Page 29 of The Devil in Oxford
“Maid… look at this.” Mrs. Penrose tapped an entry in the ledger with the tip of her pencil. She slid her scratch paper overto me, revealing her notes where she’d quietly been refiguring the calculations in her own exacting hand.
I scooted my chair across the cold floor, half-eaten fruit scone in hand. “What did you find?”
She removed her glasses. “I’m not entirely sure. But see here? Every few days there is a repeating transaction. See this number?”
Forty-seven pounds and six shillings. A year’s wages for some.
She underlined it once, running her finger down her list. “Seven times in total. See here, where three days later precisely half of that figure goes back out. Now to whom or why, I can’t tell. But mind, that’s a great deal of money to be moving about with no explanation for it.”
“Agreatdeal of money indeed, especially for someone with so many creditors. If it was payment on a debt, he’d certainly keep record of that.” I gathered up the correspondence, flipping through the pages, checking for dates to match her entries.
I pulled each letter and lay all seven on the table.
It didn’t take long to spot the pattern—one utterly invisible without the aid of the ledger.
“You see something, don’t you?” Mrs. Penrose’s voice quivered with excitement.
I skimmed the correspondence again, annoyed at myself for missing it in the first place. Harker been conversing with a fellow at Cambridge tracking down pieces of a missing Napoleonic cache—a collection of artifacts that had been stolen during Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt around the turn of the previous century. It was something I’d overlooked as Harker’s ill-fated exhibition was purportedly showing off pieces from that same cache. Many of the pieces had been looted from Egypt and brought to Europe to be on display in fashionable French homes. From what the letters indicated, the original cache had been slowly broken up and sold off into various private collections over the years. However, if what I held in my hands were true, Harker had mostly reassembled it,snapping up an ungodly quantity of artifacts for his own private collection. Far more artifacts than made it into his exhibition.
I blew out an unsteady breath, not certain what to make of what I’d found. The exhibition the other evening only contained a handful of items—and the only one on the stage that was also mentioned in the letters was the very box he was found in. But if the letters were to be believed, Harker had recovered hundreds of other artifacts, including a golden racing chariot. The chariot would have been the star piece for any other collector. I flipped back through the pages again. In truth, most of the items mentioned in the letters were far more significant than what had been on display. I’d thought it a rather bare-bones exhibition at the time, but perhaps there was something more behind the omissions. Had the exhibit been intentional, or an afterthought? Now that was a question I could not answer. At least not yet.
I ran my hand through my hair, struggling to make sense of it. Where were the remaining artifacts? They certainly hadn’t been on display in the cases at Harker’s museum, and they hadn’t been on the exhibition dais either.
I gathered the pages together, shoving them into the stolen folio before pressing a firm kiss to her forehead. “You are a genius, Mrs. Penrose. An utter genius.” I grabbed my winter coat and slung my worn leather satchel over my shoulder, determined to find the one person in Oxford who might be able to shed light on the cache. I checked my watch, snapping it back shut. If I left now, I might catch Leona at the museum before she left for the day.
CHAPTERTHIRTEENThe Plot Thickens
ASmuch time as Leona had been spending with Julius Harker, she had to know something about his cache—some tiny detail to break open the rest of the mystery, like one of those Russian nesting dolls.
I raced down the rapidly darkening streets of Oxford toward the museum, past the schoolchildren kicking a ball around the green, and paused alongside the ancient Bodleian Library to catch my breath before taking off again. Stubborn patches of snow and ice lingered in the shadier spots, waiting for the wet spots in the sun to refreeze that evening. Harker’s correspondence sat like a stone in my pocket. These unaccounted-for artifacts had tomeansomething. They simply had to.
The bells of St. Mary’s rang out marking the hour when a faint motion from the periphery of my vision caught my attention. No more than a shadow or flicker of a shape, but enough to cause me to turn just as a figure disappeared into an alleyway. The person had been less than twenty feet behind me, and I’d scarcely noticed them, so caught up in my worries about Leona and the cache.
A frisson of tension worked its way up my spine.
Come now, Ruby. It’s three in the afternoon and there are plenty of people about. No one is following you.
The rational voice in my head was likely correct and yet I hastened my step, nearly breaking into a run the last few cross streets to the Ashmolean. Hari’s hotel was just across the way from the museum, and for a half moment I was tempted to go see him, ask if he thought it plausible that I could be followed—but he would only chastise me for getting caught up in the investigation. Especially after I’d assured him that I would not do any such thing.
No. I could not turn to Hari. Not over this.
It was my imagination. That wasall.
It was quieter than normal inside the museum, with that hushed sort of wonder typically reserved for cathedrals and graveyards. Reason warred with the growing unease in my belly. Surely no one would be following me—after all, no one even knew that I wasactuallyinvestigating Harker’s death. The only way anyonecouldhave known was if they’d somehow seen me enter his museum last night.
With a start, I recalled the scent of stale pipe smoke in Harker’s office. He’d been dead for days before discovery, and by now it had been nearly a week since he’d last been in that locked room. Would the scent have lingered that long? I added that to the growing list of questions I could not answer.
I skipped steps on my way down to Leona’s basement reading room and skidded to a stop in the open doorway.
“Can I help you?” Mary asked over the rim of her glasses. She was the sort of woman who wore her annoyance on her face—and she was most certainly perturbed by my appearance.
“Is Leona here today?” I craned my neck, peering around the room. It certainly didn’t look like Leona was here.
Her expression shifted to concern as she removed her glasses and sat them on the large book before her. “No. The girl hasn’t come in at all today and Professor Reaver has been unbearable because of it.” She gestured at the pile of books behind her. “How am I to get through all this for him in six hours? Tell me that?”
I let out a sympathetic sound. “Does he often ask for your help?”
“Not usually, but Leona’s absence always puts him in a temper. The only person in all of Oxford who can handle his moods is Miss Abernathy.”
