The Old Vengeful

'Of course, Dr Mitchell!' The Vicar's help came in the form of disastrous approval. 'It would do you good to get out, Elizabeth. Beatrice can easily clear up the stall—she can store the books in the Vicarage, and the Scouts will attend to the trestles ... As soon as I can find my daughter, Dr Mitchell, Miss Loftus shall have an honourable discharge from her duties.'

It was all happening too quickly—and it was also so well organised to be inescapable that all Elizabeth's suspicions started to swirl again deep within her, not quite surfacing, but disturbing her calm.

'Well ...' She cast around for an excuse, but her wits seemed to have deserted her.

'I'll call at your home, then.' Dr Mitchell looked at his watch.

'Shall we say 6.45?'

She could feel the trap closing on her. She could still be too tired, or have a headache, or plead her mourning state, or simply be rude.

Or was it that she didn't want to plead an excuse—didn't want to, even though everything right and respectable and explicable about Dr Paul Mitchell still added up to a sum total in which she instinctively disbelieved?

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'Very well—6.45,' she said, snapping the trap herself.

II

IT WASN'T TRUE that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor, thought Elizabeth as she parked on the yellow line outside Margaret's bookshop: the law was the same, it was simply that the punishment no longer mattered.

Besides which, anyway, the restriction time had only another ten minutes to run, and the street was empty of cars not for fear of a questing traffic warden, but because all the shops had closed.

Margaret's was no exception, but Elizabeth hammered on the glass door, confident in the knowledge that if friendship wasn't enough to summon her, the thought of next term's sixth form reading list would do the trick.

Sure enough, one look over the 'Closed' sign transformed the bookseller's grimace into a welcoming expression.

'Elizabeth dear—I shalln't say 'we're shut' to you, even though you have spent your afternoon ruining my business with unfair cut-price competition at that sale of yours.'

Margaret re-bolted the door. 'Have you come to apologise, or is this a social call?'

Elizabeth smiled at her warily. The social call Margaret was half expecting might well be for her answer to that tentative offer of partnership 'if ever you found yourself free to dummy3

consider it', which Margaret had made over coffee last year.

But that 'free' had also meant 'and with sufficient capital to buy in', and now that she had both freedom and capital selling books didn't seem so enticing after all.

'My dear, you've no call to worry—' the thought of books recalled her to her intention '—you wouldn't have given house-room to the books I sold, and I didn't sell many of them either . . . Besides which I'm here as a potential customer, if you're open for business—and if you've got what I want. . . which you probably haven't.'

'I never turn a customer away.' Margaret swept a hand towards the shelves and the piled tables. 'Take your pick—

the usual discount for the school, two-thirds to you, dear.

What's the title?'

'I don't know the title, but the author's name is Mitchell with a 't'.

'Mitchell . . .' Margaret thought for a moment. 'Lots of Mitchells—but Gone with the Wind I haven't got, so cross off Margaret Mitchell. . . But there's Julian for novels, and Adrian for poetry, and Gladys for whodunits, and Paul for battles—'

'Paul?'

'Not your cup of tea, my dear—History, Military, twentieth century . . . I'm sure there's another Mitchell somewhere—'

she frowned at her shelves.

'Paul Mitchell,' said Elizabeth. 'Have you got his book?'

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'I've got two of his titles. But don't tell me you're changing your A-level syllabus next term, for heaven's sake! I've just stocked up for the Tudors and the Stuarts.'

Elizabeth shook her head. 'This is personal. Can I see them?'

'Of course.' Margaret scanned her shelves again. ' The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line is just out in paperback—

that'll save you a few pounds. But I'll show you the hardback first . . . Let's see now— Marder, Mattingly . . . Middlebrook—

Mitchell, Paul—here you are— The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line.' She regarded Elizabeth curiously.

It was a substantial book, its dust-jacket festooned with barbed-wire, stark black on white, leading her to the blurb inside.