Gus could feel his heartbeat rising with excitement. “No doubt about what?” he said. “What was the message?”
“Morris and Rossetti and a handful of others weren’t simply planning to bring back the artistic standards of the Middle Ages. They aimed to bring back the political system as well. They wanted to roll back the clock to before the signing of the Magna Carta. They believed that the only way to rescue Britain from the moral decline brought about by the Industrial Revolution, from the poverty that was destroying families and killing people, from the factory pollution that was fouling the air and the water, from the migration into the cities that was wiping out the rural way of life was to bring back the idea of the king as an absolute ruler who would have command over all things political, cultural, and spiritual. That king, needless to say, would have to be someone who understood the Pre-Raphaelite way of thinking and would return England to those glory days.”
“Someone like William Morris?” Gus suggested helpfully.
“Someone exactly like Morris,” Kitteredge said. “With Rossetti at his side.”
“Wait a minute,” Shawn said. “I’m not exactly an expert on royalty, but I always thought that king was one of those jobs you couldn’t just apply for. That’s why I didn’t bother sending an application to Monaco. Because everyone kept telling me you had to be related to the last guy.”
“Inheritance is the standard way of determining the royal lineage,” Kitteredge said. “But that line can be interrupted and replaced. It happened several times in England’s history, usually through violent rebellion or civil war.”
“So these two painters were going to lead an armed rebellion so they could make themselves king of England?” Shawn said.
“They were not violent men,” Kitteredge said. “They planned for a peaceful revolution. The British people would flock to their side and demand that Morris be installed on the throne.”
“Why would anyone think that?” Shawn said.
“Because they were going to have a symbol,” Kitteredge said. “The one thing that would prove to the world that William Morris was the rightful king of England. They were searching for-and I believe they found-Excalibur.”
Chapter Sixteen
Shawn and Gus stared slack-jawed at Kitteredge, although apparently for different reasons.
“They thought he’d be crowned king of England because he drove a fancy sports car?” Shawn said. “And one of the ugliest cars ever made, at that?”
But Gus could barely contain his excitement at Kitteredge’s words. “Excalibur was King Arthur’s sword,” he said. “The one he pulled out of the stone. And if I remember right, on the blade it said ‘Whoever wields this sword is the rightful king of all England.’ ”
Kitteredge nodded, pleased. “That’s one of the legends,” he said. “One I’m sure that Morris and Rossetti embraced.”
“So these two guys figured they’d dig up an old sword and rule the country,” Shawn said. “It sounds kind of nuts, but okay-let’s go with it. Even if they’re still alive, they’ve got to be two hundred years old by now, and too weak to lift the sword, let alone stick it into Filkins’ chest. So how can they have anything to do with this murder?”
“They don’t,” Kitteredge said. “Not directly. But there were others. It took a great deal of work to ferret this out, but I don’t believe Morris and Rosetti and those few of their Pre-Raphaelite brethren who joined in the search for Excalibur were working on their own initiative, nor did they come to the idea on their own. They were pawns of a greater force.”
“What kind of force?” Gus said.
“Call them what you will,” Kitteredge said. “The Templars. The Rosicrucians. Freemasons. Throughout history there have been shadowy forces working, and when some outsider gets a glimpse of them, they are always attributed to one group or another. I chose to call them simply the Cabal, because I have no idea with whom or what ideology they are associated.
“But rest assured, they are wealthy and they are powerful and they never go away,” Kitteredge said. “They had hoped to use Morris and Rossetti to gain the sword and possibly the nation, but they failed. That doesn’t mean they’ve stopped trying. They have a man named Polidori, who has been leading their search. He was behind Filkins’ murder. I’m sure of it. But how many people are involved and where they are hiding I have no idea.”
“And you think they’re so powerful they’ve infiltrated the Santa Barbara Police Department?” Gus said.
“It’s impossible to know their reach,” Kitteredge said.
“Wait a minute,” Shawn said. “I thought you said they found the sword.”
“I believe Morris and Rossetti did,” Kitteredge said. “And then they hid it again, rather than turn it over to the Cabal. I believe that is why Rossetti made sure his last painting stayed hidden for all these years. Because it contains clues to Excalibur’s hiding place.”
“But why kill Filkins?” Gus said.
“I can’t say for sure,” Kitteredge said solemnly. “But I believe they were sending me a message: Stay away from this picture-stay away from the sword.”
“Wouldn’t the message have been clearer if the sword had been poking through your chest?” Shawn said.
For a moment, all the animation left Kitteredge’s face. Gus realized suddenly that the professor was much older than he’d assumed, close to sixty at least. But usually there was so much energy flowing through the man it was impossible to think of him as aging, let alone aged. Now, however, Gus could see all his years weighing on him.
“It should have been me,” Kitteredge said. “I would accept death for myself before seeing an innocent killed because of my work. But I wasn’t given a choice in the matter. So all I can do now is work to avenge his death. The only way I know to do that is to find the sword and make sure it never falls into the hands of the Cabal.”
The three of them stood in silence for a long moment. Then Shawn nodded his acceptance.
“Okay, so my plan,” he said. “How we get into that gallery.”
Kitteredge looked like he was about to throw his arms around Shawn in one of his bearlike embraces. “Yes?”
Shawn walked over to the Plexiglas box housing the fertility sculpture and gave it a shove. The pedestal rocked slightly, and Shawn shoved it again. This time it tipped over and crashed to the ground.
All around them, alarm bells started ringing.
Chapter Seventeen
If Shawn had been disappointed that steel doors didn’t slam down on all the galleries once the alarm went off, he didn’t show it. Maybe that was because he was too busy running.
That course of action made sense for the three of them. They needed to get out of the Oceanic gallery before a squad of security guards arrived to protect the fertility figure.
But it didn’t make a lot of sense for any of the hundreds of museum visitors who were also running as fast as they could for the museum exits. After all, it wasn’t a fire alarm that had gone off, just the theft protection system. But while whoever had designed the museum’s security had installed alarms with substantially different sounds for various kinds of disasters, he’d neglected to include a way to alert the public to the distinction. To an untrained ear the bells ringing throughout the museum might be signaling a raging inferno in the nearest gallery.
And of course, even if that thought had not occurred to them individually, the sight of two young men in tuxedos shouting “Fire!” and racing toward the emergency exits certainly would have put it in many heads. Following their directions, the tourists blasted through doors wired to set off further alarms when opened.
Moving as swiftly and efficiently as any male salmon who hasn’t gotten the memo that the way upstream has been blocked by a new dam, Shawn and Gus led Kitteredge back through the centuries of European paintings until they arrived at the vestibule of the special-exhibitions gallery where The Defence of Guenevere had been installed. The entrance was blocked off by yellow-and-black crime scene tape, but there was no one standing in front of the door.