When we reached the doorway, the ghost was gone, and the doors shut solid. I spun, looking wildly around the theater. For the bulk of this scene, I’d disembodied the ghost, substituting a dazzle of bright light like the glint of sunlight in a mirror. It might show up anywhere.
There it was, dancing along the benches in the lower gallery. I took a step forward, but Jason stopped me. “You shall not go, my lord.” His grip on my shoulder suggested that he was taking his role as Horatio seriously. He’d stop me from going after the ghost if he could.
At least he was taking something seriously. It was a start. With a quick, wrenching twist, I ducked under his arm, dashing back down the stage stairs, across the yard, and up three shallow steps into the ground floor gallery. No ghost. Hell and damnation. A cry from the yard made me turn. Following the arc of arms pointing up at the middle gallery, I saw it: a spangle of light flitting through the shade one floor up.
Jason was already barreling toward me. Feinting right, I darted around him, toward the stairs and raced up one flight. The light wavered at the far right end amid the box seats that Cyril insisted everyone call the Gentlemen’s Rooms. I ran around the aisle at the back and slipped inside.
The first was empty. So was the second.
On the opposite side of the building, a light flared. And then another, and another, until the theater filled with a thousand tiny lights flickering like fireflies, as if the whole theater had been possessed. All at once, they winked out, and the groan of a soul in torment spiraled upward from beneath the stage.
We were nearing the end of the scene. I turned to leave and found Jason blocking the doorway, sword drawn. Damn. For a moment, I’d been so caught up in Hamlet’s search for the ghost that I’d forgotten about him.
“Be ruled,” he grunted. “You shall not go.” Striding forward, he brought his blade down on mine. Steel shrieked on steel, and with one sharp flick of the wrist, he jerked the sword from my grasp. It spun end over end, flashing in the sun. Below, the cast parted like a startled flock of birds as the blade clattered to the ground in the center of the yard.
“I suggest begging for mercy,” said Jason, his wide Australian vowels splitting through Horatio’s gentility. His mouth split into a hard grin. “On your knees would be nice.”
Edging backward, I felt the balustrade against my knees and abruptly sat down, fighting a moment of vertigo. I was only one story up, but suddenly it seemed very high. “You know that bit about mercy from The Merchant of Venice?”
“The quality of mercy is not strained,” he shot back. “But I am.”
“I like the next line.” As lightly as I could, I swung both legs over the balustrade. “It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” He lunged forward, and I let go.
Ten feet below, I hit the ground, scrabbling toward my sword in the middle of the yard. Jason leapt down after me. I grasped the hilt and whirled.
Jason stopped in his tracks, panting, the blade six inches from his belly. “Have you got a whole bloody troop of kangaroos loose in the top paddock?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I could feel my shirt clinging damply to my shoulder blades, my khaki trousers had a rip in one knee, and I’d probably smeared dirt across my face.
“Aussie for completely fucking nuts,” he roared. “Mad as a whole flipping factory of hatters. You may like leaping off buildings at a single bound, Kate Stanley, but how the hell do you expect me to pull off To be or not to be after a comic-book stunt like that?”
I put up my sword. “Now you’re Hamlet,” I said with a smile.
His hands pumped open and closed. For a split second, I thought he might charge me. Then he glanced over my shoulder, and his face changed.
I spun to see what he was looking at. In the far corner of the balcony stood Sir Henry, a naked sword in one mailed fist, the other stretched out toward us, beckoning. With a yell of fury, Jason took his role back, sprinting across the yard and climbing up a ladder concealed on the wall next to the stage. As I hauled myself over onto the balcony in his wake, Jason was striding across the stage, driving Sir Henry into the gloom on the far side. I dusted myself off and followed. Halfway across, though, something—a sound? a scent? I never afterward knew—made me slow and then stop.
Behind me, a dark figure stepped out from the wings. I turned, frowning. “Remember me,” hissed a voice as dry as fallen leaves skidding over stone. Even chased by Jason, how had Sir Henry slipped so quickly through the maze backstage from one side to the other?
A pale hand swept up, and the hood slid back. It was not Sir Henry.
It was Roz. “What was it Shakespeare should feel?” she murmured. “Dangerous?”
On the far side of the balcony, Sir Henry and Jason stepped back out onstage. “Enter Rosalind Howard, Harvard Professor of Shakespeare,” said Sir Henry for the benefit of the company gathered below. “Generally acknowledged Queen of the Bard.”
“Queen of the Damned,” I snapped.
Roz burst into a deep, throaty laugh, letting the cloak slip to the floor as she enveloped me in an oceanic hug. “Call me the Ghost of Christmas Past, sweetheart. I come bearing gifts.”
“So did the Greeks,” I said, rigid inside her embrace. “And look where it got the Trojans.”
Like a wave rolling back from a cliff, she let go. “Hell of an office,” she said, looking admiringly around the theater.
“Hell of an entrance,” I replied. “Even for you.”
“Had to be,” she said with a shrug. “I figured it also had to be public, or you’d just say no to my gift.”
“I still might.”
“Gift?”
I blinked. “That’s what she said,” I answered a little defensively, swearing silently at myself.
“Surely, Ms. Stanley, whether or not Professor Howard told you outright what she found, you must have some idea what it was.”
For a moment the temptation to pull it from my pocket, to let it go and be done with it—and with Roz—swept across me.
“Sorry,” I said aloud, “but I don’t.” From one angle, you could even say it was true; I had no idea what was actually in the box. Though I would, I growled silently at Sinclair, if you’d just let me alone long enough to open it.
He sighed. “I’m asking you to be frank with me, Ms. Stanley; perhaps it would help for me to be frank with you.” He smoothed a crease from his trousers. “We’ve found a needle mark.”
Needle mark?
“Nonsense,” bristled Sir Henry. “Roz wasn’t a user.”
Sinclair’s gaze slid to Sir Henry. “One mark, very much in the singular, does not suggest that she was.”
“What does it suggest?” retorted Sir Henry.
“Let’s just say that I’m treating Ms. Stanley’s suspicion of foul play quite seriously.” Turning back to me, he added, “And that I’d appreciate your candid cooperation.” He tented his fingers, scrutinizing me.
Fear shimmered across me. That afternoon, I’d brushed Roz off. Now I would have given anything to talk to her, scream at her, listen to her, let her hug me as long as she liked—but she was gone. Utterly and finally gone, without explanation or apology. Without even a simple good-bye, much less advice.
Nothing but a command. Keep it safe, she’d said.
If her gift needed safekeeping, I thought in a wave of irritation—who better to guard it than the police? Especially since they—or at least this one—so badly wanted me to give them something.
But Roz had not gone to the cops. She’d come to me. And Sinclair was anything but safe. Once again, I looked straight into his eyes and lied. “I know nothing else.”
He slammed his fist down on the bench Sir Henry and I were sitting on, so hard that I jumped. “In this country, Ms. Stanley, it is a crime to withhold information from a homicide inquiry. A crime that we treat quite seriously.” He leaned in so close that I could smell the peppermint on his breath. “Do I make myself clear?”
My heart in my mouth, I nodded aga
in.
“One last time, I really must insist that you tell me everything you know.”
Beside me, Sir Henry stood up. “That’s quite enough.”
Sinclair sat back abruptly, his jaw clenching from side to side. Then he dismissed Sir Henry and me with a brisk wave. “Don’t talk to the press, and don’t leave London. I’ll want to speak with you both again. But for now, good night.”
Sir Henry took my elbow, escorting me out. We had almost reached the doors when Sinclair called after me. “Whatever there is to find, Ms. Stanley,” he said softly, “I assure you we will find it.”
The first time he’d said it, it had sounded like a promise. This time, it was a threat.
6
I HURRIED OUT of the theater into an alley crowded with fire trucks and police vans, and Sir Henry summoned a cab. As it pulled up, I kissed him on the cheek and ducked inside. “Highgate,” I said to the driver before I’d even sat down—and found that Sir Henry was climbing in behind me.
I began to protest, but he held up a hand. “Not a chance of you going home alone, my dear. Not tonight.” He pulled the door firmly shut behind him, and the taxi pulled away. I fingered Roz’s gift in my pocket impatiently. How long before I’d be alone, so I could open it?
A wind had sprung up, sending clouds scudding across the sky; the scent of the dead fire hung heavy and pungent over the city. From Waterloo Bridge, I glimpsed the Millennium Bridge off to the right, still swarming with onlookers. To the left, the unwinking blue wheel of the London Eye spun slowly through the night; farther in the distance the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben glittered like golden lace. Then we were over the bridge, trundling into the press of the city. I perched forward on my seat, willing the taxi to wing faster through the narrow streets. Up and up we climbed, back onto the high ridge that edges London to the north.
Sir Henry sat far back in the seat, watching me with hooded eyes. “A secret is a kind of promise,” he said quietly. “It can also be a prison.”
I glanced back at him. How much had he guessed? How much could I trust him? Roz had trusted him—not with whatever secret she’d hidden in the box, maybe, but with me.
“Happy to offer my help,” he said, “but I have a price.”
“Can I afford it?”
“That depends on whether you can afford the truth.”
Before I could change my mind, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the box. “She gave me this in the theater this afternoon. Told me to keep it safe.”
He studied the box glinting in the streetlights, and for an instant I thought he’d snatch it from me, but all he did was lift one brow in amusement at the wrapping still neatly in place. “Admirable restraint. Or do you think she meant to keep it safe even from you?”
“She also said that if I opened it, I must follow where it leads.”
He sighed. “Death, my dear, has a way of altering everything.”
“Even a promise?”
“Even a curse.”
I did a double take. I’d scoffed at Roz’s gift as a Trojan horse, but it was true, in myths and old tales, such presents were often curses in disguise: red shoes that would never stop dancing, a touch that turned everything, even the living, to dead gold.
This is absurd, I thought shortly. In a single pull, I ripped the paper from the box. The gold tissue rose and hung on the air between us before fluttering to the floor. In my hands sat a box of black satin. Gingerly, I lifted the cover.
Inside lay an oval of jet, painted with flowers and set into filigreed gold. “What is it?” I asked aloud. The same question I’d asked Roz.
“A brooch, I should think,” answered Sir Henry.
I touched it with one finger. It was a beautiful jewel, but old-fashioned. I couldn’t imagine anyone younger than my grandmother wearing it. Not Roz. And certainly not me. And what the hell had she meant by “follow where it leads”?
Sir Henry frowned. “Surely you recognize the flowers.”
I peered at the jewel. “Pansies. Daisies.” I shook my head. “Other than that, no. I grew up in a desert, Sir Henry. Our flowers are different.”
“These are all from Hamlet. Ophelia’s flowers.” Drawing forward, he pointed them out with his pinky. “Rosemary and pansies, fennel and columbines. Look—a daisy and even some withered violets. And rue. There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me: we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays.” He snorted. “Herb of grace! Herbs of death and madness, more like. The British editions of frankincense and myrrh. Popular with Victorians for funeral jewelry commemorating the death of a young woman…a morbid era, really, for all its greatness.” He sat back. “What you’ve got there is a Victorian mourning brooch. The question is why. Do you think she sensed, somehow, that she was going to die?”
I shook my head, sweeping a finger around the filigreed edge. I’d sensed foreboding that afternoon, but even more than that, excitement. I’ve found something, she’d said. Was that it? Was there some message about her find wound through the pansies and daisies? The jewel lay obstinately mute in its box.
We turned into my street, cluttered with Victorian homes of gray stone. Even on a joyous summer afternoon it was one of the quieter parts of London; at two in the morning, it was deserted except for the wind that moaned in corners and riffled through the trees, dappling the pavement with silver light.
At the end of the street, ghostly curtains were flowing through an open window, rippling in the wind. My house, I realized. The front room window of my flat on the second floor. A fine frozen dusting of fear filled my mouth. I hadn’t left that window open.
As we drew under it, the taxi slowed to a crawl and then stopped. Through the window, shadows twisted in a gust of wind, and I saw him for the second time that night, a silhouette of darkness deeper than the surrounding dark—not so much a man, but the absence of a man, a black hole in the shape of a man.
“Drive on,” I whispered.
“But—”
“Drive on.”
7
AT THE END of the street, I looked back. The curtains were gone; moonlight glimmered on the windowpane. No shadow was visible within. Had I dreamed it? My hand tightened around the brooch in its box.
“So you do not wish to go home, after all?” asked the cabby.
“No.”
“Where to, then?” he asked.
I shook my head. If the man of shadows had found his way to my flat, nowhere was safe. I pulled both jackets tighter around me.
“Claridge’s,” said Sir Henry.
As we rolled down into the wider streets of Mayfair, I started to speak, but he shook his head ever so slightly. I followed the flicker of his eyes, and caught the curious stare of the cabby in the rearview mirror. As soon as he saw me catch his glance, he looked away.
At Claridge’s, Sir Henry paid the man quickly, helped me out, and steered me inside to a grand hall mirrored like Versailles, its floor a sleek black-and-white Art Deco chessboard. The concierge slid forward with concern. “Hello, Talbot,” said Sir Henry.
“Always a pleasure to see you, sir,” the man replied. “What can we do for you tonight?”
“A discreet place to wait, if you please,” answered Sir Henry. “And an even more discreet car and driver. The driver of the taxi we’ve just left was a bit of a gawker. He may be back.”
“He may return as much as he pleases,” said Talbot blandly, “but unless you wish it, he will find no trace of you.”
We were installed in a small sitting room full of deep chairs and sofas covered in chintz. While Sir Henry prowled the room, inspecting the Lalique crystal scattered about, I stood fixed in the center, brooding over the brooch in my hand. Once, I opened my mouth to speak, but again Sir Henry shook his head.
A few minutes later, Talbot reappeared to whisk us down a hallway, out through a service entrance, and into a small private garage where a car with tinted windows waited, its engine purring. The cabby, it seemed, had indeed turned up again, claiming that we’d l
eft something behind in his taxi. Talbot’s face twitched in an enigmatic smile. “He will not disturb you further tonight. I let him discover a few bits of evidence that might plausibly add up to the notion that you will be staying the night with us, in one of the suites. I believe that he may have locked himself in a janitor’s cupboard, while prowling near the service stairs.”
“I won’t ask how that happened,” said Sir Henry with satisfaction as we climbed into the car.
“Good luck, sir,” said Talbot softly, shutting the door behind us.
As we pulled away, I looked back. The concierge stood impassively at attention, growing smaller and smaller as we drew away, until he vanished in the night.
This time, Sir Henry doled out his directions gradually, so that we zigzagged through the streets of Mayfair, purring past Berkeley Square and out into Piccadilly. Swinging around Hyde Park Corner, we trundled along Knightsbridge, lonely and dark at this hour, turning off at last into the leafy lanes of Kensington. We were headed to Sir Henry’s town house.
The streets were empty, but I couldn’t shake a sense of menace swelling up through the darkness. The farther we sped from the hotel, the stronger it became, until the very trees seemed to be snatching greedily at the car. We were almost to Sir Henry’s when lights flared behind us, and another vehicle swung into the road. Instantly, the panic that I’d been fighting all night surged up in a clammy wave and closed over my head. My heart racing, I gripped the edge of the seat but could barely feel it through tingling hands. We turned left and then quickly right, but the other car stayed close behind.
At last we crunched into a short gravel drive; I was out of the car and racing for the house before the wheels came to a halt. The great carved door in front of us yawned open, and I bolted inside, Sir Henry right behind. I had one glimpse of red taillights disappearing down the street, and then the door swung shut. I stood panting in the grand hall of Sir Henry’s town house, facing his startled butler.