Book of Souls by Glenn Cooper (11 page)

Isabelle seemed fascinated she was conversing with a living, breathing ex–FBI agent, the kind of person who, to her, existed only in films and novels. She gazed into his magnetically blue eyes as he regaled her in his soft drawl with stories about old cases.

When the conversation turned to her life, Will found her charming and winsome, with a selfless, admirable streak, a young woman so devoted to her grandfather she took a year off from university to care for him in this remote, drafty old house and help him adjust to life without his wife of fifty years. She’d been slated to start her last year at Edinburgh, reading European history, when Lady Cantwell suffered a fatal stroke. Isabelle’s parents were in London and tried to get the old man to come down, but he vehemently objected. He was born at Cantwell Hall and, like a good Cantwell, would die there too. Eventually, something would have to give, but Isabelle volunteered a temporary solution.

She’d always loved the house and would reside there for a year, doing spadework for a future doctoral dissertation on the English Reformation and comforting the grieving old man. The Cantwells, she told Will, were a microcosm of the sixteenth-century Catholic-Protestant divide, and the house had born witness to some of that cataclysm. A fear of hers was when Lord Cantwell passed, the inheritance taxes would force the family to sell it to a developer, at worst, or the National Trust, at best. In either case, it would be the end of a family lineage that stretched back to the thirteenth century, when King John granted the first Cantwell, Robert of Wroxall, a baronial tract of land, upon which he built a square stone tower, on this very spot.

Finally, she opened up about the book. They were over the moon it had fetched an astronomical price at auction but she was desperately unhappy to see it pass out of family hands. Even as a girl, she’d been captivated by it, always finding it strange and mysterious, and she offered that its 1527 date had fueled her interest in that period of British history. She had hoped one day to discover what the book represented and how it came to rest at Cantwell Hall. Still, she admitted, the auction proceeds would keep the estate functioning for a while longer though it didn’t solve some very expensive and pressing structural issues. There was rising damp, rotting timbers, the roof had to be redone, the electricals were a disaster, the plumbing a bloody mess. She joked they’d probably have to sell off every piece inside the house to afford to fix the house itself.

Will was taking guilty pleasure in the conversation. This woman was his daughter’s age! Despite his spat with Nancy, he was a happily married man with a new son. His days as a rover and a cad were behind him, no? He almost wished that Isabelle weren’t quite so stimulating. Her long, sensual body and rapier-sharp mind were a twin-barreled shotgun aimed at the mass of his chest. He feared he was a double-trigger pull from being blown away. At least he was sober. That helped.

He was itching to get on with business and wondered when Lord Cantwell would make his grand appearance. Provocatively, he asked a question that caught her off guard. “How much would it take to fix the place up and clear out your future tax problems?”

“What an odd question.”

He pressed for an answer.

“Well, I’m not a builder or an accountant, but I’d imagine it’s in the millions!”

Will smiled impishly. “I may have something in my bag that’ll solve your problems.”

She arched her eyebrows, suspiciously, and said dryly, “Wouldn’t that be marvelous. Why don’t I see what’s keeping Granddad?”

Just as she rose to find him, the old man shuffled into the Great Hall, staring quizzically at Will.

“Who’s that?” he called out.

She answered at a volume he could hear. “It’s Mr. Piper from America.”

“Oh, right. Forgot about that. Long way to come. Don’t know why he didn’t just use the telephone.”

She ushered Lord Cantwell over for introductions.

He was well into his eighties, mostly bald except for an unruly fringe of silvery hair. His red, eczematous face was a weed garden of hairy tufts the razor missed. He was dressed for a Sunday afternoon, twill trousers, herringbone sports coat and an ancient university tie, shiny with wear. Will noticed his trousers were too large for him, and he was using a fresh belt hole. Recent weight loss, not a good sign in an older fellow. He was stiff with arthritis and had the gait of a man who hadn’t loosened up yet. When Will shook his hand, he got a stronger whiff of urine and concluded he’d been sitting on the fellow’s favorite chair.

Will ceded Cantwell his usual seat, a courtesy Isabelle approvingly noticed. She poured her grandfather a coffee, then improved the fire and offered Will her chair, pulling up a footstool for herself.

Cantwell was not given to subtlety. He took a loud slurp of coffee and boomed, “Why in hell did you want to spend 200,000 quid on my book? Obviously pleased you did, but for the life of me, I don’t see the value.”

Will spoke up to penetrate the man’s hearing impediment. “I’m not the buyer, sir. Mr. Spence called you. He’s the buyer. He’s very interested in the book.”

“Why?”

“He thinks it’s a valuable historical document. He has some theories, and he asked me to come over here and see if I could find out more about it.”

“Are you an historian like my Isabelle? You thought the book was worth something, didn’t you, Isabelle?”

She nodded and smiled proudly at her grandfather.

Will said, “I’m not an historian. More like an investigator.”

“Mr. Piper used to be with the American Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Isabelle offered.

“J. Edgar Hoover’s gang, eh? Never liked him.”

“He’s been gone for a while, sir.”

“Well, I don’t think I can help you. That book’s been in our family as long as I can remember. My father didn’t know its provenance, nor did my grandfather. Always considered it a one-off oddity, some sort of municipal registry, possibly Continental in origin.”

It was time to play his cards. “I have something to tell you,” Will said, looking each one of them in the eye, playing out a melodrama. “We found something hidden in the book, which may be of considerable value and might help answer questions about the book’s origins.”

“I went through every page!” Isabelle protested. “What was hidden? Where?”

“Under the back endpaper. There was a sheet of parchment.”

“Bugger!” Isabelle cried. “Bugger! Bugger!”

“Such language,” Cantwell scolded.

“It was a poem,” Will continued, amused by the girl’s florid exasperation. “There wasn’t time to vet it, but one of Mr. Spence’s colleagues thinks it’s about the book.” He was milking it now. “Guess who it’s written by?”

“Who?” Isabelle demanded impatiently.

“You’re not going to guess?”

“No!”

“How about William Shakespeare.”

The old man and the girl first looked to each other for reaction, then turned back to the certifiable American.

“You’re joking!” Cantwell huffed.

“I don’t believe it!” Isabelle exclaimed.

“I’m going to show it to you,” Will said, “and here’s the deal. If it’s authentic, one of my associates says it’s worth millions, maybe tens of millions. Apparently there isn’t a single confirmed document that exists in Shakespeare’s handwriting, and this puppy’s signed, at least partially—W. Sh. Mr. Spence is going to keep the book, but he’s willing to give the poem back to the Cantwell family if you’ll help us with something.”

“With what?” the girl asked suspiciously.

“The poem is a map. It refers to clues about the book, and the best guess is that they were hidden in Cantwell Hall. Maybe they’re still here, maybe they’re long gone. Help me with the Easter egg hunt, and, win or lose, the poem’s yours.”

“Why would this Spence give us back something he rightfully paid for?” Cantwell mused. “Don’t think I would.”

“Mr. Spence is already a wealthy man. And he’s dying. He’s willing to trade the poem for some answers, simple as that.”

“Can we see it?” Isabelle asked.

He pulled the parchment from his briefcase. It was protected by a clear, plastic sleeve, and, with a flourish, he handed it to her.

After a few moments of study, her lips began to tremble in excitement. “Can’t be well,” she whispered. She’d found it immediately.

“What was that?” the old man asked, irritably.

“There’s a reference to our family, Granddad. Let me read it to you.”

She recited the sonnet in a clear voice, fit for a recording, with nuances of playfulness and drama as if she had read it before and rehearsed its delivery.

Cantwell furrowed his brow. “Fifteen eighty-one, you say?”

“Yes, Granddad.”

He pressed down hard on the armrests and worked himself upright before Will or Isabelle could offer assistance, then started shuffling toward a dim corner of the room. They followed, as he muttered to himself. “Shakespeare’s grandfather, Richard was from the village. Wroxall’s Shakespeare country.” He was scanning the far wall. “Where is he? Where’s Edgar?”

“Which Edgar, Granddad? We’ve had several.”

“You know, the Reformer. Not our blackest sheep, but not far off. He would have been lord of the manor in 1581. There he is. Second from the left, halfway up the wall. You see? The fellow in the ridiculously high collar. Not one of the most handsome Cantwells—we’ve had some genetic variation over the centuries.”

Isabelle switched on a floor lamp, casting some light upon a portrait of a dour, pointy-chinned man with a reddish goatee standing in an arrogant, puffy-chested, three-quarter pose. He was dressed in a tight, black tunic with large gold buttons and had a conical Dutch-style hat with a saucer-shaped brim.

“Yes, that’s him,” Cantwell affirmed. “We had a chap in from the National Gallery a good while back who said it might have been painted by Robert Peake the Elder. Remind your father of that when I pop off, Isabelle. Could be worth a few quid if he needs to flog it.”

From across the room, a woman’s foghorn voice startled them. “Hallo! I’m back. Give me an hour, and I’ll have lunch ready.” The housekeeper, a short, sturdy woman, was still in her wet scarf, clutching her handbag, all business.

Isabelle called to her, “Our visitor is here, Louise.”

“I can see that. Did you find the clean towels I put out?”

“We haven’t been upstairs yet.”

“Well, don’t be rude!” she scolded. “Let the gentleman have a wash. He’s come a long way. And send your grandfather to the kitchen for his pills.”

“What’s she going on about?”

“Louise says, take your pills.”

Cantwell looked up at his ancestor and shrugged emphatically. “To be continued, Edgar. That woman strikes fear in my heart.”

The upstairs guest wing was cool and dark, a long, paneled hall with brass valances and dim-watted bulbs every few yards, rooms on either side, hotel-style, long, worn runners. Will’s room faced the rear. He gravitated toward the windows to watch the intensifying storm and absently brushed dead flies off the sills. There was a brick patio below and a wild expanse of garden beyond, fruit trees leaning in the stiff wind and sideways rain. In the foreground, off to his right, he could see the edge of what looked like a stables, and over its roof, the top of an outbuilding, some sort of spired structure, indistinct in the downpour.

After he splashed some water on his face he sat on the four-poster and stared at the single bar of service on his mobile phone, probably just enough for a call home. He imagined the awkward conversation. What would he say that wouldn’t just get him into more trouble? Better to get this over with and start to thaw out his marriage in person. He settled for a text message:
Arrived safely. Home soon. Love U.

The bedroom was old-ladyish, lots of dried flowers and frilly pillows, gossamer, lace curtains. He kicked off his shoes, laid out his heavy body on top of the floral bedspread, and dutifully napped for an hour until Isabelle’s voice, chiming like a small bell, called him for lunch.

Will’s appetite took everything that Louise could throw at him and more. The Sunday roast dinner sat well with his meat-and-potatoes predilection. He ate a small mountain of roast beef, roast potatoes, peas, carrots, and gravy but stopped himself from drinking a third glass of Burgundy.

Isabelle asked her grandfather, “Is there any history of Shakespeare visiting Cantwell Hall?”

The old man answered through a mouthful of peas. “Never heard of anything like that, but why not? This would have been his stomping ground in his youth. We were a prominent family that largely maintained its Catholicism throughout that dreadful period, and the Shakespeares were probably closeted Catholics as well. And even back then, we had a splendid library that would have interested the fellow. It’s perfectly plausible.”

“Any theories why Edgar Cantwell would have gone to the trouble of having a poem written, hiding clues, then stashing the poem in the book?” Will asked.

Cantwell swallowed his peas, then drank the rest of his wine. “Sounds to me like they had the inkling the book was dangerous. Those were trying times, easy to get killed for your beliefs. I suppose they couldn’t bring themselves to destroy the book. Thought it better to hide its significance in a fanciful way. Probably a rubbish explanation, but that’s what I think, anyway.”

Isabelle was beaming. “I have visions of my dissertation taking a rather more interesting turn.”

“So what do you say?” Will asked. “Do we have a deal?”

Isabelle and Lord Cantwell nodded. They had discussed the matter while Will had napped.

“Yes, we do,” Isabelle answered. “Let’s begin our little adventure after lunch.”

THEY BEGAN IN the library. It was a generous room, with bare, plank floors shiny with wear, a few good rugs, and one front-facing exterior wall that let gray, stormy light in through diamond-paned leaded windows. The other walls were lined with bookshelves except for the space above the fireplace, which had a soot-darkened canvas of a traditional English hunting party.

There were thousands of books, most of them premodern, but one section on the side wall had a smattering of contemporary hardcovers and even a few paperbacks. Will took it all in with heavy, postprandial eyes. Lord Cantwell had already announced his afternoon nap, and despite Will’s anxiousness to get the job done and get home, the thought of flopping in one of the overstuffed library chairs in a darkened corner and shutting his eyes again was appealing.