Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Jean didn’t rephrase that—he knew what it meant.

  “Your parents and your aunt, they needed the replica for their movie.” Alasdair’s voice was quiet as a sword slipping from its scabbard. “They thought they’d organized a second replica, but the craftsman reneged on the bargain. Your father threatened him. Your mother and your brother burgled his flat for the plans. Your aunt had you steal the first and only replica. Problem solved, eh?”

  “How the—how do you know all that?”

  Alasdair’s half smile indicated dour satisfaction. Quentin didn’t need to know he’d been making an informed guess. “There’s a team working against you, lad. And if the car doors slamming outside are any indication, you’ll be telling your tale to the rest of them right soon now.”

  Quentin uttered a four-letter word that wasn’t “crap.” He looked desperately around the room, not like Tim assessing the potential for conflict, but like a rat trapped on a sinking ship. His knees started to buckle. Alasdair’s strong right arm held him up as his left hand opened the door.

  Olson was framed in the opening. “Mr. Cameron. Ms. Fairbairn, what’s . . .”

  In a few concise words, Alasdair explained the situation, while Quentin stood swooning beside him. Jean ripped her notes off the pad and handed them over. “Thanks,” Olson replied, folding the papers into his pocket.

  She met Alasdair’s part-indulgent, part-skeptical glance. No, the notes weren’t admissible evidence. She was less on the ball than behind the eight-ball.

  Saying nothing, Alasdair helped Olson bundle Quentin out the door, past the cocked whiskers of Bushrod and Bucktrout, to the police car waiting at the curb. There a uniformed officer did apply handcuffs, and folded the young man into the back seat, there to await, if not Olson’s, then certainly Stephanie’s pleasure.

  The word’s going to get out, Jean thought, that coming to us—or maybe to Alasdair, whatever—just rammed you further down on the hook. But then, if the word hadn’t already spread that they were semi-professional crime solvers, no one would be coming to begin with. Or stealing her computer.

  Alasdair led first Jean, then Olson, back into the house, his satisfaction edging into irritation, or so Jean deduced when his gesture at the empty laptop case was a spear-thrust jab of his forefinger. “And now we’ve been burgled.”

  Olson inspected the desk and jotted down the answers to the relevant questions, but a vanishing computer was only on his list of priorities at all because it was Jean’s, and the odds of a full crime scene team showing up were next to nil. He said at last, “I’ll tell Stephanie and write up a report. In the meantime—” he dug into another pocket, produced a folded paper, and handed it to Jean, “—Stephanie thought you’d like to have this.”

  Jean unfolded the paper to reveal a photocopy of what had to be the Charlotte document, eighteenth-century handwriting, sketch of the Witch Box, and all. “All right! Thanks!”

  Alasdair craned to look. “Well then,” he said, which was better than, “I told you so.” Jean already knew Stephanie was not trying to compete with her. Saying something apologetic now would just make it all worse.

  She half-turned away, smoothing the paper carefully onto the desk but not seeing it, not yet.

  “There was a copy of that at Dr. Evesdottir’s house and another at her office,” Olson explained. “Oh, and Stephanie says thanks for the tips about Mrs. Dingwall’s shoes. She’s got forensics working on it. And, let’s see, we’ve found the custodian who was walking along Nicholson Street at the time of the murder, but he didn’t see a thing. He’d come around the corner of North England Street, past the Randolph House, not past the tree. He had his back turned to it the entire time. In the dark,” he added unnecessarily. Jean could remember the scene just fine.

  She asked. “Did he hear anything?”

  “No, he was listening to his iPod, with the earbuds, you know. He didn’t even hear all the excitement after y’all found the body. We’ve got no reason to implicate him in the murder, but we’ll keep an eye on him.”

  Alasdair shrugged, almost imperceptibly. So close and yet so far. “Let’s be getting the Dingwall lad to the station, then, Sergeant.”

  Let’s? Well, of course. The theft of the replica was Alasdair’s case, first and foremost. Of course he’d be the one conducting the witness to the interview room.

  “Yes, sir.” Tucking away his notebook, Olson threw open the door.

  The cats had moved to dead center of the top step. Eric was advancing up the sidewalk under the chill eye of the police officer waiting by the car. And presumably under Quentin’s blurry eyes, but Jean couldn’t see anything more past the tinted windows of the police car than a lanky shadow.

  “Is there a problem, sir?” Eric asked over the two black-and-white backs, even as his dark eyes registered the police incursion and answered his own question.

  “And you are?” Olson asked, stepping over the cats and descending the steps.

  “Eric Mason,” the young man responded.

  Jean quelled a groan. He couldn’t be named Smith or Jones, could he?

  Unfazed, Alasdair homed in on his potential witness. “We’ve had a computer stolen. We’re thinking someone walked in the door while the char . . .”

  “The housekeeper,” Jean murmured.

  “ . . . was scrubbing the bath or hoovering the bedroom.”

  “Vacuuming,” murmured Jean.

  Alasdair darted her a quick blue gleam. He was communicating just fine, thank you.

  Eric’s amiable face crumpled into a frown. “Oh no. I’m so sorry, sir.”

  “We’re not blaming the housekeeping staff,” Jean told him.

  Olson added, “We just want to know if anyone saw anything.”

  “It’s a busy intersection,” Eric replied. “People are coming and going all the time. I didn’t notice anything when I picked up the dishes. I’ll ask housekeeping . . .” He paused, his gaze turning inward as he apparently reconstructed some scene. “There was a man on the sidewalk throwing pebbles for the cats to play with. He had to step aside for the housekeeper’s buggy. Bald head with a fringe of gray hair, gray beard, college sweatshirt.”

  Alasdair’s narrowed lips and flared nostrils named a name, but Jean spoke first. “Matthew Finch.”

  “Him?” Olson asked. “We’re already trying to locate him. I sent a uniform to his office and then to his home, but he’s not there.”

  “Try his wife’s house,” suggested Alasdair.

  Jean said, “And his mother’s.”

  “We’re on it.” Olson handed Eric a business card. “If you find out anything, let us know.”

  “I sure will, sir.” Eric’s gaze moved worriedly from face to face to face.

  He and Olson looked like opposing pawns on a chessboard, Jean thought, except they were on the same side. “Thank you, Eric.”

  “I’m just sorry it happened, ma’am.” He backpedaled down the walk and past the policeman.

  Alasdair snugged the knot of his tie against his throat, not that it had slipped a millimeter since he tightened it up this morning. You would never suspect he was capable of unbuttoning himself. Jean was beginning to think they’d cycled back around to their first few meetings, when she’d thought ice water ran in his veins.

  “Are you all right on your own, then?” he asked her.

  She ran through possible replies, from Kelly’s “You don’t have to insult me,” to “I don’t feel personally threatened—yet,” and defaulted to, “Sure. I’ve got the document to keep me occupied.”

  “I’ll be back in good time for tea. Dinner. Supper. Whatever you folk are calling it.” This time his all-business expression didn’t even get as far as the ambiguous, Jean, I’m not so sure. Stepping carefully over the feline double doormat, he strode past Olson toward the parking lot.

  Jean stood in the doorway until the police car disappeared around the corner, followed by their own rental car. Then she looked down at Bucktrout—or was it Bushrod?�
�and asked, “He did mean to include me on the team he mentioned to Quentin, didn’t he? He’s not deliberately marginalizing me any more than I’m deliberately marginalizing him. We’ve got our own spheres of influence, that’s all. Our own areas of expertise. And if you think of any other trendy catchphrases I can use, just meow.”

  The cats stretched, strolled through the open door, and settled down on the rug for a grooming session.

  With a sigh, Jean followed, locking the door behind her. Then she fell greedily on the Charlotte document.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Being a photocopy, the paper was standard 8½ by 11, leaving Jean no evidence for the size of the original document, other than that it wasn’t much bigger than 8½ by 11. The writing was perfectly legible—Jessica hadn’t reduced its size to make her copy.

  Charlotte had written her message in the fine “Italian hand” considered appropriate for a lady. The long-tailed s’s that looked like lower-case f’s tended to make the unwary reader interpret documents of the period with a sort of lisp, but Jean knew better. Still she mouthed the words as she read them.

  Herewith a rendering of ye notorious Witch Box, a valu’d artifact of ye Lord Bothwell of late Memory in my Father’s Family. Ye barren Space amongst the carv’d leaves did once hold ye Am Fear Uaine, Clach Giseag, known to Countryfolk as ye Green Man, a Forest Spirit, ye Forbidden Stone. Ye Stone of green Hue, set in age’d Silver, stolen a Century since by a Maid bound for Virginia, meaning to protect herself from ye many Sicknesses there found.

  Ye Colonie of Virginia today a more salubrious Lieu, I and my Children have returned thence, my poor Husband still laboring to recall the Citizens thereof to their Duty to Crown and Empire. There I spoke with the Maid’s unfortunate Child, Thomasina, who apprais’d me of her Mother’s Taint of Witchery, as Folk foolishly believ’d.

  Absurd Beliefs do however digressively provide us with Pleasance, as Bothwell’s Trial inspir’d a Play of Master Shakespeare’s, this Intelligence reaching me from Mr. Malone, who request’d a viewing of ye Witch Box and who gift’d me this Paper as a Gentleman and a Scholar.

  Charlotte, Lady Dunmore, Blair, North Britain, ye 2nd July, 1776.

  Well, Jean thought. Jessica had told the truth about the contents of the document, if not about its origins. And yes, the drawing of the Witch Box did show it unchanged from Charlotte’s day to this, even making allowances for the stylized nature of her sketch. She’d used straight lines to denote the sides of the Box and filled them with curving ones representing the plants, the faces, the hinges, all more suggested than detailed. But the spot for the missing charm stone was obviously, evocatively, bare.

  Even though Bothwell had died over a hundred years before Charlotte was born, his reputation must have left a tendril of uneasiness curling through later generations. But she acknowledged the relationship right up front—no academic waffle-words for her. And she hadn’t found the Witch Box unsettling, either, not if she brought it to the colonies with her.

  What she had done was use the politically correct “North Britain.” Scotland, in other words, at the nadir of its eternal quest for independence.

  Ironic, Jean thought, that on the exact day Charlotte signed her note and filed it away, back in the colonies the rebellious citizens were signing a document of their own—the Declaration of Independence, with its long-tailed s’s like lower-case f’s. There even Jefferson’s rational, scientific soul had flirted with conspiracy theory by blaming George III for a laundry list of villainies—some of them internal American problems—in order to prove George was a despot. And George and his cronies, including Charlotte’s friends and relations, returned the favor by saying the rebellion was guided by “turbulent and seditious persons” working to delude the colonists.

  Jean spent a long moment admiring the drawing and the shape of the letters while Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell clanged in the back of her mind . . . Wait a minute. That clangor was less celebratory than cautionary. She heard the echo of her own words. A few historians would be interested in a message written and sketch drawn by Charlotte Murray, but there’s nothing in particular at stake. And the Folger Library in D.C. specializes in Shakespeare. If Charlotte said something about Macbeth, they’d be interested.

  Well, okay, Charlotte did say something about Macbeth, and probably Jessica had indeed sent the original document to the Folger, not that anyone had necessarily asked them yet, between all the other investigations under way and it being Sunday to boot. But Jean’s every instinct jostled forward insisting there was more to it than that.

  Mr. Malone. A gentleman and a scholar who’d asked Charlotte to show him the Witch Box, and who’d given her the piece of paper. Since when was a piece of writing paper an appropriate hostess gift? And where had Jean heard that name recently?

  Behind her, feline tongues slurping through fur sounded like the drip of rain. Outside the window, the sun shone. Her mental search engine dredged up an answer—she’d heard the name from Louise Dietz, at the theater. Something about Malone being a Shakespeare scholar who was a pretty shady character.

  Jean reached toward the empty computer case, then thumped the desk in frustration. Rats! She’d have to revert to actually asking another human being.

  Where was her bag? Ah, on the end of the couch. Dodging around the cats, she dug out her cell phone and punched Hugh’s number. One ring, two, three . . . Surely rehearsal was long over.

  “Hullo, Jean.”

  “Hugh, are you still at the theater?”

  “No, a collection of students turfed us out. They’re doing Mac, er, the Scottish play, their instructor was saying.”

  “I need to talk to their instructor. Louise Dietz. Where are you now? Can you run back to the theater and get her to call me?”

  “No worries, we’re just finishing our lunch at the café not a block behind the stage door. If they’re still there, I’ll pass on the message and your number as well.”

  “Thanks. I really appreciate it.” Jean snapped the phone shut and blessed the whims of Edinburgh real estate that had landed her next door to Hugh.

  She looked back at the document, this time considering the contractions and the antique phrasing. Tim and Sharon could well have thought there was a cipher hidden in the message or in the drawing. Their fertile brains had no doubt made a leap of not faith but fantasy, deciding that Charlotte came to Virginia looking for the charm stone because she wanted to keep some peasant from finding it and using it to reveal Francis Bacon’s papers. And yet there was no need to conjure a conspiracy theory to establish that Charlotte and her families both biological and by marriage wanted to keep themselves members of the ruling class.

  Jean stood up. The bottle was sitting on the mantel, its tiny face impassive. The cats were arranged artistically on the rug. She dawdled off to the pantry and made herself that cup of cocoa, thinking Preserve us from a disorder chocolate cannot cure—to paraphrase something Alasdair had once said about whiskey.

  A wee dram of whiskey was on her agenda for later, however “later” was defined.

  She’d just sat back down and lifted the steaming cup to her lips, when her phone struck up its electronic band. Thumping the cocoa down on the desk and then cringing, afraid she’d splashed the document, photocopy or no photocopy, she grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

  “This is Louise Dietz,” said the by now familiar, waspish voice. “Your friend Hugh says you want to talk to me.”

  “Yes, I do, if you’ve got a minute.” And, without waiting for a yes or a no, “When we were talking earlier, you mentioned a Shakespeare scholar named Malone.”

  “Edmond Malone, yes.”

  “Is there any way he could have known Charlotte Murray, Lady Dunmore?”

  “Sure. He lived in London during the same time she did and hung out with various movers and shakers like Samuel Johnson. Why? Something about the, ah, Scottish play and Charlotte’s ancestry?”

  “Yes, sort of. You said he was a shady character. Why?
”

  “He did some very good work at Stratford, correcting the details of Shakespeare’s life, and for a while was so trusted people gave him original records, copies of the plays, and so forth. But then he wouldn’t give them back, or worse, he gave them back with bits cut out of them, and his reputation collapsed. You say he knew Charlotte Murray?”

  “There’s a note from Charlotte mentioning Malone. And Macbeth and the Witch Box.”

  Louise’s gasp of enlightenment sounded like the preliminary gust of a hurricane. “Is that Jessica’s original source? What does that have to do with Bacon’s Rebellion?”

  “What? Oh, it doesn’t have anything to do with Nathaniel Bacon, it doesn’t even have anything to do with Francis Bacon, although that name probably came up when Jessica was talking about it.” Jean couldn’t reveal all—not that she knew all—to Louise or anyone else with the investigations still underway. “Thanks, Louise. I appreciate your calling me. I owe you one.”

  “But, but . . .”

  Making an apologetic face, Jean hit “end.” What she owed Louise was a full explanation. Eventually. Whenever the Charlotte document made its public debut.

  Jean turned on the desk lamp, the better to inspect the white paper with its charcoal gray markings. It was creased into four quarters, perhaps by Olson, perhaps by Jessica. A brown dot of cocoa adorned one corner. A couple of thin horizontal smudges were not, say, a streak of pencil eraser applied by Jessica, but had been copied from the original.

  What, Jean wondered, was on the back of Charlotte’s note? Lines of type that had bled through the paper? Why would the note have been run through a printing press . . . She jerked upright with a gasp of her own. That was it! Charlotte’s note was the back!

  As for the front, Malone wouldn’t have thanked Lady Dunmore for his look at the Witch Box and for the story of her notorious ancestor by giving her a blank piece of ordinary paper. He’d have presented her with a gift. What if he’d given her one of his borrowed—or stolen—bits of Shakespeare ephemera? A playbill for Macbeth? That would be valuable, yes. A page from an early printing of the play itself? That would be virtually priceless. Today.