Chapter 13: The King's Hour

Ambrose stood with the page in his hand and did not move.

June looked at the clock over the archive door.

"Forty minutes left in the king's hour," she said. "Ambrose, I'm sorry, but we have to go."

"I know."

"Then take it."

He did not take it.

I put my hand flat against his chest, over his heart, which was not beating, and said his name until he looked at me.

"Ottoline kept the whole box," I said. "She wanted it here. She wanted you to be the only one who could read it."

"Why would she want that?"

"Because she thought you'd never open it."

He breathed in once.

Then he tied the ribbon around the ninth folder, tucked it under his arm, and lifted a thick bound book off the shelf beside the box.

The spine said: Tempest Trust, Private Accounts.

"Read it on the stairs," he said, and put the book in my hands.

I read it going up.

Most of the pages were columns of money.

Near the back, one line repeated in the same ink, once every spring, for thirty-four years.

Agent's fee. Re: D.T. Location confirmed.

I stopped on the landing.

"June."

She read over my arm and went white.

"Location confirmed," she said. "You don't confirm where a dead woman is."

"No."

"Linnea, that's the whole case."

"It's a line in a ledger," I said. "Come on."

The hall had filled again before the hour ended.

Three hundred faces turned to us as we came up the aisle, and this time nobody whispered.

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