Verwandte Artikel zu The Bodies in the Library (A First Edition Library...

The Bodies in the Library (A First Edition Library Mystery, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: First Edition Library Mysteries

Wingate, Marty

 
9781984804112: The Bodies in the Library (A First Edition Library Mystery, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1984804111 ISBN 13: 9781984804112
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

Hayley Burke's fresh start as the curator of the First Edition Society's library in Bath, England, is about to take a rotten turn in this charming new mystery series from USA Today bestselling author Marty Wingate.

Hayley Burke has landed a dream job: she is the new curator of Lady Georgiana Fowling's First Edition library. The library is kept at Middlebank House, a lovely Georgian home in Bath, England. Hayley lives on the premises and works with the finicky Glynis Woolgar, Lady Fowling's former secretary.

Mrs. Woolgar does not like Hayley's ideas to modernize the First Edition Society and bring in fresh blood. And she is not even aware of the fact that Hayley does not know the first thing about the Golden Age of Mysteries. Hayley is faking it till she makes it, and one of her plans to breathe new life into the Society is actually taking flight--an Agatha Christie fan fiction writers group is paying dues to meet up at Middlebank House.

But when one of the group is found dead in the venerable stacks of the library, Hayley has to catch the killer to save the Society and her new job.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A Seattle native, Marty Wingate is a member of the Royal Horticultural Society and leads garden tours through England, Scotland, and Ireland when she is not killing people in fiction.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

THE BODIES IN THE LIBRARY

1

"I’ll be leaving now, Ms. Burke.”

I leapt up from the desk at this announcement—­knocking my phone on the floor in the process—­and 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, won’t you?”

“I certainly will,” I replied. “But”—­I added with as much authority as I could muster under her steely gaze—­“as I’ve explained, I don’t feel we can ask them to move along just yet. And, I believe this connection to the local writing community will be a boon—­helping us to build a base of support that will ensure the Society’s 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 haven’t forgotten the furniture,” I assured her. “I’m terribly sorry they left the chairs in such disarray last week.” And the week before. “It’s only that Trist had shifted things round to act out a scene he’d written with the zombies.”

Mrs. Woolgar’s eyes were veiled as she snapped her handbag closed and brushed an imaginary speck off the lapel of her dress. “Yes, well, it’s 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 Fowling’s 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 passion—­acquiring 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 others—­many of the books personally autographed—­but also works from suspense author Daphne du Maurier, added to the list for the sole reason that she was one of Lady Fowling’s favorites.

It may have appeared that I’d made quite an extraordinary leap from my former post—­assistant to the assistant curator at the Jane Austen Centre—­to 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 worth—­if not to the board, then to myself and Glynis Woolgar, a dear friend and personal assistant to Lady Fowling for donkey’s years, and who now held the post of Society secretary in perpetuum.

Mrs. Woolgar was on one side or the other of sixty—­closer than that I could not guess. It was because of her clothes. She dressed as if it were 1935—­that great age of mystery writing. The narrow frocks with wide lapels and cinched waists suited her pencil-­like physique. Perhaps some women might’ve added a whimsical flare at the hemline, but not Mrs. Woolgar. Lady Fowling—­ninety-­four when she died—­had 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 Fowling’s vast fortune notwithstanding, I knew that money was finite. It could be used up or taken away, and then where would we be? I wasn’t thinking only of my own financial history—­what about her ladyship’s lout of a nephew? I’d heard the whole story. He’d received a bequest—­a shocking amount of money that I could’ve lived on for the rest of my life—­yet he continued to look for ways to challenge his aunt’s will. Apparently, he wanted the house, too—­The First Edition Society be damned.

“That may be true,” I replied, “but we mustn’t forget Lady Fowling’s admonition that we are ‘dedicated to the enjoyment, education, and furtherance of both readers and writers of mysteries, by connecting the public to our collection.’ ”

“I doubt she meant your lot,” Mrs. Woolgar muttered as she left.

My lot. It had been my idea to invite the fan-­fiction writers group to hold its sessions at Middlebank. I had offered it free of charge, believing this was a first step in making the Society not a diminishing, albeit elite, group of elderly book lovers who were scattered across the globe, but a viable and growing concern.

Each writer in the group had chosen to create his or her own homage to Agatha Christie—­the doyenne of the detective novel. Their ages were mixed, ensuring the word got out that the Society appealed not only to university researchers and rare-­book collectors, but also to a lively assortment of arty types from twenty­somethings to pensioners. Apart from the fact I knew nothing about Christie’s writings, how could this be a bad idea?

I checked the time, went to the small kitchenette behind the stairs, and made myself a sandwich. Middlebank, as was the case with terraced houses, stretched upward instead of outward, with four floors and a basement. The ground floor—­street level—­held our separate offices, Mrs. Woolgar’s and mine, plus the kitchenette and a loo. Up one flight of stairs lay the library, with floor-­to-­ceiling shelves, a large table, fireplace, and cozy nooks, as well as a powder room. My flat was up one more flight—­accommodations had been included in the job, and I was ever so grateful—­and at the top, an attic.

The basement was never referred to as such—­instead, it was called the lower ground floor, and that’s where Mrs. Woolgar lived. Middlebank sat midway along a well-­kept Georgian terrace made of golden Bath stone. The terrace had been built on a slope and the land fell away at the back, which meant her flat had plenty of light and access to the back garden. It was lovely—­the brief glimpse I’d had.

My flat had windows that took in a sweeping expanse of the town and into the Somerset countryside, as well as having a bird’s-­eye view of both the back garden and the street in front. I had moved here from a dreary, cramped flat out on the Wells Road, and I counted myself more than lucky, although I needed a reminder of this each morning when Mrs. Woolgar and I held our briefing.

On Wednesday evenings, I remained on the ground floor and in my office while the writers group met upstairs in the library. Furniture moving wasn’t the only black mark they’d received during their short tenure. Mrs. Woolgar had posted...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1984804111
ISBN 13 
9781984804112
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
336
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
GPSR Kontakt
gpsr@libri.de

Europaallee 1
Bad Hersfeld
36244
Deutschland