Read Chapter 10: The Incriminating Letter

The key turned with a soft, oiled click that felt louder than it should have in the narrow Bodleian-side lane. Eliza paused, breath fogging in the November cold, and listened. Footsteps. Distant, unhurried, somewhere beyond the college wall. She waited until the sound faded before pushing the worn oak door inward.

Marcus’s second set of rooms smelled of dust and old paper, the kind of stillness that only settles over a space no one has entered for weeks. Julian’s key had been genuine; the lock had turned on the first attempt. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her, heart hammering against her ribs.

The room was smaller than his official college quarters, deliberately unremarkable. A single iron bed frame, stripped bare. A battered desk beneath a casement window that looked out onto a shadowed courtyard. Bookshelves lined every wall, crammed with volumes that looked identical to the ones in the library catalogues—but these were the working copies, spines cracked, pages bristling with markers.

Eliza tugged off her gloves and moved to the desk first. A blotter stained with ancient ink. A brass lamp. A neat stack of papers held down by a marble paperweight shaped like a laurel wreath. She lifted it carefully and began to leaf through the pages.

Most were notes on Roman elegy, dense and technical, cross-referenced in Marcus’s precise hand. Nothing incriminating. She checked the drawers next—locked, but the small skeleton key Julian had given her fit the top one. Inside: a box of fine-tipped pens, a tarnished pocket watch, and a leather-bound diary whose pages were blank.

She was about to close the drawer when her fingers brushed against a loose sheet caught between the diary’s back cover and its binding. Eliza eased it out.

The paper was heavier than the others, cream-colored, bearing a faint watermark she didn’t recognize. The handwriting was not Marcus’s. It was looped and confident, the ink slightly smudged as if pressed quickly. Dated six weeks before Marcus’s death.

*Marcus—*

*I trust you understand the delicacy of what I am about to commit to paper. The papyrus in question, which you have been so assiduous in pursuing, is not what it appears. Its provenance has been deliberately obscured, and the parties who arranged its acquisition will suffer considerably if the truth emerges. I have seen the documentation. The trail leads further than you imagine, and I urge you to consider whether the glory of publication outweighs the ruin it would bring to those who have supported you.*

*You asked who authorized the removal. The answer is not one name but a system, and the handwriting on the transfer order is unmistakably that of our mutual acquaintance. I trust you will recognize the signature as readily as I did. I have enclosed a likeness for your own verification.*

*Destroy this letter once you have read it. I will not write again.*

Eliza’s breath caught. The letter was unsigned, but the phrase *our mutual acquaintance* coiled in her chest like a struck snake. She turned the paper over. Taped to the back was a small photograph—grainy, evidently a reproduction of an official document. A signature line, magnified.

She knew that handwriting. She had graded exams beneath that looping, self-satisfied *W*. Professor Alistair Whitmore’s signature was unmistakable—the extravagant capital A, the flourish beneath the surname like a sword stroke.

She stared at the photograph until her eyes ached. The document fragment above the signature was mostly illegible, but the letterhead was visible: *Bodleian Libraries, Department of Special Collections*. Beneath that, a notation in a different hand: *Transfer of custody—papyrus fragment, Oxyrhynchus collection.*

The stolen charter. The papyrus Marcus had supposedly been hunting. Whitmore had signed for it.

Eliza’s mind raced. Whitmore had denied any knowledge of Marcus’s claims. He had dismissed them as the ravings of a troubled man. And yet here was proof, preserved in the dead man’s hidden rooms, that Whitmore’s signature sat at the center of whatever had been taken.

She folded the letter carefully and tucked it into her coat pocket alongside the photograph. Her hands were trembling, and she forced them still.

A floorboard creaked behind her.

Eliza spun. The door was still closed, but the shadows in the corner of the room had shifted. She squinted into the dimness—nothing. Just the loom of a tall bookshelf, its titles dimmed to silhouettes.

She took a step toward the door, and that was when she saw it. On the low shelf nearest the bed, half-hidden behind a row of identical brown bindings, a single volume stood at a slight angle, its spine turned inward. Not the way a reader would leave a book.

She crossed to it and pulled the volume free. It was a Victorian edition of Propertius, the binding cracked and worn. The pages had been hollowed out, leaving a neat rectangular cavity. Inside lay a folded letter in Marcus’s own hand, this one unstamped, unposted. The paper was yellowed at the edges, as if it had been written weeks ago and hidden with care.

Eliza unfolded it.

*If you are reading this, I am likely dead.*

*I write this to set the record straight, in case my official papers are tampered with—as I expect they will be. The papyrus was never in Southend. The charter’s true home is the archive beneath the fountain crypt, where the founding members kept their books of account. I have been close to confirming this for months, but my movements have been watched. Whitmore knows what I have found. He will not act openly, but he has means.*

*The letter from P., which I have hidden separately, confirms the identity of the man who signed the transfer order. I cannot name him here in case this falls into the wrong hands. But know this: the person who killed me did not act alone. There is a woman in the photographs. She does not belong to the society, yet she appears alongside our members in records from twenty years ago. I found her face three times in three different archives. I do not know her name, only that she is connected to a young man named Tom.*

*Eliza—if you are the one who finds this—forgive me for the risk I have put you in. Julian will be your shield or your downfall. I have not been able to determine which.*

The letter ended there, without a signature. The final lines were written in a hastier hand, as if Marcus had run out of time.

Eliza read it twice. The words *a woman in the photographs* and *a young man named Tom* echoed in her skull, entangling with everything she had learned since the beginning. Tom, who had vanished. Tom, whose sister Viv had given her the photograph. Tom, whom the Archai had apparently expelled. And now a woman connected to him, appearing alongside society members twenty years ago.

The creak came again—closer this time, just beyond the door. Eliza shoved the letter into her pocket beside the first, her heart seizing. She crossed to the window in three quick strides. It was old, single-paned, but the latch gave way with a rusty groan. The drop to the courtyard below was eight feet at most. She swung her leg over the sill.

Wood scraped against wood behind her—the door beginning to ease open. She didn’t look back. She let herself fall.

The impact jarred her knees, and she stumbled into a sprawl of dead leaves. Above her, the rectangle of the window framed a silhouette—dark, broad-shouldered, impossible to identify against the glare of the courtyard light. The figure did not lean out. It simply stood there, watching her.

Eliza pushed herself upright and ran.