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
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,
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 book, 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
“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.
