Chapter Thirteen. The Plot Thickens
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Plot Thickens
AS much time as Leona had been spending with Julius Harker, she had to know something about his cache—some tiny detail to break open the rest of the mystery, like one of those Russian nesting dolls.
I raced down the rapidly darkening streets of Oxford toward the museum, past the schoolchildren kicking a ball around the green, and paused alongside the ancient Bodleian Library to catch my breath before taking off again.
Stubborn patches of snow and ice lingered in the shadier spots, waiting for the wet spots in the sun to refreeze that evening.
Harker’s correspondence sat like a stone in my pocket.
These unaccounted-for artifacts had to mean something. They simply had to.
The bells of St. Mary’s rang out marking the hour when a faint motion from the periphery of my vision caught my attention.
No more than a shadow or flicker of a shape, but enough to cause me to turn just as a figure disappeared into an alleyway.
The person had been less than twenty feet behind me, and I’d scarcely noticed them, so caught up in my worries about Leona and the cache.
A frisson of tension worked its way up my spine.
Come now, Ruby. It’s three in the afternoon and there are plenty of people about. No one is following you.
The rational voice in my head was likely correct and yet I hastened my step, nearly breaking into a run the last few cross streets to the Ashmolean.
Hari’s hotel was just across the way from the museum, and for a half moment I was tempted to go see him, ask if he thought it plausible that I could be followed—but he would only chastise me for getting caught up in the investigation.
Especially after I’d assured him that I would not do any such thing.
No. I could not turn to Hari. Not over this.
It was my imagination. That was all.
It was quieter than normal inside the museum, with that hushed sort of wonder typically reserved for cathedrals and graveyards.
Reason warred with the growing unease in my belly.
Surely no one would be following me—after all, no one even knew that I was actually investigating Harker’s death.
The only way anyone could have known was if they’d somehow seen me enter his museum last night.
With a start, I recalled the scent of stale pipe smoke in Harker’s office.
He’d been dead for days before discovery, and by now it had been nearly a week since he’d last been in that locked room.
Would the scent have lingered that long?
I added that to the growing list of questions I could not answer.
I skipped steps on my way down to Leona’s basement reading room and skidded to a stop in the open doorway.
“Can I help you?” Mary asked over the rim of her glasses. She was the sort of woman who wore her annoyance on her face—and she was most certainly perturbed by my appearance.
“Is Leona here today?” I craned my neck, peering around the room. It certainly didn’t look like Leona was here.
Her expression shifted to concern as she removed her glasses and sat them on the large book before her.
“No. The girl hasn’t come in at all today and Professor Reaver has been unbearable because of it.
” She gestured at the pile of books behind her.
“How am I to get through all this for him in six hours? Tell me that?”
I let out a sympathetic sound. “Does he often ask for your help?”
“Not usually, but Leona’s absence always puts him in a temper. The only person in all of Oxford who can handle his moods is Miss Abernathy.”
Something about her words pricked my conscience. “Is she gone that often?”
“Now and again. Usually, I know when she’s not coming in, but this time…”
“Do you know where she is?”
Mary didn’t answer right away, focused upon the book before her.
“I haven’t a clue. I went to Reaver himself this morning and he said he sent a boy around to check if she was well, but the lad returned and wouldn’t answer my questions.
I thought I’d stop by her flat tonight and see how she fares.
Perhaps she’s taken sick, there’s been a terrible fever going around town this winter. It could be that.”
I leaned against the doorway, crossing my ankles. How very strange. “Why wouldn’t the boy answer you? It seems a rather straightforward thing. She either is or is not at home.”
Mary sighed, placing her book away on the shelf, and began to file the scattered papers on her overburdened desk. “I don’t know. I worry it has something to do with that Julius Harker business. She and Professor Reaver had been discussing him when they didn’t think I could hear.”
“What about?” I laid my hand over Harker’s letters in my pocket. Not that Mary had any idea that they were in my possession.
“A collection of artifacts. At least that’s what it sounded like, but anytime I would enter the room they’d hush up right away.”
Then Leona must know more about the cache. A flicker of hope fluttered in my chest. It was a treacherous emotion, one not to be trusted, but it was all I had to go on. Hope and a smattering of letters. “Reaver doesn’t seem to have liked Julius Harker much. I was told they were constantly at odds.”
The woman let out a startled sound, brushing an ash-colored strand of hair back from her eyes.
“He doesn’t. Can’t bear the sight of him, but that one—” She tilted her head toward the empty chair at Leona’s study desk.
“She’d been spending too much time with him.
Reaver had been lecturing her about how dangerous he was right up until Harker was found dead.
I assumed Reaver meant dangerous to her profession …
but now I cannot help but wonder if he meant something else altogether… ”
As do I.
“Does Leona have many friends here?”
Mary tucked a leather-bound journal into her own carryall. “No. She keeps to herself mostly. No friends besides you and that girl she lives with. But from the way Reaver’s been behaving, I worry she’s gotten herself mixed up into something bad.”
“Have you mentioned your fears to anyone else?”
A door farther along the hallway closed loudly, followed by low laughter. I glanced down the narrow corridor, but the others were walking away from me.
She turned to face me, gathering up her bag and slinging it over her shoulder.
“Who would I tell? It’s little more than supposition.
Leona hasn’t a mother to look after her.
The rest of her family is still in Egypt.
Then there’s her father, who might drop in now and then, reeking of liquor and throwing his military rank about before disappearing again.
The point is, the poor girl hasn’t anyone at all in this town.
And Professor Reaver works her to the bone.
His concern with her is entirely her usefulness to him and nothing more.
She’s up all hours here, locked in this reading room or in some storeroom with him when no good could happen to her. ”
“Well … she has me. Whatever good that’ll do her.
You go on home. I’ll stop by her flat, see how she is.
” My true friends were few, and I wasn’t about to lose this one even if I had behaved abominably to her when she first came to ask for my help.
I stepped out into the hallway, Mary following after.
“Are you certain it’s no trouble?” Mary locked the door to the reading room.
“No. No trouble at all,” I said with a faint smile before heading out of the museum and into the winter night.
It had been scarcely five minutes after I left the museum when that same prickle of awareness returned.
The sensation of not being alone. I turned in time to catch a glimpse of a man some thirty feet behind me, his hands shoved into his pockets.
He wore a workman’s cap pulled low over his brow and a dark gray coat.
His hair was dark, but I could not make out his face.
Realizing I’d caught him, he quickly turned, scurrying away in the direction of St. John Street. I wasn’t going mad at all. Someone was following me. I stood stone still, watching until he fully rounded the corner. Reassured of my sanity, I set off in the opposite direction.
Of course, now I had two problems instead of just one. First, who killed Julius Harker? And second, and more concerning at present, who exactly was my mysterious shadow and what did he want?
Damnation. That was three problems, not two.
I FOLLOWED THE most circuitous path to Leona’s, careful to loop back once or twice, in hopes of throwing off my follower—if he even still was there.
The whole ordeal took me three times as long as normal, and the evening air grew colder by the second.
Flurries began to fall from the sky, making the night hazier than it had been when I set out.
A snowflake stuck on my eyelashes, and I blinked it away before knocking again on Leona’s door.
The cracked blue paint peeled from lack of attention.
Her house lay on a quieter street, not far from the castle.
One of a series of two- and three-story townhomes that all looked relatively the same, with different-colored doors.
Initially built for families, over the years they’d been divided up into several smaller flats for students and other less-affluent laborers.
I shivered, blowing into my bare hands for warmth.
The door opened at last, and a gust of warm air greeted me. “I told you before, you need to—”
Leona’s flatmate Annabelle stood before me, her words evaporating as she took me in.
I’d met her a time or two since coming to Oxford—a slight creature, who’d only turned twenty last month.
She kept to herself mostly, focusing on her studies, desperate to prove herself to her family who were apprehensive about sending a girl off to the University.
Recognition dawned in her wide gray eyes.
“Oh. It’s you, Miss Vaughn.”
A car rumbled by on the street behind and I leaned closer, drinking in the warmth emanating from inside.
Ordinarily, Annabelle would welcome me in, offer to pour me a couple fingers of whisky while I awaited Leona, but there was something in her face and the way she stood in the half-open doorway that told me that I would not be crossing her threshold tonight.
A half dozen pairs of stockings lay drying atop the hall radiator along with Leona’s worn white jumper.
“I’ve come to see Leona. She didn’t show up at the museum today and Mary was worried for her.”
The girl’s eyes widened in surprise. “She didn’t?”
I shook my head, perplexed by Annabelle’s response. The girl wrapped her fingers tighter around the old brass door handle.
Everything inside the front hall looked normal. “Mary said a boy came around the house to check on her. Did you speak with him?”
“I haven’t seen any boy.” Her answer came too quickly. Her breath too short. “Haven’t seen anyone today at all … been working on a paper. I thought Leona was at the museum. She left here after dawn.”
Annabelle was lying. It was clear as day. But why? I tilted my head, peering into the welcoming foyer. “Can I come in? Wait until she returns home? It’s damnably cold out here.”
The girl shifted on her bare stockinged feet and tugged her oversized gray jumper tighter around her. “You better not, Miss Vaughn.”
And that was when I heard the voices.
Annabelle heard them too, and her face visibly blanched.
One was definitely Leona’s.
The second belonged to a man.
“Who is with her?” I growled, wrapping my fingers around the door just above hers.
Annabelle released the door, holding up her palms in defeat. “She’s safe. She’s fine. I promise you, Miss Vaughn.”
I raised a brow, my voice far sharper than I’d intended. “Julius Harker is dead. I suspect he also told his own friends he was fine, until he wasn’t.”
Annabelle wet her lips, glancing back toward the room where Leona entertained her guest. “She said I wasn’t to allow anyone in, to tell them she was out all day. Please, Miss Vaughn. I don’t want to cause trouble with her.”
“Even me?” I raised a brow.
She worried her lower lip unable to meet my gaze. “Yes, Miss Vaughn. I asked. She said even you.”
She may as well have struck me across the face. I stared at her dumbfounded.
Leona had explicitly told her flatmate to not let me in.
I struggled to tamp down the betrayal and rage battling within me.
Annabelle was an innocent in this. But Leona …
Leona had begged me to help her and was now keeping secrets.
And secrets were the one thing I could not abide.
“Tell her to meet me at the Artemis Club tomorrow morning at seven sharp. Or else I assure you I will be back here tomorrow afternoon, and I will not stand politely and wait to be turned away.” I tilted my chin toward the hall.
“Tell her if she wants my help, she cannot lie to me again. Those are my terms. She can accept them, or she can solve Julius Harker’s murder on her own. ”
The worried girl nodded. “I will. I promise. I’m sorry, Miss Vaughn. I am…”
I turned on my heels and stormed down the street and back toward the townhome. It made no sense. Why would Leona come begging for my help and then behave in such a way? And moreover, who had been in the house that both Annabelle and Leona didn’t want me to see?