‘Now, Elizabeth,’ Carl said, ‘we’ve reassured you that you didn’t do badly. There’s no need to explain.’ For the first time, Carl seemed nervous. He couldn’t threaten her, not in front of Dr Williams.
‘That’s quite okay, Carl,’ she said, smiling at him sweetly.
‘Actually, Elizabeth,’ Dr Williams said, ‘please feel free to explain.’
‘Thank you. I thought I did poorly in the interview because I couldn’t concentrate. I was shocked when I saw Dr Schmidt on the panel. As you probably know, I did some volunteer work for him earlier this year, but he fired me a few months ago. When I saw him on the interview panel, my mind went blank.’
‘Now, Elizabeth,’ said Carl, his voice cracking a little, ‘I didn’t fire you. Please don’t exaggerate.’
Elizabeth’s eyes unfocused slightly. ‘Your exact words were, You are banned from working on this material. You will email your data and findings to Alice today. You will then delete the files. If you breach confidentiality in any way, I will sue you. Give me back your keys.’ Her focus returned to the room. ‘I’d call that being fired.’
Silence reigned for several seconds.
‘You’re making that up.’ Carl’s anger had definitely started to show.
‘Elizabeth,’ Dr Williams said. ‘One of your previous lecturers, Dr Wiltshire, told me that you have an eidetic memory, is that correct?’
Elizabeth stared straight into Carl’s eyes as she replied. ‘Yes.’
‘She’s lying.’ Carl was becoming desperate.
‘So, are you lying?’ Dr Williams asked, not unkindly. ‘Because we know you are not misremembering.’
‘No, I’m not lying. And there’s more.’
Carl’s chin jutted out like a bulldog’s with the effort of controlling his ire. He certainly didn’t look handsome now.
‘Of course.’ Dr Williams sat back in his chair with a glance at Carl. ‘Please, continue.’
‘I don’t have time for this,’ Carl said, standing abruptly. ‘I need to get to another meeting.’
‘No, Dr Schmidt. You will stay.’ Dr Williams’ tone left no room for argument.
Elizabeth waited as Carl retook his seat, knowing her calm demeanour was driving him crazy.
‘As I said, Carl fired me because I questioned the hypotheses he wanted to publish. They weren’t supported by the evidence.’
‘I see.’ Dr Williams glanced at Carl again. ‘Elizabeth, are you prepared to put what you’re about to say in writing?’
‘Absolutely.’
Dr Williams turned to Carl. ‘And you?’
Carl seemed to shrink into his chair. ‘Of course.’
‘Very well, Elizabeth,’ Dr Williams smiled. ‘Just the facts.’
‘After examining all the evidence available to me, I have concluded that the writing on the wall in the cave at Juluwik is a fake.’
‘What!’
Finally, Dr Williams was going to see how Carl actually behaved.
‘Be quiet, please, Dr Schmidt, you will have your turn. Elizabeth, please continue.’
‘Based on my findings, I believe that Juan de Montoya, who works for Dr Schmidt, carved the writing into the wall, then arranged for it to be reported to Dr Schmidt as a new find. Dr Schmidt didn’t know any of this, and accepted the site as genuine.’
‘I see,’ said Dr Williams again. ‘You don’t believe Dr Schmidt knew?’
‘No, but I do believe he turned a blind eye to a lot of evidence that indicated something was wrong, because he wanted everything that would come with a world-famous site, more than he wanted to find the truth.’
‘This is laughable,’ Carl objected.
Dr Williams ignored him. ‘What do you mean, Elizabeth?’
‘Juan told Dr Schmidt that three of the four adults buried in the cave were men, when even the most cursory examination showed they were women. There were anomalies with the dating, both what was dated and when. There was a discrepancy between the writing in the cave, the grave goods and the skeletal remains, but Dr Schmidt ignored it all.’
‘Rubbish!’ Carl exploded. ‘Juan said those skeletons were male, you say they were female. It’s your word against his.’
Elizabeth shook her head. ‘No, the DNA tests confirmed they are all female.’
‘I didn’t authorise any DNA testing!’
‘Yes, you did. I have your emails requesting it. You signed the forms that Alice Smith submitted.’
‘No, I didn’t, one of my assistants must have done it for me.’
‘Ah, Carl, that’s not departmental procedure, you know,’ Dr Williams said.
‘Alice and I have your email telling us to do the tests,’ Elizabeth continued. ‘That’s not important, though. The bottom line is: the writing is fake.’
‘How would you know?’ Carl sneered. ‘Juan is the epigraphologist, not you.’
‘I know because some of the glyphs Juan used are identical to the misprinted glyphs in an early edition of Mesoamerican Writing Systems. In the first edition, some of the plates were accidentally reversed, showing glyphs in a way that never occurred in real life. Juan learnt them from that book, then reproduced them in Mexico.’
‘Do you have any evidence for that?’ Dr Williams asked.
‘I checked the editions available in the library here when Juan was an undergraduate. Only the first edition, the one with the mistakes, was available then. Juan checked that book out over and over again for four years.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘There’s a record of student numbers and due dates in the back of the book. It was Juan’s student number.’
‘And that’s a detail you can remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is all well and good,’ Carl had recovered, ‘but as Juan isn’t here to defend himself, it’s just conjecture.’
‘He is here,’ Elizabeth said. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘What do you mean?’ Dr Williams asked.
Elizabeth stood up and opened the door to reveal Nathan sitting in the waiting area, holding a laptop. ‘Nathan?’
Nathan rose and entered the room. Elizabeth turned to Dr Williams. ‘I can explain more later, but Juan is actually downstairs in his office, Skyping with a philologist in New York. The call is being shared with this laptop.’ She turned to Carl. ‘You can ask Juan to come upstairs, or you can talk to him on Skype. Either way, he is here to defend himself.’
Carl bolted out of room. Elizabeth, Nathan and Dr Williams looked at each other, then at the screen. There were two squares, one showing Henry in New York, and one of Juan downstairs. Juan stood up suddenly. His part of the screen went blank.
Elizabeth pressed a few keys on the laptop. ‘Thanks Henry, I’ll talk to you later?’
‘Sure thing.’
Less than a minute later, Carl reappeared in the doorway holding a dishevelled Juan by the collar.
Dr Williams looked meaningfully at Elizabeth; she knew he would direct the conversation from here on in.
‘Ah, Mr de Montoya, thank you for joining us. We want to talk to you about Juluwik. It appears the writing in the cave may not be genuine. Do you know anything about this?’
Elizabeth could almost hear Juan’s thoughts churn as he tried to calculate the most effective lie.
‘No, sir, I do not.’ Under duress, Juan’s Castilian accent became much thicker.
‘Dr Pimms,’ Dr Williams said, ‘you’ve asserted that the writing in the cave at Juluwik is a hoax. Understand, to be credible, you must explain why, when and how it was created, and have evidence.’
‘Yes, Dr Williams.’
Looking at Dr Williams, Carl, Juan and Nathan was too much. Elizabeth closed her eyes so she could concentrate. She took a deep breath. ‘Juan first went to Mexico to work at Tajinel about six years ago. He didn’t spend much time at Tajinel for the first four years. Dr Schmidt should be able to confirm that, given that Tajinel is one of his sites.’
‘I have many sites,
’ Carl argued. ‘I can’t be expected to keep track of everyone.’
‘In other words, you weren’t really supervising Mr de Montoya, or probably any of your other graduate students,’ Dr Williams said. ‘Moving along.’
Elizabeth hadn’t opened her eyes. ‘Juan told me that he fell in love with a local girl when he first arrived in Mexico…’
‘You leave my Lupita out of this!’
‘Quiet, Mr de Montoya,’ Dr Williams said.
‘…and that he wanted to marry her, but her father wouldn’t let him unless he proved he could support the family. Lupita lives close to Juluwik, doesn’t she Juan?’
‘Lupita has nothing to do with this!’
‘Soon after Juan arrived in Mexico and began living near Lupita, one of the locals showed him the ruins of an ancient city in the jungle. That’s when he borrowed some equipment from Tajinel, to see if he could find something worth selling.’
‘How dare you! I wouldn’t do such a thing.’
Elizabeth opened her eyes. Nathan was smiling at her encouragingly. ‘Yes, Juan, you would. But you didn’t, did you? Using ground-penetrating radar, you discovered the grave goods buried in the cave. You recognised them as significant, and possibly very old. You dug one or two of them up and had them dated, didn’t you? Submitted them as coming from Tajinel.’
Juan started to speak, then clamped his lips shut.
‘Juluwik was a valuable site, exactly as it was. But for some reason I can’t understand, you decided it would be even more valuable if it also had the earliest writing in the Americas. So, knowing the graves in the cave were three thousand, two hundred years old, and seeing the male grave goods, you decided to carve a dedication to the graves on the wall of the cave, didn’t you?’
Infuriatingly, Juan seemed untroubled by this part of Elizabeth’s revelation.
‘How dare you?’ Elizabeth shouted at Juan. ‘How dare you betray everything we are supposed to stand for? How could you be so corrupt?’
‘You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. You can’t prove any of this, anyway.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ Dr Williams said. ‘Please finish, Elizabeth.’
‘I asked a real expert in Mesoamerican epigraphology how long it would take one person to carve those glyphs into the rock. It turns out, using traditional stone tools, and working a couple of days a week, it would take three or four years…roughly the same amount of time that you were truant from Tajinel, wouldn’t you say, Juan?’
Juan waved a hand dismissively.
‘And, if the site was reported to Carl, your supervisor at Tajinel, and you had mentioned you were an expert in Mesoamerican writing, who would he turn to for help with translation? Why, you!’
Carl snorted.
‘Only, your knowledge of Mesoamerican writing wasn’t quite as good as you thought,’ Elizabeth continued.
Juan looked at her narrowly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You might have used the right tools, but you made mistakes in the text. You used glyphs from the first edition of Mesoamerican Writing Systems, only you never realised that some of the pages in the first edition were printed the wrong way around. Some of the glyphs you carved into the wall are back to front.’
The colour drained from Juan’s face, his bravado deserting him. Then a sly look crossed his face. ‘Sure, why hide it now?’
Carl and Dr Williams both gasped.
‘There’s nothing you can do to me,’ Juan said. ‘It worked. I have what I want, so I don’t care.’
‘What do you mean, it worked?’ asked Dr Williams, his eyes suddenly blazing.
‘Lupita’s father will let us marry. I will be an important man in the village, and the site will be famous, even if the writing is not real.’
‘No! How could you do this to me?’ Carl shouted at Juan.
‘We can discuss your role in this later, Dr Schmidt,’ Dr Williams said, ‘as well as your supervision – or lack of it – at your sites in Mexico.’
Carl blanched.
There was still one unanswered question. ‘Why me, Juan?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘If this was all so you could marry Lupita, why involve me? You could have recommended lots of other people to Carl.’
‘You think I don’t know?’ Juan’s arrogance returned. ‘I know you looked down on me in our classes together. You think I am stupid.’ He started to laugh. ‘But you are the one who is stupid…Just you wait!’
‘What are you talking about now?’
‘You tried to cause me pain, but you will feel pain,’ Juan tapped his chest. ‘You will lose everything.’
Nathan, who had stood quietly through all this, stepped between Juan and Elizabeth and put his arm around her shoulders. Elizabeth was appreciative of Nathan’s support, but didn’t really need it. She had finally called Juan out for his despicable behaviour.
‘I hardly think you’re in a position to make threats, Mr de Montoya,’ Dr Williams said. ‘There will be serious consequences for your actions.’
— — —
Before heading out to the car, where Taid was waiting, Elizabeth and Nathan stopped in the corridor to Skype Henry.
‘Thank you!’ Elizabeth said. ‘Thank you so much!’
‘It worked?’
‘Yes! I knew Juan wouldn’t be able to resist talking to a fellow ‘expert’ about the writing in the cave, especially once you said you’d seen a picture of the glyphs.’
‘It was a bit of a gamble, though,’ Nathan said.
‘Well, sort of,’ Elizabeth said.
‘But a calculated one,’ Henry said. ‘Worthy of Detective Sawyer, I believe.’
Henry and Elizabeth both laughed. ‘A Mark Twain thing,’ Elizabeth said to Nathan. ‘I’ll explain later.’
‘I have to say thanks, Nathan, for introducing me to Dr Pimms here. She certainly has made things interesting. The only problem is, what do I do for excitement now?’
‘Oh, come on, you live in New York City. And you work at the Main Library. Does it get any better than that?’
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. ‘Bibliophiles!’
Henry chuckled. ‘Just last night, leaving work, I stood in the foyer looking at the lights of the city and the snow outside…you’re right. It’s magic here.’
Nathan sighed. ‘One day.’
‘We’d better go. Taid’s waiting.’
‘Yeah. And I’m hungry,’ Henry said. ‘I’m heading out to celebrate with chicken and waffles and a bacon latte.’
‘A bacon latte?’ Nathan asked.
‘I’ll explain on the way to the car,’ Elizabeth said.
‘So?’ Taid called out as they walked across the car park towards him.
‘It worked! Dr Williams said Juan has committed academic fraud, so he will be kicked out of his doctoral program and dismissed from the university,’ Elizabeth said.
‘He seemed genuinely surprised that there were consequences,’ Nathan added.
‘Oh sorry, Taid, this is Nathan,’ Elizabeth said. ‘One of my colleagues from the library. Nathan, this is my grandfather, Rhys Evans.’
‘Hello, Mr Evans.’
‘Hello, Nathan. Thank you for helping Elizabeth. She’s told me a lot about you.’
‘My pleasure.’
Elizabeth fidgeted with her cartouche, trying not to interrupt them.
‘She’ll burst if we make her wait any longer!’ Taid said. ‘Come on, Beth bach, you can tell me everything in the car. But first, what about Carl?’
‘His reaction was quite scary, actually,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘He started ranting about how his reputation would suffer, how his papers would be withdrawn, all because of Juan. He went to hit Juan but Nathan held him back.’ Elizabeth patted Nathan on the arm. ‘Then Carl started smashing up Dr Williams’ office. His secretary came in, and she and Nathan and I stood in front of Dr Williams until Carl stopped. Then he just turned around and walked out.’
‘I don’t think he’ll be back,’ Nathan said.
‘Good riddance,’ Taid said, ‘to both of them.’
‘Afterwards, Dr Williams said even though I didn’t win one of the tutoring jobs, he’ll keep an eye out for something I can do part time.’
‘Wonderful news, cariad. Your grandmothers will be pleased.’
‘Especially Grandmère. As she always says, for every crime the motive is either love or money. I thought it was money, or greed, but it turned out to be love after all, even if it’s Juan’s twisted version of it.’
‘It’s certainly taken you some time to figure it all out, though. Why didn’t you sort it out in forty-two minutes like they do on Agatha Christie every week?’
‘Oh, Taid! Don’t make me feel slow!’
Taid and Nathan both laughed. ‘You! Slow? Never!’
On the ride home, Elizabeth thought about the women and children at the centre of this whole mess, the ballplayer and her family. There were still so many unanswered questions about who they were, and why they were buried beneath the floor of the cave.
She knew they were a family. But how had they died? There was simply no trace left on their bones. All the ballplayer’s injuries were long healed, and none of the children showed signs of the ritual torture or sacrifice of later Toltec, Mayan or Aztec finds. These children had no deliberate bone infections to make them cry to an uncaring god, no signs of blunt force trauma, no post-mortem decapitation.
What avenues of enquiry were left? Carl never did test the soil to see if he could prove they were poisoned. Perhaps, if Alice had access to material from Juluwik next year, they could test the soil themselves…but for what? The list of toxic plants in Mexico was almost endless, testing was expensive, and would any traces survive after three millennia anyway?
Elizabeth sighed sadly. Although she had pieced together much of the ballplayer’s life, she couldn’t determine her cause of death. Accident, disease or murder, she would probably never know.
Chapter Nineteen
Olmec date 4.15.10.12.7 8 Manik’ 10 Ch’en (26 November 1231 BCE)
Ix’s family’s huts, Lord Ajaw’s lands, ancient Olmec (Juluwik, modern Mexico)
Kimi sat near Kat, careful not to touch her. Kat’s chubby little arms reached for Ix, begging her mother to take the pain away. Kat’s face contorted in agony, she vomited more blood, screamed, and was gone.
Olmec Obituary Page 20