Henry made a mumbled apology to the Pennyworths, something about newlyweds and feelings running high. The couple smirked, and Ian made a crack about other things running high, but at least they didn't seem suspicious.

Jo had disappeared in the direction of the back stairs, and Henry decided he had better give her some space. Truth be told, he could use a moment to collect himself as well. He made a distracted bow to Ian and Lola and returned to the ballroom.

He kept himself to the edges of the room, looking for the key players in this weekend drama. The Bandersnatches were laughing and dancing, or trying to dance, but their senses of balance were rather the worse for drink. Miss Simmons was also a few drinks in and flirting with an extra, apparently having decided to enjoy herself for one last Hopkins House ball, murder investigation or not. Graham Martin was chatting with a few other extras. Henry tried to find Sophie Martin in the crowd, but she wasn't in sight. The Pennyworths might be where he left them at their room, or they might be continuing their search for the manuscript, and he and Jo had not completely eliminated them as suspects yet.

Henry took a step in Graham's direction, meaning to enquire as to the whereabouts of his wife, but a voice called him up short.

"I hope everything is alright between you and Joanna. Did you manage to catch up with her?"

He turned to find Caroline Gibson giving him a sympathetic smile. "Yes, everything is fine—thank you for your concern. Just a little misunderstanding."

"Well, with the way you two look at each other, I'm sure it won't last long," Caroline assured him. "I just hope you don't miss the Exhibition while you're 'making up.' "

Henry didn't mention that the kind of "making up" she was implying was currently part of the problem. Instead, he fixed on the other topic she had brought up. "You seem to be a woman in the know when it comes to AustenChat and the Exhibition," he said with what he hoped was a charming smile.

"I know a few things," she answered coyly. "Everyone here knows something, Doctor."

"Yes, but you more than most. You seemed very interested in Joanna's necklace, for example."

She leaned in. "There's no need to keep pretending on that front, Henry. Everyone brought things of value. Why should you hide yours?"

Henry decided that the time for caution was past. "You know, I've always had a fondness for military pieces—Napoleonic blades especially. I heard a rumor that one of the AustenChat members owns one. Is it here this weekend?"

Caroline's expression shuttered, and her conspiratorial smile turned to merely a polite one. "I've heard that rumor too, but I don't know. I don't know who it belongs to." She looked around at the other faces in the room, her smile widening to hide her sudden nervousness. "Well, you should really go and find your bride. I won't keep you any longer."

Henry was about to follow her rapidly retreating form and press her for whatever she was obviously hiding when he felt a buzzing against his chest: Jo's phone was ringing. A glance inside his jacket showed that Hanson was calling. He looked around once more for Jo, but she wasn't in the ballroom. He stepped out onto the porch and down into a secluded corner along the outside wall to take the call.

"Good evening, Detective. Please say you have something for us."


Jo strode quickly to the servants' stairs and halfway down without looking back at either Henry or the Pennyworths. When she got to a small landing, she stopped to think. It's about time you started thinking, she berated herself. She hadn't used her brain since the moment Henry had pinned her against that door; not when he'd kissed her as cover, and not when the kiss had turned real. Certainly not when she'd kissed him back like some teenager under the bleachers on prom night.

Looking down at her dress, she twisted and tugged it to set it to rights, even though nothing was really out place. It was only on the inside that she was completely disheveled. Once again, play-acting and reality were becoming harder and harder to distinguish. She felt like she was trying to solve a murder in a funhouse, and it wasn't fun.

She understood Henry better now that she'd seen him in more or less his natural habitat, but she wasn't sure if that landed them closer together or farther apart. After all, this world would always be foreign to her, and Henry always seemed a little out of sync with the modern world. So where did that leave them? Could there ever be a them, or was this one of those doomed bird and fish situations?

She shook it off and continued down the stairs. She couldn't think about this right now. Before the distraction of their close escape, and that door, and the feel of— before "The Interruption," she and Henry had discovered that the Pennyworths were after scans of the manuscript. That explained their staged distractions to gain access to the Martins' room, but if they knew who the owners were all along, why bother killing the Brewers? The only other guests who had shown any connection to the victims were the Gibsons, and she hadn't heard anything from Hanson since—

Jo cursed. Of course she hadn't heard anything. Henry had her phone. Time to suck it up and go find him. As a bonus, the faster they wrapped up this case, the faster she could get back to real life, and back to thinking clearly about...everything.

She came to the bottom of the stairs and rounded the corner quickly, nearly running straight into Sophie Martin.

The woman started and raised a hand to her chest. "Oh! Joanna. You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

"What are you doing out here by yourself?" Jo asked, scanning the hallway but not seeing anyone else. If the manuscript was truly the killer's motivation, Sophie was still in danger.

"Oh, just getting some air. That ballroom is getting awfully stuffy, and a little ripe, to be honest. What are you doing out here? Still hiding from Henry?"

Jo made a decision. With the weekend drawing to a close, the killer must be getting desperate to achieve their goal, and that made them dangerous. She and Henry needed all the information they could get, and fast.

"Sophie, my name isn't Joanna Morgan; it's Jo Martinez. I'm a detective—and Henry isn't my husband, he's my partner. We're here investigating a murder, and we think you and Graham may be in danger."

The woman's eyes went wide. "For real?"

Jo smiled grimly. "I would show you my badge, but it didn't work with this outfit."

To her credit, Sophie stayed calm. "This is about the manuscript, isn't it?"

Jo nodded. "Yes, we believe so. Can we go somewhere and talk?"

"Of course," Sophie nodded. "I know the perfect place. Come with me; I'll show you what all the fuss is about."


"Henry? What are you doing with Jo's phone?" Hanson sounded surprised.

"Jo is away from her phone at the moment," Henry said, and left it at that. "I didn't think you were supposed to call directly; have you discovered something important?"

"Yeah, you could say that. I did a little digging into Jonathan and Caroline Gibson, and they don't exist. The credit card they used to pay for the retreat led to a couple of high-quality fake ID's."

"They could simply be after the manuscript as well," Henry mused, trying not to jump to conclusions.

Hanson went on. "There's something else. We traced the same credit card to payments for internet service and used the IP address to figure out that the Gibsons, or whoever they are, really are regulars on AustenChat. Caroline has only been part of the group for three months, but Jonathan has been an active member for over four years."

"Unlike the Pennyworths, who showed up just long enough to suggest the Exhibition this weekend," Henry said.

"Exactly." Henry heard the tapping of Hanson's keyboard, and the detective added, "There was one period of about eight months when he wasn't logging on, but otherwise Jonathan is almost a daily presence. We followed up on Caroline's claim that he and Brewer knew each other professionally, but there was no Jonathan Gibson listed in any of his nursing programs or as co-workers."

Henry's head snapped to attention and his eyes came alive; several vital pieces had finally fallen into place.

"Doc? You still there?" Hanson prodded.

"He did know the Brewers professionally—they both did." Henry strode back onto the porch and stood in the open French doors, no longer caring if anyone saw him using a phone. Caroline was still in the ballroom, dancing with Graham Martin. "Detective, please tell local PD to get into position, but not to engage. You may wish to come up here now as well."

"Henry, what the hell's going on? Where's Jo?"

"I know what happened. I need to find her."

He hung up the phone to the sounds of Hanson's protests, but he knew the detective would do as he had requested. Henry may not have any actual police authority, but his partner did, and they would both need back-up very soon.


"Janefanboy and regency_forever are dead? That's awful!" Sophie was leading Jo down the corridor at a much brisker pace than Jo had seen her use before, and something occurred to her.

"Sophie, you're not limping anymore. Is your ankle feeling better?"

The woman looked a little abashed. "Yeah, I was sort of faking it." Jo gave her a questioning cop look—friendly, but still a cop look—and she explained, "I did trip and fall on Thursday, but I pretended it was worse than it was so I could stick close to the manuscript. I knew Lola was up to something."

"How so?"

"Because she's the one who tripped me. At first I thought it was an accident, but when Graham helped me back to our room, the door was unlocked, and we sure as hell didn't leave it that way. We suspected that my fall had been a distraction to slow us down so someone else had time to clear out of our room."

"Why didn't you leave the retreat, or call the police?"

Sophie shrugged. "The evidence seemed pretty flimsy. To be honest, we were sort of enjoying the whole thing. Intrigue is half the fun of a house party."

"So I've heard."

"We did move the manuscript, though. We had our doubts that even the room safe would keep out the searchers."

Sophie stopped in front of a closed door and reached out to turn the handle, grinning a little. "What better place to hide a manuscript than in the library?"


"May I cut in?" Henry tapped Graham on the shoulder and bowed with practiced nonchalance.

Mr. Martin looked a little surprised until he saw who his interloper was. "Ah, this must be payback for poaching your wife earlier. Very well, I yield." He bowed in return, bowed to Caroline, and walked away with a good-natured grin. "I'll have you know, I regret nothing."

Once he was gone, Caroline cocked an eyebrow and curtsied to her new partner. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Doctor?"

Instead of bowing in return and rejoining the line of dancers, Henry took her elbow and guided her a few steps away from the others. "Caroline Gibson is not your real name, is it?"

She looked taken aback for a moment before she recovered, but the smile that followed didn't quite reach her eyes. "No, of course not. That's how these things work, you know. Everyone here is playing a role, Henry, even you and Joanna."

"True," he admitted, "but how many of us are hiding a murder?"

Her eyes went wide; she hadn't expected him to say that. "What do you—"

"You weren't lying when you told me you knew the Brewers professionally," Henry interrupted. "You merely changed the details. Jonathan wasn't a colleague of Steven's, was he? He was his patient at Riker's Island. And you recognized Jenny the same way. You were both inmates."

Caroline's eyes darted around, and Henry followed her gaze. "Your partner isn't here. Where is he?" Henry was suddenly very aware that he didn't know where Jo was, either, and Sophie Martin was also missing from the ballroom. "Who else is he willing to kill to get the manuscript—unless it was you who killed the Brewers?"

Now she looked truly shocked. "The Brewers are dead?"

"Killed with a Napoleonic naval dirk. I believe you're familiar with the piece."

"Well, it wasn't me!" Something in her demeanor gave way, and Henry knew he was about to hear the truth. "Look, you're right about how we knew the Brewers. James is obsessed with Austen and Regency England—that's not a scam—and we came this weekend to scope out all the Exhibition pieces for later, back in the city. We wouldn't be stupid enough to grab them here."

"Hence your interest in Joanna's necklace."

She shrugged. "I know my business. We ran into the Brewers at the changing house, and they recognized us both. James did some time for fraud and assault, and I—well, never mind about me. We knew we couldn't scope out the valuables when those two might "accidentally" reveal our records and put everyone on guard, so James convinced them to skip the retreat."

"Convinced?" Henry pressed, raising an eyebrow.

"By way of $10,000 cash. Two overworked, underpaid public servants, why wouldn't they take it? He drove back to the city with them to hand it over upfront." When Henry continued to look skeptical, she said, "The payoff for us this weekend would be way more than that, so it seemed reasonable to me. He hired a ride back up here in time for dinner and told me everything was settled."

"Caroline, he did not pay off the Brewers. He slit Steven's throat, stabbed Jenny through the heart, and dumped their bodies in a park. Now where is he?"

"I don't know. Really, I don't!" she insisted, then bit her lower lip. "But once he heard the rumors about the manuscript, he was completely obsessed with finding out who owned it. I was starting to worry he would blow our cover and take it right here. You have no idea how important this stuff is to him."

"Come on," Henry said, taking her firmly by the elbow, "we need to find them." For some reason, he had no doubt that when he found Jonathan—make that James—Gibson, he would find Jo as well.


There was no wall safe in the library, no trap door in the floor, and no rotating bookshelf revealing a secret room. At least, that's not where Sophie and Graham had hidden their most valuable and sought-after possession.

Sophie led Jo to a range of shelves in one corner of the room. This particular corner contained the complete works of Jane Austen in several editions, plus commentaries, literary analyses, and biographies, all neatly arranged from top to bottom and several feet across.

"Graham picked the spot," she said, scanning the spines for something. "We may be Austenites, but he also loves Indiana Jones."

Jo frowned at the sudden change of topic. "I don't understand."

" 'X' marks the spot. Or more like the carpenter's cup amongst the golden chalices."

Jo followed her gaze, and this time she saw it, buried in plain sight among more impressive bindings: a well-read Penguin Classics paperback copy of Mansfield Park, complete with worn edges and a creased spine. "What is it?"

"It's my college copy of Mansfield Park." Sophie pulled the book off the shelf, then took a handful of books from either side of it and stacked them on a nearby table. Flat against the wall behind the spot was a rectangular metal case about four inches thick, almost like a small, very expensive-looking briefcase. Sophie pulled it out and laid it flat on the table as well, unlatched the sides, and opened the lid.

Inside, surrounded by protective padding and archival sheet protectors, was a sheaf of yellowing papers covered with fading but still very legible handwritten script. "This is my other copy of Mansfield Park."

"This one looks a little harder to read at the beach," Jo commented, a little awed. She may not have been a hard-core fan like the rest of the guests, but this was still a piece of literary history.

"It's never been about the prestige, or even the bragging rights," Sophie said. "Not that we're above a little bragging—but for us, it's about the story. This is our favorite book."

Jo smiled at the fond look on Sophie's face, but she gently urged her to close the metal case. "If you don't want your story to end with 'killed by murderous book thieves,' I think you should come with me. Let's find Graham and Henry and get somewhere a little more secure."

"My apologies, Detective, but it's too late for that."

Jo and Sophie turned to find Jonathan Gibson behind them, holding a very modern gun. Miss Simmons would not approve.


The end is in sight! Two chapters left now.