A Crimson Warning

by Tasha Alexander

  “He’s frightful,” Ivy said. “I have a hard time believing he’s ever good. Where is he from?”

  “The Assyrians worshipped him as did the Babylonians,” Mr. May said.

  “It’s hideous,” I said, staring at the menacing face, its eyes set too far apart and its wide mouth partly open to reveal long fanglike front teeth. “But gloriously hideous.” Again, I copied down all the information from the display card, not knowing what might be important.

  “We have two objects from the Department of Oriental Arts,” Mr. May said. “Shall we proceed?”

  Oriental Antiquities took up three galleries on a level slightly above the ground floor. We descended the slick marble stairs, pausing to gape at a magnificent Chinese sculpture from the landing halfway down.

  “Jade’s obvious for this section,” Ivy said. “Let me set myself to finding it. I shouldn’t have any trouble doing that on my own.”

  “Very good,” I said. “That leaves stone and gold. The only other department is Medieval and Modern Europe. What do you think, Mr. May? It seems to me our gold is likely to be there.”

  “Entirely likely,” he said. “Let’s look for stone in here.”

  I knew very little about Oriental art, and was taken aback by its exotic beauty. Within seconds, the Hindu gods and the elaborate carved scenes depicting their trials and triumphs that filled the gallery space had thoroughly captivated me. I wanted to make sketches of them, to find books that recounted their mythology. I shook my head, forcing myself to regain my focus, and concentrated on my work.

  I’d worked through two-thirds of the main gallery and was almost at the end of the Indian section when I saw it. It was the number that first caught my notice, as I’d made myself read the cards before looking at the objects, lest I found myself distracted by their beauty. The number 187 popped out at me and as soon as I’d confirmed the object was indeed what we were looking for, I waved to Mr. May, who had moved into the Chinese portion of the exhibit.

  “Mrs. Brandon is up to her ears in jade,” he said. “She wants us to meet her when we’re done.”

  “Durga,” I said. “OA 1872.7-1.89. Isn’t she spectacular?”

  “Indeed,” he said. “She’s attacking Mahisha, a demon who’s trying to plunge the world into cosmic disorder. It’s a wonderful story. She’s got Shiva’s trident and Vishnu’s discus—they’ve lent them to her because they’re afraid they’ll be destroyed if they go after the beast themselves—see how Durga’s stabbing him with the trident?”

  “He looks like a buffalo,” I said.

  “Precisely,” Mr. May said. “A terrible buffalo demon. Durga means invincible, you know.”

  “Fitting,” I said, gazing upon the magnificent piece. The goddess’s arms—I was trying to make out if she had six or eight—were clad with wide cuff bracelets. She held a sword above her head in one hand and the trident in another. Unfortunately, some of her other hands had been broken off. I wondered if originally she’d been even better armed than she appeared now. Some sort of fearsome creature—a lion, perhaps, crouched below the demon, his jaws clamping down on its leg. I loved the tall, elaborate headdress on Durga’s head, and her heavy earrings. But most of all, I loved her strength, loved that it was she whom the other gods summoned when doom seemed inevitable.

  “Are you still with me?” Mr. May asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “You do know how I love this place. It’s hard not to get a little distracted. But I promise, I am on task. We should see what Ivy’s got up to. Once we’re done with jade, all that’s left for us is the Middle Ages.”

  We went off in search of my friend, who stopped us the moment we approached. “Don’t even think about interfering,” she said. “I am determined to find this one on my own.”

  The cases in front of her were full to the bursting, many of the items in them tiny. There were amulets, combs, beads, and countless discs with holes in the center. One case held blades made from jade, which surprised me, as I would not have expected something essentially translucent to be strong enough to be an effective weapon. There were brush pots carved with stunning landscape scenes and images of farmers hard at work, pendants shaped like curvy dragons, and strange, square objects called cong, with tubular holes in the center. I particularly liked a small statue of an animal—some sort of leopard, I thought, crouched and ready to pounce on its prey.

  It took only a few more minutes for Ivy to throw up her hands, victorious. “I see it: 28,” she said, a smile on her face. “And look at him.” The piece was a jade mask, barely human, with horrible veins in his forehead, horns on his head, and fangs shooting out of his open mouth.

  “Jade was considered extremely potent by the ancient Chinese. It could offer one protection, even in the afterlife,” Mr. May said. “But this isn’t the sort of thing I’d want in my house, no matter how powerful it was.”

  “It’s scary,” Ivy said. “I’d have nightmares.”

  “Do you think?” I asked, tilting my head. “There’s a beauty to him. And such a lovely contrast—the frightening demon fashioned out of such a beautiful, smooth stone.”

  “I’d be happy to never lay eyes on it again,” Ivy said. “But that may be due to nothing more than it having taken me so long to find it.”

  “This last one shouldn’t be too difficult,” Mr. May said. “Come back upstairs. The Medieval and Modern Europe galleries aren’t excessively large, and we know we’re looking for gold.”

  He was right; it wasn’t difficult. We each started at a different spot and quickly read the catalog numbers of each pertinent object. For all the breathtaking gold in the museum, Mr. Dillman had chosen something understated but deeply moving to represent the category. I found the piece, and felt my limbs go heavy and my blood seem to stop moving when I saw what went with the number. A slim, gold and enameled ring.

  “Seventeenth century,” I said as my friends gathered around. “A mourning ring. The inscription reads, Memento mori—‘In remembrance of death.’”

  Around the outside of the ring was a series of bleak images. First, a skeleton holding an hourglass, which I took to be a reminder of our own mortality. Then came tools for digging a grave, and a sheath in which a body could be wrapped before burial.

  “It reminds me of Cordelia’s locket,” I said. “That didn’t start as mourning jewelry, but it certainly became just that.”

  The room felt colder, and I was happy to turn away from the ring. In the case behind me, there was another display. More mourning rings, a great heap of them, all from the seventeenth century. I thought of all the people who died during the great plagues of the Middle Ages, and wondered what had become of those who had worn these rings. How long did they survive after the loss of their loved one? Did they succumb to the disease as well? Next to the rings was a small, gold cup, which had been made out of melted-down bands. After their owners had died, there must have been no one left to want even their most precious jewelry.

  It was frightening how temporary the significance of any person was in the end.

  27

  We thanked Mr. May profusely, and promised to return for tea and scones another day, as we couldn’t pause even for a short break at the moment. I was terrified that every moment squandered put Lady Glover in more dire peril. We left the museum and went straight to the reading room, where the clerk who had previously assisted Colin and me recognized me at once.

  “Ah, Lady Emily, back so soon, are you?” he asked. “Let me get the deputy superintendant for you.”

  The gentleman came quickly, and greeted us with an easy affability. He became more tense, however, when I told him what I wanted to do and why. “That will be no small undertaking, Lady Emily,” he said. “And we can’t possibly go through the entire library.”

  “We won’t need to,” I said. “Mr. Dillman would take his fiancée to her father’s library after she’d found the object he’d wanted her to in the museum. The object was a clue of its own—she’d use it to find a boo
k, and he’d hide something for her either in or behind it.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what to look for,” the deputy superintendant said.

  “Let’s take each of the six subjects in turn. Perhaps we can look through the stacks and see if anything’s out of place. Because I know your books are not misshelved.”

  “No, madam, they are not. But we have three miles of bookcases, and twenty-five miles of shelves. This is an impossible task.”

  “We don’t have to search the entire library,” I said. “But if there were enough of us working, we could cover each subject in a relatively short period of time.”

  “I’ll let you try,” he said. “And will offer as much assistance as I can. I feel I must warn you of possible disappointment, however.” He summoned four clerks and took us back into the Iron Library. Light streamed into the stacks from its glass roof, traveling through slats in the iron floor designed to keep even the lowest levels bright. Bright was perhaps too strong a word. The librarians told me they carried lanterns with them nearly all the time.

  We made our way through the maze of iron and set ourselves in front of the section where all the volumes to do with ancient Egyptian papyri were shelved. Ivy and I focused on bottom shelves, while the librarians climbed tall ladders and inspected everything above us. Together we checked that each title belonged to the subject.

  They all did.

  So we followed with Medieval mourning jewelry. And then Assyria and Babylon. Halfway through the books on ancient Chinese jade, I shouted Huzzah!, which brought the clerks and Ivy to my side in a flash. I apologized for having been so loud, but could not squash my delight. There, tucked between two innocuous books about the Ming Dynasty was The Seven Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World; Or, The History and Geography, and Antiquities of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, and Sassanian, Or New Persian Empire, written by a Mr. George Rawlinson.

  “It’s exactly what I wanted,” I said. “He left it in the wrong place to tell us where to look.”

  Ivy peered over my shoulder. “I don’t doubt for a moment these great ancient monarchies are devastatingly fascinating, but I still don’t quite understand what you’re on to.”

  I pulled the surrounding books off the shelf and reached my hand to feel where I wasn’t quite tall enough to see. Straining, I stretched farther, and felt something distinctly unbooklike. I inadvertently pushed it, rough and prickly, out of grasp when I tried to pick it up. One of the taller clerks stepped forward and brought it down for me.

  “Well done, Emily,” Ivy said, looking at the parcel. “I admit I had very little faith in the enterprise.”

  Before we turned to analysis of what we’d found, we carefully returned all the books to their proper places. Then, thanking the deputy superintendant and his clerks profusely, we started to leave.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” the deputy superintendant asked.

  “I’ll leave that for my husband,” I said. “It’s Crown business, after all.” I didn’t mean it, of course, but I didn’t want to open it in public. Not without having any idea what it contained. All I knew was there was a screaming good chance the information therein was important enough to have cost two people their lives.

  Within a few moments, we’d secured a cab and were speeding back to Park Lane. We did not, however, stop at my house. Instead, we continued on to the Glovers’, where from out the cab’s window we could see a group of police officers had gathered on the front pavement, my husband standing in the middle of them.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, standing on my tiptoes in a vain effort at being seen.

  “Emily?” Colin spun around and pushed his way to me. “Go inside at once, and don’t come out until I get you. You, too, Ivy. I hope you both enjoyed the museum.”

  I knew from his tone not to ask questions, or to tell him yet what we’d found. A dour servant opened the door for us and put us in the Egyptian room, where we sat and waited.

  “Do you think it’s safe to look?” I asked Ivy, pulling the mysterious package out from the folds of my skirts, where I’d hidden it when we alighted from the cab.

  “I don’t see why not,” she said. “There’s no one else here.”

  Which was when the door opened. We both jumped, but it was only a maid who entered the salon, not someone who might have a nefarious interest in what we were hiding.

  “Would you ladies care for some tea or perhaps cognac? Cognac’s what madam preferred in the afternoon.”

  “Have you had news of her?” I asked. The girl’s use of the past tense worried me.

  “Have you not heard?” she asked. “I thought that’s why you were here.”

  “No,” I said. “Please tell us.”

  She was a little skittish. She went to the door, opened it, peered into the corridor, then shut it again and returned to us. “I don’t know all the details, madam, but it seems they’ve found one of the sleeves from the dress Lady Glover was wearing when they took her.”

  “Where did they find it?” I asked.

  “In Hyde Park, madam,” she said. “I don’t think I’d be going there anymore if I was you. Isn’t safe there, is it?”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you,” Ivy said. “Did they find anything else?”

  “Not that we’ve heard below stairs, but that’s not saying there couldn’t be more.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “And I think we will have some cognac.”

  “Feeling the need for fortification?” Ivy asked after the girl had gone.

  “I’m worried sick about Lady Glover, but I know I can’t let that distract me,” I said. I’d buried the parcel in my skirts again when the maid had opened the door, and hadn’t pulled it out yet. “We should wait until we know we won’t be interrupted.”

  It took nearly a quarter of an hour for our drinks to arrive. I asked the maid to ensure we would not be disturbed except by my husband, and then took a sip of the golden liquid. Its warmth was soothing. Confident we were alone, I set the parcel on the table between us.

  It was wrapped in coarse fabric, a sturdy burlap. I tugged at the twine that bound it—it was much narrower at one end than the other and round, like a cylinder. Or a bottle.

  Which is exactly what it was. Wrapped tightly around it was a stack of papers. I removed them and examined the bottle first. It was about half full with a muddy-looking liquid. Long, rusty nails stuck out above the muck, and as I turned it in my hands, I saw the sad remains of a little toad in it. And then a large, black spider floated to the top.

  “I don’t like this,” Ivy said. “I don’t like spiders. Not at all.”

  “This one can’t do you any harm,” I said, placing the bottle carefully on the table. I wasn’t any happier than Ivy with what we’d found. Not because I disliked spiders—they didn’t bother me in the least—but because there was something deeply disturbing about the contents of the bottle. Everything about it seemed evil.

  I shuddered.

  And then I unrolled the papers and started to read.

  “Mr. Foster is going to have a great deal of explaining to do,” I said.

  * * *

  Colin sorted things out with Scotland Yard as quickly as he could, but it was nearly another hour before he joined us in the Egyptian room. I offered him cognac, but he wanted to go home, and he did not want to discuss what we’d found until we were there. Three police remained in front of the Glovers’ house, and I could see them watching us as we walked along the street. They gave a brisk wave when they saw we’d arrived with no incident.

  “Is there some reason to think we, specifically, aren’t safe?” I asked, pouring my husband two fingers of Glenmorangie the instant we were settled in the library.

  “No,” he said, taking the glass and thanking me. “They’re just on edge, that’s all.”

  “Has Lord Glover received anything more from the kidnapper?” Ivy asked. “He must be absolutely torn up over this.”

  “Some
one found the sleeve, along with a note pinned to it—I assume the servants would have told you that—in the park this morning. It didn’t take long for the police to figure out it belonged to Lady Glover. Her maid confirmed it was what she’d been wearing when she was last seen.”

  “What did the note say?” I asked.

  “Would you like to see more of your wife than just her sleeve?” he said. “They’ve made a thorough search of the park, but found nothing else.”

  “Poor Lord Glover,” I said.

  “He’s seeking consolation in his club,” Colin said. “Insists he doesn’t want to stay in the house. His man will bring him any messages sent for him—but not until after he’s shown them to me.”

  “So there’s no news beyond that?” I asked. “No instructions for the delivery of the ransom?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “If it’s any consolation, we have a new direction for you to follow,” I said. “Our day has been shatteringly productive.”

  I passed him the papers we’d found wrapped around the bottle.

  “Foster?” Colin asked, rising to his feet and starting to pace. “Foster owns the match factory? He’s an advocate for the working class. He wouldn’t stand for the conditions in that place.”

  “Perhaps he’s never taken the time to visit,” I said.

  “I’ve looked into the details of the business,” he said. “And saw no mention of Foster’s name. Furthermore, what they’re doing may not be strictly illegal. There’s a way in which, technically, they are providing a service to families who don’t want to see their infirm loved ones in a workhouse.”

  “But Foster does own it,” I said. “We’ve proof of that now. And we know Dobson and Florence are working for whoever killed Mr. Dillman. Surely this implicates Mr. Foster?”

  “It may indeed,” Colin said.

  “He’s certainly got motive for wanting Mr. Dillman dead—”

  “If he knew about these papers,” Colin said. “We don’t know that he did.”