The Night Librarian: A Mystery
an excerpt

The Night Librarian: A Mystery by Nora Nightingale

Chapter One: The Body in the Library

Enid Graves lived a quiet life, a safe life, a contained life. But things will not be so for our heroine for very long. Soon she will feed the cats and pack her bag, as she does every day. She will hunt down the goggles she had specifically fitted for her pug dog Chairman Mao (since she read that pug dogs are prone to eye injury, she wanted to take no chances), put him in the front basket of her 1959 Schwinn Black Phantom bicycle (willed to her by Dixie, her beloved and wildly misunderstood genius of an uncle) and put on her own goggles and ride her bicycle down the hill to the Whitman Library where she works as the night librarian. She thinks this will be a regular night at the library. She has her supper packed in cleaned out yogurt containers in a grocery bag: lamb & eggplant stew and a small salad of cucumbers and onions in vinegar. Enid is not aware that her daily life, and the way she sees herself and her quiet place in the world is about to change. Let us observe….

Enid Graves, the Night Librarian coasted her bicycle down Thayer Street and stopped at the Teashop. Although it was strictly against the rules, Amy, the manager of the Teashop, allowed her to bring The Chairman into the store, as long as he was on a leash and they didn’t plan to stay too long. Everyone had realized the havoc he would wreak if left without Enid, but still within sight. She got her large cup of Lapsang Souchong tea, as usual, but today she did not have time to stop and talk. She was on her way to work, and had been running a bit behind, as The Chairman had put up quite a resistance to wearing his goggles that afternoon. She waved, and wedged her cup in the corner of the front basket where it was crowded into safety by not only The Chairman, but by her satchel and lunch bag. She re-strapped her old-fashioned leather helmet and rode up and across the campus lawn to the library.

The Whitman Library stood tall and proud at the very top of Beechum Hill, overlooking the quaint New England College town of _______ . (You must understand the need to keep the specifics of things a secret. Academic communities by nature are very closed and isolated places in many ways, with, as you will soon see, many people concerned very much about relatively low stakes. I have taken the risk of telling the story, but you must trust that my concern over personal repercussions necessitates keeping many specifics undisclosed. Let us just say that we are dealing with a small New England town, in a small New England state, with a small New England college, of quite some reputation, but probably not the famous one you are thinking about.) The library was built at the turn of the 19th century, and was everything a library should be: all columns and stone, great steps and high windows, inside it was dark wood walls, feet were quieted by ancient carpets, and narrow black iron staircases led from one level to another in the main reference room. Enid thought it a superior specimen of a building, and hated that most people referred to it as The Annex. The Feinstein library was built next to it, on the lot of an old administration building that had burned down due to faulty wiring in the 1970s. Over the next decade or so, the Whitman had gradually been forced to give up much of its collection to the Feinstein, under the auspices of technology and progress. Now, at the start of the 21st century it stood as a relic, a reminder. Now it held old reference, special collections, rare books, and (thankfully) the graduate student study carrels in the lower stacks. This is why there had to be a Night Librarian. While no books could be checked out past 10pm, the study carrels had to be accessible until midnight on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it was Enid’s job to be available. One cannot just let students run rampant through the library unsupervised.