Tasha Alexander - A Crimson Warning

“Don’t fall asleep just yet,” Colin said. “You’re still in your clothes.”

“I’ll ring for Meg,” I said.

He sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed my wrist as I reached for the bell. “Don’t,” he said, his lips so close to my face I could feel his breath on my cheek. “I’ll provide any assistance you need.” I felt his fingers feel for the buttons on the back of my dress. He undid the top two or three, then pulled me up to sitting. Kneeling in front of me, he started to remove the pins from my hair, one at a time until my curls had tumbled down around my waist.

Blue light had started to force its way around the edges of the curtains before we finally went to sleep. Yet somehow, when Meg brought breakfast to us only a few hours later, I found myself so refreshed, so vividly alive, I felt almost embarrassed.

After eating and getting dressed it was still early enough that we had time to walk to the museum. I pulled on my gloves and made my way to the door. The rain had stopped, though the pavements were damp in spots, and the sun was struggling to make its way through patchy holes in the clouds.

“Sir, I—”

“Not now, Davis,” Colin said. “We must hurry.”

“Very good, sir. Enjoy your walk, sir.” He opened the door. We stepped outside, but he didn’t close it. “It’s dry, so no need to worry where you step. Shall I have it taken care of at once?”

I looked down and saw that our whole front entrance was bathed in red. The steps, the columns of the porch, the front door. All red.

Colin hardly paused. “Very good, Davis. Carry on.” He adjusted his hat and offered me his arm.

“Well?” I asked.

“What?”

“The paint? What’s your secret?”

“I assumed it was yours,” he said. “I’ve lived an entirely blameless life.” He walked a little bit faster, but other than that, showed no further response.

“I know it’s not something I’ve done,” I said.

“I’m not discussing it,” he said. “We have work to do and don’t need to waste our time taking the bait of some disgruntled miscreant.”

I could feel my temples pulsing. “How can you be so calm?”

“Because while there are things in my past others may judge, I’ve neither done anything of which I’m ashamed, nor anything I feel the need to defend,” he said. “So unless you’ve some delicious deceit to share with me, I am not concerned in the least.”

“Don’t you care how I feel about what you’ve done?”

“To an extent,” he said. “But the past is the past, Emily. Why would anything I did before I met you cause a rift between us?”

“So it’s nothing you’ve done since we met?”

“Certainly not since I fell in love with you. Unless, of course it pertains to my work. But if that’s the case, we have a bigger problem on our hands than we know; that would mean our villain has connections in the highest levels of the government.”

“I can’t tell if you’re teasing me or serious,” I said.

“I like to keep you on your toes.” He patted my arm.

“But I—”

“No more, Emily. I’m not going to let us fall prey to this person’s vindictiveness.”

And that was all he would say on the subject. I was still agitated when we got to the museum. Colin stopped and stood in front of me.

“Stop worrying,” he said, taking me by both arms. “You are in your element here, and I couldn’t be doing this without you. I would not have been able to get Cordelia to open up like you did, and I admit freely I probably wouldn’t have taken any note of this game of hers and Dillman’s. So stand tall, and show me where we need to go.”

This bolstered me. If I had his support, what did I care if everyone else was taunting us about red paint? Well, I did care, and probably too much. But I forced it out of my mind, took him by the hand, and led him straight to the first of the Egyptian galleries.

“EA 59,” he said, trailing a bit behind me.

“The numbers will be here.” I showed him on a display card. “Keep our Shakespeare in mind—it will provide something essential. To begin, I think we should look for anything with a museum number that begins with EA and includes 59. If a connection between the object and the quote is obvious, we’ll know our work is done. If not, we’ll keep going.”

“I’ll take this side,” he said. “Murder thy breath in middle of a word.”

Having two rather than three letters, as we had before, was somewhat more difficult. Particularly as our hint, the quote, was more oblique than when we’d known what the piece we were looking for was made out of. In our first two galleries, I’d located four different things that fit the bill when it came to EA 59, but the Shakespeare didn’t mesh with any of them.

“You did a spectacular job figuring this all out,” Colin said. “We’d be lost if you hadn’t recognized the importance of what Cordelia told you. Or if you’d been unable to put her enough at ease to confide in you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “We make an excellent team. You can kick people around in ways I’d never be able to. Although you could teach me.”

“I’ll take a pass on that,” he said. “I don’t want to render myself useless. Where’s the next room?” He’d had as little luck with our search as I so far.

“Turn left here,” I said. We split directions as soon as we entered. I worked my way through the gallery clockwise, Colin anti-clockwise. I was looking at row after row of ushabtis, figurines designed to stand in for the occupant of a tomb should he be called to do any work in the afterlife. One set, made from blue faience, charmed me more than the rest. Their faces, though formed in the traditional Egyptian manner, had an endearing eagerness to them. I should very much have liked to have them in my own tomb as working in the afterlife didn’t have much appeal to me.

“Emily,” Colin called from across the room. “Here’s something, but it’s a series. EA 59197 through 59200.” He stood in front of a display of canopic jars, the vessels used to hold the vital organs that had been removed from the deceased during the process of mummification. These had belonged to Neskhons, the wife of a high priest of Amun. “It could be any of them.”

“No,” I said, excitement growing. “It couldn’t. It has to be this one. The baboon.”

“The baboon?”

“Yes. Each of the lids represents a god, and each god is responsible for protecting a different organ. Murder thy breath in middle of a word. Hapy, the baboon-headed deity, looks after the lungs.”

“Breath,” he said. “Of course. Well done, dear girl. What next? A trip to the library?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Partly because I’ve only just been through the stacks in thorough detail and partly because we’re staring at a jar. If I were Mr. Dillman, I would have used that to store whatever I had that needed protection. We should fetch Mr. May.”

“No,” Colin said. “We’ve no time for that.” He looked around the crowded room. “There are so many people here, we’d be hard-pressed to draw attention to ourselves.”

With great care, he touched the ancient object, gently pulling the lid from its base. It moved without too much effort. He held the lid gingerly in both hands. “I don’t want to risk dropping it,” he said. “You look inside.”

I did as he asked and saw a slim burlap package. I pulled it out, hoping I wasn’t disturbing the remains of Neskhons’s lungs. Colin returned the lid and let out a long breath.

“Glad not to have broken anything.”

“Were you holding your breath?” I asked.

“It seemed appropriate under the circumstances.”

*   *   *

“This is bad,” Colin said. “Very, very bad.” We’d taken our find home to examine it, ignoring both the red paint and the curious onlookers outside the house. The parcel was full of papers similar to those I’d found wrapped around the bottle—these giving much more detailed accounts of similar corruption.

“There’s more?” I asked, leaning over his shoulder.

“Dillman tracked each of the instances of election fraud. Look at this.” He passed a paper back to me. “But it’s more than that. Bribery. Extortion. Every good thing—every initiative, every bill, every project—that Foster’s been involved with was tainted from the beginning.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“Not given his popularity.”

“No, it’s more than just that. I understand politicians are prone to corruption. And you know how I feel about what we’ve already seen regarding his role at the match factory. But who has so little faith in his own success that he tampers with literally everything?”

“It’s staggering,” Colin said, frowning. “I can’t imagine what he was thinking. He’s the last person I would have suspected of such underhanded behavior.”

“Suspect no more,” I said, handing him the last sheet of paper in the stack I’d been reading. “If this is to be believed, Mr. Foster is no more guilty than you.”

He read the page slowly, then read it again. “We know where to go from here.”

Mr. Barnes looked genuinely pleased to see us. He ushered us into his office in Westminster, offered us tea, and fluffed the cushion on my chair before he would let me sit down.

“Do you know, Lady Emily, I think you’ve begun to have a real impact on private discourse about women’s rights?” He gave me tea even though I’d refused the offer. “Not public discourse, yet, but one must start somewhere. I had a very prominent Conservative in here yesterday who brought up the subject to me. He’s not willing to support your agenda, of course, but just the fact that’s he’s talking is a real step forward.”

“Thank you, Mr. Barnes,” I said. “It’s important work.”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m rather impressed with the strategy you employed. I know Lady Carlisle well, and I know what the Women’s Liberal Federation has done in the past. Your idea of working on the men with the most open minds was a stroke of genius.”

“How did you know that’s what I’d done?”

“It was obvious to anyone paying attention. A brilliant move. They’re hardly aware of what you’re up to.” His desk was a model of organization, everything arranged in perfect right angles. Except his pen, which he straightened. “But you didn’t come here to discuss this, I don’t think? Has something happened?”

“You know the answer to that,” Colin said.

“You, too?” he asked, shaking his head. “This paint is like a curse. When will the monster stop?”

“I don’t know,” Colin said. “Why don’t you tell us?”

“Forgive me,” he said. “I don’t quite—”

Colin rose to his feet. “There will be no forgiveness, Barnes. What you’ve done is despicable.” He tossed the papers we’d brought from the museum onto the desk. Barnes’s face froze.

“Dillman.” He sat up very straight in his chair.

“Foster is your friend,” Colin said. “Why did you want to destroy him?”

Mr. Barnes remained very still. “No, you misunderstand completely. I would never destroy him. I’ve made him what he is.”

Colin picked up the papers and waved them in his face. “You have ruined him with corruption and rot. How did you think he would survive this?”

“He’ll never have to.”

“He’ll have to now,” I said. “I, for one, am not going to see this buried.”

“Foster doesn’t know anything about it,” Mr. Barnes said. “You can’t condemn him for it.”

“What do you think will happen when it’s all public?” I asked. “People aren’t going to believe he’s so naïve as you suggest.”

“Everything I have done is to ensure this stays quiet and unknown,” Mr. Barnes said.

“That’s a lie,” Colin said. “You’re the one who orchestrated it. All of it. It’s right here.” He flung the papers back onto the desk.

“If I hadn’t done all this, he wouldn’t have even a third of the power he does now.”

“So, I’m to believe you’re a public servant, is that it?” Colin was leaning forward, across the desk now. “What is your game, Barnes?”

Mr. Barnes clasped his hands, laid them on his lap, and said nothing.

“All this destruction. All this hatred. Where does it come from?” Colin was almost shouting. Then he lowered his voice. “You’re done now, you know that.”

“Stop,” I said. “The hatred. I know where it comes from. You’re more refined than most gentlemen, Mr. Barnes, and far more intelligent. Your manners are impeccable. You’re witty and considerate. Your fortune is nothing to sniff at. And yet, they’re not going to accept you, are they? Not all the way?”

He looked down.