The School of Night

by Louis Bayard

  But even this simple act was harder than it seemed. December, wasn’t it?

  Twelve …

  And the date was … what the hell was the date?

  Sixteen …

  All I needed now was the year. But my hand wasn’t able to punch the keys anymore, so I had to lay my other hand on top and press down.

  One … six … three … four.

  I thought at first I’d misremembered. But then, breaking into the midafternoon gloom, came a green light, followed by a high singing frequency.

  “Wow,” said Clarissa.

  The vault door gave off a dyspeptic rumble. Clarissa and I each grabbed the handle—a faint crackle as our hands brushed—and together we pulled.

  A sound like lips pulling away from skin, a swirl of cool, heavy air, and with a long amorous sigh the door swung open and Lily Pentzler rolled out.

  Unfurled, like a Persian rug, she lay there, entirely still. Powder-blue throat and periwinkle lips. And the face—that staring face, with its swollen eyelids—the face had a shade all its own.

  Alice blue, I thought, with a strange jolt of triumph.

  Desperately, I crammed down the laugh that was starting to bubble inside me. It was Clarissa who had the presence of mind to step over the dead woman’s body—as though it really were a rug—and peer into the vault’s interior and deliver the news.

  “The books,” she said. “Alonzo’s books are gone.”

  7

  I HAD NEVER met anyone named August until my first week at college, when I met two. I didn’t meet any others until twenty-seven years later, that day in Alonzo’s apartment. His name was August Acree—Detective August Acree—of the Violent Crimes Branch. A point guard’s build, just melting into fat, and a dandyish mustache, whose promise of fun was undermined by ball-bearing eyes, severe, unpersuadable. Once or twice I caught him smiling. I’m not sure I saw him blink.

  By now a forensic photographer was circling Lily’s body, technicians from the Mobile Crime Lab were crawling in and out of Alonzo’s vault, and two uniformed cops were standing outside the apartment door, looking vague and bored.

  Outside, a phalanx of cop cars, a pair of local news crews, and a knot of worried widows: Alonzo’s fellow tenants, wondering how bad things could happen in Northwest D.C., where residents were practically guaranteed a natural death.

  Detective Acree knew different. No deference, no silver tongue. He treated the crime scene as if it were on the other side of the Anacostia. He stared down that vault as if it were a meth lab.

  “It’s got vents,” he said. “Blowers.”

  “True,” I said.

  “In working order?”

  “As far as I know.”

  He gave his tie a delicate twist. “Then there’s no reason for that woman to suffocate. She should be alive right now.”

  “Detective?” said Clarissa, taking a step forward. “If I may?”

  A crease lined August Acree’s brow as he squared himself toward her.

  “Your name, ma’am?”

  “Clarissa Dale. I think I could be of help here.”

  “Ah.”

  You can say ah in many different ways, but you can’t make it sound much less encouraging than that.

  “Best I can tell,” she said, “Mr. Wax’s vault is built along the same lines as a bank vault. Which means it needs some way of suppressing fires. Your classic sprinkler system, that’s not going to work because it’s going to soak the books. Might as well just let them burn, right?”

  The crease in the detective’s forehead got deeper.

  “Now most banks,” Clarissa said, “use a gas called halon. Pretty safe, not too toxic. But if you’re not a regulated entity, you can get away with using carbon dioxide.”

  “Carbon dioxide.”

  “Now don’t worry, Detective, I won’t touch a thing. I’ll just direct your attention to the vault’s roof. Assume for a second that a fire’s broken out. In that event, what happens is the carbon dioxide gets released from the ceiling, see? It floods the vault, it squeezes out the oxygen so the fire won’t have anything to react with. Imagine a hand, okay? Pressing all the oxygen to the floor.”

  “So…” Acree took a step toward the vault. “If someone’s actually inside when this is happening…”

  “They’d have a few minutes is all. And if they know how the system works, they’re gonna keep low, because that’s where all the oxygen is. If there’s any left. Now when we found Miss Pentzler, she was all the way down to the ground.” Clarissa knelt in an attitude of prayer. “Her face was pressed against the door crack. My guess? She was fighting for air.”

  The detective gave his tie another twist.

  “So how’d the smoke alarm get triggered?”

  The question was answered by one of his own techs, emerging from the vault with a plastic bag raised like a war trophy. Inside was a soggy cigarette butt, no more than an inch long. Far too small, you’d have thought, to merit all the scrutiny it now received.

  “Was Miss Pentzler a smoker?” asked Detective Acree.

  “Not that I ever saw,” I said. “She might have been.”

  “Geez, you’re not a smoker, but you bring a lit cigarette into a vault, then get yourself locked inside. I don’t know. In my world, that’s…” He made a whistling sound.

  “Maybe it was someone else’s cigarette,” I said.

  “Then where’s the someone else? If that cigarette was still burning, whoever it was couldn’t have been far off. And forget the cigarette for a second. If Miss Pentzler knew what a fix she was in, why didn’t she call someone? Building management, nine-one-one?”

  With some regret, I drew Lily’s BlackBerry from my pocket.

  “We found it by the sofa,” I said, fighting to keep my voice level.

  Detective Acree watched as the phone was sealed in a bag. Then he turned his eyes back to the vault.

  “No air,” he said, half to himself. “No phone. No one to hear her scream.”

  “No books,” added Clarissa.

  Acree arched his eyebrows. “Sorry?”

  “Detective, I don’t mean to minimize Miss Pentzler’s death, but there’s another pretty serious crime that’s taken place here. Mr. Wax’s whole collection has gone missing.”

  “That so?”

  In unison, Clarissa and Acree swiveled toward me. Awaiting confirmation.

  “I’m afraid she’s right, Detective. Alonzo had one of the most esteemed collections of Elizabethiana in the world. Shakespearean quartos and folios. First editions of Tudor poets. One of Queen Elizabeth’s Bibles. We’re talking a value of—I’d say three or four or five million dollars, and that’s conservative.”

  “He wouldn’t have sold it off?” asked Acree.

  “Maybe a title or two, he’s done that before. But not the whole inventory, he just wouldn’t have.”

  “Why not?”

  “The collection was his life.”

  Except Alonzo took his life, didn’t he? After first taking the precaution of wiping out his computer’s hard drive. With great care and deliberateness, he’d gone about erasing himself from this earth, and he’d done an uncommonly thorough job.

  * * *

  By five o’clock, the last forensic obeisances had been paid, and Lily Pentzler was ready for her plastic shroud. And when they lifted that plump, short-waisted figure onto the gurney, I felt something inside me go slack. Grief, I suddenly realized. Lily Pentzler had consecrated her life to one man, and this was how she’d been rewarded.

  The balcony door was still open, and the air from outside had formed a high-pressure front with the apartment’s climate-control system. From inside the vault, I could hear the arrhythmic skitter of Alonzo’s hydrothermograph, protesting every fluctuation in humidity and temperature.

  “Mr. Cavendish.”

  Detective Acree beckoned me toward him.

  “I think you said you were Mr. Wax’s executor.”

  “That’s right.”

&nb
sp; “Then I hope you’ll satisfy my curiosity. Was his book collection insured?”

  I blinked.

  “Well, yes, it was.”

  “So who’s the beneficiary?”

  Two days earlier, I couldn’t have told him. But having trawled for hours in the sea of Alonzo’s paper, I knew. “Me,” I said. “I’m the beneficiary.”

  I fully expected his mouth to turn up the way it did. What I didn’t expect was the delicate climb of his voice as he said:

  “Tough for you.”

  8

  I WOKE THE next morning, matted in sweat, my cell phone clamoring from the depths of my pants pocket.

  “Mr. Cavendish!” said Bernard Styles. “We just saw the news coverage of Miss Pentzler’s death. Tragic business!”

  Whatever fog was left in my brain burned right off. For I was picturing not Styles but his silent emissary, Halldor. Standing in the main hall of Union Station, staring up at me and Lily.

  “Yes,” I said. “Very tragic.”

  “I knew her quite well, you know. Damned fine head on her shoulders. I always thought Alonzo was lucky to have her.”

  “It’s funny,” I said. “You know where I was yesterday, but maybe you could tell me where you were.”

  I’d meant it to sound tossed-off, that little query, but my voice betrayed me, for Styles held off a moment.

  “Well, as I mentioned, we were planning to descend on Mount Vernon, but it seemed much too hot to be gadding about. So we went instead to the Museum of Crime and Punishment.”

  “I see.”

  “Fearfully interesting place. Oh, but hold on, we also saw something about Alonzo’s books being stolen. Beyond scandalous! Never mind, these things always come to earth somewhere.”

  “Cornelius Snowden might disagree,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Old friend of yours. He was carrying Stow’s Annales when he died. As far as I know, that book never came to earth anywhere.”

  I gave it a couple of seconds before adding:

  “Snowden was kind of like Alonzo. He had something you wanted.”

  “Well, you’ll pardon me, but I fail to see what Cornelius Snowden has to do with anything. As for Alonzo, the item in his possession was not his to possess, as I thought I made clear to you. I’ve engaged you, Mr. Cavendish, to recover a document that is legally mine.”

  “What if I can’t?”

  “If you really don’t think you’re up to the job, you need only return my check and we may take our leave of each other. You…” His voice dwindled down to a drawl. “You haven’t cashed the check, have you, Mr. Cavendish?”

  I pressed my eyelids down. “Of course I have.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh, dear.”

  “Look, I just need us to be in the open, okay? If there’s something funny going on—between you and Alonzo, you and anyone—I need to know it.”

  “I can assure you, Mr. Cavendish, I’ve nothing to hide. What about you?”

  * * *

  Clarissa called ten minutes later.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Outside your door.”

  I went to the window. A tangle of black hair, strangely purposeful in the light of noon. I looked at her for longer than was strictly necessary. Then, with no warning, she tipped her head back and caught my eye. And waved.

  “Oh, yeah, hi,” I said into the phone. “How did you know where I live?”

  “I dropped you off. In a taxi. Last night.”

  “Right.”

  “Can I come up?”

  “It’s kind of messy, honestly.”

  “You better fire her.”

  “Who?”

  “Your cleaning lady. If she was over there yesterday, she’s not doing much of a job.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Listen, give me ten minutes, I’ll be right down.”

  She smelled of sunblock that morning. One of those nongreasy sports solutions that remind you of your dad’s aftershave. And, to tell the truth, her madras shorts could easily have been lifted from my father’s wardrobe. They did have the advantage of revealing her legs, which were slender and lightly muscled and of Euclidean proportions. I did my best not to stare. I’m not sure I succeeded.

  “Let’s go to Stanton Park,” Clarissa said. “It’s shadier there.”

  She walked so quickly at first I had to struggle to keep up. And then, a couple of blocks on, her energy gave out altogether. So that, by the time we reached the park, she looked like she was crossing the Sun’s Anvil.

  “Hot,” she gasped.

  We found a bench under a cherry tree. I offered her a handkerchief—and saw too late the latticework of holes in the cotton. We fell silent.

  “You seem to know the area,” I said at last.

  “I rent a place over on Fourth Street.”

  So Clarissa Dale was, of all ridiculous things, my neighbor. How long had this been going on?

  “An apartment,” I said. “That sounds kind of quasi-permanent.”

  “Not to me.”

  On the benches across from us sat a line of nannies. Their arms folded in an unbroken line, they regarded us with deep foreboding, and their young charges would stop in the midst of chalk drawing or climbing up a slide to stare at us, like animals sniffing a storm.

  “Where’d you learn all that shit about bank vaults?” I asked.

  I’d forgotten how gratifying it could be to make a woman laugh. A grunt of surprise … a sudden flash of gum, startlingly red … a white hand clapped over her mouth.

  “I used to work for a bank,” she explained. “Back in the day.”

  She wiped the sweat from her face. Spread the damp handkerchief across her lap.

  “Listen, Henry, I’ve got Alonzo’s hard drive.”

  I stared at her.

  “How?”

  “Well,” she chirped, “first I took it out of Mr. Computer.”

  “No, I mean when?”

  “Before the police got there.”

  Three, four minutes. No longer.

  “I always keep a screwdriver in my bag,” she said. As though that explained anything.

  “The hard drive is evidence,” I said.

  “Not if it’s been erased.”

  “But if it’s erased…?”

  “Well, there’s erased and then there’s erased. You’d know that, Henry, if you’d ever been in the IT field.”

  As patiently as she could, she explained to me that hard drives don’t really delete information, they just mark it as having been deleted. If it isn’t copied over with other data, then, in many cases, it’s recoverable.

  So, having removed Alonzo’s hard drive, Clarissa Dale, in the privacy of her own lodgings, transferred it to her computer, scanned the file structures with Windows Explorer, and was able finally to retrieve a few Word files and, more critically, the remains of a personal-appointment database.

  She went straight to the entry for May 12—Alonzo’s last day on earth—and found three names on his to-call list.

  “Me,” she said. “You. And—”

  “Amory Swale.”

  A flush of good humor stole into her cheeks as I told her how I’d come across Swale’s name, just above hers, in Alonzo’s folder.

  “Okay,” she said. “So you called his number, and then what?”

  “It was out of service.”

  “And you didn’t Google him? Never mind, I did. He’s got a Web site. Swale’s Antiquarian something something. So I dropped him an e-mail last night, just before bed, and what do you know, this very morning I hear back.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Very cagey. Didn’t want to talk by computer or phone, asked me if I’d come see him in person.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Nags Head, North Carolina.”

  Two-five-two, I remembered. Swale’s area code.

  “It’s a five-hour drive, Henry. Not too much traffic this time of year. If we leave tomorrow—say, seven A.M.—we could be there for
lunch.”

  “Seven A.M.”

  “Well, yeah, beat the traffic. You got anything else on your plate?”

  If nothing else, I had the sprawl of Alonzo’s papers. Accounts to be opened, bills to be paid, appointments to be kept. God help me, a memorial service for Lily. And on top of that, a District of Columbia police detective who would look with ill favor on my skipping town with an investigation under way.

  A mountain of obligation reared up before me … and opposing it, what? A woman who wanted to take a joy ride to a resort town?

  “Seven it is,” I said.

  9

  “WHO’S KIT?” CLARISSA asked.

  We were half an hour south of Richmond, and she had colonized the passenger seat of my ’95 Toyota Corolla. Her head was bowed over Bernard Styles’s digitized document, and her hair had fallen down on either side, screening her as comprehensively as a voting booth.

  “Kit,” I said.

  “The very first line,” she said. “He would not be the first—lover, I guess—so to be served by Kit. Who would burn hot and cold in the space of but one breath…”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s Marlowe.”

  “Marlowe?”

  “Well, possibly.”

  “As in Christopher Marlowe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like the playwright.”

  “Very much like the playwright.”

  “So he was pals with Ralegh.”

  “There’s evidence, yeah. Ralegh wrote a jesting reply to one of Marlowe’s poems. And some guy once accused Marlowe of reading ‘the atheistic lecture to Sir Walter Ralegh and others.’”

  “Others? Did he mean the School?”

  “Not clear. The accuser was in cahoots with Ralegh’s rival, the Earl of Essex. So Essex may have been trying to tar both men with the same brush. It may have been pure invention.”

  “Or else they really did know each other. And they really were atheists.”

  “Maybe.”

  Alonzo had never had much use for that word maybe. And neither did Clarissa, for she folded her lips down like a scolded toddler.

  “Okay,” she said, “one other thing. If Ralegh really wrote this letter, how come he can’t spell his name? I mean, R-a-w-l-e-y. Where’s the i?”

  I pressed my hand to my temple. “You’re kidding, right?”