Classified as Murder (11 page)

Did I imagine a slight edge of scorn in my son’s tone? My reply was a bit heated. “There’s nothing wrong with good manners. Mr. Delacorte is a gentleman. If I decline an invitation politely, he won’t press me to change my mind.”

Sean rolled his eyes at that. “It’s all too Miss Manners for me. I guess you know what you’re doing.”

“Thank you,” I said. I decided there was no point in delaying any longer as I stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I want to freshen up before I leave for the Delacorte house. Come on, Diesel.”

“See you later,” Sean called out as Diesel and I left the kitchen.

A few minutes before nine I parked in the shade of one of the massive live oaks that lined the Delacorte driveway. The tree had to be hundreds of years old, and there were others of similar size and age on the grounds, all of them festooned with Spanish moss. For a moment I fancied I had stepped backward in time a couple of centuries to around the time the house was first built.

The sound of traffic on the nearby street and the mewing of my cat brought me back to reality. I released Diesel from his safety harness, grabbed my satchel, and got out of the car with my cat.

I stood for a moment and stared at the facade of the house. After a couple of deep breaths, I headed up the walk. Diesel strode along beside me.

Truesdale opened the door as I raised my hand to knock.

“Good morning, Mr. Harris.” He stood back to allow me and Diesel to enter, then carefully shut the door behind us. “Mr. Delacorte awaits you in the library.”

“Thank you, Truesdale,” I said. Before I could say that I knew the way and would announce myself, the butler headed toward the library.

After all the English mysteries I’ve read, I should have realized there were no shortcuts with a butler. Diesel and I trailed in the man’s wake.

Truesdale opened the door and advanced inside. “Mr. Harris is here, sir. With his companion.”

James Delacorte rose from behind his desk as Diesel and I moved forward. “Good morning, Charlie. And Diesel.” He beamed as he gazed down at the cat. I was pleased to note that he seemed more chipper than he had on Saturday afternoon.

“Good morning, Mr. Delacorte,” I said. Diesel warbled, and our host laughed.

“What a charming sound.” Mr. Delacorte came around the desk to rub Diesel’s head.

Truesdale coughed discreetly, and I turned to him.

“Would you care for any refreshment, Mr. Harris?” The butler waited for my response, his face a polite mask.

“Not at the moment, thank you,” I said. “Perhaps some water later, if it’s no trouble.”

“Not at all, sir.” Truesdale gave a small bow before he turned to his employer. “Sir?”

“That will be all for now, Nigel, thank you.” Mr. Delacorte waved his butler away. “I’ll ring if I need you.”

“Of course, sir.” Truesdale bowed again and then left the room.

“You’re certainly punctual,” Mr. Delacorte said. “A virtue, to my mind.” He returned to his chair behind the desk. “Please, sit.”

I sat in the chair I’d occupied two days ago and set my satchel on the floor beside me. Diesel began to prowl around the room. I watched him for a moment, but he was not a destructive cat. I didn’t think he would be leaping onto shelves and knocking things off. He simply wanted to sniff out the room and see what it had to offer.

Mr. Delacorte coughed gently, and I turned my attention to him.

“Sorry, sir,” I said.

I was about to assure him that Diesel wouldn’t damage anything when Mr. Delacorte spoke. “Not to worry. When I had a cat in the house, I always allowed it in this room. I never had a problem, other than the odd hairball.

“Now, about the inventory,” he continued. “Over the years I have kept my own sort of catalog of the collection in these volumes, adding each acquisition as I made it.” He patted a stack of four leather-bound books, each about an inch thick, on the desk in front of him. “I suppose I should have computerized it at some point, but I am not fond of the things. I would much rather rely on my own way of doing things, old-fashioned as it may be.”

“Are those volumes the only copy of your inventory?”

My concern must have shown in my face. Mr. Delacorte chuckled. “No, there is a backup copy. My lawyer keeps it in his office, along with other important papers of mine. I bring the second copy up-to-date every couple of months. That’s one of the tasks for this week, as I have made several acquisitions in the past month that need to be included.”

“Having a backup is always a good idea,” I said. “Whether it’s an electronic copy or a print one. At some point, if you like, I can work on creating a database for your collection so you can have an electronic version.” I didn’t add that the electronic version would have considerable more flexibility than his print one. How did he ever find anything in those volumes, unless he remembered exactly when he purchased each item in his collection, and in which order?

The magnitude of the job hit me then. How did he expect to match the items on the shelves with the entries in his catalog? Unless his collection was arranged in accession order. That is, the first book he bought was the first book on the first shelf, followed by the second book he bought, and so on through all his purchases and arranged in that order on all the shelves in the room.

Or perhaps he had another system—some system, at least. Trying to inventory the collection would be chaos otherwise.

I was never very good at playing poker, and Mr. Delacorte was watching me intently. He smiled. “I know what you’re thinking, Charlie. ‘How does he ever find anything?’ I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid it’s the kind of thing that can give a librarian a headache.”

“There is method in my record keeping, rest assured on that. Perhaps not the conventional way of doing things, but it has worked for me for over fifty years now.” He tapped the volumes in front of him. “Each of these books corresponds to a set of shelves in the room. The books are placed in accession order—isn’t that what librarians call it?—on the shelves to correspond with the entries in the book.”

“That’s the right term,” I said, feeling much relieved. But Mr. Delacorte’s next words made my spirits sink all over again.

“At least, they used to correspond,” he said, almost as if I hadn’t spoken. “I discovered last week that a number of the shelves have been rearranged, and now everything is quite mixed up.”

This was bad news. It might take days—if not weeks—to get the books sorted out in accession order again.

Rearranging the collection was malicious. The person who did this obviously understood the arrangement of the collection. A family member? That seemed the most likely answer.

“Whole shelves?”

“Not quite,” Mr. Delacorte replied. “What I should have said was that books were moved to shelves where they don’t belong. I noticed it because I spotted my copy of a later printing of
The Bay Psalm Book
, one of my earliest acquisitions, on a shelf containing items I purchased, oh, perhaps eight years ago.”

How exciting, I thought.
The Bay Psalm Book
, metrical translations of the Psalms into English, was the first book still in existence printed in the American colonies. From what I could remember, there were only eleven known copies that have survived from that first edition printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was impressed that Mr. Delacorte owned a copy of even a later printing.

I was so caught up in thinking about this one book that I had to force my attention back to the conversation at hand. “Do you have any sense of how extensive the rearrangement is?”

“No,” he said. “But the shelf on which I found my
Bay Psalm Book
contained several other items from different periods of acquisition. My guess is that the rearrangement is fairly extensive.” His expression turned grim with that last statement.

I certainly couldn’t blame him for that. His assumption made my stomach sink even further.

“What day did you make your discovery?”

“Wednesday,” Mr. Delacorte said promptly. “I returned home from a brief business trip to New York late Tuesday night. When I came into the library the following morning, I realized a mischievous hand had been at work in my absence.”

“Did you confront your family about the prank?” That was a mild word for it, in my opinion.

“Naturally, because they were all here while I was away,” Mr. Delacorte responded. “They all professed ignorance. I observed them as carefully as I could, and the only one whose reaction I found patently insincere was Stewart’s. He was quite a jokester as a child and adolescent. I thought he had grown out of it, but this is in line with the kind of joke he used to pull.”

“Except in this case, it’s a costly joke—at least in terms of time,” I said.

Diesel had finished his first tour of the library and came back to settle down on the floor beside me. As was my habit, I bent to stroke his head, and he warbled softly.

“Indeed.” Mr. Delacorte’s face reddened—not much, but enough to make me fear a repeat of Saturday’s episode.

“I’m sure we can soon make headway with returning the collection to its proper arrangement.” I put as much conviction in my voice as I could muster.

“I devoutly hope so,” Mr. Delacorte said as the red faded away. “Perhaps now you understand my fears about thefts from the collection. At first glance, it might seem simply a thoughtless prank.”

When he paused, I finished the thought. “But it could have been done to conceal a theft and make it harder to uncover.”

Mr. Delacorte nodded.

A thought struck me, and I felt sheepish. “There’s one important question I forgot to ask. Do you keep the library locked when you are not in here?”

“I do,” he said. “The only other key to the room is in Nigel’s safekeeping.” He held up a hand. “And before you ask, no, I do not believe he is responsible. It was another member of the family.”

There was no use arguing with him on that point, I could tell by his tone. “Was there any sign of forced entry?”

Mr. Delacorte shook his head. “No. I have no idea how the miscreant obtained it, but he—or she—must have a key.”

I agreed. “The first thing is to determine whether anything has actually been stolen. If a theft has occurred, you can call in the police.”

“I would prefer not to involve the police,” Mr. Delacorte said, his expression pained. “I have little affection for my family, I will admit, but I would like to avoid the unpleasantness of a police investigation.”

That was his call, and I wasn’t about to argue with him. I figured he could be preparing himself for the worst by saying that items had been stolen. Then when we discovered everything was still here, only jumbled around, he would be relieved.

“I think we should start on the inventory, then,” I said. “But one more thing—the items in the cabinets. Are they in the inventory, too?”

“No,” Mr. Delacorte said. “They are mostly maps and letters, things like that. I have a separate inventory for them. At the moment I’m not concerned about that part of my collection. It’s the books that are the most important overall.”

“Then the books take priority.” I regarded my employer for a moment. “Let me start with the first volume of the inventory and do some searching, see what I can find. It might not be as extensive as you fear.”

“Thank you, Charlie,” Mr. Delacorte said with a slight smile. “I
am
pleased to have your help with this. I confess I considered it a daunting task to undertake on my own, and I didn’t want to involve Nigel. He has many other duties, and I knew he would fret about them while he was helping me in here.”

“I’m more than happy to help,” I said as I stood. I didn’t remind him that he was paying me quite well for the work. “Now, the shelf—the one that signaled someone mixed up the books. Did you replace any of them in their proper positions?”

“I started to,” Mr. Delacorte said. “I was so angry, however, that I found myself unable to think, and I decided to leave them alone until I found a capable assistant.” He paused a moment. “
The Bay Psalm Book
is in its proper place, however. That was as far as I got.”

He extracted the inventory volume on the bottom of the pile on his desk and handed it to me.

“The hard part for me with such a marvelous collection,” I said, “is going to be focusing on the task at hand, rather than sitting down with each and every item and poring through it.”

Mr. Delacorte nodded. “I understand. And I promise, once we are done, you have an open invitation to come here and look over anything you like, for as long as you like.”

“Thank you.” I hefted the inventory ledger in my right hand. It weighed four or five pounds. “Oh, and I suppose an explanation of how the ledgers correspond to the shelves would help. I should have asked that already.”

Mr. Delacorte said, “Of course.” He rose from behind the desk and headed for the wall to the right of the door as one exited the library.