1 Killer Librarian (5 page)

“Except for the books,” I teased him.

The bill arrived and I tried to grab it, but Caldwell was quicker.

“Please let me treat you,” I said.

“Not in a million years. I expect to learn a lot more about murder from you.”

SEVEN

Twad and Tweed

M
y first big mistake was not figuring out the way the Brits drink in a pub.

At the Cock and Bull we ran into some friends of Caldwell’s, two older gentlemen, who introduced themselves as Twad and Tweed. They were both tall, with full heads of silver-gray hair. They occasionally watched cricket with Caldwell on Sunday afternoons. Within moments of greeting us, Tweed was taking orders for a round.

Caldwell suggested I might like to have a shandy instead of the beer.

“A shandy?” I asked. “Is that a kind of beer?”

“Beer and lemonade. Women tend to like it.”

“Real lemonade?” I cringed.

Twad nudged Caldwell and said, “That’s right. The Yanks call it Seven-Up.”

“Worse yet,” I said. “Plain beer sounds good to me. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“Pints all around?” Tweed asked.

Again Caldwell tried to protect me. “How about a half-pint for you?”

“No, if everyone’s having a pint, I will too.”

The Indian food had been spicy and salty, and I found that I was terrifically thirsty. My pint came, looking more like a pitcher of dark beer to me, and I drank half of it very quickly.

“You like that then?” Twad asked.

“Like what when?” I said back.

“The ale?”

“Brilliant,” I said, because I had been practicing saying
brilliant
all month long. I could say it with a pretty good accent, I thought, with a soft, slight roll to the
r
.

I wasn’t the only one who had gulped the pint down in a quick hurry. Twad and Tweed weren’t far behind. When we came to the bottoms of our glasses, Twad declared it was his round and went back up to the bar.

While he was gone, I took the time to glance
around the room, which was as I had always imagined an English pub being, except smaller and dingier. The ceiling was low and the room was dark, as if people had been smoking in it for a few centuries, which they probably had. The dark alcoves and odd nooks gave one the sense that intriguing conversations were taking place.

“How old is this pub?” I asked Caldwell.

“Fairly recent really, I’d say. Maybe early eighteen hundreds.”

I nodded as if I drank in two-hundred-year-old pubs all the time. When Twad handed me my next pint, I proposed a toast. “To the old country and the new country, coming together.”

We clanked our pints together and drank to amity across the waves.

“What brings you to London?” Twad asked me.

Caldwell raised his eyes slightly as he waited for me to answer.

“Doing some research,” I said.

“You must go to the Victoria and Albert,” Tweed effused.

“I was planning on it. I hear they have an excellent collection of swords.” Which was true—I had heard that from a friend who did ironwork in his spare time when he wasn’t cataloguing children’s books at the Kerlan Collection.

“You’re interested in swords?” Twad gave me a look and stretched his eyebrows up to the top of his head.

“As much as I’m interested in any weapons of destruction.”

They all looked at me to see if I was serious. Caldwell gave out a hoot of a laugh and the two older gentlemen twittered along with him.

Twad said, “You Americans and your weapons of mass destruction. Liable to get us all killed.”

We all laughed again.

I had never been much of a beer drinker, preferring a light chardonnay with dinner, but there was something about standing up in a pub with three English blokes that made the libation taste as good as any I had ever had. I had nearly finished my second pint without any trouble.

As Caldwell went off for the third round for all of us, Twad and Tweed started discussing a cricket game and I looked around the room.

A blond-haired man was standing next to me, nursing a glass of red wine by himself. While his face was somber, his eyes lit up when I turned his way. He nodded and said, “Cheers,” lifting his wineglass.

I lifted my almost-empty pint glass. “Thanks. I
guess I should say cheers too. Or, as we say, here’s mud in your eye.”

“Why, you’re an American,” he said, and laughed. “I love your accent. I went to New York once. Great city.”

“Yes, it is. But London is wonderful,” I gushed, which was unlike me, but at the moment it felt wonderful.

“Can be sometimes,” he murmured. “I’m Guy, by the way.”

“I’m Karen. I just got here today—to London, I mean.”

“On your own?” he asked.

With that question, what Dave had done to me came crashing down. “I wasn’t supposed to be. A friend was going to come too, but then something came up. Actually, he called the day we were going to leave. And he told me he didn’t want to be with me anymore. How could he do that?” What had gotten into me? Perhaps it was the ale making me speak so openly to a stranger.

“He did treat you badly,” Guy said, with such gentleness in his voice that it took my breath away.

The thought of Dave’s voice on the phone, telling me it was over between us, which I had been pushing into the far back reaches of my mind, came
flooding forward, my feelings of grief and anger mixing together dangerously. The two pints of beer had unleashed the torrent.

I leaned forward and whispered, “Nothing has turned out how I expected—all because of Dave.” I hated to say it out loud.

“What did he do?”

I took a deep breath. “We’d been going out for four years. He’s a plumber with his own business. Does very well and now he’s doing even better since I gave him the idea for a new kind of toilet.”

“How does one make money with a toilet?” Guy asked.

“It’s hard to explain, but toilets are like mousetraps: People are always looking for a better one,” I said, not wanting to get into the scatological details. “Anyway, we’ve been planning this trip for over six months, I was so looking forward to it. I thought maybe even he might give me a ring and everything, and then, right as we are leaving, really, yesterday, he dumps me.”

“That’s a shame. And you such a nice woman.”

“I think so. Most of the time.” My head felt abuzz from the beer and the still very raw emotions.

He shook his head and looked straight into my eyes. “I know how you feel. Happened to me once,
it did. Not a pleasant thing. And me ready to pop the question too.”

“What did you do?”

He took my question seriously. “I went crazy for a while, thought of getting even in some horrible way, but in my line of work one has to be careful.”

“Caldwell—he owns the B and B I’m staying at—I don’t want him to know what happened with Dave. It’s too embarrassing. It’s nice to be able to talk to someone about it. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Of course not.”

I asked, “What is your line of work?”

“Let’s just say I do keep company from time to time with the seedier elements of this fair city.”

“Oh.” It felt like he didn’t want to say any more about what he did.

Guy smiled and kept his eyes on me. “Is this awful man still back in the States?”

“Well, no, that’s part of what’s so awful. Dave—his name is Dave Richter—is here in London. We were supposed to come here together on the plane, but he broke up with me, and I came anyway, and he did too, on the same plane.”

“Together?”

“No. He doesn’t know I’m here.” I had to take
a deep breath to say the next part, which hurt like below-freezing air rushing into my lungs. “And the worst thing—the worst thing of all . . . I still can’t believe it.” I didn’t know if I could say it—it would make it more real.

“What?”

“He didn’t come alone.”

“Really?”

“He came with another woman.”

“No.” He said the word like a door slamming hard. “Of all the—”

“Yes, and she’s half his age. He’s fifty. I suppose some people would find her attractive, you know. She’s got long blond hair and she’s super thin. And she wears those shirts that don’t cover your belly button. Not appropriate travel wear, I’d say.”

“Right,” he responded.

“Then . . . You’re not going to believe this, but I followed them to their hotel. The Queen’s Arms. What was I thinking? What if he had seen me?”

“We all go a bit bonkers at such a time. Go gentle on yourself.” He nodded. “The Queen’s Arms Hotel. Know the place. Not far from where I live. Bit gone to pot. Loos down the hall.”

Not having a private bath would drive Dave wild. He didn’t even like having me share his bathroom when I stayed over.

“So, if you had your way, what would you like to have happen to this bloke?” Guy asked.

Talking about it had made me feel better. “I don’t know . . . something horrible, I suppose.” I laughed. It came out sounding like a cackle. “You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve actually been fantasizing about killing him.”

Guy rolled his wineglass in his hands. “Very understandable. I’ve been there myself.”

Just then Caldwell handed me my third pint of beer. “Good evening,” he said to Guy. To me, he said, “Karen, we’ve commandeered a table on the other side of the room. When you’re ready.”

I swayed slightly as I stood there. I couldn’t believe what I had just told this stranger. But it had felt good to get some of that anger off my chest. “I hope I haven’t said too much.”

“Not to worry,” Guy said. “You’ll be surprised. Dave will be taken care of. I’ll make sure he is.”

Caldwell took my arm as I started to walk. I was glad of his assistance. The floor of the old pub seemed to slant in all directions.

Twad and Tweed were sitting together on one side of the table. Caldwell and I slipped into the other side—a tight fit that forced Caldwell to keep an arm on the bench back behind me. The three men talked about cricket for a while, trying to explain
the game to me, but I felt like Alice fallen down the rabbit hole. Or maybe Dorothy gone over the rainbow. Somehow I’d landed in a strange land in which I didn’t know the rules.

“Wickets and crumpets and toppers,” I mumbled. “Oh my.”

Halfway through the third pint of beer I started to fade.

“I think it’s time to call it a night,” Caldwell suggested.

“But I haven’t bought a round,” I protested.

When I looked around, I saw that Guy was gone. No matter. Talking to him had done me good. I knew I would never kill Dave for real, but murdering him in my mind had helped a little.

EIGHT

Nodded Off

I
n the deep middle of the night I woke up. My head ached, my toes hurt, and everything in between was not feeling very good either. I didn’t know where I was or what time it was, but I knew I needed to try to mend myself. I stumbled out of bed, crashing into the nightstand, then righted myself.

My head was trying to lift off my shoulders and go into orbit. I put both hands on it to keep it in place. Aspirin and orange juice might do the trick, might quell my body aches enough to get me back
to sleep. I turned on the bedside light and squinted my eyes against the glare. My purse was by the door to my room, so I stumbled over there and found the bottle of aspirin I carried with me just in case of a sinus headache. However, I was well aware that what I was feeling was the result of too much drink on top of severe jet lag.

The clock read three in the morning. Everyone should be sound asleep. I could safely make my way down to the kitchen and see if I couldn’t find some form of juice in the refrigerator.

Wrapping my bathrobe around me, I hoped I looked presentable enough if I ran into anyone. I opened the door as quietly as possible and stepped out into the hallway. A night-light shone on the floor so I could make my way without fear of running into anything or anyone. Down the stairs I went and turned toward the kitchen. There appeared to be a light left on in the sitting room, and I could see well enough to find a switch in the kitchen.

I found no orange juice in the refrigerator, but I did find elderberry syrup. It would have to do. The label said to mix with water. I found a glass and mixed the liquid half and half. Two aspirin and a large tumbler of some very sweet juice later, I thought I might live. But I didn’t want to go back to my room quite yet. I decided to wander into the
sitting room and look out the window until my head stopped swirling.