“And who gave her the notebook in the first instance?” Marcus sputtered.
“There’s a simpler and better solution.” Gray was studying Marcus now, with a look he recognized—the look of a Bidder about to raise his paddle. “We calm down, go after Jo, and let Sotheby’s decide whether the notebook is genuine. If it’s crap, we hand it back with pleasure to Miss Cantwell. If it’s not, I pay market value for an undiscovered Woolf, donate the manuscript to Sissinghurst, and Miss Cantwell’s a hero. Nobody’s accused of theft, nobody loses her job, and Sissinghurst snags a great display for its summer tours. Agreed?”
“What’s in it for you?” Imogen demanded suspiciously.
Gray’s eyelids flickered. “Jo Bellamy can’t design my garden if you throw her into jail.”
“Yeah, well—the White Garden’s been designed for a good fifty years already,” she snapped. “All this talk! Where does it leave us? The notebook’s still bloody AWOL.”
“It leaves us with the ex-wife.” Gray looked expectantly at Marcus, who allowed himself an instant’s thought. Then he stabbed Cissy’s call button. Nobody in the office knew more about the private affairs of the Experts than Cissy; she would have Margaux Strand’s mobile memorized.
PETER HAD A PECULIAR SENSE OF HUMOR, JO MUSED AS SHE surveyed Hamish Caruthers, the Head of Wren Library, a half-hour later.
Trinity’s home for books was a massive block set over an open colonnade. To describe it thus was to demonstrate the failure of words: It was the most beautiful building Jo had ever seen.
Buff-colored stone, rectangular and classic; rank upon rank of soaring windows; and inside, a black-and-white checkerboard floor sweeping to vanishing point. At either side, sensibly perpendicular, were the stacks of books.
“Christopher Wren designed it,” Peter told her as they sauntered across the marble. “You’ll know him for—”
“St. Paul’s.”
“Grinling Gibbons carved the limewood figures at the end of the stacks. Four hundred–odd years old, I expect.”
“And kids get to study here.” Jo craned her neck to stare at the ceiling, awed.
“They get to take it for granted, which is more of a luxury. Look.” He stopped by a glass case displaying rare books. “There’s Milne’s manuscript of Winnie-the-Pooh. And Newton’s first edition of Principia. And Byron, of course.”
A looming statue of the Romantic poet, complete with windswept hair and elaborately tied cravat, held down one end of the main floor. “It was intended for Westminster Abbey,” Peter said, “but was refused on account of Byron’s wretched morals. Trinity jumped at it. And there’s Hamish, God love him.”
Hamish Caruthers was almost as large as the statue. A massive individual in a heathered wool Fair Isle sweater, white dress shirt, and Trinity bow tie, his brown hair was the color of mud and fell in loose strings to his collar; his cheeks were full and red; and his shoulders—rounded by years of bending over the Reading Room tables—were like the sloping sides of a railway embankment. He wore a pince-nez. Jo had never seen a pince-nez, but the phrase formed itself in her mind as she stared at the fussy wire frame balanced precariously on Hamish’s fleshy nose. He glanced over the pince-nez with a forbidding expression as Peter murmured in her ear—presumably conversation was discouraged in the Wren—and Jo saw recognition dawn. Unbelievably, Hamish was staring at Peter Llewellyn with what could only be described as profound distaste.
“Hamish, mate,” Peter said easily as he swung across the marble floor. “How’re tricks? Moldering volumes moldering nicely? Trustees happy? Wife safely off wherever wives go, when they’re not wanted?”
The Head Librarian of Trinity College reached for his pince-nez, folded it deliberately, and tucked it in his cardigan pocket. “Peter.” His voice had the quality of unsulfured molasses. “What in bloody hell are you doing here?”
“I’ve brought a friend to see the college.” Peter was smiling, Jo noticed, at a joke he refused to share with anyone. He’d lost his quiet air of desperation—the melancholy that had shaped him from the moment they’d met in Sotheby’s café yesterday morning. She understood that his present glee was entirely at Hamish’s expense. Hamish also knew this, and suspected Peter’s companion was in on the joke.
She would never be able to pry a secret out of this man. What in God’s name did he owe Peter?
“Right, then—I’ll let you get on with the tour,” the librarian grunted, and turned away. The movement was akin to the shifting of a cannon, and ought to have required the effort of several sweating laborers, but Hamish managed it in a single heaving roll.
“Sorry, but you’re Point of Interest Number One,” Peter said. “In fact, Hamish, old bean, we’ve come direct from London on purpose to see you.”
The librarian grunted again, and rather than heave himself back to face Peter, merely leaned against one of the oak tables. It creaked alarmingly.
“What’s to do?” he asked.
His mouth, Jo noticed, was pursed as though he were sucking aspirin. Or something equally bitter.
“We require a few moments of your time. And your Keys to the Kingdom.”
“My keys?”
“It’s an Apostolic Matter.”
For several seconds, there was silence among them. Jo resisted the impulse to glance over her shoulder. Peter continued to smile genially to himself. And then Hamish said, “Who’s the lady, then?”
“I’m Jo Bellamy.” She extended her hand.
“American.”
“From Delaware, actually.”
Hamish’s eyes drifted from her face to Peter’s. “Perhaps she can have a look at Pooh.”
“No.” Peter shook his head decisively. “That’s not on, Hamish. Miss Bellamy is to be admitted to the Kingdom with full privileges.”
“Bollocks!”
The oath came out as a snarl.
“It’s okay, really,” Jo said feebly as she retreated toward the display case. But Peter was ignoring her. His eyes remained fixed on the librarian’s face with that same expression of unholy amusement.
“Oh, very well,” Hamish muttered in exasperation. “If it must be. I’ll sell my soul to the Devil on your behalf, Peter.”
“Smashing.” Peter reached for Jo’s shoulder, his gaze still on the man he miraculously controlled. The touch of his fingertips, light but certain, sent a jolt of warmth through her body. Startled, she glanced at Peter’s profile—but he appeared unconscious of his effect. He was falling into step behind Hamish. And then he dropped his hand.
Cheeks flushed, Jo quickened her pace to catch up with the librarian, Peter’s lithe frame swinging protectively behind her.
THEY DESCENDED A BACK STAIRCASE, HEELS ECHOING ON metal treads, to the depth of three floors. They must be beneath the colonnade by this time, Jo thought, and the weight of Wren’s massive building pressed on her mind. The subterranean passages of the library were airless, windowless, a labyrinth of lost books. Hamish trudged toward an ancient elevator, the kind Jo had only seen in Hitchcock films: a wire cage framed in mahogany. She and Peter squeezed into it after the Head Librarian, who drew the accordion gate closed with his huge paw, and the whole delicate bauble swayed on its cable ominously.
Hamish had not spoken a word since his concession statement in the Reading Room above; he refused to make eye contact with either of them, his face stony, his lips pouting like a carp’s. He threw a lever, and with a sharp lurch, the cage began to descend. Jo watched as layers of flooring—concrete, wood—slipped above her head inexorably. Three stories. Four. Darkness seeped like ink into the mesh cage and the air was filled with the sound of Hamish’s wheezing. Peter began to whistle tunelessly; was he perhaps a martyr to claustrophobia? And then Jo’s nostrils caught the wet-clay smell of damp earth, familiar from countless gardens but heavy now as the grave. The elevator shuddered to a halt.
Hamish peeled open the door.
Jo stepped out. Her shoes met hard earth. Somewhere was a faint drip of water. And
the temperature had fallen to shuddering point.
There was another scent now on the air—elusive, overlaid with gravedigger’s clay, something vanilla and jasmine. She must be imagining it. She shook her head, deliberate as a dog, to clear her senses.
Peter touched her shoulder again. “Come on.”
She walked between the two men, Hamish a moving mountain backlit by the small flashlight he’d drawn from his pocket. The passage was narrow and low, so that the librarian stooped, and even Jo—a good six inches shorter—felt tamped down and trapped. Peter’s tuneless whistle drifted in the air. They turned a sharp corner, and then another, and came to an abrupt halt before a thick oak door bound with iron.
“Here.” Hamish thrust the flashlight into Jo’s palm and reached for a set of keys. “Train that thing on the lock, would you?”
Jo obeyed.
The librarian fitted an old-fashioned iron key into the door and turned it with both hands.
The heavy oak swung inward. Golden light spilled over the threshold. With it came the scent of midnight flowers, stronger and more cloying than a few moments before.
“Damn,” Peter muttered. “I know that perfume. Margaux’s been and gone, hasn’t she?”
Hamish grunted. “She’s friendly with a young Trinity man. An Apostle. He broke all his oaths for her, I’ll be bound.”
“He’s not the first,” Peter said brusquely, and stepped inside.
MARGAUX STRAND’S HEELS CLICKED FURIOUSLY across the paving stones of the King’s College quadrangle. There was a don at King’s she badly wanted to consult named Nadia Fenslow, who’d gone antifeminist and now made a career of celebrating the distinguished males who crowded the English canon in a slavish sort of neo-lit conservatism. Margaux had hoped she might be available, might remember the boozy lunch they had shared during last year’s MLA conference. Nadia of all people would be up to her eyeballs in Apostles, swooning over E. M. Forster in a way that turned Margaux’s stomach, or suggesting that Woolf was but a pale shadow to Lytton Strachey, who’d probably taught Virginia how to spell when she was just a little thing in white muslin. Nadia might have a notion what Apostles Screed meant. Only Nadia was in Reykjavik until the start of Hilary term, and the don who’d borrowed her office had smirked at Margaux as though she were Nadia’s long-lost lesbian lover.
Margaux was seething.
Somewhere a bell tolled three o’clock. She was aware of an insistent curl of hunger in the pit of her stomach, ignored out of long dieting habit. What she wanted was a good glass of Bordeaux and a bit of cheese, possibly some biscuits, with a clever partner to gaze at her over candlelight. She needed somebody who understood her vocabulary and caught her references and knew where to look for the missing half of Woolf’s notebook without demanding to share the limelight. That was the essential difficulty in Margaux’s world at the moment: She had been sharing too much for too long. Other people’s triumphs, for instance. Other people’s credit. She’d contributed modestly to an article chiefly written by someone else, or shored up the course load of those too distinguished to be bothered with students anymore. She’d scrambled for a few crumbs of the Oxford pie to savor all by herself. At this point in her career, Margaux had reached the point she thought of as Lady Macbeth’s Choice: Crush all obstacles in her path to power, or exit stage right, on maternity leave. Having jettisoned Peter, the latter choice was probably out for the nonce. Single motherhood was far too impoverishing.
Peter had looked quite forlorn, poor poppet, she decided fondly—trailing into her rooms with that regrettable American in her corduroy trousers, staring at Margaux with the eyes of a wounded hound, and handing her the means of being feared and envied for the rest of her literary days. Peter was too endearing; a failure in his own right, of course, but endlessly devoted. It was comforting to have a Peter in one’s past. Just as it had been essential to leave him behind.
Margaux lurched suddenly as her stiletto caught between two paving stones. She cursed explosively. Across the quadrangle, a startled undergraduate turned his head. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen. They were such children these days.
She balanced precariously on one foot, wrenched the other out of its granite vise, and swore again as she glimpsed the heel. The expensive leather was torn, the white plastic shoddiness exposed; and with her gift for the interpretation of metaphor she saw immediately that this might be construed as a statement about her life—possibly even about herself. She pushed the thought aside. Better to concentrate on finding that drink.
Limping slightly, she reached the quadrangle gate just as Sotheby’s phoned her.
THE CHAMBER OF THE ARK, AS JO WOULD THINK OF IT EVER afterward, was low-ceilinged and medieval, the sort of room that demanded an ecclesiastical sound track—monk’s chanting or plainsong. The golden light came from an old oil lamp, set in the middle of a round oak table at the center of the room. Electric bulbs were easier on the eyes; but the Apostles, Jo was quickly discovering, were all about atmosphere.
Lining the walls were glass-fronted cabinets with Gothic arches; inside stood rank upon rank of rectangular cases, tooled in leather, and stamped with a date in gold. 1827. 1843. 1896. 1907…
“Did you talk to her?” Peter was saying.
“Margaux? Avoided her like the plague,” Hamish growled. “She wasn’t here long, mind you. Forty minutes, perhaps. Bit peevish as she left. Had words with our porter.”
“Maybe he found something in her bag that didn’t belong to her,” Jo said.
Hamish gave her a wolfish smile. “I’m off. Back in an hour. Have to lock you in. Don’t panic—nobody will hear you if you scream.” A flicker of amusement crossed his blunt features—the shoe, Jo realized, was now decidedly on the other foot—and then with a salute, he pulled the heavy door closed.
Neither of them spoke as Hamish’s footsteps shuffled down the dirt passageway. Peter drew his cell phone from his pocket, as if to call Margaux one more time—then thrust it away in disgust. There would be no signal so far underground.
“Where do we start?” Jo asked quietly.
“Nineteen forty-one, I should think.” He crossed to the Gothic cabinets, scanning the volumes as he loosened the knot of his tie. He’d already undone the top buttons of his shirt, and the effect, Jo thought, was of the true Peter emerging from the shadows. All his attention was fixed on the task, but his elegant fingers were so blindly languorous that for an instant, Jo had to close her eyes. When she opened them, he had stuffed the tie in his coat pocket and dropped the coat itself over the back of a chair. He was briskly rolling up his sleeves, determined to get down to work. “Bring the oil lamp,” he said, halting before one of the cabinets.
Jo snatched at it with trembling fingers; the knowledge that Margaux Strand had actually been in the chamber recently enough to leave her scent was infuriating. If they’d been quicker, Jo might have gotten Jock’s notebook back.
“Better take 1940 as well,” Peter said, and drew two leather-tooled cases from the shelves.
“What if Margaux took what we need?”
“She’d never recognize it,” Peter replied. “She’s good enough at literary analysis—Woolf’s obsession with drowning reflects the independent female’s fear/fascination with orgasm, the unwillingness to submit to the annihilating vortex of the male psyche, and so on—but terrifically dull when it comes to puzzles. I’ll lay odds she completely missed whatever’s here. Hence the row with the Wren porter. She’d need to rip up the closest available minion.”
“Unless, of course,” Jo murmured as she stared down at the empty interior of the case labeled 1940, “she just picked off everything available.”
Peter stared at her wordlessly for a second, then lifted the lid of 1941.
“Fucking Christ!” he spluttered, and shoved the empty case away.
“SO YOU SEE,” MARCUS SYMONDS-JONES WAS SAYING, “what we chiefly need is your help.”
Margaux kept walking straight down King’s Parade, away from th
e college and its beastly gate, her mobile pressed to her ear. If Peter’s boss wanted to find him, then Peter hadn’t given up and taken his gardener back to London. He might be searching for her and the Woolf manuscript even now. Bloody hell, he might even be in Cambridge—Peter was no fool. Margaux’s impulse was to tell Marcus Symonds-Jones to shag off, thank you very much, but before she stabbed the End Call button she hesitated. She did need help—
“What’s it all about, Marcus? Has Peter been naughty again?”
“So naughty he’s about to be arrested for theft,” the department head retorted tartly, “and you with him. It was you that Peter and his client Jo Bellamy consulted in Oxford last night, wasn’t it, Margaux?”
Shit. Shit shit shit—
“You do realize,” Marcus went on, “that the actual owner of that possible Woolf is either the National Trust or the Nicolson family, neither of which is going to take kindly to Peter’s pilfering?”
“It’s not Peter who’s stealing, it’s that American,” Margaux sputtered indignantly. “She may look naïve, but I’ll bet my knickers she’s no innocent, Marcus. You know what Peter is. Always bending arse backwards to be of help—”
“So you did see him.”
“What if I did? He’s my ex-husband.”
“Where he is now, Margaux?”
Her stiletto caught again in a paving crack, and Margaux lurched painfully. “I don’t know. That’s the truth.”
“Look—Margaux…”
She remembered this wheedling tone; it was the one Marcus always used when he wanted sex. It meant that he needed her. Margaux was suddenly acutely alert. She came to a halt beneath a Tudor window, nursing her ankle, and listened.
“You wouldn’t like Peter to lose his job. Or, heaven forbid, go to jail. Would you, Margaux?”
“I don’t suppose so.”
“What if I told you I had a deep-pockets buyer for the item who might be willing to put everything right? No loss to the Trust, no loss to The Family, no loss to you or us—Provided, of course, the Woolf is genuine?”
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