Interred with Their Bones

by Jennifer Lee Carrell

Ben’s rapt fascination irritated me. “One obscure Latin phrase that may or may not be a pun, uttered more than a decade before Shakespeare staged a play, and fifteen years before his name showed up on a title page, does not constitute evidence. It constitutes coincidence.”

  “I do not believe in coincidence,” said Athenaide, coming to rest in front of the queen’s portrait. “Though, speaking of coincidence, this pun you discount was read aloud in the presence of the queen at Audley End. The family home of the Howards, about whom we have become so curious.”

  Her cell phone trilled, and she answered it. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she griped. “I’ll be right there.” She hung up.

  “What is it?”

  “Professor North never boarded his plane. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go put out a few fires. By the time Nicholas returns, I’ll be back.”

  Ben didn’t move from the door. “Without company, next time,” he specified.

  Her eyes flared. “I am well aware of my error, Mr. Pearl. It will not happen again. I’ve left your books on the table, Katharine. You can thank me when I get back.”

  He stood aside, and she sailed out.

  “What do you know about this North?” asked Ben, locking the door.

  “He wrote a book claiming that Oxford was Shakespeare. Not much else, beyond what you heard Matthew say.”

  “But he’s a professor of Shakespeare?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you reckon he’s missing? Do you think it’s just shyness?”

  “Sounds like it fits his profile.”

  “It also fits what’s been happening to Shakespeare professors.”

  I sat down hard. “You think he might be the next victim?”

  “I think somebody ought to consider it.” He stretched. “But not us. Kate—we have to start thinking about where we’re going next. Do you think it will be Henley-in-Arden? Ophelia’s home?”

  “Probably. If not precisely Henley, somewhere else in Britain. But I won’t know for sure till I see what Dr. Sanderson turns up.”

  “Britain means passports. New identities. All the risk of airports. It won’t be easy.”

  “But it’s possible?”

  “I’ll need some time.”

  “I need to see the letter first, anyway.”

  “How would you feel about it if I leave you here while I make the arrangements?”

  “I don’t need babysitting twenty-four/seven. Can you get out and back in again?”

  “Without you in tow, yes.”

  “Then, go.”

  He stood in front of me. “Don’t open the door, Kate. Not for Athenaide, not for Matthew, not for Dr. Sanderson.”

  “Not for anyone,” I parroted.

  “You can open it for me.” He smiled.

  “How will I know it’s you?”

  “Two slow knocks, three quick. Unless you have a secret Shakespearean knock.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Back soon.” Opening the door carefully, he slipped out.

  I reached for the books Athenaide had brought. There were only two: the paperback facsimile of the Folio and Widener’s copy of Chambers. The letters were all where I’d left them—except that there was one more. She’d added Ophelia’s letter to Jem to the stash. I drew it out.

  What could Ophelia have had to say to Emily Folger? Where was Dr. Sanderson? How long could it take to count to seventy-nine? Restlessly, I read through the letters again.

  I was wading through the tangle of the Howards when a knock at the main door startled me. Just a simple double knock. Not Ben’s complicated tattoo.

  “Kate Stanley,” said a quiet voice, and my heart turned over in my chest. It was DCI Sinclair.

  Shoving the letters back into Chambers, I scooped up the books and backed from the door.

  “I know you’re in there.”

  I looked wildly around the room. The door in the corner was locked. The only other way out was through the windows, but they didn’t open. I’d have to break one.

  “Listen to me, Ms. Stanley,” said Sinclair. “I know you’re not the killer, but the FBI thinks otherwise. They find you, and they’ll arrest you in a flash and ask questions later. Cooperate with me, on the other hand, and I’ll give you room to find what you’re looking for.”

  “How?” With alarm, I realized that I’d spoken aloud.

  “Come with me now, and I’ll have you on a plane to Britain in half an hour.”

  Britain. More than likely, it was exactly where I needed to go. To Henley-in-Arden, near Stratford. But I wouldn’t know till Dr. Sanderson came back with the letter. Where was he?

  “I’ll make sure you walk, Kate.”

  Sinclair had no jurisdiction in the U.S. He could neither guarantee his promises nor back up his threats. If it was not all just a ruse in the first place. And if it was not, what he was offering to do was surely illegal as well as unethical, undermining a criminal investigation on another country’s sovereign ground. Why would he make such an offer? What did he want badly enough? “At what price?” I asked.

  “The sodding bastard who burned a national monument on my watch,” he said savagely. “I want him. You help me, and I’ll help you.”

  I glanced back at the door in the corner. Where was Dr. Sanderson? Where was Ben? “I need some time.”

  “You don’t have time. The FBI are still looking for you in New Mexico. But the minute they give up, they’ll draw the same conclusion I did—that whatever it took, you’d have found a way onto Mrs. Preston’s plane.”

  “No.” I wasn’t going anywhere without that letter.

  The door rattled a little, and I backed up again. Setting the books on a window seat, I picked up a chair from the table, readying to throw it. If anyone came through the door, I’d at least make a try for the window.

  “You can’t keep running on your own,” said Sinclair. “The way I see it, you’re after the same thing the killer is, which means you’re in much worse danger from him than the police.”

  “I know that, thank you. He more or less told me the same thing.”

  “You’ve spoken to him?” There was an eager catch in his voice.

  “He’s spoken to me.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “No.”

  There was a pause. “How well do you know the bloke you’re traveling with?”

  “Well enough to know it’s not him, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  His urgency intensified. “Who else could have done the job in Utah?”

  “Whoever was following us.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  In the corner, I heard Dr. Sanderson’s door click unlocked and watched it crack open, half filled with dread, half with hope. Would it be Dr. Sanderson? Or the FBI? My grip on the chair tightened.

  It was Athenaide. Finger to her lips, she beckoned me to follow her.

  Beyond the other door, Sinclair continued. “It’s somebody who can tail you closely, Kate. Probably somebody you know.”

  No, I thought. I will not believe that. And I stepped through the door after Athenaide.

  She locked it behind us. We stood in a small, bare office, the desk blank, the computer off. The windows had chicken wire imbedded in the glass. A door in the opposite wall stood ajar. Athenaide sped through it.

  Beyond lay Dr. Sanderson’s office, strewn lavishly with antiques. Portraits of men in doublets hung on three walls. On the fourth, windows almost as tall as French doors opened onto a narrow conservatory cluttered with plants and potting materials. The middle window gaped open.

  Out in the hall, I heard pounding on the Founders’ Room door.

  “Time to go,” said Athenaide. She clambered through the window, heading for a small door set a ways down in the opposite wall of the conservatory. I followed.

  The door opened, and I stood blinking in a hallway lined with card catalogs. To my left, people milled about in a flurry of chatter and clinking glasses, and for a moment I had no idea
where I was. Then I glimpsed moss-green carpeting that I recognized.

  We were in a corridor that connected the two halves of the Reading Room, the Old and the New. Far from getting out of the library, I had burrowed to its well-guarded heart.

  It was the crowd that had thrown me off. And then I realized what was happening. The conference reception had begun.

  “Go,” whispered Athenaide. “Use the crowd.”

  “But, Dr. Sanderson,” I protested. “The letter.”

  “He’s the one who sent me to fetch you,” said Athenaide. “You’re to meet him in half an hour, two blocks west. A fine view westward, he said. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  “Great, Athenaide. All I have to do is walk out through an FBI gauntlet.”

  “I suggest the front door,” she said with a wink. “Since you’ve raised a ruckus at the back. There are waiters in Renaissance costume serving champagne on the lawn. You’ll find a display of costumes near the main entrance, in the Great Hall. Borrow one.”

  “But Ben—”

  “I’ll tell him where you are. Now go.”

  She gave me a little push, and I stepped into the Old Reading Room. It was not just crowded, it was packed.

  High above the crowd, light filtered down through stained glass. Different dialects of English darted through the air, along with snatches of German, Japanese, French, and Russian. Somewhere, a quartet was singing madrigals. I bumped into a man in Druid’s robes—probably the archmage—and kept going.

  Across the room, someone called my name.

  Thrusting past me, Athenaide ran lightly up a staircase that rose to a gallery ringing the whole room. Leaning over the balcony, she rang a bell with a shrill silvery chime.

  People stilled and looked up.

  “I would like to welcome you all,” she began.

  Easing through the throng, I made my way toward a tall, carved fireplace. Just beyond, I reached the French doors to the Great Hall opposite and slipped through. Paneled like the Founders’ Room, the hall was five or six times the size, with a high arched ceiling. Normally, it was the exhibition hall—the one area of the library open to the public. That evening, though, it was filled with tables set for a sumptuous dinner. I wove through them toward the gift shop and the doors to the street.

  In the far corner, just as Athenaide had said, stood a display of mannequins in Shakespearean dress. Not authentically Renaissance clothing, but costumes from some of Hollywood’s great Shakespeare productions. “From the Athenaide Dever Preston Collection” read a placard.

  Front and center stood a figure of Olivier costumed as Hamlet. It took one twitch to whisk the Dane’s inky cloak from the mannequin’s shoulders, and one more to swirl it around mine. I poked my head through the doorway. To the left, down the long main hall, the Founders’ Room was seething with men.

  Hugging my books close, I turned right, pushing through the glass doors to the lawn, where people from the sixteenth century were offering champagne on silver trays to people in the twenty-first. Wrapping Olivier’s cloak around me, I walked through the crowd. As a knot of people passed by on the sidewalk, I stepped out to join them, heading as fast as I dared up Capitol Street.

  27

  THE DAY HAD been hot and humid. At dusk, the heat was still oppressive, but at least a small breeze was blowing. All the same, under the cloak, my clothes clung damply to my skin.

  Head down, my ears pricked for the sound of following footsteps, I passed the Library of Congress on my left, and the Supreme Court on my right. I heard no one behind me. Pulling off the cloak, I looked up. In front of me was an expanse of marble, green lawn, and barricades, and beyond that soared the dome of the Capitol.

  Two blocks west, Dr. Sanderson had told Athenaide. A fine view westward. I felt a surge of affection for him as I walked around the south side of the Capitol, hurrying along on the pebbled cement, passing beneath elms and maples. It was cooler here, or at least I could make myself think so, listening to the soft papery rustle of air moving in the trees.

  As promised, the front of the Capitol, facing west, had one of the best views in all of D.C. The obelisk of the Washington Monument rose white against the horizon, while the sun hung low in the haze. Strains of Sousa tumbled jauntily from a bandstand across the water. Day in and day out, I still preferred the hurly-burly of New York and London, where the chaos of the present collided cheerfully with the past, instead of standing hushed before it. But I had to admit that the Mall was lovely in the quiet of a summer sunset.

  I scanned the wide expanse of marble and pavement in front of the Capitol. For a Fourth of July weekend, it seemed strangely empty, save for a strolling pair of lovers, and one or two suits hurrying somewhere, heads down. But it was too late for tours, and the office staff had mostly gone home. And it was too early—and still too hot—for most of the nightlife. What little there was clustered around the band on the other side of the water.

  Dr. Sanderson was nowhere to be seen, but I was a little early. I turned and climbed the stairs, amid the potted palms, looking up at the white dome crowning its hill. On the first landing, I turned and looked again across the green-and-white city.

  Below and to the left, beyond the balustrade, darkness exhaled from beneath the grove of magnolias that clung to the hillside—a few late flowers still hanging like small spiced moons among the dark gloss of the leaves. I went down the stairs toward the trees. Halfway down, a movement in the bracken below caught my eye.

  I took a step forward, and then another. Far below, on the dark ground, as if in the bottom of a deep hole, someone lay sprawled in the bracken.

  “Hello?”

  No answer. I hurried down the steps, and around the marble balustrade, stepping gingerly up the slope into the darkness beneath the trees. Night had already fallen here, and I stopped to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. A man lay asleep on the ground. I stepped closer. A man with gray hair and a red bow tie.

  Dropping the cloak, I ran to him. Dr. Sanderson lay sprawled on the ground, stabbed more times than I could count. His throat had been slashed and was gaping like a second slack mouth just above his bow tie. I heard a buzzing, and the faintly metallic scent of blood enveloped me. Flies were already swarming over him. Even as I doubled over, retching, I saw that his hand still gripped a crumpled paper. I bent down to look.

  A hood was pulled over my head, and I was thrown to the ground.

  The books flew from my hands and the wind was knocked out of me, so that I could make no sound. Then my attacker was on top of me, shoving a gag in my mouth, pinning my arms behind me, and quickly tying my wrists. A hand groped downward, sliding between my legs.

  With every ounce of strength I could muster, I rolled, knocking him off me. I scrabbled to my knees, but he caught me, and flung me back down. My head hit the ground so hard that white light flared up around me.

  I went still, thinking, I can’t black out now. I can’t. The light faded, and I was still conscious. I lay there unmoving, listening. He seemed to be standing above me. Doing what? I could see nothing through the hood, and, worse, I heard nothing but the faint sound of his breathing. Knives, I thought, make no sound once they’re drawn.

  He bent down to straddle me, and I jerked my knee upward as hard as I could.

  I heard a sharp grunt of pain, and he fell heavily off to the side. Hoping I’d caught his groin, I rolled away. I felt leaves brushing at me—I seemed to have rolled under a bush.

  I heard my attacker lurch to his feet and stagger a few steps. And then there was silence.

  I lay still, barely breathing.

  The silence held.

  And then I heard footsteps, pounding closer.

  “Kate!” called a voice. Ben’s voice.

  I heard a jumble of footsteps, some coming closer, others leaving.

  “Kate,” Ben called again.

  As loud as I could, I called back through the gag. There was a rustling, and hands reached for me. The hood came off, the gag came o
ut, and Ben was there, untying my hands and holding me as I retched, gasping for breath.

  “Everything all right down there?” The deep voice, accustomed to authority, came down from above. A dark figure stood high overhead on the Capitol steps, peering over the balustrade as I had done.

  Ben pulled me back into the gloom.

  A beam of light flashed across the ground, sweeping past Dr. Sanderson and then quickly jerking back. In that instant, I saw the pale sliver of ivory. The letter was still in Dr. Sanderson’s hand.

  “Jesus,” said the voice. Footsteps lumbered heavily down the stairs.

  Pulling Ben with me, I darted over to Dr. Sanderson, trying not to look at the slash across his neck. His hand was cold and already stiffening. I worked the letter from his grasp. It was wrapped around something hard.

  I turned to gather up my books. Ben knelt to help. The letters I’d left stashed inside Chambers were all still there: Roz’s notes, Granville’s letter to Child, and Ophelia’s letter to Granville.

  Quietly, calmly, Ben was talking. “This is your chance to clear yourself with the police,” he was saying quietly. “If you stay.”

  “Not till I read the letter.”

  “It may not be so easy to come back.”

  “The letter.”

  Ben nodded and took my elbow, guiding me deeper into the shadows just as the cop reached the bottom of the stairs. Cutting across the slope, we emerged from the magnolia grove onto the path that circled around the south side of the Capitol. Hurrying across the pavement, we scooted through the darkness under the taller park trees—elm and ash and oak—toward Independence Avenue. Behind us, I heard the crackle of a radio as the cop called for backup.

  In the near distance, a siren began to wail.

  Darting across the street toward the federalist entrance to the Rayburn House Office Building, Ben hailed a cab and we went speeding up into the Capitol Hill neighborhood. A few blocks east and north, we got out. Linking his arm in mine, Ben began to walk briskly up the street. I tried to pay attention, to figure out where we were headed, but Dr. Sanderson’s face kept swimming up into the darkness in front of me, the gash in his throat a silent screaming mouth. Swerving aside, I was humiliatingly sick in someone’s bushes.