Sonnet of the Sphinx Page 12

  Miss Webb stared at Grace. “A lost work,” she said at last. “By Shelley?”

  Grace nodded. “A sonnet.”

  “No,” Miss Webb said slowly. “No, I don’t believe that I have. Forgive me, but your interest is in Lord Byron, isn’t it?”

  “I’m interested in all the Romantics.” If she’d had to pick one to date, Grace would have gone for Keats. Shelley’s obsession with death and his tendency to drift with life’s tides was against her nature. And she certainly didn’t kid herself that she could have held the interest of a notorious rake like Lord Byron.

  “Shelley.” Miss Webb smiled. “He was the one who ran off with the sixteen-year-old girl. The one who wroteFrankenstein.”

  “That’s right. But you never heard anything about a poem being discovered locally?”

  “Well, you know, I might not have paid much attention to such a thing, my dear. I don’t say that I don’t enjoy the occasional limerick, but I’m not much of a poetry aficionado. And, despite what you might think, I’m still a relative newcomer in these parts. People don’t talk to me the way they do to one of their own.” Her smile faded as she pointed that out, and she left not long after.

  Grace, analyzing her expression, thought Miss Webb had looked like a woman who suddenly remembered something she wished she had tried harder to forget.

  14

  Peter phoned that evening.

  “There you are,” he said in his lazy, slightly husky voice. “I was beginning to wonder whether you’d run off with the till money.”

  “I didn’t work today.”

  “I know, I’ve been ringing the shop all afternoon.” His tone altered, though he still spoke lightly. “Everything all right? You sound like you’ve been crying.”

  “I’m okay. I’ve got a cold. I—er—had an accident.”

  “What sort of accident?” She thought he sounded genuinely startled.

  She filled him in on her experience. A resounding silence hummed down the line.

  “Are you there?” she demanded finally when he said nothing after she finished her tale.

  “I’m here.” He sounded preoccupied, like someone making a sharp left turn and hoping his coffee didn’t spill into his lap.

  “A little sympathy would be nice.”

  “And you have it, my darling.” That was worse than the silence. That was like someone reading from a bad script.

  Grace opened her mouth, but the exchange came in. A voice spoke in heavily accented French.

  “Are you in France?” demanded Grace. Not that there was any reason heshouldn’t be in France…

  “No. That is, yes,” Peter said, and for the first time in their acquaintance, he sounded flustered.

  What the…? Grace caught sight of herself in the mirror over her bureau. Her mouth was hanging open. Not a good look. She closed it sharply.

  “Peter—?”

  He said hastily, “Grace, I can’t talk. I’ll ring you back.”

  Dial tone.

  Slowly Grace replaced the receiver on its cradle. What wasthat about? She remembered previously thinking that Peter would never have been panicked or desperate enough to kill, but he had certainly sounded off-balance and guilty right then. Not at all like his usual cool and confident self. She couldn’t understand it.

  He had been nonplussed to hear of the attack on her, she was sure of that. But then she had asked him if he was in France and he had lied, and then thought better of it. Why? What about France made him skittish?

  The obvious answer—that France was the last place they’d had word of his murderous ex-girlfriend Catriona Ruthven—she instantly rejected. That was over and done, she was quite sure.

  Or was she reading something into a bad connection? That was the most likely explanation.

  But he didn’t ring back that night.

  “Mydeah,” Lady Vee said, “we were soshocked toheah of your unfortunate accident.”

  Grace adjusted the phone beneath her ear. It was the second day following her accident, and she was making the most of her convalescence by spending the afternoon in the garden, reading over her conference notes. It had been a while since she had spoken to a classroom, and she wanted to be sharp.

  The garden was particularly beautiful on that sunny day, or perhaps it was the relief of feeling back to normal. Her bruises were fading, and the worst of her cold seemed to have passed.

  She made suitable noises in response to this sympathy from such an unexpected quarter. Her eyes followed two hummingbirds exchanging words over the heavy purple clusters of a Buddleia bush.

  “If it would help you to have the loan of one of our vehicles, you know you would be most welcome. The Citroën is out there gathering dust. I could have Bartleby drop it off later today. You have to be able to get around.”

  She did need to arrange transportation, and fast. She hadn’t a car to get to work in, and Rogue’s Gallery was too far to walk, even for one who had newly discovered the joys of perambulation.

  “That’s very generous of you.” Suspiciously generous. Grace wondered what Lady Vee was up to.

  “Then that’s settled. And in the nick of time! We wereso hoping you might be feeling well enough to take Cordelia on the guided walking tour of Hadrian’s Wall this week. Thepoor child is bored totears with us.”

  Grace sighed.

  Oh, well. She was not averse to the idea of a walking tour of the Roman ruins. She would have preferred to go with Peter, and perhaps turn it into a picnic, but what were the odds of that? Crowds were not really Peter’s thing, nor guided tours. Cordelia would provide company, and Grace would be doing a good deed. If she earned the use of a car, so much the better.

  Hoping she was not going to regret it, she said, “I should be feeling well enough by Thursday. Peter will be back by then, and I’ll ask for the afternoon off.” She thought of her recent adventures, and added, “If you’re sure you trust her with me.”

  Lady Vee chortled at the idea that her kith and kin would not be safe with Grace.

  They finalized the arrangements, Lady Vee rang off, and Grace returned to her reading. Though her lecture would focus on Byron, Grace found herself reading through all the sections concerning Shelley. She was hunting for any references to sphinxes in his work, but found nothing. Shelley was not especially interested in Egypt or Egyptology, despite the success of poems such as “Ozymandius.” He had never traveled to Egypt.

  That didn’t mean the sonnet was a fake. Though she had not been able to take as much time as she would have liked examining John Mallow’s journal, the bit that she’d read indicated that he had believed the sonnet was legitimate. John’s excitement, despite the understated manly tone of his journal, had been tangible across the decades and faded pages.

  Judging by the account of how the poem had come into his keeping, it seemed as though it must have been written during the final stage of Shelley’s life in Italy.

  That had been a troubled time for Shelley. Ill health, the recent deaths of his children, particularly William, Mary’s nearly fatal miscarriage and her subsequent withdrawal from him, all conspired to depress him. He had dreams or possibly hallucinations of his own death, in particular the famous vision of the naked child rising from the sea.

  Yet despite claims that his own writing days were behind him—“I do not write—I have lived too long near Lord Byron and the sun has extinguished the glow-worm”—he wrote prolifically. As well as “The Triumph of Life,” he was working on a political play in verse, an erotic drama, translations of Goethe and Calderón, and several lyrics and ballads—mostly dedicated to Jane Williams, the wife of Edward Williams, Shelley’s friend and companion on that final fatal boat trip. An overlooked sonnet might easily have been penned at that time.

  It was tantalizing. Too tantalizing. Reluctantly, Grace turned back to her notes. But her wandering attention was caught by the copy ofThe Clarion that Sally Smithwick had been kind enough to drop off for her. There was a brief account of her accident, but
the murder was still the lead story. There had been no new developments, butThe Clarion continually found different ways of reporting that.

  Bored, Grace flipped through the pages, pausing briefly at the horoscopes. Like most people who did not believe in astrology, Grace invariably read her daily horoscope.

  “An opportunity to make a difference to a friend or a youngster is present. The more you do to help someone out, the better you will feel about yourself. Love is in the air.”

  Something’s in the air, thought Grace skeptically.

  She scanned for Peter’s birth date. June 20 made him a Gemini. According to the horoscope, Gemini, the sign of the Twins, was dual-natured, elusive, complex, and contradictory. “To Gemini, life is a game. The sign is associated with mutable Mercury; adaptable and versatile, the Gemini character can prove restless and fickle.”

  “Swell,” she murmured.

  “Quick-thinking, quick-witted, and fast on their feet like the messenger god of Roman mythology that rules their sign, it’s that very curiosity and cleverness that can lead this sign into trouble…”

  This is pathetic, Grace told herself. Now I’m looking to the stars for guidance?

  This sage character analysis was followed by a Chinese proverb: “Better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one.”

  I’ll drink to that, thought Grace, returning to her books.

  By Wednesday, Grace was feeling nearly normal. She went to work her morning shift at Rogue’s Gallery, chugging along in the Citroën on loan from Lady Vee. Bartleby, Lady Vee’s minion, had informed Grace that the car was a genuine classic, but something about the faded yellow hue and odd shape reminded Grace of a pear. Still, it ran—after a fashion.

  Peter must have returned during the night, for he came out to examine the car as Grace was parking in a cloud of exhaust beneath the trees in the lane outside Craddock House. He opened the car door for her, nearly detaching it from the car.

  Slamming the loose door back into place, he said, “Ah, it’s you. I thought someone had started a bonfire.”

  “I’ll have you know that this is a classic Citroën 2CV.”

  “I do realize that. Did you knock over a museum?”

  “That’s more your line, isn’t it?” she inquired tartly.

  He had been midmotion kissing her hello, but that stopped him. He drew back, his black brows rising. “Blimey,” he murmured, and rubbed his jaw as though she had socked him.

  Grace had to fight a smile. It was soaggravating, the effect he had on her. Despite her doubts, despite her irritation with his odd behavior, despite her better judgment, she was happy to see him.

  “How was France?” she inquired as they walked up the flagstone path to Craddock House. “Buy anything interesting?”

  He held the door to the gallery open for her. “Hinting for presents?” he inquired without a hint of the discomfiture he had displayed on the phone.

  “No!”

  His mouth quirked with amusement.

  When she went to fill her tea mug, she found a small parcel wrapped in gold-starred tissue. She opened it and found a beautifully bound volume ofPoems of Passion and Pleasure by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

  She bit her lip. It really was a gorgeous little book. The light brown binding was embossed with gold decorations and lettering. There were sixteen luscious art deco color illustrations. She checked the copyright. Published in London in 1920.

  Gently, she turned the yellowed pages.

  And it is not the poet’s song, though sweeter than sweet bells chiming, Which thrills us through and through, but the heart which beats under the rhyming.

  “Ella Wheeler Wilcox,” Peter said behind her, and she turned. “American poet, journalist, and Free Thinker.”

  “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

  He smiled, but it was an odd smile, almost uncertain. Some emotion flickered in his eyes that she couldn’t read.

  The morning went quickly. They were inundated with customers early on, but between customers Peter questioned her about the attack, and Grace filled him in on all the details.

  “Are you absolutely certain it couldn’t have been an accident?”

  She nodded.

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  They were interrupted before he could complete the thought, but it occurred to Grace that if Peter had killed Kayaci, that might explain why he couldn’t think of a reason that anyone should want her out of the way. He was the only one with a motive.

  The good news was that her faith in him was justified. The bad news was that Peter had probably murdered Kayaci.

  15

  The moon was a curved and razor-sharp crescent, glinting like the horns on a samurai’s helmet. Kameko pulled the heavy draperies shut, closing out the night, and unobtrusively withdrew from the library.

  Mr. Matsukado muttered something, the first words either of them had spoken in over an hour, and Grace looked up from reading John Mallow’s journal.

  “Find something?”

  “I’m beginning to believe there is nothing to find,” he said shortly.

  Having sifted through much of the “archives” of Mallow Farm once, Grace left it to her partner to pore over the photos and account books with fresh eyes while she read John Mallow’s journal. She felt it was important to read John’s own account of finding the sonnet; she wanted to understand everything she could about Mallow.

  She suspected Mr. Matsukado did not feel that theirs was a fair division of labor, but he had not so far expressed this. It was the first night since Grace’s accident that they had been able to get together and search. She was still undecided about this hastily formed alliance. She had not had good experiences with these obsessive collector types—naturally she did not count herself among the obsessives.

  As she read, Grace had to remind herself that she was no longer interested in what had happened to Mallow. It was difficult, because the more she read of his private journal, the more she spied into the dreams and thoughts of this long-dead soldier, the more she cared about him.

  John Mallow had only been in his twenties, but there was strength of character and a tough-mindedness one didn’t often find in young people these days. He also had a strong sense of the ridiculous. Grace found herself chuckling at passages in the browned fragile pages that brought vividly to life the dark-haired man with grave eyes in the old photos.

  He wrote of the war, but although he displayed the revulsion any thinking person would, he did not seem afraid. In fact, he seemed to possess an almost serene fatalism. He wrote of the antics of his dog Tip, of the men he served with in ‘L Detachment,’ and of Egypt.

  Having “read” Egyptology at Queen’s College Oxford in 1938, he had seemed destined for a career in archaeology, but then the war came. Mallow had seemed to make the best of it, and being stationed in Egypt was clearly something of a dream come true—world war notwithstanding.

  He wrote nostalgically of England, of home and family, fretting a bit over his younger brothers, who were also serving in other “theatres.” He wrote of Mallow Farm, which one day would be his—if he survived the war.

  None of it seemed to fit with the young man who could desert his duty and the girl he loved.

  And he did love Eden Monkton, if Grace was any judge. It was one of those long-standing childhood friendships that gradually turned into something else. At the beginning of 1941, John had still been thinking of Eden as a skinny kid with “fringe” in her eyes.

  But after being injured in a November raid, Mallow had come home on sick leave and attended a Christmas party at the Monkton Estate; and John had fallen hard for the new and improved Eden Monkton.

  Eden, seen through John’s eyes, seemed an extraordinary girl. Beautiful, intelligent, charming, sensitive, witty, civic-minded, a fine sportswoman, et cetera, et cetera. The litany of her qualities went on even after John had left the country and returned to Kabrit in the Suez Canal Zone.

  Cynically, Grace began to wonder if Ede
n had done John in. No one could be as perfect as he believed her to be.

  Raising her head out of the journal, she stared unseeing at the wall of glass-fronted bookshelves. “I wonder what did happen to him?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mr. Matsukado said. “They would all be dead now in any case.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “The man would be nearly a hundred years old.”

  “Eighty…” Grace did some quick calculating. “Nine.”

  “That’s practically dead.”

  Grace laughed. “Come on, Lady Vee and this Professor Archibald are both alive and still kicking.” She set aside the journal and went to sit beside Mr. Matsukado on the floor. She picked up a stack of old magazines. They were mostly dated from the sixties, and she thought they could safely skip them. All the same, she found herself fanning through the pages.

  She wondered what had happened to John’s journals from 1942 and ’43, and where Eden’s letters were. John referred to them in his journal.

  Mr. Matsukado sat back on the polished floor with an air of one whose race has been run. “We will approach this Professor Archibald at the conference. So far he has refused my calls.”

  “Your calls? I didn’t realize you had contacted Professor Archibald.”

  Mr. Matsukado seemed slightly uncomfortable. “Yes, I mentioned it to you, old thing.”

  His eyes avoided hers, and he turned back to the papers before him.

  Grace was quite sure he had not mentioned contacting Professor Archibald. But that didn’t concern her so much as the fact that he was lying about it.

  “I think it’s necessary as a writer to experience everything life has to offer, don’t you?” Cordelia confided.

  “Within reason,” Grace said cautiously. “Life has things to offer that would do neither you nor your writing much good.”

  Cordelia made a face that indicated Grace was speaking in the predictable tongue of all adults.