Murders for Sale. Andre Norton
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moment Philippine collected herself and the smile returned to her face.
“I’m sorry. Here all is well and yet—sometimes the other life comes back. I was put in a concentration camp by the Germans when they invaded France. But we will not talk about it.” A look of strain returned to her face and, with an obvious effort, she remembered her role as guide. “We come now to Beech Street which crosses Spruce and is really the main street of the town. Along there, on the right are the church—only one, Congregational, and the shops just beyond it. Opposite them are the town hall and the police station, and across the road there on the corner of Beech and Spruce, is the Inn. It’s made over from one of South Sutton’s earliest buildings—an old coaching inn, 1820, I think it was, and built about the same time as the first college buildings. The food is good. You’ll probably want to eat there sometimes.”
“Is that all there is to South Sutton?” Fredericka asked.
“Just about.” Philippine laughed again. “We turn left here into Spruce Street. The campus is on our left still and here, a stone’s throw on the right, is Miss Hartwell’s bookstore.”
“Oh—but—it’s lovely,” Fredericka exclaimed. “It’s the kind of Victorian I like—the valentine kind—and it has trees—copper beeches and lots of land. It’s exactly right.”
Philippine who was a little ahead, turned to look back at Fredericka. “I think you’ll like it. It is a good house and it’s also a good bookstore, which, if all Lucy Hartwell says of you is true, will matter even more to you.”
Was there reproof in her voice? Or was it just the foreignness of this stranger? Fredericka cursed herself for being sensitive. It was what happened to well brought up New England women when they got into their thirties and hadn’t married. Even New York couldn’t do anything about it.
As they walked up the brick walk, the screen door banged open and a large woman hurried out.
“Is that you, Miss Wing? Oh dear—do please forgive me but I’ve got to leave almost before I see you. But Philippine will tell you everything, won’t you, Philippine? Oh dear, I don’t know what this town ever did before Philippine came to take charge of us. And Margie, that’s my niece, will help too, if you want her. She needs discipline, all the young do these days, but she may be some use. Dear me—”
The torrent of words would have continued forever, Fredericka felt certain, if the speaker had been standing still but all the while she had been hurrying down the path and only when she reached the gate did she stop and turn back to peer at her new employee in a vague, nearsighted way.
“Yes, you’re just as I hoped you’d be,” she announced unexpectedly. “And we did really cover everything by letter. Just go in. I’ve left notes around saying what’s what.”
“It’s all right, Lucy,” Philippine said gently. “But how are you going to get to the station?”
“Walk—or rather run. I sent Chris on with my bags. He’ll probably persuade Cy to wait for me.” She waved a large hand vaguely and trotted off toward the station.
“She’s a darling,” Philippine said, and then laughed as she added, “but a little distraught as you may have observed. Personally I can’t see what use she’ll be to that niece in California.”
“She seems more motherly than businesslike.”
“She isn’t really. The bookstore is an obsession and you’ll see that she’s done a fine job with it.”
Inside the door a long passage ran straight back to another door which stood open so that one could see the green of trees beyond it. Fredericka could observe the whole ground floor of the house, or most of it, from where she stood just inside the front door—shop rooms to right and left, and back of them two large rooms, also filled with books.
“I’ll just whisk you through here and upstairs—and then leave you in peace,” Philippine said.
Fredericka saw that the back room on the left side was the office and lending library and that beyond it was an attractive modern kitchen which seemed to have been added to the square box of the house as an afterthought.
“Miss Hartwell always lives in there, and I expect you will, too,” Fredericka’s guide said, as they looked in through the kitchen door.
Fredericka stopped for a moment to stand in the door at the end of the hall and look out across a narrow porch into the tangled mass of trees and shrubs that crowded, like an invading jungle, toward the small patch of back lawn.
“Very overgrown, is it not?” Philippine asked. “Chris slashes away upon it when he has time. Around the other side”—she waved a vague hand toward the kitchen—“it is more cleared—a few flowers and even a hammock. But you can discover all that for yourself.”
Fredericka hurried after her guide and climbed the stairs that went up steeply from a point in the hall midway between the front and back doors.
Philippine finished her explanation hurriedly. “Your room is the yellow guest room at the back, Miss Hartwell’s at the front and, on the other side of the hall, an extra shop storeroom at front, bath and a personal storeroom at the back. There’s no second floor over the kitchen—so that’s all there is. And now I must dash. My jeep should be ready and my lunch—” she stopped abruptly. “But—how stupid of me. What about your lunch?”
“I—I don’t really want anything at the moment. I’d rather have a bath first and then I’ll see if there’s a bread crust in the kitchen.”
“I’m sure there’s something there. If not, it’s only a step to the stores—you remember—along Spruce Street on the right. If it’s really all right I must dash. I am so sorry but we will meet soon again, I hope.”
Fredericka heard the clatter of steps on the stairs and then, as the screen door slammed, she sank into the chintz chair and groaned.
Suddenly the door opened again and Philippine’s voice, sounding strident and foreign in the quiet house, called: “The bookshop never stays open on Saturday afternoon unless Miss Hartwell happens to want it to. So you’ll have the weekend to catch your breath.”
“Thanks,” Fredericka called.
The door slammed again, this time with finality.
An hour later, Fredericka, feeling greatly refreshed, finished the last of the salad and cold coffee that she had found waiting for her in the kitchen. She had planned to explore the bookshop and the library but a glimpse of the hammock beyond the kitchen window was too much for her resolution. She salved her conscience by taking a block of paper and a pencil from the office desk and when she had stretched herself out in the leafy shade, she wrote the words, Things to be done… Then she stopped and chewed the pencil meditatively.
So much had happened since that morning two weeks ago when she had read the ad among the Personals in the Saturday Review. She knew it now by heart.
WANTED. Educated woman to run bookshop and lending library, small college town in Massachusetts. Work not arduous. Rest and enjoyment of country possible. Owner-manager called away suddenly. Please reply Box 874
It had sounded like the answer to prayer. Being a branch librarian in New York in July had been bad enough, but short staff, shorter tempers, and hours of overtime had made the thought of escape a rainbow dream. And there was the book started two years ago, the encouraging letter from the publisher: “Work not arduous.” There would be time, at last, to write.
At a sound behind her Fredericka sat up suddenly, and the pencil slipped from her hand to the ground.
From the tangle of shrubs and trees a black face peered out at her.
“Beg pardon, Miss. I’m Chris. Miss Hartwell’s Chris. Sorry if I scared you. I’ve been unpackin’ books in the stable here and Miss Hartwell, she say I was to ask you if you didn’t want somethin’ else done afore I went along home.”
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