She closed her eyes and rubbed her face. The last time she had been in the Reading Room, it had been summer and she’d arranged a clandestine meeting with Charlotte. The occasion had been hopeful, very nearly giddy. Charlotte had just found her footing as Sherlock Holmes, Livia had decided that she would write a story based on Charlotte’s exploits, and the future had seemed bright and appealing.
The name Moriarty had not yet entered their lexicon. And she had yet to meet Mr. Marbleton—though undoubtedly he already knew of her. And was probably following her about town, waiting for an opportunity to introduce himself.
Her hand settled atop a hidden pocket in her skirt and felt the outline of the cloisonné box. Please. What are you trying to tell us?
Agitated, she rose and returned a stack of books to the clerks at the catalogue tables. She still had a few more books to go through, but what should she do after that? Ask for the even more marginally related tomes? What other avenue of inquiry was left?
She turned around to go back to her seat. Three men marched in her direction. A jolt shot up her vertebrae.
The man in the middle looked like Mr. Marbleton.
No, it was him.
The moment seemed caught in tree sap, barely flowing. The light washing down from the oculus of the blue dome overhead gleamed upon his top hat. The flaps of his long coat fluttered sinuously around his knees, like water plants in a pond. He pulled off his gloves and took all of eternity to gently tuck them into a pocket of his coat.
Alarm surged in her veins. No, no, she must not stare at him. The men beside him were Moriarty’s minions. It would not do to attract their attention. Not only would she put herself in harm’s way, but she would make his already-trying situation that much more difficult.
She looked straight ahead and marched on limbs that felt like wet clay. Her hands tight around her reticule, her face pinched, she hoped she presented the very image of a bluestocking, even though she wasn’t learned enough to be one. As she passed the trio, however, she couldn’t help but glance in his direction, a look toward his chest rather than his face.
Only to see him raise a hand and touch something on the lapel of his greatcoat.
As slow as the earlier moment had been, everything now happened in acceleration. Whatever he’d touched was a blur of color and texture. And then he and his escorts were behind her.
Her heart pounding, she didn’t dare turn around, but headed directly for her seat and sat down. She shook. Even her teeth chattered.
What was he doing at the Reading Room? Had Moriarty let him out? Perhaps he was permitted to go about London, or whichever city he and Moriarty happened to be in, as long as he was properly “escorted.”
But why the Reading Room?
In all their exchanges—too few, alas, always too few—he had never given her the impression that he was a scholar. To be sure, Charlotte, a frequent visitor to the Reading Room, wasn’t one either, but she was encyclopedic in her reading habits. Mr. Marbleton, like Livia, preferred fiction, not exactly what the Reading Room was best known for in its collection.
Had he come for her, by some chance?
She pressed a hand over her heart, trying to slow its thunderous beat.
Hadn’t she just been thinking about the previous summer, when he had followed her in secret around London? Had he observed her trip here to meet with Charlotte?
Present-day Mr. Marbleton, if he wished to see her or give a message to her, could not possibly drop by Mrs. Watson’s place. Nor could he approach her hotel, even if he knew where she was staying, for the same reason that a minute ago they hadn’t looked at each other.
Was the Reading Room his educated guess then?
If—if his presence here was intentional, then he must have a purpose. Did he want to convey something that would help her understand the message embedded in that lowly, dirtied, precious ticket stub?
But how could he, when he was being watched?
She gripped the edge of the table, needing to hold on to something solid and heavy.
Under the Reading Room’s 140-foot-diameter dome—the information was printed directly on the back of her reader’s ticket, a proud boast on the part of the institution—the large, circular space was anchored by the superintendent’s table at the very center. Catalogue tables formed a close ring around the superintendent’s table. From there, reading tables, measuring around thirty feet in length, radiated like spokes on a wheel.
Livia, being herself, had chosen an empty table and a seat far away from the center of the room. Each reading table had a high partition running down its center, to give those on one side privacy from those on the opposite side. Normally, Livia was grateful for such man-made hedges to hide behind. But the partitions on her own very long table and the adjacent one, while shielding her from the attention of Moriarty’s men, also blocked her view of Mr. Marbleton.
She could crane her head all she wanted but see only a narrow alley. And if she stood up, which she dared not do, she still wouldn’t be able to peer over the partition, not without stepping on the crossbar of a chair, at the very least.
She loosened a button at her collar—she was breathing fast and perspiring. Not knowing what to do next, she flipped her notebook to an empty page, scribbled down the date and her location, and stared at the words until they swam.
How much time had passed? How long would he be allowed to stay? And could he relay anything to her when she couldn’t see him?
Tears of frustration stung the backs of her eyes. She hoped—she prayed hard—that he had given this some thought before he arrived. That even though the likelihood of him running into her was small, he’d prepared for this lucky encounter.
Another ten minutes elapsed, the passage of time as swift as a flood and as slow as a retreating glacier. She was still shaking, still waiting, still not sure what she could do, when Mr. Marbleton appeared at one end of her alley, toward the center of the Reading Room.
Some reading tables had a bookshelf appended—hers was one such. He stood before the bookshelf. Or rather, he and his two minders stood shoulder to shoulder, and she almost couldn’t see him at all.
“It’s time to go,” one of them said to him.
In German.
“So soon?” he replied in the same language. “I haven’t been here since summer. How about a little more time?”
No, please, not so soon. She hadn’t even had a good look at him.
“We are sorry. It’s time to leave,” repeated the other escort.
The escort suddenly turned in her direction. She averted gaze to her still-open notebook, not daring to look up even with her peripheral vision.
The floor of the Reading Room had been covered with a special material to reduce the sound of footsteps. Livia barely heard their departure.
She dropped her head into her hands. She wanted to whimper. She wanted to scream. Had he tried to tell her something? And had she already failed him?
15
Only after a quarter of an hour had passed did Livia get up, tiptoed to the very rim of the Reading Room, and slowly walked its circumference, pretending to be interested in the books that encircled the room while casting furtive glances into the alleys created by the high partitions. And when she had completed the circle, she walked the smaller round between the catalogue tables and the reading tables, surreptitiously checking the alleys again from their inner ends.