by Ellery Adams
Jane jerked a thumb toward her office. “She’s waiting for me in there?”
Sue nodded and Jane continued walking, her lips pursed in puzzlement. Nandi, the local postmistress, loved a good, long chat. She loved to tell newcomers how she was part Zulu and part British and that she was named after Shaka Zulu’s warrior mother. This usually led to a history lesson on Shaka Zulu’s establishment of an all-female fighting force. Nandi also knew a vast array of African folktales and never failed to entertain the children waiting in line with stories of Anansi the spider, leopards and tortoises, elephants and juju trees, or kings and their magic drums.
It was completely out of character for Nandi to say that she didn’t have time to linger, and Jane was worried that more bad news was about to land on her lap.
“Good morning, Nandi,” she said, infusing her voice with a cheerfulness she didn’t feel. “What a lovely surprise.”
Nandi didn’t smile or return the compliment, which made Jane even more anxious. “I’m not replacing Monroe as your mailman,” Nandi said. “I’ve come because I made a promise to Mr. Alcott.”
Jane grew very still.
Nandi reached into her uniform jacket and withdrew a postcard. “You know I like to spin a good yarn, but I can keep my mouth shut when it matters. I promised to put anything Mr. Alcott mailed to the post office directly into your hand. So I’m doing it. Please hold out your hand.”
Jane complied and Nandi got to her feet and reverently laid the postcard on Jane’s palm. She then smiled and it occurred to Jane that the postmistress was relieved to have completed her task. She was now free to be her lighthearted self. After wishing Jane a wonderful day, she showed herself out, closing the door behind her.
Alone in her office, her cup of coffee totally forgotten, Jane held the postcard with quivering fingers.
“Edwin,” she said.
Her eyes filled with unbidden tears.
It had been too long since she and the man she loved had connected. So much had happened since Edwin had left Storyton—since he and Jane had shared a meal, a laugh, or a touch—that the receipt of this simple card made her ache for him.
She gave in to her feelings of longing and loneliness. For a few moments, in the privacy of her office, she wasn’t the Guardian of Storyton Hall. She was just a woman missing her man.
After a time, she grew calmer. She dried her eyes and looked at the image on the postcard.
“Where are you, Edwin?” she asked, though she knew the picture could be misleading. Her lover could be miles away—another continent even—from the place the card had been posted.
A lifelong fan of Egyptology, Jane recognized the image as a scene from The Book of the Dead. It was a scene of judgment, but the soul being judged had been a good man during his lifetime and would continue his journey to paradise.
“Not the most romantic choice,” Jane murmured, flipping the card over to discover that it had been mailed from Alexandria.
Her eyes hungrily took in Edwin’s elegant script:
Jane read the lines again and again. They were beautiful, but she didn’t think they were Edwin’s. Turning to her computer, she entered the first line into Google’s search box and got an instant hit.
“Rumi.” She grinned. “I should have known.”
The words, unlike the picture on the postcard, were definitely romantic. But Edwin hadn’t written anything personal. Not a single thing. This concerned her on two levels. Did he need to be secretive because he was in danger? Or was he incapable of expressing how he felt about the woman he supposedly loved?
That’s not it. She immediately pushed her doubt aside. He’s expressed his love openly and honestly dozens of times. Something else is going on.
Examining the lines of poetry more closely, Jane noticed that the word “bird” was slightly darker than the rest of the words. It was as if Edwin had gone over it twice with his fountain pen.
Jane’s instincts told her that this was no accident. Edwin was sending her a message about a bird. But what bird?
Flipping the postcard over again, Jane scanned the bird-headed gods in the tomb scene as well as the much smaller bird hieroglyphs. Her eyes moved from left to right, very slowly, until she thought she saw something odd.
She pulled out a magnifying glass from the top drawer of her desk and held it over Thoth’s foot. Thoth, the god with the head of an ibis and the body of a human, didn’t usually have a symmetrical heart symbol hovering above his big toe. In fact, this symbol wasn’t Egyptian at all. Following the heart symbol was a vulture glyph.
Turning back to her computer, Jane searched for an online hieroglyphs translator. She’d used these in the past and knew they weren’t completely accurate, but they’d point her in the right direction. According to the translator, the vulture glyph represented the letter E.
Heart plus E meant Love, Edwin. Jane was sure of it. But what about the other symbols he’d inserted above those two?
With careful scrutiny, Jane realized that Edwin had added the entire column to Thoth’s left. She plugged each symbol into the translator and then waited for the result. When it appeared on her screen, the initial thrill over having discovered Edwin’s hidden message quickly morphed into cold dread.
BEWARE OF FALSE FIN
What did Edwin mean? What false Fin? Surely, he wasn’t referring to Butterworth, Sinclair, or Sterling. Those men had been a part of Jane’s life since her girlhood. Could he be warning her against Landon Lachlan? He was the newest Fin, having come aboard following Gavin’s retirement. But Gavin had handpicked Lachlan. The men were blood relatives, for crying out loud.
Jane trusted her Fins with her life. More significantly, she trusted them with the lives of her family. Not one of them would betray her. Of that, she was certain. If any man had the potential to let her down, that man was Edwin.
Yanking open her desk drawer, she swept the magnifying glass and the postcard on top of a messy collection of pens, pencils, paper clips, sticky notepads, and lip gloss. Slamming the drawer shut, she gripped her computer mouse, determined to focus on her daily tasks.
At first, it was impossible to concentrate. Inventory documents and budget spreadsheets blurred as she kept gazing off into the distance. But eventually, she came to the realization that neither the Rudyard Kipling Café nor the Madame Bovary Dining Room would be updating their autumnal menus if she didn’t place produce orders from local farmers today. All it took was an image of Mrs. Hubbard’s face when one of the braver members of the kitchen staff informed her that there’d be no Granny Smith apples for her famed Apple Brown Betty or pumpkins for her curried pumpkin soup, to shake Jane from her stupor.
By lunchtime, she’d checked several items off her to-do list and had almost forgotten about Edwin’s postcard.
Almost.
In an effort to turn her thoughts toward the investigation, Jane asked Sinclair to meet her in her great-aunt and -uncle’s apartments.
“This is a treat!” Uncle Aloysius met her at the door. He gave Jane’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze and led her into the living room to say hello to Aunt Octavia.
Aunt Octavia tapped her cheek and Jane obediently planted a kiss on the powdered skin. She loved that her great-aunt smelled of magnolia blossoms and old books. Today, however, there was an additional scent. A very strong and rather unpleasant fish odor.
“Have you eaten, dear?” Aunt Octavia asked. “We just finished our lunch, but we could call down for another tray.”
“No, thanks. I’ve had so much coffee that I’m not hungry yet. What did you two eat?”
Aunt Octavia laughed. “Don’t play coy—I know you can smell that tuna from a mile off! It’s all Muffet Cat’s fault. He was a very naughty boy and jumped up on my lap just as I was about to take a bite of my favorite sandwich: an open-faced tuna melt with tomatoes and arugula. Simply divine!” She made a kissing noise. “Apparently, Muffet Cat concurs. Only I didn’t know he was with us. The little devil snuck into our apartm
ent on the delivery cart. Our feline acrobat was balanced on the frame, completely concealed by the tablecloth, and didn’t make his move until I was on the verge of my first bite. He frightened me near to death and I dropped the whole half sandwich!”
“It bounced once.” Uncle Aloysius touched his own chest to demonstrate. “And then, it landed upright on the carpet. Muffet Cat pounced like a wild panther and began gulping it down. He growled too, making it quite clear that he was staking his claim over my wife’s lunch.”
Jane glanced around. “Where is his Portly Highness now?”
Aunt Octavia gave an amused snort. “He’s on the bed, in a tuna-induced coma.”
There was a knock on the door and Aloysius let Sinclair into the apartment.
“Oh, so this isn’t a familial visit?” Aunt Octavia asked Jane, looking hurt.
Taking her aunt’s hand, Jane said, “I’d love to spend an afternoon with you. We could drink tea, discuss books, go over the details of the Pre-Raphaelite dinner and dance, and feed Muffet Cat feline breath mints. I really miss our summer afternoons, when the twins were preoccupied with fishing, canoeing, archery, falconry, and their other activities, because it gave me a chance to share a precious hour or so with you and Uncle Aloysius. You’re both so important to me. But ever since this rare book conference began and someone was killed, all those lovely stolen moments have become impossible to reclaim.”
“Nothing is impossible. Especially not for you, my sweet girl,” said Uncle Aloysius.
“I assume you and Sinclair are heading upstairs.” Aunt Octavia pointed overhead, her eyes bright with curiosity.
Jane removed her locket. “We are. I want to see if our collection contains any books, published articles, or personal correspondence written by the man buried in our back garden.”
“You’ve identified the skeleton?” Aunt Octavia clapped her hands with glee.
Hating to spoil her aunt’s mood, Jane looked to Sinclair for help.
“I wish it were cause for celebration,” he said solemnly, and went on to describe the arrow found in Otto Frank’s back. Next, he explained how Kyle Stuyvesant had been the victim of a hit-and-run and that the ring taken from his corpse had undoubtedly been buried with Doctor Frank.
“Fins only commit violence if the Guardian or the secret library is threatened,” Uncle Aloysius said when Sinclair was finished. “What if those bones belong to someone else altogether? A man who stole the cookbook and Doctor Frank’s ring, perhaps. A man who also suffered from rickets and tuberculosis. Those afflictions weren’t uncommon during the nineteenth century.”
This theory didn’t ring true to Jane. “I admit that it’s possible, but why would an imposter be buried in the garden? If Frank wasn’t murdered, then where did he go? And why bury the cookbook with the body? Why didn’t Walter Steward add it to our secret collection?” As she spoke, Jane pressed the book-shaped engraving on her pendant. It sprang open to reveal a key nestled in a bed of velvet.
“That is indeed a mystery,” her uncle said. He sounded disappointed.
Aunt Octavia looked deflated. Even the electric orange hue of her batik print housedress seemed duller.
Wanting to restore confidence, Jane said, “That’s why we’re going up. To search for clues. To find answers. To do the impossible.” She smiled first at her uncle and then at her aunt. “You raised me to handle situations like this. It isn’t easy, but I can do it. Because I have you, and I have the Fins, I can do it.”
She waited until Aunt Octavia returned her smile before making her way into the bedroom and to the back of her aunt’s walk-in closet. She was glad to be alone and hoped there’d been nothing telling in her voice or facial expression when she’d mentioned the Fins. For when she had, she’d flashed on an image of Edwin’s postcard and of its disturbing hidden message.
She pushed the shoe rack away from the air vent and removed the four screws holding the vent cover in place to reveal a small aperture. And just like that, her mind emptied of all thoughts.
Jane slid her key into the tiny keyhole and turned it clockwise at the same time she turned the metal lever to its right counterclockwise. She heard the sound of something large and heavy moving along the sitting room wall.
After replacing the vent cover and shoe rack, Jane met Sinclair in the sitting room. The bookcase housing Aunt Octavia’s prize collection of Meissen porcelain, which was firmly held in place by pieces of wax, had swung away from the wall. It was into this slim, dark opening that Jane slipped, followed by Sinclair.
Jane never tired of the thrill she experienced when she pulled a lever on the wall and the bookcase slid back into place. The lever also activated the emergency lighting. The lights were dim, but they allowed Jane and Sinclair to make their way up the narrow stone staircase into the secret library.
The library was a climate-controlled, waterproof, fireproof room outfitted with metal storage drawers. These looked like those found at a bank, but were designed more like the archival boxes found in the deepest recesses of the Library of Congress.
“I bet Rosemary has seen repositories like this,” Jane said to Sinclair.
“And wondrous materials as well,” Sinclair said. “In addition to reams of works from presidents, statesmen, and other prominent Americans, the Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room has a perfect Gutenberg Bible printed on vellum, seventeenth-century publications on cryptography, dime novels, the African-American Pamphlet Collection, and the personal library of Harry Houdini to name a few.” He paused and then added, “There’s also the Third Reich Collection.”
Jane, who’d opened a drawer marked “ephemera” and was frowning over an ad for a “fasting diet” for chubby babies, looked up sharply. “How is that categorized?”
“As one of their collections with unusual provenance.”
Gesturing at the wall of drawers in front of her, Jane said, “We have those too. Written records of man at his worst. The Library of Congress is right to preserve and display these things. It’s only by studying our history that we can learn from it. If things are hidden or destroyed, aren’t history’s mistakes more likely to be repeated?” She sighed. “At least, that’s what I once thought. Now, I don’t know. It seems like whatever decision I make about these materials is wrong. If I sell one item in an effort to share our human story and to improve Storyton Hall, I bring danger our way. On the other hand, if I keep every item locked up here until I pass the mantle to the twins, I risk nothing.”
“Faulkner said that ‘you cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.’” Sinclair opened a drawer near the back wall and peered inside. “Ah. This begins the record of Walter Edgerton Steward as Guardian. His son, Cyril, became Guardian after Walter’s death. So if you can find the drawer marked with Cyril’s signature, the section we’ll need to search will be made clear.”
Jane moved to the middle of the wall and opened a random drawer. The signature on the bottom of a piece of paper listed the acquisition date and the description of the treasure housed within: an inscribed copy of Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris. The signature belonged to her great-uncle.
Closing the drawer, Jane walked over to Sinclair. “Since we know when Otto Frank fled London, we can concentrate on that time period. We don’t have to sift through everything Walter amassed.”
“Excellent point,” said Sinclair. “And one I should have come up with myself. I’m afraid I’ve been distracted by thoughts of another doctor.”
Jane was stunned by this admission, but hid her surprise because she didn’t want to dissuade Sinclair from saying more. “I assume you’re referring to Celia. Did you call her about the ring?”
“Yes and yes.” Sinclair kept his gaze fixed on the contents of another drawer. “She’s en route to Storyton Hall as we speak. I tried to dissuade her, but she wouldn’t be deterred. At least, she had the good sense to leave her students behind. Also, the two grad students she left her
e have completed their work and returned to Charlottesville.”
“Then why is she coming?” Jane asked.
Sinclair’s fingers, which had been rifling through sheaves of paper like rustling bird wings, fell still. “She read about Mr. Baylor’s passing in her local paper. Having heard about Mr. Stuyvesant, she can’t stay in her lab when she feels that these events are somehow tied to the discovery of Otto’s bones. That’s what she said.” The look he turned on Jane was one of concern. “When I tried to warn her off, to hint at the danger awaiting anyone who might interfere with the person who stole the ring from Mr. Stuyvesant’s pocket, she laughed. She laughed and claimed that she’d been through worse.”
Jane didn’t know how to respond, and there was nothing to be done in any case. Celia wouldn’t be put off. Perhaps, she’d prove to be helpful.
Unless she’s in collusion with the killer, came a sudden, unpleasant thought.
“I believe I have it!” Sinclair said. He removed a small, leather-bound book from a drawer. “This, dear Jane, is Doctor Otto Frank’s diary.”
Jane’s relief was so immense that she felt like she was being bathed in sunshine. “Oh, Sinclair! How wonderful!” She gave him a hug. “Let’s take it back down to the sitting room, order some food, and start reading.”
However, as Sinclair studied the paper that rested on top of the book, his jubilant grin turned into a frown.
“What is it?” Jane asked.
“The diary was written in German. I know several languages, but German isn’t one of them.” Jane opened her mouth to speak when Sinclair suddenly brightened again. “However, guess who happens to be fluent in German?”
Jane thought she knew the answer, but decided to humor Sinclair. “Who?”
“Doctor Celia Wallace.” He spoke her name as if every syllable were a musical note.
Chapter Fourteen
Jane didn’t wait for Celia to arrive. She decided to leave Sinclair and the forensic anthropologist alone to have a more intimate meeting.