Tales From the Black Chamber Read Online Free Page A

a single step and to the right.
    Anne leapt up the stair but stopped when she saw all the blood. Some very old part of her brain immediately recognized death. And then she smelled decomposition. She choked back tears and vomit, stepped outside, shuddering uncontrollably, and called 911.

3
    The police kept her standing out on the lawn for two hours. Eventually, they asked her into the house and sat her down in a little breakfast room off the front hall that looked like a large butler’s pantry set off by swinging doors from the kitchen and a formal dining room.
    The detectives, a tall white woman and a shorter black man, asked her questions for a half hour, with a stenographer taking a statement. Then for another half hour, they asked the same questions again. And then once more. Yes, she’d come down here out of concern for her client; no, she didn’t know who the strange man was or have any concrete reason to believe he was involved other than a suspicion he’d used her computer; no, the book was of no great value; and no, she had just walked in.
    Finally, they asked her to look around the house for any valuable books that might be connected with the crime. She was shown upstairs, downstairs into a finished basement, and upstairs again to a finished third floor. Books were omnipresent but not overwhelmingly so. The library in whose doorway Mrs. Garrett’s body had lain had two walls of built-in bookshelves. Anne confessed to the police that, in fact, she hadn’t noticed a single really rare, old, or valuable volume in the entire place. There were books about books—enough to write several doctorates on early printing, calligraphy and illumination, and manuscript authentication. Even more numerous were vast numbers of secondary sources on Renaissance printers, authors, sages, clerics, magicians, alchemists, and the whole rogues’ gallery of the world of knowledge from the sixteenth century or so. Anne’s admiration of Mrs. Garrett grew. Not only did she have a charmingly formal, old-fashioned sense of décor, she’d assembled Anne’s dream library, or at least the secondary-source stacks of it. But there wasn’t a single piece she’d bought from H&E nor a solitary antique book.
    The police thanked her for her expert opinion, asked her to stay in Washington for a couple days in case they had any more questions, and told her they’d like her to check and sign the statement she’d given once it was typed up.
    Anne got back in her rental car and poked around on her iPhone for the number of a hotel—there was an Embassy Suites that seemed like it’d be fine a mile and a half away in an upscale shopping center in Friendship Heights right on the Maryland line.
    She checked in, got in the shower, and wept.

    Cried out, Anne was sitting in bed wearing the hotel’s complimentary robe, which she loved—hard as it was for a New Yorker to admit, it was fully as nice as the one she’d worn the one time she and Dave had checked into the St. Regis for a romantic weekend—when her cell phone rang.
    â€œMs. Wilkinson, I’m Stephen Hunter from the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” announced a slightly gravelly baritone. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions about the death of Mildred Garrett.”
    â€œI’d be happy to cooperate, but I’ve already spoken to the D.C. police.”
    â€œYes, they gave me your name. Where are you now?”
    â€œI’m at the Embassy Suites in the mall in Friendship Heights.”
    â€œMazza Gallerie?”
    â€œNo, a different one. Chevy Chase something?”
    â€œPavilion. Sorry for the confusion. That’s right across the street from the other mall. I’ll meet you in the hotel lobby in half an hour.”
    â€œAll right.”
    She’d just gotten dressed and was wondering where she’d buy some changes of clothes for the next couple days