The Librarian Always Rings Twice

1
"Shall I be Mother?”
Charles Henry Dill didn’t wait for a response, but reached across the library table for the pot, the sleeve of his baby-­blue linen jacket pulling up and exposing his hairy arm. He poured, managing to splash tea into the saucers and onto the highly polished walnut surface before, at last, hitting the cups.
Beside me, Mrs. Woolgar flinched and leapt up to get a towel— ­either that or she was about to go for his throat, a prospect I found not all that unappealing.
I stood. “No, let me.”
Mrs. Woolgar sat down again as I retrieved a small towel from the trolley by the door. I mopped up the spill as Charles Henry distributed tea round the table, after which each of us poured the excess from the saucers back into the cups before adding milk. I noticed he had handed board member Maureen Frost, sitting next to him, a saucer with no spills.
“Well, now,” Dill said, with a smirk of self-­importance, “let me just say I’m ever so glad to be joining you here at Middlebank House and the First Edition Society, and I look forward with eager anticipation to working with our esteemed curator, Ms. Burke, in my new role as her assistant and, I daresay”—­he chortled—­“general dogsbody.”
How had it come to this?
It had started on Monday. My boyfriend and I had returned from a week in Deal—­a lovely seaside town in Kent—­and I was ready and rested for the First Edition library’s inaugural public open hours in two days’ time. It was the logical next step to increasing the awareness of the Society, gaining new respect and members, and contributing to the overall knowledge base about those wonderful women writers from the Golden Age of Mystery.
But a library open to the public had been a shocking proposition—­ at least to the Society’s secretary, Mrs. Glynis Woolgar. It took a fair bit of song and dance on my part to convince her that our founder, the late Lady Georgiana Fowling, had intended for her impressive collection of first editions—­as well as rare and unusual printings—­to be enjoyed, not hidden away. The secretary had agreed, but with reservations.
On my first day back at work, I had expected to find Mrs. Woolgar with her knickers in a twist about the launch of the Wednesday-­afternoon opens, but instead, at our morning briefing, I had been met with an ashen face across the desk from me. Even before we had exchanged “good mornings,” she made the pronouncement: “It’s about Charles Henry.”
Rarely was any news that involved Charles Henry Dill, Lady Fowling’s lout of a nephew, good news, unless it was that he was out of the country. Because when he wasn’t out of the country, he applied himself to his life’s goal of trying to get more, more, more money out of his aunt’s estate.
Mrs. Woolgar had told me his latest scheme was to become my assistant, and when I could find my voice again, I said, “But surely the board wouldn’t allow it? Mr. Rennie wouldn’t allow it?”
Duncan Rennie, the Society’s solicitor, did his best to keep Dill and his machinations at bay. Sadly, as Mrs. Woolgar had pointed out, “Asking for a job isn’t nefarious unto itself.”
The board members’ reasons for acquiescing had been another matter. The board comprised four dear old friends of her ladyship, plus a young one. Mrs. Audrey Moon and Mrs. Sylvia Moon—­they had married brothers—­and Jane Arbuthnot were in their eighties; Maureen Frost, in her early seventies; and my friend Adele Babbage, several decades younger than the others and ten years or so my junior.
Dill had worked his subterfuge quickly while I had been away, and he had kept under the radar of Mrs. Woolgar, aided and abetted by Maureen. First, he had worn down resistance from the Moons by “stopping in for a cuppa” every afternoon the week before. Under the guise of sharing stories of his aunt, he had revealed to them his wistful hope to be a part of the Society as a way of honoring her. Jane Arbuthnot had been easily swayed by Maureen. But I had been shocked to learn that Adele—­the turncoat—­had agreed to Dill’s proposal, too.
The meeting had been arranged for Tuesday, the next afternoon. When the attendees, including Mr. Rennie, had arrived, Mrs. Woolgar had taken them up to the library. I had stayed on the ground floor in the kitchenette to get the tea tray ready, and so when the front-­door buzzer went off with the last in, Adele, I answered.
“Are you still speaking to me?” she asked, slapping a sweet smile on her face.
“Barely,” I said.
Adele stepped in and stopped. “Is that his?”
A large white Panama hat hung on the hallstand.
“I’m afraid so. He’s cut off that dreadful ponytail, probably so the hat would fit on his head. He must’ve taken scissors to it himself—­it’s all one length, and he has to tuck it behind his ears.”
Adele wrinkled her nose. “Eww. Look, Hayley,” she said, following me into the kitchenette, “I know hiring Charles Henry sounds dire, but the Moons as well as Jane have had to endure four years of his trickery in his attempt to get hold of Georgiana’s fortune.”
“And house,” I had added as I arranged pastries on a tray.
“And house.”
“What about Maureen?” I asked. “What does she see in him?”
“Yes,” Adele said. “You’d think she’d have better judgment than this. Perhaps all those years ago, he wasn’t quite so . . . Charles Henryish.”
Nearly tw