The Inkwell Murders – Chapter 6
What Vera Knew
K.E. Ramos did not exist — not on any city registry, not in any professional directory, not in any record the bureau could find in twenty-four hours of searching. The name in the Archive’s access log had been given with a false address and a false institutional affiliation: the University of Cray, which did not exist either. Someone had obtained access to the Concordance under a fabricated identity, removed a document, and then ensured that the man sent to find it would die before he could speak to anyone about what he had not found.
Nadia went back to Vera Crome.
This time she did not accept tea. She sat across from the older woman in the study with the performative books and she put the access log entry on the table between them and she said: “Did you authorize this?”
Vera looked at it for a long time. Long enough that the silence became its own kind of answer. “No,” she said finally. “I did not.”
“But you knew someone else was interested in the collection.”
Another pause. Shorter. “I had been approached,” she said. “Three months ago. A man came to this office — charming, well-dressed, knew the right things to say about books. He offered to buy the collection. The entire Inkwell bequest, including whatever was in the Concordance.”
“What was his name?”
“He gave me a card. The name on it was Ramos.” She said it without surprise, which told Nadia she had already connected the access log to the visitor. “I refused him. The collection isn’t mine to sell — it belongs to the Archive in perpetuity. And frankly” — a pause — “his interest worried me. A man who wants that badly to buy something he can’t have will eventually find another way to get it.”
“So you sent Castor to get there first.”
“I sent Castor to find out what was there. What the document was. What it was worth.”
“And what did you think it was?” Nadia leaned forward. “You knew about the manuscript. Petric told you. He told you it was the reason the Society dissolved. What did he say about it?”
Vera looked at the window. The November sky outside was the colour of dirty pewter, pressing down on the city’s rooftops. “He said it was a confession,” she said. “The manuscript. He said it had been written by one of the founding members and given to the Society for safekeeping — with the understanding that it would never be published. That it documented something that had happened in 1887. Something that, if it came to light, would ruin the reputations of several families. Very old families. Families whose money and names still run through this city.”
She turned from the window and looked at Nadia directly. “He did not tell me what the confession said. I have wondered for thirty years. And I am beginning to think,” she said, “that the wondering was safer.”