“We do, and it is,” I answered. “Sherlock introduced himself at dinner two nights ago. You wouldn’t have noticed,” I said, putting as much sting into it as I could. “We became instant friends, didn’t we, Lock? The nickname just kind of happened.”
“I like it,” James said. “Lock. Not bad.”
“My name is Sherlock Holmes. I don’t respond well to nicknames—from either of you—but if you’re going to insist, since your brother’s middle name is Keynes, he could be called—”
“Don’t go there!” James declared.
“Where?” Sherlock said, goading him.
“Lock and Key?” I said. Both boys groaned. I grinned. “Adorable. And as for your snooty demand of no nicknames, I nickname everybody, don’t I, Jamie? And Lock it is. Don’t ask me why, but it suits you.”
Sherlock huffed and returned to his job at hand: studying a campus map included with the orientation folder.
“Did you even know we had a family Bible?” I asked James.
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“How weird is that? You know? We get a shout-out from the headmaster, which I could have done without, and then he brings up some family heirloom we’ve never heard of.”
“I think Baskerville is filled with stuff we haven’t heard of,” James said.
“Meaning?” I asked.
“It’s hyperbole,” Sherlock said. “He’s exaggerating to make a point, in part because of the note in his back pocket.”
James turned to Sherlock Holmes as if ready to decapitate him.
“Jamie?”
“It’s nothing. And I said cool it with the nickname!”
“We can assume it has to do with the missing Bible,” Sherlock said. “And because of the way Jamie responded to it—bewilderment with a dash of curiosity—we can further extrapolate that whatever is written there is not entirely clear. A puzzle, perhaps? A clue?”
“Moria’s the only one calls me Jamie, Lock. You’d better remember that!” He stabbed his sister with his eyes. “And not here at school ever again. Got it?”
“Easy, Dexter. I get it.”
“Another middle name?” Sherlock asked.
“TV show,” I said. “Cultural reference. Serial killer.”
“Ah,” Sherlock said. “I love a good mystery. Doesn’t everyone?”
“What’s the card say?” I asked.
“It’s for me, not you. Forget about it.”
“If it has to do with our family Bible, then it’s for me, too.”
“It doesn’t.”
“If I read it, then I’ll know you’re right,” I said.
“If he knew what it meant,” Sherlock interjected, “he’d be more willing to share it. Your brother is embarrassed because he has no idea.”
“As if you’d know!” James barked.
“Why do you suppose I’m perusing a map of the campus, Jamie? For my entertainment? Do you actually believe I don’t know every building on the campus? There are fourteen total. What’s interesting is that if that note contains a clue to the whereabouts of the Bible, as I believe it must, and if it suggests a campus location or a specific structure, or perhaps an element of one or more structures, then isn’t such a map the first place one should, would, turn to?”
“As if I’ve had time! And where do you get off acting like you know about my note? You don’t know anything.”
“Let me see it, Jamie,” I said, offering my outstretched hand. “Seriously.” I shook my open palm.
He was stuck on Sherlock’s meddling comments. “How could you possibly . . . What is it with you?”
“Am I close? Warm? Warmer?” Sherlock was pointing to various buildings on the school map. “Let’s see. What do they have in common? Windows. Floors. Doors. If I were directing you in a kind of scavenger hunt, it would need to be more specific. Chimney? Clock tower? Ivy covered? Something else structural? Contents? There are books in the library and Main House. A lab here and there: language lab, science lab. Also hymnals in the chapel. Music? Marble in the chapel. An organ. A piano in the common room and in the music rooms. This is fun, don’t you think! Give us a clue, won’t you, Jamie Keynes?”
“Shut . . . up!” he hollered.
“Is he right? Has Lock guessed your note? Seriously?”
“He’s a freak! I don’t get him. I don’t get you!” he said, shouting in Sherlock’s ear. I pulled him back.
“James! Come on! Back off! What is it?”
James looked as frightened as Sherlock looked amused. “He’s just . . . It’s just . . . plain weird, is all.”
“Because I’m painfully close?” Sherlock asked James. Then to me he declared, “Because I’m painfully close.”
James stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind.
I looked over at Sherlock apologetically. The English boy grinned back at me. When he lifted his hand slowly, I saw he held a red envelope and a small white piece of notepaper.
“You picked his pocket! How clever, Mr. Holmes,” I said.
“Let us get to it before he realizes he’s lost it. Afterward, I think it best if we leave it on the floor, don’t you?”
“Clever and mischievous!” I said, drawing James’s desk chair to Sherlock. “We’re going to get along great, you and me.”
“You and I,” he corrected. “You Yanks have butchered the use of ‘me’ to the point it’s barely recognizable.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Show me the note.”
I read the note my brother had received.
Aloft in the middle of the seven ribs you will find it, but only by night.
“I can understand why Jamie went nuts,” I said to Sherlock. “You were right about what it said. That is uncanny.”
“Lucky guess.”
“You’re not psychic or something, are you?”
“I am something,” he said, and I laughed.
“Yes, you are.” I didn’t mean to smile as widely as I did. It felt like I was flirting, which was definitely not the case. “‘Ribs.’”
“Only at night.”
“Is that significant?”
“It’s interesting, certainly.”
“Because?”
“Because there’s either something waiting there, or there isn’t. Right? It’s a curious choice to add night into the equation, given that the entire school is now in required study hall followed by an imposed curfew.”
“A prank? Someone angry at James because of Dr. Crudgeon’s assembly, and trying to get back at him by getting him into trouble? Oh my gosh! I’ll bet you’re right!”
“I didn’t say anything of the sort,” Sherlock said, “though it is an intriguing theory, that.”
“What else is there? Why else tell him it has to be done at night?”
“Why else, indeed? For that, one first must assume it is not a prank. So let us take that position, shall we?” The boy had a curious way about him. I got the feeling his mind worked at supernatural speeds, that he was somehow five steps ahead of me. I didn’t appreciate such arrogance, even if unspoken, and realized I would either have to admire it or, as James had done, resent it.
“You won’t make many friends if you’re always like this, you know.”
“Always like what? Myself? Then the friendships aren’t worth making, dear Moria. Would you have me a chameleon, always changing myself to fit the color of those around me? To what purpose? Am I to be six people? Nine? And what if I’m one color with one friend, another with another, and suddenly those two and I are together? What color then?” I’d hit some nerve, a dentist with a probe. “No! Better to know than to not know. A pillar of wood split into toothpicks won’t support a thing.”
“That is so random. Forget I said anything.”
“That’s an impossibility. Of course I can’t forget what you said. How is one supposed to forget what has already been heard? You realize scent and sound are the only two senses we cannot control. We can elect not to touch, to taste, to see. But once you say s
omething, you’d better be able to live with it, because it can’t be forgotten.”
After just ten minutes with Lock, I was beginning to understand why James had fled the room. I admired the boy greatly, I even felt drawn to be in his company in order to see what might come out of him next, but the idea of not being able to turn him off like I could a confusing TV show was indeed somewhat terrifying.
“I’ve bothered you,” he said, sounding anything but sincere. “My apologies.”
I snorted. He understood I wasn’t buying the apology. Later, I would look back and realize this was one of those moments we’d connected in ways two people always hope to connect, but rarely do. “Why do you think ‘night’ is part of it?”
“It’s a test, of course.”
“Of course?”
“A test of your brother’s determination. His will. Fortitude. Daring. Resolve.”
“Enough!” I said, stopping him. “Just because one is a know-it-all does not require one to demonstrate it at every opportunity.”
“Noted.”
“You’re saying he or she wanted to make it as difficult as possible on James. But what if the person sending this can’t get to the place, can’t leave the Bible until—”
“Study hall, when everyone else is accounted for.”
“Oh, you are the devil, Lock! Of course!” I thought about it for a moment. “But actually, no. I mean, who could do it if we’re all accounted for? Besides, you can’t take a bathroom break, run to your room in the Bricks, grab the Bible, put it somewhere else, and get back to study hall in any kind of believable time. The proctor will come looking for you.”
“If you’re a student.”
The way he just dropped that into my lap startled me. “What? You think a proctor is going to play a prank like that? Why?”
“The logical deduction is that it cannot be a student to place whatever it is, wherever it will be, if we accept it can only be placed during study hall. You must agree with me here. There is no other way to see it, Moria. Since, as you have so astutely pointed out, a fellow student’s role in such an act is unlikely to the point of impossible. And, since it is also highly questionable a proctor would engage in such activity, it leads us back to where we began: that the requirement for James to accomplish this task at night can only be seen as a challenge. A test. Someone is daring him. More to the point perhaps, he or she—or they—is also overly confident he won’t take the note to a proctor or the headmaster himself. That’s an interesting confidence. James is known to this person, I should think.”
I sat there in rapt attention, in awe of the boy I faced, yet desperate to appear only vaguely impressed. He had laid out the options like stones in a footpath, so easily followed. His was a mind capable of much faster processing than mine. I found it seductive; I wanted to hear more, I wanted to be around such brilliance in spite of the boy’s poor manners.
“A friend or close associate. But one willing to put James at risk of expulsion, should he be caught in the act. An interesting dichotomy, that. I suppose we must consider persons or a person who perceives James as a rival; but how has he gained a rival so quickly? We’ve only just arrived! So no! More likely a student, short-tempered or quick to judgment. Ah!” Sherlock went silent, staring into space as if able to see through walls. “Or . . .” He allowed the word to hang in the air, a day-old helium balloon unable to rise or fall. “Let’s consider the possibility of an adult behind these clues. Yes.” He was talking to himself, thinking aloud; I was no longer in the room. “But how, if at all, might the clues connect to the missing Bible? Perplexing, that.” He spun his chair to face me with such lightning speed that I tipped back and would have gone over had he not reached out to catch my hand—again, with a quickness more reserved for a striking snake. He righted me, returning me to balance. “As improbably and slightly foolish as it may sound,” he giggled girlishly, not at all becoming, “and with no possible motive I can discern at this exact moment, I do believe I may have hit upon it. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, an adult stole the Bible, wanting James, and James alone, to discover its contents. Thus, the clues are here to lead him to it! So I ask you this, Moria: What information is contained in this family Bible of yours?”
“I . . . ah . . . have never heard of it before.” I hated to sound so stupid and, more than that, did not want to appear ignorant, especially of things having to do with my own family. “Dr. Curmudgeon said family records and stuff like that.”
“Clever nickname. Yes, typically, lineage,” Sherlock said. “Birth dates. Who begot whom. A family tree of sorts if not literally. Perhaps cause of death?” he inquired to himself. “Hmm. Intriguing. It has a role here at Baskerville since its very presence here must be of some significance.”
“What is it?” I could perceive a veil of discouragement.
“Plainly, not enough, Moria. Sorely lacking, we might say. Hmm? There’s something there.” He shot his arm out in front of himself, fully extended, and rubbed his fingers together as if feeling grit in the air. Only a frost of mist remained, wafting like dissipating smoke. “Yet . . . nothing. As ephemeral as a ghost. There, but not there.” His dark eyes darted about. “More data points are needed. Perhaps the Bible and the clues are related, perhaps not. The timing would suggest the former, but one can be fooled by coincidence. You and I require two things, Moria. They are . . . ?”
He’d put me on the spot. I wanted so badly to prove myself his equal. “For one, what it is that’s been left for James. This note he got.”
“Brava!”
I bit back a grin of satisfaction. “Let’s see . . .”
“Get on with it! Haven’t got all day!”
“Shh! I’m thinking!” I felt hurried, disrupted, unsettled. I resented his interruption. “I’ve lost it,” I conceded. “You shouldn’t have hurried me, Lock. That wasn’t fair.”
“Whosoever it is who must yet venture into the prescribed location in order to leave said clue for James to find.”
It was so obvious, I felt the idiot and tried to talk my way out of my mistake. The person behind it in the first place. “Unless it was put there last night, or the night before,” I said.
Sherlock slapped the desk. This time, I did go over backward, right onto my head.
“Of course!” He jumped over the fallen chair and straddled me from above, feet on either side of me. He looked about nine feet tall from where I lay on the floor. “Moria,” he declared loudly, “you’re brilliant!”
CHAPTER 9
BONES AND RIBS
THANKFULLY, I RECEIVED A POSTCARD FROM Father that afternoon, putting to rest my concern over his silence and resetting the waiting period before my anxiety would begin to creep back in. The image on the front of the card was the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, but the postmark carried the zip code of Atlantic City, New Jersey, a contradiction I found curious if not intriguing. I congratulated myself on the fact that not everyone would have bothered to study the postmark; I am frightfully smart.
Nearing the end of mandatory study hall in the school library, I saw James react when he felt a hole burning in his back pocket. The red envelope wasn’t there! He stabbed his hand into the pocket for a second time to the same result, an overwhelming sense of panic and loss taking hold. He would never admit it to Sherlock Holmes, but he’d spent some of the study hall looking over the same brochure containing the campus map. He’d used the library—a first for him—to read up on the design of the school buildings, along with Baskerville’s vast art collection, trying to make sense of the reference to ribs in the note. For him, it all came back to the note:
Aloft in the . . . center? no . . . middle of the seven ribs . . . he? no . . . you will find it, but only by night.
He thought that was right. He would have exactly fifteen minutes between the end of evening study hall and the first room check by his hall master, Mr. Cantell. That gave James only a few minutes to check out the chapel. He’d read that it had a Hammerbeam roof with ex
posed trusses. He’d also found a very old black-and-white photo of the chapel being reconstructed, below which the caption quoted the architect saying “the bones of the superstructure will last a millennia.” Bones, as in ribs, he thought. Trouble was, the chapel wasn’t in the direction of the Bricks. To be seen in the vicinity would invite questions. The only students walking near to the chapel were other middles like me, some of whom lived across the street near the faculty housing. James, a good head taller, would need to blend in if he were to have any kind of chance to avoid being spotted and cited for not going directly to his dorm.
I need you to make a distraction, he wrote in a note, sliding it stealthily across the table to Clay Richmond.
Why would I help you? Richmond wrote back on the same note.
James had to think long and hard on that one. So study hall can end.
You know where the Bible is?
I think maybe. Do you?
I wish. OK. But you owe me.
As study hall dismissed, Clay Richmond wiped out on his skateboard and cried painfully for help. Seemingly everyone turned at once in his direction. All but one person.
Thus began James’s life of conspiracy. If I’m honest, which I most often am, he and I occasionally collaborated as brother and sister to deceive Father or Lois, Ralph or our cook. We told fibs. We embellished upon the truth where necessary to protect one or the other, or the both of us. I consider such behavior “expected” for siblings, though the only sibling I have is James, so I lack a proper reference point. But here, in the hallowed halls of Baskerville Academy, James Moriarty reached out to a known ne’er-do-well for assistance in an act that violated school rules and therefore made each boy beholden to the other in that they were now accomplices. James had discovered strength in numbers; he’d discovered others would do things for him when he had something to offer in return; he’d discovered that with the proper cover a person could accomplish things previously believed impossible.
He reached the chapel—the “bones” and ribs—without a hitch.
Late at night, the empty chapel morphed into a cavernous, echoey place that announced and reverberated James’s every movement. The sounds sloshed around like pool water after a cannonball. The tap of a heel or sole striking the marble floor pinged off the stone walls and dark stained-glass windows, repeating itself in slowly fading reflections until covered by the next errant noise. The squeak of a door, a sniffle, the pop of a knee joint. The century-old, inward-facing pews were crafted from wood so dark they looked almost ebony, a wide marble aisle separating them. The aisle reached a marble statue of a kneeling knight with sword and shield, whose back was carved as a lectern. Past the knight, a single step led up to the inward-facing choir pew opposite a grand pipe organ, all of which terminated in a semicircular apse that hosted a long linen-covered harvest table holding a matched pair of candelabras, their silver tentacles reaching for the ceiling forty feet overhead.
The Initiation Page 6
