The Herring in the Library (7 page)

I nodded. I’ve never quite seen the point of children, so it is doubly a mystery to me why anyone should want to introduce a completely unrelated humanoid into their
household to crap on the Axminster, but each to his (or her) own.

‘That’s good,’ I said, trying to appear sincere.

‘Yes,’ he said. But he too didn’t seem as sure as he should have been, and the conversation lapsed once again.

I checked out the other end of the table, where Ethelred was paying rather too much attention to his hostess’s reconstructed frontage. She leaned forwards in a way that
seemed to me to go beyond mere flirtation.

‘Are they very big?’ I heard Ethelred ask.

It seemed an unnecessary question.

‘Bloody good wine,’ I heard Colin say.

I turned to see Shagger putting a finger to his lips. Annabelle presumably was unaware of this particular extravagance. Shagger noticed my glance and gave me a wink before
calling the village idiot over for a whispered conversation.

Reluctantly I turned my attention back to Gerald. ‘Is Jane a solicitor too?’

‘No, she’s a full-time mother,’ he said. Again, did I detect a lack of enthusiasm for this career choice? ‘She used to work in a bank.’

‘Like Robert?’

‘Same bank. She used to be Robert’s secretary.’

‘I see,’ I said.

I finally caught Ethelred’s eye and he turned immediately to the less dangerous charms of Jane Smith.

‘We’ve got a very good gardener, here,’ said Shagger, over to my right, as though he had suddenly been reminded of the fact. ‘Acres of gardens of course.
You need somebody full-time. He’s called John O’Brian. I don’t know where Annabelle found him, but she reckons he’s very good.’

‘Is that the guy I saw earlier?’ I asked. ‘Lots of muscle, not much shirt, good firm bum?’

‘Yes,’ said Shagger. Like Gerald Smith, he seemed to harbour some secret sorrow this evening. ‘Yes, that’s the chappie.’

‘Do you do much gardening yourself?’

‘No, I leave that to John. Annabelle spends a certain amount of time overseeing John’s work. She has a lot of fun in the garden, she tells me. Are you all
right?’

Some of my soup had gone down the wrong way. Gerald patted me on the back.

‘No, I’m fine,’ I said, but changed the subject away from gardening to avoid any repeat performance. Obviously, if I employed somebody like John O’Brian,
I wouldn’t have wasted him on mulching the rose bushes either, but I suspected Annabelle might be in breach of the Working Time Directive.

I looked across the table at Clive Brent, who in turn was casting furtive glances in Annabelle’s direction. She caught his eye once and then frowned and turned away. What
was that all about? Robert was fortunately now deep in conversation with Fiona McIntosh, but the air, frankly, was getting electric with intrigue and suppressed desire.

We were well into the various courses when Robert stood up and tapped a glass for silence.

I don’t know what sort of speech the others were expecting. Most of the party was, by this stage, fairly drunk, the wine having flowed more freely than Colin had
predicted. There had been a brief and almost imperceptible contretemps between Mr and Mrs Shagger, when the village idiot had produced a big, cobwebby bottle of red and Mrs S had waved him away,
only for Mr S to wave him back again. This obviously confused the village idiot, who had stood there, not unlike Balaam’s Ass, until Shagger took the heavy bottle from him by force and went
round the table pouring drinks. Mrs S ostentatiously declined. Anyway, having stuck to lemonade, I was probably the only member of the party who was entirely sober when Robert scraped back his
chair and began to address us.

He explained that he and the gold-digger intended this as some sort of house-warming and that we were a specially selected group of chums. I wondered briefly whether Shagger had
slept with all the women and his wife with all the men – but that would have ruled me (and Ethelred) out, so possibly not. I got the impression he might be drunk enough not to hold back on
little details of that sort, so I continued to listen with interest.

‘Will there be fireworks?’ asked Clive.

‘Fireworks? Of a sort, maybe. For the moment, however, I merely wish to drink the health of everyone here round the table.’

So, nine of us drank each other’s health in wine, one in lemonade. Robert burbled on a bit longer and then, quite abruptly, took his leave.

I’d had a chance to watch Annabelle’s face during all of this, and it had changed from mild puzzlement to genuine concern. Whatever Robert had in mind, she had not
been let in on it. On the other hand he might have just gone to the loo. It was reaching the stage in the evening when a number of bladders were realizing that they were not as young as they once
had been.

We talked amongst ourselves for a bit. Annabelle left and came back. Felicity was the next to depart, and returned complaining that the facilities were almost impossible to
find. Gerald and Jane made a family outing of the same trip, which also took some time. They came back separately, having mislaid each other in the labyrinthine corridors of Muntham Court. In the
meantime Fiona McIntosh had also excused herself.

A good fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes had elapsed when Mrs Shagger’s patience finally wore out and she suggested that, since Robert had deserted us, we should take the
opportunity of touring the ground floor with her to admire the various treasures, and so on and so forth, that Muntham Court had to offer.

Everyone decided to go except Ethelred, who seemed to have had a row of some sort with Felicity Hooper. So I stayed back with him and the others departed. Annabelle went with the
Smiths and Felicity Hooper, then Clive Brent drifted out on his own, followed by the McIntoshes, each clutching a glass.

Ethelred was morose and untalkative. I was wondering whether I shouldn’t after all go for a wander round, when I noticed John O’Brian, wheeling his now-empty barrow
in the very last of the fading light, back to wherever barrows get put when darkness falls. He disappeared round a hedge and was, sadly, lost to sight.

I was just wondering how soon I could get Ethelred to drive me home, when Annabelle returned and announced Shagger had kicked the bucket.

Fair enough. It was only later that things started to get
really
interesting.

Five

So, then there was one.

Annabelle had whisked Ethelred off with her, leaving me alone at the table. Since all the action was clearly going on elsewhere, I wandered out into the corridor.

The weird thing was that people were obviously rushing around in a blind panic elsewhere, but here all was silence and calm. I could hear the ticking of a large clock somewhere
nearby, but that was all. I decided to go left, but all of the oak panelling looked much the same. I wasn’t sure if I was heading for the front door or the kitchen. Like I say, it was a
reasonably big house.

Then I turned a corner and collided with Clive Brent, who was hurrying in the opposite direction.

‘Do you know where the others are?’ I asked.

‘Others?’ he said.

‘The other guests. You all cleared off, then Annabelle came back saying something had happened to Robert.’

‘Robert?’

He wasn’t really being much use. I wondered if I should give him a good shake and start again. It works with Ethelred sometimes.

‘Haven’t you been with the others?’ I asked.

He gave me a guilty look. ‘No-I sort of lost them,’ he said. ‘I was . . . looking around.’

Then I heard a voice in the distance yelling: ‘Robert!’

‘Let’s go that way,’ I said, pointing in the direction of the distance. Another couple of turns of the corridor took us to a little gaggle of people in evening
dress, standing on what was clearly the wrong side of an oak door. They looked worried.

‘Robert!’ Colin was calling through the keyhole.

‘Has he moved?’ asked Gerald.

This seemed to be an ongoing conversation, because Colin just shook his head briefly. ‘All just as before. Maybe . . . how much had he had to drink?’

‘What’s Annabelle doing?’ asked Felicity in an irritated manner. ‘Surely she’s got round to the window by now? It’s ridiculous that a key
can’t be found.’

‘I should have gone with her,’ said Colin. ‘I said that at the time.’

‘She’s got Ethelred with her,’ I said.

They all turned and looked at me at this point. Felicity said: ‘Fat lot of good he’ll be.’

‘You should have gone with Annabelle,’ said Fiona.

‘I said that at the time,’ said Colin.

‘Did you?’ said Fiona.

‘Did I what?’ asked Colin.

Yes, in a crisis, this was precisely the conversation we were having. We were, frankly, a total shower and (with one exception) all drunk enough to believe that we alone had the
solution.

‘Somebody should phone for an ambulance now,’ said Felicity. ‘This is getting ridiculous.’

‘There’s a doctor here already,’ said Fiona, slurring her words only slightly. ‘Two actually.’

‘No, somebody phone,’ said Colin, still kneeling by the door. ‘He must have had a heart attack or something. And if Annabelle doesn’t appear in a moment,
I’m breaking the door down.’

‘That’s a pretty solid door,’ said Clive, studying it for the first time.

‘There must be something we could use as a battering ram,’ said Colin. ‘Somebody should go and look for an oak bench.’ That Muntham Court might contain
an oak bench was a reasonable theory, but nobody seemed capable of carrying out the necessary empirical research. Gerald glanced around vaguely as though a bench might suddenly appear. If Robert
wanted manly action, he had wined and dined us a little too well.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

‘Just arrived,’ said Colin. ‘We sort of got lost. But Annabelle and the others must have been here for five minutes or so.’

‘We were being shown round,’ said Jane, slightly diffidently. ‘We got lost, too, then we found Annabelle here outside the library. She tried the door, but it
was locked, so we knocked, obviously. When nobody opened it, we looked through the keyhole. Robert’s in there, but slumped over his desk. Annabelle said that the quickest thing was to break
in through one of the windows.’

‘Is anyone calling an ambulance?’ asked Colin.

‘I’m onto it,’ said Fiona, tapping numbers into her mobile. ‘Damn – this is a whole lot easier when you’re sober,’ she added. She tried
999 again, but this time very slowly.

‘Let’s smash the door down then,’ said Clive, with a confidence that marked him out as the drunkest of the party. The oak bench had not appeared, but he was
still up for it – a shoulder charge against a solid oak door obviously seemed to Clive both prudent and likely to be effective.

It was perhaps as well that, at that very moment, we heard the sound of breaking glass somewhere inside the room.

‘That could be the cavalry arriving,’ said Clive, with more than a trace of disappointment in his voice. The chance to kick a door in comes rarely to most
people.

‘I can see two figures at the window,’ said Colin, who had refused to give up his vantage point by the keyhole. ‘One of them has got the window open and is
climbing in – that’s Ethelred. Good man. Now Annabelle’s in.’

‘Ambulance on its way,’ said Fiona, snapping her phone closed, ‘but it’s likely to be ten minutes or so.’

‘Excellent work all round,’ said Colin.

‘What on earth are they doing?’ asked Felicity. ‘They need to get this door open
fast.’

‘Annabelle’s over by the desk with Robert,’ Colin reported. ‘Can’t see what she’s doing exactly. Ethelred’s heading this
way.’

And finally, after the metallic rasping noise of bolts being pulled back, the door opened. We all pushed past Ethelred and stood in a sort of loose circle round the desk looking
at Robert.

Then we all rather wished we hadn’t. Colin and Fiona asked us all to give them space while they tried resuscitation, and we were happy to give it to them. But they
didn’t look that hopeful.

Strangled. With the rope. In the library.

Six

It all happened so quickly.

When Annabelle hurried me out of the dining room, leaving Elsie behind, I was not quite sure where we were going – only that we needed to get there fast.

I was led at a brisk trot out of the front door and round the side of the house. It was now almost dark and I stumbled once or twice on the uneven surface. There were rose bushes under the
windows, which snagged my trousers at least once as we squeezed between them – but there was no time to check for possible damage. We stopped on the soft earth, by a tall, well-lit window.
The interior of the library could be seen clearly – the book-lined walls, the armchairs, the large antique globe and, in the centre of it all, Robert slumped, face down, on his desk, as
though he had pitched forward in the middle of writing something.

I tried pushing the window, but it wouldn’t budge. It had been securely fastened from inside.

‘We’ll have to break the glass,’ said Annabelle. She handed me a large flint; this was, in her view, quite clearly Men’s Work.

It was an iron casement window with leaded panes. That we should not break windows is something so firmly instilled in us from childhood that I paused for a moment, flint in hand, before
striking the centre of the pane closest to the latch. I felt a brief moment of exhilaration as I heard the glass fracture and fall inwards. I knocked away some of the jagged fragments still
clinging to the lead beading, then gingerly put my fingers through, opened the window and hauled myself in.

‘Give me a hand,’ ordered Annabelle. ‘I can hardly be expected to climb up there in this dress unaided.’ I quickly apologized and pulled her in after me.

We stood for a moment by the window, my hand still holding Annabelle’s. Robert had not stirred at all. In the stillness of the library, there was no sound of breathing, no rhythmic
movement of Robert’s back as his lungs drew breath. It was not looking good. We glanced at each other, then at Robert, lying face down, a whisky glass beside him, his favourite pen neatly
capped and lying beside the blotter on the vast mahogany desk. There was something odd about his neck, but I couldn’t immediately see what. While I was still wondering what to do, Annabelle
took charge.