Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder by T.A. Willberg

Author:T.A. Willberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Park Row Books
Published: 2020-10-15T18:06:52+00:00

* * *

Marion spread the old map open on her bedside table and brought the monocle to her right eye.

A web of silvery, shifting lines materialized. Hundreds of them: long and convoluted, short and segmented. Most of what the map detailed above the level of the Gadgety Department and before the Border was familiar—the ballroom, kitchens, cafeteria, residence quarters, library—though indeed she noted a number of connecting tunnels, hidden doors and rooms she was yet to explore. But as it had been the first time she’d looked through the monocle, the maze below the Gadgetry Department, beyond Michelle White’s office and over the Border, was the most fascinating. Or perhaps fascinating wasn’t the word. Disconcerting.

Occasionally a minuscule label would appear on the parchment’s surface—chamber eight, chamber ninety, top hall—but whenever Marion attempted to trace the lines that led to them, she failed. For everywhere the paths beyond the Border bisected and converged, until eventually their origins and termini seemed to disappear altogether. She searched every crevice, though she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for. Would anything of particular importance really be labeled?

She removed the monocle and threw it onto her bed. Her neck ached, her eyes itched with exhaustion. Two hours had passed and the only thing she’d been able to learn from the map was something she already knew—the tunnels beyond the Border were a confounding death trap. If there was something down there Nancy and Gillroth were trying to keep a secret, no one would ever have been able to find it, even if they knew where it was.

She turned her attention back to the map and noticed something she hadn’t taken interest in before. A faded mark, not made with invisible ink but with a normal pen—a long and wavy line drawn from near the bottom of the map to the middle. She’d seen it the first time Bill showed her the parchment but had thought it nothing but an unintentional scribble.

She held the map under her bedside lamp. The mark was not a line. It was an arrow.

She attached the monocle to her head and adjusted the straps. The arrow, faded and nearly indecipherable, appeared to connect two points: one in the maze beyond the Border, one in the very heart of Miss Brickett’s. The problem was that under the monocle’s lens, the line of normal ink was pale, almost bleached, and Marion couldn’t quite make out where it led. Without the monocle, the line became clearer, yet it was impossible to tell what it connected. She studied the arrow further, noticing a line of thin script written in Gray Ink just beneath, so small it was nearly impossible to read: To the Border. To the truth.

There was a tap on her bedroom door. She ignored it, hoping whoever was there might leave.

Tap tap tap. Louder this time.

“Who is it?”

“Ah, Miss Lane. You’re in.” The voice was frail, old. Professor Gillroth.

Marion threw the map and monocle under her bed and pulled open the door.

The professor smiled; his rheumy eyes swept over her shoulder as if to check she was alone.

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