“Deal.”
Five minutes later we heard an engine roar to life and the silver blue Citroen I had seen racing away from Jutting’s house pulled out of a driveway up the road. We ducked down as it passed.
“Good luck,” Ashna said.
“Thanks.” I got out of the car and walked up the road while Ashna turned the vehicle around and headed out after Dworkin and his accomplice. The sun was hot and the road was dusty but I could feel damp, cool air coming up from the river which was only twenty feet away, down a rocky embankment covered with long grass and weeds. I entered the trees and shortly after came to a two-story stone house hidden in the center of the copse. Birds fluttered in the branches above and the sound of water flowing grew louder as if the river had narrowed.
The house looked suitably ancient, crouching among the trees. It was a simple rectangle with a steeply pitched roof of red ceramic tile. Moss grew in abundance on the stone walls and among the tiles. One wall was completely covered with a heavy growth of ivy. I walked around to the rear and found that the river flowed right along the back edge of the house. Looking down into the water, I saw a school of minnows pass through a sun dapple, shining and then gone like tiny flashes of light. An embankment had been built up and a massive water wheel stood motionless just above the surface of the river. The wheel, clearly unused for the last hundred years, was rotting slowly into the ground. Grass and weeds grew up through its paddles and the axle was so corroded I could almost see sheets of rust flaking off. The place must have been a mill at some time in the distant past. A stone and wood structure was built up around the wheel forming a kind of platform above and just above that was an open window. Placing my feet carefully and testing my weight before climbing higher, I scaled to the platform, got a foot up on the window sill, and pulled myself up by reaching inside and grasping the moldering jamb. The walls of the house were nearly two feet thick, giving me plenty of purchase on the sill. I crouched there for a moment, eyes adjusting to the dim light and surveying the room.
An unmade bed was jammed into one corner with a battered suitcase resting on the floor beside it. The suitcase was open and nearly covered by a haphazard pile of clothing. Across the room, one straight backed wooden chair gray and warped with age was pushed up against the wall. A low Moroccan table next to the bed held a scattered mess of pocket change and crumpled receipts. I started a timer running on my phone, put it back in my pocket, and jumped down. The floorboards sagged under me alarmingly, squeaking and complaining. The house, like the water wheel outside, appeared to be slowly rotting away. A book lay open on the bedside table. I flipped it over and read the title: The Magus: A Complete System of Occult Philosophy. Definitely Dworkin’s room. I searched his suitcase and under the mattress but found nothing. There was nowhere else to hide anything in the bare bedroom, I would have to search the house. Outside, I found a landing with narrow, dark steps leading up, presumably to an attic, and a slightly wider set of stone steps curving down toward the ground floor. There were several other doors leading off the landing—more bedrooms I guessed. I stood and thought for a moment. Dworkin had either hidden the goods somewhere other than his room or taken them with him. If he had hidden them it would be downstairs or attic, not another bedroom. I decided to search the downstairs first. If he stashed them it would have been quick, as an afterthought before going out. He would have had the laptop and notes out somewhere, working on the riddle.
At the bottom of the steps I found a massive kitchen with a floor of age-darkened terra cotta tile and a high ceiling stained by a couple hundred years of smoke and grease. Along one wall were wooden shelves and a roughhewn hutch bearing plates and cups. Lined up on the opposite wall were a venerable iron AGA range, an enormous farmhouse sink, and a small refrigerator that might have been purchased new in nineteen fifty three. Directly opposite the stairs was a heavy door which looked like the main entrance to the house. I continued forward into the kitchen and began looking around.
On one high shelf a whole pear floated in a dusty bottle full of amber liquid. The bottle was unmarked and sealed with wax and cork. Homemade pear brandy, I guessed. Probably very old. I couldn’t help myself. It went into my pack after a quick wipe to remove the most egregious dust. I made a quick search of the space but there were few places to hide anything. A closed door was recessed under the stairs. To the right of that was an arched passageway leading off the kitchen. I opened the door first and peeked through, expecting a pantry. It led instead to a dim, cave-like space that must have once been the working portion of the mill. I saw machinery seized with rust connected to the axle of the water wheel, a pile of broken furniture, several old armoires with sheets draped over them, and, far in the back, the unmistakable form of a Citroen DS from the early sixties, gray with thick dust.
I closed the door and moved on through the passageway into what appeared to be the main living space. It was stone floored and high ceilinged with
