The untitled books, p.1
The Untitled Books, page 1
The Untitled Books
The Glass Library, Book #3
C.J. Archer
www.cjarcher.com
Contents
About THE UNTITLED BOOKS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
A Message From The Author
Also by C.J. Archer
About the Author
Copyright © 2023 by C.J. Archer
Visit C.J. at www.cjarcher.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
About THE UNTITLED BOOKS
A curated collection of magic…and murder.
When a set of bound manuscripts written on magician-made paper is brought to the Glass Library, Sylvia and the professor send the owner away. After all, the library collects books about magic, not containing it.
But the murder of the bookbinder who bound them sees the books returned to the library, along with Gabe in his role as consultant for Scotland Yard. When his investigation uncovers a link to Sylvia’s past, they’re even more determined to find the murderer. But they’re not the only ones searching for answers. Someone has gone to great lengths to find the truth behind the binding of the books.
The hunt for the killer leads them to dark corners of London and unscrupulous players with much to gain by owning the collection. It also leads to the discovery of long-buried secrets, and staggering revelations that shed light on Sylvia’s past.
Chapter 1
London, Spring 1920
There can be no doubt that the most enchanting way to spend a wet day is indoors with a cup of tea in one hand and a book in the other. In my case, it was more than one book. I sat on the attic floor, surrounded by them. Large ones that required two hands to lift and small ones that could fit in my palm; leather-covered tomes and unbound manuscripts; texts I could read and others written in foreign languages.
I didn’t mind the dust and musty smell of the Glass Library attic. Indeed, the attic felt welcoming, once I cleared away some of the cobwebs.
I set the teacup on the floor and picked up my notebook. Positioning it near the gas lamp for better light, I transcribed the details of a slim volume written in an Arabic script as best as I could before setting it aside. There were at least two dozen more to be cataloged. They’d been stored in the wooden trunk decorated with cutwork brass and studs that Professor Nash had placed near the back of the attic after returning from Egypt with them many years ago. The trunk had remained closed all that time, gathering dust, along with several others he and his friend collected. It was going to take months to catalog everything, and even longer to have them translated.
At some point in the afternoon, the downpour eased and the rain became a light patter on the roof. I hardly noticed when it happened. Nor did I notice the time until the professor’s head popped through the trapdoor like a jack-in-the-box.
“I’ve just locked up,” he said.
“Is it that late already?” I closed the book I’d been cataloging and set it aside with the notepad. “I’d better go. Mrs. Parry doesn’t like us to be late for dinner.” My landlady was generally very sweet, but she didn’t like going to the trouble of cooking for her lodgers if it wasn’t necessary. I’d learned that the hard way after dining out with Daisy one night without informing Mrs. Parry. She’d scolded me the following morning over breakfast and made me wash the dishes for an entire week instead of following the roster.
I passed the teacup to the professor and extinguished the lamp before following him through the trapdoor and down the ladder to the mezzanine level of his flat. He pushed his spectacles up his nose and regarded me with a smile.
“You’d best dust yourself off before your landlady sees you or she’ll think you’ve gone into service.”
Fortunately, I’d worn gray for my foray into the attic this time. The day before, I’d worn a pretty white blouse that may never be quite as white again.
I washed the cup in the kitchen sink and turned to the professor as I dried it with a towel. “Don’t get up,” I said as he rose from the chair. “I’ll see myself out.”
“Goodnight then, Sylvia.”
“Goodnight, Professor.”
I headed out of his flat via the secret door hidden among the bookshelves to the library then down the stairs to the small reception area. I collected my bag and coat and was about to open the door when someone tried to enter from the other side. Finding the door locked, they banged on it. Incessantly. Either the person was rude, or they desperately needed to speak to the professor or me. I assumed the latter and hurriedly unlocked the door.
The woman standing there holding an umbrella fell into the former category. I managed to refrain from sighing with disappointment at the sight of her, but only just.
“Lady Stanhope. What are you doing here?” Perhaps it wasn’t the politest way to greet a viscountess, but it didn’t warrant the scowl she gave me as she regarded me down her nose.
She pushed past me, her strides purposeful. The damp hem of her black skirts tangled around her ankles and her black cloak billowed like a cloud behind her. She folded up the umbrella and held it out to me, shaking it when I didn’t immediately take it from her. “Is the librarian here?”
I was about to answer when a man I’d not noticed in the gloomy light followed her inside. He did not carry an umbrella and his chauffeur’s cap and oilskin raincoat were damp. The empty arms of the raincoat hung loosely at his sides and, judging by the bulge, he carried something under it to protect it from the rain. Lady Stanhope’s umbrella could have done the job, but she would have to hold it over his head instead of her own and I suspected she’d claim that was beneath her.
She pushed back the hood of her cloak, revealing a face that was still striking, although a lifetime of haughtily pinched lips had formed deep lines around her mouth that now drew together in disapproval. “I asked you a question, Miss Ashe.”
“The library is closed, madam. We open again at nine tomorrow.”
“I am here now and what I have in my possession will be of interest to the librarian.”
I should have persisted, but her claim intrigued me. “In what way will it interest him?”
“I have some magical books.”
My gaze fell on the chauffeur. “I’ll fetch the professor. If you’ll wait here—”
“I’ll wait through there.” She marched off between the two black marble columns marking the entrance to the library and strode to the reading nook.
The chauffeur gave me a small shrug of apology then asked me to help remove his raincoat. I deposited the umbrella in the stand near the door and hung up his raincoat. He followed Lady Stanhope into the library carrying a cardboard box in both hands, his tall black boots click-clacking loudly on the floorboards.
I returned upstairs and informed the professor of Lady Stanhope’s arrival. “I am sorry to bother you, but she insisted I fetch you.”
He patted my shoulder as he closed the door to his flat behind him. “It’s quite all right, Sylvia. I wonder what she wants.”
“She claims to have magical books.”
He blinked back at me. “Well, well. Let’s find out why she believes that.”
Lady Stanhope sat at one end of the sofa in the reading nook while her chauffeur stood behind her, his uniform and stiff stance giving him the air of a military escort. The box he’d been carrying sat on the desk.
Professor Nash bowed his head in greeting. “Good evening, Lady Stanhope. To what do we owe this pleasure?”
She signaled the chauffeur with a forward jut of her chin. He reached into the box and removed six quarto sized books bound in olive green leather covers. He placed them on the desk then stepped back.
Lady Stanhope smiled like a cat who’d caught a mouse. All that was missing was a lick of her lips. “You may look at them.”
The professor waited, but she seemed to think no more explanation was required. He switched on the desk lamp. “What am I looking at?”
“Magical books made with magical paper.”
I joined the professor as he carefully picked up the topmost book. There was nothing stamped on the front or spine, but the cover’s corners were encased in silver protectors engraved with the initials JF. He opened it and scanned the first page. There were no publisher details, just a title and author name.
“The Well of Wild Wood by Honoria Moffat-Jones,” I read. The words were handwritten in neat uniformly spaced capitals. “That name rings a bell. Did she write The Little Folk of Wild Wood?”
“She did,” Lady Stanhope said with a hint of excitement in her voice. “The book sold well, but she never published another. That makes these rare. Unpublished manuscripts by a famous author handwritten on magical paper are priceless.”
And yet she paid a price for them.
I read a few lines of the handwritten text over the professor’s shoulder as he slowly turned the pages. It was
Professor Nash closed the book. “It’s a novel.” He studied the titles of the other books. “They’re all novels, written by the same author.”
Lady Stanhope’s lips thinned further. “And?”
“You misunderstand the library’s purpose. We house books about magic, not books that contain magic. The thought is very much appreciated, however. Thank you, madam.”
Her brows drew together in a severe line. “I’m not donating them, Professor. They’re mine.”
“Oh. Then why are you here, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
She stood and picked up the book he’d just set down. She thrust it in front of his face. “I’m here to ask you to verify they contain magic. I bought them from a reputable bookbinder on Paternoster Row, but one can’t be too careful. Mr. Littleproud contacted me out of the blue claiming to have some untitled books that might interest me, and I purchased them on the proviso that they do indeed contain magic.”
“You don’t trust his word?”
“He claimed they’re untitled, for starters, and they clearly have titles.” She opened the book to the first page and stabbed a gloved finger on the capitalized text. “Perhaps he also lied about the magic to drive up the price.”
“’Untitled’ is a term used in the book trade to describe an unpublished manuscript.” Professor Nash picked up one of the other books and opened it to the first page. It also lacked publishing details and was handwritten. “Whether these manuscripts were intended to be published by the author or not isn’t clear, but I can assure you he didn’t lie about them being untitled in the correct sense of the word. As to whether or not the paper contains magic, I’m afraid I can’t answer that. Nor can Sylvia. Neither of us are magicians.”
I hadn’t told the professor that I suspected I might be a magician. It had been Gabriel Glass’s suggestion after I’d easily found the stolen Medici Manuscript last week. He’d theorized that its magical silver clasps called to me, called to the magician’s instinct within me. Yet I wasn’t a silver magician. I knew that with certainty, despite my brother suspecting he might be, if his diary entry was anything to go by.
I stared at the books on the desk, trying to determine whether my eagerness to touch them was because they contained magic or because I simply liked old, mysterious books.
Professor Nash cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up his nose. “If you’re not prepared to take the bookbinder’s word, madam, then you’ll have to find a magician who can verify whether there is magic in these or not. If you don’t know one—”
“Of course I know one. I know several.”
We’d met Lady Stanhope when she tried to dupe a young magician artist before he became aware he was a magician. We’d learned that she took lovers from among the art community, using her influence at the Royal Academy to entice them into her bed. She’d shown an uncommon interest in Gabe, suspecting that he’d inherited his mother’s magic, and had befriended his fiancée in the hope of getting close to him. The moment his relationship with Ivy ended, Lady Stanhope took his side and warned him to distance himself from the Hobson family as their boot making company faced difficulties. We thought we wouldn’t see Lady Stanhope again after Gabe told her he wasn’t a magician, but it seemed she wouldn’t be easily dismissed. Here she was again, her insatiable appetite for magic bringing her back into our sphere.
I reached for the book sitting on top of the stack, but Lady Stanhope snatched the pile out from under me before I could touch it. She shot me a frosty glare, as if I had no right to touch her possessions without permission, then jerked her head in the chauffeur’s direction.
He took the books from her and placed them inside the box. He followed her to the front door where she waited for someone to open it for her. Professor Nash obliged. It was no longer raining, and Lady Stanhope strode off down the lane without a backwards glance.
The poor chauffeur had to juggle the box of books and her umbrella while I settled his raincoat around his shoulders. He raced after her, slipping on the wet cobblestones as he exited the lane behind her.
Professor Nash scratched his head. “I wonder if the bookbinder is telling the truth about the paper containing magic or if he saw a way to make easy money from a wealthy woman.”
“If he did, he should close his shop and leave the country immediately. Lady Stanhope won’t take kindly to being duped.”
He gave a wry chuckle. “Very true. She prefers to be the one doing the duping.”
I didn’t venture into the attic the following morning. I didn’t want to be dusty for my outing with Gabe. He arrived promptly at ten as arranged, entourage in tow. Clearly his friend, Alex, and his cousin, Willie, weren’t prepared to let him out of their sight until they knew there was no threat of another kidnapping. The two thugs arrested in Crooked Lane last week wouldn’t identify the person who employed them, and until he or she was caught, the threat of another attempt loomed.
If Gabe was worried, he didn’t show it. His smile lit up the library, reaching his warm eyes. There was no sign of concern for his safety in his relaxed stance, no sign that the discovery of his ability to alter time confused him, or that he felt guilt for ending his relationship with Ivy Hobson.
Yet I knew those things weighed on his mind. When he let his guard slip, he revealed a man scarred by war who was still trying to discover who he was and how he fitted into a world that had altered dramatically since 1914.
But he was a master at keeping that guard up.
Before we left, Professor Nash told them about our visit from Lady Stanhope. “She’d purchased a collection of unpublished works from a bookbinder on Paternoster Row who claimed the paper was magician-made. She thought we could verify it for her. We couldn’t, of course. I was about to suggest Huon Barratt, but she assured us she could find a magician to ask.”
Gabe’s gaze slid to me, but he made no comment.
Alex snorted. “Barratt and Lady Stanhope…now that’s a meeting I’d want to see. He’s a lazy good-for-nothing and she’s got as much charm as Medusa.”
“The snake-haired woman of Greek mythology?” Willie asked. “The one who turns folks to stone when they look at her?”
“I’m surprised you’ve heard of her.”
“Course I have. I ain’t an idiot.”
Alex gave her an arched look.
She narrowed her gaze. “I know a few people I’d like to turn to stone with a stare.”
“Why not just marry them?”
She thumped his arm.
Gabe sighed. “I apologize,” he said to the professor and me. “They’ve been spending too much time in one another’s company lately. I’ve tried telling them I don’t need nannies, but they insist on dogging my every step. It’s grown beyond tiresome for everyone.”
Alex and Willie stood side by side, arms crossed, and glared at Gabe, challenging him to try and order them to leave. They might bicker, but when it came to protecting him, they were united.
“It would seem Lady Stanhope is becoming a serious collector,” Gabe said as we headed along Crooked Lane behind Alex and Willie. “She’s obtaining quite the reputation in the last few weeks among magician circles, ever since the opening of the Royal Academy exhibition.”
Given his family’s reputation among magicians, and his work as a consultant on magical investigations for Scotland Yard, I imagined he knew a lot of them, even though he wasn’t magical himself.
Willie stopped inside the narrow entryway to the lane from the main street and put out an arm, stopping the rest of us from passing. She scanned left and right, checking for kidnappers.
