1 A Motive for Murder (11 page)

“Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.”

(Walter Scott)

Chapter 14
.

That afternoon I emailed Melissa and told her to call me when she could.

Five minutes later she did.

"Misty, you emailed my work email, not my home email!"

I slapped myself on my forehead. "Oh, sorry! I forgot."

"Don't worry, I'll delete it. I overhead Skinny Troll telling Keith you needed to rework your West Wycombe Park article, but he said he liked it."

I groaned loudly. "Why can't he see through her?"

Melissa snorted. "He's too nice and trusting. She's probably after his job."

An unwelcome image of Daisy sitting at Keith's desk presented itself to my mind. I dismissed it. "She should leave us alone then."

"True. Anyway, Misty, spill; what's happening on the guy front?"

I laughed. "Melissa, do you realize you have just failed the Bethel Test again?"

"Bechtel Test. Good attempt to divert. Spill!"

"He tried to kiss me." I sighed.

"Good for you! Don't fall into another unsatisfactory relationship, though. Do you like really like him?"

I sighed again. "No, of course not. I mean, Douglas is good looking but he clearly has issues and there are too many red flags that he's verbally abusive. I can't figure why I was ever interested in him in the first place. I suppose it was Desert Island Syndrome - you know, not dating for ages is like being stranded on a desert island. You want to get on the first boat that comes along. Even a boat with holes looks good."

"So the other man, Jamie, is the luxury yacht?"

I laughed at the image. "Well, I wouldn't go that far, but he does seem like a good, sturdy boat. Melissa, seriously, Jamie isn't interested in me like that."

Melissa chuckled. "Well be careful. I'll call you later if I can. I've got a deadline and I've had writer's block all day."

"What article are you stuck on?"

"No, two things. I've got a deadline for the magazine and I'm stuck on the novel. I don't know what power my heroine can have. Perhaps I could base her on you."

I laughed. "What, on me? I don't have any powers!"

"You're a researcher, and a good one too."

"That's kind of you, Melissa, but I wish being a good researcher was a power."

"Well, you know that Mary Queen of Scots said she feared the words of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe. The pen is mightier than the sword and all that."

"Melissa, she said she feared his prayers not his words."

"See, I told you that you are a good researcher! Gotta go, catch you later."

I wasn't so disappointed that the conversation was short, as I was keen to get to the computer. I wanted to look up Bible references to the ancient Greek word
thelema
, meaning "purpose," to see if there was any connection with the Hellfire Club or even Aleister Crowley, and also wanted to look up the date of Paul Whitehead's death. It seemed pretty obvious that he had burned the evidence and then killed himself, perhaps so that no one could torture the information out of him. He was the Steward of the club and held all the secrets. There was certainly at least one secret he was party to, and he made sure no one else was able to get it. Perhaps the date would give me a clue.

I was sure Aunt Beth would have a concordance, but I couldn't find one on the shelves. There was a big black King James Version Bible, several volumes of David Eddings - who knew Aunt Beth was into epic fantasy! - five editions of Pride and Prejudice, just about everything ever written by Shakespeare and Aristotle, and a stack of occult books with authors such as John Dee, Samael Aun Weor, Aleister Crowley, and of course, Arthur Edward Waite.

It looked like I'd have to use an online concordance. I made a cup of tea, not Lapsang Souchong, opened a packet of cookies invitingly labeled, "McVities Lyles Golden Syrup Creams," and turned on the laptop. I found sixty four references to the ancient Greek word
thelema
in the New Testament. I groaned. The joys of being a researcher! I'd rather be able to kick butt while wearing five inch stilettos and skin-tight leather. Oh, I had better add Spanx to that equation.

My reading glasses perched on my nose, I found that the first reference was in Matthew 6:11, the famous Lord's Prayer passage.

May your purpose be done on earth just like your purpose is done in heaven
.

I looked carefully through the remaining sixty three instances of the word
thelema
, and to my great surprise, every instance explicitly referred to God's purpose. Well, there was one instance where it was the devil's purpose, but I was struck by the fact there was not one instance of human, mortal purpose. I wondered about the significance of this.

I finally concluded that "Do as thou wilt" perhaps wasn't so much "Do whatever you like" but "Do what you focus on" as in,
Focus, then act
. Somehow the whole idea of Rabelais' and Aleister Crowley's Thelema made more sense, at least to me.

Now to Paul Whitehead. He had received an important letter, the arrival of which had prompted him to burn all his records and then kill himself. It was easy to find his date of death, December 30, 1774. I googled 1774 to see what was significant about that year. The second entry mentioned the Boston Tea Party, so I googled that. The Wiki entry said that the Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, which was in Massachusetts, then a British colony, against the British government and the East India Company. The East India Company controlled all the tea coming into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, some colonists threw the tea into Boston Harbor.

Okay, I pretty much knew all that, just not the date. A web page said that England did not receive news of the Boston Tea Party until January 1774 due to the time taken by transport in those days, but that the news was not officially announced until March 1774. I couldn't find the date in January, so looked up voyage times from America to Britain in the eighteenth century. This was a difficult search. I finally found one source that said the voyage in the nineteenth century would have taken twenty five to twenty eight days.

Horrors, at that point I realized I had eaten all the cookies. Research makes me hungry. The cupboards revealed a packet of cookies called "chocolate digestives." In Australia, a digestive was something someone would take for an upset stomach. Oh well, the illustration on the packet looked good, so I opened the packet and took out only four biscuits this time, in an attempt at self control.

Back at the laptop and refueled by tea and chocolate digestives, I immediately came across a useful article written by a professor of history. The article mentioned Benjamin Franklin, and said that in those times, voyages across the Atlantic took six to eight weeks.

Whitehead took delivery of the letter on December 23, 1774. If the letter was sent from America, it may have referred to events that happened in November 1771, possibly even in late October 1774. On the other hand, the letter may have been sent from within England.

I sat at the computer for two hours but couldn't find anything to tip me off as to what had upset Whitehead so. Sir Francis Dashwood was championing the case of American independence, and I did find one site that said American revolutionaries were debating whether to break with Britain in November 1774. Of course, I also figured that Paul Whitehead did what he did to prevent something from happening. If he did prevent it, then I'd never be able to find out what it was. It seemed like researching this any further would be pointless.

I got up, stretched my legs and looked out the window for a car. Aunt Beth's lawyer was overdue by five minutes. He had called the day before to make a time with me so he could drop off a package that Aunt Beth had bequeathed to me in her will. I hoped it had something to do with money, and a lot of it.

By the time I got back downstairs, I could see a figure behind the frosted glass of the front door, and made it there just as the doorbell was ringing.

I showed the elderly man into the living room. He looked more like an undertaker than a lawyer.

"Mrs. Sales," he began in a clipped Oxbridge accent.

"Ms.," I interrupted. "I'm not married, and if I were married, I would still be 'Ms.'"

He looked at me like I was an insane and overtly feminist member of the colonies. "Ms. Sales," he said, with emphasis on the 'Ms.', "as I informed you on the phone, I cannot divulge any details of Mrs. Banks' will at this time, but these two packages are for you. The terms of Mrs. Banks' will stipulated that our firm was to hand deliver these packages to you."

He handed me the first one, which was a large, yellow envelope.

"Open it now."

I did as I was told, and pulled out the veterinary records of Diva the cat. There was also one thousand dollars, err, pounds.

"You know own the cat," he said, and one side of his mouth rose in small sneer. "And that money is to fly the cat back to Australia."

My first thought was to wonder how much a flight for a cat would be, and how much the quarantine would cost. I didn’t know if a thousand pounds would cover it. I shrugged. At least it was better than nothing and was at the least, a sizeable contribution. I’d grown attached to the cat and her weird ways.

The lawyer interrupted my thoughts. "I am also asked to have your agreement that you will open the other package in private. The additional terms are that you will agree to keep the jewelry on your person at all times, to keep it out of sight, and you yourself are to agree to bequeath it as an heirloom. It is never to pass out of your ownership. You are not to mention to anyone that you have it. Do you understand and agree?"

"Yes." I reached out for the package, my hopes of bars of gold and stacks of hundred pound notes cruelly dashed.

The lawyer moved the package out of my grasp. "You need to sign these documents first. Sign in all the places so marked, and I will need to see your passport."

I handed over my passport which I had out ready for him, and signed next to the crosses. "What about the house?"

The lawyer glared at me. After what seemed an age, he said, "Your aunt did not own the house."

"She didn’t? Was she renting?"

The lawyer shook his head. "I am not at liberty to divulge that information." His lips pursed into thin sneer again.

The lawyer rose and made for the door, but Diva shot between his legs and he fell heavily. I hurried over to help him up, but he waved me away, and dusted himself down.

No sooner than the lawyer was out the door, than I raced up the stairs two at a time, and leaped onto my bed. My hands were shaking as I opened the package.

I spread out the contents over the bed. A piece of silver jewelry, a silver fob chain. Antique silver to be precise, and it was clear it had another piece added in later to extend the length. My parents had been jewelers and also were collectors of antique jewelry so I was up on antique jewelry, not that I had much of it. I found the hallmark readily enough and recognized the piece immediately as made in London. There was no sovereign head, which meant the chain was made either before 1784 or after 1890. I didn't have a hope of recognizing the year mark or the maker's mark without a book or the net; I'm good with antique silver but I'm not that good. There was also an ornate citrine seal, but it was the keys hanging next to the seal that caught my attention.

These were not the usual watch keys, for they were both larger, far more solid and looked like medieval casket door keys. Each stood out like a sore thumb against the fine silver. Engraved on one key was the symbol XXII. I turned the other key over but found no mark.

Diva jumped up on the bed and sat on my lap, so I gently tried to dislodge her without being scratched. I got up and crossed over to the little desk in the corner of my bedroom for my notes on the poems.

Take twenty steps and rest awhile

Then take a pick and find the stile

Where once I did my love beguile

T’was twenty-two in Dashwood’s time

Perhaps to hide this cell divine

Where lay my love in peace sublime
.

At first I had thought it meant that there are twenty steps to the passage but twenty two steps in Dashwood's time; now I realized that the two figures were not related. The XXII on the wall is after the Circle cave, which is directly after the Tool Store where the picks were said to be stored. Churchill's poem said the cave was under the Temple. The caves were under the Temple, but anything under the Caves would also be under the Temple. Churchill's poem said there was one passage which could be found only with a clue.

Charles Churchill's poem also mentioned a maze and tools. I hadn't noticed the mention of tools before as I had taken the reference metaphorically.

Under the Temple lay a cave:

Made by some guilty, coward slave,

Whose actions fear’d rebuke,

A maze of intricate and winding ways,