What Time Devours

by A. J. Hartley

  Julia McBride was obviously the headline act, but it was tough to follow Angela, and Julia seemed more nervous than he had ever seen her. The paper seemed solid enough and was warmly received, but she seemed out of sorts, and when Chad fielded a question about clothing and started talking about servants’ attire in general, she cut him off irritably. When it was all over, she spent an age fiddling with her sheaf of notes, and Thomas was sure she was avoiding having to talk to anyone. That might have been as well, because it was Angela who had gathered the telltale huddle of admirers.

  “Interesting panel,” said a woman beside him.

  Thomas found himself standing next to Katrina Barker.

  Time to wheel out further evidence of my unbelonging.

  “Yes,” he managed. “Who knew buttons could produce so much material?”

  She started to nod, then picked up the pun and began to laugh.

  “Excellent,” she said, wagging a finger as she sailed through the crowd like the Queen Mary.

  Thomas slipped out of the room, down the hall, and out the front door before he had really decided to leave. His hesitation outside cost him, and when he turned to go back in, he found Mrs. Covington looming.

  “If you intend to come in, you will need to have registered,” she said, intoning the words like some high church minister.

  Thomas just turned and was walking away when someone fell into step beside him. Chad.

  “Good paper,” said Thomas.

  “Could have been better,” he said.

  He didn’t look at Thomas, so there was no gratitude for the politeness even in his face.

  “Not staying for requests from editors to submit to their journals?” said Thomas.

  “Right,” said Chad. “No, I’m running errands for Professor McBride. As befits my stature.”

  “I’m sure she was very proud of your work.”

  “Yeah?” said Chad, with a quick, sneering glance. “What would you know about it?”

  “You know,” said Thomas, rounding on him, “I’m really not in the mood to be condescended to by a jumped-up little nothing like you, so just take the compliment and shut up, all right?”

  It was like he’d slapped him. The boy withered, lost at least a decade, and flushed. He opened his mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “I’m sorry,” said Thomas. “I’ve just had some not-so-great news and . . .”

  “It’s okay,” said Chad, lowering his eyes. The boyish humility was already morphing back into surly adolescence.

  “She obviously values you, is all I’m saying,” Thomas offered. “Julia, I mean.”

  “Yeah, when she needs someone to go buy her a jump drive she values me,” Chad said, scowling. “But when it comes to answering questions about my work—my work—that’s another story.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t have set up the panel if she didn’t respect your work.”

  “Oh, she respects it all right,” he muttered. “Maybe a little too much.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The boy colored again and looked down: a kid caught talking in church.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Forget it. Look, I’m going this way. I’ll see you later.”

  And he peeled off down a side street at a jog. Thomas wasn’t sure if it was just the result of the boy’s professional anxieties combined with Thomas’s putdown, but he was sure that Chad was retreating, kicking himself for whatever he thought he had revealed.

  CHAPTER 42

  Back at the hotel the landlady was hovering with a slightly affronted look.

  “A Constable Robson wants you to call him,” she said.

  He thanked her but offered no explanation while she loitered restraining herself from telling him that this was a respectable guest house, and that if he was going to bring it into disrepute he should pack his bags . . .

  “Could I make a long-distance call first?” said Thomas.

  She was a muscular woman, with bobbed, graying hair and bright dark eyes.

  “Where to?” she said. She seemed to ask out of surprise. He couldn’t imagine his answer would make any difference, which actually took the pressure off.

  “Japan,” he said.

  She didn’t actually stagger, but something flitted through her eyes.

  “I’m afraid we have no way of charging guests for overseas calls,” she said, polite.

  “It’s important,” said Thomas. “You can time it and guess. Or charge me when you get the phone bill.”

  “We’re just not set up for this kind of thing,” she said, as if he had suggested something improper.

  “I’ll pay in advance,” he said, fishing pound coins from his pocket and spilling them onto the telephone table. “And you can bill me if you don’t think it’s enough. It doesn’t matter how much it is. I really don’t care.”

  She considered the money, then him in the dim light of the hall, and he could tell that she was interested in people’s stories.

  “You mind using this one?”

  “That’s fine.”

  She checked her watch. Thomas turned away and dialed. By the time Kumi answered, the landlady had retreated to the kitchen.

  His wife sounded tired, but glad to hear from him.

  “The surgery is tomorrow,” she said.

  “Tomorrow!?”

  “They didn’t want to wait, just in case. It has been a few days since they got the biopsy results . . .”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.”

  “It’s okay, Tom. Really. But yes, they’re going to operate tomorrow. I can’t eat tonight and have to be up at five so I’m going to bed now . . .”

  “You want me to come?” he cut in. “I could come. I could go to the airport right now.”

  “And I’ll be unconscious when you get here,” she said, and he thought he could hear her smile. “No, Tom. Not yet. Give me your phone number there and I’ll pass it on to Tasha Collins at the consulate here. One way or another they’ll get word to you the moment it’s over. You’ll probably know something before I do.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’ll be sleeping.”

  “Right.”

  “And Tom?”

  “Yes?”

  “If it is bad news,” she said. “If they can’t get it out, or it’s bigger than they thought, or it’s obviously spread already . . .”

  “Yes?” he said, quickly, to stop her from saying any more.

  “Then I’d like you to come. Please.”

  “Okay.”

  Thomas warned the landlady that he had given her number to Kumi and, when the woman started to look indignant, told her why. She blinked, then nodded tightly.

  “I’ll get you the portable,” she said. “You can keep it in your room. For privacy.”

  “Right,” said Thomas. “Thanks.”

  “You want something for lunch? I could do you a sandwich.”

  “That would be great,” said Thomas, grateful as much for the consideration as for the food.

  “Ham and cucumber, all right?”

  “Perfect. Thank you, Mrs. . . .”

  “Hughes.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hughes.”

  “I’ll have it out to you in a moment,” she said. “And you can call that policeman.”

  He thanked her again, took a steadying breath, and then dialed the station, squinting at the landlady’s handwriting in the low light of the hallway.

  “Ah, Mr. Knight,” said Robson. “I was hoping I might hear from you. I’ve been checking up on your marauders. On their fingerprints, specifically.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing, which is odd,” said the policeman. “You said they were in their thirties or more, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So for petty villains to have evaded the national fingerprint registry for that amount of time means one of two things. Either they are upstanding citizens who turned to crime because there was something about you that did not
strike their fancy . . .”

  “Or?”

  “Or they are very good at staying out of trouble, which would suggest the opposite.”

  “The opposite being . . . ?”

  “That these are very serious men who know what they are doing. If they were paid to follow you, to attack you, then they may do so again. You see, Mr. Knight, I don’t know how it is where you are from, but over here we find that most criminals are petty and not very bright. Criminal master-minds are strictly the stuff of fiction.”

  “Why do I sense a ‘however’ coming?”

  “Well, I did say ‘most.’ There are a few who are both clever and dedicated. If what they do is harass people, threaten them, perhaps even kill them, then they will have a reputation to live up to.”

  “You think these guys were hit men?”

  “I think that, psychologically speaking, ordinary men of their years and grooming do not pursue someone arbitrarily through ancient monuments. Furthermore, I think that their ability to have eluded fingerprinting over years of nefarious activity suggests a certain professionalism. Such professionals do not like to leave tasks for which they were employed uncompleted. It looks bad to future employers.”

  “So you’re saying I should watch my back?” said Thomas.

  “Do you need to be in Kenilworth right now, Mr. Knight?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “Then if I were you, I would give serious consideration to shaking the dust of our humble settlement from your feet on your way out.”

  “You think I should leave town?”

  “Stand not upon the order of your going,” said the policeman, sounding pleased with himself, “but go at once. That’s Shakespeare, that is.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Thomas sat up through the evening and into the early morning, reading absently from Shakespeare’s sonnets, waiting for the phone. From time to time he looked up and stared into the middle distance, thought turning uncertainly into prayer. A few weeks ago when a Jehovah’s Witness had showed up at his Sycamore Street door, he had referred to himself as a “borderline agnostic Catholic,” a phrase that had baffled the earnest young black man and sent him on his way. Thomas wondered about it now, wondered if he was angry at God, as people seemed to be when faced with tragedy, and decided that he wasn’t. Since Kumi’s announcement, he didn’t think God had entered his head till this moment. Was that because his faith wasn’t strong enough in the first place, or was it just that his version of God didn’t interfere in the natural order of things? He thought of the words from that XTC song that had caused all that furor on college radio in the late eighties, that stuff about whether God made diamonds and disease, whether God had made us or the other way around. “Dear God,” it was called. He hadn’t thought of it in years. It was off that album that reeked of the English countryside, every song coming out of the small towns and pastoral landscapes that lay all around him.

  At twelve minutes past three, the phone rang. He pounced on it and heard an unfamiliar American woman’s voice.

  “Hello, is that Thomas?”

  “That’s right.”

  “This is Tasha Collins?” she said. It wasn’t a question, but she had one of those voices that raised the pitch at the end of each sentence so they sounded like questions. “Kumi’s friend at the consulate?”

  “Right. Yes. How is she?”

  “She’s good. Resting. The surgery went well? They removed the tumor and I spoke to the surgeon after. He said the tumor was small—grade two—but he thinks they got it all.” It sounded like she was reading. “The margins were good and there’s no sign of it spreading? They took some lymph nodes to be sure, but it looks good. They got it early.”

  “And she’s okay?”

  “So far. Like I said, she’s resting. They’ll release her from the hospital in a few hours? She’ll be home by evening our time.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Thomas slept for two hours, left a note for Mrs. Hughes, packed his bag, and ordered a cab to the railway station. He stood there on the platform, waiting for the first train to London, feeling the chill of the morning and breathing in the air as if for the first time in weeks. He would call her from London. But for now . . . For now everything was if not good, then at least better than it had been, and the difference was extraordinary.

  Once in the city he called Westminster Abbey and left a message for the verger, who, he was assured, would be arriving shortly. He took the tube to Westminster, and though it was packed with silent commuters who kept their eyes to their newspapers or their iPods, he smiled all the way.

  At the abbey, Thomas checked with a marshal and found the verger in the cloistered walk on the south side of the abbey proper.

  “Mr. Knight. I have some news for you,” said Hazlehurst, his gait bobbing with pleasure.

  Thomas shook the little man’s hand and fell into step beside him as he reported his findings with bookish glee.

  “The grave in Poets’ Corner does indeed belong to Charles de Saint Denis, Lord of Saint Evremond. He was an exile from the court of Louis the Fourteenth over some political impropriety, and though the matter was later resolved and his relationship with the French crown was reinstated, he never returned to France. He lived in London, a poet, essayist, and dramatist, known for his epicurean habits and the sophisticated company he kept. He was a master of the quotable bon mot—a sort of seventeenth-century Noel Coward—and celebrated the flesh at every available opportunity, a religion to which he ascribed his long life. He wrote a play called Sir Politick Would-Be that was supposedly in the English style, corresponded with some prominent ladies—philosophers, hedonists, and society types—maintained at least one lengthy affair with a considerably younger woman, was on very good terms with the English monarchy, particularly Charles the Second, lived to be over ninety—which is extraordinary for the period—and was buried in the south transept.”

  “And the champagne?”

  “Well, this is where it gets interesting,” said the verger. “Did you know that champagne wasn’t originally sparkling? No, I didn’t either. Anyway, this Saint Evremond chap was from the Champagne region, though its wine was little valued in those days. The popular wines were much heavier and sweeter. Anyway, it was he who introduced champagne to England, and though there seems to be some disagreement on the subject, it was also he who effectively created the sparkling stuff we know today.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “By bringing it to London,” said the verger. “Everything gets fizzier here.”

  Thomas laughed.

  “I don’t really understand the science of it,” Hazlehurst continued, “but it seems that the time taken to transport the wine to England allowed a secondary fermentation that produced carbon dioxide. If the cork was kept tight—lashed in place with string or wire—the gas produced was harnessed and made the wine sparkle. The fashionable English salons that Saint Evremond favored were most enamored of the wine’s effervescence, and the method was re-exported to France, where it found its way into mainstream champagne production.”

  “So the English invented champagne?” Thomas grinned.

  “Delightful, isn’t it?” said the verger. “An exaggeration, perhaps, maybe even a distortion, but an amusing one nonetheless. And now it’s time for you to answer me a question.”

  Thomas had sensed this coming, but he didn’t mind.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Why do you care? You are interested in this long-dead French nobleman, but know nothing about him, so . . . ?”

  He let the question trail off, eyebrows raised, an ironically Gallic expression.

  Thomas told him about the lost Shakespeare play, Daniella Blackstone’s curious passion for an obscure brand of champagne, and David Escolme’s planned meeting with Thomas in Poets’ Corner. To his surprise, the verger’s excitement wilted.

  “It’s not much to go on, is it?” he said. “I mean, these might be completely unrelated items. Y
ou may be on the wrong track entirely.”

  “I know,” Thomas admitted, “but think about it. A man of letters and culture who embodies a kind of Anglo-French accord, if you will, who had ties to French theater and wrote plays himself ‘in the English style.’ The man knew English drama and lived in London only a few decades after the last reported copy of Love’s Labour’s Won was on sale. Is it not at least possible that he acquired a copy—perhaps the only copy—of this English play about French royalty? A play that—if Love’s Labour’s Lost is anything to go by—celebrates verbal wit and the triumph of love and pleasure over restraint. If my sense of the lost play is even close to being right, I can’t think of anything better suited to a French hedonist, socialite, and man of letters. Effervescent you said, right?”

  “I was talking about the champagne.”

  “Well, that’s probably the best word to describe what I imagine Love’s Labour’s Won to be. Effervescent. Right up Saint Evremond’s alley.”

  “So, if we make the leap of faith and say he did own a copy of the play,” said the verger, “what happened to it? His library has been cataloged, and he is—in some circles—quite well known. If he still had the play when he died in 1703, it would have come to light.”

  “Perhaps he gave it away.”

  “If there is no textual record of the play postdating that 1603 bookshop inventory,” the verger mused, “it must surely have been something of a prize possession already: a curiosity, at the very least. A man of Saint Evremond’s tastes and learning would not give it away lightly.”

  “You said he maintained various correspondences and kept a mistress or two,” said Thomas. “Maybe he gave it to one of them.”