Chapter Nine #2
in them. As he and Paul walked on, Sid looked back over his shoulder, as drawn to that gaze as he’d been repelled by it, because
it felt as if it was personal somehow. The women stood shoulder to shoulder, staring back. Blatantly. If they’d been men,
it would have been threatening.
Sid told himself not to let Paul’s paranoia infect him. They were just hikers.
It was vital he keep his own head together if he was going to work out what was happening and what to do.
Anya
My father’s house in Cambridge was a mansion distinguished enough to have its own Wikipedia page. His family had owned it
for three generations. It occupied a spacious and very private end lot on a beautiful wide street just a ten-minute walk from
the library site.
The street was lined with mature beech trees, grown so large their roots had forced up paving stones; their trunks were thick
and gnarled. The leaves were starting to turn, from acid green into copper. Beechnuts fell around me, plinking onto the roofs
of the high-end vehicles parked along the verges and crunching beneath my shoes.
I walked through a set of open gates onto a wide, paved driveway. A perfectly shiny Ferrari was parked in front of a large
garage. The home looked to be Victorian, and Gothic in style, though it was hard to see much evidence of its age in the fabric
of the building. Every inch had been restored and maintained. Window frames gleamed with white paint; the stonework was pristine,
the yew globes in the front garden immaculately clipped. There wasn’t a stray leaf on the ground. Beneath it all, I wondered
if the old bones of the house could breathe.
Your father’s a control freak.
Evidence of Magnus’s obsession with legacy was here, too, in the family motto chipped into stone above the door, the cuts,
appropriately enough, surgically clean. The motto: Ingenio et industria. By wit and industry. So squeaky clean.
He opened the door himself and let me in.
I rubbernecked shamelessly. My greedy eyes didn’t want to miss a thing.
I’d had to imagine his family home for so many years; seeing it for myself felt unreal.
It was a riot of rich Victorian architecture: a finely etched glass porch door, original, beautifully tiled floors, molded ceilings, brass hardware on the doors, William Morris wallpaper, glass lanterns, intricately carved banisters, unfeasibly large bouquets of fresh flowers spraying from urns on polished side tables.
There were family portraits, too. My father and, presumably, my grandfather and great-grandfather beside him.
“I made some calls,” he said. “For your mother.”
“I heard from her. It seems like you got her on the trial. Thank you.”
Dust motes spiraled in a shaft of sunshine that crept through a doorway from a room I couldn’t see into. This place was impressive,
but lugubrious. It was hard to imagine Mum here; she must have found it stifling.
I was kicking myself for not approaching Magnus for help earlier. I’d been so passive where he was concerned, so eager not
to upset Mum. Why did I buy into her invective so wholly that I didn’t even think to ask one of the most medically well-connected
men in the country to help us? Why didn’t I make my own mind up about that as she got sicker? Perhaps I needed to grow up.
In answer, I heard her.
Don’t deal with the devil.
I tried to ignore her, but she was persistent.
If you give your father an inch, he’ll take a thousand miles.
“This way,” he said, and I followed him.
I was alert for any sign of my half siblings, even though they were surely at school. It was hard to believe I was in the
family home, the place I might have grown up in if things had been different.
It was also hard to believe it was a family home. It was more like a museum.
At the end of one wing of the house, in a room with tall, arched windows, designed to make the most of its garden views, he
invited me to sit down.
I took a seat opposite the windows. I felt buzzed but edgy, too. I’d been running on adrenaline for too many hours. I’d taken painkillers for my foot, but they were wearing off.
There were four professional archival boxes on the table in front of me and two empty book stands. I inched forward to look
at the boxes but didn’t touch. They were plain and unlabeled, cream colored, not a fingerprint on them. Magnus hit a button
on the wall and semi-sheer blinds rose from the base of each window to the top. The light in the room dimmed to a pearly gray
and the air felt soupy.
“Which would you like to open first?” he asked, and I flinched, because the question had echoes of my childhood birthday parties.
At every single one, I’d fantasized that he would turn up to surprise me.
“You choose,” I said.
He opened the one closest to him and extracted a white bag, which he handed to me. I loosened its drawstring and removed a
book. Written in Latin and exquisitely illustrated, it was a medical encyclopedia.
“Fifteenth century?” I asked.
My father nodded.
“German,” I said.
“Yes.” He looked lit up, as if he’d been waiting for this, for me to prove my expertise, and it delighted him. I didn’t want
that to mean something to me, but it did.
I turned the pages. Here was a Tree of Life, a Zodiac man, a Tower of Wisdom. There were astrological diagrams, recipes for
remedies, and instructions for bloodletting. The illustrations were of exceptional quality, the colors so fresh on the page
it was as if they’d just been mixed, as if the scribe’s brush were sitting to the side, still wet with paint.
He had more to show me: an extremely rare and very early Bible with fascinating riddles, manicules, and annotations in the margins, a Celtic codex not dissimilar to the mind-blowing Book of Kells, Ireland’s national treasure.
A gorgeous little book of hours. Treasures, all of them. He watched me intently as I examined
them.
“Do you have a favorite?” I asked. A collector’s favorite piece can reveal a lot about them. I was eager to know everything
I could about him but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of asking directly.
He smiled, as if he knew my game. “I love them all,” he said. “You could make a lifetime’s work of studying this collection.
If I hadn’t chosen medicine, that would be my dream. Next best thing is that you do it.”
“Why recruit me to St. Andrews, not Cambridge?”
“The manuscripts live up there. As I said, it’s where they’re most secure. Did you enjoy meeting Tracy? Isn’t she exquisite?”
He caught my expression and backtracked. “I mean, you can see why the camera loved her, can’t you?”
I nodded slightly, but he’d sounded a bit creepy to me, and I wondered about their relationship.
“Let me ask you a question: Why so self-deprecating in your interviews about Folio 9? You should be proud of your talent.
If you were—” He stopped, catching himself.
I stared. His words got right under my skin. My interviews were, of course, available for anyone to find, but it unnerved
and annoyed me to think of him reading them and judging me. “If I were what?” I asked. “One of your children?”
He shook his head, but we both knew that’s what he was about to say, and it cut like a knife.
“I think you gave up your right to offer me advice when you decided to abandon me before I was born,” I said. “You don’t get
to parent me. It’s not part of our deal.”
His lips twisted, and I was glad to see that I could get to him. “Understood,” he said.
I closed the books. “Thanks for showing me these.” We put them back in their boxes and he pressed the button that made the blinds open. We both blinked in the light. I still wasn’t used to seeing my eyes in his face. “I need to ask you something,” I said.
“Anything.”
“If I decide I don’t want to work with you at any point, will you stop helping Mum?”
He winced. “How little you think of me.”
“Will you?”
“I promise I’ll do everything I can to help your mother, for as long as she’ll let me.”
He makes promises as easily as he breaks them.
I didn’t trust him, but his word was all I had to go on. I thought of Mum on the phone earlier, how happy and hopeful she’d
sounded for the first time in what felt like forever.
He said, “Anya, before you leave, can I hug you?”
“No,” I said.
“Fair enough. A handshake?” He held his hand out. Now there was a glint of mischief in his eyes. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
He can be charming when he wants to be.
I hesitated before reaching across some of the most valuable manuscripts in the world and shaking my father’s hand. His grip
was too firm. It hurt a little. He was smiling, but I was remembering how hard he’d held me in the car earlier, hard enough
to bruise his own flesh and blood.
He’ll crush anything and anyone that gets in his way.
Clio
Clio told her boss what she’d discovered: the delicate threads linking Eleanor Bruton and an embroidery fragment to the Institute of Manuscript Studies at St. Andrews.
DI Tim Keenan had his best poker face on as she did.
She admired how he never made snap judgments, preferring to consider things carefully before making up his mind.
As Lillian said: He swivels the jar and looks at a specimen from all angles before classifying it.
When Clio had finished her story and shown Tim a photo of Eleanor’s poem, he said, “If these were different times, I’d greenlight
this, because I can smell trouble here the same as you can, but I need everyone on Operation Platinum.”
Clio nodded. She knew. She watched him carefully, still mindful of Lillian’s warning, but he wasn’t reacting any differently
from usual. He said, “But why don’t you liaise with the officer who made the inquiry. Let them know we think she’s been deliberately
posed as St. Katherine and tell them everything you’ve just told me.”
“Will do.”
She composed the email, laying everything out carefully, and paused before hitting send. She added a cheeky request to see
the crime-scene report, justifying it by suggesting her department might have more useful expertise to add. The reply came
promptly.
To: Clio Spicer
From: Izzy Adefope
Re: Operation Saint
Date: September 18, 2024
Hi Clio,
Thanks so much for your team’s prompt input. Much appreciated. As you can see, it arrived in time to inspire the name of our
operation.
Below is a list of personal items found at the scene. ID was straightforward. A bag left beside her body contained her wallet
and driver’s license. Whoever did this made no attempt to disguise her identity.
Lack of blood or any other evidence around the body leads us to assume that she was killed elsewhere and moved to the location
where she was found. Cause of death is a single bullet wound to the back of the neck. Bullet exited through the forehead.
Either the shooter got lucky, or they knew what they were doing. We’re leaning toward it being a professional hit.
For obvious reasons we have a strong working theory that the death was intended as a message. Your info strengthens that hypothesis.
The location of the body dovetails with the St. Katherine theme. The park where she was found is on Butcher Lane in Limehouse,
next door to an organization called the Royal Foundation of St. Catherine. (FYI: Spellings of Saint Katherine of Alexandria’s
name are interchangeable. Whether it’s with a k or a c, it’s the same saint so the location where this body has been left is unlikely to be a coincidence given your theory on the
costume and the pose.)
We have no idea yet who this symbolic message might be for or from, and we’re holding off publicizing any details for as long
as we can, to give us space to make inquiries before the internet gets hold of it and speculation goes through the roof.
What we’ve established so far is that Professor Cornish worked for the Institute of Manuscript Studies in St. Andrews, Scotland.
We haven’t located any next of kin yet. If we can’t identify anyone soon, we’ll contact the Institute to inform her colleagues
and see if they can assist with that.
If you or your team have more thoughts, I’d love to hear them. None of us has expertise in the art or rare book world. We’re
all Philistines, basically. Thanks for your assistance to date.
Izzy
DC Izzy Adefope
Murder Squad
LIST OF PERSONAL ITEMS FOUND AT THE SCENE
Bra
Knickers
Dress (possibly from a costume)
Headscarf (possibly from a costume)
Handbag
Bag contents:
iPhone
Sewing kit
Wallet including bank cards, Oyster card, and library card
Tampons
Makeup
Clio took a moment to process what she’d read.
With Eleanor Bruton dead, too, possibly murdered because she had the embroidery in her possession, she was starting to think
that the fragment of embroidery might be lethal. Unfortunately, there was no sign of it among the list of things recovered
with Diana’s body. It would have been helpful if it were. She might have got some answers from it.
She replied to Izzy, telling her about Eleanor Bruton and the embroidery, as well as the connection between them and Diana
Cornish’s place of work, and she attached a link to the British Museum fragment for context. She omitted explaining how she’d
found out about Eleanor. She didn’t want to mention Lillian just yet. She asked if they’d discovered where Diana had been
staying in London or been able to retrace any of her movements yet.
The reply was brief: “Thanks! No. I’ll let you know when we do.”
She looked up a number for Lady Arden’s home in Wiltshire. The butler was on leave for the day; she left a message, asking
if he could call her back and let her know if he’d found the name of the person who had visited asking after the embroidery.
Clio thought about Eleanor Bruton. She remembered the overdue library book she’d seen in her office and picked up the phone to call Salisbury Library.
They confirmed that there were ten books overdue on Eleanor Bruton’s account, all special orders.
Eleanor was supposed to have returned them over a year ago.
They read Clio a list of titles. They included books on medieval symbolism, the fabric trade in medieval Italy (Clio remembered that book), early clothing, and medieval bookbinding techniques.
She thought of Eleanor Bruton’s poem sewn into the curtains in Scotland and looked again at the list of items recovered from
Diana’s bag.
“Sewing kit” stood out. Her eyes kept returning to it. It wasn’t something you’d expect to have in your bag unless you’d had
a recent use for it, an occasion to sew.
Coincidence? Probably. But stranger things had happened.
She sent a reply to Izzy Adefope: “Any chance I can inspect the evidence?”