Sonnet of the Sphinx Read online

  Too patiently, he said, “Why did he stop you?”

  “I don’t know. But the vendor at the photography booth saw him harassing me. He yelled, and Kayaci took off. I never saw him again. Until…”

  “You have no idea what he wanted?”

  “He was raving,” Grace said. “Mumbling about snakes and breakfast. It was all very weird.”

  “You had no subsequent dealings with this man Kayaci?”

  “None.”

  The plainclothes officer—Grace was now convinced he was with the police—stepped forward into the light. She could read his T-shirt.You have the right to remain silent, so please SHUT UP .

  Not bad advice, frankly.

  “Was it your decision or Mr. Fox’s to start down the hillside in that particular direction?”

  “Mine.”

  She could see the gleam of his eyes in the lamplight and knew this was a trap. “That is to say, Peter wasn’t with me. I woke up, and I was a little flustered. I thought it was later than it was, and I gathered everything together and started down the path.”

  “Mr. Fox left you asleep on the hillside?”

  “I realize now he had only…” She paused delicately. “Stepped away for a moment, but as I say, I was feeling off-kilter.”

  The constable hastily erased and rewrote his notes, then looked to the other officer.

  “Tell me exactly what you did upon spotting the deceased?”

  “I think I just stood there for a moment or two. I thought it—he—was a log. The light was—that is to say, it didn’t register at first…” She was talking too much. She sounded like she was trying to cover up something. “When I realized what I was looking at, I dropped everything and knelt to see if he was…alive.” She shivered. “He was still warm.”

  “I see. And then?”

  Something in his crisp tone made Grace uneasy. “Then I got up and Mr. Sartyn was standing there watching me. He startled me. I screamed, and a number of people started toward us.”

  “Including Mr. Fox.”

  He made it sound sinister. Was Peter’s showing up on the heels of Sartyn more or less suspect? “Peter showed up a second or two after Mr. Sartyn. He instructed someone to call for help.”

  “Do you have any idea why anyone would want to kill Mr. Kayaci?”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t an accident?”

  He said smoothly, “We’re exploring every possibility.” Then he added, “You haven’t answered my question, Ms. Hollister.”

  “I don’t have any idea of who might have wished him harm. He wasn’t from around here, you know.”

  She saw an unexpected glimmer of teeth. “But then, neither are you, Ms. Hollister.”

  Grace was relieved to find Peter waiting for her in the car park amidst a crowd of onlookers and emergency vehicles. He leaned against the hood of the Land Rover, arms folded, a slightly bored spectator at the circus that followed violent death.

  It had to be an act, but if so, it was the role he had been born to play. He greeted her without concern, politely held the door for her, and moved around to his side without haste.

  Grace observed him with something akin to exasperation. She knew it would not take the police long to connect Kayaci to Peter. Once that happened, it was impossible to predict what might follow. It seemed unlikely that anyone else in Innisdale would have a motive to kill the man.

  “Was he murdered?” she demanded, as Peter slid behind the wheel and started the engine.

  A news van pulled up alongside them, and she quickly turned her face away. She feared she was becoming a tad too well known at crime scenes.

  Head turned over his shoulder, Peter reversed the Land Rover in a tight arc. She barely caught his cool “It does look that way.”

  Until that moment, she had been clinging to hope.

  “Whathappened?”

  His eyes remained on the rearview and the commotion behind them. “How should I know?”

  “I mean, where did yougo?”

  He shifted gears smoothly. His voice was smooth, too. “I realized we were being watched. I decided to circle round and see if I couldn’t get the jump on our friend.”

  She couldn’t tell by his voice if he was lying; she would need to see his eyes to be sure. “Thanks, by the way, for leaving me spread out like a virgin sacrifice.”

  “It’s a lovely thought, but hardly that.”

  She made a sound that in a less well-bred girl would have been a snort. “Your concern for my safety is overwhelming.”

  She felt him look her way. “You were in no danger.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You were off in the woods playing…Natty Bumppo.”

  “And you, my faithful Indian companion?” Beneath the mockery, he sounded terse. Definitely not as calm as he pretended.

  She bit her lip. “Do you know what happened to him? Harry, I mean.”

  “Is that your diplomatic way of asking whether I killed him?”

  “Did you?” She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer.

  “No.” With a candor she could have done without, he added, “The opportunity never arose.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “Some civic-minded soul.”

  “You shouldn’t even joke like that. The police—”

  “I’m not joking.”

  She bit back whatever she had started to say.

  Already they were turning down the side road that led to Renfrew Hall and the cottage Grace rented. She would have liked to have talked this out, discuss the possibilities, reassure herself that Peter could not commit murder, but he pulled behind the redbrick house and got out.

  The silence between them was filled with unsaid things as he walked with her through the garden, pale flowers glimmering in the dark, their footsteps scraping the stone walk. The light she had left on burned cheerily behind the windows of the Gardener’s Cottage.

  Peter watched her unlock her door. She turned, starting to speak, but he gave her a peck on the cheek and was gone, moving with uncanny stillness through the trees.

  7

  Grace went inside, leaned against the door, and listened to the sound of Peter’s car engine dying out down the village lane.

  Too wound up for sleep, she made a cup of cocoa, pulled out the sofa bed, and curled up in the nest of pillows sorting through the day’s mail. There was a fat registration packet from Amberent Hall. Slightly cheered, Grace tore it open and quickly read through it.

  “Amberent Hall is situated in a beautifully restored nineteenth-century Gothic manor with charming gardens and a stunning view of Wastwater and the stern rugged mountains of Yewbarrow and Great Gable.”

  That sounded right up Grace’s alley.

  Academia seemed a safe haven from the violence of the night. It occurred to her that there was a chance she might find someone at this conference with some information on John Mallow and the Shiloh letter. After all, where better to start looking than at a meeting of Lake District experts on the Romantic period?

  She shuffled through the papers. The program looked promising.

  Friday, June 9

  8:30 Tea and pastries.Drawing Room (armchairs for 19)

  She would have preferred tea and crumpets or tea and scones, but decided to forgive this concession to non-British appetites and read on.

  9:00–11:00 The Heart That Would Not Burn: The Life and Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley.Lecture Room (hearing loop installed)

  Dr. F. Archibald,Blithe Spirit: The Life of Shelley

  11:00–12:30 Mrs. Prometheus: The Feminism of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.Parlor

  C. V. Keene,Mary Shelley: A Life

  Feminists were divided as to whether Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley rightfully belonged amongst the sisterhood; Grace was certain it would be an interesting lecture. There were those who believed that the daughter of the author ofA Vindication of the Rights of Woman should never have published her own efforts anonymously or allowed her husband to edit her work, and that doin
g so somehow diminished her.

  12:30–1:30 Byron and the Bryon Complex.Cedar Room

  James Postit,The Demon Lover

  1:30–2:30 Lunch in the Rock Garden

  Grace hoped that the meals would prove something better than the usual interchangeable hot protein option, hot starch option conference fare.

  2:30–4:00 Panel: The Pisan Circle.Lecture Room

  Panel: J. B. Plow,Circle of Sisters

  V. M Brougham,Glorious Apollo —CANCELLED

  George Garfinkle,Ariel & Endymion

  Quincy Ludlow,Lord Byron’s Doctor

  Moderator: Dr. F. Archibald,Blithe Spirit: The Life of Shelley

  On Friday the program appeared heavily slanted toward Shelley, which was encouraging. And Dr. F. Archibald, the director of the conference, looked to be the reigning Shelley expert. Surely he would be aware of whether there had ever been a local discovery of a work by Shelley.

  Smothering a yawn, Grace laid the papers aside, switched off the bedside lamp, and scooted down on the mattress.

  The gnarled silhouette of the apple tree outside the window was projected across the wall like the slide in a magic lantern. In the silence and darkness, the horror of the evening crept into the small room. She could smell the damp decay of the woods, feel the watchful silence pressing in; once again she saw Kayaci lying sprawled across the path.

  With a shudder, Grace banished these dreadful images. She debated sleeping with the light on, but managed to resist giving in to irrational fear.

  Think of something else, she instructed herself, and immediately began to mull over Peter’s role in the evening’s events.

  A few months earlier, she had made a decision not to pry into his colorful past—to let Peter tell her his life’s story in his own time. It had not been an easy decision. Peter’s mysterious history acted upon her the way an unopened jigsaw tempted a puzzle addict. She comforted herself with the belief that there was something sad and desperate about women who felt compelled to spy on their men.

  Not that Peter was exactly “her” man. He was more like…public domain. Or maybe a national treasure.

  She chuckled sleepily at this but sobered as she considered the truism that everyone was capable of killing under certain circumstances. What might those circumstances be for Peter?

  The previous day at the gallery—just for a moment—there had been something in his eyes…

  “Another murder? You’ve turned into quite the Miss Marple.” Roy Blade, Innisdale’s biker librarian, greeted Grace.

  “Why is it always Miss Marple and never Sherlock Holmes?” Grace complained, and Blade grinned his pirate’s grin.

  “Maybe because your legs are so much better than Holmes’s.”

  “But not better than Miss Marple’s?”

  He laughed. He was a muscular man with long black hair and an eye patch. He sported an impressive and probably dangerous collection of tattoos, and was not typical of Grace’s acquaintances before she had moved to Innisdale. Not everyone would agree that expanding her circle of friends to bikers and ex–jewel thieves was a wise move, but it made for an interesting life.

  She and Blade exchanged pleasantries, if discussion of murder could be classified as pleasant, as they made their way through the canyons of books.

  The library had been built in the 1950s. It was not large, and the reading selection was mostly unremarkable, but Grace felt at home there. She loved the smell of old books, she loved the faded red carpets and the yellow and ruby pendant lights that hung over the long, battered tables.

  Glancing across the mostly empty tables, she met the gaze of Scott Sartyn standing behind the massive front desk. Sartyn held her eyes for a moment, then looked away.

  Following her gaze, Blade muttered an obscenity, more startling in his public school accents. “I see you’ve met the Boy Wonder.”

  “He was there last night. When I found…um…Mr. Kayaci.”

  “Was he?” Blade’s good eye gleamed with malicious interest. “Was he indeed?”

  “He seemed very suspicious. Of Peter and me, that is—although I find him rather suspicious myself.”

  “Do you?”

  “Well, no. But something about him bugs me.”

  “Something about him bugs everyone.” He slanted a look in Sartyn’s direction that in another time and place might have forewarned of a knife between the ribs.

  “Where did he come from? Who hired him? Is he actually in charge now?”

  Blade growled, “And why not? He’s the sort Village Council twats love. As for where he came from, your guess is as good as mine. Simply showed up one day with all his bright and shiny credentials.”

  “But how could they give him your job?”

  His lip curled. “It never was officially my job. The Council could never quite bring themselves to make the post mine permanently. Maybe it’s my image.” Blade raised a black-leather-clad shoulder. He always seemed to wear black leather regardless of weather or occasion. At Grace’s expression, he laughed a low and nasty laugh. “Don’t worry, I’ve got the little punk’s measure. He won’t be content with our backwater village for long. I can put up with him for a bit.”

  She nodded, only partially convinced, and glanced Sartyn’s way again. He was scowling as he shuffled through a stack of papers. Good. She didn’t want to attract his attention any more than she had to. Part of her reason for visiting the library was to get Blade’s opinion on the possibility of the Shelley document. Though he might not look it, Roy Blade was a scholar of Romantic literature.

  She said, “Have you ever heard anything about the local discovery of a work by Shelley? This would have been in the 1940s.”

  Blade’s eyes narrowed. “No. What’s up?”

  “Maybe nothing. Probably nothing. Can you think of anyone who might know for sure?”

  “Your friend and mine, Her Royal High and Mightiness.”

  “Lady Vee?”

  Lady Venetia Brougham was the authoress of several lurid if thoroughly researched books on Lord Byron.

  “She and her cronies used to call themselves the Cumbrian Circle or some such twaddle back in the day.”

  As they conversed, Grace felt a funny prickle between her shoulder blades. She recognized that feeling; it was the uneasy awareness of being watched. She glanced over her shoulder and sure enough, Scott Sartyn’s eyes were drilling into her.

  Blade muttered another obscenity, and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Later.”

  Grace nodded and moved off through the creaking towers of bookshelves. Feeling a bit foolish, she paused to peer through a space in the medical reference books to see Sartyn quietly but obviously taking Blade to task.

  Blade’s face was flushed and his powerful hands gripped the bookcart as though he wanted to smash it into the younger man. Patrons in chairs listened interestedly until Sartyn stalked off.

  Clearly she would have to wait to talk to Roy when he was off duty. Still, the morning’s visit need not be wasted. Grace settled down at the computer bank to research what exactly might be a “Serpent’s Egg.”

  She convinced herself that she was not prying into Peter’s past so much as scouting out who else might have motive for getting rid of Kayaci. Whatever this Serpent’s Egg was, it seemed to be Kayaci’s reason for contacting Peter—possibly for being in the U.K. at all.

  Her research uncovered a CD by a band named Dead Can Dance, a foreign film from 1977, and a couple of novels. Nine Internet pages later, she came across a small reference to an attempted robbery at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

  Topkapi? Vague memories of the famous caper film starring a befuddled Peter Ustinov in pursuit of a bejeweled dagger flitted through her brain. Oh, Peter, she thought.Topkapi?

  Focusing her search on the former Imperial Residence of the Ottoman Dynasty, Grace was able to locate the full story—or at least as much of it as was Internet record.

  Twelve years earlier, thieves had broken into the national museum located b
y the Bosporus Sea. Fortunately, depending on whose side you were on, the daring plan of the robbers had been foiled—how it had been foiled was glossed over—and nearly all the loot had been recovered with the exception of a national treasure called the Serpent’s Egg. The suspected ringleader of the thieves had been arrested, and the authorities were confident the Serpent’s Egg would soon be returned. However, subsequent stories were increasingly vague as to what became of either the Englishman or the jewel.

  Grace paged on and on. There were many pictures of theKandjar, the famous emerald dagger featured in the filmTopkapi . There were photos of theKasikci or Spoonmaker’s Diamond, a few jewel-encrusted thrones, and a golden coffer that used to contain the poetry book of Ahmet III, a poet with whom Grace was unfamiliar. But none of these treasures had apparently interested the thieves.

  And then finally she found it. Grace stared at a photo of the 140-carat egg-shaped diamond and caught her breath. It was both beautiful and repulsive. A thick vein of tiny blue sapphires and rubies ringed the center diamond like a glistening sac, giving the illusion that the egg had only moments before been laid by some terrifying mythological creature.

  She scanned the short history of the piece. In the sixteenth century, Babur, a descendant of Genghis Khan, had invaded India and set up the Mughal Empire. Mughal rule technically lasted until the nineteenth century, and was ingenuously referred to as a time of “unrest.” The disorganized and warringRajputs were no match for the trained and well-armed—with primitive firearms no less—Mughals. News to Grace, but then, she was rather weak in Islamic history.

  The rest of the story was legend. On one of many military campaigns, a favorite captain of the newly established sultan came upon a small provincial temple dedicated to Anant Nag, the thousand-hooded snake god. In the temple, the Mughals had discovered a ten-foot-tall snake statue. In Grace’s opinion this would have been sufficient reason to get the heck out of that temple, but the Mughals were made of sterner stuff.