The librarian pointed back to the children’s area. ‘Those two deserve some kind of sainthood, or a medal at the very least. Both primary school teachers. Not content with spending their working weeks corralling the little bastards, they actually volunteer to come here and do more of the same on their Saturday mornings.’
‘You’re lucky to have them.’
‘You can say that again.’ All the time she was talking, the librarian was working, picking up books from the trolley, checking them through and, according to their condition, placing them on one or other of the lower shelves. ‘Without my volunteers and my part-timers,’ she went on, ‘this place’d close even sooner than it will do anyway.’
‘Is it going to close?’ asked Carole.
Di Thompson shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Government cuts are hitting all the local amenities. And libraries are currently in a pretty vulnerable state. Borrowings down, people find it so easy to read e-books or order real books on Amazon. Then kids spend all their time playing computer games rather than reading, people who used to rely on the library for computer services seem mostly now to have their own laptops or tablets. The reference information we used to provide is all available at the touch of a button from Wikipedia … I could go on. The effects of all that are already being felt – even here in West Sussex. In other parts of the country there are a lot of libraries reducing their opening hours, stopping their mobile library services, some closing down completely. And a few continuing as community libraries, all run by volunteers. It’s not a great time for us.’
‘But libraries are part of our heritage,’ said Carole piously. ‘There are people whose entire education has come from their public library. Surely they can’t be allowed just to disappear? Somebody must do something about it.’
‘What, though? And, more importantly, who? Who’s going to do something about it?’ Di Thompson looked Carole straight in the eye. ‘It’s the old “use it or lose it” syndrome. And I often wonder whether the people who do say how terrible it is, who write letters to the papers saying we mustn’t lose our libraries, saying that an efficient library service is an essential part of a civilized society – do they actually use their local branch as much as they should?’
Carole looked away. She didn’t know whether Di was actually getting at her or not, but she still felt guilty.
‘We keep trying to drum up more interest in this place, but it’s an uphill struggle. Special events, all that …’
‘Library talks?’ Carole suggested, seeing a way of getting to the subject she really wanted to talk about.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Di. ‘They can be quite popular, but the trouble is, it’s always the same people who attend. The Fethering stalwarts, mostly female, mostly over seventy. Very loyal, but as they die off, who’s going to replace them? What I do these days is rather similar to being a vicar, watching my congregation slowly slipping away to nothing.’ As she spoke, her hands were still busily sorting the books.
Carole decided to take the direct approach. ‘And does a library talk attract more interest if the evening ends in a murder?’
Di Thompson let out a small, sharp laugh. ‘Well, it would appear to, yes. Certainly had more people joining the library this week than we have had for some time. I think that’s maybe something to do with them wanting to visit the scene of the crime.’
‘And was this the scene of the crime?’ asked Carole.
It had been a half-hearted attempt to see whether Di might reveal that she knew more detail about Burton St Clair’s death than the rest of Fethering. As such, it failed. The librarian replied, ‘The scene of the crime was actually in the car park. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard that.’
Carole covered up. ‘Oh, there’s been so much gossip in Fethering during the last week, it’s hard to pick out the truth from the speculation.’
‘Tell me about it.’ Di Thompson let out a jaded sigh. ‘I’ve heard more theories about whodunit than you’d find in the entire crime section.’
‘Any convincing ones?’ asked Carole hopefully.
‘No. Each one sillier than the next.’ The librarian gave her a sharp look. ‘Why, are you about to inflict yet another one on me?’
Carole had been offered an opening, and she knew she had to use it with caution. ‘Well, I was talking about it with Jude, my neighbour, you know, who was here on Tuesday night …’
‘I know Jude.’
‘… and the police had spoken to her …’
‘Detective Inspector Rollins and her sidekick?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have sympathy for her. They’ve taken up a lot of my time this week.’ She gestured to her trolley. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be sorting out this lot on a Saturday.’
‘Jude said the police told her Burton St Clair was killed by anaphylactic shock after eating something containing walnuts, to which he was allergic.’
Di Thompson looked at her with new respect, realizing she was dealing with a Fethering resident who actually knew some of the facts in the case. Which was quite a novelty. ‘Yes, that’s what they told me. And I had to close the library on Thursday while they searched the place. Kept the staff room shut up yesterday too. Which was very inconvenient, because they gave me so little notice about it.’
‘Presumably,’ said Carole, hoping to channel the librarian’s resentment of the police towards further revelations, ‘they checked the staff room where the wine had been kept for drinks after Burton St Clair’s talk?’
‘Yes. Looking for traces of walnuts, I suppose.’
‘And did they find any?’
That was greeted by a cynical laugh. ‘Well, if they did, they weren’t going to tell me about it, were they?’
‘Of course not.’ Carole knew all too well how reticent the police could be when it came to sharing their findings with amateurs. ‘You were actually there when the bottle was broken?’
‘Yes.’
‘From what Jude said, you’d poured a glass for Burton St Clair from the last remaining bottle in the staff room?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And then when Steve Chasen went to pour a glass for himself, you reached out to stop him and that’s how the bottle got knocked over?’
‘Yes. Vix Winter, my junior librarian, was there too.’
Carole looked around the room. ‘Is she here today?’
‘No. She should be.’ There was a lot of resentment in Di’s voice. ‘She called in sick.’
‘Are you suggesting she’s not sick?’
‘I just think, for a girl of her age, she suffers from a remarkable amount of illness.’
‘Right.’ That, clearly, was an ongoing staffing problem which did not concern Carole. ‘So, going back to the bottle getting smashed, it could be any one of the three of you who knocked it over?’
‘I suppose so. But it wasn’t deliberate. It was an accident.’
‘But if it had been deliberate, any one of you could have ensured that it fell on to the floor?’
‘Perhaps, but why would we want to?’
‘To destroy the evidence that chopped walnut had been infiltrated into the bottle?’
‘Oh, I see, right. Well, I can assure you, Carole, I haven’t been infiltrating chopped walnut anywhere.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting you had been.’
‘No? You are aware, aren’t you, that you and Jude have got a bit of a reputation around Fethering for seeing yourselves as amateur sleuths?’
‘Have we?’ asked Carole innocently.
‘Very definitely. Why else do you think I’m answering your questions?’
‘Oh.’ Carole felt her face colouring. ‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Anyway, I didn’t like that Detective Inspector Rollins’s attitude. If anyone’s going to solve the case, I’d much rather it was the local amateurs.’