Sonnet of the Sphinx Page 16

  “What did you have for supper the night of the concert?”

  What now? Had they violated some obscure food ordinance?

  “That seems like a pretty weird question. How is that relevant to your investigation?”

  “Just answer the question, Ms. Hollister.”

  “Turkey sandwiches.”

  He pounced. “And?”

  “Andwhat? Chocolates and fruit and wine.”

  “I’d like the entire meal from start to finish.”

  In the tone of one humoring a lunatic, Grace recited the menu.

  “Who prepared the meal, yourself or Mr. Fox?”

  “Peter. Do you now suspect Kayaci was poisoned?”

  He ignored this, taking another tack. “What has Peter Fox promised you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Has he promised to marry you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Drummond’s smile was knowing. “And he won’t. You’re one of many. He’s using you as he uses all women. The man’s an invidious womanizer.”

  Invidious? Surely he meant inveterate. Or possibly insidious. Grace told herself to focus, saying firmly, “Even if that were true, it doesn’t make him a murderer.”

  “What did you see on the hillside that night?” he yelled, and Grace jumped in her seat.

  “I. Saw. Nothing.”

  “You’re lying, Ms. Hollister.”

  “I’m not lying!”

  “Then you’re hiding something. Someone believes you saw something. Someone wants to shut your mouth permanently. Peter Fox does not have an alibi for the evening that your car went into Swirlbeck, Ms. Hollister. He’s claiming he was on the road to Yorkshire, but who’s to say he wasn’t on the road behind you?”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. Why waste her breath? Nothing she said to the jerk would change his mind about Peter and her. Or perhaps there was something else behind the sudden refocus on Grace. After all, he must have known before that day that Peter did not have an alibi for the night she had been attacked. And why had he waited so long to question her about what had been in the picnic basket?

  Was it coincidence that Scott Sartyn seemed to have a hot line to DI Drummond’s office?

  She said coldly, “If you’ve only Scott Sartyn’s word that I’m harassing him, it’s hearsay. You’ve no witnesses because it never happened. Have you bothered to question him?”

  “About?”

  “The murder!”

  “Naturally.”

  “Were you aware that he was acquainted with Hayri Kayaci?”

  Drummond answered promptly, as though he had been waiting for her to bring up this point. “Yes. He was approached by Kayaci when he was a student doing fieldwork in Turkey. Kayaci tried to recruit Sartyn into his antiquities smuggling operation. Apparently Kayaci never knew it was Sartyn who turned him in to the authorities.”

  It was a jolt, but Grace rallied. “And you checked his story out, I hope?”

  “Certainly. Sartyn had no reason to kill Kayaci.”

  “So that leaves Peter.”

  “And yourself.”

  “Me?”

  “If you’re willing to lie for Fox, to cover up a murder, who’s to say you wouldn’t commit that murder yourself?”

  “I’mto say. That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  He shrugged. “If it wasn’t Fox, it was you. I should give it careful thought, Ms. Hollister. Just how far are you willing to go to protect that man?”

  19

  “Though Lord Byron had been willing to honor his proposal to Leigh Hunt regardingThe Liberal, patently he had lost all enthusiasm for the project. That it was within Lord B’s means to rescue Hunt, and that he declined to do so, appalled Shelley, himself generous to a fault. Yet Byron had loaned Shelley fifty quid as though it were of no more consequence than a pinch of snuff. The man was a conundrum.”

  Grace forced her wandering thoughts back to the dais where Professor Fenwick Archibald was reading fromBlithe Spirit: The Life of Shelley.

  The reigning local Shelley expert was small, plump, and pink-cheeked like an elderly baby. He had an improbable circle of yellow curls around his tonsured head, reminiscent of a Cabbage Patch doll. But he knew his stuff. For the last hour and forty-five minutes, an audience of ninety scholars and educators had listened enrapt to the all-too-brief tale of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s life.

  A few rows ahead, Grace could see the sleek, almost identical dark heads of Mr. Matsukado and Miss Musashi. Mr. Matsukado had not spoken to Grace since two nights earlier, when he had, to all intents and purposes, shown her the door. Though it was maddening to be denied access to John Mallow’s journal and the sketchbook she had barely had a chance to examine, Grace was by no means ready to concede defeat in the quest for the Shelley sonnet.

  “Going to try to catch up with the old boy at lunch?”

  Grace nodded in response to Roy Blade’s question and checked her watch. Ten minutes till blastoff. Roy Blade jotted a note in the margin of his own copy ofBlithe Spirit: The Life of Shelley, and gave her a crooked smile.

  When the lecture finished, Grace watched Kameko clear a way to the dais with quiet efficiency. Mr. Matsukado followed in her wake, but Grace could see it was a wasted effort. Professor Archibald had already disappeared, and Grace and Roy changed direction midstep and filed out with the others toward the Rock Garden.

  It was hot and humid in the garden. Lowering clouds gave an oppressive feel to the afternoon.

  “Target sighted,” Blade said out of the corner of his mouth. Grace, following the line of his gaze, caught a glimpse of Professor Archibald, surrounded by acolytes, making a beeline for the buffet table.

  “Got ’em,” she murmured.

  “And here comes trouble.”

  She glanced around and saw Mr. Matsukado bearing down on Professor Archibald from the opposite direction.

  “Want me to run interference?” Blade was eyeing Kameko with a certain gleam in his eye.

  “You are enjoying yourselfway too much.”

  Blade laughed, following Grace as she weaved her way through the crush of people—most of them intent on getting to the food line. Spying her, Kameko moved to intercept.

  Blade stepped in front of her, and Grace darted forward in time to hear Mr. Matsukado exclaim, “Professor Archibald, old chap, I wanted to speak to you on a most confidential matter.”

  “Hey? What’s that?” Professor Archibald blinked at Matsukado as though the daylight were too bright.

  “A confidential matter. A matter of great literary and historical importance.” Mr. Matsukado looked over his shoulder as though he felt the dragnet closing in. Spotting Grace, he babbled, “I wanted to ask you about John Mallow. I must speak to you about John Mallow. It is urgent that I speak to you about—”

  Professor Archibald scowled. “You’ll have to speak to Elsie Weeks. She’s our registrar. I really cannot be bothered with such details.” He nodded curtly. “Good morning.”

  Mr. Matsukado snatched at the old man’s robe. “But wait!”

  Professor Archibald waved his robed arms like a plump bird trying unsuccessfully for takeoff, and scuttled away.

  Mr. Matsukado turned to Grace, the need to express himself overriding their broken alliance. “He’s lying! He must be!”

  “Not necessarily. It was a long time ago.” Grace moved past Mr. Matsukado, running the last few steps to catch up with him.

  “Dr. Archibald, I’m Grace Hollister.” She offered a hand and a smile.

  Dr. Archibald responded to the smile, taking her hand and saying, “I didn’t catch your name, my dear.”

  “Grace Hollister.”

  Dr. Archibald squinted, then his eyes widened. “The Byron cameos. My dear, my dear. It issuch a pleasure.” He patted Grace’s hands. “What do you think of our little conference?”

  “Wonderful,” Grace said. “And your lecture was so moving. I’d never read Trelawney’s account of
the cremation of Shelley’s body on the beach at Viareggio. I’ve seen Fournier’s painting, naturally.” The painting was one of those wonderfully romantic and totally inaccurate depictions so popular in the 1800s.

  “A marvelous bit of stage management on Trelawney’s part,” Archibald said. “The construction of the funeral pyre, the anointment of the body with oil and frankincense, the libations of wine.”

  “You made it come alive. That moment when Byron is overcome and turns to the sea to swim out to theBolivar…” Grace had been both fascinated and appalled at Trelawney’s grisly and detailed account of the exhumation and cremation of Shelley’s and Williams’s bodies.

  “The heart that would not burn,” the professor pronounced dramatically, referring to the macabre bit of lore that had Mary Shelley carrying her dead husband’s unburnt heart in a silk hanky for the rest of her years.

  “Most symbolic,” Grace said, just as though she would have done the same.

  Professor Archibald shook his fuzzy curls for a melancholy moment.

  “AndI’m looking forward with great anticipation to your talk tomorrow.” He was beaming at her. “What an adventure!”

  “It’s funny you should say that. I’m sort of on another adventure now.”

  “Indeed?” Professor Archibald practically rubbed his hands with anticipation.

  “Do you remember a friend of yours from many years ago by the name of John Mallow?”

  Professor Archibald looked blank, then something flickered in his marble-bright eyes.

  “Johnny Mallow?”

  “He brought you a sonnet that he believed was written by Percy Shelley.”

  The old man moistened his lips. “ ‘Sate the Sphinx.’ Or ‘Sat the Sphinx,’ in all likelihood.” He caught himself. “Then you’ve found it?”

  Grace shook her head. “No.”

  She studied his face, but the professor looked as guileless as a baby. Of course, he’d had an entire lifetime to perfect that look. “We were hoping you might have the vital clue. That is, were you able to authenticate the poem? Was it by Shelley?”

  Professor Archibald cast an uneasy look over his shoulder and spotted Mr. Matsukado hovering hopefully in the background. He looked alarmed.

  “We can’t talk about this here. Too damned many foreigners lurking about. Come inside.”

  Grace cast a look back for Blade, but he seemed to be in deep conversation with Kameko. At least she hoped they were conversing and not squaring off. It was not easy to tell from their expressions.

  She allowed herself to be hurried across the green and up the stairs that led inside the beautiful main building of Amberent Hall.

  The professor led her down a long hallway of shining parquet floors and glossy paneling. The halls seemed to echo with the ghostly footfalls of generations of students, the shades of voices and laughter. With something like homesickness, she smelled the peculiar and somehow unique school scent possessed by every academic institution from Hogwarts to St. Anne’s Academy.

  Archibald opened a door in the paneling and ushered Grace into a cubbyhole of an office graced by an unexpectedly grand arched window. Years of books and papers and stacks of teacups were accumulated on the shelves.

  Archibald removed an empty birdcage from a chair, dusted the faded velvet, and beckoned Grace to sit. He found a way through the pillars of books to his own seat behind the desk and lit a meerschaum pipe. The smell of tobacco and old books filled the room.

  “Now, start at the beginning and leave out nothing.”

  But of course Grace could hardly start at the beginning, and there was a great deal she had to leave out, so it didn’t take her long to bring the professor up to speed.

  He heard her out in silence, blowing smoke rings into the dusty light from the window behind him.

  “I see, I see. And you want to know whether the sonnet was genuine?”

  “Right.” Grace was clasping her hands so tightly together they hurt.

  Another smoke ring drifted into the stream of dust motes above the professor’s bald head. “Of course we hadn’t the technological resources, and it was wartime. We weren’t able to test the ink and paper for validity.”

  “But?”

  “But as close as I could tell…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “It was genuine.”

  In the sudden silence that fell between them, the first few pinpricks of rain hit the giant window.

  Grace whispered, “Did you copy it?”

  The old man smiled a sad smile. “I did, you know. But I was living in Plymouth in August of 1943, and the house where I stayed was hit by a buzz bomb. Everything I owned was lost.”

  “How awful!” Grace was very fond of her material possessions.

  “Wartime.” The old man raised his shoulders dismissingly.

  “Do you remember any of it? What was it like? Was it dated? Could you tell when it had been written?”

  Professor Archibald was unfazed by the barrage of questions. “It was not dated, but I believe it was written shortly before Shelley’s death. It had the melancholy mysticism of those final months. Perhaps it was the last thing he attempted.”

  She was silent, listening to the lullaby of rain.

  “Strange that you should come now,” he said quietly.

  Grace glanced at him. “What do you think happened to John Mallow?”

  “After he ran off with Bella Monkton? I’ve always imagined they emigrated to the States. Bella was wild for Americans. Got into trouble with one of the young fliers stationed over at—” He cleared his throat. “Ah well, water under the bridge.”

  “So you have no doubt that he did run off with Arabella Monkton?”

  “Doubts? No.”

  “But she was only sixteen.”

  Professor Archibald gave her a worldly look. “I imagine Eve wasn’t much older when she persuaded Adam to bite from the apple.”

  “But Eden—”

  “Eden was a grand girl, but Bella was a force of nature. There was no resisting her.”

  The faraway glint in his eyes gave Grace the impression he was speaking from personal experience.

  “When did you return the sonnet to John?”

  “My dear, my dear.” He shook his round head admonishingly. “You’re asking me to remember something that happened half a century ago.”

  “According to a letter we found, you still had the sonnet in early October.”

  The pink forehead wrinkled. “October? I suppose that’s right. I must have returned it not long after that letter was written—reluctantly, I must confess.” He smiled wryly.

  But he had returned the sonnet. Grace had not missed that telltale“You’ve found it?”

  “If you could narrow it down at all.”

  “Hmm. Well, the doodlebug hit us October 14.”

  “Doodlebug?”

  “V1 rocket, my dear. So I suppose it would have been between whenever your letter was written and October 14.”

  “When did John Mallow disappear?”

  “The exact date?” The old man laughed. “After I returned the sonnet.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, my dear, but it all happened a long time ago. A lifetime ago.”

  Mr. Matsukado was waiting for Grace outside the hall entrance. Kameko held a shiny black umbrella over him. Rain bounced off it like glass beads. Roy Blade stood beneath the eaves, watching them sardonically.

  “What did he tell you?” Mr. Matsukado demanded.

  She ignored him but could not contain her excitement at what she had learned. Pointedly to Blade, she said, “The sonnet is genuine. At least as far as Professor Archibald could tell.”

  But Mr. Matsukado would not be so easily dismissed.

  “Where is it?”

  “He doesn’t know. He returned it to John.”

  “He’s lying!”

  Grace didn’t bother to hide her exasperation. “Would you knock it off? Why would he lie?”

  Matsukado laughed harshly. “Why? He wants the glory, the credi
t for finding it all to himself.”

  “Then why hasn’t he presented the sonnet to the world as his discovery? He’s had fifty years. There was no one to contradict him.”

  “Perhaps he was afraid John Mallow would come forward. Perhaps he feared someone like me would come forward. And I have!”

  Blade growled something that didn’t carry through the rain. Kameko shot him a dangerous look.

  Grace, struggling for patience, said, “That doesn’t make sense. If Archibald had stolen it from John Mallow, John would certainly have come forward.”

  “That’s what I mean!”

  Grace put her hands to her head. It was going to be a long weekend.

  20

  Grace turned out the light and fell back in the soft pillows of her own bed. It felt wonderful to stretch out after the cramped cot of the dormitory accommodations at Amberent Hall. The sweet, cool scents of the garden drifted in the open window.

  She was exhausted but content. The conference had gone well; in particular, her talk about her part in recovering the Byron cameos had been well received. She had made the acquaintance of several respected scholars in her field, and there had been much enthusiasm generated for the release of her book. She had received two invitations to speak at other conferences.

  And while Professor Archibald had not been able to hand over the lost sonnet, Grace had not really expected that. At least Archibald had been able to confirm that the sonnet was genuine, as far as he knew. And he had been able to narrow the window of when John Mallow and the sonnet had both gone missing.

  Sometime in 1943, between October 8 and October 14, John Mallow had disappeared, taking the sonnet with him.

  Grace’s eyes widened in the darkness. And Arabella Monkton had disappeared, as well.

  Maybe they needed to turn their investigation toward tracking Arabella. Surely if anyone knew what had become of John, it was she? True, she had only been sixteen—and a wild sixteen at that—so it wasn’t likely that she had stayed with John, but even so, she had to know what had happened to him immediately following their flight from Innisdale. She would surely know whether John Mallow had the sonnet when he pulled his runner.