Owls Well That Ends Well (17 page)

“Appealing, in an untidy, bookish, professorial fashion,” I suggested.

“Yes, that’s the ticket,” Dad said. “And very suitable, too. I mean, it’s a much classier murder than most, isn’t it? Killing someone over a book, instead of drugs or money or infidelity or any of those typical motives. And a vintage mystery book, to boot—I really like that part.”

“I’m sure it will be a comfort to Gordon at that great yard sale in the sky, knowing he made an atypically classy exit. And to Giles when he’s put on Death Row.”

“Laugh if you like,” Dad said, in a tone of mild reproach. “I’m just saying that when you finally identify the real culprit, I hope it’s someone … um …”

“Equally classy, but not so nice?” I suggested. “I’ll remember that tomorrow when I start auditioning candidates for the role of the real killer. Meanwhile, I want to interrogate—I mean talk to Giles. Just to see if he knows anything we can use to shake Chief Burke’s belief in his guilt. You know, if I were an evil person, I’d point out to the chief that there was probably an eyewitness to the murder.”

“An eyewitness!” Dad exclaimed.

“Meg,” Sammy said, very solemnly. “You should have mentioned this to the chief earlier.”

“It wouldn’t do any good,” I said. “You’ll never get him to talk.”

“Who?” Dad asked, while Sammy shook his head with a worried air.

“Him.” I pointed to Spike.

“Hmm,” Dad said, looking at Spike. “You’re right. He could very well have been in the barn when it happened.”

“And look how cheerful he is,” I said. “He’s not usually this happy unless he’s bitten someone quite recently. He probably enjoyed the vicarious bloodshed.”

“You could be right,” Sammy said. “Do you suppose we should test him for blood spatter?”

“What good would that do?” I asked. “For one thing, he probably does have blood spatter on him; he must have bitten three people today alone. But even if you found Gordon’s blood on him, all that would prove was that he might have been in the barn at the time of Gordon’s murder, which isn’t exactly relevant. That bookend weighs more than Spike, and I’m pretty sure the murderer had opposable thumbs.”

“I should tell the chief, though,” Sammy said. “Don’t give him a bath until I find out if we need to test him.”

“A bath? Do I look like a masochist?” I said. “But if you like, you can take him into protective custody.”

“No, thanks,” Sammy said.

“Released on his own recognizance,” Dad said.

I was about to leave them to their fun when I saw Sophie close her eyes and shudder slightly.

“Dad,” I said. “I think something’s wrong with Sophie.”

Chapter 21

Dad, Eric, and Sammy hurried back to the corner and stood at my side. I pointed. Sophie’s face took on a pained expression. Her eyes closed, her features scrunched up, and she shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

“Grandpa?” Eric said, looking slightly uneasy himself.

“Should we leave her alone?” I asked, jerking my thumb at Eric, trying to communicate to Dad that if Sophie were about to keel over at our feet, maybe we should lure Eric out before her demise.

“No, let’s stay a little longer,” Dad said.

“She hasn’t been poisoned, has she?” I asked. “That is what SPOOR is worried about, right? Farmers using poison on their rodents and killing the owls?”

“No, I don’t think she’s been poisoned,” Dad said. “Watch.”

We watched for a few more minutes. I was already working on how to explain Sophie’s death to Eric if Dad stuck me with the job, and wondering whether we had a box the right size to serve as a coffin for the owl funeral that I could see in our future.

Suddenly Sophie stretched out her neck, opened her beak, and spat out a pellet.

“There,” Dad said, beaming proudly, as if Sophie had done something particularly clever. “You see, she’s fine.”

“Co-o-ol!” Eric said, running to retrieve the pellet. For the SPOOR collection, no doubt.

“Ick,” I said.

“Can she do it again?” Eric asked.

As if this were her cue, Sophie launched herself into the air and swooped gracefully out the open door.

“Isn’t that fascinating?” Dad said.

“At least she makes a lot less fuss than a cat with a hairball,” I said. “Take Spike inside, will you? I’ll see you when I get home from jail.”

“Is there anything else I can do to help?” Dad asked, as he headed over to Spike’s pen.

“No,” I said. “Then again—if you wouldn’t mind. It’s not something you can do tonight, but if you wouldn’t mind tomorrow …”

“Just say the word,” Dad exclaimed.

Dad was disappointed at his secret assignment—obtaining lavender and rose bath products from Cousin Rosemary—but the warning that she must on no account know that he was buying them for me satisfied his taste for cloak-and-dagger operations.

Michael and I had plenty of time to cool our heels and eat our share of the picnic supper when we got down to the police station, but shortly after ten, Chief Burke let Giles go. Probably a good thing we’d come to collect him. The defense attorney was having a splendid time, arguing with the chief and threatening to file various motions. He wasn’t eager to leave. We hustled the tired and disheveled Giles out of the station.

“Enthusiastic sort of chap,” Giles said, when we were safely in the car.

“Well, this is what they live for, defense attorneys,” I said. “A nice, challenging case.”

“And he’s very good,” Michael put in. “Whenever any of the law school professors need a defense attorney, he’s the one they call.”

“That’s encouraging, I suppose,” Giles said. “Just as a point of information, do the Caerphilly law faculty get arrested often?”

“Not really,” Michael said. “But I’m told that when and if they were, he’s the very man they’d call.

Giles nodded.

“Think positively,” I said. “As a mystery buff, don’t you find it exciting to experience the criminal justice system firsthand, instead of just reading about it?”

“No, I think reading about it is infinitely preferable,” Giles said, looking at me with alarm. “For that matter, I suspect it will be a good long while before I really enjoy reading mysteries again. Especially police procedurals.”

“You’ll feel better in the morning,” Michael said.

“Better, perhaps; but not differently,” Giles murmured.

Giles lived in a quiet neighborhood, only minutes from the police station—and, for that matter, only minutes from campus. You had to move out of town, as we had, to find anyplace that wasn’t only minutes from anyplace else in Caerphilly.

Our original plan was to ferry Giles back to his car, but he looked so beat that Michael suggested that we just take him home and worry about the car tomorrow. Giles didn’t protest.

Though when we arrived at his small, mock-Tudor house, he insisted on inviting us in for sherry and, despite the late hour, I didn’t protest. I wanted to hear Giles’s side of the story. And I didn’t mind finally getting to see Giles’s study, where Michael had spent so many happy hours. I understood Michael’s point that Brits were more reserved than Americans, and didn’t invite people to their homes as readily, but I thought it was about time.

Giles went to fetch the sherry and Michael collapsed into a shabby but comfortable-looking green plush armchair while I prowled around exploring. Giles had four of the chairs clustered together in the center of his study—the walls being completely occupied by more square feet of bookshelves than most town libraries could boast. Giles’s book collection still overflowed the shelves. Stacks of books marched along the base of the bookcases, and more mountains of books occupied every open space. Small mounds surrounded each armchair, and here and there large Indian brass trays balanced on book stacks of suitable height to form side tables, while battered corduroy cushions thrown atop low heaps of books took the place of footstools.

Comfortable clutter, I found myself thinking. Earlier in the day, I’d have called that an oxymoron, but Giles’s study reminded me that not all clutter was irretrievably bad, and suggested that maybe some collections of things, however large and apparently disorganized, didn’t qualify as clutter. Should I feel guilty for having a double standard about clutter?

Since nearly every square inch of wall space was occupied by books, Giles had improvised a way to display the decorations most people hung from picture hooks. He’d used those hooks designed to hold Christmas stockings on a mantel without driving a nail into the wood to suspend various objects from the front of the bookshelves. Two silver stars supported a small oil painting, a team of brass reindeer towed a pair of antique dueling pistols affixed to a polished wooden board, and a series of framed certificates of appreciation from various arcane societies floated beneath a series of brass letters spelling out the cryptic message ACNE ELOPE. I puzzled over the sequence for several minutes before realizing that he’d combined the letters in two sets of holiday hooks, one reading PEACE and the other NOEL.

Now, I settled into another faded green chair and waited for the sneezes. Giles’s study reminded me of his office, which I had seen before. I always sneezed half a dozen times shortly after entering his office until my nose adjusted to the prevailing atmosphere of book dust and left me alone. I expected his study would have the same effect.

“I want our library to look like this,” I said, when I’d gotten past the sneezes.

Our future library, that is. Right now most of our books were packed in boxes and stored in Michael’s office at the college, in the Cave, or at my parents’ house. But we’d already designated one huge room on the ground floor as the library, with an adjacent room for Michael’s office. It had the potential to look just as cool as this, I thought, looking around. In fact, even cooler.

To my surprise, Michael only looked around wistfully and nodded. Odd. Normally I was the one who would have trouble visualizing what the library could look like once we replaced the missing floor, mended the waterdamaged ceiling, and put new glass in all the boarded-up windows. Was he just tired, or was something else wrong?

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Giles said, for the hundredth time, as he came in carrying three reasonably clean sherry glasses. “Bail bonds, criminal defense attorneys—I’m afraid it’s all rather foreign to me.”

“No problem,” Michael said, accepting a glass of sherry.

“Always happy to share our vast personal experience with the criminal justice system,” I added, as I held out my hand for a glass.

“Er … right,” Giles said, handing me the sherry.

We sipped in silence for a few minutes, while Giles wandered about the study, making minor corrections to how various books and knickknacks were arranged, muttering something about jackbooted thugs as he did so. Not really fair—the room looked in very good shape for a place the police had just finished searching from top to bottom. And he was lucky that they hadn’t felt it necessary to use fingerprint powder.

I wondered briefly how long one should wait before asking one’s host how his arrest had gone, and then decided to dive in. If Giles hadn’t gotten used to my impatient nature by now, it was time he learned.

“I’m amazed that they actually arrested you,” I said, which I thought was a pretty tactful opening.

“I don’t blame them,” Giles said. “You have to admit, the evidence looks bad for me.”

“But what about motive?” I asked. “I mean, can you really imagine someone killing someone else over a book?”

“Well, yes,” Giles said. “I can imagine it.”

Chapter 22

“Giles!” I exclaimed.

“Your lawyer will probably be happier if you don’t go around saying things like that,” Michael suggested.

“I don’t condone it,” Giles said, sounding uncharacteristically melancholy. “It’s abhorrent to consider taking a human life for any reason, but for a mere material object? Unspeakable. But unimaginable? No. I can imagine it. A great deal more easily with a book than with some other object. Isn’t that strange?”

“Not really,” Michael said. “You value books. I’m not sure you care about any other material objects.”

“But not that book,” Giles said, in something closer to his normal precise manner. “For one thing, I already have a copy of
The Uttermost Farthing,
thank you very much. The copy Gordon found isn’t even in particularly good condition. You can see that just by looking at it.”

“Not anymore,” I said.

“True,” Giles said, looking pained. “I wonder if there’s enough left to judge the condition. For all I know, they only have my word on its poor condition before he tried to burn it. Stupid thing to do. It was badly worn and discolored, but it would have done for a reading copy. Though not at the price he was asking for it.”

“What was he asking?” Michael said.

“Eight hundred dollars,” Giles said, with some heat. “Outrageous, even if it were in mint condition. He’d have been overcharging to ask fifty for it, the blackguard.”

He blinked suddenly, as if he’d surprised himself with the strength of his emotion. He’d certainly surprised me. Normally Giles didn’t go much beyond mild indignation.

He shook his head and sipped his sherry.

“I don’t know why the poor blighter annoys—annoyed me so much,” he said, in something closer to his normal dry tone of voice.

“I do,” I said. “I heard him say he’d found a book you wanted on someone’s dollar table.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Giles said. “That’s his business. Buying books cheaply and selling them for as much as he can get. He has a right to make a living. Why should I resent the fact that he has the time and energy to go book hunting and the expertise to recognize a valuable book when he finds one?”

“Annoying that you didn’t get to the dollar table first,” Michael said.

“But that’s not his fault,” Giles said.

“Says you,” I put in. “You didn’t see him shoving his way to the head of the line.”

“He happened to get to that table first,” Giles said. “And however annoying it would be to pay full price when he’d paid a dollar, I could afford it. If I’d wanted the book in the first place, and I didn’t. So I feel bad about resenting him so much.”