The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

This would be Lupton Cornball, whom I had met yesterday at the Finis.

“I’ll see him first.”

The phone rang. I reached out, but Duffy beat me to it. “Hello?” he said. “Office of the chief librarian.” He listened for a moment than looked at me. “I’ll ask.”

He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Detective Smalls wants to talk to you. She’s on the way up.”

“Smalls? Okay, her first, then Goliath. Oh, and I’d like to talk to Councilor Bunty Fairweather. She’s in charge of fiscal planning and smite-avoidance policy. They’ve an alternative Anti-Smite plan cooking, and I want to find out what it is.”

“She’s your two-o’clock. Shall I push her up to your eleven-thirty?”

“Is that straight after Goliath?” I asked, glancing at the clock. “No, Mrs. Jolly Hilly, the insane Enid Blyton fundamentalist is after Goliath. Bunty is after them.”

“Do I have to talk to insane people?”

“You’re a librarian now. I’m afraid it’s mandatory.”

“Hmm. Okay, Smalls first, then Goliath, then Hilly, then Bunty.”

Duffy nodded, made a note on his clipboard and opened the door to admit Phoebe. I smiled agreeably. I didn’t much care for her, but we needed to get along.

“Detective Smalls,” I said, rising to welcome her.

“Chief Librarian Next,” she replied, shaking my hand. I gestured her to the sofas.

“That’s a bit of a mouthful,” I said. “Better call me Thursday.”

“Then you must call me Phoebe. You’ve recovered well from the attack at the Lobsterhood yesterday.”

“I got lucky. One of the hinges from the trapdoor embedded itself into an Aeschylus only inches above my head. Coffee?”

“Thank you.”

Duffy took the cue and moved silently to the coffee machine while Phoebe looked around her.

“This is very plush.”

“Libraries have been monstrously overfunded these past thirteen years,” I said. “The librarians had to take industrial action when the city council threatened to have gold taps put in the washrooms. Mind you, that will all change. I think you’re getting some of our funding.”

“Fifty million that I know of,” she said.

I raised an eyebrow. Fifty million was a third of our budget. “But we have to fund the Special Library Services out of that,” she added.

This made it a lot easier—Wexler’s team was expensive.

“Tell me,” she continued, “do you think Colonel Wexler is mad?”

“Yes, but in a good way. Got anyone on your staff yet?”

“A few trigger-happy nutters who were too mentally unstable even for SO-5. I told them to sod off—I want to keep gratuitous violence inside books, where it belongs.”

“Very wise. Your watch is slow.”

She looked at me oddly and pulled up her sleeve. The watch was a Reverso—the face was hidden. She flipped it over. “You’re right. How did you know?”

“I can hear it tick. And it’s ticking slowly. Not important. Anything on the ‘stolen thirteenth-century codex’ question?”

She pulled out a small pocketbook and turned to a page marked with a rubber band. “Possibly. Out of the eighty-three reported bibliothefts over the past month, only two had the same modus operandi. One in Bath and another in Lancaster. Exactly the same. Torn-out pages, then destroyed, but with the rest of the book left untouched.”