1 Killer Librarian (11 page)

Favorite Tragedy

I
stood in front of the bathroom mirror, the only mirror in my suite. I was wearing my simple black dress made of some chemical compound that was guaranteed never to wrinkle. After bandaging a blister, I had put on shoes with a small heel that were very comfortable to walk in. In honor of the occasion, I had lined my eyes with a soft black pencil and dabbed on concealer to hide the worst of my shadows. My hair I had washed and set loosely on rollers and now it was curling around my ears. All this was very nice and I looked completely presentable.

Then I brought out the shawl. With my eyes closed, I wrapped it around my shoulders, felt its warmth embrace me.

When I opened my eyes, the transformation was complete. Another woman stood before me. Someone who didn’t wear a watch. Someone who knew how to have a good time. Someone who might even drink champagne if it were offered.

I dabbed my lips with a color that came close to the warm red of the shawl. Even better.

I was ready to go.

As I descended the stairs, I felt like I was going to prom, an event I had never taken part in. My junior year I had not been invited; my senior year a fellow intellectual who worked on the school paper asked me out to see
Woodstock
. It was my second time seeing the movie and his third. No way would we condescend to go to such a bourgeois event as prom. But I have forever missed being given the opportunity to wear a frothy confection of a dress.

Unbeknownst to me, the Tweedles awaited. They came out from the sitting room and looked me up and down. Caldwell was not yet in sight.

“My oh my. Are you going to be warm enough?” one of them asked.

“And those shoes look a little high. You be careful or you’ll twist your ankle in those. Betty and I insist
on wearing our walking shoes no matter what the affair. Don’t we, Betty?”

“Absolutely. I’d hate to have to deal with the British health system. You’d probably have to wait days to be seen. And miss all that time on your vacation.”

I looked down at myself. The shawl was awfully lightweight and the shoes were a little higher than I was accustomed to. Had I made a mistake?

Right then Caldwell walked out from the kitchen. He was saying to the Tweedles, “You can’t miss it. It’s right at the end of the road and it has a huge banner. I’m sure you’ll enjoy your meal.”

He stopped when he saw me. At first he didn’t say anything, but the warmth in his eyes was enough.

Finally he said, “You are a vision. Perfectly perfect.”

No one had ever used the word
perfect
to describe me before, even though it was something I constantly strived to be.

Caldwell was wearing a dark navy blazer over a dark sweater with a paisley silk scarf. To my eye, he looked very European. Debonair in a way that American men rarely dared to be.

*   *   *

We took Caldwell’s Smart car, which I had never seen before. It looked like it would fold up and fit
into a purse. I loved it. Because it took up just half a parking space, he managed to tuck it into a spot that was only a few blocks away from the Globe.

When we stepped out on the sidewalk, he took my arm and tucked it under his. While the air was chilly, I was completely warm.

“How do you feel about
Macbeth
?” he asked as we walked.

“While I think it’s an important play,” I said. “It’s not my favorite of the tragedies.”

“What is?”

“Depends on the day.”

He laughed. “I know what you mean. On this day, which is your favorite?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s always between
Othello
and
Lear. Othello
is more romantic but
Lear
seems to me to be a truer tragedy. An unavoidable one.”

“How so?”

“We all grow old. We all fear we are not loved.”

He patted my hand. “How did you get to be this wise?”

“I just sound like I know what I’m talking about. It comes with the territory,” I said, thinking of my job, answering questions about books all day long.

“What territory?” he asked.

I realized I had slipped, but it could be fixed. “You know, sounding smart and authorial.”

“Of course.”

We rounded a corner and stopped.

There stood the Globe, an almost exact duplicate of the theater in which Shakespeare’s plays had first been presented, dark beams crisscrossing the white stucco façade. Three stories high, the building was an open-air amphitheater about a hundred feet in diameter.

Staring up at it, I felt transported back five hundred years. I wondered if the people then felt as excited as I did on entering this enormous theater.

I had read up on it, of course. The original Globe Theatre was able to hold about three thousand people, if one counted the people standing in the “pit,” the open area right in front of the stage.

“I can’t believe I’m actually seeing this place for real. Something I’ve read about forever. It’s as if the books, the plays, even Shakespeare himself, have come to life right before my eyes.”

“I know how you feel,” Caldwell said, giving my arm a squeeze as we walked forward.

I believed he did. I put my hand on top of his and squeezed back.

I was entering a fairy-tale world.

Enchanted.

EIGHTEEN

That Damn Spot!

W
alking into the Globe Theatre to see
Macbeth
on the arm of a handsome Brit, I determined nothing was going to keep me from enjoying this once-in-a-lifetime evening.

The center of the new Globe was like that of the old—roofless, open to the stars. With a thrust stage and a large, open yard, the area had seating only around the periphery. I had purchased the best seats money—thirty-three pounds, to be exact—could buy: middle-gallery, front-row seats, a splurge, but one I was very happy I had made when Caldwell
murmured his delight at where we were sitting. The seats were plain wooden benches, but Caldwell insisted on hiring cushions for us to sit on.

He handed me into the row and followed behind as we made our way to the exact center. I had planned it this way. I wanted to be able to see everything. With the pillars in the roofed area, many of the views were compromised. But I also knew that I needed to be sitting. There was no way I could have stood in the middle yard for the three hours of a play. They allowed absolutely no form of stool or folding chair and, out in the open, if it rained, they didn’t allow umbrellas. But the play would go on.

“I’m very sorry for your companion that he will be missing this, but I can’t help but be happy for myself,” Caldwell said as we sat shoulder to shoulder.

“I think you will probably enjoy it more than he would have,” I said quietly, knowing Dave. He would have found the seats too small, the play too long, and would have fidgeted through the first half of the play and slept through the second half.

“Do you come here often?” I asked.

He paused and said curtly, “Not recently.”

I wondered what I had stirred up, but didn’t feel like intruding. I looked around and marveled at the theater, the people filing in and beginning to fill up
the middle area. The theater being open to the sky reminded me of an outdoor baseball game. I decided not to pass this thought along to Caldwell as it made me sound too American. I was gawking, but I didn’t care. Sometimes one had to give in and simply be a tourist.

“What do you think?” Caldwell asked me.

“I’m sure it wasn’t quite like this in Shakespeare’s day, but it certainly gives the feeling.”

“Yes, I’m afraid the original might have been a little more rowdy. At that time, this theater was in the red-light district. Plays were considered quite risqué.”

“Well, acting was, after all, a purple profession. Shakespeare was lucky that he was being patronized by the Lord Chamberlain.”

“My, my. Aren’t you a little font of knowledge?” Caldwell teased me.

Again, I almost blurted out that it was because I was a librarian, but caught myself in time. This pretending to be something I was not was wearing very thin. “I was an English major. I guess some of the facts just stuck.”

Before I could say anything more, the sound of a lute filled the air. With little ceremony and no damping of the floodlights that shone on the grounds of the theater, the three witches backed
onto the stage, circling around, staring out at the crowd, and then turning to each other.

The first witch, with long dark hair tied back with a rope of thorns, asked, “When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

The next witch cackled out, “When the hurly-burly’s done, / When the battle’s lost and won.”

I sank into the words. They hit me hard and I felt myself swimming in their power, especially the second witch’s lines.
Hurly-burly
was so full of sounds, and I loved the sense of the battle lost, then won. Life in a nutshell.

I slipped a glance at Caldwell. He was leaning forward but must have sensed my look, for he turned and crinkled his eyes, then quickly went back to watching the play. I, too, lost myself in it.

That was, until Lady Macbeth entered the scene. She was tall and regal, wearing a murderously dark crimson gown that spoke of rich beauty and danger. Sweeping into the room, she read the letter from Macbeth and came to a decision as to what must happen. When Macbeth entered her room, she stood taller than he was and with more majesty.

Then she uttered the lines: “Look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t,” and I was
struck by what was happening in this play. She was conspiring to kill a man.

I had just found a dead man, a man someone might well have killed. And hadn’t I, in my mind at least, thought to do the same? And, while under the influence of too much to drink, talked about it to someone who might be able to arrange such a thing? What had I been thinking?

I was chilled to my bones and shivered slightly.

Caldwell turned and asked if I wanted his jacket. I wrapped my shawl around my shoulders and assured him I was fine. Of all the plays to see, why was I watching this one? If only I had managed to find the blond man and explain myself to him and tell him not to worry about the plumber anymore. Or if only I knew for sure that he would receive my note.

I tried to shake off my worries, thinking how ridiculous I was being. After all, the man probably knew I had been a bit tipsy, and why would he do anything to Dave, a man he didn’t even know or care about?

And having found Howard Worth dead, even suspecting that he might have been killed by someone who was sleeping in the same house as I was. It was all too much.

When Lady Macbeth, wringing her hands, said, “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him,” I was struck again with worry and wonder at how I was hearing this play as if for the first time.

In that moment, I knew that Lady Macbeth was amazed at the humanness of a dying man. I was seeing this play with wide-open eyes. How could I have even thought of killing another human being, even for a moment? Horror washed over me.

I stood up without realizing I had moved.

Caldwell asked, “Are you okay?”

“I need some air.” But even as I said the words, I saw that I couldn’t get out of the row in the middle of a scene. I sank down in my seat.

Caldwell put his hand on the small of my back and advised me to lean forward and breathe deeply. I fell forward in my chair, almost touching my knees with my head. Saying a mantra, “Nothing has happened,” to myself, I calmed down. I had gotten too caught up in the play. My life was not like that. I was not a queen. Not a murderer, but had I set in motion something that was unstoppable? No, it was only a “dagger of the mind.”

After a few moments, I was able to sit back up.

Caldwell gave me a worried look. “All right?”

“I’m fine,” I whispered back.

For the rest of the play, I kept myself at a bit of a remove, watching the people watching the play, noticing the fine night it was, the music, the warmth of Caldwell sitting next to me. A historic magical play about a time that never was, I reminded myself. Such dark deeds would never happen because of me.

*   *   *

“You gave me a bit of a scare in there,” Caldwell said as we walked back to his car.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I never get faint like that, but all of a sudden it all seemed to hit me.”

“Probably jet lag and overstimulation. Being in a new country as well.”

“That’s it. I lead a quiet life at home.”

“I suppose you’d like to go back to your room,” he said with slight reluctance in his voice.

“Well, actually, I was hoping we could swing by the Cock and Bull. As I recall, I owe you a pint.”

“Are you sure?” He brightened up.

“It would be my pleasure. After all, you drove.”

“Yes, but you provided the tickets.”

“You were gracious enough to accompany me.”

He stopped in the street for a moment and looked at me. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that you were British. You can acquiesce with the best of them.”

There in the middle of the street, I dropped him a curtsy. “I thank you, my lord, for those kind words.”