The Suspect by L. R. Wright Read Free Book Online

the ad. Maybe she had made too modest a self-presentation. God knew, she didn't mind admitting it, she would dearly love to meet an agreeable male person. It had been far, far too long.
    At seven that evening she was in the library, and at seven thirty George Wilcox came in, a bunch of irises in his hand. "Cassandra," he said, presenting her with the flowers. "I like saying your name. Never known another girl with that name."
    "I'm not fond of it, actually," she said, smiling at him. "I'd have preferred being called something more ordinary."
    "It's got a nice lilt to it," said George, "you've got to admit that. How would you like to have a name like mine, now? George. In your case it would be Georgina, or Georgette, or some damn thing. It sounds like your mouth's full of porridge, George does."
    "But it's what it means that's important,” said, Cassandra.
    "Not what it sounds like. " She put down the irises and whisked a dictionary out from under the counter. "Mine means the unheeded bearer of bad tidings, that's what it comes down to. But yours—” She looked it up. "Earthworker,” she announced, triumphantly.
    "Farmer,” said George.
    "Or gardener,” said Cassandra. She closed the dictionary with a snap and stuffed it back under the counter. "It suits you.”
    "Maybe,” said George, grudgingly, and he wandered off among the books.
    When the library had moved two years ago from its old, cramped, musty quarters in the basement of a church to the new building, Cassandra, eyeing the six wide floor-to-ceiling windows, had gone off immediately to buy several large plants. Included in the order were three Ficus benjamina, five or six feet tall, shivery and graceful. Two days after they were set in place, they let loose a shower of leaves. George Wilcox was waiting at the front door when she arrived to open the library that day and was witness to her dismay.
    "They don't like being moved, that's all," he told her. "Just leave them alone. Mist them a lot—squirt them with water. They'll be all right."
    And they were. Cassandra took to consulting him whenever she had worries about the plants, which she considered a far weightier responsibility than the books, since she knew nothing about them.
    George Wilcox was one of her more regular customers. His preference among books was biographies, while hers was novels. Eventually, casual conversation as he checked out his books led to her reading some that he recommended and to his trying an occasional work of fiction.
    He had started bringing her things a year ago: flowers from his garden, interesting shells from his beach, sometimes small potted plants which he told her sternly were for her house, not the library. When his wife became ill in November, Cassandra helped him choose books for her. And when she died, in March, Cassandra appeared at his door with a chicken casserole, feeling stupid and helpless, and in his kitchen she wept with him, and he patted her shoulder and made her coffee.
    She wondered now, putting the irises in water, what he would think if he knew about her ad in the paper. They had had few personal conversations—although he had once told her, uneasy but determined to speak his mind, that he was sure her mother would survive quite happily in Sechelt without her. Cassandra, shocked to find he had read her situation so accurately, didn't reply, and he hadn't mentioned it since. She put the vase of flowers on the counter and went to hunt up three romance novels for Mrs. Wainwright, whose husband would stop by later to pick them up for her. Mrs. Wainwright, a bustling, large-boned woman of fifty, was a practical nurse whose hours seldom allowed her to visit the library in person. Cassandra found George Wilcox scanning the shelves of mysteries and was surprised.
    "It's that business with Carlyle," he said, by way of explanation. "It's turned my mind to crime." He jabbed his finger toward the shelves. "Who's good, here?"
    She picked out a book by Julian Symons and