The Woman in the Library

by Sulari Gentill

Cain’s book is the story of a homeless man called Isaac Harmon who takes up residence in and around the Boston Public Library. Threads of backstory, self-discovery, and social commentary radiate from the novel’s very human centre.

“I ran away from home when I was fifteen. Ended up in Boston and lived rough for a couple of weeks.”

“I only lasted two weeks. Would have been much less if I hadn’t met Isaac. He kept me out of real trouble and made sure I didn’t starve until I was ready to go home.”

A darkness flashes across Cain’s eyes. For a while he keeps his own counsel, before he responds. “He’d ring me every now and then. I’d meet him, take him for a burger. We’d talk. He was killed about five years ago.”

“Someone stabbed him.”

So sad

Whit carefully pulls an onion ring from a stack smothered with honey barbeque sauce and cheese.

He mentioned burgers and youre eating bbq onion rings and nachos??????

“What if they never find out who killed Caroline?” Marigold’s voice trembles. “We heard her scream. A scream is supposed to bring help, and we heard her scream.”

The narrative is strange—unlike anything I’ve written before. The library takes on a consciousness of its own, watchful, patient, dangerous. The scream becomes a motif, an echo of each character’s silent cry for connection and friendship, for help.

We come to a doorway, the entrance to an antique store, and though he stops and stares at it, he says nothing. I prompt him. Perhaps there is something in the window which is connected to his hero’s old life. He winces. “This is where I tried to sleep that first night after I got off the bus from Charlotte.”

I’m surprised when Whit answers. “Yeah, apparently the Gallery was being set up for some event the next day. She was under the buffet table—hidden by table linens and rosettes and stuff. They only found her because one of the cleaners was fastidious enough to lift the tablecloth to vacuum.”

He snorts. “No, but my folks are. The Palfreys have been clients of Metters and Putnam for years.”

Cain returns us to the subject to Caroline Palfrey. “So, whoever killed Caroline managed to hide her beneath a table without anyone seeing? And before the security guards got there?” “That’s the theory.”

Marigold’s voice is low and melodic, and she is still talking when I drift off, something about Whit and sabotage.

remember though that we don’t use the term beanie!

???? Sir are you from canada??? We definitely say that in the us…

When I go down to collect it, Mrs. Weinbaum and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Jackson, who share an apartment on the ground floor,

Because we forgot to pick up supplies yesterday and then Whit ate everything you had left. Get back to work. I don’t want to be responsible for derailing your masterpiece—Cain.

So sweet

I answer. “Hello again—” The scream that cuts me off is not a man’s. It’s female, and terrified, and familiar. The scream is Caroline Palfrey’s.

And I tell her about my sister. “She was two years younger than me. At home she was my best friend; at school we barely acknowledged each other. She died when she was eleven.”

“We were on a school excursion to the Blue Mountains. The entire junior school…so about three hundred kids. They separated us into year groups, and so we went up on different buses, and Gerry and I were hanging with our own friends. I really couldn’t have told you exactly where she was until she fell.”

“There was a loose safety rail on the lookout, and apparently Gerry was leaning out to take a photo when it gave way. The point is, Marigold, that I knew the scream was hers the moment I heard it. I recognised it. And recognised that it was a real scream…not a joke or a prank.”

She shows me the phone. “This is the last call you picked up…about an hour ago.” The caller is identified by name. CAIN. I pull back.

“Don’t worry about it, Freddie.” She pounds a pillow into shape. “For the record, you’re not overreacting. This is weird and a little creepy. And if we ever find the little monster who’s got Cain’s phone, we should beat the shit out of him.”

I love her

And we call it “crank calling.”

What are you talking about?!

I tap the first icon and a photograph opens. I stare for a moment to work out what I’m seeing on the small screen. The picture is dark, and grainy, taken in low light. A door with central brass knocker, a gryphon I think, atop an orb. The second message is also a picture—another door. But I recognise this one immediately. It’s my door at Carrington Square.

“I do.” Marigold makes the image larger on the screen. “That doorknocker…this is Whit’s door…at his parents’ house.”

Whit’s mother introduces herself. Jean Metters. She’s very thin, very beautiful, and looks no older than thirty-five. She speaks politely but efficiently and neither her upper lip nor her brow moves at all.

He stabbed me and I think I blacked out. I don’t remember seeing his face.”

Kelly is somewhere between thirty-five and fifty and tall and broad, particularly for a woman. She has a strong face, immaculately made-up, blond hair pulled back in a knot with not a strand out of place.

Detective

It’s also occurred to me that Cain needs to have an accomplice—I know, I know, you haven’t decided it was him yet, but he’s my favorite for the role of serial killer.

I'm thinking about Leo…

The reality is, I suppose, that I am a straight white man with no diversity or disadvantage to offer as a salve for the fashionable collective guilt that rules publishing.

Ew

I understand that popular correctness demands that men like me be denied to compensate for all the years in which we were given too much. I just wish I’d had a chance to enjoy a little of that privilege before it became a liability. Anyway, she said no. So there we are.

Yuck. Please make Leo the killer!

I do worry you might offend your U.S. readership by slandering our chocolate. We do know that our chocolate is inferior, but there’s a kind of national agreement to pretend otherwise. Without it we might have had to invade you.

Bro. Shut up

Whit has sent us to Around the Hole, a buzzing, trendy bakery. Slick and modern, with shiny surfaces and small tables which say Stop, but don’t linger too long.

Lol what

We end up leaving with three dozen donuts. Marigold insists upon it and pays for them, but even she realises it’s excessive.

This place sounds disgusting, respectfully

The two men are similar to look at, gym stocky, wearing dark suits, closely fitted jackets which strain to button, and monochromatic ties. “We’ll be seeing you, Metters,” one replies.

His brothers?

“Oaks and McIntyre, I think they said—Feds.”

Cain comes through the door. “Sorry, what did I miss?” “Where were you?” Cain hands Whit a slip of paper. “One of the doctors called me over. She wanted me to get that past your mother.” Whit reads the note and smiles. “Molly,” he says. “What does she want?” Marigold asks. “Nothing. It’s her number.”

????????? How is this professional?

It’s true in a way. Cain and I are probably five years older than Whit and Marigold, who couldn’t be much more than twenty-one or two. “How old are you?” Marigold asks Cain. “Thirty.”

I put him out of his misery. “I’m twenty-seven.”

“Who would have thought you’d meet someone wanted by the FBI in a library?” Whit stretches gingerly. “Just because they were asking about Cain doesn’t mean that he’s wanted by them,” I point out. “Oh, yeah.” Whit looks at Cain. “They asked if I’d ever known you by any other name.”

“Like a pen name,” Cain says sheepishly. “Actually Cain McLeod is my pen name,” he admits. “They’re probably talking about my real name.” “Which is?” Marigold demands, exasperated. Cain folds his arms. “Come on, whoever-you-are,” Whit says, grinning. “Out with it.” After a moment Cain resigns. “Abel Manners.”

If Whit is in the latter stages of a law degree, which over here is a postgraduate course, he would be closer to twenty-five than twenty-one or two, unless he was some kind of child prodigy. The same goes for Marigold.

do like that Cain’s name was once Abel. If it is possible to have a favorite biblical story, mine was that of Cain and Abel, the first murder. It adds a kind of ancient weight and tradition to the petty homicides of today, as though even the most base and inelegant dispatch has an echo in time and is a curse of the ages.

Whit’s father approaches us in the visitors’ lounge where we’ve been for over an hour. He’s smiling, and so we are relieved even before he tells us that it was just a burst stitch and that Whit will be okay, though he’ll need to rest quietly to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Seems a dramatic reaction to just that

Frank Metters’s

Whit's dad

“Freddie!” Leo Johnson runs to catch up with me. “Hello!” I smile as he removes his baseball cap. His hair is damp and he’s breathing heavily. “What are you doing here?” “They let me out of Carrington Square every now and then. Whew!” He wipes his brow with his sleeve. “I spotted you on the other side of the square…only just caught you, though.”

How is he always just spotting her… killer!

Running into Leo reminds me that I am here to write a novel, regardless of murders and donuts, and I’m grateful that I have a colleague who has no connection with the scream and all it has led to, against whom to pace myself.

Don't speak so soon…

My surprise clearly needs no words because he continues to explain. “My agent will tell you it’s a story about passionate friendships and reluctant relationships in modern America, but really it’s a romance.”

Leo

Or perhaps it’s the fact that there’s a murderer somewhere.

Yeah! Across the hall!!

I do like Leo. There’s a real chemistry between him and Freddie. I promise he and I will be there to console Freddie when she finally discovers the awful truth about Cain.

I hate this man.