A Crimson Warning

“Will Winifred be arrested?” Ivy asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Colin said. “Scotland Yard are searching the house right now. We already know she’s guilty of extortion, and now this. I’m afraid it doesn’t look good for her.”

“But you can’t think she killed Mr. Dillman,” Ivy said.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I just can’t believe it, despite what we’ve seen.” Ivy’s shoulders were pulled back, stiff and straight.

“She may have had an accomplice,” I said. “Which is why we need to look at those notebooks right away, Colin.”

I took them to the table, spread them out, and opened the one in which I was the most interested—the one that listed parliamentary bills amongst other things. “We know more about Mr. Dillman’s way of thinking since having come to a full understanding of the game he played with Cordelia. Let’s see if he was doing something similar to that with the information in these books.”

We looked at the numbers and symbols listed next to each bill. I copied out twice each set—numbers and symbols—and gave one to Ivy. Colin and I would use the other.

“Take a notebook and go through, page by page. We need to find all of these.”

The meaning of the numbers proved elusive, so elusive that Colin turned to a thick volume of parliamentary records. “They are just votes, Emily. Votes on bills that passed in the last five years.”

“So why did he pick these in particular?” I asked. “Can you find out more about the bills?”

“I will,” he said, turning back to the book.

Ivy let out a little squeal. “I’ve found one of the symbols!” She turned the notebook she’d been studying so that I could see it right side up. A quite competent watercolor of a laurel was on the page, its small, white flowers executed with great precision. Incorporated into the bottom of the image was the symbol, an upside-down triangle, so small one would only notice it buried amongst the green leaves if one was specifically looking for it. Beneath the picture were the words Daphne Alpina and a date, 18 June 1891. The “a” was underlined.

This spurred us on. Soon we had pictures to go with each of the symbols—and on each of them, something in the accompanying text had been underlined. From the flowers, there were two letters and two numbers. From his drawings of birds, we got thirty letters.

“The first is easy,” I said. “Between the daphne and the hellebores we have A and E. Given what we already know about Mr. Dillman’s game, it’s reasonable to surmise this should be combined to EA, which is how the catalog numbers for all the items in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan begin.”

“So the numbers—5 and 9—are the second bit,” Ivy said. “We need EA 59 or EA 95.”

“And the rest?” Colin asked. “This long string of letters?”

“It’s the hint,” I said. “He’s put an additional layer of disguise this time. And, given the number of letters, it’s undoubtedly more than just telling us what the object is made of. Cordelia said he sometimes gave her quotes as clues.”

“So we need to untangle the letters,” Ivy said.

Colin continued to study the parliamentary record while Ivy and I set to it.

W D T E D M O B R E N A T M O E I A R R D L H U I D Y F H R

“Let’s make a list of every word we can find in it,” I said. “And then see if we can string them together in some sort of sensible fashion.”

“Toady rat in tree,” Ivy said.

“Sensible, darling,” I said.

“Hide now or die,” she said. We fell silent.

Over the course of the next two hours, we’d come up with what seemed an unending list of possible words, almost too many to count.

“This sounded like a good idea,” I said, after having strung together another phrase that was almost promising.

Colin came and stood over my shoulder. “I think you’re trying too hard to make it fit the museum,” he said.

“How goes it with Parliament?” I asked.

“I’ve found absolutely nothing,” he said. “I think we need to take that list of Dillman’s at face value.”

“That’s disappointing,” Ivy said.

“Let’s focus on the words you lot have found instead,” Colin said. “Dream of water?”

“Yearn for more?” I tapped my pencil on the table. “This is incredibly frustrating. We have lots of nonsense, but nothing that uses all of the letters.”

“Let me see everything you have,” he said. I passed him our pages of words. He went to his desk and sat down. “The only thing I prefer to word puzzles is chess.”

“Maybe we should just take the whole list to the museum,” Ivy said. “We’ve narrowed down which galleries to search. Perhaps the clue will become evident once we’ve narrowed down the options with the numbers.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” I said. “We should be there the minute it opens tomorrow.”

“I’ve got it,” Colin said, rising from his chair and walking towards us. “It’s obvious, really. Murder thy breath in middle of a word. It’s from Richard III.”

“I was really hoping for the toady rat,” Ivy said.

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s quite an unusual animal, don’t you think?”

“Not you, Ivy.”

“I couldn’t be more certain,” Colin said. “There are plenty of phrases we could string together with these words, many of which sound like they are appropriate. But no one will convince me that a line of Shakespeare is going to coincidentally appear within this list. Toady rat notwithstanding.”

“But our villain,” Ivy said. “He quotes Shakespeare.”

“My dear girl,” he said. “Everyone quotes Shakespeare.”

*   *   *

As Colin sketched out his plan for the next morning, Ivy bowed out of coming to the museum. “I’ve tried Robert’s patience enough,” she said. “I think he’d draw the line at my being present when you arrest someone.”

We promised to give her an update as soon as we were finished at the museum. Once she’d gone home, we retired to our bedroom, where I collapsed, exhausted, on the bed.

“Don’t fall asleep just yet,” Colin said. “You’re still in your clothes.”

“I’ll ring for Meg,” I said.

He sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed my wrist as I reached for the bell. “Don’t,” he said, his lips so close to my face I could feel his breath on my cheek. “I’ll provide any assistance you need.” I felt his fingers feel for the buttons on the back of my dress. He undid the top two or three, then pulled me up to sitting. Kneeling in front of me, he started to remove the pins from my hair, one at a time until my curls had tumbled down around my waist.

Blue light had started to force its way around the edges of the curtains before we finally went to sleep. Yet somehow, when Meg brought breakfast to us only a few hours later, I found myself so refreshed, so vividly alive, I felt almost embarrassed.

After eating and getting dressed it was still early enough that we had time to walk to the museum. I pulled on my gloves and made my way to the door. The rain had stopped, though the pavements were damp in spots, and the sun was struggling to make its way through patchy holes in the clouds.

“Sir, I—”

“Not now, Davis,” Colin said. “We must hurry.”

“Very good, sir. Enjoy your walk, sir.” He opened the door. We stepped outside, but he didn’t close it. “It’s dry, so no need to worry where you step. Shall I have it taken care of at once?”

I looked down and saw that our whole front entrance was bathed in red. The steps, the columns of the