Garden of Thorns

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Mark picked it up and read: “From Hell. Mr. Lusk. Sir I send you half the kidney I took from the woman preserved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it….” He stopped at Hilary’s harsh intake of breath. Graymalkin looked up, offended that her soft perch had stiffened, and leaped from Hilary’s lap to the floor.

  Jenny’s lips thinned to a slit, compressing her voice. “Ink and paper of the period, all right—it’s the only authentic letter from Jack the Ripper. It disappeared years ago, and now we know why. Who did Arthur bribe to get it, do you think? Some records clerk at Scotland Yard?”

  With only her fingertips Hilary picked up one of the documents. “Post Mortem report, dated November 10, 1888. Gross.”

  “Not so much so as these photographs.” Jenny indicated several scratched sepia pictures, two of slum street corners, a third of a battered woman’s body stitched together like a rag doll, a fourth of what might have been a body once, but now looked like a pile of meat in a butcher’s display case. A drawing beside them resembled a page out of a biology student’s notebook, except that the dissected body was that of yet another woman.

  In the back of Mark’s mind Osborne’s ominous soundtrack crescendoed and stopped with a squeal. Leaden silence filled the room. He scooped everything back into the manila folder and placed that firmly inside the portfolio. His mouth was so dry he had to swallow before he spoke. “Did Arthur do a film about the Ripper?”

  “No.” Jenny dropped her face into her hands and kneaded her temples.

  “Why would he want these?” Hilary asked. “Wasn’t his mother killed the same way?”

  “So was his wife,” replied Mark. “Did he get these before Felicia died or after?”

  Hilary picked up his thought. “Did this particular collection of Arthur’s ever come out at the trial?”

  “I don’t think so. The prosecution would’ve marched this stuff in with a brass band. Nathan would know, wouldn’t he?”

  “I’ll ring him tomorrow,” said Jenny’s muffled voice. “Tell him to come and collect this lot. I want it out of the house.”

  Hilary’s face was slightly greenish, and Mark didn’t feel so well himself, chocolate and tomato sauce bubbling uneasily in his stomach. Jenny and Hilary were no doubt picturing the same scene he was, the bodies of Vicky and Felicia sprawled before the parlor fireplace. Arthur’s father Edward had been found in the hall doorway, still holding the straight razor he’d used to mutilate Vicky and finally turned on himself. But who had mutilated Felicia, making sure that history repeated itself? Arthur had played enough parts—James Bond, Lowell Thomas, perhaps Casanova—so maybe Jack the Ripper had been part of his repertoire, too. But just because his father had been a murderer didn’t mean that Arthur had been, too. He’d been found innocent in a court of law.

  “Dolores wouldn’t want to go public with this stuff,” Hilary said.

  “Someone other than Arthur knows about them,” Jenny told her. “The date on that portfolio is 1989, and Arthur died in 1988.”

  Mark got up and laid the portfolio on the mantelpiece, next to Lucia’s skeletal burial detail. “Nathan probably knows all about it—Arthur was just researching a movie or a book—no big deal.”

  “Right.” Jenny slapped the table with her palms. “That’s it, then. There’s a Scrabble game in the cabinet: I challenge you both to a duel and will even spot you American spellings….”

  The connecting door creaked further open. Mark, Jenny, and Hilary froze. Graymalkin trotted through the gap and smugly presented Jenny with the tiny body of a mouse. The collective exhalation almost blew it away. Thanks, Mark thought, and exchanged a sheepish glance with Hilary. Jenny drew herself up and said sternly, “Graymalkin, we are not amused.”

  The cat stretched, first her front legs, then her back, and proceeded to wash her face. From the front of the house the tick of the clock echoed, inexorably scything time.

  Chapter Eight

  Morning rush hour in the back corridors of the Lloyd was every bit as genteel as Hilary could have hoped. Secretaries opened doors for conservators, security guards greeted administrators, and all wafted away to their individual tasks with the self-possessed smiles of the virtuous.

  “Cream or sugar?” Hilary asked Leslie Underwood.

  “Black, please,” she responded. “You’ve been here a whole week now. Ready to run screaming out into the real world?”

  “This is the real world. Some of these artifacts have more human vitality than living people.”

  Leslie grinned as Exhibit A, Kenneth Coburg, strolled into the break room. “Happy first day of spring, ladies. Someone go tell all those flowering trees they’ve jumped the gun.”

  “Around here March twenty-first is just a formality,” Leslie agreed, and disappeared with her coffee toward her sentry post.

  Kenneth opened the box of doughnuts he held and with a slight bow extended it toward Hilary. “You get first choice. May I recommend the glazed ones?”

  “No thank you.” Hilary picked up her notebook and edged toward the door, but Kenneth blocked her path.

  “How’re the artifacts coming? Are they almost ready to go back home?”

  “I’ll finish the formal descriptions today, after I look up some iconography—what the symbols mean. Then I start packing. Even with temperature and impact tests they should be ready by the end of the month.”

  Kenneth captured her hand and held it to his lips. His dark, liquid gaze made her feel like an otter swimming through an oil spill. “I do appreciate an intelligent woman, Hilary. Let’s drive over to Dallas Saturday. We can go bar-and gallery-hopping in Deep Ellum.”

  And end up in a hotel room, Hilary told herself. “Thank you, but I’ve been invited to dinner with Lucia Hernandez.”

  “Ah yes, you and Nathan and your archaeologist friends.” Kenneth released her hand and drew himself up, assuming a noble expression. “Surely we can go for a drink without Mark coming after us with a shovel. Or is he the jealous type?”

  “I have no idea,” Hilary told him, although she knew full well Mark hadn’t a possessive bone in his body. “Speaking of the artifacts, I really need to be going….”

  Kenneth shrank back against the door frame, allowing her to slip past and into the hall, although not without a quick tickle in the small of her back. “See you later!”

  Kenneth, Hilary thought with a sigh, was amusing and annoying at the same time. Not threatening—so far he’d good-naturedly taken “no” for an answer—but irritatingly persistent. He liked women. So did Mark, for heaven’s sake. But Mark liked them as people, and Kenneth liked them as collectibles.

  She walked into the library and sat down at a computer terminal. Typing, Purgatory, she copied the titles that unfurled down the screen. Sacrament was next, and then the individual ceremonies. She took her list into the stacks and found the bound research papers she needed.

  Friday evening with Jenny had been, overall, very enjoyable; the house and that horrible portfolio, the conversation, and the Scrabble game had provided a welcome distraction from Mark’s and Hilary’s personal tensions. The lasagna dinner Hilary had prepared for Mark on Saturday had actually been edible, and the kisses they’d shared afterward were proper enough for a convent parlor. On Sunday Mark had introduced her to Lucia, who’d proudly displayed her granddaughter’s Folklorico costume with its embroidered designs, and reiterated her dinner invitation for the following Saturday. Mark and Hilary had lingered late on the bench beneath the heavy limbs of the live oak, venturing up the stairs to his apartment over the garage only when the crane flies—which Hilary had at first thought were Texas-sized mosquitos—came out at nightfall.

  Mark’s apartment was furnished with casual charm, a mixture of antiques and Salvation Army rejects, part Mark’s and part Lucia’s. Books, papers, and pottery shards filled every horizontal surface, interspersed with kachina dolls and pots of cactus, model castles and the odd trowel. The bedroom contained an old brass bed with a spread made of bright Indonesi
an fabric.

  Hilary had lain awake Sunday night visualizing herself in Mark’s bed, in his arms, abandoned to sexual bliss. Although which of the postures she’d read about constituted abandon and which gymnastic skill she wasn’t sure. The media led her to believe that everyone else in the world was engaged in a sexual Olympiad while she sat, arms folded protectively, choked by desire, wondering if she’d ever care enough for Mark or for any man to permit—no, not violation, but consummation.

  Poor frustrated Mark was sitting on the sidelines as well. And unless Jenny was also protesting too much about Kenneth, she was currently celibate. She might have a lover waiting for her back in England—surely a woman couldn’t reach her late thirties in a state of chronic virginity….

  Stop it, Hilary told herself. She took the books to a table and sat down, crossing her legs and knotting her ankles. First she consulted Demonology in Medieval Art. Demons had different names now. Purgatory, where the souls of the departed suffered until they were purged of sin, was a state of mind.

  Several references later, a shadow fell across her notebook. “Oh, Nathan, good morning.”

  “Hello, Hilary. How are you? Isn’t it a lovely morning?” Having delivered himself of the formula greeting, Nathan stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at her notebook, his face puckered with thought and with an edge she couldn’t quite identify.

  She said, “Earth to Nathan.”

  He shook his head and adjusted his glasses. “First of all, if your ears have been burning, it’s because Wes, Dr. Bradshaw, really did call both Vasarian and Dolores Coburg and ask whether it was all right if you worked on the Regensfeld artifacts. I just found out.”

  Nathan obviously felt his judgment was being called into question; what whetted his expression was anger and resentment. Hilary asked, “Are you going to have to take me off that job?”

  “No way. You’re doing good work, and I defy anyone to say otherwise.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nicholas Vasarian is in the lab right now running over your files—I got the artifacts out of the storeroom for him. And Bradshaw is dancing attendance on Dolores. Go ahead and finish here before you go down. I trust you to answer any questions without me being there.”

  “Sure—I mean, thanks again.”

  Nathan’s eyes focused beyond the top of her head. “I won’t be there because I have a lunch date with Sharon Ward. Dolores has decided to go ahead with the biography.”

  “Good,” Hilary said, straining upward like a giraffe after a tender treetop, trying to intercept Nathan’s gaze.

  Still he avoided her, his words coming faster and faster. “I’m not going to tell Dolores about that Jack the Ripper portfolio. I don’t think it’s relevant to Arthur’s life and achievements. I’m asking you to ask Mark and Jenny not to mention it. And you shouldn’t yourself, of course.”

  “But that’s…” Hilary told herself that yes, it was cheating, and Nathan knew it. It must have been Sharon who’d placed the old folder in the new portfolio. She was in the perfect position—and had the brass—to exert a little emotional blackmail on Nathan, protecting her family from…. From what? Nathan was right, the Ripper material was disturbing but didn’t necessarily mean a thing. “Mum’s the word,” Hilary finished lamely.

  “Thanks. Hang in there.” Nathan walked out of the library, his shoulders slumped as though his integrity had become a heavy burden.

  Hilary replaced the bound volumes she’d used, pulled out an encyclopedia, and killed a few minutes browsing before she admitted she was hoping Vasarian would give up and leave before she made it to the lab. I know what I’m doing, she assured herself.

  She gathered her notebook and marched off down the corridor, only to swerve into Nathan’s room when she heard his phone ringing. “Nathan Sikora’s office, Hilary Chase speaking.”

  “Well howdy there, you sweet young thing. This is Travis Ward.”

  “May I help you?”

  “Is my wife there?”

  Thanks, Nathan, she mouthed at the man’s cluttered desk. Among the printed sheets was a piece of pink notepaper folded in half, bearing a woman’s rounded script. Hilary looked quickly away and clutched at the exact truth. “No, I haven’t seen her today.”

  The silence in her ear stretched out so long she thought Travis had hung up. Then, “Okey-doke. Don’t suppose you’re free for lunch?”

  “I’m supposed to meet Mr. Vasarian in the lab.”

  “Just my luck. Some other time. Bye-bye, sugar.”

  “Goodbye.” Hilary hung up the phone, wondering whether Travis was checking up on Nathan and Sharon.

  The note was signed not “Sharon” but “Felicia”. That Felicia? Hilary hesitated, then with a guilty grimace turned back to the desk. Only the lower back half of the paper was exposed. “…and the roses, too. ‘Dolly’ says she doesn’t have the ring, but I know she wormed it out of poor foolish Arthur. Do you think I could sue to get it back? Thank you. (How is Nathan enjoying college?) Yours truly…”

  Yes, that Felicia. Writing, it appeared, to Nathan’s father no more than a year or two before she died—judging from her reference to Nathan being in college. Sikora Senior must have been the family lawyer, continuing to work for Felicia even after the divorce, then defending Arthur against the charges of murdering her. Ironic, Hilary thought. She wondered if Dolores was still using him, and why the old letter was lying on Nathan’s desk, and what had happened to her own discretion. She double-timed it out of the office.

  Wes Bradshaw was just disappearing into his office. Great—she’d outwaited him and hopefully Dolores. Hilary hurried down to the lab. Appropriately enough, June’s radio was playing Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto”; the exquisite music complemented the elegant form of Nicholas Vasarian seated at her computer terminal.

  When he saw Hilary, he rose from her chair, peeled off his cotton gloves, and shook her hand. “I hope you don’t mind my more or less reading over your shoulder, Miss Chase.”

  “It’s your responsibility to see that the artifacts return safely,” Hilary replied. He seated her at the table, scooting in the chair like a maitre d’ in a posh restaurant. All six artifacts sat in a row across the mat, in order, each label laid neatly in front. He’d added a line or two to some of those labels—details of provenance, she noted. The computer screen glimmered with her description of the Giotto, measurements, materials, symbolism.

  “You’re doing a fine job,” Vasarian assured her. “I’m simply checking on some details for my own use. The Regensfeld case is my most important, but not my only one. With Eastern Europe opening up, I expect quite a few similar cases.”

  Hilary thought of the Eleanor Cross. “Will you be tracking missing artwork to the Soviet Union? I imagine the Russians are a lot harder to deal with than we Americans are.”

  “Not so much so as you would expect. These artifacts were created during the Age of Faith, but today is the Age of Cynicism. Where once you could go to any country and celebrate the same mass, now you can go to any country and celebrate the same bank account. Instead of crucifixes and communion wafers, we now have dollars, rubles, pounds, and yen.”

  In spite of herself, Hilary laughed. “Are you British, Mr. Vasarian?”

  “Nicholas, please.” His leisurely posture was only a pose; his long, narrow hands were braced on the edge of the table, and his brown eyes watched the door of the lab like d’Artagnan watching for the Cardinal’s guards. “My family escaped from Armenia at the turn of the century. I was born in Czechoslovakia not long before Hitler invaded. My earliest memories are of muddy roads clogged with refugees, dive bombers whining overhead. I have a British passport, yes, but for many years I lived in France and Germany. With the advent of the European Community I can finally feel at home.”

  “I imagine so.”

  Disdainfully turning his back on the door and its possible dangers, Vasarian pulled the gloves on again and picked up the Bible cover. “This reminds me of Russian icons
that have been so decorated with gold and pearls that the face of the saint is overwhelmed. I notice your description points out the dichotomy between medium and message.”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t indulge in editorial comments, but it struck me rather forcibly.”

  “Would these artifacts have survived if they hadn’t been so valuable in either workmanship or material? Forgive me—I believe we were discussing this very question at the reception last week, and Dr. Galliard disagreed with me. Do you suppose she was playing devil’s advocate?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hilary answered. “She’s a fighter.”

  The look in Vasarian’s eyes was bright, almost feverish, for a moment. Then the jaded look fell again on his face. “These artifacts were created in belief. Believing is fighting, isn’t it? Fighting against death and pain and nothingness. A very Western concept, that to be strong we have to fight. In the East strength is in surrender.”

  “Taoism?” asked Hilary. “Just being?”

  “Exactly.” Vasarian set the Bible cover back on the table. One gloved forefinger traced the tiny face of the ivory bishop, then brushed lightly around the empty interior of the reliquary.

  His diction was that of a classical actor. Hilary thought of Prospero, the old magician in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, asserting “Our revels now are ended”. Despite his expensive suit and tie, Vasarian’s face was austere, as though the clothing was a costume over a hair shirt. What are you really looking for? she asked him silently. Not artifacts, but the certainty the artifacts represent? Assurance that surrender is not defeat?

  Dolores Coburg strolled in the door like Queen Elizabeth visiting her subjects, handbag dangling at her side. “Nicholas,” she called, “have you forgotten our lunch date?”

  “No, no, Dolly, not at all.” He took off the gloves and with a slight bow extended them toward Hilary. She suppressed a smile. Kenneth had been aping Vasarian’s continental courtliness. He probably meant it as satirical comment. Not surprising he’d be uncomfortable with his mother’s seductive manner toward the art sleuth.