pockets. 'I'd appreciate you walking me through what happened.'
The man's tone implied he was giving an order, not asking a favor.
'Sure.' Lang pointed. 'The table where those two police officers are taking names was in the room between here and the Reading Room. Eon was standing-'
'You mean Sir Eon Weatherston-Wilby.'
What was the thing the Brits had about titles? Maybe it was the only part of their former nobility that was still noble rather than ammunition for the tabloids.
Lang finished his narrative.
'Perhaps you would be so kind as to take me to room four, the Egyptian exhibit.'
Again, more of an order than a request.
A photographer was finishing up taking pictures of a chalk outline on the floor. A janitorial employee, mop in one hand, bucket in another, was waiting to remove what was now a congealed black puddle of blood. The wreckage of the chariot had already been removed, presumably to wherever the museum did restorations.
Fitzwilliam rested an elbow in the palm of one hand while he rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the other. 'You attacked an armed man with only a spear?'
'I didn't have a lot of options.'
'Why didn't you wait for the police like everyone else?'
Lang detected what could be a tone of accusation. 'Because I didn't want them to get away with Eon. Sir Eon.'
'Just what made you think they were going to take him farther than this building?'
Lang watched the photographer pack up his equipment. 'Why would they take him from where he was otherwise?'
'But they were armed. What did you think you could do?'
Lang was getting irritated at what seemed pointless interrogation. 'Ask the man your folks just peeled off the floor there.'
Fitzwilliam caught the edge in the reply and changed the subject as well as location. 'Let's take a look at the loading door, shall we?'
The door was wide-open, revealing several officers searching the street as well as the square.
'These doors aren't the kind that open from the inside when locked,' Fitzwilliam observed.
Having noticed that previously, Lang said nothing.
'That would indicate they were left unlocked, quite likely intentionally.'
Lang still said nothing.
Fitzwilliam was scratching his chin again. 'What do you make of that, Mr. Reilly?'
'Too bad you can't ask the guard they shot.'
The inspector's hands dropped to his side. 'Meaning?'
'Meaning someone had to let them in. Killing that someone is the one sure way to make sure nobody knows who they are.'
Fitzwilliam nodded slowly. This American might cause trouble, but he didn't miss much, either. 'I don't suppose you have a thought as to the identity of the dead man?'
Involuntarily, Lang's hand slid into his pocket, touching the crumpled piece of paper, the half of the boarding pass if that was really what it was. He instantly decided not to mention it. Information was the capital of his former profession with the agency: once spent it became useless.
'Not a clue.'
III.
New Mermaid Inn
High Street
Rye
East Sussex
The Next Morning
Jenny Fasting never understood why someone as wealthy as Langford Reilly would choose to stay in a hotel as old as this one. The ceilings were low, the floors uneven, the doorways crooked and the mullioned windows mostly opaque. She had asked him once and he had replied that if the place had been good enough for Elizabeth Tudor, it was good enough for him. Of course, it had been a bit newer when Good Queen Bess had paid a visit to Rye to inquire about an inconsistent source of fish. That was before the river's mouth had silted up, ending Rye's place as a major harbor and fishing center. The inn had been almost new when the Queen visited, having replaced the former Mermaid Inn after the French had staged a surprise raid and burned a good part of the town as well as the hotel. Jenny was fairly certain Elizabeth I had never actually stayed here, though.
That was the thing about the Yanks: they worshiped the old, even old buildings in advanced states of dilapidation. Yanks. A word she understood her boss, Lang Reilly, did not appreciate for reasons that had to do with a dispute over there in America more than a hundred years ago. Something about a War of Northern Aggression. Whatever that was.
Another thing about the Yanks, er, Americans: they were always in a hurry. That was why she had been awakened after midnight last night by a call from London. Mr. Reilly wanted her to meet him in the small laboratory facility his foundation had set up in Rye to serve the institution's needs in the British Isles. Cheaper than London with considerably less traffic. In fact, Rye's main street was still cobblestoned with half-timbered houses just as though the Queen might return.
If he had asked her to meet him anywhere other than the laboratory, she might have been able to fantasize some sort of romantic liaison. Although Mr. Reilly had never been anything more than polite at both the meetings she had with him, he was, after all, single and quite good-looking. And rich. Not the type to show any interest in a drab lab tech like Jenny.
She ran her fingers nervously through limp hair the color of dead grass. One of these days she would replace the thick glasses with that new eye surgery. In the meantime, she would continue to look like just what she was: a lab boffin. A single lab boffin.
And there was nothing romantic about being called out of bed to put some stub of paper under an electronic microscope, read it and make a legible copy by breakfast. That was hardly her job. She dealt with the arcana of chemical biology. But Mr. Reilly was the boss and if he wanted a jillion pounds sterling worth of gadgetry used to examine a piece of paper, so be it. An airline boarding pass, at that. Seemed he could simply call the airline if he had somehow managed to damage his bleeding boarding pass.
But he was the boss.
That was why she was sitting in the dining room of the New Mermaid, sipping tea that tasted like it had been brewed sometime in the distant past, waiting for Lang Reilly.
He appeared on the dot of 8:00, disgustingly wide-awake. He slid into the seat across the table from her, wished her a good morning and ordered kippers and eggs from the innkeeper.
Jenny wondered if anyone, Lang Reilly included, really took pleasure in staring eye to eye with a smoked herring first thing in the morning. Although the dish was as English as afternoon tea, the sight and smell of a dead fish at breakfast was, well, disgusting. Why couldn't he simply have bangers and mash like a working-class sod? Even so, she could not tear her sight away as he deftly stripped the backbone and its comblike rack from the rest of the fish.
'So, what did you find out?' he asked.
Although she knew exactly what she had found, she dug in her purse and extracted an enlarged copy. 'Aegean Air flight 162, seat 24-B. Either the twenty-third or twenty- fifth of last month. The paper was too badly worn to be sure.'
He reached for the paper. 'Any idea from where to where?'
She shook her head. 'I couldn't get a real soul at Aegean Air this early, only serial recordings, but I'll be happy to…'
