SPOILER ALERT/WARNING: If anyone is reading or planning to read And Then There Were None (also titled sometimes as Ten Little Indians) by Agatha Christie, you should probably not read this story as it will contain a MAJOR spoiler for that book! You’ve been warned 
* * * * *
Chryseis Kent, the dark-haired head of the University Library’s Acquisitions Department, looked over the railing from where she stood on the library’s fourth floor promenade and gazed down over the balustrade at the lounge area in the library’s second floor atrium. An elderly white haired woman in a gray skirt, white buttoned up blouse and a matching gray jacket sat dozing in one of the comfortable chairs in the atrium with a folded newspaper and an ivory-handled walking cane across her lap. The director of the library, Ms. Pryor, had sent Chrys a text message and asked her to meet briefly with the woman, who wanted to speak with someone from the library about its third annual Halloween reading event taking place that very night. Chrys looked at the clock on the wall. She had received Ms. Pryor’s text message nearly an hour ago and was embarrassed to have kept the visitor waiting, especially since the library had closed thirty minutes earlier because of the special Halloween event. Chrys hurried to the elevator and rode it to the second floor.
The elderly woman woke as Chrys drew near. Chrys smiled apologetically and said, “I’m terribly sorry to have kept you waiting for so long. I’m Chryseis Kent. I really was on my way down here after Ms. Pryor asked me to speak with you, but one thing after another delayed me till now. I’m very sorry.”
The older woman smiled back and, speaking with a cultured British accent, replied, “Not at all, dear. Think nothing of it. I know my visit was unscheduled and one cannot expect the world to stop because of the whims of an old lady.” She took the newspaper from her lap and set it down on a nearby table covered with magazines. The headline, intended to shock readers, took up most of the front page: Lunatic Escapes From Local Asylum! The woman pointed at the paper. “The tabloids here in America are as outlandish with their headlines as they are back home in England. And equally impolite too. Calling a troubled youth a ‘lunatic’ is so uncivil." She paused and looked at the headline again. "Yes, I read that article and then must have nodded off,” she added.
Chrys looked at the headline and felt a chill go up her spine. Ignoring it, she simply smiled again at the white haired woman, who pointed at a seat across from her. “If you have a few moments, dear, I would very much like to ask you a few questions about your library’s Halloween event tonight.” She looked up at Chrys. “And, that’s an absolutely lovely outfit, Ms. Kent.” Chrys wore a short gray skirt, a bright blue blouse that nicely showcased her ample chest, a matching pair of blue shoes, and brown stockings with white garters. A black belt around her waist completed the ensemble.
Chrys took the seat across from the visitor. “Thank you. I’m glad you like it. And I’d be happy to answer your questions. What would you like to know?”
The woman smiled again. “As you probably can tell, I come from England. A small village not far from London actually. We ladies in the village have a reading group. I suppose here in America you would call it a book club. Well, ours is a unique club because we only read books written by one of our own.” She paused and gave a slight laugh. “I don’t mean books by one of our own club members. I meant one of our own countrymen, of course: Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie. We read and discuss her books, short stories and plays. Each month a different work is selected and then we have a luncheon hosted by one of the club members at which time we discuss what we read. It’s quite a nice way to spend time with one’s friends. And, as you might know, 2015 is the 125th anniversary of Dame Agatha’s birth in 1890 so this is a most special year for our club.”
Chrys chimed in, “Yes, and that’s why we selected Agatha Christie as the focus for our Halloween event this year. She really was perfect for it.”
The older woman grinned with excitement. “One of our lady members uses that Internet thing to perform research about Dame Agatha and she tells us at each luncheon about goings-on around the world that refer to our favourite author. In the course of her research, she learned about your library’s event. The women in our group knew that I was visiting my nephew, Walter, here in the States, so they imposed upon me to learn more about your event so I could report on it at our next get together in two weeks. And that is what brings me here. I don’t wish to take up too much of your time, but I will be quite the celebrity at our next luncheon if you could share some tidbits about your library’s event honoring Dame Agatha, Ms. Kent.”
“I’d be glad to tell you about our own little club,” Chrys answered with a bit of pride. “Many colleges and universities here in the USA have student organizations on campus for sports, music, theater, politics, et cetera. Several years ago, a group of students asked me if I would be the advisor of a reading club they wanted to form. In many ways, ours is similar to yours but instead of being dedicated to one author, our group, which is called The Rose & Cognac Society, focuses on the mystery and horror genres in literature. Each month, a student proposes a book or story or play and we all read it. Then, we get together at a local coffee shop to talk about what we read. In the past, we’ve read such works as Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, another of your country’s famous novelists, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, and The Monkey’s Paw, a short story by another writer from England, W.W. Jacobs.”
The elderly women gave Chrys her complete attention. “It’s wonderful that young people today are still interested in reading. Your club sounds fascinating. What can you tell me about tonight’s event?”
Chrys smiled before she spoke. Her voice took on a hushed tone as she explained what would be happening that night. “On Halloween, we hold a very special all-night event in the library. This is our third one. Each Halloween, students in the club and I spend the entire night in the library alone. The building is locked, the electricity and phones are turned off, no cell phones are allowed, and we make do with only the emergency lighting in the building. It makes for a very Halloween-ish atmosphere. We have a potluck dinner and then we spend the night discussing each of the books chosen by the students. Six students signed up for this year’s Halloween discussion and each of them selected a different work by Agatha Christie to read and present to the group. It’s a lot of fun and a unique way to spend Halloween. The first year we did this, we dedicated the evening to the works of Edgar Allen Poe because he wrote both horror and mysteries. Last year's theme was horror fiction, and we read books by Stephen King. This year we decided to focus on mysteries and chose Agatha Christie’s works.”
“That is simply wonderful, Ms. Kent,” exclaimed the old woman who was genuinely interested in and excited by what Chrys had related. “Can you tell me what each of the students have chosen to read and discuss?”
Chrys nodded and reached into the pocket of her skirt. She took out a folded piece of paper. “I have the list here. Let’s see. Sam read a classic, Murder on the Orient Express. Larry chose one of the scarier novels, And Then There Were None. Martina read What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw. Joyce chose something particularly appropriate for tonight, Hallowe'en Party. Heather decided to read The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side. And, finally, Lenny went with a short story instead of a novel – The Witness for The Prosecution.”
The older woman clapped her hands with satisfaction. “What a marvelous assortment of Dame Agatha’s works! I think your club is in for a very special night, Ms. Kent.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “I greatly appreciate you taking the time to speak with me. I will be eager to tell my group of ladies all about how you and your students are celebrating Dame Agatha’s special anniversary.” She stood and held her hand out to Chrys. "Thank you again," she said.
Chrys also stood and took the offered hand. The older woman clasped her other hand around Chrys’s to give her a warm handshake. “I’ll walk you out,” said Chrys.
The woman shook her head. “No need, my dear. You’ve given me enough of your time and I’m sure you have things to do to get ready for your evening here. I can find my way out.”
“Thank you,” answered Chrys as they walked to the elevator. “I do have some things to finalize upstairs for tonight. Just take the elevator to the first floor and you’ll find the exit to the street. It was very nice meeting you.”
"Likewise," the British woman said before pressing the down button and walking with the aid of her cane into the elevator.
Chrys returned to the lounge area and straightened up the magazines and newspaper on the table. She took another look at the startling newspaper headline, shivered for a few seconds, and then went back to the elevator, which she rode up to the fourth floor.
* * * * *
It was 11:30 PM. All the food from the potluck dinner had been eaten and everyone had pitched in to clean up after the enjoyable meal. Chrys and the students sat in the library’s fourth floor lounge, which was illuminated by one emergency light recessed in the ceiling. A variety of snacks had been set up on a table. Juices, sodas and bottles of water were in the small refrigerator in the corner of the room and a pot of fresh coffee rested on a hot plate. All of the students’ cell phones, along with her own, were in a cell phone lock-up box in Chrys’s basement office with its timer set to open at 6:00 AM and not a moment sooner. The emergency lights in the library, visible through the glass walls of the lounge, cast an eerie glow with most of the library's halls plunged in near darkness, a stark contrast to how bright the library was during normal business hours.
The group was nearly ready to begin the evening's discussions. Each student was allotted 45 minutes to give a presentation about his or her book or short story. Chrys took her place at the head of the table and looked at the students. She frowned as she realized one of them was missing. “Where’s Joyce?” she asked. The five students looked around as if to confirm that Joyce definitely was not in the room.
“I haven’t seen her now that I think about it since we started cleaning up after dinner,” offered Heather.
Another student, Larry, walked from the lounge and into the hallway, looked right and left but only saw darkness. “I know we’re supposed to keep our voices down in the library, Ms. Kent, but I think we can make an exception now since it’s only us here tonight,” he said while looking back into the lounge before turning around and yelling into the hallway. “Joyce! Joyce! Where are you? We’re getting ready to start the book talks!”
His cries for the missing girl were met with silence. Martina joined him in the hallway and, cupping her hands near her mouth, shouted, “Come on, Joyce! We want to start the book discussion! Come back to the lounge!” Martina’s plea was also met with silence.
The five students looked at Chrys. “Maybe she fell or something, Ms. Kent," suggested Sam. "We should go look for her.”
Chrys nodded. “I agree. Let’s spread out and look for her.”
They filed out of the room and everyone went in a different direction to search for the missing student. Less than five minutes after the search began, the quietness that pervaded the fourth floor of the library was shattered by the piercing shrieks of one of the female students. Chrys and the other students raced in the direction of the screams and found Heather crying and hyperventilating outside of the fourth floor ladies room. Between wracking sobs, she pointed and said, “In there! Joyce . . . she’s in there.”
Chrys cautiously opened the door and entered the bathroom where she saw a sight that she would never forget for the rest of her life. Joyce was kneeling on the floor with her unmoving head plunged in the toilet. Chrys tentatively touched the back of Joyce’s neck, but the poor girl didn’t move at all. Chrys knew that Joyce was dead, drowned in the toilet. Chrys choked back a sob of her own and went back to the hall where she saw Martina comforting Heather, who continued to cry and shake. Chrys sadly shook her head and reported what she found without beating around the bush. “Joyce is dead. Drowned from the look of things. Someone held her head under the water in the toilet."
The gathering of students gasped. One of them, Sam, looked pale. He turned to Chrys and asked, “Drowned? What kind of a lunatic would do that to poor Joyce? She was harmless and wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
Chrys’s eyes opened wide as she heard Sam’s question, her mind racing back to the newspaper headline she had read a short while ago. Lunatic Escapes From Local Asylum! “Oh, my God!” she said aloud in a voice that was nearly a whisper. “He must be here inside the library!”
“Who?” asked Larry. “Who must be here, Ms. Kent?”
“It was in the paper. I read it downstairs in the atrium. It said a boy escaped from a nearby asylum and . . .” She stopped midsentence and looked at the students gathered around her. She counted them and looked from face to face. “Lenny! Where’s Lenny?”
The four students turned to each other and realized that another of their group was missing. Chrys looked up the hallway, first to the left and then to the right. She was turning to talk to the four students when she sharply looked back to the right and pointed up the hall. “What’s that?” she asked, indicating something on the floor that was jutting out from one of the book racks.
From a distance of about fifty feet away and in relative darkness, no one could tell what it was so, as a group, they slowly and cautiously made their way up the darkened hall. Heather gasped when they drew closer. “It’s. . . It looks like a foot!” she exclaimed.
Chrys held out her arm to stop the students from proceeding. “I’ll look,” she said. “You all stay here.” She glanced around to see if anyone was lurking in the shadows, but there were too many shadows because the emergency lights were spread too far apart to cast much illumination anywhere in the building. She forced herself to move forward and, as she approached the object on the floor, she saw that it was, in fact, a foot. She peaked around the shelf and gasped as she saw Lenny lying face down with a bloody pipe beside his body. “Don’t come closer,” she said. “It’s horrible! It’s Lenny! It looks like someone bashed his head in with a pipe!”
The two girls, Heather and Martina, cried as they hugged each other tightly. Chrys walked back to the four students. “Let’s go back to the lounge and figure this out. We have to stay together and protect each other.”
At that point, Martina broke free from the hug she shared with Heather. “Figure this out?” she asked, her voice rising with fear. “Figure what out, Ms. Kent? There’s a crazy lunatic in here and he’s killing us one by one! You figure it out, but I’m not waiting to be next. I’m leaving. If you were smart, you’d all leave too!” And, with that, she ran down the hallway and was quickly lost in the darkness.
Sam turned to what remained of the group. “She’s not wrong in wanting to get out of here. But we can’t leave her on her own. I say we go back to the lounge and then me and Larry will go look for her. Ms. Kent and Heather can wait there together till we get back.” Larry nodded slowly in agreement.
They returned to the lounge. “I’m really scared, guys,” said Heather.
Larry nodded and took a cup of coffee from the pot on the hot plate. “Caffeine always helps me focus,” he said. “Anyone else want some?”
Sam shook his head and so did Chrys. “I’ll take a cup, Larry,” said Heather. “Milk and a Sweet & Low, please.” Larry nodded and prepared a second cup for Heather. He handed it to her and said, “I have an idea too. Sam and I will go and look for Martina, but we’ll also go to Ms. Kent’s office and get that cellphone lock box. Maybe we can break it and then call for help.”
Chrys nodded. “That’s a great idea. But please stay together and be careful.”
“We will,” promised Sam. He looked out the door of the lounge and into the gloomy hallway. He didn’t see anything looming there so looked at the other boy and said, “Let’s go, Lar. I want to get out of here too.”
Larry took another sip of his coffee and set it down on the table. He patted Heather’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay. Just stay here with Ms. Kent and we’ll find Martina and get the cellphones.”
Heather nodded but didn’t look encouraged, confident or comforted. “Okay,” she meekly said with a forced smile. “Hurry back, please.”
“Remember,” said Chrys. “Stay together and be very careful.”
The two boys left the room and headed in the direction that Martina had taken when she ran off. Heather and Chrys sat quietly in the lounge watching the clock on the wall tick away the seconds and then the minutes. “What if they don’t come back for us, Ms. Kent? What if they leave us here alone with some crazy killer? What if he gets them too?”
Chrys sighed. The same fears had been running through her head. She tried to be optimistic. “They’ll be okay, Heather. And they’ll come back with the phones so we can call for help. Try not to let fear overwhelm you or make your imagination run wild.”
“Easier said than done, Ms. Kent,” replied the frightened girl. “Easier said than done.” She took another sip of her coffee before burying her face in her hands to hide her tears.
The two women sat in silence as they waited and waited. Suddenly, the quiet was pierced, first by a horrible scream and then by a gunshot and a loud thud. “Oh God!” cried Heather. “We’re next! He’s coming for us next, Ms. Kent. We can’t stay here. We’ll be sitting ducks if we stay here.”
“You’re right. Better to take a chance in the library where we can maybe hide or find a way out.” She tried to give the frightened student a reassuring smile. “Let’s go. We’ll stay together.”
Heather felt goose bumps cover her arms. “Larry and Sam stayed together, Ms. Kent,” she said in a whispered voice.
“Let’s hope that the two of us do better than them then. I say we try to make it to the stairs near the elevator,” suggested the librarian.
“Okay. Just promise you won’t leave me, Ms. Kent. Promise?”
Chrys nodded. “We’re staying together. I won’t leave you. Promise!”
They left the lounge and slowly made there way up the corridor in the direction of the elevator. As they rounded a corner, they were met with a grisly sight. Sam lay there face down on the floor in a pool of blood. He had been stabbed multiple times and a bloody knife was still sticking out of his upper back. Both women screamed and retreated from the corpse, backing up until their backs were pressed against the balustrade that overlooked the second floor atrium. Simultaneously, they turned around and looked down before they each screamed again. Lying on the ground below with blood coming from a head wound was the body of Larry. A gun rested on the floor about a foot from him.
“He got them all, Ms. Kent. He got them all! And we’re the only ones left.”
Chrys took the panicking girl’s hand and led her away from the balcony. They walked past Sam’s body, determined to get to the stairs near the elevator. It took another minute before they reached their destination. Chrys tugged the stairway door open and Heather screamed again as she pointed to the landing at the top of the stairs. “It’s Martina! He got her too!”
Chrys looked closely at Martina’s body and could see the impressions of fingers around the dead girl’s neck. “It looks like she was strangled from behind.”
“We can’t go down there, Ms. Kent,” said Heather as she pointed down the stairwell. “He could be waiting there to kill us too.”
Chrys thought that he could be anywhere waiting to kill them, but she kept that thought to herself so as not to further scare the other girl. They stepped back from the stairwell door and tried the elevator, but the power had been turned off for the night of the Halloween event so the elevator never responded to their call. “This is all very weird,” said Chrys, who suddenly looked deep in thought.
“That’s putting it mildly, Ms. Kent,” retorted Heather.
“No, it is. Think about it. An escaped madman could conceivably have hidden inside the library, but where would he get a gun, or a lead pipe, or a knife? And why use different weapons each time he killed? It doesn’t make sense to me. I can see that a crazy person could drown Joyce and strangle Martina because he could use his hands to commit those murders, but the others . . .?” She left the thought hanging there.
Heather suddenly grabbed the librarian’s arm. “Ms. Kent! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!”
Chrys freed her arm and gently took Heather’s hand. “What is it, Heather? What are you thinking?”
“It’s all Agatha Christie!”
“What?” asked the puzzled librarian.
“You just gave me the answer. It’s all Agatha Christie! Look! Lenny was killed with a pipe blow to the head. He read The Witness for the Prosecution for tonight’s party. The victim in that story was also bludgeoned to death. Same thing for Joyce. In her book, Hallowe'en Party, a girl was drowned while bobbing for apples.”
Chrys’s eyes opened wide as she pulled the list of books from her skirt pocket again. “Sam read Murder on the Orient Express.”
“And the victim there was stabbed to death,” continued Heather. “And Martina?”
Chrys looked at the list. “Her book was What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw. I just saw that movie on Netflix. Mrs. McGillicuddy saw a woman strangled on a passing train.”
“And Martina was strangled. What did Larry read?””
“He read And Then There Were None,” answered Chrys. "It's about ten people stranded on an island with someone killing them one at a time."
Heather gave a nervous laugh. “Kind of like what we’re facing now, right? I’m guessing someone was shot in that book?” she asked.
Chrys thought about it. “Yes, a judge was shot in that book.” She furrowed her brow as she thought some more. “But, that was a red herring.”
“A red herring?” questioned Heather.
“Oh God!” said Chrys as she grabbed Heather’s arm and ran with her back to the balustrade. They looked over the balcony’s edge to the atrium floor. Larry’s body was gone.
“In And Then There Were None, the judge was the killer and he faked his death with a gunshot so he could continue his killing spree without anyone suspecting he was the killer because, as far as they were concerned, he had already been killed.”
Heather’s eyes opened wide. “Then Larry is the one killing everyone here! We have to find a phone and call for help.”
Chrys nodded as she scanned the list of books again. “Heather?” she asked. “What happened to the victim in your book, The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side?”
Heather looked at the dark haired librarian. “She was poisoned, Ms. Kent.” Just as she spoke those words, Heather doubled over in pain, clutching both her stomach and her throat. “Owwww! It hurts, Ms. Kent. It hurts really bad.” The girl fell to her knees. “Oh no! The coffee! Larry poured the cup of coffee I drank in the lounge. He . . . He must have poisoned me . . .” And then she died.
Chrys knelt beside the last of the students, holding her hand. “Heather! Heather!” she yelled to the unhearing corpse. Chrys slowly stood, completely distraught that five of the students in The Rose & Cognac Society were dead and had been killed by another student in their group.
She was so distraught over having witnessed Heather's death that she failed to hear someone moving behind her as she looked down at the body of the dead girl. By the time she realized she was not alone, it was too late. A sweet smelling rag was pressed firmly over her mouth and nose from behind and held there by a strong hand while another hand and arm wrapped itself around her waist to hold her still. She tried to resist and keep from breathing, but eventually she inhaled the chloroform fumes from the rag, and that was her undoing. Chrys slowly closed her eyes before going limp. As she lost consciousness, she heard Larry taunting her. “Go to sleep, Ms. Kent. When you wake up, we’ll recreate two more Agatha Christie books!”
* * * *
When Chrys finally came around, she found that Larry had moved her from the library’s fourth floor promenade to a section of the library’s basement. Chrys recognized that she was lying on the dated two-shaded green checkered floor tiles that had not been replaced following the renovations that were done several months earlier after an explosion had severely damaged part of the library's basement. Chrys also realized that she had been tightly bound by Larry. Her wrists were tied securely behind her back. Her shapely stockinged legs were tied with two lengths of white rope, one that bound her ankles together and the other had secured her thighs to each other just above her knees. She really frowned though when she realized that her arms had been bound to her body with another white rope that circled her upper arms and chest just above her ample breasts, which Larry had exposed by unbuttoning and opening her bright blue blouse. She was somewhat relieved to find that she still wore her gray skirt and white panties. Chrys tried to call for help, but she was barely able to make a sound because her mouth had been packed with some sort of material which was kept in place by a white cloth that had been cleaved between her lips and knotted behind her head.
“Ah, good,” she heard a nearby voice say. “You’re finally awake, Ms. Kent. You kept me waiting longer than I expected so I entertained myself by admiring your boobs. I always wondered what they’d look like and what it’d be like to be able to play with them. I thought about that a lot when the group met to plan tonight’s get together.” He looked down at the captive librarian and smiled lecherously. “And now I know.” He licked his lips with glee as he stared hard at her exposed breasts. “I’m going to enjoy them some more too before you take your final place in our little drama here.” He grinned at her.
“Did you know, Ms. Kent, that you get to fulfill two roles in our Agatha Christie celebration?" He nodded his head up and down. “In The Murder on the Links, one of the characters, Madame Renaud, was also bound and gagged.” Larry chortled as he made the revelation. “But that, Ms. Kent, was a very minor part in a Christie murder mystery. I have a much more important role for you tonight.” She struggled to free herself, but the ropes held and the gag kept her relatively quiet. “All the others I killed tonight played their parts properly and you’re going to play yours too. You’re going to be the star of my own version of another Christie book, The Body in The Library.”
Larry knelt beside Chrys, letting his fingers play momentarily with her nipples, rubbing them to hardness. His hands then roamed over her breasts while she desperately tried to move away from him, moaning and crying protests into her gag. “Do you remember that book, Ms. Kent? Do you remember how the poor girl whose body was found in the library was strangled with the belt from her own dress?” Larry’s fingers traveled down Chrys’s body from her bare breasts and through her cleavage till they came to rest at her waist. He slowly began to undo the black belt from above her skirt, occasionally brushing his fingertips over the exposed skin of Chrys’s midriff. Larry eventually undid the belt and pulled it free. He held its ends in his hands, extending the belt so Chrys could see its entire length. “This will look so lovely wrapped tightly around your pretty neck, Ms. Kent.” He moved the belt towards her, and, when she struggled and tried to roll away from him, he straddled her bound legs and then slowly moved himself up along her body till he sat across her waist. She could feel his arousal pressing against her as she cried into the gag and unsuccessfully fought to shake him off.
“But, maybe there’s no need to hurry to add you to my body count, Ms. Kent,” he said as he grinded against her. Chrys opened her eyes wide and vigorously shook her head from side to side as she took in his threat. “After all, I can have some real fun and kill you later, right, Ms. Kent?” he said as his hands groped Chrys’s breasts again.
“Wrong, young man,” said a voice with a British accent. Larry was turning to see who had spoken when the ivory handle of an old woman’s cane crashed hard against his right temple. A second blow from the cane quickly followed the first, but this time it hit Larry hard at the base of his neck. He gave a loud grunt and then he fell motionless to the side. Chrys could not hide her surprise or relief when she saw the elderly woman she had spoken with earlier standing above her and Larry.
“What an absolutely evil boy,” the woman said. “You’ll forgive me, I hope, Ms. Kent, but after I left you earlier, I thought I could find my way out of the library on my own, but I somehow ended up in the basement instead of on the first floor. By the time I realized my mistake, the power to the lift had been turned off and I was unable to get back to the first floor exit to the street. I found a chair in your office and must have fallen asleep again. I only woke when I heard that young man come down here. I was going to ask him for help, but, when I saw him carrying you unconscious over his shoulder, I decided to stay hidden. After I heard him confess to killing others and then heard his threats directed at you, I had to do something.” She looked at her cane. “I do hope that I didn’t ruin the finish on the handle. It was a gift from another of my nephews, you know.”
She then turned her attention to Chrys. “Oh, forgive me again, Ms. Kent,” she said as she finally seemed to focus on Chrys’s predicament. “I’ll have you free in a moment and then we can call the local constable. I mean the police.” The old woman smiled at Chrys before kneeling to release her from the ropes and gag. “My lady friends in St. Mary Mead will never believe me when I tell them what happened here,” said the older woman wistfully as she worked to set Chrys free.
THE END!
* * * * * * *
Notes about Murder Is Easy:
“Murder Is Easy” is my fifth Ms. Kent story. Ms. Kent is the OC, of course, of 
who continues to graciously allow me to write stories featuring her librarian. If you haven’t checked out the Amazon Arrow gallery, you’re really missing a lot of great stories and art!
Speaking of art, the drawing that accompanies this story is by the amazing Alazar whose webmaster graciously allows me to share his work on DeviantArt. You can find lots and lots of Alazar drawings at www.AlazarsArt.com
As for the story itself, I’ve always enjoyed reading books by Agatha Christie (and still do!) and that is what inspired me to write this Ms. Kent story.
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was born on September 15, 1890 in the United Kingdom, so this is, indeed, the 125th anniversary of her birth. Before her death in January 1976, she wrote 66 detective novels, 14 short story collections and the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap (which has run continuously in London’s West End since 1952).
The names and methods of demise of the characters in this story were all derived from Agatha Christie’s novels:
Murder on the Orient Express (published in 1934) featured the stabbing death of a man named Samuel Ratchett.
What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw (published in 1957) featured the strangulation of a woman named Martine.
Hallowe’en Party (published in 1969) featured the drowning of a girl named Joyce Reynolds.
The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side (published in 1962) featured the poisoning death of a woman named Heather Badcock.
The Witness for the Prosecution (published in 1925) featured the bludgeoning death of a woman and the trial of her alleged killer, a man named Leonard Vole.
And Then There Were None (published in 1939) featured, among others, a character named Lawrence John Wargrave.
Other Christie books mentioned in my story are The Murder on the Links, which was published in 1923, and The Body in the Library, which was published in 1942.
The title of my story was also “borrowed” from a book by Agatha Christie – Murder is Easy – which was published in 1939.
A little bit about Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve always been fascinated by Poe’s work, probably because my grandparents, who lived in The Bronx, New York, often brought me to Poe Park when I was very young. Poe lived in the Fordham section of The Bronx in a small cottage in the mid 1840s. I can still remember visiting that cottage back in the day whenever they would bring me to that park.
Edgar Allan Poe lived from 1809-1849 and was a writer of, among other things, horror (short stories such as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum) and detective stories (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined Letter all feature his fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin). One hundred years after Poe’s death, beginning in 1949 and continuing until 2010, an unknown visitor (or visitors) paid homage to Poe by visiting the original site of Poe’s Baltimore, Maryland grave in the early morning hours every January 19th (Poe’s birthday). The visitor would pour himself a glass of cognac and raise a toast to Poe before leaving three roses in a particular arrangement and the unfinished bottle of cognac at the site of Poe’s original grave. I named Ms. Kent’s book club, The Rose & Cognac Society, in honor of that tradition.
Finally, Ms. Kent’s rescuer at the end of my story may or may not have been Miss Jane Marple!
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I understand you wouldn't want to spend too much time on sleepy scenes-I can embellish those with your permission, but the story is what counts anyway-but I'd still love to see, and illustrate, a Jacky Graham story by you, with the angles you want to emphasise!
I'm glad you liked Murder is Easy. I had fun with that one
Your comment about Sybians being portable is good! I've not seen one up close and personal, but I have seen them in use, not something that can easily be carried around!!
A rather expensive "toy", I looked up the price quite a while back and they were over $1,200. Other than that they seem to drive women crazy, that is the sum total of my knowledge on that subject.
the old woman came in the perfect time
My only quibble with the story isn't a narrative issue but a grammatical one: the lack of italicization and/or quotation marks on the titles of the books and stories listed throughout. It may be a stylistic choice on your part, which is, of course, your right as the author to select. It's just one of those things that always stands out for me.