“Do we run?”
“I hate leaving that mound of dirt.”
This was so unexpected — and so entirely like Peter’s sense of responsibility — that Jo nearly snorted with laughter. She caught herself, however, and tried to avoid breathing.
What could Lucy be doing? Impossible to see from their position. Gazing at the starless sky? Talking on her cell phone? But no, there was still no sound, and Jo imagined the girl was an emphatic talker. Then the scent of burning tobacco drifted across the garden wall, and Jo sighed inwardly. A bedtime smoke. Lucy definitely had a habit.
They waited wordlessly while the cigarette burned down. Then they heard the house door open and groan closed, and watched as one by one, the lights were extinguished.
Peter made fast work of filling the hole he’d dug. Then they went through the hedge a final time, and positively ran to the Triumph parked in the schoolyard, Jo clutching the Peek Freans tin to her chest. She was laughing with hysterical relief and Peter had just turned the ignition, when his cell phone rang.
“BLOODY HELL,” HE SAID AS HE STARED AT THE NUMBER glowing green in the darkness. “Margaux.”
“Pick up!” Jo hissed. “No, better yet — let me.” She wrenched the phone from his hand, stabbed a button, and shouted, “Where’s my notebook, bitch?”
“You might ask yourself instead,” said a cool voice in her ear, “how many different ways Peter is using you. Could I speak to him, please?”
Scowling, Jo handed off the phone.
“Right, hello, sorry about that,” Peter said.
Sorry? When Margaux had deliberately screwed them and left without a word? Jo glared at him sidelong. And what did Margaux mean about Peter using her? That he wasn’t really interested in the Woolf manuscript? Or… that he didn’t believe it was real?
“… not asleep, actually, I’m behind the wheel. Yes. Driving. Where are you?”
There was a pause. Peter shifted into reverse and the Triumph wheeled backward, turning toward the Abergavenny Arms. “You what?” he spluttered. The car swerved and Jo clutched at the swing strap. The ancient biscuit tin slipped off her lap and burst open.
“Well, that’s bloody well put the cat among the pigeons, hasn’t it? And you actually thought it was a good idea? I’ll be fired, darling, if I’m not arrested — ”
Darling.
Jo tried to remember that she had no claim on Peter. Of a romantic kind. He was just a nice guy who was helping her out. By handing her precious manuscript to his ex-wife, who promptly stole it… He’d landed Jo in a very difficult position with Sissinghurst.…Why had he decided it was okay to drop everything and leave London? Had he been forced to get out of town quick, and she’d provided an excuse?
The tin bounced at Jo’s feet as the car negotiated a curve. She lifted the oilskin package and held it up in her hands. It was dark umber in color, tied like a parcel with blackened twine. She began to work at the old knots with her fingers. What she needed was a pair of scissors — or her secateurs. But no, she’d left them behind at the hedge. Damn.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to Jo,” Peter was saying. “I’m not entirely sure where we’ll be. I owe it to her to discuss — ” Another pause, and this time she distinctly heard Margaux’s voice through the receiver, both strident and pleading. “I think you tossed that claim in the rubbish a year ago, along with half the contents of the Islington flat. Now look — I’ll call in the morning. Get some sleep. Night.”
His voice, Jo thought, was a shade gentler on that final word, a caress half remembered. It made her stomach clench.
He snapped the phone shut and exhaled gustily. “Lord. She was put on earth to drive men mad.”
“What did she say?”
I love you, Peter, I miss you, it was all a stupid mistake.…
“She said she was unavoidably delayed in Oxford yesterday morning — ”
Boy toy, Jo thought.
“ — couldn’t reach us because her mobile was dead, so she just took the notebook into my office. And found that nobody knew where I was.”
“She took the Woolf manuscript to Sotheby’s?” Jo cried, outraged.
“My own particular boss put her through the Inquisition, rather.” Frustration and amusement in Peter’s voice, now. “She thought she’d help by saying I’d been at Oxford. The long and short of it is that Marcus has the notebook, it’s being analyzed by our in-house experts over the weekend, and they’re pursuing the issue of legal ownership as best they can. So you’ve no need to worry any longer. The notebook is safe.”
“Are you out of your mind? I’ve just lost complete control! Your nightmare of a wife handed off my grandfather’s book.”
“… which you filched from a tool shed at Sissinghurst, Jo! It never belonged to you.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Then what is?”
She was so furious with him — his sudden defection into the reasonable world — that for a moment she was speechless. “The point,” she snapped, “is finding out what happened. To Virginia. And Jock.”
“Which we’ve tried to do. Who owns the bloody thing in the end is irrelevant. Sotheby’s might as well establish that as anyone.”
“Given that you work there,” she said with deadly calm.
“Now, what is that supposed to mean?”
“Peter, are you getting some sort of commission for all this?”
“I’m probably losing my job,” he retorted acidly.
“What did that woman want? At two o’clock in the morning?”
“To hear my voice,” he said distinctly. “She was… lonely.”
There was a tense silence. The Triumph left Rodmell behind and picked up Swanborough Hollow — the road north, toward Lewes.
“You never asked about the Ark,” Jo said. “What she found yesterday, or what she did with it — ”
Peter cleared his throat uncomfortably. “To be honest, I completely forgot about the thing. It was a shock, actually — her calling like that. In the middle of the bloody night.”
“So much of a shock, in fact, that you wasted the sole opportunity you had to grill the woman! Jesus, Peter — she’s ripped us off twice, and all you do is scold her like a wayward child!”
“Haven’t I just explained that she never meant to steal the damn notebook?”
“If that were true,” Jo retorted, “she wouldn’t have run off to Cambridge. I’m not that stupid, even if you want to be.”
“All right — all right.” Peter lifted his hands from the wheel in exasperation. “Maybe she lied. It’s a habit of Margaux’s. But she’s not all bad, you know. She tried to deal with the notebook honorably by turning it over to my boss. And she’d like to make amends. She’s tumbled to the fact that we’re searching for the rest of the manuscript — and she offered to help.”
Jo grasped the twine securing the oilskin package and pulled.
“We’re not searching anymore, Peter,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-One
PETER PULLED THE TRIUMPH ONTO THE LEFT-HAND verge of the road and killed the engine. He snapped on his penlight.
“What have we got?” he asked quietly.
The book — for it was a slim bound volume, not a letter or notebook or even torn pages, as they’d expected — had no title stamped on its pale blue cloth cover. But there was a yellowed envelope resting on top of it, with an inky smear of handwritten words.
To the Grave Robbers, it read.
“Do we open it?”