The Librarian Rules – Part 1: Silence Please

"Silence," said Miriam, "in the library."

She was fifty-two, the head librarian of a grand Victorian reading room with a glass dome and a gallery of iron staircases. At six the doors had been locked and the lamps lowered. She had been alone in the building for an hour, setting out one chair, one desk and one sheet of cream paper.

Daniel was forty-four, a patent lawyer who had been a patron for six years and her partner for four. He stood at the issue desk with his coat over his arm, a little flushed, a lot hopeful.

"The terms," said Miriam. She slid the paper over. His limits and hers: no marks, nothing painful, no real humiliation, no one else in the building. The word was Overdue.

"Say it."

"Overdue."

"If you say it, the Librarian retires. I put the kettle on."

"Yes, Miss Hale."

"Not yet." She took off her cardigan, slipped on a long black gown, a pair of half-moon glasses and a ring of keys. She raised a single finger to her lips. Her voice, when it came, was a barely audible, exquisitely cold whisper. "Mr Lowe. You have returned fourteen books late in the last five years."

"I am very sorry, Miss Hale."

"I did not ask you to speak." She stepped from behind the desk. "A fine is not sufficient."

She walked him between the high shelves to the old study alcove at the back, a green-shaded lamp, a hard chair, a rolltop desk. She sat him down. She placed a thick book open in front of him and pointed at a line.

"You will read this passage aloud. In a whisper. Perfectly."

He read. She corrected every word, quietly, with a pencil tap on the desk, and he began again. And again. And at the half hour she tilted her glasses and murmured, "Are you content, Mr Lowe?"

"Content, Miss Hale."

"Good. Continue."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Overdue.