The School of Night (7 page)

The balcony door was still open, and the air from outside had formed a high-pressure front with the apartment's climate-control system. From inside the vault, I could hear the arrhythmic skitter of Alonzo's hydrothermograph, protesting every fluctuation in humidity and temperature.

“Mr. Cavendish.”

Detective Acree beckoned me toward him.

“I think you said you were Mr. Wax's executor.”

“That's right.”

“Then I hope you'll satisfy my curiosity. Was his book collection insured?”

I blinked.

“Well, yes, it was.”

“So who's the beneficiary?”

Two days earlier, I couldn't have told him. But having trawled for hours in the sea of Alonzo's paper, I knew. “Me,” I said. “I'm the beneficiary.”

I fully expected his mouth to turn up the way it did. What I didn't expect was the delicate climb of his voice as he said:

“Tough for you.”

8

I
WOKE THE
next morning, matted in sweat, my cell phone clamoring from the depths of my pants pocket.

“Mr. Cavendish!” said Bernard Styles. “We just saw the news coverage of Miss Pentzler's death. Tragic business!”

Whatever fog was left in my brain burned right off. For I was picturing not Styles but his silent emissary, Halldor. Standing in the main hall of Union Station, staring up at me and Lily.

“Yes,” I said. “Very tragic.”

“I knew her quite well, you know. Damned fine head on her shoulders. I always thought Alonzo was lucky to have her.”

“It's funny,” I said. “You know where
I
was yesterday, but maybe you could tell me where
you
were.”

I'd meant it to sound tossed-off, that little query, but my voice betrayed me, for Styles held off a moment.

“Well, as I mentioned, we were planning to descend on Mount Vernon, but it seemed much too hot to be gadding about. So we went instead to the Museum of Crime and Punishment.”

“I see.”

“Fearfully interesting place. Oh, but hold on, we also saw something about Alonzo's books being stolen.
Beyond
scandalous! Never mind, these things always come to earth somewhere.”

“Cornelius Snowden might disagree,” I said.

“Who?”

“Old friend of yours. He was carrying Stow's
Annales
when he died. As far as I know, that book never came to earth anywhere.”

I gave it a couple of seconds before adding:

“Snowden was kind of like Alonzo. He had something you wanted.”

“Well, you'll pardon me, but I fail to see what Cornelius Snowden has to do with anything. As for Alonzo, the item in his possession was not his to possess, as I thought I made clear to you. I've engaged you, Mr. Cavendish, to recover a document that is legally mine.”

“What if I can't?”

“If you really don't think you're up to the job, you need only return my check and we may take our leave of each other. You…” His voice dwindled down to a drawl. “You haven't
cashed
the check, have you, Mr. Cavendish?”

I pressed my eyelids down. “Of course I have.”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, dear.”

“Look, I just need us to be in the open, okay? If there's something funny going on—between you and Alonzo, you and
anyone
—I need to know it.”

“I can assure you, Mr. Cavendish, I've nothing to hide. What about you?”

*   *   *

Clarissa called ten minutes later.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Outside your door.”

I went to the window. A tangle of black hair, strangely purposeful in the light of noon. I looked at her for longer than was strictly necessary. Then, with no warning, she tipped her head back and caught my eye. And waved.

“Oh, yeah, hi,” I said into the phone. “How did you know where I live?”

“I dropped you off. In a taxi. Last night.”

“Right.”

“Can I come up?”

“It's kind of messy, honestly.”

“You better fire her.”

“Who?”

“Your cleaning lady. If she was over there yesterday, she's not doing much of a job.”

“Oh. Yeah. Listen, give me ten minutes, I'll be right down.”

She smelled of sunblock that morning. One of those nongreasy sports solutions that remind you of your dad's aftershave. And, to tell the truth, her madras shorts could easily have been lifted from my father's wardrobe. They did have the advantage of revealing her legs, which were slender and lightly muscled and of Euclidean proportions. I did my best not to stare. I'm not sure I succeeded.

“Let's go to Stanton Park,” Clarissa said. “It's shadier there.”

She walked so quickly at first I had to struggle to keep up. And then, a couple of blocks on, her energy gave out altogether. So that, by the time we reached the park, she looked like she was crossing the Sun's Anvil.

“Hot,” she gasped.

We found a bench under a cherry tree. I offered her a handkerchief—and saw too late the latticework of holes in the cotton. We fell silent.

“You seem to know the area,” I said at last.

“I rent a place over on Fourth Street.”

So Clarissa Dale was, of all ridiculous things, my neighbor. How long had this been going on?

“An apartment,” I said. “That sounds kind of quasi-permanent.”

“Not to me.”

On the benches across from us sat a line of nannies. Their arms folded in an unbroken line, they regarded us with deep foreboding, and their young charges would stop in the midst of chalk drawing or climbing up a slide to stare at us, like animals sniffing a storm.

“Where'd you learn all that shit about bank vaults?” I asked.

I'd forgotten how gratifying it could be to make a woman laugh. A grunt of surprise … a sudden flash of gum, startlingly red … a white hand clapped over her mouth.

“I used to work for a bank,” she explained. “Back in the day.”

She wiped the sweat from her face. Spread the damp handkerchief across her lap.

“Listen, Henry, I've got Alonzo's hard drive.”

I stared at her.

“How?”

“Well,” she chirped, “first I took it out of Mr. Computer.”

“No, I mean
when
?”

“Before the police got there.”

Three, four minutes. No longer.

“I always keep a screwdriver in my bag,” she said. As though that explained anything.

“The hard drive is evidence,” I said.

“Not if it's been erased.”

“But if it's erased…?”

“Well, there's erased and then there's
erased
. You'd know that, Henry, if you'd ever been in the IT field.”

As patiently as she could, she explained to me that hard drives don't really delete information, they just mark it as having been deleted. If it isn't copied over with other data, then, in many cases, it's recoverable.

So, having removed Alonzo's hard drive, Clarissa Dale, in the privacy of her own lodgings, transferred it to her computer, scanned the file structures with Windows Explorer, and was able finally to retrieve a few Word files and, more critically, the remains of a personal-appointment database.

She went straight to the entry for May 12—Alonzo's last day on earth—and found three names on his to-call list.

“Me,” she said. “You.
And
—”

“Amory Swale.”

A flush of good humor stole into her cheeks as I told her how I'd come across Swale's name, just above hers, in Alonzo's folder.

“Okay,” she said. “So you called his number, and then what?”

“It was out of service.”

“And you didn't Google him? Never mind, I did. He's got a Web site. Swale's Antiquarian something something. So I dropped him an e-mail last night, just before bed, and what do you know, this very morning I hear back.”

“What'd he say?”

“Very cagey. Didn't want to talk by computer or phone, asked me if I'd come see him in person.”

“Where is he?”

“Nags Head, North Carolina.”

Two-five-two
, I remembered. Swale's area code.

“It's a five-hour drive, Henry. Not too much traffic this time of year. If we leave tomorrow—say, seven
A.M.
—we could be there for lunch.”

“Seven
A.M.
”

“Well, yeah, beat the traffic. You got anything else on your plate?”

If nothing else, I had the sprawl of Alonzo's papers. Accounts to be opened, bills to be paid, appointments to be kept. God help me, a memorial service for Lily. And on top of that, a District of Columbia police detective who would look with ill favor on my skipping town with an investigation under way.

A mountain of obligation reared up before me … and opposing it, what? A woman who wanted to take a joy ride to a resort town?

“Seven it is,” I said.

9

“W
HO
'
S KIT?
”
CLARISSA
asked.

We were half an hour south of Richmond, and she had colonized the passenger seat of my '95 Toyota Corolla. Her head was bowed over Bernard Styles's digitized document, and her hair had fallen down on either side, screening her as comprehensively as a voting booth.

“Kit,” I said.

“The very first line,” she said. “
He would not be the first—lover,
I guess—
so to be served by Kit. Who would burn hot and cold in the space of but one breath
…”

“Oh, yeah. That's Marlowe.”

“Marlowe?”

“Well, possibly.”

“As in
Christopher
Marlowe?”

“Yeah.”

“Like the playwright.”

“Very much like the playwright.”

“So he was pals with Ralegh.”

“There's evidence, yeah. Ralegh wrote a jesting reply to one of Marlowe's poems. And some guy once accused Marlowe of reading ‘the atheistic lecture to Sir Walter Ralegh and others.'”

“Others? Did he mean the School?”

“Not clear. The accuser was in cahoots with Ralegh's rival, the Earl of Essex. So Essex may have been trying to tar both men with the same brush. It may have been pure invention.”

“Or else they really did know each other. And they really were atheists.”

“Maybe.”

Alonzo had never had much use for that word
maybe
. And neither did Clarissa, for she folded her lips down like a scolded toddler.

“Okay,” she said, “one other thing. If Ralegh really wrote this letter, how come he can't spell his name? I mean,
R-a-w-l-e-y
. Where's the
i
?”

I pressed my hand to my temple. “You're kidding, right?”

“No.”

“You really don't know about Elizabethan spellings.”

“Hello. I was a business major.”

“Okay,” I said. “The English language back then wasn't standardized. There were no official dictionaries. There was no—no cultural
belief
that words should always be spelled the same way. So people spelled things however they heard them or however made sense. I mean, the name
Shakespeare
had something like sixteen different spellings, and the way
he
spelled it isn't the way
we
spell it.”

“And Ralegh?”

“Spelled it one way, his father spelled it another, his half-brother another. And the spellings changed from document to document. You wouldn't believe how many versions are out there. The only thing we're pretty sure of is how the name is pronounced.”

“Okay, but I always thought Ralegh had an
i
in it.
R-a-l-e-i-g-h
.”

“You can blame that on his widow. She survived him, so she got to spell his name how she wanted to spell it. It's only recently that scholars have decided to take the
i
out again. And I could tell you why, but it might take hours, and in the meantime I have a question for you.”

“Sure.”

“If you're a business major, why aren't you in
business
somewhere?”

A delta of wrinkles appeared just above the bridge of her nose.

“Your tone, Henry.”

“Sorry, you just—you appear to have vast, frankly unlimited amounts of time. And a certain amount of discretionary income, too. In which case I'd like to know the secret. Maybe the whole world should know.”

“The world would be bored,” she answered. “If you want to know, I took a buyout. From a company called StrategoStats, which specializes in automated content compliance. A staff of twenty-three, headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire. Combined 2006 sales of $83.1 million. You could Google the whole operation, Henry, if that's not too straightforward for you.”

“And you came to Washington why?”

Her dark lashes lowered a fraction.

“To pay my respects to Alonzo.”

“He'd be touched.”

“And to educate myself.”

“About what?”

“Everything.”

She put the paper back in the glove compartment. Then she stretched out her legs and let herself sag against the headrest.

“It's all right, Henry. I don't expect you to trust me.”

*   *   *

And why, I wanted to ask, should I trust a woman who couldn't even dress properly for a funeral?

Then again, how trustworthy was I? My Toyota, speaking strictly, belonged not to me but to an ex-girlfriend, currently domiciled in Hoboken. Who, speaking strictly, didn't know I had it. The legality of this never bothered me too much because, until Bernard Styles came along, I didn't have enough money to get the car out of its Pennsylvania Avenue garage-home. It had languished there through entire seasonal cycles, and by the time Clarissa and I came for it, it was so encased in dirt that someone had been able to scrawl a message on the back window.