by Glenn Cooper
He glumly looked over at DeCorso; the man was lost in his headphones. His face looked like it belonged in a meat locker. He’d been feeding Frazier a steady stream of surveillance information all morning: Piper had called the nanny to arrange for extra hours. He was going away for a few days, didn’t say where. Finally, another team of watchers had flown in. One of their men had followed Piper jogging along the river. He’d gone food shopping with his wife and baby. Typical Saturday stuff.
But now DeCorso had something bigger. He spent a few minutes online getting answers to the questions he knew Frazier would ask. When he was done, he removed his headphones. It wasn’t just bigger, it was seismic. In their world, a mag-eight quake.
Frazier could see by his face he had something important. “What? What now?”
“You know Henry Spence, right?” DeCorso asked.
Frazier nodded. He knew all about the 2027 Club, a harmless bunch of old coots, as far as he was concerned. The watchers checked up on them from time to time, but the consensus was that Spence ran nothing more than a glorified retirement social club. No harm, no foul. Hell, he’d probably join when he hung up his spurs, if they’d have him-not likely!
“What about him?”
“He just called Piper, cell phone to landline, so they’re clueless he’s being tapped. Spence is in New York. He bought Piper a first-class ticket with an open return for London. He’s leaving tonight.”
Frazier rolled his eyes. “For Christ’s sake! I knew Piper wasn’t alone in this, but Henry Spence? Does he have that kind of cash, or is he fronting for someone else?”
“He’s seriously loaded. Dead wife’s money. There’s more.”
Frazier shook his head and told him to spit it out.
“He’s been sick. His DOD’s in eight days. Wonder if it’s gonna be natural causes or us.”
Frazier was shoving his legs into his trousers. “God only knows.”
Chapter 11
Will felt good to be out on the road, traveling light, like the old days. He’d had an excellent night’s rest in a cushy first-class sleeper seat which, by a twist of fate he’d never know, was originally intended for young, dead Adam Cottle. He wasn’t an experienced international traveler, but he’d been to the UK and Europe a few times on Bureau business. He’d even given a talk at New Scotland Yard a few years back, titled “Sex and the Serial Killer-The American Experience.” It had been well attended, and, afterward, a bunch of ranking detectives had taken him out on a pub crawl that predictably ended in amnesia.
Now he was chugging through the flat English countryside in a Chiltern Rail first-class car an hour out of Marylebone Station on the Birmingham line. The gray sprawl of London had given way to the earth tones of cultivated land, a palette of greens and browns muted by the wash of a wet autumn day. At full throttle, the rainwater on the train’s windows streaked horizontally. His eyelids grew heavy watching the tilled fields, rolls of hay, and drab, utilitarian farm buildings whizzing by. Small villages filled the window for seconds, then were gone. He had the compartment to himself. It was a Sunday, and this was low season for tourists.
Back home, he imagined that Nancy would be up soon, and later in the morning she would take Phillip out in the stroller, that is, if it weren’t pouring there too. He’d forgotten to check the forecast before he left but regardless, he was certain Nancy would have her head in a personal little rain cloud. When he got done with his treasure hunt, he planned to spend some time in Harrods figuring out how to buy his way out of his mess. Anyway, he could afford it. He was embarrassed to tell her, but Spence had made an off-the-scale offer. He’d never considered himself someone who could be seduced by money, but then again, no one had ever thrown cash his way before. As a new experience, it wasn’t unpleasant.
The price tag for the assignment? A check for $50,000 and the title to the bus! As soon as Spence kicked it, the motor home was his. He didn’t know how he’d afford to gas it up, but worst case, he’d plant the thing in an RV park in the Florida panhandle and make it their vacation getaway.
The bigger carrot was still on the stick. Spence wanted the DODs for his clan, but on that request, Will would not relent. The number Spence put on the table made him gasp for air, but there wasn’t enough money on the planet. If he flagrantly violated his confidentiality agreements, then he was afraid Nancy’s assessment would be correct: he’d be putting their heads on the chopping block.
Awakening from a doze, he heard the conductor over the loudspeaker and blinked at his watch. He’d been out for the better part of an hour, and the train was slowing as it approached the outskirts of the large market town.
Stratford-upon-Avon. Shakespeare country. The irony made him smile. He’d gotten into Harvard because he could clobber a running back who was trying to get a football past him, not because of his aptitude in literature. He’d never read a word of Shakespeare in his life. Both his ex-wives were theater nuts, but it wasn’t contagious. Even Nancy tried to get him to see a crowd-pleaser, Macbeth, if he recalled, but he’d pouted so much, she dropped it. He couldn’t imagine what all the fuss was about, and here he was, carrying perhaps the rarest of all Shakespearean artifacts, possibly the only known piece of work definitively written in Shakespeare’s own hand.
The station was Sunday-quiet, with only a handful of cabs at the stand. A driver was standing next to his car, smoking a cigarette in the drizzle, his cap soaked through. He flicked away the butt and asked Will where he was heading.
“Going to Wroxall,” Will said. “A place called Cantwell Hall.”
“Didn’t figure you for a Willie Wonka tourist,” the cabbie said, looking him up and down. Will didn’t get his meaning. “You know, Willie Shake Rattle and Roll, the great bard and all that.”
Everyone’s a profiler, these days, Will thought.
Wroxall was a small village about ten miles north of Stratford, deeper into the ancient Forest of Arden, now hardly that, the forest cleared centuries ago for agriculture. The Normans had called Arden the beautiful wild country. The best description it could muster today would be pleasant and tame.
The taxi sped along the secondary roads past dense hedgerows of field maple, hawthorn, and hazel, and plowed, stubbly fields.
“Lovely weather you brung with you,” the cabbie said.
Will didn’t want to do small talk.
“Most folks going to Wroxall go to the Abbey Estate conferencing center. Beautiful place, all done up ’bout ten years back, stately hotel and all. Christopher Wren’s country digs.”
“Not where I’m going.”
“So you said. Never been up to Cantwell Hall, but I know where it is. What brings you here, if I may ask?”
What would this guy say if he told him the truth, Will thought? I’m here to solve the greatest mystery in the world, driver. Meaning of life and death. Beginning and end. Throw in the existence of God while you’re at it. That’s why I’m here. “Business,” he said.
The village itself was a blip. A few dozen houses, a pub, post office, and general store.
“Entering and leaving Wroxall village,” the cabbie said with a nod. “Just two miles on now.”
The entrance to Cantwell House was unmarked, a couple of brick pillars on either side of a threadbare gravel lane with a central row of untamed grass. The lane plunged through an overgrown, wet meadow dotted with the fading hues of late-season wildflowers, limp, blue speedwells mostly, and the occasional clump of fleshy mushrooms. In the distance, around a sharp curve, he caught sight of gables peeking above a high hedge of hawthorn that obscured most of the building.
As they got closer, the sheer magnitude of the house jumped out at him. It was a hodgepodge of gables and chimneys, pale, weathered brick rendered over a visible Tudor exoskeleton of dark purplish timbers. Through the hedge, he could see that the central face of the house was completely clad in ivy cut away from white-framed leaded windows by someone who seemed to lack a facility for right angles and straight lines. The pitched a
nd multiangled slate roof was slimy and moss green, more animate than inanimate. What he could see of the tangled front garden beds suggested they were, at best, lightly tended.
Passing through a generous, hedge-formed portico, the lane turned into a circular drive. The cab crunched to a halt on gravel near a latticed, oak door. The front windows were dead and reflective. “Dark as a tomb in there,” the driver said. “Want me to wait?”
Will got out and paid. There was a wisp of smoke coming from one of the chimneys. He cut the man loose. “I’m good,” he said, shouldering his bag. He pressed the buzzer and heard a faint interior chime. The taxi disappeared through the second hedged portico, back to the lane.
The entrance was unprotected from the elements, and while he listened for signs of life, his hair was slicking with rain. After a good minute, he pressed the buzzer again, then used his knuckles for emphasis.
The woman who opened the door was wetter than he was. She’d obviously been caught in the shower and without time to towel off had thrown on a pair of jeans and a shirt.
She was tall and graceful, a cultured, expressive face with confident eyes, skin, young and fresh, the color of buttermilk. Her clavicle-length blond hair was dripping onto her cotton shirt, and the outline of her breasts showed through its wet translucency.
“I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “It’s Mr. Piper, isn’t it?”
She’s gorgeous, he thought, not what he needed right now. He nodded, and said, “Yes ma’am,” like a polite Southern gentleman, and followed her inside.
Chapter 12
The housekeeper’s at church, Granddad’s deaf as a post, and I was in the shower, so you, I’m afraid, were left standing out in this wretched weather.”
The entrance hall was indeed dark, a two-story paneled vault with a staircase ascending to a gallery landing. Will felt that it was as inviting as a museum, and he started worrying he’d clumsily knock over a porcelain plate, a clock, or a vase. She flicked a switch, and a giant Waterford chandelier started glowing over their heads as if a bottle rocket had exploded.
She took his coat and hung it on a hatstand and parked his bag though he insisted on keeping his briefcase with him. “Let’s get you to the fire, shall we?”
The centerpiece of the dimly lit Tudor Great Hall was a massive hearth, large enough to roast a pig. The fireplace frame was as dark as ebony, ornately carved, and shiny with antiquity. It had a chunky mantel and a straight-lined, medieval appearance, but at some point in its history someone had been stricken with a Continental bug and overlain the hardwood fascia with a double row of blue-and-white Delft tiles. There was a modest fire, which seemed small and disproportionate to the size of the vault, going. The chimney wasn’t drawing well, and wisps of smoke were backing into the room and floating up to the high, walnut-beamed ceiling. Out of courtesy he tried not to clear his throat, but he couldn’t suppress it.
“Sorry about the smoke. Got to do something about that.” She pointed him to a soft, lumpy arm chair closest to the flames. When he sat on it, he detected a whiff of urine, astringent and acid. She bent over and placed another couple of logs on the fire and prodded the stack with a poker. “I’ll just put a pot of coffee on and make myself a bit more presentable. I promise I won’t be long.”
“Take your time, I’m fine, ma’am.”
“It’s Isabelle.”
He smiled at her. “Will.”
Through watery, irritated eyes, Will took in the room. It was windowless, densely packed with furniture and centuries of bric-a-brac. The zone near the hearth seemed the place that was most functional and lived-in. The sofas and chairs were twentieth-century, designed for cushioned comfort, a few high-intensity reading lights, tables littered with newspapers and magazines, tea and coffee mugs scattered about, careless white rings from wet glasses imprinting the wood. The middle and borders of the Great Hall were more museumlike, and if Henry VIII had just arrived from a hunt, he would have felt at ease with its Tudor airs and splendor. The coffered, walnut walls were covered to the beams in tapestries, taxidermy, and paintings, dozens of dour-faced and bearded Cantwells peering down from their sooty canvases in their frilly collars, robes, and doublets, a gallery of men’s high fashion throughout the ages. The mounted stags’ heads, locked in surprise at their moment of death, were a reminder how these men had spent their leisure.
A majority of the furnishings stood on or around a massive, Persian rug, worn at the edges but pristine at the center, protected by an oak trestle banqueting table ringed by high chairs covered in red cloth. Each cushion back was adorned with a single embroidered Tudor rose. Atop both ends of the table was a pair of silver candlesticks, large as baseball bats, with thick white candles half again as tall.
After a while, Will got up and took a tour of the dark recesses of the room. There was a layer of dust everywhere, blanketing all surfaces and objets d’art. It would take an army of feather dusters to make a dent. Through a doorway, he looked into another darkened room, the library. He was about to wander in when Isabelle returned with a tray of coffee and biscuits. Her hair was drier, pulled back into a ponytail, and she had hastily applied some makeup and lip gloss.
“I should put more lights on. It’s like a mausoleum in here. This room was built in the fifteenth century. They seemed to have no desire whatsoever to let any light in-I expect they thought it was healthier to seal themselves away.”
Over coffee, she inquired about his trip and told him how surprised and intrigued they had been to receive a call from the buyer of their book. She was keen to hear more, but she put Will off until her grandfather awoke from his nap. He was something of an insomniac, and it wasn’t unusual for him to fall asleep at dawn and awake at midday. They marked time by sharing their backgrounds, and each seemed intrigued by the other’s life.
Isabelle seemed fascinated she was conversing with a living, breathing ex-FBI agent, the kind of person who, to her, existed only in films and novels. She gazed into his magnetically blue eyes as he regaled her in his soft drawl with stories about old cases.
When the conversation turned to her life, Will found her charming and winsome, with a selfless, admirable streak, a young woman so devoted to her grandfather she took a year off from university to care for him in this remote, drafty old house and help him adjust to life without his wife of fifty years. She’d been slated to start her last year at Edinburgh, reading European history, when Lady Cantwell suffered a fatal stroke. Isabelle’s parents were in London and tried to get the old man to come down, but he vehemently objected. He was born at Cantwell Hall and, like a good Cantwell, would die there too. Eventually, something would have to give, but Isabelle volunteered a temporary solution.
She’d always loved the house and would reside there for a year, doing spadework for a future doctoral dissertation on the English Reformation and comforting the grieving old man. The Cantwells, she told Will, were a microcosm of the sixteenth-century Catholic-Protestant divide, and the house had born witness to some of that cataclysm. A fear of hers was when Lord Cantwell passed, the inheritance taxes would force the family to sell it to a developer, at worst, or the National Trust, at best. In either case, it would be the end of a family lineage that stretched back to the thirteenth century, when King John granted the first Cantwell, Robert of Wroxall, a baronial tract of land, upon which he built a square stone tower, on this very spot.
Finally, she opened up about the book. They were over the moon it had fetched an astronomical price at auction but she was desperately unhappy to see it pass out of family hands. Even as a girl, she’d been captivated by it, always finding it strange and mysterious, and she offered that its 1527 date had fueled her interest in that period of British history. She had hoped one day to discover what the book represented and how it came to rest at Cantwell Hall. Still, she admitted, the auction proceeds would keep the estate functioning for a while longer though it didn’t solve some very expensive and pressing structural issues. There was rising damp, rotting tim
bers, the roof had to be redone, the electricals were a disaster, the plumbing a bloody mess. She joked they’d probably have to sell off every piece inside the house to afford to fix the house itself.
Will was taking guilty pleasure in the conversation. This woman was his daughter’s age! Despite his spat with Nancy, he was a happily married man with a new son. His days as a rover and a cad were behind him, no? He almost wished that Isabelle weren’t quite so stimulating. Her long, sensual body and rapier-sharp mind were a twin-barreled shotgun aimed at the mass of his chest. He feared he was a double-trigger pull from being blown away. At least he was sober. That helped.
He was itching to get on with business and wondered when Lord Cantwell would make his grand appearance. Provocatively, he asked a question that caught her off guard. “How much would it take to fix the place up and clear out your future tax problems?”
“What an odd question.”
He pressed for an answer.
“Well, I’m not a builder or an accountant, but I’d imagine it’s in the millions!”
Will smiled impishly. “I may have something in my bag that’ll solve your problems.”
She arched her eyebrows, suspiciously, and said dryly, “Wouldn’t that be marvelous. Why don’t I see what’s keeping Granddad?”
Just as she rose to find him, the old man shuffled into the Great Hall, staring quizzically at Will.
“Who’s that?” he called out.
She answered at a volume he could hear. “It’s Mr. Piper from America.”
“Oh, right. Forgot about that. Long way to come. Don’t know why he didn’t just use the telephone.”
She ushered Lord Cantwell over for introductions.
He was well into his eighties, mostly bald except for an unruly fringe of silvery hair. His red, eczematous face was a weed garden of hairy tufts the razor missed. He was dressed for a Sunday afternoon, twill trousers, herringbone sports coat and an ancient university tie, shiny with wear. Will noticed his trousers were too large for him, and he was using a fresh belt hole. Recent weight loss, not a good sign in an older fellow. He was stiff with arthritis and had the gait of a man who hadn’t loosened up yet. When Will shook his hand, he got a stronger whiff of urine and concluded he’d been sitting on the fellow’s favorite chair.