The Latke in the Library & Other Mystery Stories for Chanukah by Libi Astaire

Author:Libi Astaire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cozy mystery, women sleuths, Hanukkah, amateur sleuths, Humorous mystery, Clean mystery, Jewish mystery, British detectives, mystery short stories
Publisher: Aster Press
Published: 2016-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

And Then There Were Gornisht

THE WAITRESS HAD TAKEN AWAY their plates. While they waited for dessert to be served, Agatha once again tried to turn the conversation round to the body she had found in the library before lunch. It was one thing for a younger woman like the arts and crafts instructor to not take her seriously; the young had a distressing tendency to think that “old” was a synonym for “foolish.” But she could not understand why her luncheon companions refused to believe she really had found a dead body.

Perhaps this was payback time, she thought. For fifty years she had made a living from deceiving people, planting red herrings in her books so people would think the wrong person was the murderer. Now, no one would believe her when she did speak the truth.

But this wasn’t the first time in her life she had encountered an obstacle. There had been a few occasions when her publishers were lukewarm about a manuscript, suggesting that perhaps the creative well had run dry. When that happened, she had gone back to her typewriter with even greater resolve, determined to make the next book her best. And the new book often surprised her, as well as her readers and the critics.

She therefore decided the problem must be that she hadn’t presented her discovery of the body in a sufficiently exciting way. The modern world was so noisy and filled with so many distractions. Perhaps a person could no longer say, “There’s a dead body in the library. We’d better call the police.” Perhaps you had to take a photo of the body on your cell phone and send it to Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp and those other names Sheldon was always mentioning. Then, when your post went viral—the word “viral” always made her think of some dreaded disease gone wild, like the influenza epidemic of 1918—perhaps the right people would take notice.

Unfortunately, she didn’t know where her phone was at the moment. She supposed Sheldon had remembered to pack it with her other things this morning, when she left the rehab facility. Perhaps it was in her tote bag, with her medication. When she returned to her room, she must look for it. If no one else was willing to call the police, she must do it herself. She only hoped the battery wasn’t dead. She very often forgot to recharge it. But surely there was a regular phone in her room. She could use that if ...

“Have you ever been there, Mrs. Krinsky?”

Agatha returned to the other world, the world that wasn’t inside her head, with a start. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bernfeld, I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking about the body I found in the library. The one I told you about.”

“Oh, well, if you want to tell your story before we tell ours, I’m sure Rubles and I won’t object. I only thought that because our story also takes place near the sea—one of the uninhabited Isles of Scilly, to be precise—it made sense to carry on with the seafaring theme.

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