Never Laugh as a Hearse Goes By: A Penny Brannigan Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

so she settled back in her seat and closed her eyes, thinking about the long list of tasks still on her to do list. She opened her eyes when the driver announced they were approaching Hawarden.
    Located six miles from Chester, the town of Hawarden, just inside the Welsh border, is best known for its long ties with the family of William Ewart Gladstone, who served as Britain’s prime minister a record four different times in the second half of the nineteenth century. A champion of liberalism, rights for women, and education over his long and distinguished career, he was also a great reader who owned some 32,000 or so books that he decided not to bequeath to his alma mater, the University of Oxford, on the grounds that that distinguished university already had enough books.
    The idea of creating a different kind of library appealed to Gladstone. A residential library that was private, because it received no public funding, yet open to everyone. Before his death in 1898 he transferred his books, many of which contain annotations in his own hand, to a temporary building, known as the tin tabernacle. After his death, a permanent, much grander building was built to house the collection. This building, completed in 1906, comprised the library and a residential facility for students, staff, and visitors. It remains today the only prime ministerial library in Britain.
    Built of red sandstone with an exuberance of stylized Victorian detailing, the two-storey Library features dormers, gables, and plenty of Gothic touches. There are oriel windows, pointed doorways, leaded pane windows, and pinnacles and small statues of great thinkers, such as Aristotle, in canopied niches.
    Minty struggled off the bus at the stop closest to the Library entrance, crossed the street, and strolled along the pavement past the curving stone wall covered in greenery to the Library entrance. She paused for a moment on the lichen-covered path to take in the extravagant statue dedicated to the memory of the Library’s namesake, William Gladstone. She continued on her way, and as she reached the main entrance a young staff person opened the door for her and helped her in with her bag.
    Minty paused in the reception area to look around. She had grown up in the area, and although she had been to the Library many times it always filled her with a sense of quiet, respectful awe. She loved it more on every visit and, in fact, it was she who had suggested holding the conference here. Sometimes it reminded her of an elite college and at other times of an understated boutique hotel. But it always reminded her of a much loved and much used country house with its quiet comforts and atmosphere of tranquil exclusivity. However, as she wandered down the hallway, glancing at the leaflets on the deep-set oak windowsills, she was reminded that first and foremost, it is a library—a place for research, reading, and learning—at once traditional and modern. Pamphlets offered week-long courses in beginners Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or Welsh and promoted presentations by visiting authors. Several courses focused on the Victorians and others connected theology and film—a three-day course exploring the cultural context of Jesus at the Movies looked interesting.
    There was nothing announcing upcoming conferences, such as the one she herself had organized, as these events were private.
    After asking a staff member if the bishop and his wife had arrived and being told they had not, she went upstairs to her room to get settled in, review the conference arrangements, and lie down for an hour or so before the evening welcome reception began in the Gladstone Room. She took out the sheet of figures she had printed off the night before and, sitting on the edge of her bed, mulled them over. The discrepancy in the one parish bothered her. There was increased activity, but as far as she could tell not the corresponding increase in revenue she would have expected to see. Wondering if she should