Sonnet of the Sphinx

by Diana Killian

  “If the Shelley exists, it will be somewhere in this pile of junk,” Grace said. “And it’s all got to go back to Mallow Farm within twenty-four hours.”

  “Then you’ve got twenty-four hours to search for it, haven’t you?” Peter started up the stairs.

  “Are you serious? And are you just going to bed?” she called after him.

  He paused. “I’m going to have a nightcap, and then I am indeed going to bed.” His smile was exaggeratedly lustful. “You’re welcome to join me.”

  Isn’t that my luck,Grace thought.The night I’ve been waiting for, the night he finally asks me to stay—and means it—is the night I have to spend prowling through eighteen crates of bric-a-brac, dust, and spiders.

  Peter smiled an oblique smile and said, “Be sure to lock up when you’re finished, love.”

  Praise for Diana Killian’s Poetic Death Mystery

  High Rhymes and Misdemeanors

  A Selection of the Mystery Guild

  “[A] light, charming novel…filled with wonderful characters and with substantial information about the Lake Poets and their lives. Secret passageways, a bit of breaking and entering and a smidgeon of kidnapping make this an entertaining romp through a beautiful part of Britain.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “A series to watch.”

  —Romantic TimesMagazine

  “High Rhymes and Misdemeanorsis a cross between James Bond andRomancing the Stone…. There is action, action, and more action in this light-hearted tongue-in-cheek thriller. Diana Killian is an excellent storyteller with a fine sense of timing who has created an adorable heroine.”

  —Harriet Klausner,Books ’n’ Bytes

  “The landscape is filled with detail that will transport readers….High Rhymes and Misdemeanors is a fun outing for literary mystery fans as well as an introduction to a new heroine who will be interesting to learn more about through more stories.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “A lot of fun and very witty and winsome. I was won over. Diana Killian knows her setting and Lord Byron’s factual biography as well as lore. You don’t have to know the poet to read and enjoy—never fear.”

  —G. Miki Hayden, author of the Macavity-winningWriting the Mystery, forFutures Magazine

  “Funny, clever and a cast of characters that will leave you laughing till the last page.”

  —TheBestReviews.com

  “A good romp and hard to put down.”

  —The Mystery Bookstore, Los Angeles, CA, “Cozy of the Month” pick

  “Fun to read…. I just sat back and let things wash around me while I enjoyed them…. A true beach or airplane book.”

  —Mystery News

  “Killian writes a mystery that keeps the reader’s interest right to the solution and makes the reader want to collect the next in the series. I recommend this book.”

  —Lonnie Cruse, author of “Murder in Metropolis,” which appeared inCozies, Capers & Crimes

  Also by Diana Killian

  Verse of the Vampyre

  High Rhymes and Misdemeanors

  Available from Pocket Books

  AnOriginal Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  Copyright © 2006 by Diane Browne

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-3471-6

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-3471-7

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  To Pamela and Laura—

  for the women that you are.

  To Faith and Emily—

  for the women that you will one day be.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to everyone at Pocket Books for your behind-the-scenes efforts, and a special thank you to Micki Nuding for taking such good care of the orphan child.

  Thanks to my agent, Jacky Sach.

  Thanks always to Kevin.

  And, of course, thank you to the Partners-in-Crime writing group, one and all.

  Prologue

  Pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say that you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious.

  —Letter from Leigh Hunt to Percy Bysshe Shelley

  All week the priests andreligiosi wound up and down the baked streets, praying for rain. Unheeding, the Tuscan sun beat down, crops turning to dust in the fields, grapes withering on the vine.

  On Monday afternoon, July 8, theAriel left the harbor in a lowering, stifling heat.

  For a time, the slim man with tangled fair hair watched the distant witchlight flickering in the leaden sky. The sultry heat seemed to crackle with weird energy. The stillness was oppressive.

  The boat’s other two occupants, Edward Williams and the boy, Charles Vivian, conversed briefly, their words barely filtering into his consciousness.

  The young man raked fingers through the golden hair that was perpetually in his eyes, then turned his attention once more to the book of Keats’s poetry.

  The boat creaked, the sails whispering to each other.

  The storm that whipped up off the black-glass ocean was like an enchanted thing, so sudden, so parlous. The pages in the book flapped like chattering paper teeth.

  “Shelley, Gad’s sake—!” He came out of his trance to see Williams struggling with the tiller.

  Thrusting the book half-folded back into his jacket pocket, he lunged to help with the sails. Rain stung their hands and faces like an angry swarm, soaking them to their skin in seconds.

  The many laughing misadventures of the long summer could not prepare them for this tempest. The main sheet had jammed; they could not bring the sails down.

  Williams was swearing, his curses carried off in the shrieking gale. The boy crouched in the belly of the boat, eyes black as India ink.

  Arielbucked and plunged like one of Willmouse’s toy boats in a bathtub sea. As though a giant hand pushed a wall of water toward them, a wave hit them from the side; the yacht was almost swamped. Shelley was sent sprawling. The provisions they had purchased in Leghorn scattered about him, bottles bobbing in the rapidly pooling water, and he remembered Wales, remembered political pamphlets in dark green bottles and will-o’-the-wisp balloons.

  “We’ll have to swim for it,” Williams shouted. He grabbed for the boy, who fought him off in a blind animal panic. “Shelley—”

  Shelley clung to the gunnel with wet white fingers, laughing unsteadily. “Are you mad?”

  The wind whipped the words away, as it whipped away any chance of survival. They were miles off the coast of Spezzia. Even if one could swim—and he could not—it was too far.

  He righted himself with difficulty, wrapping his arms tightly about his torso. Almost instantly he lost his balance and had to grab for the tangle of rigging.

  Williams abandoned fighting the boy and came to him, but Shelley fended him off, shaking his head.

  There was nothing for it. Williams began to strip, pulling his shirt over his head. TheAriel heeled. In dreadful pantomime, Williams flailed blindly, lost his balance, and plunged off the side. He vanished beneath the sickly-hued waves in an instant.

  Shivering in the water and debris, the boy began to keen. Shelley trie
d to smile at him.

  The world dissolved in wind and rain and thunder.

  1

  “‘Old King Tut was a wise old nut,’” Grace Hollister read aloud, selecting a sheet of music from the stack beside her. She was sitting Indian-style on the floor of Rogue’s Gallery, surrounded by neatly sorted books and papers.

  “Possibly a wise young nut. Though not wise enough to keep himself from getting clipped.” As Peter Fox’s mocking gaze met hers, Grace was reminded of a line by Thomas Moore: “Eyes of unholy blue.”

  “That’s right; some scholars now believe Tutankhamen was murdered, don’t they?” She studied the crimson-and-sand-colored illustration of a cigar-smoking pharaoh peeking out from behind a pyramid. This King Tut looked more like a Vegas mob boss than Egyptian royalty. Not that Grace had much experience with Vegas mob bosses—or any mob bosses. Until recently she had led the life of a sheltered academic, teaching Romantic literature to the privileged young ladies of St. Anne’s Academy for Girls in Los Angeles.

  “They do. A three-thousand-year-old cold case.” Peter lifted a wooden writing box out of its wrappings. He opened it, picked out assorted pen nibs, old-fashioned paper clips, and a winged dagger cap badge for the 22nd Special Air Service. Peter studied the badge, set it aside, and made a notation on his clipboard. “Who Dares Wins,” he murmured, and his thin mouth curled in an odd smile. “Very nice.”

  Summer was the height of tourist season in the English Lake District, and so naturally the busiest time at Rogue’s Gallery. Between customers, they were still working their way through the boxes and crates that had been delivered two weeks ago from Mallow Farm. The new owner, Mr. Matsukado, was a wealthy Japanese businessman. The Shogun, as he was referred to locally, had decreed all of the seventeenth-century farmhouse’s original furnishings unsuitable. Peter had bought the lot, much to the chagrin of his local competition. Much of the haul had turned out to be of the pink china roosters and bronzed baby shoes variety.

  Grace adjusted her reading glasses and brushed back her hair, which had deepened to sorrel while away from the California sun.

  “Why, Valentino as a sheik, he wouldn’t last half a week in old King Tut-Tut-Tut-Tut-Tut-Tut-Tut King Tuttie’s day.” She checked the date on the music. “Nineteen twenty-three. A year after Carter discovered Tut’s tomb. Had they even opened the burial chamber yet?”

  “February 1923.”

  She selected a faded brochure in red, white, and blue. “The Maid and the Mummy.A musical farce in three acts. Thisis an oldie—1904.”

  “Something of a theme, no?” Peter was making more notes in his own personal hieroglyphs.

  A thin slip of yellowed paper slid out from the musical brochure Grace held, and she unfolded the paper. It was a letter. The date at the top read October 8, 1943.

  “Listen to this,” she said.

  Dearest Girl,

  It’s difficult to know what to write. I’m a devil to treat you so. Oh, I know it too well, and to wrap it up in thumping philosophy only cheapens…

  She broke off. “I can’t read the next few lines.” She squinted at the lines long ago dissolved by…a watermark? Tears? Gin?

  There’s a kind of high comedy in our breathless obsession with tetchy old Fen’s verdict, while half the youth of Europe is churned to powder in the cogs of this mechanical slaughter of modern warfare. And yet if our little discovery should turn out to be one of Shiloh’s poesy, then there is a rightness to it, a queer poetic justice. I must let this go. One day, I suppose we will look back on this time and shake our wise gray heads over all this doubt and uncertainty.

  Goodnight, Dearest. I’m better for loving you so.

  For a moment they were silent. The lazy hum of bees and the sunlit fragrance of the garden drifted to them through the open window.

  Grace blinked rapidly behind her specs. “It’s signed ‘John.’ ”

  “Helpful,” said Peter. “There can’t be many chaps named John.” He reached for the letter, which Grace held in one still hand.

  Huskily, she said, “Nineteen forty-three. World War II. I wonder if—”

  He directed a quizzical look her way. “Why, Esmerelda, I believe the heart of a romantic beats beneath that leathered academic hide.”

  Momentarily distracted, Grace spluttered, “Leatheredhide?”

  “Never having had opportunity to fully explore the hide in question—”

  “Take my word for it, my hide is perfectly…” She stopped, aware that they were digressing rather wildly.

  “Soft? Supple? Silken?” He ran light fingers down her bare arm.

  It was a touch she felt in every cell. With great difficulty, Grace ignored that casually seductive caress, holding the letter up and out of his reach. Her brows drew together as she reread the elegant faded hand.

  “Shiloh,” she said slowly.“Poesy.” She turned to Peter, green eyes bright with excitement.

  His thin clever face reflected amusement. “I recognize that feverish expression, if not the cause for it.”

  It was absurd, and yet stranger things had happened—and to Grace and Peter.

  “The mereword ‘poesy’ conjures his ghost.”

  “Surely not.”

  He was still joking. Grace was not. “ ‘In the still cave of the witch Poesy, seeking among the shadows,’ ” she quoted.

  Peter appeared to consult some inner and extensive reference section. “Shelley,” he identified. “Percy Bysshe.”

  “Shiloh,” Grace agreed triumphantly. “Lord Byron’s pet name for Shelley.”

  “Pet name?” he objected. “Must you put it quite like that?”

  “Albé and Shiloh, that’s what they called each other,” Grace persisted eagerly. “Byron and Shelley. Two of the greatest poets of the Romantic Age.” Two of the most intriguing, anyway; Grace had a private yen for the bad boys of poetry. The frail, sensitive, and iconoclast Shelley had always proved a huge hit with her freshman and sophomore classes.

  Peter was unconvinced. “You can’t be serious. An unknown work by Shelley? Where would this ‘John’ find such a thing—assuming that vague reference to Shiloh is meant to indicate Shelley and not some other Shiloh.”

  “What other Shiloh? I don’t think he’s referring to the American Civil War. It’s not exactly a common name. Not even in the 1940s. I mean, there was that Neil Diamond song—”

  “If this is a confession,” he interrupted, “I’m not ready to hear it.”

  She laughed. “But it was Shelley’s nickname, and a name by which Shelley scholars know him. And just because we don’t know where the letter writer might have found such a work, doesn’t mean the work couldn’t exist.”

  Peter said nothing, holding the paper up toward the light streaming through the front window. His black-winged brows drew together. Turning, he flattened the letter on the counter behind him and studied it closely.

  “What do you think?” She joined him at the counter as he studied the yellowed paper.

  “Even if this bloke managed to get his mitts on an original work of Shelley’s, this was written over fifty years ago. The item, whatever it might have been, is long gone.”

  “But it might not be!” Grace gestured to the boxes still unopened, the stacks of partially sorted papers. “And the clue to its whereabouts might be here, maybe in another letter. It looks like some of this stuff hasn’t been gone through in decades.” The layers of magazines, newspapers, bills, circulars, letters, and other assorted paperwork formed a kind of pulp strata.

  “My dear girl.”

  Dearest Girl…

  Who was John? What Mallow daughter or sister had been his “dearest girl”? Grace adored the riddles of the past. Her idea of a good time was exploring an old churchyard or whiling away an afternoon in a library archive. Maybe that was why she was pushing thirty and still unmarried.

  “It’s not that far-fetched. There was a lost Mary Shelley story discovered in a wooden chest in Tuscany a few years ago. And what about back in 19
76, when that trunk was opened in Barclays of London and a slew of previously unknown works by Byron and Shelley were found? It’s not impossible.”

  “Mary Shelley lived in Tuscany,” Peter pointed out. “And the Barclays trunk belonged to Scrope Berd-more Davies, who was a friend and confidante of Lord Byron. Correct me if I’m wrong, but did Shelley ever visit the Lakes?”

  “I don’t see how that matters. Thanks to Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey, the Lake District wasthe center of the Romantic Movement, and Shelley was a huge admirer of Wordsworth. Perhaps he made a trip that no one documented.” It was difficult to imagine that such a meeting wouldn’t be recorded in those days of fanatical journal and letter writing, but it was possible.

  “Or perhaps he mailed a copy to his idol,” he suggested blandly.

  “Yes! Or no.” She saw that this brought them back to the original problem. If a poem had been mailed to Wordsworth or another literary figure, it would surely have turned up in someone’s papers. Even in their own lifetimes, the most casual writings of these men had been valued and preserved by their friends and family. “It doesn’t matter how it got here—assuming it is here.”