The Bone Key (7 page)

“Kyle,” I said, “but no one calls me by it.”

“What do your friends call you?”

I bit back the instinctive honesty of,
I have no friends
, and said, “Booth, mostly.”

“Then I shall call you Booth, and you will call me Claudia. All right?”

“I . . . I got you flowers,” I said and dove into the kitchen to fetch them.

“Booth,” she said when I reappeared, “I promise that I am not going to bite you.” She smiled a little. “But I must admit the flowers are lovely.” She accepted them and pinned them deftly to her bodice. I felt a great glow of relief, as if some dreadful barricade had been passed; I had been afraid she would be offended.

“We . . . we should go.”

“I suppose we should.”

We left my apartment building and walked together from one streetlight to the next. She made no motion that would suggest she expected me to offer my arm, and I was grateful. But after a block and a half, she said, “It is quite appalling how little I know of you, Booth. Where are you from?”

“Oh, er, here. Well, about twenty blocks north, to be accurate.”

“So you
are
one of
those
Booths.”

“The last one, yes.”

“You certainly don’t put on side about it.”

“There’s nothing left to be particularly proud of.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. You’re the last scion of one of the Twenty, and I don’t think anybody knows you exist.”

“Considering the scandal of my mother’s death, I prefer to be forgotten. Are you a . . . a native?”

“My mother was a Truelove who married beneath her. I don’t know whether I ought to be counted as a ‘native’ or not, although I suppose I must have spent about half my childhood here, all told. My parents’ marriage was rather stormy.”

She did not sound as if she wished to say anything more, and we walked for some time in silence. Then she said, “You ditched me, didn’t you?”

“Miss Coburn, I . . . ”

“I recognize the plumage. I just want to know why.”

“I, er . . . I didn’t . . . ”

She waited.

“I didn’t want to know any more,” I said.

“You?”

“I . . . ” She was right. It was not like me; I was known in the museum for the terrier-like tenacity of my pursuit of facts. It was why I was the person to whom all the mysteries were sent.

“It wouldn’t help to know,” I said, looking away from her into the darkness. “Havilland DeWitt stole the necklace. He murdered Madeline Stanhope. Does the rest of it matter?”

“I’m an archaeologist. I don’t like theories. I like proof.”

“But what good does it do to prove it?”

“
You
’re the one who wanted justice for Madeline Stanhope.”

I did not look at her and did not answer.

We walked without speaking until we came in sight of the museum’s brilliantly lit front entrance. Then Miss Coburn stopped and said, “Do you dance?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Dance. Do you?”

“No . . . that is, not—”

“Then I’ll lead.” She put one hand up to touch her hair, a gesture which recalled my mother to me in a painful momentary flash, and then said, with the hint of a sigh, “Well, Booth, let’s do the pretty, as my Coburn grandmother would say. Give me your arm. And just to prove you can do it, will you call me Claudia? Once?”

I could not tell if she was still angry at me or not. “ . . . Yes, er, Claudia,” I said and offered my arm. I had braced myself and did not flinch when she took it.

“Very nice,” she said. She smelt of verbena. “And now I will stop baiting you. On all fronts. You are, after all, doing me a favor, and I appreciate it.”

She was not still angry; I let my breath out, relieved, and dared, “Is Mr. Larkin so very awful?”

“Horrid. I’ve met
cows
with more personality.”

“Oh.” I wondered how I compared to cows in Miss Coburn’s estimation.

“There’s nothing worse than a garrulous bore. Oh, look, a limousine. That’ll be Reginald Dawe and his fifth wife.”

“You seem to know a great deal about . . . ”

“High society? You may thank my Truelove aunts. Mama was the only one of the three who got married, and so Aunt Ferdy and Aunt Vinnie have no one but me to lavish their expertise on. They don’t count my brother. They say men don’t notice things anyway.”

She gave me a bright, sidelong look, as if daring me to respond. I said nothing. We came to the steps, proceeded up them. Miss Coburn was looking very grand, as if she did not take these same stairs two at a time when she was in a hurry. The rotunda was full of men in tuxedos and women in dresses that shimmered and swirled, the Foucault’s pendulum swinging in their midst, the clock of the Titans’ mother Gaia. As we crossed to the coat-check counter, I could feel the stares and whispers; in all the years I had worked at the museum, this was the first time I had escorted a woman to the annual ball. I could imagine the rumors starting and felt a cold quiver of dread in the pit of my stomach.

When Miss Coburn had surrendered her coat, she gave me a doubtful look. “You don’t want to mingle, do you?”

“No,” I said.

“Then I’ll find you when the doors open. Just don’t hide.”

“I—”

“You do stand out in a crowd, you know,” she said and swept away, as stately as a swan.

I knew I stood out; I was six-foot-three, and my hair had gone entirely white when I was twenty-four. The combination made me horribly visible. The best I could do was to stay back near the wall, in the shadow of one of the columns, and pray that no one noticed me.

I had been standing there for maybe five minutes when I saw her. I do not know how I recognized her as Madeline Stanhope, but I never had the least doubt of who she was. She was a small woman, wrapped toga-fashion in something long and white and trailing, like a bed-sheet or a shroud. She was standing very straight at the top of the museum’s main staircase. She did not look like a ghost—she was neither transparent nor insubstantial to the eye—but she was clearly not a living woman. Her face was too white and too still, with her eyes burning like the promise of eternal damnation. She was staring straight at me.

Miss Coburn had accused me of “ditching” her; that was nothing compared to my crime in ditching Madeline Stanhope. I did not know why she had appeared here, now, but I knew I could not ignore her.

Madeline Stanhope gave me a very slight nod and turned away, walking into the long Contemporary Art gallery that ran the length of the museum. I understood; I followed her.

Three-quarters of the way up the stairs, I heard a clatter of heels behind me. I had been trying with all my might to ignore the assembled wealth and dignity of the Museum Ball, but at that noise, like Orpheus, I could not forbear to look back.

Miss Coburn, clutching her skirts carelessly in one hand to keep them out of her way, caught up to me and said, in a low hiss, “Booth, what are you
doing
?”

I kept climbing. There was nothing I could tell her that would not sound even less likely than the truth. “Following Madeline Stanhope.”

“Foll—” Automatically, Miss Coburn kept pace with me. “Are you out of your
mind
?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

We reached the top of the stairs; Madeline Stanhope was halfway down the gallery. She moved with neither hurry nor hesitation, not drifting but walking with firm, even steps, although her feet made no sound. When she looked back and saw that I was following, her smile revealed small sharp teeth—certainly not teeth belonging to a living woman, nor like the teeth I had seen in Mrs. Stanhope’s skull.

“Can you see her?” I whispered to Miss Coburn.

“No.” She looked up at me. “You lead.”

My spine was being replaced, vertebra by vertebra, with cubes of ice, but I followed Madeline Stanhope into the Contemporary Art gallery.

Halfway down the gallery, Miss Coburn whispered to me, “Where do you think she’s going?”

“ . . . I’m afraid she wants to show me something.”

There was a pause. “Oh,” said Miss Coburn, “I see what you mean.”

Madeline Stanhope turned from Contemporary Art into Medieval, walked through Medieval into Renaissance, and from there into Decorative Arts. She came to a halt in front of the case containing the Venebretti Necklace.

I heard Miss Coburn’s breath hiss in. Then she whispered, “I can see her now.”

The revenant of Madeline Stanhope walked slowly around the case, as if inspecting the necklace from all angles. Then she turned to us, placed her hand on top of the case, and stared at us with the dark conflagration of her eyes.

Miss Coburn caught at my elbow. “Look!”

I could not help my flinch, but I followed the direction of her pointing finger. Clearly visible on Madeline Stanhope’s wrist, dark and ugly against the glass case, was a shackle. I felt faint and queasy and cold. Together, Miss Coburn and I backed away until we could sit down on the nearest bench. Madeline Stanhope’s burning eyes marked our progress, but she made no movement either to stop us or to follow us.

“Booth,” said Miss Coburn, very quietly and calmly, “I think perhaps now would be a good time for you to tell me what Havilland DeWitt did.”

“I, er . . . yes, I suppose so.” I glanced uneasily at Madeline Stanhope.

“She’ll wait,” Miss Coburn said. “She’ll wait until the end of time if she has to.
Talk
.”

“It was the curse,” I said, because everything was fitting into place in my head, all the pieces lining up as I had known they would as soon as I let myself think about it. “At least, part of it was the curse.”

“Go on.”

“He wanted the necklace. You could see it, couldn’t you? In his memorandum book? It’s no very large step from wanting the necklace kept safe from museum patrons to . . . to wanting the necklace kept safe from
everyone
.”

“No, but you haven’t proved he took that step.”

“That’s the books. That list of books.”

“Wasn’t he trying to break the curse?”

“No. Not with those books. Maybe he started there, but the books in Latin—those were all necromantic texts, and the necromancers of that time had some—”

“Booth. Spare me the lecture on Renaissance necromancy, and tell me what he did.”

“Havilland DeWitt had a plan, and . . . and I think I know what it was. He wanted the necklace for himself, because that’s how the curse works. But he was the museum director—important man, important friends, reputation to maintain. He needed a . . . he needed someone else to take the blame.”

“All right,” Miss Coburn said, although she still looked dubious.

Madeline Stanhope stood by the case, watching us, her eyes full of hunger and rage. I was grateful that she was not coming any closer.

I went on: “And I believe he was quite sincere about wanting to keep the necklace safe. After all, he was planning to keep it in his own house—”

“How—”

“Wait. Let me finish. It was going to be vulnerable to burglars, inquisitive servants, prying house-guests. I guess that what happened . . . that he asked himself how Maria Vittoria Venebretti would have solved his, er, problem—”

“And thus the works on her and on Renaissance magic.”

“Yes. He found his answer in the
Imperium Orbis
of Carolus Albinus. Albinus talks about how to command all sorts of things: Hebrew golems, spirits of fire and air—”

“Booth.”

“Sorry. Right. Albinus also talks about how to command the dead.”

“
Merde
,” said Miss Coburn.

“ . . . Yes. Mr. DeWitt found that the two halves of his problem solved each other. He needed a . . . a suspect who would never show up to prove his—or in this case her—guilt, and he needed . . . ” I realized I was staring at Madeline Stanhope and looked away. “He needed a dead body.”

“But chaining her to the wall?”

“I haven’t read a great deal . . . that is, I don’t like this kind of spell. But this sort of . . . of guardian needs to be . . . it’s an avatar of fury, is how I understand it.”

We were both looking at Madeline Stanhope now. She was staring back at us, her lips pulled away from her sharp teeth. One hand was resting on the glass case, and I could see the tension of the fingers, yearning to reach through the glass to touch the necklace itself.

“And it worked,” I said, distantly amazed at how level my voice was when most of my mind was screaming. “She was bound to the necklace just as he desired, and the hue and cry went up after her—all the way to San Francisco according to your aunt.”

“Yes.”

“And then Mr. DeWitt was hoist by his own petard.”

“What do you mean?”

“He waited a year. Then he offered a perfectly innocent explanation for wandering around in the basements at all hours and went down to take the necklace back. But he was a stupid man, and he didn’t understand . . . that is, he forgot to tell her not to guard it from
him
.”

“So the heart attack . . . ”

“I don’t think it was coincidence.”

“But why—nothing happened to us!”

“Philip Burney—who is also on Mr. DeWitt’s list—says that the dead see only by moonlight. And I think she must be limited . . . she must have a radius of influence, with the necklace as its focus. Or else why wouldn’t she . . . that is, I’m often in the museum after moonrise. But people just aren’t in the galleries at this time of night.”

“The watchman’s supposed to be,” Miss Coburn muttered.

“Yes, well . . . ”

The revenant was still standing, still staring.

“Miss Coburn,” I said, “what happened to Madeline Stanhope’s bones?”

“I don’t know. Why does it matter? Shouldn’t we be figuring out what she wants?”

“Oh, I know what she wants. I’m just afraid to give it to her.”

I felt Miss Coburn’s swift glance, but I could not take my eyes off Madeline Stanhope; I was too frightened.

“She wants the necklace,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Quite sure.”

“We can’t give it to her. Starkweather will
slay
us.”

“She wants it,” I said, looking at the predatory teeth, the strong angry hands. “It’s
hers
now. And I can’t help thinking Maria Vittoria Venebretti would be pleased.”