First Edition Society - The Bodies in the Library

Ill be leaving now, Ms. Burke.

I leapt up from the desk at this announcementknocking my phone on the floor in the processand hurried out of my office.

Yes, Mrs. Woolgar, I said, tugging on my jacket. Have a lovely evening.

The secretary stood in the flagstone entry and reached for her coat off the hall stand. The open front door framed a twilight sky behind her, as a cool October breeze swirled round our ankles. Bunter, a tortoiseshell cat, sauntered down the staircase, his tail straight as a soldier apart from the question-mark curl at its tip. He settled on the bottom step.

You will have a word with them, wont you?

I certainly will, I replied. ButI added with as much authority as I could muster under her steely gazeas Ive explained, I dont feel we can ask them to move along just yet. And, I believe this connection to the local writing community will be a boonhelping us to build a base of support that will ensure the Societys future.

Mrs. Woolgar took a lace-edged hankie from her sleeve and polished the brass plate mounted at the door that read The First Edition Society.

And the furniture?

I havent forgotten the furniture, I assured her. Im terribly sorry they left the chairs in such disarray last week. And the week before. Its only that Trist had shifted things round to act out a scene hed written with the zombies.

Mrs. Woolgars eyes were veiled as she snapped her handbag closed and brushed an imaginary speck off the lapel of her dress. Yes, well, its only that we have a great responsibility to maintain a certain caliber and excellent quality here at Middlebank House. Not only because this was Lady Fowlings own residence and she was held in high esteem here in Bath and greatly mourned three years ago when she died, but also because it sets the standard for her grand endeavor, the Society, which she began herself with...

I stopped listening but kept the polite smile plastered on my face as Mrs. Woolgar continued to tell me my job. I was new to my position as curator at The First Edition Society, an organization founded and funded by the late Lady Georgiana Fowling. She had turned Middlebank House, her home, into the repository for her lifetime passionacquiring first editions of the women authors from the Golden Age of Mystery. Her library comprised a vast collection not only from Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and the othersmany of the books personally autographedbut also works from suspense author Daphne du Maurier, added to the list for the sole reason that she was one of Lady Fowlings favorites.

It may have appeared that Id made quite an extraordinary leap from my former postassistant to the assistant curator at the Jane Austen Centreto my current position of sole curator at the Society, especially as my university degree was in nineteenth-century literature. Never having read a detective story in my life, I knew I needed to prove my worthif not to the board, then to myself and Glynis Woolgar, a dear friend and personal assistant to Lady Fowling for donkeys years, and who now held the post of Society secretary in perpetuum.

Mrs. Woolgar was on one side or the other of sixtycloser than that I could not guess. It was because of her clothes. She dressed as if it were 1935that great age of mystery writing. The narrow frocks with wide lapels and cinched waists suited her pencil-like physique. Perhaps some women mightve added a whimsical flare at the hemline, but not Mrs. Woolgar. Lady Fowlingninety-four when she diedhad dressed in the same era, if the portrait on the stairs was anything to go by.

This is a chance for growth, I said when the secretary had finally run out of steam. And if we do not grow, we stagnate.

The Society is not in need of funds, Mrs. Woolgar stated, and not for the first time.

Lady Fowlings vast fortune notwithstanding, I knew that money was finite. It could be used up or taken away, and then where would we be? I wasnt thinking only of my own financial historywhat about her ladyships lout of a nephew? Id heard the whole story. Hed received a bequesta shocking amount of money that I couldve lived on for the rest of my lifeyet he continued to look for ways to challenge his aunts will. Apparently, he wanted the house, tooThe First Edition Society be damned.