Scholar's Plot (9 page)

Before our quarrel, I’d have obliged and asked him what that was. As things stood I simply waited, and soon his need to boast won out.

“Mistress Peebles has the keys we need.” He spoke softly, as we were still in the hallway surrounded by offices. “And a three-year-old could pick the lock on her door. All we have to do is wait till she goes home, pick up the keys, and we can let ourselves into Hotchkiss’s house while it’s still light enough to see. If we walk in openly, acting like we’ve got permission, there’s a good chance no one will question us. And if they do we’ve got the key. We’d probably have time to skin off before they find out we don’t actually have permission.”

I’ve been involved with too many of Fisk’s plans to think things would go as smoothly as he assumed. But on these summer days the light lingered late, and 
besides…

“If we’ve nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon, then you won’t have any objection to checking out that thesis, in the library.”

When he really wants something, Michael doesn’t give up on it. But I like libraries, and I now had a deep curiosity to see this one.

“The alphanumeric system. And he was only a
scholar
when he came up with it.”

We emerged from the building that held the clerk’s office as we spoke. It was getting late in the afternoon, but with luck we’d have time to look at this forged thesis and maybe get some dinner, before returning to filch Nancy Peebles’ keys.

“His brilliance didn’t make Mistress Peebles like him any better,” Michael said. “What is this system he created? You seem to know of it.”

“Everybody knows about it,” I said. “Well, everyone who cares about books. My father went to a lecture about it once, and raved about its wonders for the rest of the week.”

I hadn’t recognized it at the time, but I now wondered if some of his obsessive reaction had sprung from 
jealousy. It was always someone else who came up with the brilliant ideas. He’d died only a few months later. I pushed those memories away and went on.

“It really was important, for scholars. What he did was to create numbers for everything there is.”

Michael’s brows rose. “What, a number for horses? And flowers and clouds and spinning wheels and turtles and toothpicks and—”

“Yes.” He was joking, but it was an enormous, incredible undertaking. “He created a number for toothpicks. A number for hoof picks for those horses, and for every disease those hooves can get. A number for everything there is, Michael.”

He’d stopped joking, but now he was puzzled. “I can see ’twould be an enormous task, but why is it important?”

“Because before he came up with these numbers, that he painted onto the spines of books about those subjects, there was no way to put books about the same topic in the same place. Oh, great libraries like this one, they’d have rooms for particular subjects, with shelves labeled for books about this and that. But all it took was one scholar putting a book down in the wrong room, or stack, and it could be lost for years. For decades, maybe. Even if it was in the right room, you still had to sort through stacks and stacks of books to find the one you needed. My father said the alphanumeric system would make tasks that scholars spent days and weeks on take minutes and hours instead. It revolutionized research, in every library and school in the Realm. That its inventor came up with it here, that he put his system to work in this library first, was a huge academic score for Pendarian. They won’t take his murder lightly.”

“The more reason for them to forgive Benton, if you can prove who did it. Though I still think ’twill be the project that… We’re here.”

Michael, who’d planned to burgle it himself, was the one who knew where the library was, but I’d noticed the building last night. An old, three story manor house, that like the tower, had been captured when the university walls went up. It stood out among the drab rectangles of the university buildings like a grand dame among laundry maids.

We passed through the front doors into a lofty, marble-tiled entry hall. It had three arched doorways on the ground floor, with a split staircase winding up between them that came together at the center of the second story gallery. But the manor’s furniture had vanished, replaced by a battered table holding flyers, and a large map of the house with a numbered list beside it.

I was stepping up to read it when a young man said, “Can I help you find something?”

A familiar copper whistle hung from a cord around his neck.

“Yes,” Michael said. “We’re looking for unpublished dissertations on ancient history. Particularly on excavation techniques.”

“And do you have a pass to use the library?” It was clear he already knew the answer, but he was going to be polite about kicking us out. And there was only one person who could have told him we were coming.

“Has Professor Dayless had you standing here, waiting for us, all afternoon?” I asked.

“Most of it,” he admitted. “But you really can’t use the library without a pass. It’s restricted to scholars, and guests who’ve been granted permission.”

“Why would Professor Dayless keep us from using the library?” There was a suggestion of gritted teeth in Michael’s voice. “We don’t even need to use the library. We just want to see one dissertation.”

She might have done it because she’d had years of practice anticipating scholars’ attempts to evade the rules. Or she might have had some other reason — either way, I resolved not to underestimate the good professor in the future.

“You mean the dissertation Professor Sevenson copied.” The officious twerp actually sounded sympathetic. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think it’s back on the shelves yet. Master Hotchkiss was still working on those dissertations when … ah, before last night. And today everyone’s so rattled… I’m not sure anyone could find it for you. Even if access to the library wasn’t restricted, which it is.”

And he stood there, stubbornly staring at Michael, who stubbornly stared back at him, till I grabbed Michael’s arm and dragged my erstwhile employer off to dinner.

The good news was that the burgling of Peebles’ office went off without a hitch. We waited outside till we saw her leave the building, then Michael stood watch at the landing to make sure no one came by while I picked the lock … which took almost as little time as I’d optimistically suggested. It took only a few minutes to find Peebles’ keys, which she kept in a desk drawer that wasn’t even locked.

The bad news was that, as Michael pointed out, we’d probably have to burgle the library after all. But that could be put off till later, and I wanted a look at 
Hotchkiss’ house before Peebles found someone willing to clean it.

A few questions posed to students in the tavern where we’d eaten told us Hotchkiss lived in a cottage that had once housed the old manor’s groundskeeper. There was an open commons between it and the library, dotted with trees, flowerbeds, and big stone benches. The benches and grass were covered with students, who’d come out into the lowering sun to study and argue … and flirt, when there was a girl-scholar to flirt with.

We walked right through them, as if we had every right to be there. They paid us no attention at all.

The house was in the same style as the manor, and small only in comparison — two stories, with plenty of windows and two chimneys. The low wall that surrounded it wouldn’t keep a rabbit out, much less a burglar. Though their “tight” campus security should have kept most criminals out … and I wondered why it hadn’t.

“Must be nice, to be a groundskeeper here.” The path to the cottage was well-laid brick, with flowerbeds tended by the university gardeners — who probably lived in town, in hovels.

“I expect ’twas called that when the university took it over,” Michael said, pushing open the gate. A latch, but no lock. “Though ’twas likely built to house a dowager, when the new baron came to power.”

“Or a mistress.”

“’Tis in sight of the manor’s windows, Fisk.”

“You’re right. Not a mistress.”

Michael started up the path to the door, but I wanted to scope it out as a burglar would have. After a few curious glances when we went through the gate, the students went right back to ignoring us.

“Where are you going?” Michael demanded, as I set off around the house.

“I want to see how he got in.”

“You mean the murderer? What makes you think he didn’t go through the front door? Like we should be doing, if you don’t want to attract attention.”

“Whose attention? The ones who aren’t deep in their books are arguing about the nature of lightning. They wouldn’t notice if we … ah. I can see why the guards decided it wasn’t a burglary.”

We’d just come around the back of the house, and there it was — half a dozen dark streaks under a window, plainly visible on the stone wall, where muddy shoes had scrabbled for purchase.

Michael sighed. “All right, I’ll humor you. Why do marks below a window, where someone has clearly tried to climb in, make it
not
a burglary?”

“Because burglars aren’t stupid. At least, no more than anyone else. Why climb through a window over a muddy flowerbed, when there’s a window two down that’s over a brick path?”

“Mayhap the one over the path was locked,” Michael said. “And the other open.”

“And why scramble to get up, through either of them, when there’s a crate next to the back door that would lift you high enough to climb in easily?” I thought he’d missed that.

Michael returned to the back door. The crate beside it held three pots of growing herbs, as if some cook had taken them off a kitchen windowsill and set them outside, for whatever reason one sets plants outside. Michael might have been able to tell me, but as I was currently up on points I decided not to ask.

“He might not have thought of it.” But Michael’s voice was slower now, less certain. “Particularly if he wasn’t much practiced in his craft.”

“A beginner wouldn’t start on a campus swarming with scholars, or with the house of a librarian, who wasn’t likely to be rich. No, if anyone went through that window it wasn’t a burglar. Not even a beginner.”

“But an amateur murderer might have,” Michael murmured. “Most in that situation wouldn’t be thinking clearly enough to notice the crate.”

“Or think about finding a pail, or something else to stand on in that shed between the compost heap and the privy?”

Michael said nothing, so I led the way to the front door and tried the key. It took a bit of jiggling, as if it hadn’t often been used in that lock, but it turned and I swung the door wide.

In this house the stairs started up from the front hall, in the usual way. Off to the left, through an open door, I saw the legs of an overturned chair and a corner of the hearth. Farther down the hall were two more doors, closed — kitchen and dining room, probably. The window with the muddy streaks would open into the dining room.

The hall itself held a coat rack laden with coats, cloaks and professorial robes, all in the university colors, and a bench where you could put on or remove boots in bad weather. And lastly, a rug that would have been quite nice, if not for the huge red-brown stain that marred one corner.

Michael, who for all his softness is less squeamish than I, knelt and lifted the edge. The blood beneath it was still wet and red. I didn’t blame the maids.

“He bled a lot,” Michael said.

“Head wounds do.”

“That’s how it seems, when ’tis bleeding into your eyes in a fight. But most scalp wounds clot, eventually. This blow must have broken the skull, as well as the scalp.”

“I wonder what he hit him with.”

“Whatever ’twas, the guards will have taken it for evidence. What
are
you looking for, Fisk? Captain Chaldon told us how he died.”

“I know. I’m looking for
why
he died.”

And there might be no evidence of that, but I saw no need to admit it, yet.

The front room, to the left of the hall, held formal furniture, much of it overturned, and a number of expensively bound books. Whether they belonged to the university and came with the house, or belonged to the librarian I couldn’t say. But they’d been thrown off the shelves and were lying on the floor, some face down with their pages crumpled beneath. My father had taught me to care for books, and I suppressed an urge to pick them up and rescue them.

Someone had ransacked this room.