I don’t suppose for one minute she was the only one.”

“Not by a long shot,” I answered in a low voice.

“Don’t tell me, Ellie, that you’re worried about coming under suspicion should it turn out that Karisma’s death was not accidental?”

“It’s bound to come out that I had an argument with Mrs. Swabucher this morning over my feeling that I had been used by her and Karisma. Mrs. Malloy heard my raised voice and wanted to know what had been going on. And … the whole thing could be blown out of proportion so that it would sound as if I’d had a major crush on Karisma and had gone berserk at the thought of his betraying me.”

“Did you?” asked Ben in a neutral voice.

“Go berserk and kill him?”

“No—have feelings for the man?”

“How could I, when I hardly knew Karisma?”

“And are a happily married woman.”

“I don’t suppose that I would have thought about the possibility of my becoming a suspect if Mrs. Swabucher hadn’t made her accusation. She looked right into my eyes when she said Karisma had been murdered, and I felt such a chill go through me that I wanted to turn and run.”

“Come here, my silly one.” Ben drew me into his arms and I rested my aching head against the comfort of his shoulder.

“Believe me, I don’t want Eudora to be dragged down to the police station,” I whispered, “but the thought of my being locked up for life, away from you and the twins, is at the front of my mind. It’s awful to admit that the reason I couldn’t stop crying when I got home didn’t have nearly as much to do with Karisma’s death as with not being able to forget that look Mrs. Swabucher gave me.”

“You can’t make much out of that,” Ben said reasonably. “The woman was in shock.”

“That’s true.” But I sounded uncertain.

“My guess, Ellie, is that if she were thinking of anyone in particular, it would be Brigadier Lester-Smith. The man has to harbour feelings of bitterness; and she may have
leapt to the conclusion that he’d found a way of punishing her for the blow she had inflicted years ago on his male ego.”

I sat up straight. “Oh, but he’s such a dear, it’s difficult to imagine him resorting to brutality.”

“If you don’t want it to be him,” said Ben obligingly, “then how about Mrs. Malloy? She was on the spot. And Vanessa was telling me on the way to the vicarage that her future mother-in-law had gone off Karisma a bit when she thought he might be trying to cut George out of the picture.”

“Oh, we’re starting to talk nonsense!” I stood up and immediately sat down again.

“I disagree. It seems to me that I’m making a valid point, Ellie. When someone is murdered, and we don’t even know that is the case here, almost everybody who has any connection—however remote—with the victim can be found to have some reason for committing the crime.”

“It did cross my mind,” I admitted, “that Mr. Poucher might be the guilty party, if, as you say, there is one. He was extremely upset when he told me his crotchety mother had rebounded back to top-notch health after meeting Karisma yesterday and doing a photo session with him. And he was decidedly evasive about where he was when Heathcliff practically tore the reading room apart.”

“You see.” Ben smiled fondly at me. “The list of people with motives is infinite. But we won’t explore them all. I think you should go upstairs and have a nice relaxing bath, sweetheart, while I heat you up some soup. And afterwards you might like to get into bed and take things off your mind.”

This suggestion was not without appeal, but I had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Ben went on to suggest that I take some of my interior decorating books with me and snuggle down with them under the blankets.

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “It would be relaxing to browse through catalogs of duvets for Eudora’s bed”—my mind went blank for a second—“and … and try to find possible curtain material for Brigadier Lester-Smith’s house.” I was expressing my appreciation for Ben’s thoughtfulness with a kiss, when the drawing room door opened and in floated Vanessa.

“Sorry, lovebirds,” she cooed as we broke apart, “but you’re wanted on the telephone, Ellie. It’s your friend Eudora Spike, and she was so rattled when I answered that she never mentioned my wedding, let alone my modelling career. But”—Vanessa was still talking as I hurried out into the hall—“I’m not about to criticize this once, because I’ve just remembered that in the excitement of my own life I forgot to report to either of you on Gerta, the priceless nanny. She came up to the house and asked me to tell you she’s going to London this evening to pick up some of her things from home, so not to set off the alarm if you couldn’t find her.”

My cousin’s voice faded into a hum as I grabbed up the receiver and breathlessly asked Eudora how she was doing.

“I’ve had a rather disturbing telephone call from Sir Robert,” she told me. “He’d stopped by Mr. Poucher’s house on the way home from the library to ask him if he still had the coffeepot cord, and got the news that old Mrs. Poucher had passed away during the afternoon, apparently between the time her son left and arrived home. The doctor was there and said it was an open-and-shut case of old age. And from the sound of things, the old lady did rather overdo things earlier in the day.”

“Another death …” I said.

“Yes, they do seem to be coming in droves,” Eudora replied evenly, “and that’s why Sir Robert rang me up. He’d been talking to Mrs. Dovedale, who in turn had a word with Bunty Wiseman, and they are all convinced that an evil force is at work in Chitterton Fells. So Sir Robert has asked me to perform an emergency exorcism immediately at the library, to rid it of Hector Rigglesworth’s ghost.”

“What? This evening?”

“Ellie, I really should talk to my bishop, but he’s unavailable and Gladstone’s feeling is that if I don’t do something, a panic may set in that could spread throughout Chitterton Fells. So I think the best thing I can do is go down at once to the library and conduct a prayer service, invoking God’s blessing on the repose of Mr. Rigglesworth’s soul.”

“Will all the Library League members be in attendance?”

“Gladstone, of course, will accompany me,” Eudora replied, “and I imagine most of the others will be there. Can you manage to join us, Ellie? I’d feel more comfortable if you were present.”

“I’ll leave immediately,” I promised, and as an afterthought said I would bring a bottle of holy water my mother-in-law had brought with her on one of her visits. We might as well avail ourselves of all the help we could get.

When I went back into the drawing room and told Ben about the latest development, he said it sounded like utter nonsense to him, but offered to accompany me to the library. Vanessa said with a sweetly self-sacrificing smile that she’d stay and watch Abbey and Tarn, even though she had made plans to go out to dinner with George, who was still a little down because he was afraid he’d blotted his copybook with the moat incident and would no longer be made welcome at Merlin’s Court. Having thanked them both, I said I would just as soon go on my own, as I could do with the time alone in the car to think things through.

Luckily, Ben understood how I felt. He came out to watch me drive off without offering any advice except not to offer anyone—friend or stranger—a lift home and insisting I promise to give him a ring if anything occurred to make me nervous. I could tell he didn’t believe for one second that the exorcism would produce any terrifying results. No vile substances hurtling out of the mouths of luckless persons possessed by demonic invasion, the kind that are manifested in films dealing with excursions into the occult. As for me, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into the library through the back entrance and once again mounted the stairs to the reading room.

Just outside its door I was a little taken aback to see Mrs. Malloy about to enter ahead of me with Mrs. Dovedale, but she explained they met up at the bus stop outside the grocery store and she had decided to come along and provide me with moral support.