Page 16 of Fangs, Frost, and Folios
Nick smiled. “Uncle Mort could be… well, stern I suppose. But Penny chased those demons away.”
There could be a journal with some… private information about a certain client of mine… dearly like his personal property back before human curators come in and start poking into it.
Giovanni found himself wondering exactly who René’s client was, what that expedition in Pakistan had been about, and just what Charles Mortimer had been up to in his youth.
If Penny’s husband had demons, where had they come from?
And did they have a name Giovanni could trace back to René du Pont?
Five
“We could sell it.”
“It has to be performed.”
“What if it’s shit?”
“It’s Shakespeare. You think it’s going to be shit?”
“I’m just saying that I slept throughHenry VIIIand I don’t think I missed much.”
“Only the breakup of the Catholic Church? The birth of one of the greatest monarchs in history?”
“Its performance literally burned down the Globe Theatre—I don’t think I’m wrong on this.”
“That was not the fault of—”
“Mon Dieu!” René slammed a volume of theEncyclopaedia Britannicadown on the library table. “Shut up. For fuck’s sake, shut up. At this point, I want to burn down this theater myself.”
Beatrice looked up from a stack of Marlowe books that were grouped near the Shakespeare section of the library. “What?”
“I think he regards our Shakespeare debate as tiresome.” Giovanni was sitting in a wingback chair, paging through what they’d guessed was an attempt at cataloging by some well-intentioned amateur back in the 1980s. “He’s wrong of course.”
Beatrice smirked at René. The vampire was smart, that was certain, but patience was not his strong suit. He’d reluctantly agreed to their deal the night before and had even appeared enthusiastic in the early-morning hours when they managed to narrow down the shelves where personal journals seemed to be kept.
The nitty-gritty of cataloging, however, was far from entertaining.
“René, you said there were journals from the 1590s in your section?”
“Yes, but everything appears to be from the Mortimer family collection. If your old friend hid anything of her scandalous ancestress among them, I haven’t found it yet.”
“Look in the Marlowe,” Giovanni muttered. “Penny had a sense of humor.”
Beatrice looked up. “Marlowe?”
“Of course.” He set down the folded pages he’d been studying and sat up. “Penny loved to tease people. What greater tease than putting an unknown Shakespeare play in a section devoted to his biggest rival?”
Beatrice walked over to the section of the library shelves she’d identified the night before. She’d spent most of the previous night—after persuading René to join their efforts—mapping the entire library, using vampire speed to create a large grid and identify most of the major sections. Many were jumbled, especially in areas that appeared to be used more. Fiction, poetry, and plays were the most disorganized.
“Marlowe and Shakespeare overlap a little bit here,” Beatrice said. “There might be some Marlovians in the Mortimer line.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Giovanni said. “Look for anything out of place. Penny loved puzzles and games.”
Beatrice made short work of looking through the volumes on the shelves. “It’s a good collection. All Marlowe’s major works except… Hmm.” The missing volume was notable. “There’s not a single volume of his poetry. Just the plays.”
In a second, Giovanni was at her side. “Nothing? Not any of his poetry?”
Beatrice double-checked the shelf. “There are some academic works related to his poetry but not a collected volume in the bunch.”
