Newton’s Fire

Rachel’s aunt, Crane Court and their narrow escape from Pelham’s apartment.

Olivia listened in stony silence. ‘How could you keep this from me?’ she demanded, when he was done. ‘Don’t you realize how much trouble you’re in? How much trouble you’ve put me in?’

‘None of us are exactly here by choice,’ said Pelham.

‘You should have told me.’

‘Yes,’ admitted Luke. ‘You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry. We all are. But we’re riding a bolting horse here. It’s all we can do to cling on.’

‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ said Olivia. ‘You still can’t dig up my floor. I don’t care who’s after you.’

Luke crouched, placed his palm flat on the floor, tantalized by the mysterious gold just a few feet beneath. Yet he knew in his heart that Olivia was right. Even if they could get down, this was too important a site to risk. He smiled wryly at Rachel. ‘Your aunt asked me something earlier. She asked me why a man like Newton would take a job at the Royal Mint. I gave her the usual reasons: status, income, London. But the truth is that no one really knows. What if this is why? I mean, Newton drove himself crazy with alchemical experiments in 1693. What if that wasn’t pure research? What if he’d simply needed a large quantity of gold to complete whatever Ashmole left him? He was an alchemist; of course he’d have tried alchemy first. But when that failed him, where would he have turned?’

‘The Royal Mint,’ murmured Olivia.

‘The position of Warden had always been a sinecure,’ said Luke. ‘But not under Newton. He designed new coining presses, invented new alloys. He oversaw an entire recoinage of the realm. And he was the greatest mathematician in British history, so I’m guessing he could have run rings around the auditors. He could have taken however much gold he’d needed and no one would ever have known.’

Pelham grinned down at the floor. ‘Sir Isaac’s stolen bullion,’ he said. ‘How cool is that?’

‘All the more reason to treat it with respect,’ said Olivia.

Rachel had gone to consult the Newton paper. Now she frowned. ‘I think maybe we’re missing a trick,’ she said, tapping the text. ‘I mean we’re all pretty much agreed on what this means, right? Ashmole left something to Newton on the understanding that he’d complete it, bring it here and hide it beneath the floor. But this was a working laboratory by then. The foremost laboratory in England. And then an anatomy room. That’s right, yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Olivia. ‘Why?’

‘So you were absolutely correct earlier when you said that Ashmole couldn’t possibly have expected Newton to come here with a pickaxe and dig up the floor. Which means there must have been some other way down. A way that both he and Newton knew about.’

‘There isn’t,’ said Olivia. ‘We’ve rebuilt this place god knows how many times. If there were any secret passages or the like, we’d have found them long ago, believe me. And even if one had somehow escaped our notice for over three hundred years, do you honestly expect us to find it in just one night?’

‘You can’t think of anything?’ asked Luke. ‘No anomalies at all?’

She shook her head. ‘We found an old septic tank when we put in the extension out back. But that was only a few feet deep, and we’ve concreted it up, anyway. And then there was the old well, of course. But that’s it.’

‘The old well?’ asked Rachel dryly. ‘You don’t mean as in “Salomans House well concealed”?’

‘Oh my good lord,’ murmured Olivia, clasping her hands by her mouth. ‘Yes, I rather suppose I do.’

II

There was little Croke could do to help search Crane Court, so he settled himself into a penthouse apartment and watched it live on a vast plasma TV. Speculative reports were interspersed with loops of footage, one of which even included a brief clip of himself and Morgenstern arriving earlier. But every so often they’d cut to aerial shots, and there was something perversely satisfying about being able to hear those selfsame helicopters clattering above his head.

His mobile rang. He checked the number. Walters. ‘Are you in Oxford yet?’ Croke asked him.

‘On our way,’ said Walters. ‘But we may have found something. Thought you’d want to know at once.’

‘Go on.’

‘Redfern and the others stopped off in a place called Oddington. Kieran’s been checking it out and the house nearest where they parked belongs to a woman called Olivia Campbell. An Olivia Campbell runs something called the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, about fifteen minutes walk from where they parked. Thing is, they put on a History of Chemistry exhibition there a few years back. The programme’s on their website. And guess who helped organize it? Only our friend Pelham Redfern.’

‘Then that’s where they’ve gone,’ said Croke.

‘So it would seem. We’ll find out soon enough.’

‘And you three can take care of them yourselves, right? Only I want to keep this to ourselves if we can.’

‘Let us check it out. I’ll call you back if we need help.’

‘Good.’ Croke finished the call, stood there frowning. A museum in the heart of Oxford. What an odd place to go to ground. He was still brooding on this when Morgenstern came in.

‘Just completed the second scan,’ he told Croke. ‘Nothing. And we double-checked those anomalies against the plans, like you suggested. But they’re all water or sewage or other utilities.’

‘You’re saying it’s not here?’

Morgenstern gave a shrug. ‘Police scanners are designed to find recent disturbances, organic remains, explosives, that kind of shit. For something like this, we should maybe get in some geological or even archaeological equipment.’

It was the word ‘archaeological’ that did it, for some reason. Croke held up a hand for quiet, to buy himself time to think. The Museum of the History of Science. What if Luke and the others hadn’t gone to ground? What if they knew something he didn’t? ‘Bear with me a moment,’ he said. ‘I want to make a call.’

He tried Jerusalem first, but Avram wasn’t answering, so he rang his nephew in London instead.

‘Yes?’ asked Kohen.

‘The Museum of the History of Science in Oxford,’ said Croke.

A moment’s silence. ‘Ah,’ said Kohen. ‘Yes.’

Anger descended upon Croke like the holy spirit. ‘Tell me.’

‘The Museum of the History of Science used to be the Ashmolean. The Ashmolean was also once thought of as Salomon’s House. In fact, if the E.A. in Newton’s message refers to Elias Ashmole, as seems plausible under this hypothesis, then it’s probably more likely to be the …’

Croke held his cellphone down by his side to prevent himself from yelling. When he’d calmed a little, he raised it again. ‘Are you telling me we closed down half London to search in the wrong fucking place?’ he asked. He gave Kohen the chance to reply, but all he got was silence, so he ended the call before he said anything unforgivable.

‘We’re searching in the wrong place?’ asked Morgenstern.

‘So it would seem.’

‘And this Oxford Museum of yours? That’s the right place?’

‘That’s how it looks.’

Morgenstern nodded as he digested this. His lips tightened and a little colour rose in his throat. He could use this as an opportunity to distance himself from this fiasco, Croke knew, or he could remind himself that this was his Commander in Chief’s top priority. Thankfully, he chose the latter option. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘then we’d better get down there, hadn’t we?’