Chapter 34

CHAPTER 34

FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1926

J oe stood with Lauren in the dark, empty corridor outside the Met's receiving room. "We need a confession." He didn't have to tell her that again but did anyway. They'd gone over the plan plenty of times before this moment. But this was the moment that counted.

They'd decided it would be best if no police were in the receiving room when Mr. Clarke arrived with his crate. He should be relaxed and willing to talk. The only people present would be Lauren, Mr. Clarke, and the registrar, who would unpack the box. They would tell Mr. Clarke that Mr. Robinson would be called as soon as the coffin was free of its packaging. Joe and Oscar, who was currently parking the police car where it wouldn't be seen by Clarke, would stand by, ready to move in and make an arrest.

"Are you all right? You ready?" Joe cupped his hands around her shoulders, resisting the urge to draw her close. The betrayal he'd felt from his own father was nothing compared to what she suffered from Lawrence Westlake. He'd take this pain upon himself if he could spare her.

He couldn't do that, but he could see that justice was done, at least in the legal sense. Joe would have arrested Lawrence by now had it not been for Mr. Clarke's delivery today. He didn't want to risk other forgers going underground. They needed to see how Clarke would explain Hatsudora's coffin.

Lauren double-checked the small microphone clipped to the back of the necktie she wore over her blouse. The wire had been carefully stitched in place all the way down the tie so that when she buttoned her suit jacket, no one could tell it connected to a recording device attached to the waistband of her skirt. "Ready." Her beautiful face was stark and pale.

But she was stronger than she knew.

Lauren's nerves tangled while Mr. Klein tapped the mallet to the crowbar around the edges of the crate's lid. Mr. Clarke looked on, his eyes glowing. Stroking his silver beard, he leaned toward her.

"The old ticker is thumping now, I can tell you."

She managed to smile. Her pulse raced, too, but not for the same reason. She'd sent a telegram to Mr. Lythgoe and Mr. Winlock, asking them to confirm the final destination of Hatsudora's coffin. If the French team had gained ownership, there was a small chance they'd sold it to Clarke's team for a price impossible to refuse. But the answer had come back definitively: Hatsudora was enshrined in Cairo's Egyptian Museum.

"Knock, knock!" Anita's voice echoed in the cavernous room.

Lauren turned and felt the blood leave her face. There by her side was Lawrence. Tension ballooned in the room.

"Mr. Westlake said he needed to see you," Anita explained. "I told him you'd be a while, and he said it was urgent. I hope that was okay." The crimp in her brow hinted that she sensed it wasn't.

Her mouth in a tight line, Lauren nodded to show her assistant she wasn't upset with her, and Anita slipped back into the corridor. The sound of her footsteps faded into nothing.

Lawrence approached. "Don't let me interrupt you."

She couldn't find a single word to say to this man. She wasn't ready for this. She was barely ready for the confrontation she'd planned on.

Mr. Clarke set his jaw but thrust out a vein-crossed hand. "Lawrence, it's been many years. You must be so proud of your daughter."

A pounding entered Lauren's skull as the two men exchanged barbed courtesies. Even Mr. Klein paused to glance between them before resuming his work.

This was not the plan. She didn't want Lawrence here to see Mr. Clarke's humiliation. He would only rejoice in it, she knew, based on his little stunt replacing that ointment jar with a fake. Lauren would have to deal with him later, but not now. Please, God, not now .

"Actually, we are in the middle of something." Lauren motioned to draw him away. "Tell me what's so urgent, and then you'll have to leave." She bit the inside of her cheek. She ought to have sent him away, full stop.

"I don't mind, Dr. Westlake," Mr. Clarke inserted. "Lawrence would like to see this, I'm sure."

"And what's that?" Lawrence put his back to Lauren, and she felt it with the force of a slap.

The air cracked as nails popped free of the wood. Mr. Klein pried off the boards, and sawdust spilled onto the floor, some peppering the air before settling. Sweeping it away, the registrar set to work on the interior box the dust had insulated.

"You know Hetsumina," Mr. Clarke replied to Lawrence, "the twin whose coffin now graces the New Accessions room upstairs? My team found her lost sister, Hatsudora. Stay, and you'll be one of the first to meet her on this side of the ocean."

"Is that right?" Lawrence asked. He knew how much this would mean to Lauren, and yet he did not turn to her with delight. He didn't ask her why she hadn't told him of the find he knew she most longed for. With Mr. Clarke in the room, it was as if Lauren were as inanimate as the artifacts unpacked here, and less important.

She knew it wasn't Hatsudora in the crate, and yet she remained as transfixed as the rest of them as Mr. Klein removed layer after layer of protection. At last, he cut away the muslin sheet wrapping the coffin.

Lauren gasped at the impossibly perfect likeness to Hetsumina's coffin.

Mr. Clarke exclaimed. Mr. Klein brushed the sawdust from his knees, caught Lauren's eye, and smiled before backing out of her way. Lawrence's mild reaction barely registered.

Lauren's hand went to her pocket, which held Mr. Lythgoe's letter and telegram about the real Hatsudora. She touched them to remember the truth as she knelt beside this coffin that looked so real.

Carved from wood, it was painted in the exact colors to match Hetsumina's and appliquéd with ornate gold-leaf hieroglyphs. The young woman portrayed in the funerary mask wore the same fashions, too. The inscriptions all around the coffin contained no errors. In fact, they were a perfect replication of her sister's, with the exception of her name. If Lauren didn't have proof in her pocket that the real coffin rested in Cairo, she'd have declared this genuine.

"Mummies don't lie," Lauren had once told Anita. But coffins did.

"Marvelous," Mr. Clarke breathed. "She's simply amazing, isn't she? Let's call Mr. Robinson down, shall we? I imagine he'll be as excited as we are."

Lauren rose and brushed off her skirt. "I'm not so sure you'll want him here for this," she began. "This coffin is unbelievable, Mr. Clarke. Truly, literally , unbelievable."

"Indeed," Lawrence said gruffly. "The occasion demands the director of the museum. He may even make you an offer on the spot, Clarke. Bravo."

It was as if he hadn't even heard what she'd said. She narrowed her gaze at her father, wishing she could see past his fa?ade into the hidden depths and motivations that made him who he was. That made him ignore her, congratulate his archrival, and insist on inviting an audience.

She wiped her palms on her skirt. "What was so urgent you needed to see me right away?" she asked him.

Lawrence waved a hand. "Not important."

"Why are you here?"

Seconds ticked by.

"All due respect, Dr. Westlake, but it's clear the matter can wait," Mr. Clarke said. "Shall we call Mr. Robinson?"

"Mr. Clarke, this coffin is not what you think it is. I'm willing to bet there's no mummy inside. Or if there is, it's not Hatsudora." She motioned for Mr. Klein to help her remove the lid.

He did. Just as she thought, the coffin was empty. Except for an envelope addressed to Clarke. She handed it to him.

Mr. Clarke's face paled, then darkened as he read it. "This says that Hatsudora, the mummy, was stolen right out of the coffin before my team packed it for shipping. Why didn't they send me a telegram, rather than surprise me like this? I'm sorry, Dr. Westlake, I don't know what to say. I do hope the coffin will still be of some use for you. What a disaster. I can't understand it."

"I can." Removing the letter and telegram from her pocket, she explained how. "This is the finest forgery I've ever seen," she said.

Confusion lined Mr. Clarke's face, but not horror. She was certain that whatever amount of money he'd paid for this, he'd be all right even if he never recouped a dime. "I don't understand how this could have happened. My own team..." He muttered in broken phrases as he tried to sort out this elaborate hoax.

Lawrence did not come closer to look for himself. All he looked for, it seemed, was satisfaction. But he did not appear to be surprised. It was as if he had known this would happen.

A glimmer of understanding knocked the breath from her lungs. "You knew, didn't you?" she whispered, but again, he didn't hear her. He more than knew. He'd arranged this entire deception. He'd known she was hoping to find Hatsudora ever since she'd shown him Hetsumina's coffin in November.

Lauren walked toward him, remembering that her every word and his were being recorded. "You called me in to look for forgeries at Mr. St. John's house last November. You'd already been there cataloging his collection before I got there. Do you remember that?"

"Of course I do, but I don't see what—"

"I found an alabaster ointment jar to be fake. The hieroglyphs were wrong. Then I learned that jar had been a gift from Mr. Clarke. But you knew that, didn't you? You knew that before I arrived. In fact, I think you took the real jar out and swapped it with an alabaster jar you—or someone else—carved to look the same. Except for the mistakes in the inscription."

Mr. Clarke glowered at Lawrence.

"Why would I do such a thing?" he sputtered.

"You hate Mr. Clarke. You're jealous of his legacy and feel that you've been wronged. You were probably jealous of the way Mother wrote about him in her letter."

Lawrence's complexion turned ashen.

"Nancy saved the box of letters you left in the fireplace, and I read them. You saw an easy way to taint Mr. Clarke's name, so you took it. Am I right so far?"

"This is ridiculous." Lawrence glanced from her to Mr. Klein.

The registrar ducked his head and made to leave as though to give them privacy.

"Stay, Mr. Klein," Lauren told him. All of this would come out in tomorrow's newspaper anyway. "I need you to pack this up again, please. I want it out of here."

He began to comply but in no hurry.

Lauren addressed Lawrence again. "The rumors about Mr. Clarke's little alabaster-jar forgery didn't do much to harm him, did they? Then there was that nasty business with the Napoleon House roof burning in his hometown, and you couldn't stand to be humiliated like that. You could imagine him in his mansion on the shore, laughing at you, along with his set."

"Dr. Westlake!" Mr. Clarke stopped her. "I did no such thing, Lawrence, I swear. I didn't even know about a Napoleon House in Newport. I don't understand what this is about."

Her father blanched. To be mocked was one thing. To be invisible, for his so-called legacy to go unnoticed, was something altogether different.

Hatred crystalized in Lawrence's eyes, and the rest of his face hardened, too. "You should have left my wife alone." He shoved a finger toward Mr. Clarke. "What were you about, visiting her when I wasn't home?"

"And what were you about, leaving her to die alone?" Mr. Clarke spat back. "For what? What were you doing that was more important than Goldie? Than your own daughter?"

"Is she?" Lawrence asked with deadly calm. "None of my other children lived. What's different about this one?"

"You aren't suggesting—"

"Only what I have often suspected over the course of the last thirty-three years and more."

The words came at her with the sharpness of blades. Mother would never break her marriage vows. Would she? Had she? "How I wish you knew your father" were among Mother's final words. But surely she was referring to the husband who had been so absent in both of their lives. Lauren was Lawrence Westlake's daughter. But at this moment, she was too ashamed of him to say so.

"Stop." She scraped the scattered pieces of her courage together. Could they see that inside she was cut and bleeding? Was that Lawrence's intention? To hurt her in order to derail her? It pained her to realize he wasn't above such a move.

"This isn't about Mother," she said. "This is about you and the Napoleon Society. About all those fakes you sent your members, the fake canopic jars you sold to Sanderson, the fake jewelry you auctioned off at the gala. Daniel Bradford is Dr. Daniel DeVries, isn't he? That's why Aaron Tomkins threw me out of his shop before I had a chance to verify the authenticity of his stock. After Joe's visit, when he asked to be put in touch with Bradford, Tomkins must have reached DeVries and been told not to have anything to do with me or Joe."

Mr. Clarke sat down on a stool, stunned into silence.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Lawrence told her.

"I do know what I'm talking about. That's why you wanted me to write articles for you. But you wanted them so you could learn how to get better at your craft. I must say, whoever worked on that coffin got it right. The only other forgery that came close to fooling me was Moretti's Book of the Dead. Mr. Clarke has no reason to sell forgeries. This is the work of the Napoleon Society."

"Lawrence!" The strangled voice came from Mr. Klein. "I warned you!" Sweat darkened the hair at his temples.

Shock rippled through her as she stared at the registrar. "You're one of the forgers."

"I'm not just one of the forgers," he sneered with a German accent. "I'm the best. Lawrence and Daniel had the right connections, but none of what you described would have been possible without me."

Faster than thought, he jerked her by the arm, spinning and pinning her against him. She felt his heartbeat at her back, his hot breath near her ear, and a circle of cold metal at her head.