The Crown that Lost its Head: A Historical Mystery Thriller (An Agency of the Ancient Lost & Found Mystery Thriller Book 2)

by Jane Thornley

  “Fine, thanks,” I responded, taking a deep gulp of wine. “Which floor are you two on?”

  “Top-floor penthouse.” Rupert smiled. “My apologies for commandeering the best view.”

  I laughed. “I’d expect nothing less. Were all the Airbnb castles taken?”

  Evan chuckled. “They were. I couldn’t find him a room with a pool, either, so we had to make do. Try the pastries,” he urged, offering me a plate of delicious-looking appetizers. Typically, I was ravenous and wondered if it would be rude to take one of each. As if sensing my thoughts, Evan forked over a selection and passed me a plate.

  After more bantering, more wine, and enough pleasantries for me to believe this arrangement might actually work, the door flew open and a man slipped inside. In his thirties, bearded, with longish blond hair and spectacles, wearing a mask like a sagging diaper, he looked like he could have been chased by a rabid dog. Closing the door behind him, he tore off the mask and stared at us while trying to catch his breath.

  We froze, staring.

  “Dr. Markus Collins, I presume?” Evan asked after a few seconds.

  “Yes, I am Markus Collins,” the man said between gasps. “I recognize all of you…from Connie’s descriptions and…thank you for agreeing to help me. I do hope I haven’t…dragged you into the maelstrom. Mind if I sit?”

  Evan slid out a chair into which the bearded archaeologist collapsed, shooting us all a brief smile before propping his elbows on the table and burying his head in his hands.

  “Pass over your phone, please,” Evan requested.

  Markus looked surprised but plucked the mobile from his pocket without comment.

  “Dear man, are you all right?” Rupert asked, leaning forward.

  Markus studied us, one by one. The blue eyes magnified behind the wire-rimmed glasses seemed so deeply barricaded into their sockets they could be in hiding. I could see the resemblance in the siblings in the coloring if nothing else.

  “I’m still alive, which is saying something.” He sat back and dabbed his forehead with a napkin. “How long I can stay that way is left to be seen. I’m sure I was followed here. Mind if I have a glass of wine?”

  Peaches leaped into action to fill the man’s glass. “Drink up. You look like you need it.”

  “Let’s order our dinners and get down to business,” Evan suggested before retrieving menus along with our server and providing translations where needed. Of course Evan spoke some version of Portuguese. Minutes later, we placed our orders, each choosing a dish for sharing before settling in to listen.

  “Now tell us what happened, dear man,” Rupert began. “I understand that you and your team have come across a rather notable skull.”

  Markus sighed and shook his head. He was still perspiring heavily but appeared to be trying to pull himself together. After taking several sips of wine, he began. “If only it was that simple, but on the surface, yes, we found a skull missing its skeleton.”

  “So, only the skull?” I asked.

  “Yes. There were two skulls in the coffin that belongs to the original occupant, a Pedro Alavares Fidalgo, who was complete. Initial X-rays indicate that this second skull has strange cranial markings and growth abnormalities.”

  Markus set down his glass. I had many questions but he quickly continued. “We—we being my colleague, Jose, another archaeologist, and I—needed to remove the coffin lid to investigate further, of course, but as scientists we follow a rigorous methodical system to ensure the contents were not contaminated.”

  “What about these cranial markings?” I interrupted.

  He swallowed and gripped his glass. “The skull had cranial abnormalities indicating that the man must have suffered a severe head injury during his lifetime. However, the most alarming feature was the regular holes encircling the top part of the skull as though something was bolted onto the bone. That it was a crown is only conjecture. From what we could determine, whatever that object was, it was removed some time ago.”

  “As a result of some long-ago tomb robber?” Rupert said, dabbing his lips.

  “Or maybe someone removed the object and hid it for safekeeping,” Markus said.

  We all looked at Markus dumbfounded. “Seriously?” I said.

  “Perhaps. Consider this: presume that initially the skeleton was buried with a possible crown. Later, for reasons we have yet to determine, the skeleton was removed and buried elsewhere, and whether the crown was removed at that time or not, we don’t know. All we know for certain is that a skull with cranial deformities and holes indicating the application of a possible permanent headpiece was buried with Senhor Fidalgo minus his skeleton. Otherwise, we have no way of knowing when the headpiece was removed or why or even where the rest of the skeleton lies.”

  “And you haven’t opened the coffin to take DNA samples or whatever you guys do?” I asked.

  He turned to me. “No, of course not. We might damage or possibly destroy the contents. There are protocols in any forensic investigation. We are scientists first and always,” he said testily. “Oh, Lord, that sounded pompous—apologies. Anyway, we were waiting for more sensitive and modern equipment to arrive from another facility and only used the lab’s ancient X-ray in the interim.”

  “Okay…” I said. Like that would have stopped me.

  “Nevertheless, that inferior machine still revealed this extraordinary find,” Markus continued. “There were ten coffins in total, all found within Capela de Soa Maria Baptista’s tiny crypt, untouched since they were first laid to rest, or so we believed. Once we saw one coffin with two skulls, one with severe skull contusions, we knew special precautions were in order. We knew that we may have found the remains of some minor royal or, at the very least, somebody with some incredible mystery surrounding his remains.”

  “Indeed,” Rupert remarked, looking as if he had just swallowed a bug. “And what precautions did you take exactly?”

  Markus sighed. “For one thing, we agreed not to breathe a word to anyone until after we had alerted the proper authorities—standard procedure, you understand—and secondly, we knew we must guard the find until said authorities arrived. Jose and I agreed to spell one another off in shifts. Is there more wine?”

  Evan topped up his glass before Markus continued. “Try the appetizers,” Evan suggested, passing him a plate.

  Markus took the plate but ignored the food. “We had only two nights until the authorities were due to arrive to assess our find—things are still very slow with Covid and we were a skeleton team to begin with, no pun intended. We were taking turns watching the facility overnight while the other slept. All very straightforward, really. Though we had thought about hiring a security watch, that would be like signaling that something interesting was on-site so decided against it.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” I said. “And?”

  “And the skull went missing on the second night.” Markus took another swig and coughed before gazing at me in abject misery.

  “The skull is gone?” Rupert asked, sounding affronted.

  “Yes, I have made a terrible mistake,” Markus said miserably. "I broke my own cardinal rule and unleashed a Pandora’s box.”

  Rupert leaned forward. “Dear man, will you please fill in the details? How did the skull disappear on your watch? Where were you when it happened? What horrendous crime could you have possibly committed?”

  Markus gazed down at the pastries with unseeing eyes. When he lifted his head again, his expression had changed from distraught to bleak. “On that last night, as we were approaching the graveyard shift—no pun intended—Jose received a phone call from his wife saying there was an emergency at home and that he had to leave.”

  “Leave the mortuary?” Evan asked.

  “Yes. We had been doing shifts in pairs with one of us sleeping and the other watching, as I said, but on that last night, he left at 12:15 a.m. Where was the harm in that? we thought. The lab was mostly unused and we had only commandeered it for our purposes unde
r special arrangement with the morgue. Staying with the coffins was only a precaution. No one but a handful of people knew we were there and the facility is well off the beaten track. Who’d be interested in bunch of long-dead remains but a pair of forensic archaeologists?”

  “So what happened?” Peaches asked.

  “That’s just it, I don’t know, at least not for certain.” His brief attempt at self-control was cracking. “It’s not like we had working security cameras in the facility, but I’m assuming it had something to do with my actions between the hours of midnight and 2:00 a.m. While I was sitting around trying to stay awake, I took photographs on my phone of the X-rays for my own use and risked a little online research using the antiquated printer to make copies. In retrospect, I can’t believe I did that.”

  I stared at him blankly. Online research had always been my go-to activity for off-hour pleasure—that and knitting, of course. Nothing he had confessed so far seemed like the crime of the century.

  “In other words, I Googled.” Markus spoke the word as if it was synonymous with “machine-gunned innocent bystanders.”

  “Googled?” Rupert said, as if that confession was the last thing he expected.

  “Yes, but in my defense,” Markus went on, “it was rather a boring stint and, thanks to Jose, I already had a few clues as to the identity of the possible interloper. I wanted to learn more. It had to do with the elongated jaw and the other cranial contusions that sent me off on the research trail.”

  Evan was several strides ahead. “You Googled what, exactly?”

  “I Googled search terms associated with royal personages during the relevant years, along with the Capela de Soa Maria Baptista crypt and, on Jose’s suggestion, the crown princes of Spain and Portugal in those same years, notably those with possible spinal or cranial deformities.”

  “In other words, you left a search trail for any hacker prowling the Internet,” Evan said, making a steeple with his long fingers. “Either that or someone may have been electronically stalking you the whole time.”

  “Yes, something I now realize is ridiculously easy if one is technologically astute, which I’m not particularly,” Markus said with a groan.

  “And the server was not secure,” Evan added, as if he saw how it all unfolded.

  “I’d been using the Wi-Fi at the old morgue because I didn’t want to overtax my data plan. Now that I think about it, I doubt it was secure at all since nobody used it much anymore. I didn’t bother to check. Why would I? Would you?” he asked Evan directly, as if trying to shore up his self-defense.

  “Always,” Evan said. “Internet security is one of the first things I check anywhere I go, especially when dealing with sensitive material. It’s also critical that you always tape over the webcam on your computer. The web provides the easiest way to glean every one of your personal secrets these days, almost including your very thoughts.”

  “So, someone was tracking Markus online?” I asked, finally cluing in, at least partly.

  “Apparently,” Evan said.

  Markus turned to me. “Somebody must have been, right? Thus, I inadvertently revealed our exact interest in the remains, including where we found them and what the coffin contained, and even went so far as to input a few clues as to the possible royal interloper’s identity. This included details as to his deformed skull, indicating that the person must have suffered a head injury even before the possible application of the crown.” He turned to Evan. “But surely all that couldn’t have transpired from a mere hour of searching?”

  “More likely that you and your find have been the subject of somebody’s interest for some time, old chap,” Rupert replied. “Your sister informed us that the supposed violation of those tombs hit the media here in Lisbon a while ago.”

  “Well, yes. There was controversy but we thought it had died down. Certainly we didn’t disclose where we were taking the coffins.”

  “Wait, who is the suspected interloper missing his skull?” I asked.

  But Evan had the deeper, more commanding voice. “What happened next?” he demanded.

  “So at 1:25, I took a sleeping bag into one of the adjacent offices and caught a bit of sleep, something I would usually do only if Jose stayed on guard. But this time I couldn’t stay awake a moment longer and thought to catch a few minutes rest, only I slept for hours while leaving the lab unprotected.”

  “Maybe you were drugged?” I suggested.

  He looked at me. “I thought of that but that would mean Jose had drugged me, which I seriously doubt.”

  “Not necessarily. Was the office soundproof?” I asked.

  “No. It was just a regular office down the hall from the lab, but I had left the door open and, when I came to, it had been closed.”

  “So somebody broke in?” Peaches asked.

  “It wasn’t hard—the outside lock had been jimmied apparently. Sometime between the hours of three and four—my best guess—someone entered the lab and stole the skull from that coffin. Not anything else, you understand, just the skull, and no other coffins were touched. It was a very specific theft, as if the thieves knew exactly what they were looking for. The coffin had been tipped onto the floor and left in shambles. Pedro Fidalgo still had his gold rings but was left in a pile of bones.”

  “My word, man,” Rupert erupted, “but what about this Jose fellow? Could he be a suspect?”

  “Definitely not,” Markus said as he buried his head in his hands. “Jose was already dead.”

  4

  It took several minutes and more wine to get Markus to stop trembling and keep talking.

  “It seemed like an accident,” he said. “The police will probably think it was an accident but I know it was murder. Jose rushed home, taking what I understand to be his usual route—he only lived a few blocks away from the morgue—and he tripped over a curb and hit his head on the sidewalk hard enough to break his neck? What are the chances of that happening? But I’m afraid that’s what the police will deduce.”

  “Initially, perhaps, but they’ll figure it out eventually,” Evan said, patting the man on the shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Peaches piped in. “The police are not nearly as dense as people give them credit for.”

  “I agree that it was too much of a coincidence,” I said. “What was the emergency that sent him home?”

  “Fire. His wife, Ana, called to say that she smelled smoke in the flat.”

  “And was the flat on fire?” I asked.

  “Apparently,” Markus said miserably, reaching for more wine. I stilled his hand, pouring him a glass of water instead. “I spoke to her days ago just after it all happened. She was distraught, of course, but there had been a fire in the basement, quickly put out but real nevertheless. That, too, could have been deliberately set to draw Jose away.” He clutched my arm. “Don’t you see? Somebody was already on our tail. They wanted me alone, and had I been awake when they entered the premises, I’d probably be dead, too.”

  At that moment there was a knock on the door. Our food had arrived, delivered by three servers, all of whom shot concerned glances at the man blotting his forehead with a napkin. Conversation stopped as the plates were delivered and the water refreshed, and Evan drew the servers away with some explanation that set them nodding with sympathy before quietly shutting the door.

  “I said that your girlfriend broke off your engagement,” Evan said when he took his seat again.

  Markus managed a wry smile. “She did, in fact, only months ago.”

  “Here, eat something. It will fortify you,” I suggested. “Did you say anything to the police about the robbery?” I began passing around platters of chicken, fish and baked beans.

  “Yes and no.” Markus sniffed, staring down at the platters without interest. “I told them there had been a robbery, of course, but didn’t disclose the exact nature. They believe that somebody had broken in and tried to plunder the coffins, thinking to steal jewelry and such. Old tombs are always susceptible to looting
. The police believe I interrupted the robbery and that the thieves got away with nothing.”

  “My word, man,” Rupert exclaimed while slipping a few sardines onto his plate. These were huge sardines, by the way, and by no means the minuscule canned variety. “What about the skull?”

  “I didn’t mention it.”

  Rupert paused. “Why the devil not?”

  “Because,” Markus said, struggling to control himself. “Because before the police arrived that night, I received a threatening phone call.”

  My first forkful of chicken and mushrooms paused halfway to my mouth. “From whom?”

  Markus shook his head. “It was anonymous—a man with a deep voice, Spanish accent. He said that if I was to utter one word about the skull or disclose those X-rays to anyone, I’d be dead. I didn’t know that Jose was dead already but I believed him nonetheless. It’s not like I’m used to being threatened. My kind of archaeology is hardly of the Indiana Jones variety. Until now.” He stifled a nervous laugh.

  “And?” Rupert prompted.

  “And I was instructed to destroy any evidence I had, including deleting my search strings—which he named, by the way, so he definitely was hacking me—and he said not to tell a soul about what I found. Or else,” he added.

  For a moment we were all silent.

  “And did you do that?” I asked.

  Markus nodded and then shook his head. “Yes and no. I deleted the photos from my phone and cleared the cookies on my laptop but didn’t destroy the actual printouts or the two X-rays. How would he even know about those? I had printed out my search results on the cruddy old printer earlier and stuffed them inside my jacket along with the X-rays. I thought, how would this person know if I did or didn’t obey all his instructions, and really, why should I? Wasn’t it bad enough that he plundered our forensic investigation and possibly the biggest discovery of my career? There were no cameras for the bastard to spy on me. By that time, the shock was wearing off and I was furious.” Something hard and resolute burned in his eyes.