The home of the late Professor Alistair Finch was a library that had burst its banks and colonized a four-story Georgian townhouse. Books stood in teetering ziggurats on the floor, filled custom-built shelves that bowed in the middle, and spilled from wooden crates labelled in a tight, scholarly hand. The air was thick with the scent of paper decay and pipe tobacco, trapped for decades.
Elara stood in the study, the epicenter of the chaos, feeling a pang of professional kinship. This was the habitat of a true mind, obsessive and unbounded. But now it was a crime scene, and the mind was gone.
Thorne was downstairs, talking to the sole, distraught housekeeper. Elara had asked for a moment alone with Finch's world. She needed to understand the man who had authenticated a Roman dagger for a killer.
Her eyes moved not to the books, but to the gaps. To the spaces on the desk where objects should have been. The impression of the round object, the hawthorn berry left behind—they pointed to something removed. A trophy, or a clue the killer wanted them to follow.
She began with the desk. The overturned magnifying glass had been bagged. The blotter, with its ghostly circular imprint, was being photographed. She opened the top drawer. Neat compartments held brass paperweights, bundles of quills (affectation, she thought), and seals. Wax seals. Her pulse quickened.
There were three: one with a family crest, one with the university emblem, one plain. None matched the size of the impression. A fourth was missing.
She moved to a large cabinet of shallow drawers—a map or print cabinet. The first drawer held architectural sketches of churches. The second, botanical illustrations. The third was heavier. She pulled it open.
Inside were not papers, but objects. A collector's cabinet of curiosities. A Neolithic flint blade. A Byzantine coin. A pilgrim's badge from Canterbury. Each on a little velvet tray, each with a tiny, typed label. Finch hadn't just studied history; he'd collected its physical touchstones.
At the back of the drawer was a velvet rectangle, indented with a perfect circle. The label beneath it read: "Sigillum Secretum – Origin Unknown (Poss. 14th cent. Alpine scriptorium?)."
A secret seal. Origin unknown. It was gone.
"He took it," she said aloud.
"Took what?" Thorne's voice came from the doorway. He held two mugs of terrible instant coffee from the housekeeper's kitchen.
"The seal. Finch had a collection. The killer took a specific one, labelled as a 'secret seal' from a possible fourteenth-century scriptorium." She accepted the mug. "He left us a hawthorn berry and took a medieval seal. That's an exchange. A transaction."
"Trading a seed for a stamp?" Thorne sipped his coffee, grimaced. "Why?"
"Symbolic value. Hawthorn… in the context of the Malleus Maleficarum on his chest… it's complex. It can mean hope, but also cruelty. It was used in hedges to mark boundaries, to keep things in—or out." She put her mug down, untouched. "The killer is leaving us a trail of symbols. He's communicating. The seal he took is the next word in his sentence."
Thorne's phone buzzed. He listened, his face tightening into a mask of controlled fury. "Pathology on our first victim. The monkshood in her hand wasn't just a prop. She was poisoned. Aconitine. A massive dose. She was dead before she was posed. The dagger was theatre."
"Poison," Elara echoed. A woman's weapon, history whispered unfairly. But in the medieval mind, a tool of deceit, of hidden power. The opposite of the blunt, state-sanctioned violence of the Roman pugio.
"And the invisible ink analysis came back," Thorne continued. "The salt traces. It's not from the Mediterranean. It's from a specific type of rock salt. They're running a location match, but it's rare. Northern European, possibly mined."
Salt. Purification. Preservation. A substance that prevents decay, but also sterilizes the earth.
The housekeeper, a small woman with eyes red from crying, appeared behind Thorne, wringing her hands. "Inspector? There's… there's something. I didn't think. With the shock. But the Professor. He had a visitor. Two nights ago."
Thorne was instantly still. "Who?"
"A young man. Former student, he said. He came quite late. The Professor… he was agitated after. Not angry. Excited. Like he used to get when he found a new… a new thing for his collection." She looked guiltily at the open cabinet. "He was on the phone later, I heard him. He said… he said, 'The authentication is verified. The thread is genuine.' Then he laughed. A strange laugh."
The thread is genuine.
Elara felt the words hook into the core of her fear. The First Thread. It wasn't just her metaphor. It was theirs. The killer's and the victim's.
"Did you hear a name?" Thorne pressed gently.
The housekeeper shook her head. "No, sir. But… he left an umbrella. A nice one. The Professor told me to put it in the closet to return, but with… with everything…" She led them to a narrow hall closet. Inside, among walking sticks and old macs, was a single, elegant black umbrella with a handle of polished, deep-red wood.
Thorne bagged it carefully. "Prints," he said to Elara, though his hope was thin.
But Elara wasn't looking at the fabric. She was looking at the handle. The wood was beautifully turned, topped with a silver cap. And engraved on the cap was a tiny, exquisitely detailed symbol.
A labyrinth. The same seven-circuit design from the ostracon in the museum.
"He wanted us to find this," she said, her voice hollow. "He knew we'd come here. He left his calling card with the housekeeper because he knew she'd remember. He's not hiding. He's presenting."
The awful theatricality of it settled over the cluttered house. They were not hunters tracking prey. They were an audience, following a scripted trail of props and symbols laid out by a director who was always one scene ahead.
Back in the study, Elara's gaze fell on Finch's vast, disordered bookshelf. The thread is genuine. What thread? Her eyes scanned the spines, looking not for titles, but for gaps. A space where a book had recently been removed.
There. Between a dense tome on heretical sects and a catalogue of Roman metalwork. A space just wide enough for a slender volume. The books on either side were slightly less dusty on their outer edges.
"He took a book, too," she said. "After he killed him. Or Finch gave it to him earlier. Something specific, from this section." She ran a finger along the empty space. Heretical sects met Roman law. The intersection of unorthodox belief and state power. The killer's themes.
Thorne's phone rang again. He answered, listened, and a grim focus settled on his face. "The salt. They've got a probable source. An old, disused salt mine in Cheshire. It was used in the nineteenth century for… experimental preservation techniques. There were rumours a private collector used the tunnels for storage."
He looked at Elara. "We need to go. Now."
As they descended the stairs, leaving the ghost of Professor Finch amidst his plundered collection, Elara felt the first thread pull taut. It was leading them out of London, into the dark, preserved earth. To a place where things were kept from decay.
To a mine that wasn't for extracting salt, but for hiding things in it.
The killer had his secret seal. He had his book. And now, he was inviting them to see where he kept the rest of his collection.