The dead woman in the Reading Room was arranged like a forgotten manuscript.
Dr. Elara Vance saw her first as a dissonance in the symmetry. The British Museum's Enlightenment Gallery was a temple of order: creamy Portland stone, ranks of oak display cabinets, a vaulted ceiling where every plaster rosette was identical. The body, laid between two cases of Babylonian cylinder seals, was a violent footnote scribbled in the margin.
Elara wasn't meant to be here. Her domain was the sterile labs and dusty storage rooms of the Museum's Department of Scientific Research, not its public halls at midnight. She studied pollen grains trapped in the pelvic bones of Saxon peasants, not fresh blood on Victorian mosaic floors. But the call from a desperate curator—"It's… archaeological, Elara. You have to see."—had been a hook she couldn't resist.
Now, the scene held her utterly still.
The woman was young, pale, her dark hair fanned out like spilled ink on the polished wood. She wore a simple, high-necked linen dress, an anachronism in modern London. Her hands were folded over her abdomen, clutching a single, wilting stalk of purple monkshood. But it was the object placed upon her chest that stopped Elara's breath.
It was a pugio—a Roman legionary's dagger. Not a replica. The iron blade was crosshatched with the delicate, active corrosion of centuries, the bronze hilt green with verdegris. It was a Grade I archaeological treasure. And it was resting, with terrible deliberation, on the woman's sternum.
"Dr. Vance?" A man's voice, frayed with stress and authority, broke the silence. He stood near the Egyptian sarcophagus, a tall figure in a rumpled suit that spoke of long hours. Detective Inspector Marcus Thorne. His eyes, the colour of slate under rain, scanned her without welcome. "The curator said you might have… insight. Before we move her."
Elara approached, her low heels clicking in the vast, cold space. She ignored Thorne for a moment, her gaze cataloguing. The dress was hand-stitched, late medieval in cut. The monkshood, Aconitum napellus, was historically known as Wolfsbane. A plant of executioners and poisoners.
"You haven't touched her?" Elara asked, her voice soft.
"Pathologist is twenty minutes out. We've photographed." Thorne's tone was a clear question: Why are you here?
Elara didn't answer. She circled the body, her archaeologist's mind mapping the site. No visible blood. No sign of a struggle. The dagger was a message, not the weapon. Her eyes kept returning to the hands, the precise placement of the fingers over the navel. A ritual containment.
"It's a Totenpass," she murmured, more to herself than to him.
"A what?"
"A 'passport for the dead.' A pagan Roman tradition, later borrowed in early Christian burials. The dead were given a coin for Charon, or a scroll with instructions for the underworld judges. A physical object to ensure safe passage." She gestured to the dagger. "This is hers. But it's wrong."
Thorne stepped closer, his skepticism palpable. "Wrong how?"
"The pugio is a military weapon. A symbol of the state's violence, of law and order—Pax Romana. It doesn't belong with a civilian woman in a medieval dress. It's a contradiction. Like he's mixing his sources." She finally looked at Thorne. "Who is she?"
"No ID. Not in any missing persons files from the last 48 hours. Cameras show her entering the museum alone at 9:03 p.m., during a late opening. She had a ticket. Then nothing. All the cameras in this gallery failed at 9:47 p.m. for exactly six minutes. When they came back on… this."
"She walked in," Elara said, a chill tracing her spine. "She was compliant. Or she was already under duress."
A young forensics officer in a white suit knelt near the woman's head with a UV lamp. He switched it on. A faint, ghostly blue fluorescence glowed on the floorboards beside her cheek.
"Sir," the officer said. "There's writing."
Elara and Thorne moved as one. In the ultraviolet light, a single line of script was revealed, painted in something clear and organic that had dried invisible to the naked eye. It was in Latin.
"Sic transit gloria mundi."
"Thus passes the glory of the world," Elara translated automatically. A medieval phrase, used in papal coronations. A memento mori.
"He wrote it after he killed her," Thorne said, his jaw tight. "A signature."
"No," Elara said, her mind racing through the implications. "It's not a signature. It's a citation. He's not just killing her. He's… referencing something." She stood up, her heart beginning to pound a slow, heavy rhythm. "The dress, the monkshood, the dagger, the phrase. They're not random. They're elements. Like footnotes."
Thorne's radio crackled. He listened, his expression darkening. "We've got a second scene. Bloomsbury. A private library. Another body. Arranged."
Elara's head snapped up. "How?"
"Male. Dressed like a medieval scribe. Details are sparse, but…" Thorne met her eyes, the professional barrier momentarily down, revealing a stark confusion. "They said there's a book on his chest. And the same phrase is written on the floor in something they can't see."
The chill in Elara's spine became ice. Two bodies. Two tableaux. A linked series.
"It's a replication," she breathed, the theory forming with dreadful clarity. "He's not inventing. He's recreating. This…" she gestured at the woman in the linen dress, "this is a specific historical murder. Or a pastiche of several. He's staging scenes from a… a catalogue."
Thorne stared at her. In the gloom of the great gallery, surrounded by the silent witnesses of ten thousand years of human history, the idea did not sound insane. It sounded infinitely worse.
"A catalogue of what?" he asked, his voice low.
Elara looked at the Roman dagger, a tool of empire, lying on the breast of a woman from the age of faith. She thought of the invisible ink, the meticulous staging, the deep, scholarly cruelty of it.
"Of perfect murders," she said. "The ones that were never solved. The ones that became legend."
She didn't know it yet, but she had just named the beast.
In the shadows of a display case, something glinted. Elara moved, crouching down. It was a tiny piece of fired clay, no larger than her thumbnail, half-hidden against the skirting board. An ostracon—a potsherd used in the ancient world for notes, for votes, for curses.
She picked it up with a gloved hand. One side was smooth. The other bore a single symbol, incised with a fine, confident line.
It was a simple, seven-circuit labyrinth.
And at its centre, instead of the Minotaur, was a small, precise question mark.
The first thread had been found.