The Eleventh Commandment by Mary F. Burns

Author:Mary F. Burns [Burns, Mary F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Shapira Scrolls, Moses Shapira, John Singer Sargent, Violet Paget, Vernon Lee, historical mystery, historical fiction, Chanan Tigay, Lost Book of Moses, Little Daughter of Jerusalem
Publisher: Word by Word Press
Published: 2022-04-15T06:00:00+00:00

Lord Parke’s man was waiting for us at the Gare du Nord, so of course everything was swiftly and properly taken care of—we were whisked away in a carriage sent from the Hotel Westminster hotel, dropping John off first at his home and studio, with promises from him to come to London in the next few days if he could; then I was taken to my pensione in the sixth. All arrangements for the next day fell into place.

“I shall call for you at ten sharp then,” Lord Parke said as I alighted from the carriage, his man having leaped down to open the door for me. I thanked him, then turned back to thank Lord Parke.

“My dear Lord Parke,” I said. “Words cannot express how grateful I am for all the trouble you have gone to, getting involved in this escapade with us, and scrambling from house to hillock in pursuit of what I am not sure.” I held out my hand and he held it in his own.

“Miss Paget,” he said earnestly, “Violet, life would be so much duller without my acquaintance—may I say friendship?—with you and John. The gratitude is all on my side.”

I nodded graciously. “At ten!” I said, and stepped away from the carriage, watching it as it rolled off, the horses stepping smartly along the cobblestone street. With a sigh, I turned to the door of the pensione, where I saw that my arrival in such a handsome equipage had drawn the notice of not only my landlady, but two or three other guests of the establishment, all peeping out of the first floor drawing room windows (or what passes for a drawing room in a Paris pensione).

Not being inclined to suffer through their hints and attempts to question me, I hurried up the stairs to my room on the third floor, where I quickly surveyed what would needed doing in order to arrange and clean my clothes, and get everything packed up in order to leave in the morning.

As I worked, I thought about the events of the last few days, going over and over in my mind the various bits of information—both present and missing—that formed the structure of this remarkable situation. It struck me that none of the three of us had mentioned “the woman”—the Lady in Blue, as I thought of her. Had she left the field, defeated at last? Or was she even now here in Paris, planning another attack? However she had known to search for the documents at John’s studio in the first place—and then again in his hotel room in Rotterdam—surely she would be flummoxed now as to who exactly had the documents in their keeping? The lack of documents in John’s room at the Willemsbrug might lead her to suspect he had passed them to another. It seemed unlikely she could get at Lord Parke in the Hotel Westminster hotel, and I assumed he would have his valet in the suite as extra insurance against such an attempt.

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