THE DAY HAD been hot and humid. At dusk, the heat was still oppressive, but at least a small breeze was blowing. All the same, under the cloak, my clothes clung damply to my skin.
Head down, my ears pricked for the sound of following footsteps, I passed the Library of Congress on my left, and the Supreme Court on my right. I heard no one behind me. Pulling off the cloak, I looked up. In front of me was an expanse of marble, green lawn, and barricades, and beyond that soared the dome of the Capitol.
Two blocks west, Dr. Sanderson had told Athenaide. A fine view westward. I felt a surge of affection for him as I walked around the south side of the Capitol, hurrying along on the pebbled cement, passing beneath elms and maples. It was cooler here, or at least I could make myself think so, listening to the soft papery rustle of air moving in the trees.
As promised, the front of the Capitol, facing west, had one of the best views in all of D.C. The obelisk of the Washington Monument rose white against the horizon, while the sun hung low in the haze. Strains of Sousa tumbled jauntily from a bandstand across the water. Day in and day out, I still preferred the hurly-burly of New York and London, where the chaos of the present collided cheerfully with the past, instead of standing hushed before it. But I had to admit that the Mall was lovely in the quiet of a summer sunset.
I scanned the wide expanse of marble and pavement in front of the Capitol. For a Fourth of July weekend, it seemed strangely empty, save for a strolling pair of lovers, and one or two suits hurrying somewhere, heads down. But it was too late for tours, and the office staff had mostly gone home. And it was too early—and still too hot—for most of the nightlife. What little there was clustered around the band on the other side of the water.
Dr. Sanderson was nowhere to be seen, but I was a little early. I turned and climbed the stairs, amid the potted palms, looking up at the white dome crowning its hill. On the first landing, I turned and looked again across the green-and-white city.
Below and to the left, beyond the balustrade, darkness exhaled from beneath the grove of magnolias that clung to the hillside—a few late flowers still hanging like small spiced moons among the dark gloss of the leaves. I went down the stairs toward the trees. Halfway down, a movement in the bracken below caught my eye.
I took a step forward, and then another. Far below, on the dark ground, as if in the bottom of a deep hole, someone lay sprawled in the bracken.
“Hello?”
No answer. I hurried down the steps, and around the marble balustrade, stepping gingerly up the slope into the darkness beneath the trees. Night had already fallen here, and I stopped to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. A man lay asleep on the ground. I stepped closer. A man with gray hair and a red bow tie.
Dropping the cloak, I ran to him. Dr. Sanderson lay sprawled on the ground, stabbed more times than I could count. His throat had been slashed and was gaping like a second slack mouth just above his bow tie. I heard a buzzing, and the faintly metallic scent of blood enveloped me. Flies were already swarming over him. Even as I doubled over, retching, I saw that his hand still gripped a crumpled paper. I bent down to look.
A hood was pulled over my head, and I was thrown to the ground.
The books flew from my hands and the wind was knocked out of me, so that I could make no sound. Then my attacker was on top of me, shoving a gag in my mouth, pinning my arms behind me, and quickly tying my wrists. A hand groped downward, sliding between my legs.
With every ounce of strength I could muster, I rolled, knocking him off me. I scrabbled to my knees, but he caught me, and flung me back down. My head hit the ground so hard that white light flared up around me.
I went still, thinking, I can’t black out now. I can’t. The light faded, and I was still conscious. I lay there unmoving, listening. He seemed to be standing above me. Doing what? I could see nothing through the hood, and, worse, I heard nothing but the faint sound of his breathing. Knives, I thought, make no sound once they’re drawn.
He bent down to straddle me, and I jerked my knee upward as hard as I could.
I heard a sharp grunt of pain, and he fell heavily off to the side. Hoping I’d caught his groin, I rolled away. I felt leaves brushing at me—I seemed to have rolled under a bush.
I heard my attacker lurch to his feet and stagger a few steps. And then there was silence.
I lay still, barely breathing.
The silence held.
And then I heard footsteps, pounding closer.
“Kate!” called a voice. Ben’s voice.
I heard a jumble of footsteps, some coming closer, others leaving.
“Kate,” Ben called again.
As loud as I could, I called back through the gag. There was a rustling, and hands reached for me. The hood came off, the gag came out, and Ben was there, untying my hands and holding me as I retched, gasping for breath.
“Everything all right down there?” The deep voice, accustomed to authority, came down from above. A dark figure stood high overhead on the Capitol steps, peering over the balustrade as I had done.
Ben pulled me back into the gloom.
A beam of light flashed across the ground, sweeping past Dr. Sanderson and then quickly jerking back. In that instant, I saw the pale sliver of ivory. The letter was still in Dr. Sanderson’s hand.
“Jesus,” said the voice. Footsteps lumbered heavily down the stairs.
Pulling Ben with me, I darted over to Dr. Sanderson, trying not to look at the slash across his neck. His hand was cold and already stiffening. I worked the letter from his grasp. It was wrapped around something hard.
I turned to gather up my books. Ben knelt to help. The letters I’d left stashed inside Chambers were all still there: Roz’s notes, Granville’s letter to Child, and Ophelia’s letter to Granville.
Quietly, calmly, Ben was talking. “This is your chance to clear yourself with the police,” he was saying quietly. “If you stay.”
“Not till I read the letter.”
“It may not be so easy to come back.”
“The letter.”
Ben nodded and took my elbow, guiding me deeper into the shadows just as the cop reached the bottom of the stairs. Cutting across the slope, we emerged from the magnolia grove onto the path that circled around the south side of the Capitol. Hurrying across the pavement, we scooted through the darkness under the taller park trees—elm and ash and oak—toward Independence Avenue. Behind us, I heard the crackle of a radio as the cop called for backup.
In the near distance, a siren began to wail.
Darting across the street toward the federalist entrance to the Rayburn House Office Building, Ben hailed a cab and we went speeding up into the Capitol Hill neighborhood. A few blocks east and north, we got out. Linking his arm in mine, Ben began to walk briskly up the street. I tried to pay attention, to figure out where we were headed, but Dr. Sanderson’s face kept swimming up into the darkness in front of me, the gash in his throat a silent screaming mouth. Swerving aside, I was humiliatingly sick in someone’s bushes.
When it was over, Ben wrapped his coat around me and put his arm around my shoulder.
“It was an ugly death,” he said.
“It was an assassination,” I spat. “He was turned into Caesar on the Capitol steps.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t try to excuse it or lighten it or in any way alleviate it, and for that I was grateful. I was also grateful for the arm around my shoulder. In the thickening darkness, his physical presence seemed my one link to safety. I blinked back the hot prick of tears and we walked for a ways in silence. “I think”—I swallowed hard—“I think he was also Bassianus.”
“Who?”
“Lavinia’s love. His throat was slit and his body tossed into a hole in the woods before…before she was raped and mutilated.”
Ben’s grip around me tensed. “Did he—?”
“No.” But the place between my legs where his hand had groped still burned. “Where are we going?”
“I’ve put a plan in motion, Kate, and if you won’t go to the police, the best thing to do is go through with it.”
I nodded, and we walked one more block and then turned right. Ten feet up, Ben reached over and opened the iron gate to the house on the corner—a deep blue Queen Anne house with gables and turrets, roses twining around pillars, and a swing on the front porch. Still holding my arm, he led me up the path through the garden to the front door. It was ajar. We stepped inside, and Ben closed it behind us; it locked with a click.
The house was dark, save one dim Chinese vase lamp in the hall, but Ben drew me unerringly across Oriental carpets, past a steep staircase, through a dining room, and into the kitchen at the back of the house.
“I take it you know the owners?”
“Not home at present.” Setting the two books on the kitchen table, he switched on a light. “Sit down,” he said, and I sat. “I’m going to the sink.” It was the first time he’d lost contact with me since he’d plucked me from the bushes. I watched him as if he might disappear.
Looking through some drawers, he found a clean towel and began wetting it down in the sink.
I forced the panic downward. “People just leave their houses when you want them? Leave them open?”
He looked back with a smile. “Depends on how good your connections are. But, no, not easily. It’s part of what I’ve been pulling every string I could think of to arrange for the past hour.”
Hunched at the kitchen table, I unclenched my fist. The paper I’d been holding slipped from my hand; the object inside it fell to the table with a clunk. A black brooch painted with delicate flowers. The original of the one pinned to my shirt. Was it still there? I fumbled at my shoulder.
It was there.
On the table, the paper, spotted with blood already turned brown, caught my eye. It was a letter, dated 1932, but the handwriting was a spidery copperplate that belonged to an earlier era. The signature was Ophelia’s.
One phrase, underlined twice in the center of the page, leapt out from the rest.
Miss Bacon was Right, Ophelia had written. Right piled upon Right.
The floor seemed to drop away beneath me. If Delia Bacon was right, William Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the plays.
“Oh, dear God,” someone said, and I realized the voice was mine.