“Come on, let’s go find Edwin,” I said when we disengaged.
* * *
Edwin wasn’t far away, just outside the chambers, in the courtyard and waiting for the rest of us.
“Overkill?” he said to me as we approached him.
“Maybe a little.” I laughed. “But it was the best overkill ever. Where was the Burgess Ticket?”
“In the box with the coins,” Edwin said. “I have no recollection of keeping them together, but I must have. When I went to gather the coins this morning, I looked through the box. And, there it was. Finding it this morning seemed fortuitous. The Queen was lovely to do the favor she did. The ticket was the icing on the cake, I suppose.”
Tom, Rosie, Hamlet, and Jack and I gathered around him.
“How do you know her?” I said.
“She’s stopped by the bookshop a few times, but it’s not me she knows. It’s Rosie.” Edwin pulled Rosie close as he put his arm around her. “Rosie has helped her find some of the best books. Rosie’s skills and ways with people brought the Queen. It wasn’t me, truly it wasn’t.”
“Och, on with ye then.” Rosie waved away the compliment.
“Rosie found the construction papers too,” I said.
“Aye?” Edwin said. “Everything’s been found then! That’s lovely.”
But everything hadn’t been found, I thought as I saw Mary and Lyle walking toward us. No, there was still something missing.
“Hello,” Mary said to us all. “I’m shocked by the Queen’s visit, but I’m thrilled the bookshop was saved. I apologize for whatever Henry did, and whoever he recruited to help him do it. Please accept our apologies.” She looked toward Lyle who nodded.
“Aye. Me too,” Lyle said.
“Lyle, did you present the idea of closing down the bookshop to the council?” I asked.
“Aye, I’m afraid I was requested to do so and I did. I’m so sorry.”
“Henry requested you do it?” I said.
Lyle blinked at me. “No, Mikey Wooster asked me.”
“What?” Mary said.
“Aye. You thought it was Henry?” he said. “No, Henry led the way later because he was the senior member of the council, but all of this was set in motion by Mikey. Henry was helping him.”
“Helping him do what?” Mary said.
“He wanted the bookshop,” I said as I looked at Lyle.
“I don’t know. I was never told why, I was just asked to be a part of setting things in motion,” Lyle said.
“Did Dina come talk to you right after Edwin and I did, in your office?” I asked.
“Oh, aye, I was told she stopped by, but I’d left by then. I was upset by the conversation with you and Edwin. Later, I tried to ring her, but she didn’t return my call. My staff told me she demanded to see for herself that my office was empty, so they showed her.”
“Why would they do that? Why did you set things in motion?” Mary said.
“Because Mikey is married to Dina, your niece, Mary. I’d do anything for your family, you know that. My staff knows that.”
I pulled out my phone and called Inspector Winters.
“Delaney? I’m in the chambers. Where are you?” Inspector Winter said.
“In the courtyard. Where’s Inspector Buchanan?”
“Talking to Mikey Wooster, I think.”
“Hang on a second,” I said as I pulled the phone away and held it so he could hear.
I looked around the courtyard. The crowd was dispersing. If the council was voting on anything else, we hadn’t stayed to see it. Neither had the wonderful people who it seemed had come out to support the bookshop.
“Mary, you were in trouble for looking inside drawers and such at the museum. That’s why they asked you to leave, right?” I said.
“Well, I suppose,” she said, embarrassed.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but I need to know something, and this is more important than anything else because it’s about Henry’s murder. I need you to be one hundred percent honest with me.”
“Okay.”
“The letter, Queen Elizabeth I’s letter that talked about a truce with Mary, Queen of Scots.”
“Aye,” she said. Her cheeks reddened. I knew the look. My cheeks reddened the same way.
“You came into the bookshop to tell us you just remembered the trip to Paris, the alleged letter, but, and tell me the truth, you didn’t just remember it that day, did you? You and Henry talked about it after the dinner party, didn’t you? You told other people about that time in Paris too. Of course you did. A letter like that would be too important to Mary, Queen of Scots, and extremely valuable. Dina and Mikey knew.”
“Delaney,” she said.
“Didn’t they!”
She blinked at me. “She’s my niece.”
“She might have killed your husband.”
“No, I can’t believe that.” Tears started to fall down Mary’s cheeks. “Mikey said she didn’t, that he must have been killed for something else. No!”
“You were looking in drawers because Dina asked you to. You were searching desks and drawers for some sign of that letter. Dina had desks in her shop—she’d bought them because she thought it was a possibility that the letter was inside them? You were all searching, weren’t you?”
After a long pause, Mary nodded once.
“When did you think the letter might be in The Cracked Spine?” I asked.
“A few months ago.” Mary deflated. “The first time we met the docent in Paris about five years ago, he told us about the alleged letter being stolen by the queen’s bastard brother, Moray, and then hidden inside a desk in a castle. He didn’t know which castle. We found him again a few months ago, and he said he had it on good authority that Edwin MacAlister at The Cracked Spine had the letter.”
“And you don’t think Mikey or Dina killed Henry?” Tom said to her.
“Henry was going to come forward with everything, wasn’t he?” Jack asked.
“I don’t. I … I didn’t want the bookshop closed. Henry didn’t either. I didn’t know … I tried to help.”
I put the phone back up to my ear. “Did you get all that?”
“I did,” Inspector Winters said. “I’ll find Buchanan.”
“I have an idea,” I said.
“I’m listening,” Inspector Winters said.
I stepped away from the group and told him my idea.
THIRTY-FIVE
Edwin relocked the bookshop’s front door after we’d all entered.
“Follow me, everyone,” I said.
Edwin, Rosie, Hamlet, Tom, Mary, Lyle, Inspectors Buchanan and Winters, and Mikey and Dina Wooster were all there. Jack had headed back to Glasgow. It was going to be very crowded, but we’d make it work.
The inspectors had been put on alert. Mikey, Dina, Mary, and Lyle were being watched closely. In fact, Inspector Winters hadn’t liked my idea, but I thought it was probably the only way to find the killer. My plan was to push the suspects to the brink of their obsession, and hope the killer would crack.
It might not have been the best, but it was all I had.
I led the way over to the dark side. I was the pied piper of a sort. We snaked over the stairs and then down the dark hallway on the other side. I put the key into the door and turned three times to the left.
“What in the world?” Inspector Buchanan said as she followed me directly inside.
“I’ll explain it to you later,” I said as I started removing things from the desk, including the paper I’d spread over the top of it. “Come in, everyone. Edwin, help me.”
He made his way around everyone else to join me. The space was too small for three people, let alone eleven, but we crowded in.
“First of all, is there a maker’s mark anywhere on this desk?” I asked Edwin.
“Aye, I’ve seen one,” he said as he walked to one side and crouched. “Right here.”
I crouched too. A tree with an E undernea
th. It looked just like the mark on one of the desks at Dina’s.
I looked at her as she put her hand to her mouth.
I looked back at Edwin. “Do you know where any secret compartment might be?”
“False drawers? Backs? I don’t know,” Edwin said. “Let’s look.”
There were five drawers on the desk. Once by one, Edwin and I pulled them out and looked at each one closely. Then we passed them around for everyone else to look at too. Inspector Winters and I shared a glance as we both noticed that our suspect guests were particularly focused on the task, but I went back to the desk with Edwin.
There were no false fronts, no false backs, nothing that seemed like a secret hidey-hole.
“May I see the maker’s mark?” Dina asked.
“Sure,” I said as I moved to the side.
Inspector Buchanan stayed right next to her as she inspected. Dina looked at the mark and nodded at Mikey.
“This is the desk you wanted?” I said to Dina. “You and Mikey were willing to ruin the bookshop just so you could have it.”
“They didn’t know what else to do,” Mary said. “They tried to figure out a way to break in. They knew they couldn’t just talk to Edwin. They didn’t know what to do.”
“Mary,” Mikey said.
“Don’t . .,” she said to him. “Henry changed his mind. He knew better.”
Mikey shook his head, but no one admitted to murder. Yet.
We continued searching but to no avail. A thread of disappointment mixed with panic inside my gut. My plan was falling apart.
But someone else didn’t think so.
You’re too focused on where you’ve been to pay attention to where you’re going.
I laughed. It was Mary. But not any of the Marys we’d become acquainted with lately. It was Mary Poppins. Close enough.
“What?” Tom said.
“We’ve got to turn it over! I mean, we need to be really, really careful, but we have to turn it upside down. See it from another angle.”
Three people had to leave the room—Rosie, Hamlet, and Lyle—to open the space enough to turn the desk as gently as we needed to turn it. Tom, Edwin, and I managed it quickly though and the three who’d left returned.
At first glance, there was nothing unusual about the bottom of the desk. It looked like the bottom of any desk, except maybe this one was made with real wood. Hamlet started knocking on the bottom—the areas where there were drawer spaces on the other side as well as the area where there was just desk.
And suddenly, something sounded different.
“Wait! What was that?” I asked.
Hamlet knocked again. “Aye, it sounds as if there’s something missing there.”
I tried to look at the piece he was knocking on from different angles. “Do we have to cut it open to get inside?”
“We can’t do that,” Inspector Winters said. “It’s too valuable.”
“I’ll do it,” Edwin said. “I’ll need a knife or something.”
A second later, I handed him a letter open, one with a pearl handle that I’d found on a shelf.
Edwin placed the blade of the letter opener into a seam.
He looked up at the rest of us. “Here we go.”
He pried the wood—once, twice, and then three times. And on the third and most exuberant try, it sprang free. Well, a piece of it came off easily, hopefully intact, but none of us double-checked right away.
We were too interested in what was there. There was a secret space where secret things not only could be hidden, but had been.
Parchment with writing.
“Nobody touch it,” I said as I reached for some gloves.
Maybe it should have fallen apart, crumbled to dust. But it didn’t, it hadn’t. With tweezers and my gloved hands, I pulled out a single sheet of parchment and took it to the worktable, where I unfolded it and we all stared.
The parchment might have stayed together, but the ink had faded. There was still some of it there, but it was difficult to read. I would need to use a special light as well as take other precautions to save it, but for now, we all looked closely at the final few words that had been written on the page and were still legible.
We shall be queens together. Elizabeth.
Mary cried out once and then turned to Mikey. “Did you kill Henry for this?”
“No!”
“He did!” Dina said. “He killed Henry for this letter, this bookshop. Our future.”
“I didn’t!” Mikey exclaimed as both he and Dina were being handcuffed by the inspectors.
“It wasn’t ever about the coins, was it?” I asked.
Mikey and Dina wouldn’t look at me.
“I can’t believe this!” Mary said.
But I wasn’t sure what she couldn’t believe. Was she overcome by the letter, surprised about the coins, did she still think Mikey killed Henry?
Both inspectors were informing their suspects that they were being arrested for the murder of Henry Stewart.
I looked at Mikey. “The thing is, if you’d just talked to Edwin, he would have worked with you in searching for this. You killed Henry and you didn’t have to.”
Mikey looked at me with a long, evil glare. He finally said, “I didn’t kill Henry.”
“Yes, you did!” Dina exclaimed.
“No, I didn’t.” He looked at his wife. “You did, and I have the proof.”
Dina’s glare at her husband was even more evil than Mikey’s. We all waited, hoping one of them would say more, keep spilling the beans. Even the inspectors seemed to pause a beat. The suspects had been read their rights. Was there more they wanted to share?
But there wasn’t. Mikey stopped talking and Dina stopped speaking real words; strange mewling sounds came around some tears, but no more words came.
The inspectors, with Rosie leading the way, took the suspects away.
My plan had worked. I wasn’t sure how it was going to play out, but I knew that if we’d found a letter, the strange obsessions these people had would take over, and the killer would somehow be uncovered. I was glad it had worked. At least we knew the killer was one of the Woosters. I had faith the police would sort it out from there.
I was really glad that Mary wasn’t a killer. I liked her. Lyle wasn’t a killer either. I couldn’t envision him and Mary becoming a couple, but who knew. Hamlet escorted them out of the bookshop, and soon it was only Tom, Edwin, and me.
As Tom and Edwin looked at the letter and pondered its validity, I became lost in something else. I didn’t know yet if the note had anything to do with Mary, Queen of Scots. I might never know because I might not be able to save the letter completely. But I knew one thing without a doubt—the woman I’d recently met, the one who’d just left with Hamlet, the one who claimed she was once a martyred queen of Scotland, had spoken the same words I’d just read to me as she and I had visited the Edinburgh Castle.
We shall be queens together.
Maybe that was proof enough.
THIRTY-SIX
I held the paper on my lap and read aloud to Tom:
Edinburgh resident Dina Wooster has been arrested for the murder of her uncle, Henry Stewart. A city councilman, Stewart had been working with his niece and her husband, fellow councilman Mikey Wooster, attempting to steal a priceless letter hidden inside a desk at a Grassmarket bookshop, The Cracked Spine. When their efforts to take the letter were unsuccessful, they planned to use government procedures to shut down the bookshop so they might attempt to take possession of its full inventory. Their plan went awry when Mr. Stewart told his niece that he was not going to follow through with their nefarious activities. In a fit of rage, Ms. Wooster attached an explosive device to Mr. Stewart’s automobile, using instructions on the internet to build the bomb. He was killed in the explosion; there were no other casualties. Ms. Wooster had hoped to prevent Mr. Stewart from reversing the decision to vote on the bookshop’s demise. As it happened, the bookshop was saved by none other than the Queen of
England herself.
Full story to be printed in this weekend’s special edition, “When Queens Collide,” by Brigid McBride.
“She’s a good writer,” I said. “I can’t wait to read this weekend’s version.”
Tom sat next to me on the couch and kept a doubtful expression on his face. “She’s not bad.”
I laughed. “I’m not that insecure. You may fully admit that she’s good at her job.”
Tom smiled. “So, what now, my bride? Now that you’ve solved another murder.”
“It just all came together.”
Tom laughed. “Aye, with your help.”
“Well…”
“That was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen. I’m sad about the murder, but you are one adventure after another, Delaney.”
“I still can’t believe it.” I laughed. “The real Queen!”
“Aye.” Tom shook his head. “How about the other queen? Do you think you and Mary will be friends?”
“Well, we’ve been invited to another dinner. Eloise and Gretchen are hosting. Along with voting in favor of keeping the bookshop open, the council is no longer pushing for the revival of the Burgess Tickets. Gretchen is relieved and thankful. It’s a celebratory dinner, but also something to honor Henry. Mary should be there too. Tomorrow night? Are you available?”
“I am.”
“There will be more details in the article, but Brigid told me that Dina decided to use an explosive because that’s how Mary, Queen of Scots’ second husband was killed. She thought it would throw the police off track, make them think Mary was having an affair. No one would guess that Dina Wooster would attach an explosive to a car. Bridgid also learned that Dina had forgotten about the coins until I mentioned them. They weren’t nearly as important as the letter.”
“She’s wicked.”
“And we fell for it a little. I mean, the affair idea seemed feasible to me, until it didn’t. Inspector Buchanan said she never considered it, but maybe she’s just saying that.”
Mikey had done a good job preserving evidence. He thought his wife would try to throw him under the bus if it came down to it. Dina’s fingerprints were on the bomb-making materials still at their house. Her fingerprints only. When he told the police what he’d saved, Dina cracked and said she should have killed him too.
The Stolen Letter Page 24