The Inkwell Murders – Chapter 18
The Auction
While Nadia had been finding bodies and tracing family histories through document boxes, another story had been running in parallel — one she had only partly noticed and now found herself standing at the edge of.
On the same week Edmund Castor had died, a private auction had been held in a hotel in the north quarter. The auction had been for rare books and documents — Sable Harmon’s restoration shop was known in that community, which was how Nadia connected it — and among the lots had been something described in the catalogue as an unpublished document of historical interest, Veldmoor provenance, pre-1900. No further description. No provenance note. The lot had sold, before the auction even formally opened, to a private buyer who had communicated only through a solicitor.
The document that had been taken from the Concordance by the false K. E. Ramos — the Aldiss letter, the one Kieran Hartwell had eventually found — had been put up for auction the same week its companion piece was being searched for by a dead man.
Someone had known exactly what they had. Had known its value — not monetary but strategic. Had offered it, discreetly, to buyers who would understand what the Reckoning’s existence implied.
Who had taken the Aldiss letter from the Concordance before Castor arrived? Not Kieran Hartwell — he had found it there and taken it himself. But that meant someone had put it back. Someone had accessed the Concordance, removed the letter, and then — for reasons Nadia had to work out — returned it.
Unless the Aldiss letter in the Concordance had been a copy. And the original had been auctioned.
She pulled the auction house’s records. The consignor was listed as anonymous. The buyer: a trust, as yet unidentified. The auction house had followed all legal requirements, they assured her; they had no idea the item might be connected to a murder investigation, they assured her; they were happy to cooperate fully, they assured her, with a quality of enthusiasm that suggested they had already called their lawyers.
The solicitor representing the buyer agreed to contact their client. Two days later, Nadia received a letter — physical, handwritten — from an address in the city.
The letter was brief. It said: I have the letter. I also have the names of the four men who died in the Marsh Street fire, and the names of their surviving descendants. I have had them for twenty years. I purchased the letter at auction to prevent it from being used by persons who would use it to destroy rather than to illuminate. I am prepared to speak with you at your earliest convenience.
It was signed: L. Maren-Vane.
The name hit her like cold water. L. Maren. The woman founder of the Inkwell Society — the one whose full name had never been recorded. A descendant, presumably. Or a name carried forward in a family that had kept its own vigil for a hundred and fifty years.
She drove to the address immediately.