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A Hoosier Chronicle by Meredith Nicholson

M >> Meredith Nicholson >> A Hoosier Chronicle




Her deep sigh implied that he might do as he liked with his son, now
that she had so completely failed with her daughter.

"Aunt Sally is very much interested in Mr. Harwood. She has put Sylvia's
affairs in his hands. Could it be possible--"

He groped for her unexpressed meaning, and seeing that he had not
grasped it she clarified it to his masculine intelligence.

"If there are two persons she is interested in, and they understand each
other, it's all so much more formidable." And then, seeing that this
also was too subtle, she put it flatly: "What if Harwood should marry
Sylvia!"

"Well, that _is_ borrowing trouble!" he cried impatiently. "Aunt Sally
is interested in a great many young people. She is very fond of Allen
Thatcher. And Allen seems to find Marian's society agreeable, more so, I
fancy, than Harwood does;--why not speculate along that line? It's as
plausible as the other."

"Oh, that boy! That's something we must guard against, Morton; that is
quite impossible."

"I dare say it is," he replied. "But not more unlikely than that Harwood
will marry this Sylvia who worries you so unnecessarily."

"Marian is going to marry somebody, some day, and that's on my mind a
great deal. You have got to give more thought to family matters. It's
right for Marian to marry, and I think a girl of her tastes should
settle early, but we must guard her from mistakes. I've had that on my
conscience several years."

"Of course, Hallie; and I've not been unmindful of it."

"And if Aunt Sally is interested in young Harwood and you think well of
him yourself--but of course I don't favor him for Marian. I should like
Marian to marry into a family of some standing."

"Well, we'll see to it that she does; we want our daughter to be
happy--we must do the best we can for our children," he concluded
largely.

She promised to appear at the dinner table, and he went down with some
idea of seeing Mrs. Owen at once, to assure her of his honorable
intentions toward her in the "Courier" matter; he wanted to relieve his
own fears as well as his wife's as to the mischief that had been wrought
by Thatcher's suit.

In the hall below he met Sylvia, just back from her first day at the
normal school. The maid had admitted her, and she was slipping her
parasol into the rack as he came downstairs. She heard his step and
turned toward him, a slender, dark young woman in black. In the dim hall
she did not at once recognize him, and he spoke first.

"Good-afternoon, Miss Garrison! I am Mr. Bassett; I believe I introduced
myself to you at Waupegan--and that seems a long time ago."

"I remember very well, Mr. Bassett," Sylvia replied, and they shook
hands. "You found me in my dream corner by the lake and walked to Mrs.
Owen's with me. I remember our meeting perfectly."

He stood with his hand on the newel regarding her intently. She was
entirely at ease, a young woman without awkwardness or embarrassment.
She had disposed of their previous meeting lightly, as though such
fortuitous incidents had not been lacking in her life. Her mourning hat
cast a shadow upon her face, but he had been conscious of the
friendliness of her smile. Her dark eyes had inspected him swiftly; he
was vaguely aware of a feeling that he wanted to impress her favorably.

"The maid said Mrs. Owen and Marian are still out. I hope Mrs. Bassett
is better. I wonder if I can do anything for her."

"No, thank you; she's quite comfortable and will be down for dinner."

"I'm glad to hear that; suppose we find seats here."

She walked before him into the parlor and threw back the curtains the
better to admit the air. He watched her attentively, noting the ease and
grace of her movements, and took the chair she indicated.

"It's very nice to see Mrs. Bassett and Marian again; they were so good
to me that summer at Waupegan; I have carried the pleasantest memories
of that visit ever since. It seems a long time ago and it is nearly four
years, isn't it."

"Four this summer, I think. I remember, because I had been to Colorado,
and that whole year was pretty full for me. But all these years have
been busy ones for you, too, I hear. Your grandfather's death must have
been a great shock to you. I knew him only by reputation, but it was a
reputation to be proud of."

"Yes; Grandfather Kelton had been everything to me."

"It was too bad he couldn't have lived to see you through college; he
must have taken a great interest in your work there, through his own
training and scholarship."

"It was what he wanted me to do, and I wish he could have known how I
value it. He was the best of men, the kindest and noblest; and he was a
wonderful scholar. He had the habit of thoroughness."

"That, I suppose, was partly due to the discipline of the Navy. I fancy
that a man trained in habits of exactness gets into the way of keeping
his mind ship-shape--no loose ends around anywhere."

She smiled at this, and regarded him with rather more attention, as
though his remark had given her a new impression of him which her eyes
wished to verify.

"They tell me you expect to teach in the city schools; that has always
seemed to me the hardest kind of work. I should think you would prefer a
college position;--there would be less drudgery, and better social
opportunities."

"Every one warns me that it's hard work, but I don't believe it can be
so terrible. Somebody has to do it. Of course college positions are more
dignified and likely to be better paid."

He started to speak and hesitated.

"Well," she laughed. "You were going to add your warning, weren't you!
I'm used to them."

"No; nothing of the sort; I was going to take the liberty of saying that
if you cared to have me I should be glad to see whether our state
university might not have something for you. I have friends and
acquaintances who could help there."

"Oh, you are very kind! It is very good of you to offer to do that;
but--"

A slight embarrassment was manifest in the quick opening and closing of
her eyes, a slight turning of the head, but she smiled pleasantly,
happily. He liked her way of smiling, and smiled himself. He found it
agreeable to be talking to this young woman with the fine, candid eyes,
whose manner was so assured--without assurance! She smoothed the black
gloves in her lap quietly; they were capable hands; her whole appearance
and manner somehow betokened competence.

"The fact is, Mr. Bassett, that I have declined one or two college
positions. My own college offered to take me in; and I believe there
were one or two other chances. But it is kind of you to offer to help
me."

She had minimized the importance of the offers she had declined so that
he might not feel the meagreness of his proffered help; and he liked her
way of doing it; but it was incredible that a young woman should decline
an advantageous and promising position to accept a minor one. In the
world he knew there were many hands on all the rounds of all the
available ladders.

"Of course," he hastened to say, "I knew you were efficient; that's why
I thought the public schools were not quite--not quite--worthy of your
talents!"

Some explanation seemed necessary, and Sylvia hesitated for a moment.

"Do I really have to be serious, Mr. Bassett? So many people--the girls
at college and some of my instructors and Mrs. Owen even--have assured
me that I am not quite right in my mind; but I will make short work of
my reasons. Please believe that I really don't mean to take myself too
seriously. I want to teach in the public schools merely to continue my
education; there are things to learn there that I want to know. So, you
see, after all, it's neither important nor interesting; it's only--only
my woman's insatiable curiosity!"

He smiled, but he frowned too; it annoyed him not to comprehend her.
School-teaching could only be a matter of necessity; her plea of
curiosity must cover something deeper that she withheld.

"I know," she continued, "if I may say it, ever so much from books; but
I have only the faintest notions of life. Now, isn't that terribly
muggy? People--and their conditions and circumstances--can only be
learned by going to the original sources."

This was not illuminative. She had only added to his befuddlement and he
bent forward, soliciting some more lucid statement of her position.

"I had hoped to go ahead and never have to explain, for I fear that in
explaining I seem to be appraising myself too high; but you won't
believe that of me, will you? If I took one of these college positions
and proved efficient, and had good luck, I should keep on knowing all
the rest of my life about the same sort of people, for the girls who go
to college are from the more fortunate classes. There are exceptions,
but they are drawn largely from homes that have some cultivation, some
sort of background. The experiences of teachers in such institutions are
likely to cramp. It's all right later on, but at first, it seems to me
better to experiment in the wider circle. Now--" and she broke off with
a light laugh, eager that he should understand.

"It's not, then, your own advantage you consult; the self-denial appeals
to you; it's rather like--like a nun's vocation. You think the service
is higher!"

"Oh, it would be if I could render service! Please don't think I feel
that the world is waiting for me to set it right; I don't believe it's
so wrong! All I mean to say is that I don't understand a lot of things,
and that the knowledge I lack isn't something we can dig out of a
library, but that we must go to life for it. There's a good deal to
learn in a city like this that's still in the making. I might have gone
to New York, but there are too many elements there; it's all too big for
me. Here you can see nearly as many kinds of people, and you can get
closer to them. You can see how they earn their living, and you can even
follow them to church on Sunday and see what they get out of that!"

"I'm afraid," he replied, after deliberating a moment, "that you are
going to make yourself uncomfortable; you are cutting out a programme of
unhappiness."

"Why shouldn't I make myself uncomfortable for a little while? I have
never known anything but comfort."

"But that's your blessing; no matter how much you want to do it you
can't remove all the unhappiness in the world--not even by dividing with
the less fortunate. I've never been able to follow that philosophy."

"Maybe," she said, "you have never tried it!" She was seeking neither to
convince him nor to accomplish his discomfiture and to this end was
maintaining her share of the dialogue to the accompaniment of a smile of
amity.

"Maybe I never have," he replied slowly. "I didn't have your advantage
of seeing a place to begin."

"But you have the advantage of every one; you have the thing that I can
never hope to have, that I don't ask for: you have the power in your
hands to do everything!"

His quick, direct glance expressed curiosity as to whether she were
appealing to his vanity or implying a sincere belief in his power.

"Power is too large a word to apply to me, Miss Garrison. I have had a
good deal of experience in politics, and in politics you can't do all
you like."

"I didn't question that: men of the finest intentions seem to fail, and
they will probably go on failing. I know that from books; you know it of
course from actual dealings with the men who find their way to
responsible places, and who very often fail to accomplish the things we
expect of them."

"The aims of most of the reformers are futile from the beginning.
Legislatures can pass laws; they pass far too many; but they can't make
ideal conditions out of those laws. I've seen it tried."

"Yesterday, when you were able to make that convention do exactly what
you wanted it to, without even being there to watch it, it must have
been because of some ideal you were working for. You thought you were
serving some good purpose; it wasn't just spite or to show your power.
It couldn't have been that!"

"I did it," he said doggedly, as though to destroy with a single blunt
thrust her tower of illusions--"I did it to smash a man named Thatcher.
There wasn't any ideal nonsense about it."

He frowned, surprised and displeased that he had spoken so roughly. He
rarely let go of himself in that fashion. He expected her to take
advantage of his admission to point a moral; but she said instantly:--

"Then, you did it beautifully! There was a certain perfection about it;
it was, oh, immensely funny!"

She laughed, tossing her head lightly, a laugh of real enjoyment, and he
was surprised to find himself laughing with her. It seemed that the
Thatcher incident was not only funny, but that its full humorous value
had not until that moment been wholly realized by either of them.

She rose quickly. One of her gloves fell to the floor and he picked it
up. The act of restoring it brought them close together, and their talk
had, he felt, justified another searching glance into her face. She
nodded her thanks, smiling again, and moved toward the door. He admired
the tact which had caused her to close the discussion at precisely the
safe moment. He was a master of the art of closing interviews, and she
had placed the period at the end of the right sentence; it was where he
would have placed it himself. She had laughed!--and the novelty of being
laughed at was refreshing. He and Thatcher had laughed in secret at the
confusion of their common enemies in old times; but most men feared him,
and he had the reputation of being a mirthless person. He had rarely
discussed politics with women; he had an idea that a woman's politics,
when she had any, partook of the nature of her religion, and that it was
something quite emotional, tending toward hysteria. He experienced a
sense of guilt at the relief he found in Sylvia's laughter, remembering
that scarcely half an hour earlier he had been at pains to justify
himself before his wife for the very act which had struck this girl as
funny. He had met Mrs. Bassett's accusations with evasion and
dissimulation, and he had accomplished an escape that was not, in
retrospect, wholly creditable. He hated scenes and tiresome debates as
he hated people who cringed and sidled before him.

His manner of dealing with Thatcher had been born of a diabolical humor
which he rarely exercised, but which afforded him a delicious
satisfaction. It was the sort of revenge one reserved for a foe capable
of appreciating its humor and malignity. The answer of laughter was one
to which he was unused, and he was amazed to find that it had effected
an understanding of some vague and intangible kind between him and
Sylvia Garrison. She might not approve of him, he had no idea that she
did; but she had struck a chord whose vibrations pleased and tantalized.
She was provocative and, to a degree, mystifying, and the abrupt
termination of their talk seemed to leave the way open to other
interviews. He thought of many things he might have said to her at the
moment; but her period was not to be changed to comma or semicolon; she
was satisfied with the punctuation and had, so to speak, run away with
the pencil! She had tossed his political aims and strifes into the air
with a bewildering dismissal, and he stood like a child whose toy
balloon has slipped away, half-pleased at its flight, half-mourning its
loss.

She picked up some books she had left on a stand in the hall. He stood
with his hands in his pockets, watching her ascent, hearing the swish of
her skirts on the stairs: but she did not look back. She was humming
softly to herself as she passed out of sight.




CHAPTER XXI

A SHORT HORSE SOON CURRIED


Sylvia sat beside Bassett at dinner that night, and it was on the whole
a cheerful party. Mrs. Bassett was restored to tranquillity, and before
her aunt she always strove to hide her ills, from a feeling that that
lady, who enjoyed perfect health, and carried on the most prodigious
undertakings, had little patience with her less fortunate sisters whom
the doctors never fully discharge. Mrs. Owen had returned so late that
Bassett was unable to dispose of the lawsuit before dinner; she had
greeted her niece's husband with her usual cordiality. She always called
him Morton, and she was Aunt Sally to him as to many hundreds of her
fellow citizens. She discussed crops, markets, rumors of foreign wars,
prospective changes in the President's Cabinet, the price of ice, and
the automobile invasion. Talk at Sally Owen's table was always likely to
be spirited. Bassett's anxiety as to his relations with her passed; he
had never felt more comfortable in her house.

Only the most temerarious ever ventured to ask a forecast of Mrs. Owen's
plans. Marian, who had found a school friend with an automobile and had
enjoyed a run into the country, did not share the common fear of her
great-aunt. Mrs. Owen liked Marian's straightforward ways even when
they approached rashness. It had occurred to her sometimes that there
was a good deal of Singleton in Marian; she, Sally Owen, was a Singleton
herself, and admired the traits of that side of her family. Marian
amused her now by plunging into a description of a new flat she had
passed that afternoon which would provide admirably a winter home for
the Bassetts. Mrs. Bassett shuddered, expecting her aunt to sound a
warning against the extravagance of maintaining two homes; but Mrs. Owen
rallied promptly to her grandniece's support.

"If you've got tired of my house, you couldn't do better than to take an
apartment in the Verona. I saw the plans before they began it, and it's
first-class and up-to-date. My house is open to you and always has been,
but I notice you go to the hotel about half the time. You'd better try a
flat for a winter, Hallie, and let Marian see how we do things in town."

Instantly Mrs. Bassett was alert. This could only be covert notice that
Sylvia was to be installed in the Delaware Street house. Marian was
engaging her father in debate upon the merits of her plan, fortified by
Mrs. Owen's unexpected approval. Mrs. Bassett raised her eyes to Sylvia.
Sylvia, in one of the white gowns with which she relieved her mourning,
tranquilly unconscious of the dark terror she awakened in Mrs. Bassett,
seemed to be sympathetically interested in the Bassetts' transfer to the
capital.

Sylvia was guilty of the deplorable sin of making herself agreeable to
every one. She had paused on the way to her room before dinner to
proffer assistance to Mrs. Bassett. With a light, soothing touch she had
brushed the invalid's hair and dressed it; and she had produced a new
kind of salts that proved delightfully refreshing. Since coming to the
table Mrs. Bassett had several times detected her husband in an exchange
of smiles with the young woman, and Marian and the usurper got on
famously.

Mrs. Bassett had observed that Sylvia's appetite was excellent, and this
had weakened her belief in the girl's genius; there was a good deal of
Early-Victorian superstition touching women in Hallie Bassett! But Mrs.
Owen was speaking.

"I suppose I'd see less of you all if you moved to town. Marian used to
run off from Miss Waring's to cheer me up, mostly when her lessons were
bad, wasn't it, Marian?"

"I love this house, Aunt Sally, but you can't have us all on your hands
all the time."

"Well," Mrs. Owen remarked, glancing round the table quizzically, "I
might do worse. But even Sylvia scorns me; she's going to move out
to-morrow."

Mrs. Bassett with difficulty concealed her immeasurable relief. Mrs.
Owen left explanations to Sylvia, who promptly supplied them.

"That sounds as though I were about to take leave without settling my
bill, doesn't it? But I thought it wise not to let it get too big; I'm
going to move to Elizabeth House."

"Elizabeth House! Why, Sylvia!" cried Marian.

Mrs. Bassett smothered a sigh of satisfaction. If Aunt Sally was
transferring her protegee to the home she had established for working
girls (and it was inconceivable that the removal could be upon Sylvia's
own initiative), the Bassett prospects brightened at once. Aunt Sally
was, in her way, an aristocrat; she was rich and her eccentricities were
due largely to her kindness of heart; but Mrs. Bassett was satisfied now
that she was not a woman to harbor in her home a girl who labored in a
public school-house. Not only did Mrs. Bassett's confidence in her aunt
rise, but she felt a thrill of admiration for Sylvia, who was
unmistakably a girl who knew her place, and her place as a wage-earner
was not in the home of one of the richest women in the state, but in a
house provided through that lady's beneficence for the shelter of young
women occupied in earning a livelihood.

"It's very nice there," Sylvia was saying. "I stopped on my way home
this afternoon and found that they could give me a room. It's all
arranged."

"But it's only for office girls and department store clerks and
dressmakers, Sylvia. I should think you would hate it. Why, my manicure
lives there!"

Marian desisted, warned by her mother, who wished no jarring note to mar
her satisfaction in the situation.

"That manicure girl is a circus," said Mrs. Owen, quite oblivious of the
undercurrent of her niece's thoughts. "When they had a vaudeville show
last winter she did the best stunts of any of 'em. You didn't mention
those Jewesses that I had such a row to get in? Smart girls. One of 'em
is the fastest typewriter in town; she's a credit to Jerusalem, that
girl. And a born banker. They've started a savings club and Miriam runs
it. They won't lose any money." Mrs. Owen chuckled; and the rest
laughed. There was no question of Mrs. Owen's pride in Elizabeth House.
"Did you see any plumbers around the place?" she demanded of Sylvia.
"I've been a month trying to get another bathroom put in on the third
floor, and plumbers do try the soul."

"That's all done," replied Sylvia. "The matron told me to tell you so."

"I'm about due to go over there and look over the linen," remarked Mrs.
Owen, with an air of making a memorandum of a duty neglected.

"Well, I guess it's comfortable enough," said Marian. "But I should
think you could do better than that, Sylvia. You'll have to eat at the
same table with some typewriter pounder. With all your education I
should think it would bore you."

"Sylvia will have to learn about it for herself, Marian," said Mrs.
Bassett. "I've always understood that the executive board is very
careful not to admit girls whose character isn't above reproach."

Mrs. Owen turned the key of her old-fashioned coffee urn sharply upon
the cup she was filling and looked her niece in the eye.

"Oh, we're careful, Hallie; we're careful; but I tell 'em not to be
_too_ careful!"

"Well, of course the aim is to protect girls," Mrs. Bassett replied,
conscious of a disconcerting acidity in her aunt's remark.

"I'm not afraid of contamination," observed Sylvia.

"Of course not _that_," rejoined Mrs. Bassett hastily. "I think it's
fine that with your culture you will go and live in such a place; it
shows a beautiful spirit of self-sacrifice."

"Oh, please don't say that! I'm going there just because I want to go!"
And then, smiling to ease the moment's tension, "I expect to have the
best of times at Elizabeth House."

"Sylvia"--remarked Mrs. Owen, drawling the name a trifle more than
usual--"Sylvia can do what she pleases anywhere."

"I think," said Bassett, who had not before entered into the discussion,
"that Aunt Sally has struck the right word there. In these days a girl
can do as she likes; and we haven't any business to discuss Miss
Garrison's right to live at Elizabeth House."

"Of course, Sylvia, we didn't mean to seem to criticize you. You know
that," said Mrs. Bassett, flushing.

"You are my friends," said Sylvia, glancing round the table, "and if
there's criticizing to be done, you have the first right."

"If Sylvia is to be criticized,--and I don't understand that any one has
tried it," remarked Mrs. Owen,--"I want the first chance at her myself."
And with the snapping of her spectacle case they rose from the table.

They had barely settled themselves in the parlor when Harwood and Allen
arrived in Allen's motor. Dan had expected his friend to resent his
part in the convention, and he had sought Allen at Lueders's shop to
satisfy himself that their personal relations had not been disturbed. He
had found Allen, at the end of a day's work, perched upon a bench
discoursing to the workmen on the Great Experiment. Allen had, it
seemed, watched the convention from an obscure corner of the gallery. He
pronounced Dan's speech "immense"; "perfectly bully"; he was extravagant
in his praise of it. His father's success in naming the ticket had
seemed to him a great triumph. Allen viewed the whole matter with a kind
of detachment, as a spectator whose interest is wholly impersonal. He
thought there would be a great fight between the combatants; his dad
hadn't finished yet, he declared, sententiously. The incidents of the
convention had convinced him that the Great Experiment was progressing
according to some predestined formula. He and Harwood had dined together
at the University Club and he was quite in the humor to call on the
Bassetts at Mrs. Owen's; and the coming of Sylvia, as to whom Mrs. Owen
had piqued his curiosity, was not to be overlooked.

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President Obama teams up with one of Marvel's greatest heroes, reports Alison Flood
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

Murder One closing so did we commit this crime?

Barack Obama is teaming up with Spider-Man in a new comic from Marvel, which will see the future president exchanging a fist-bump with Peter Parker's alter ego.

The five-page story takes place in Washington DC on inauguration day, when one of Spidey's oldest enemies, the Chameleon, attempts to stop Obama's swearing-in ceremony. Fortunately, Peter Parker is covering the event as a photographer, and jumps in to save the day.

"Ya hear that, Chameleon? The president-elect here just appointed me ... secretary of shuttin' you up," Spider-Man says as he thwacks the Chameleon in the face. "I hope this doesn't ruin the inauguration for you," he tells Obama, as the Chameleon is led away by security officials. "Honestly, I'm more upset by the Chameleon's shockingly deficient understanding of the electoral process," Obama replies.

Spidey then cedes the limelight to Obama. "This is your day, after all, and I know it wouldn't look good to be seen palling around with me," he says, in a nod to Sarah Palin's comment that the then presidential candidate had been "palling around with terrorists".

The story, written by Zeb Wells and illustrated by Todd Nauck and Frank D'Armata, will appear as a bonus feature in Amazing Spider-Man 583, which goes on sale on 14 January.

"When we heard that president-elect Obama is a collector of Spider-Man comics, we knew that these two historic figures had to meet in our comics' Marvel Universe," said Marvel's editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. "A Spider-Man fan moving into the Oval Office is an event that must be commemorated in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man."

In October, graphic novel biographies of Obama and his then rival John McCain were published by IDW. April will see Michelle Obama appearing in the Female Force comic book series.

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Poetry Workshop creature features

For many years my local corner shop displayed a large sign in its window telling local residents to "use us or lose us!" It always looked a rather toothless threat to me. After all, if I didn't use them, what difference would it make to me if they weren't there? And surely a corner shop, one that had been there for years, would have enough customers to survive without recourse to such apocalyptic warning? But it didn't and was soon converted into flats.

This community shop was destroyed not so much by the pressures of the supermarkets or people's commuting patterns, but simply by customer apathy. It's something to think about as crime writers and readers across the world mourn the imminent passing of Maxim Jakubowski's celebrated Charing Cross Road bookshop in London, Murder One.

Apathy is a strange word to connect to a bookstore that thrives on passion. It's noticeable when you walk through the door, when you speak to the friendly, knowledgeable staff, when you look at the shelves and see the vast range of titles on offer. This isn't your regular kind of bookstore: the first time I visited spent a whole lunch break looking up and down, from floor to ceiling from table to table; it was an hour that changed my perception of both crime writing and of bookselling.

Murder One was – and for a few weeks will remain – a shop that took crime seriously. Not in the sense that it intellectualised it, or made unsubstantiated claims for its importance, but in the way that it treated crime writing with the respect it was due. With a genre that has so many off-shoots, branches and sub-genres, it took a shop of Murder One's calibre to show just how diverse, interesting and mentally stimulating crime could be – far more than the guilty pleasure I had, until then, considered it.

Thanks to judicious recommendations, enticing table displays and hours of foraging among the stacks, I discovered writers that I would never have picked up, let alone read. You could always get the latest blockbuster, but delve a little deeper and you'd find books that were not stocked anywhere else, novels that, like the perfect crime, were hidden from public view. The Martin Beck novels by Sjöwall & Wahlöö – probably my favourite sequence of novels in any genre – were introduced to me via Murder One, as were Kem Nunn, Sue Grafton, and Henning Mankell. It's also the staff of Murder One who piqued my interest in the inimitable Fred Vargas, and I can't thank them enough for the introduction.

Inclusive and without snobbery, Murder One amply demonstrated that the best bookshops are places not just of commerce, but of community; places that make feel you belong. It's the kind of store that bibliophiles dream about: well-stocked, well-staffed and shabby enough to lose days browsing within. It's just unfortunate that such shops don't have enough paying customers to keep them afloat, or that these customers visit all too infrequently – something of which I'm certainly guilty.

These kinds of shops are facing a long, bloody battle – and one which, without significant reinforcements, they are likely to lose. As we hear of the travesty of another brilliant independent going down, we'll mourn the loss, wring our hands and damn Amazon and the supermarkets and Waterstone's. Yet perhaps the most important detail we'll probably keep under wraps: the last time we actually spent any money there.

Murder One closing its doors for the final time is undoubtedly a .38 shell for independent bookshops, but whether it's body blow or a warning shot all depends upon us, the consumers. No one, no matter how iconic or established, can exist on fond memories alone: just ask Woolworths. Use these shops now, because it doesn't take a master sleuth to deduce what will happen if we don't.

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