Murder on the Silk Road
Page 28
“Charlotte, please,” she reminded him, once again.
“Charlotte was just telling me about how the thefts of Dunhuang manuscripts and artworks from museums around the world were planned by the director of the Academy and his son,” Bunny said. “I wonder what, if anything, is going to happen to him now.”
“I happen to have the answer to that question,” said Tracey.
As usual, he was one step ahead of the game. For someone so reluctant to leave his little corner of Maine—he had once told Charlotte that he’d only been out of state twice in his life, and then only to Boston—he managed quite nicely to keep tabs on his interests around the world.
“I thought Miss Graham would be interested in following up, so I called my contact at Interpol headquarters outside of Paris. As you know, Miss Graham and I worked on a rare-book theft case together a couple of years ago. As a result, I know some people in the art thefts department there.”
“I remember,” said Bunny. “The Saunders’ neighbor. A terrible thing.”
“The countries from which the artworks were stolen have petitioned the Chinese government for the return of the artworks through the United Nations. But my Interpol contact tells me that he doesn’t expect the Chinese to return them. In cases like this, their policy is, ‘what we have, we hold.’”
Kind of like the British Museum’s policy, thought Charlotte.
“But,” Tracey continued, “this is very interesting: they are going to remove Chu as director of the Academy.”
“I thought he would be a cultural hero,” said Charlotte.
“I did too. But apparently tourist dollars are more important to the Chinese than cultural relics. They’ve done a lot to promote tourism in Dunhuang. They’ve built a guest house, an airport, a museum. Chu was already in hot water because of his attitude, which was putting off tourists.”
Charlotte thought of his obnoxious interruptions of Victor’s lecture, and of the signs he’d posted telling which Western countries had “stolen” the missing artworks.
“The thefts were the final straw,” Tracey said.
“What will happen to him?” asked Charlotte.
“Nothing serious. He’ll just be transferred to another museum. He’ll probably like it better. It’s bound to be in a less remote location.”
“And his son?”
“His son is going to have a lot of trouble finding a country that will accept him as a foreign student,” he said. “Boston University certainly isn’t going to take him back.”
“My stepdaughter is going to be very pleased to hear this news.”
“Why’s that?” asked Tracey.
“She’s planning to go back to Dunhuang next summer with Bert Rogers—he’s a paleontologist she met there. They’re getting married. She wants to do some work translating manuscripts in the library while Bert digs up dinosaur fossils, and she was afraid that Chu would make it tough for her.”
“I don’t think she’ll have anything to worry about,” said Tracey. “The new director will probably be glad to have an American scholar of her caliber there to study for the summer.”
Charlotte wondered if the same would be true of an American movie star and her businessman husband.
An hour later she had repeated the whole story for the third time—to Kitty Saunders. Once again, they sat at Kitty’s kitchen table. Outside, the gulls wheeled and dived in the cerulean-blue sky, and the sun glittered on the little cove. The fog had retreated as quickly as it had come.
“Would you like some more tea?” asked Kitty, after Charlotte had answered all her questions. Insatiable curiosity was one of Kitty’s chief characteristics, one that had prompted her husband to nickname her Walt, short for Walter Winchell, the gossip columnist.
“No thank you,” said Charlotte. She had already had three cups of good old Lipton orange pekoe, Kitty’s enthusiasm for odd-tasting herb teas having waned after her book-collecting neighbor was poisoned with an herbal concoction two years ago.
“I have a present for you,” said Charlotte.
“Oh, how nice!” said Kitty, clapping her hands together dramatically. Though Kitty hadn’t trod the boards since their days in summer stock, she still liked to think of herself as a dramatic type and had cultivated the mannerisms to go with the image.
Reaching into her pocketbook, Charlotte pulled out the present, which was wrapped in lavender tissue paper, and handed it to Kitty.
“What is it?” Kitty asked, after she had unwrapped it.
“It’s called a dragon bone, but it’s really a dinosaur bone. The ancient Chinese used them for divination. These are ideographs representing the hexagrams from the I Ching,” she said, pointing out the characters that were incised in black on the bone’s surface.
Kitty slowly turned the bone over in her perfectly manicured fingers.
“I bought it from an herbalist at the Dunhuang bazaar.” Charlotte smiled. “Ground-up dragon bone powder is sold for its aphrodisiac properties.”
“How fascinating!” said Kitty, with a salacious little grin.
“I have one, too. Mine’s incised with the ideograph for ‘The Wanderer.’ Marsha didn’t say what the ideographs on your bone stand for, but we can ask her next time she comes up to visit. She estimates from the style of the calligraphy that the writing dates from the tenth century.”
“I’m very touched,” said Kitty, getting up to give Charlotte a kiss and a hug. “This is one of the nicest gifts I’ve ever received.”
“The bone itself dates from about sixty-four million years ago,” Charlotte continued. Or maybe, sixty-three million years ago, she thought. Like those of the T. fiski, this bone could have come from a post-Cretaceous dinosaur.
Holding the bone in her hand, Kitty studied it for a minute, and then looked up at Charlotte over her reading glasses. “Shall we?” she said, her blue eyes, which were still her best asset, gleaming.
“Shall we what?”
“Consult the I Ching?” Without waiting for an answer, she got up and fetched her antique Chinese coins and a pad of paper and pencil from the counter. “Here, you throw,” she said as she returned to the table. She handed Charlotte the coins. “I’ll go get the books.”
Charlotte threw the coins six times. After each throw, she wrote the line down on the pad of paper. The first line, a yang, or solid, line, was followed by five yin, or broken, lines.
Kitty was back in a minute, her gray-jacketed volume of the I Ching clutched in her hands along with several books of interpretation. “What have we got here?” she asked, leaning over to look at the hexagram. “It’s number twenty-four: ‘Return,’” she announced after looking it up in the index.
For a moment, she consulted the I Ching and the books of interpretation. “Here’s my reading,” she said finally. She looked up at Charlotte again over the tops of her glasses. “Are you r-e-a-d-y?”
“Shoot.”
“You are beginning a new stage in your life after a long period of stagnation. The powerful light that was on the wane is coming back, as when winter changes into spring, or nighttime into day. With it, it will bring new forces, refreshingly different and more powerful than before. This applies both to your professional life and your personal life.” Kitty looked up. “I’ll read you what this book says about relationships.”
Charlotte nodded.
She read the relevant passage. “‘Return’ also refers to the new forces that are forming in an old relationship. As a result of the new light that has been shed on this relationship, the problems inherent in it should now be more apparent. The new light should also help you become aware of how the basic structure of the relationship relates to your own needs.” Kitty looked up again. “Is this making any sense?”
“Perfect sense.”
“As a result of this new light, you will see the changes that must be made. But you can’t forcibly seek these changes,” Kitty continued. “You have to let them come of themselves at their own natural and deliberate pace.”
“Yes.”
“Another aspect of this hexagram applies to your relationship with a group of people with similar interests to yours. ‘This is the time for you to work harmoniously together toward a common, and high-minded, destination,’” she read. She continued. “If you ask me what I think—”
“You’ll tell me whether I ask or not.”
“That’s right,” said Kitty, with a pert nod. “I think this means that you are going to return to China to work with the Chinese Academy of Dramatic Arts, and that it’s going to be a very exciting experience for you.” Raising her head, she looked Charlotte straight in the eye. “I also think it means that you’re going to work things out with Jack.”
“Kitty,” protested Charlotte. “I don’t think you’re an objective soothsayer. You and Stan have a stake in this.” As her oldest friends, Kitty and Stan had often met Jack, and they liked him enormously.
“That’s absolutely right,” Kitty said. “But that doesn’t deny what the I Ching says, does it?”
Charlotte had to agree. “No, it doesn’t.”
“Actually,” Kitty went on, “I haven’t been consulting the I Ching as much lately as I used to. I’ve moved on to something else now.”
“Tea leaves?” teased Charlotte.
Kitty ignored her. “Numerology. Numbers are very powerful. I can tell you what kind of year it’s going to be for you just from your birth date and the letters in your name.” She paused for a moment to think. “I’ll bet it’s going to be a ‘one’ year for you: new beginnings.”
When it came to change, Kitty was the expert. She had a new enthusiasm for every day of the week.
Picking up the pencil, Kitty started writing out Charlotte’s name and assigning a number to each letter. Looking up at Charlotte, she suddenly stopped. “Maybe I should save this,” she said. “I think the I Ching has given you enough to think about for today.”
Charlotte leaned back in her Windsor chair and stared out the window at the sun sparkling on the cove. “Enough for a long time to come,” she said.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Stefanie Matteson
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3714-3
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