The White Garden by Stephanie Barron

Author:Stephanie Barron
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780553906844
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-06-10T22:00:00+00:00

PETER HAD A PECULIAR SENSE OF HUMOR, JO MUSED AS SHE surveyed Hamish Caruthers, the Head of Wren Library, a half-hour later.

Trinity’s home for books was a massive block set over an open colonnade. To describe it thus was to demonstrate the failure of words: It was the most beautiful building Jo had ever seen.

Buff-colored stone, rectangular and classic; rank upon rank of soaring windows; and inside, a black-and-white checkerboard floor sweeping to vanishing point. At either side, sensibly perpendicular, were the stacks of books.

“Christopher Wren designed it,” Peter told her as they sauntered across the marble. “You’ll know him for—”

“St. Paul’s.”

“Grinling Gibbons carved the limewood figures at the end of the stacks. Four hundred–odd years old, I expect.”

“And kids get to study here.” Jo craned her neck to stare at the ceiling, awed.

“They get to take it for granted, which is more of a luxury. Look.” He stopped by a glass case displaying rare books. “There’s Milne’s manuscript of Winnie-the-Pooh. And Newton’s first edition of Principia. And Byron, of course.”

A looming statue of the Romantic poet, complete with windswept hair and elaborately tied cravat, held down one end of the main floor. “It was intended for Westminster Abbey,” Peter said, “but was refused on account of Byron’s wretched morals. Trinity jumped at it. And there’s Hamish, God love him.”

Hamish Caruthers was almost as large as the statue. A massive individual in a heathered wool Fair Isle sweater, white dress shirt, and Trinity bow tie, his brown hair was the color of mud and fell in loose strings to his collar; his cheeks were full and red; and his shoulders—rounded by years of bending over the Reading Room tables—were like the sloping sides of a railway embankment. He wore a pince-nez. Jo had never seen a pince-nez, but the phrase formed itself in her mind as she stared at the fussy wire frame balanced precariously on Hamish’s fleshy nose. He glanced over the pince-nez with a forbidding expression as Peter murmured in her ear—presumably conversation was discouraged in the Wren—and Jo saw recognition dawn. Unbelievably, Hamish was staring at Peter Llewellyn with what could only be described as profound distaste.

“Hamish, mate,” Peter said easily as he swung across the marble floor. “How’re tricks? Moldering volumes moldering nicely? Trustees happy? Wife safely off wherever wives go, when they’re not wanted?”

The Head Librarian of Trinity College reached for his pince-nez, folded it deliberately, and tucked it in his cardigan pocket. “Peter.” His voice had the quality of unsulfured molasses. “What in bloody hell are you doing here?”

“I’ve brought a friend to see the college.” Peter was smiling, Jo noticed, at a joke he refused to share with anyone. He’d lost his quiet air of desperation—the melancholy that had shaped him from the moment they’d met in Sotheby’s café yesterday morning. She understood that his present glee was entirely at Hamish’s expense. Hamish also knew this, and suspected Peter’s companion was in on the joke.

She would never be able to pry a secret out of this man.

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