An Absence of Alice
An Achille Pierrot Whodunitby Tabitha Mystie
I awoke that morning, had my usual hearty English breakfast and decided to walk into Lenox, barely two miles from the house which I rented for the summer.. While it is thousands of miles from my own cottage in the Lake District, I have been quite at home here in the Berkshire hills.
After checking for mail at the Post Office - a rather disappointing royalty check from my publisher and two back copies of "The Review of Books" - I stopped in at the Lenox Library. While it is not quite the Bodleian, it is a most excellent library, contained in a most handsome building and serves the intellectual Agora of the town.
As I walked into the Library I was met, not by the usual quiet murmur , but by a definitely unquiet discussion between librarian and one of the many volunteers who give their time and good efforts to the library in admirable fashion.
"Every one."
"But we have five different editions of `Alice in Wonderland.`''
"None on the shelves and none out on loan"
"Impossible"
It was quite methodical; the alphabetical pattern was clear. Alice was followed out the door by Balzac. Every Callas tape and CD went next. Then went every dictionary, even “Groves Dictionary of Music”; the encyclopedias, every back issue of Fortune magazine and the novels of Graham Greene. It became clear that an insidious and relentless force was at work.
Book by book, magazine by magazine, CD by CD, the Lenox Library was vanishing. Once through the alphabet, the pattern was repeated: Jane Austen, Bach - father and sons -- down through Gore Vidal. At “W” the creeping horror, not content with decimating the Library’s shelves, literally came out into the open.
On the morning of July 22, early risers going past the Library were stopped in their tracks; the Welles Gallery was gone! Where it had stood the night before, only a rectangle of raw earth remained.
Instead of the well-earned rest Pierrot had anticipated, he was plunged into the puzzling Library affair. As usual, he found the challenge irresistible.
With his customary thoroughness, Pierrot’s first order of business was to identify those with motives for destroying the Lenox Library.
“But who could possibly gain?”
“Ah, mon ami, I have learned never to underestimate the power of greed. Those who have much never stop needing more. I see, for example, that the great media czar, Rubric Merdehoc, has an estate nearby. It is well known that he hates libraries because they cause people and especially children to spend less time watching television. And since I understand that the Library is open Thursday nights in the winter and is about to open on Tuesday nights as well, it poses even more of a threat to Merdehoc’s, how do you say it, “ratings.” Men have killed for less.
“Seems a bit far fetched, old boy.”
“Ah, but I have a plot fetched from an even greater distance. You are aware, no doubt, that there is in Washington a cabal of highly placed government officials of great power but limited vision who are determined, by whatever means necessary, to eliminate all libraries, as well as other aspects of the arts and humanities.”
“And you suspect...”
“I suspect everyone, mon ami. But there is still another possibility. Have you noticed one interesting fact about all the disappearing books, a fact overlooked by everyone, but not by Achille Pierrot. Look at the shelves. What do you see?”
“Spaces where the books used to be.”
“Naturellement. But notice where the spaces are. None of the missing books are from the top two shelves. Does this not suggest something?”
“Of course! The person we’re looking for is vertically disadvantaged.”
“Or cleverly trying to give that impression”
“ So we’re looking for someone who is either very short or very tall.”
“ Perhaps. But somewhere in the back of my mind I sense a missing piece to this puzzle . It is no ordinary crime and no ordinary criminal mind has conceived it. Even I, Achille Pierrot, have not yet found the key to this mystery.”
One afternoon I was attempting to raise Pierrot’s spirits or more precisely to pour balm on his wounded ego.
“Mon Dieu! Of course you are correct. That is the answer. In the past, I have always had to find a solution to a crime. For the first time, I must uncover a solution to which there is no crime. It is now clear. In this affair of the vanishing Library there is no crime and therefore no culprit. But there is a solution and I , Achille Pierrot, have found it!”
Have you, the reader, guessed Pierrot’s solution to the Affair of the Vanishing Library?
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