Page 41 of Happily Ever After
Just becauseIthought Oswald couldn’t write his way out of a deckchair, that didn’t mean everyone thought the same. After all, I didn’t think much of Tolstoy, but plenty of other people did. There were probably students of Oswald’s work out in the world, poring over his every word, analysing every grim, obviously rhymed line. Those diaries could be valuable to the world of literary research. I could be a hero!
I took the pillow off my head and got up. The Master ‘brrrrrpd’ at me questioningly, and then followed as I set out towards the library again, with a new resolution in my steps.
I bloody wellwouldfind those diaries, if I had to take the room apart to do so.
18
221B, BAKER STREET – SHERLOCK HOLMES, A CONAN DOYLE
By Tuesday, my resolution was wavering.
Under the watchful eye of Oswald, I had stripped all the shelves again and piled the books on the floor. Then I had systematically examined each individual shelf, pulling, prodding, wiggling and yanking. After that, I’d taken the bookcases as a whole, dragging any unattached away from the panelling so that I could tap the walls, lifting to look for spaces underneath and checking for hidey-holes or suspiciously hollow sounding places.
After two days of this, with absolutely no result other than occasionally toppling book mountains, I was filthy, exhausted, and building a whole new set of muscles that I was absolutely never going to need again.
I stood, resting my back against the table, and surveyed the room. Or what I could see of it through the clouds of irritated dust, which swirled and coiled through the air as though I had disturbed a nest of tiny insects.
‘Nope,’ I said to Oswald and The Master, who were both staring at me as though they believed I had taken leave of my senses, and in this house I had quite a lot of competition for that stare. ‘They really aren’t in here, are they?’
The cat blinked and licked his front again, so that he could stretch his chin upward and better appreciate the warmth from the fire on his chest. Oswald just glared.
There was a tap at the window and I turned to see the form of Jay, nose flattened on the glass panels. I waved and went over.
‘Hello, how are you?’ Jay leaned against the ledge outside and peered through the gap. I’d opened the window a crack in a hopeful attempt to release some of the dust into the wild. It hadn’t worked.
‘Fed up. How’s your mum? Thanks for leaving me the note.’
‘She’s fine, thanks. Mending nicely and the installation for the landscaping show is all done. And if I hadn’t left the note, you’d probably be launching books at my head right now. Can I come in, or are you under observation?’
I opened the window wider. ‘Come in. Hugo is doing an internet shop with Mrs Compton, mainly to prevent her from buying arsenic and cyanide, and Lady Tanith is upstairs somewhere, supposedly lying down, but that’s awholeother story.’
Jay hopped in. He didn’t need the paper. Today he wasn’t wearing his work clothes and it was nice to see him in normal jeans and a T-shirt that actually fitted. ‘I was gonethree days,’ he said, once he’d landed on the floor inside. ‘You mean that there’s yet more bonkers stuff gone on while I’ve been away?’
In hushed tones, although not too hushed because he had to watch my lips carefully and ask for me to repeat a few things, I told Jay about what I’d found in the attic. He stretched his eyes very wide.
‘Good grief. That’s halfway into sectioning territory. So she goes up there and…?’
‘Well, I don’t exactly know. She may just find it comforting to have all Oswald’s things in one place where she can see them, and she only goes up to look through the photographs, read his books and remember good times,’ I said, giving the benefit of the doubt so much leeway that it threatened to capsize. ‘Perhaps she just lights a candle to his memory.’
‘Or it could be blood sacrifices, chanting and trying to invoke Oswald’s spirit,’ Jay said, pulling a face. ‘You need to tell Hugo.’
‘What? No, I don’t, do I? I mean, it’s private, it’s Lady Tanith’s business. Like Hugo’s…’ I bit my tongue. ‘Hugo has his own peccadillos that he doesn’t want his mother to know about.’
‘Are they teetering on the edge of being something that means the police should be informed?’ Jay sat on the sofa, leaning forward over his knees.
‘No! Of course not. But, to be fair, neither are Lady Tanith’s.’ I felt the pity again, making my heart lurch. ‘Day to day she’s fine. Well, no, not fine, obviously, but she’s hardly running amok with a chainsaw. She keeps the estate ticking over, she’s in charge of the finances…’ I had an awful moment of wondering what would happen to the finances when Hugo had free rein with the money and the ability to attend all the vintage and historic clothing sales in the world. ‘She’s apparently sane, more or less. She just really, really loved Oswald.’
‘Butfifty years.’ Jay dropped his head and fiddled with his hearing aids. ‘Fifty years, Andi. That’s not love. It’s not even obsession. I think Lady Tanith has levelled up on the obsession thing and she’s into – I dunno, whatever comes next.’ He looked up at me now. ‘And that might be something you want to think about, if you can’t find these diaries.’
We both stared around the library, which looked like a room in a photoshoot forHoarders’ Weekly.
‘She’s going to go postal, isn’t she?’ I said, eventually.
‘Well, if they aren’t here, they aren’t here,’ Jay said, standing up and coming over. The Master oozed out from in front of the fire to rub against Jay’s legs, purring. ‘You can’t make them be here. You’re sure they definitely aren’t among the sacred tomes up in the attic?’
I shook my head. ‘Pretty sure. The books up there looked to be properly bound and titled from the extremely quick glance I had from between my fingers, whilst screaming.’
‘Maybe Lady Tanith got it wrong, and Oswald got rid of the diaries.’
