Sonnet of the Sphinx Page 22

  Peter was innocent of murder.

  Despite the fact that she had never fully believed it, that she had tried not to judge, and that it had only slightly altered her feeling for him, the relief was incredible.

  She opened her mouth to tell the detective inspector what she knew of Sartyn’s death. But as she met Drummond’s bright and curious gaze, some niggling doubt stopped her.

  If Peter was correct, and Drummond’s real purpose in coming to Innisdale was to capture and convict the “Ice Fox,” she might be handing Drummond the very excuse for arrest he needed. She might end up getting herself arrested as well.

  “And?” Drummond said, seeing her hesitation.

  “Was there a question?”

  He said smoothly, “In fact, I do have a question for you, Ms. Hollister. I’d like to know why you’ve attempted to book a flight back to the States when you are currently part of a homicide investigation.”

  “Are you saying you plan to prevent my traveling indefinitely?”

  “Indefinitely? I understood you had a four-year visa. Why the sudden hurry to return home?”

  “I haven’t seen my family in almost two years, and during those two years some fairly…” She groped for the word. “Momentous things have happened. I feel like…I guess I’m homesick.”

  “I see. So this would be just a quick visit, is that correct?”

  Grace nodded. She didn’t quite understand his tone.

  Drummond said smoothly, “In that case, Ms. Hollister, perhaps you can explain why you have not purchased a return-trip ticket?”

  28

  “There’s nothing about Miss Webb in here.”

  It was the next morning, and Grace was breakfasting in the garden while she browsedThe Clarion.

  “Most likely she’s returned home safe and sound.” Peter replaced his teacup in the saucer, tilting his head up toward the bright sun.

  Grace gave him a brief, disapproving look over the top of the paper. However, it was difficult to disapprove of someone who looked so undeniably sexy. He wore only Levi’s; chest and feet were bare. He was all lean muscle and elegant bones.

  She said primly, “Maybe the killer has claimed his next victim.”

  Peter smiled faintly without raising his head. “Maybe she is the killer.”

  Grace made a tsking sound, continuing to read. A butterfly flitted down and landed on the sugar bowl. Folding up the newspaper and setting it aside carefully, so as not to disturb the gentle folding and unfolding of delicate wings, Grace reflected that because of years of living in apartments, she had never really appreciated how glorious a real garden was. She knew they were beautiful to look at it, but she had never appreciated how soothing it was to watch birds and butterflies, listen to the lazy buzz of bees, or smell the truly gorgeous scents of massed flowers. Especially soothing when you were suspected of being an accomplice to murder.

  With effort, she put aside the memory of her latest encounter with DI Drummond. The fact that he could even suggest that she might have deliberately taken part in a crime—well, in a murder—was offensive.

  She ignored the whisper that pointed out that she had withheld evidence and engaged in breaking and entering; Drummond didn’tknow that.

  “Anything useful turn up in Eden’s letters?” Peter asked, sitting up and raking the hair out of his eyes.

  “Not really. They’re fascinating, though; they give such a picture of what life was like in Britain during the war years, especially for the literary set. I’m going to go back when I have time and really read them through. And it’s so interesting to read about Sir Vincent. Someone should write a book on him.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Not me. I don’t like him enough. The more I read, the more I can believe that he probably pocketed a few artifacts here and there along the way. But one intriguing thing cropped up. Eden had no idea why her father and John’s fell out. When she asked Sir Vincent about it, he brushed her off with some story about John being the son of farmers and not a suitable match.”

  “Are you sure it was a story? Sir Vincent sounds like a candidate for class prejudice, especially if he was enamored of Egyptian society and culture.”

  “Well, Eden didn’t buy it. The Mallows were gentlemen farmers. It’s not like John and his brothers were out milking the cows and picking the apples themselves.”

  “She must have asked John about it.”

  “The antipathy seems to have been on Sir Vincent’s side. John apparently didn’t know what the problem was.”

  “Or he wasn’t telling his girlfriend.”

  “Possibly.” She watched the butterfly take wing. “There are no letters from John after the end of September. He was coming home on leave. The letter we found was probably the last he wrote to her. It must not have been mailed.”

  “Obviously he reached home safely.”

  “Yes. It’s clear from Eden’s diary, and cards and notes from different people, that she saw John a few times after he returned home. She had a journal, but she didn’t keep it up. She mostly wrote in it when John was away and she had too much time to think.”

  The garden gate clanged behind them. Peter glanced around. Grace saw Jack Monkton walking their way on the flagstone path. He waved cheerily.

  Grace waved back.

  “Don’t encourage him,” Peter murmured.

  Jack reached the patio. “Sorry to burst in on you!” He was carrying a brown-wrapped parcel.

  “Can we get you something?” Grace offered.

  “I could do with a cuppa.”

  “Allow me,” Peter said, before Grace could rise.

  “I spoke to the old girl at the Historical Society. You should have no trouble seeing Mother’s papers.”

  “Actually, I was there yesterday,” Grace said.

  “What did you think?”

  “I’ve only started looking through everything. It’s difficult to say.”

  Monkton nodded, not really listening. “I’ve been thinking things over. Thought I’d like you to see this.” He shoved the parcel across the table to Grace. She looked her inquiry.

  “It’s John Mallow’s journal. His final journal.”

  Grace’s breath caught. She picked the parcel up as tenderly as she would have a baby.

  “I don’t know what you’ll make of it. I read some of it once, years ago. I was never able to make much of it. But as you’re researching this stuff, maybe something in here will make sense to you.”

  Grace nodded. She laid the package on the iron table, pulling at the strings. The paper fell away. She touched the leather cover gently, then opened the journal, flipping through to the end.

  The last entry was for October 11, 1943.

  A kind of shadow seemed to touch her heart, and yet she felt a strange relief. Surely this was the closest to a happy ending. Better that it ended as it apparently had—even with the loss of the sonnet.

  “Jack, I think I know what happened to your father. And the sonnet.”

  He sat up very straight. “And that is?”

  “I think he may have been killed in Plymouth during an air raid. He had gone there to pick up the sonnet from an old friend, a Shelley scholar who was evaluating it. He picked up the sonnet on the thirteenth. It seems likely that he spent the night; he must have decided for some reason to stay on another day. There was an air raid on the fourteenth, and Plymouth was badly hit. Many people were killed, many buildings destroyed.”

  “But surely his body would have been identified?”

  “It would depend. Not all bodies were identifiable.”

  His eyes held hers for a long moment, then he nodded curtly.

  “Your father’s last entry in his journal is for October 11. Your mother’s journal entries are less regular, but I can’t find anything in her letters and other papers to prove that she ever saw or spoke to him again after that date.”

  John started to speak, but Grace went on. “In ’45, she mentions in her journal that Tip was getting feebl
e. I’m pretty sure Tip was your father’s dog. If John had lived, if he had run off with your aunt, even if he had returned to his regiment, he would have taken Tip with him. He was crazy about that little dog. He had him in Egypt. I don’t believe that he would have left him—any more than I believe he abandoned your mother and you.”

  Monkton was silent for a long time. At last he cleared his throat and nodded. His eyes, meeting hers for a brief moment, glistened.

  “Can any of this be proved?”

  “I don’t know. It would take a lot of research, checking and rechecking old records.”

  “But you believe that’s what happened?”

  “I do, yes.”

  He nodded again and rose from the table. “Thank you.”

  Grace placed a hand on the journal. “Would it be all right if I kept this for a day or two? I’ve come to feel I know John. I’d like to read the last chapter.”

  “Of course. Of course. If anyone has the right…”

  He awkwardly patted Grace’s shoulder and walked swiftly down the path. The gate clanged shut behind him.

  She was reading through the journal when Peter came out with the tea tray a few moments later. He glanced around as though he expected to find Jack hiding behind the shrubbery.

  “That was quick.”

  “I’m afraid I blindsided him.”

  “It’s one of your more charming talents.”

  She barely heard him, turning over another page in the journal. “How very odd: the last entry is written in hieroglyphics.”

  29

  Your shadow in deceiving moonlight

  Your voice in the whisper of sand

  I drink from the waterskin, not water, but your memory

  And at night wine cannot dull the ache

  Grace recognized that line about the waterskin. Unless she was mistaken, John Mallow must have reworked some ancient Egyptian poetry. Ezra Pound had done something similar in the 1960s.

  John had written a lot of pleasantly innocuous poetry, and he had done some really clever sketches. He had written movingly of the war and the world around him. She thought he would make wonderful material for a book.

  If she wasn’t going to return to teaching, she would have to earn a living somehow. Or perhaps she could return to teaching and still write.

  “This is the kind of detective work I like,” she remarked, when Peter looked in on her later that afternoon. “No danger, no dead bodies, just figuring out an intriguing historical puzzle.”

  “Fancy a visitor?” he inquired.

  “Who?”

  “Your trusty sidekick, the fair Cordelia.”

  “Oh.” She slipped her specs up. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not really. I trust we’re not planning to adopt?”

  Grace shook her head. Peter ducked out but was back a few seconds later with Cordelia in his wake. That day’s ensemble consisted of hip-hugging pink jeans and a white tube top. Cordelia was about as thin as a girl could get, but she didn’t look any better with her belly exposed than the chubby girls who favored that fashion statement. And why any flat-chested adolescent insisted on wearing tops designed to emphasize endowment was beyond Grace. She itched to give Cordelia a makeover.

  “I hope it’s not as boring here as it is at home,” Cordelia announced.

  “Boredom is the sign of a tiny mind,” Grace informed her, reaching for the pencil she had dropped.

  Cordelia groaned. “Did they make you memorize this stuff, or was it your own idea?”

  Grace nudged a box of letters toward her. “Here. Sort these by date.”

  They spent a couple of productive hours while Cordelia sorted and Grace continued to read through John Mallow’s final journal.

  It appeared that Eden’s instinct regarding her sister was correct. The only direct mention of Arabella was when John wrote in passing that she was “making rather a nuisance of herself.”

  It continued to puzzle Grace that there was nothing to explain why John and Sir Vincent Monkton had fallen out. Could it have been something as simple as class prejudice? Grace had grown far too fond of John to believe that he could be at fault for any bad blood. It was easier to believe that the eccentric Sir Vincent had taken an unreasonable dislike to his daughter’s suitor. But it seemed strange to her that John had no comment on the subject. Surely Sir Vincent’s attitude must have rankled?

  Peter joined them—to Cordelia’s obvious delight—for tea.

  She was going to miss this, Grace reflected, reaching for a lemon tart. Miss the easy graciousness of afternoon tea and the pleasure of sharing her thoughts with Peter.

  “Super!” Cordelia exclaimed through a mouthful of praline biscuit. She reached across the tray for another.

  Make that sharing her thoughts with Peter…and Cordelia.

  “So how did Shelley drown?” Cordelia interrupted, as Peter and Grace discussed the probable fate of the sonnet in the Plymouth bombing.

  Grace replied, “There are three theories. One is that it was an accident. Shelley and his friend Edward Williams weren’t very experienced sailors, and a squall came up suddenly.”

  “What are the other theories?” Cordelia popped another biscuit in her mouth and wiped her fingers on her jeans. Observing, Peter arched his eyebrow.

  “Well, Shelley had been depressed for months. He was in poor health, and he’d suffered a number of recent tragedies. He believed that he would die young, and he’d had dreams that seemed, after the fact, to foretell his death. So some scholars believe that he might have done something deliberately to cause an accident.”

  “You mean suicide?”

  “Yes. The thing is, Shelley could have committed suicide any number of ways. He had asked a friend to provide him with laudanum for that very reason.”

  “But he believed that he would die of drowning, didn’t he?” Peter put in.

  “Yes. But Shelley was very kind, very sweet-natured. It’s hard to believe that he would have acted in a way that harmed Williams or Charles Vivian.”

  “Who was Charles Vivian?”

  “A sailor boy Shelley and Williams hired to help with the boat. He was about your age,” Grace told Cordelia, knowing the adolescent love of the gruesome.

  Cordelia, however, looked unimpressed. “And what’s the third theory?”

  “The third theory is that theAriel was deliberately rammed and sunk by an Italian fishing boat because Shelley and Williams were mistakenly believed to have a lot of money on board.”

  Cordelia’s eyes brightened. “Murder?”

  “A child after your own heart,” Peter drawled.

  Grace ignored this. “Sort of. There’s supposed to be a deathbed confession from one of the sailors.”

  The phone rang. Peter rose, returning a few moments later.

  “Jack Monkton.”

  Grace took the call in the kitchen, listening absently while she watched Peter and Cordelia. As Cordelia talked, she threw looks at Peter from under her lashes. He was watching her with an indulgent smile, one hand idly working a small cloisonnéBaoding ball with nimble fingers. Keeping his hand in—literally?

  Monkton said, “It skipped my mind when we spoke earlier—and I don’t suppose it matters now, in any case, but after my mother’s death I found a record of payments my grandfather made to a post office box in Scotland. The payments stopped after my grandfather’s death. The arrangement was made without the knowledge of the family solicitors, so they were unable to shed any light. I was never able to find out who had cashed the checks or what they were for.”

  Grace thanked him and hung up thoughtfully.

  “Do you know anything about hieroglyphics?” Grace asked Peter later that evening. Cordelia had left a few hours earlier, and Grace had reached the end of John’s journal.

  There was nothing of a revelatory nature because John, of course, had not known it was the end of his journal. He mentioned his prospective trip to see “old Fen” and the fact that his leave was almost up; but a
s usual, most of the page space was devoted to Eden.

  Having read Eden’s letters and journals, Grace couldn’t understand the attraction. Eden might have been a terrific girl, but she was utterly devoid of humor. And, in Grace’s opinion, she took herself way too seriously. But in fairness, life during a world war had not exactly been a laugh fest.

  “Such as?” Peter inquired.

  “I’m not sure. There are several…I guess I would describe them as sidebars, and they’re all in hieroglyphics. I don’t know if John wrote them down because he thought they were beautiful and interesting, or whether he was really recording some information.”

  Peter studied the page over her shoulder. “I know that hieroglyphics are written in rows or columns and can be read left to right, right to left, or top to bottom.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “The key is supposed to be in the way the animals or humans are facing. They always face in the direction the line should be read.”

  “So if all the animals are facing right, you’d read from right to left. If all the animals are facing left, you’d read left to right.”

  “Correct. I have a book that might help you decipher them.”

  He left the flat and was back in short order with a copy ofEgyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs.

  Grace spent the next few hours comparing John’s tiny drawings with the list of hieroglyphic signs in Alan Gardiner’s book.

  Late that evening, she showed Peter her results.

  “You see, this symbol seems to refer to a room. But with this over it, it seems to indicate a hidden room.” She handed him the translation book.

  Peter studied the page.

  “Andthis would seem to indicate that it was a room belonging to a king.”

  “Possibly,” he said. He glanced back at the open book.

  “Or maybe a king is in the room. It’s hard to tell, since I’m less fluent in ancient Egyptian than John. But what if he’s talking about the Monkton Estate?”