Read Online Bristol House by Beverly Swerling - Free Book Online

window in her flat’s back bedroom—the window that seemed to have flown open of its own accord—and, presuming no buildings in between, look directly into the world of the Carthusian monks. Never mind that Henry drove them out in 1538, or that Bristol House wasn’t built until 1901. In terms of the phenomena she’d experienced at the flat and nowhere else, that sight line seemed to her to be of major importance. And the persecution of the Charterhouse monks had begun in 1535—the same year her Jew of Holborn was supposed to be distributing his treasures. How coincidental was that likely to be? she asked herself as the bus stopped and started its way through the traffic of modern London.
    ***
    Returning to the apartment after spending hours away had evolved into a set routine, a series of checks. Turn the key. Open the door. Hold her breath while she reached for the remote on the hall table. Holding her breath should not have anything to do with whether the ghost appeared. Still, Annie always drew in that first long gulp of air and did not exhale until she clicked on the radio.
    “The Foreign Office has said there is no doubt that the United Nations vote will come in the next few days. As previously announced, Britain will abstain because . . .”
    Annie was unaware of the issue, or whether she should approve or disapprove Britain’s abstention. The discussion moved on to a cricket match in Jaipur. She had no idea what that was about either, but it didn’t matter. It was the announcer’s voice that gave her both comfort and courage. Annie waltzed confidently into number eight on a wave of inexplicable talk of overs and declarations and wickets.
    She dropped her bag in the drawing room, taking a minute to note that the lilacs she’d bought the day before were already wilting, but all else was as it should be. She walked down the hall to the kitchen with, thank God, no extraordinary incident and stopped to squeeze a lemon into some soda water, add a bit of sugar, then take a sip. Finally, with her heart beating at a furious rate despite the soothing drone of the BBC, she turned and looked down the short leg of hall toward the back bedroom.
    The door was closed, which was how she’d left it earlier in the day, and there was nothing to see.
    In the dining room her laptop was open—also as she’d left it—but idling in sleep mode. She struck a couple of keys and waited for the screen to light up, then clicked open her mail and ran her eye down the list of senders. Most of what had come in while she was away was advertising. There was, however, an e-mail from Geoff Harris. He’d written one word, “Bollocks,” and attached a picture from the old book. It was the drawing of three Carthusians being dragged on a hurdle to their execution at Tyburn, enlarged so every detail was sharp and clear. None of the monks even slightly resembled either Geoff or the man she’d seen in the back bedroom.
    Annie hit reply and typed, “Whatever bollocks means, I agree.”
    Moments later her phone rang at the other end of the apartment. She had to dash down the hall to grab it from the bag she’d left in the drawing room. Geoff was on the line. “I want to talk about this. May I come by?”
    Annie said he could.
    ***
    “Clary said he had to add pixels to make it this clear, but that he didn’t change any of the parameters. The way he explains it, this is the picture from the book, adjusted to how it would appear if the artist had been working to a larger scale.”
    “It looks right,” Annie said. “Exactly like the original, just bigger.”
    “But none of these blokes look like me.”
    “No,” she admitted. “They do not.” It was indisputably true and made her wonder what exactly he’d wanted to come rushing over to talk about.
    They were sitting side by side on Mrs. Walton’s slightly faded blue sofa. The printouts of the enlarged drawings were spread out on the coffee table. Geoff leaned in to look more closely