Paul Christopher - The Sword of the Templars

“Is there an e-mail account?”

“Grandpa Henry using e-mail? Come on, now.”

“Grandpa Henry having a love affair with Ms. Branch?” Holliday grinned.

“Point taken,” said Peggy. “I’ll check.” She tapped a few keys. “You’re right. There’s a Hotmail account: medievalscholar99@hotmail.com.”

“What’s the last message he sent?”

“It’s to medievalscholar123@hotmail.com,” said Peggy. “Sent a week ago.”

“What’s the subject line?”

“It’s a thank-you for a reply from the 123 person. The subject line for the original message is ‘QUERY.’ ”

“What does it say?”

“It says: ‘Dear Henry, as I suggested to you on your visit it looks like you have some early combination of a Book/Masonic-Pigpen/Elian problem going on, but without the key I’m afraid it’s probably indecipherable. There’s no mention of it anywhere in the literature that I can find. There’s a fellow in Jerusalem named Raffi Wanounou who knows a lot about crusader castles; maybe he can point you in the right direction. He works at the Institute. Sorry I can’t be more help. It was nice seeing you in March. Hope things went well with Donald. Keep in touch.’ It’s signed Steven Braintree.” Peggy made a face. “There’s such a name as Braintree?”

“It’s part of Metropolitan Boston. John Quincy Adams was born there,” said Holliday. “Apparently this particular Braintree is a professor at the University of Toronto.”

“What’s all this ‘Book/Masonic-Pigpen/Elian’ stuff?” Peggy frowned. “It’s all gobbledygook.”

“I think he’s talking about codes,” answered Holliday. “You ever read a book called The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett? They did a TV movie of it back in the eighties with Cliff Robertson.”

“Not my era.”

“It was about a code based on a Daphne du Maurier novel called Rebecca.”

“Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. 1940. Alfred Hitchcock.”

“The forties is your era?”

“Absolutely.” She grinned. “All that noir stuff. Great lighting, everybody smoking cigarettes.”

“I thought you quit.”

“I did. Sort of.”

Holliday sighed. Peggy was going off on one of her tangents. He headed her off at the pass.

“Anyway, the book was used as the key for the code. I think that’s what the e-mail means when Braintree refers to ‘book.’ Pigpen is sometimes called the Masonic Code, which sort of fits in with the sword. I have no idea what ‘Elian’ refers to.”

“Did Grandpa have some particular interest in codes?”

“Not that I knew of,” said Holliday, shaking his head.

They spent another few minutes browsing through Uncle Henry’s files without success, then gave it up, retreating under the barrages of psychic artillery coming through the closed door from Ms. Branch’s direction. They drove back to the Hart Street house and spent the next two hours going through Uncle Henry’s study and anywhere else they could think of, looking for anything else that might shed some light on the sword wrapped in the flag and Henry’s reasons for hiding it away so carefully, including a close look at the file of correspondence in the old man’s desk. The only thing they came up with of any interest at all was Henry’s invitation to the Balliol College Old Master’s Lunch with an obscure message scrawled on the back:

Oxford 4:20 Abingdon Express-40

bus/Reading train/Reading toward

Carmarthen change Newport toward Arrive

Trains Wales-Holyhead to Leominster. Will

pick up. No cabs. L’Espoir, Lyonshall, Kingston,

Herts. 44-1567-240-363

“Directions from Oxford to Leominster, in Her efordshire,” said Peggy, pronouncing it “Lemster.” “I know it’s pronounced that way because a Welshman once corrected me.”

“There’s a place in Massachusetts with the same name,” said Holliday, “They pronounce it ‘Lemon-Stir, ’ home of Foster Grant sunglasses and the original plastic pink flamingo.”

“Your brain must be a very strange place,” said Peggy, laughing.

“In my business your head tends to get clogged with a lot of irrelevancies. Take horses. Did you know Adolf Hitler had a thoroughbred named Nordlicht, or North Light, and that it died on a plantation in Louisiana in 1968? Or that George Armstrong Custer was riding a horse named Victory at the Little Big Horn, not Co manche for instance? Or the fact that Teddy Roosevelt was the only one of his Rough Riders at San Juan Hill who had a horse at all?”

“And I’ll bet you know its name,” said Peggy.

“Of course.” Holliday grinned. “It was called Little Texas. By the time they got to San Juan Hill the horse was exhausted, so Roosevelt had to dismount and lead the charge on foot.” He laughed. “Although I think it probably had more to do with public relations; didn’t look good in the papers to be the only one in the saddle.”

“That’s enough history,” said Peggy, holding up her hands in defeat. “Let’s go eat.”

“Gary’s Diner again?” Holliday said.

“Let’s try something more upscale,” suggested Peggy.

Upscale in Fredonia, New York, meant the White Inn, an outsized mid-nineteenth century clapboard farmhouse with an overdone columned portico and a wrought iron fence that made it look like an imitation of its namesake in Washington, D.C. According to Peggy they served a mean chocolate martini in the lounge and great prime rib in the dining room. Holliday let Peggy have the prime rib while he ordered the baby spinach and shrimp.

“You sure you don’t want the prime rib?” Peggy asked. “That thing on your plate looks like an appetizer.”

Holliday looked at the immense slab of meat Peggy was happily carving her way through. It looked like enough to feed a small army and came complete with a giant baked potato swimming in butter and sour cream, butter beans, and a side salad besides. She popped a forkful of meat into her mouth, then tore up a dinner roll and used it to swab up a small puddle of au jus that was wending its way dangerously close to the baked potato and its sour cream and dripping butter pat summit.

Holliday speared a shrimp.

“You’re young. I’m old. Gotta watch my figure.”

“I’m like a hummingbird,” said Peggy, scooping up some baked potato. “I have to eat my own weight every day or I fade away.” She ate some butter beans. “And you’re not old, Doc, you’re distinguished.”

Holliday looked at her fondly. In jeans and a T-shirt Peggy could probably pass for a freshman at the university. He, on the other hand, had salt-and-pepper hair that was now considerably more salt than pepper, used reading glasses, wore Dr. Scholl’s in his shoes, and occasionally felt twinges of arthritis in his joints. She was still climbing uphill in the morning of her life, and he was sliding slowly down in the early evening; a world of difference.

“Easy for you to say,” he said wistfully. Who was it who said that youth was wasted on the young?

“George Bernard Shaw,” he said.

“Huh?” Peggy asked.

“Nothing,” said Holliday.

Peggy sliced off another chunk from the slab on her plate.

“Speaking of old, what are we supposed to make of Grandpa Henry and the secretary?”

“He wasn’t always old.”

“He didn’t mention her in the will.”

“I’m not surprised. Wills are public documents, and discretion is clearly important to her,” he shrugged. “Besides, he may have already given her his bequest.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was reading a copy of Anne of Green Gables when we came into the office.”

“So?”

“It was a first edition.”

“You think Grandpa gave it to her?”

“Probably,” he nodded. “You still have that BlackBerry machine?”