Never Laugh as a Hearse Goes By: A Penny Brannigan Mystery by Elizabeth J. Duncan

Author:Elizabeth J. Duncan [Duncan, Elizabeth J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Twenty-three

“A single return to Chester, please.”

“The train’s on the platform now and leaving in four minutes. You can just make it if you get your skates on.” The railway agent handed over two orange tickets.

Penny hurried along the platform and climbed into the first carriage. Because Llandudno is the first or last station on the line, depending on which direction you’re travelling, the carriage was almost empty. Penny squeezed down the narrow aisle and chose a forward-facing window seat in a configuration of four—two seats facing forward, two facing backward, with a table between them. She set her overnight case on the seat beside her and as the train pulled out of the station, opened a notebook on the table, and drew a line down the centre. At the top of the page on the right she wrote MINTY RUSSELL and on left she wrote SHIPTON.

Her pen hovered over the page. She scratched her cheek with her other hand and drew lines down the page with the headings MEANS, MOTIVE, and OPPORTUNITY at the top. She made a few notations, but she finally put the pen down and looked out the window. The train was slowing down as it approached Llandudno Junction.

Well, that’s something, she thought. I know absolutely nothing about either of them, except that they both worked for the Church in Wales. What a daft exercise this is. What could I possibly discover at the Library that the police, with their expertise and resources, had not or could not? She hoped Davies was doing better with his investigation.

*

The front door to Gladstone’s Library beckoned as Penny walked up the same pathway Minty Russell had just a few days earlier. As she passed the ornate bronze statue of William Gladstone that stood in the front grounds, she paused to take a closer look. At its base were three figures representing classical learning, finance, eloquence, and one playing an Irish harp. The monument had been created by Irish sculptor John Hughes to be erected in Dublin, but when the city council refused to accept it, it had been donated to the Library in the 1920s. So for the last nine decades, a sober, dour Gladstone, clad in the flowing robes of a Roman senator which he had probably never worn in life but were so beloved of sculptors, had gazed steadily over the stone wall covered in greenery and the metal fence that separated the Library’s front lawn from Gladstone Way.

Penny entered the now familiar reception area of the Library and had a quick word with the receptionist. As she accepted her key, Warden Graham Fletcher approached her.

Penny was taken aback by the change in his appearance in just a few days. Dark rings circled his dull, vacant eyes and he seemed wreathed in despair and desolation. His shoulders hunched into his jacket and the loose skin on his noticeably thinner face drooped into sad little jowls.

“Ah, Miss Brannigan,” he said. “So good to have you back with us. I do hope your stay this time will be much more uneventful.

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