A number of books had fallen on the body, and Inspector Halledjian pushed some aside to get a look at the woman’s face, which was rather blue.
“You say you found her like this?” he asked the librarian.
“Yes, I did hear some odd choking noises earlier, but only just found her a short while ago. She was already cold.”
Inspector Halledjian looked the librarian in the eye and spoke slowly. “Do you know why she was looking at Austronesian grammars?”
“No. But I did see her a few hours ago. She passed the checkout desk earlier and I heard her tell a friend she was studying ‘morpho-
“No one killed her on purpose”, the Inspector answered.
“How can you be sure?”
“You overheard her predict her own death,” he said. “She took an interest in Austronesian morphology, and must have been practicing here among the stacks. She got into some morphology she couldn’t handle and suffocated herself. This isn’t a murder. It’s a tragic case of infixiation.”