letters from her husband. No mention of our mystery girl. I guess the secret of Sally just isn’t meant to be revealed.”
“It was an admitted long shot,” Summer replied, pulling the photographs out of the envelope and spreading them across the shelf for Julie to see. They were all sepia-tinted images from nearly a century before. Julie held up one photo of a young woman in a riding outfit, holding the reins of a horse.
“She was a pretty young woman,” Summer remarked, noting a delicate face set with penetrating eyes similar to her famous uncle.
“Here’s one with Kitchener,” Julie said, pointing to an earlier photo in a garden setting. Kitchener stood in his uniform next to a couple with their young daughter, clutching a large doll, between them. Summer recognized the toddler as a younger version of Emily from the horse picture.
“She looks about four years old there,” Summer said, picking up the photo and flipping it over to see if a date was written on the back. She nearly choked when she read the inscription.
“April, 1916. Uncle Henry and Emily with Sally at Broome Park.”
She shoved the photo in Julie’s face. Julie read the inscription, then flipped it over and studied the image with a wrinkled brow.
“But that’s Emily with her parents. Her mother’s name was Margaret, I believe.”
Summer looked at her and smiled. “Sally is the doll.”
By the time the lightbulb clicked on in Julie’s head, Summer was already tearing through the first box of Emily Kitchener’s possessions. In an instant, she pulled out a porcelain-faced blond doll that was dressed in a checkerboard apron. Holding the doll up in the air, Summer compared it to the one in the photograph.
It was the same doll.
“He said the Manifest was safeguarded with Sally,” Julie muttered. “And Sally is a doll?”
The two women studied the doll, whose clothes and extremities were well worn from the attentive play of a young girl nearly a century earlier. With tentative fingers, Summer turned the doll over and pulled off its checkerboard apron and matching calico dress. A heavy seam was visible along the doll’s back, which kept the stuffing inside. Only the stitching was crude and uneven, not matching the workmanship of the rest of the doll.
“This doesn’t look like the work of an expert seamstress,” Summer noted.
Julie rummaged through one of the other boxes until producing a tarnished silver dinner knife.
“You care to perform the surgery?” she asked nervously, handing Summer the knife.
Summer laid the doll facedown on the shelf and began sawing at the topmost stitch. The dull-edged knife was a poor match for the tough catgut thread, but she eventually cut through the first few stitches. Setting the knife aside, she pulled apart the remaining seam, opening up the back side of the doll. Inside was a compressed mass of cotton wadding.
“Sorry, Sally,” she said, carefully pulling out the wadding as if the doll were an animate object. Julie peered anxiously over Summer’s shoulder, but slumped when she saw that the doll’s torso was filled with nothing but cotton. She closed her eyes and shook her head as Summer pulled out a large ball of it.
“Silly idea,” she muttered.
But Summer wasn’t through. Peering inside the cavity, she felt around with her fingertips.
“Wait, I think there may be something in here.”
Julie’s eyes popped open as she watched Summer reach into the doll’s left leg and grab hold of an object. Summer worked it back and forth until pulling out a linen-wrapped tube several inches long. Julie leaned closer as Summer set the object on the shelf and gently unwrapped the linen. Inside was a thick piece of parchment rolled into a scroll. Summer held the top edge down, then carefully unrolled it across the shelf as both women held their breath.
The parchment proved to be blank. But they soon saw it was protecting a smaller scroll rolled inside. It was a bamboo-colored papyrus leaf with a single column of script running down its center.
“This… this must be the Manifest,” Julie uttered quietly, her eyes locked on the ancient document.
“It appears to be written in some sort of ancient script,” Summer noted.
Julie stared at the lettering, finding it familiar. “It appears similar to Greek,” she said, “but it’s nothing that I’ve seen before.”
“That would most likely be Coptic Greek,” thundered a male voice behind them.
The women jumped at the unexpected assertion. Spinning their heads toward the door, they were shocked to find Ridley Bannister standing in the entry. He was dressed in a thickly padded black leather jacket and pants favored by dirt-track motorcycle racers. But neither woman noticed his unusual attire. Their attention was focused instead on the snub-nosed revolver he held in his hand, aimed squarely at their chests.
30
You are the one that attacked me in my hotel room,” Julie blurted, finally recognizing the leather outfit.
“Attack is rather a harsh description,” Bannister replied casually. “I prefer to think that we were just sharing research information.”
“Stealing, you mean,” Summer said.
Bannister shot her a hurt look. “Not at all,” he said. “Strictly borrowing. You’ll find that the diary has found a new home with the rest of Kitchener’s private papers upstairs.”
“Oh, a penitent thief,” Summer replied sarcastically.
Bannister ignored the cut.
“I must say, I am quite impressed with your sleuthing abilities,” he said, eyeing Julie. “The leather diary was a marvelous discovery, though the Earl’s comments were less than startling. But then identifying Sally on top of that. Quite an encore.”
“We weren’t quite as sloppy as you,” Summer remarked.
“Yes, well, I had limited time to peruse Emily Kitchener’s possessions. Be that as it may, a job well done. I searched ten years ago myself without such success.” He raised the pistol and motioned with it.
“Would you ladies be so kind as to move to the rear of this compartment? I’ll be needing to leave with the Manifest.”
“To borrow?” Julie asked.
“Not this time, I’m afraid,” Bannister replied with a sharklike smile.
Julie peered at the scroll before slowly stepping away.
“Tell us first. What is the significance of the Manifest?” she asked.
“Until it has been authenticated, no one can say for sure,” Bannister said, creeping over to retrieve the parchment with the papyrus inside. “It’s just an old document that some seem to think could rattle the theological powers that be.” He picked up the scroll with his free hand and gently placed it in an inside pocket of his jacket.
“Was Kitchener deliberately killed because of it?” Julie asked.
“I would assume so. But that’s one you’ll have to take up with the Church of England. It’s been nice chatting with you ladies,” he said, backpedaling toward the door, “but I’m afraid I have a plane to catch.”
He stepped out of the pantry and began closing the door behind him.
“Please don’t leave us in here,” Julie begged.
“Not to worry,” Bannister replied. “I’ll be sure and phone Aldrich in a day or so and let him know there’s a pair of lovely lasses locked in his basement. Good-bye.”
The door slammed shut with a whoosh followed by the sound of the dead bolt sliding home. Then Bannister flicked off the pantry’s lights, plunging it into blackness. He quietly crept upstairs to Aldrich’s quarters, stopping to replace the unloaded Webley pistol in a glass cabinet of Kitchener’s military artifacts, where he had borrowed it minutes before. Waiting until the lobby cleared, he slipped out of the manor unseen and quickly hopped upon his rented motorcycle.
Three hours later, he called the Lambeth Palace head of security from a phone at Heathrow Airport.
