Episode 4: For the Lost Leonardo, Chapter 3

"You seriously think this is a mystery house?" Jones queried, following Stone and Flynn up a nearby staircase. "Mate, you could probably fit every mystery house there is into this place! It's huge!"

"Well I don't see it being anything in that ballroom back there, do you?" Stone hissed back.

"We're just new to this," Jones persisted. "How do we know what's magical and what's not."

"You're not that new, Ezekiel," cut in Flynn, "and I'm certainly not new to this and I didn't spot anything. I've never encountered a mystery house before, but it would not surprise me if a magical house could change its appearance or size, especially on the inside. I mean the inside could be in a totally different dimension, like the Library itself, for instance."

"Yeah, yeah, or the TARDIS, I get it," sighed the young man. "The last one wasn't exactly the same inside as out, either."

They reached the landing at the top of the stairs. Corridors extended away in opposite directions.

"I vote I go this way and you take Stoney-face there the other," decided Ezekiel, turning to his corridor and heading off. A hand on his collar stopped him in his tracks.

"You ain't disappearing off on your own in here," stated Stone. "You're comin' with me."

"Just how much of a masochist must you be to want to spend even more time in my company?" Jones spat back.

"Okay," sighed Flynn, giving Stone a pointed look until the latter removed his hand from the thief's collar. "How about I go with Ezekiel and you take the other corridor."

"Fine," growled Stone, stalking off in the opposite direction.

"Have you two ever worked together on..." Flynn searched for a suitable word. "Anything? I mean without the arguments and Stone making a bet you couldn't plan anything that didn't involve just you?"

"That was the first time we'd worked together without Cassandra or Baird," replied Ezekiel, referring to a case where Stone, Flynn and he had retrieved an ancient Greek amphora from some rather belligerent harpies in a race against the two ladies' retrieval of an actual witch's broomstick. They'd won the amphora, but lost the race. "The only reason Stone didn't argue every single point was because he was waiting for me to prove him right and fail."

"But you didn't fail," said Flynn. "Surely there have been missions since..."

"Since the two lovebirds got together, they've been pairing up on everything," shrugged Ezekiel. "They didn't need me in the way."

"So you've been working alone, ever since Cassandra and Stone became an item?" Flynn asked, frowning.

"Not entirely," admitted Ezekiel. "Jenkins has been helping me out here and there and the Library always seems to give me cases I can handle. Anyway: you were the one who said we could go out alone now. You graduated us."

"I didn't mean all the time, though," said Flynn gently. "I've been there: no good comes of doing this job alone."

"I'm fine," Ezekiel shrugged, shaking his head. "I'm not alone. I have Jenkins helping me. I was more alone than that before I took this job."

"You should have all of us," replied Flynn. "We're a team. We're all perfectly capable of working alone, yes, but we shouldn't have to. We should be working together more often, all of us."

"I'm fine," Ezekiel repeated, and Flynn saw there the look, and heard there the voice, he had seen on his own face and heard in his own voice all those years ago, after Simone had, well, gone. It was the look of a liar, and the sound of the lie you keep telling yourself in the mirror every day until you've convinced yourself it's true.

"What was the last time you left the Library, Ezekiel?" Flynn asked, watching the young man carefully. "And I don't mean on a mission or to the dig."

"Technically the dig was a mission at one point," pointed out the thief.

"When?" Flynn persisted.

Ezekiel winced at his tone and shrugged again, avoiding his glance. "I dunno, I've been busy."

"When we get home, we're all going out for the evening, assuming the girls are still around," announced Flynn. "We'll even drag Jenkins along."

"Yeah, because that worked so well last time!" Ezekiel laughed.

"That wasn't our fault: that was Shakespeare's Quill," clarified Flynn. "This time we'll... We'll call ahead and make sure the girls aren't working on anything dangerous."

They reached a door that was closed and locked. So far every door they had passed had been open, or at least unlocked, and they had been able to look in and take stock without interrupting the flow of their conversation. Now, that was no longer the case. A locked door meant something hidden.

"Do you want to do the honours or shall I?" Flynn asked, gesturing at the lock.

Ezekiel pulled out a set of skeleton keys and gave him a look that contained all of his old arrogance. "Please," he said. "Like you could crack this faster than me."

XXXX

Stone made his way carefully and methodically through every room, scanning bookcases, display cabinets and walls for anything that stood out. The last mystery house they had encountered had tried to warn them through pictures. He had worked out the meaning of the clue, but only once he had been safely tucked away in the dollhouse until the ghost had been vanquished.

Most of the rooms were guest bedrooms. Some were bath or shower rooms. A few seemed to be little writing rooms or studies, each with their own sets of bookshelves, or, in one case, a long desk, easel and covered canvas. There were items on the desk too. Scrolls and books, scattered in piles or laid open on the desk, reminded him of the office of the Library. The canvas on the easel was covered, but painting equipment was resting nearby and he didn't lift the cloth. It would be an intrusion to look at an artist's work before it was finished, without his or her permission of course.

He left the room and turned a corner into another corridor. This one was shorter, with a door to a small box room on the wall opposite that of the room he had just left. The only other door was at the far end. It was double door, which immediately piqued his interest. He pushed it open with one hand, and looked up.

Lining walls two storeys high all around him were books. There was a walkway around the edge of the second storey, with a wrought iron spiral staircase leading from it to the lower one. A wheeled ladder attached to the underside of the walkway allowed access to books higher than the arm could reach or the eye could see. Another had a similar set up on the floor above, but with a cage around its upper reaches, to avoid the worst consequences of a foot slipping. In the middle of the long wall, opposite the door, and again in the middle of the short wall that had no other rooms beyond it, multi-paned leaded glass bay windows reached up from floor to ceiling. In the curve of one sat an armchair with moveable lectern. In the other sat a carved mahogany desk with a leather backed chair almost certainly concealing an inlaid leather desktop for writing on.

Stone walked over to the desk and confirmed the existence of the leather. There were writing materials on the desk, and a bookstand, but nothing that might give any clue to the interests or business of the writer. He turned away, walking round tall green leafy plants to reach the nearest bookshelf, and began looking through the titles. He spotted some original cover Jules Verne novels, pulled out his phone and took a picture, sending it to Cassandra then dialling her number.

"Hey, Cassie, you'll never guess what I just found," he said as soon as the phone answered.

"That's great, sweetie, but we're a teensy bit busy here right now," came the reply.

"Seriously? You're pickin' out weddin' stuff and you ain't got time to look at a photo?"

"Fine," she muttered. He heard her click windows on her phone. "Oh, Hetzel cover Jules Vernes, how odd. Although that looks a pretty big library. I guess there would be bound to be something we've come across already in there."

"I know, I just saw it and it made me think of you is all."

"Aw, that's sweet," said Cassandra's disembodied voice, "How are you getting on with Flynn and Ezekiel this time round?"

"They're just checking out something else right now," he replied. There was a loud noise in the background. "What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing," came the reply. "No, Eve just knocked a pile of magazines over. Nothing to worry about. Have fun."

The line went dead. Stone looked at the phone and shrugged. "Must have been some pile of magazines."

He pocketed the phone and continued looking along the shelves. All the great philosophers were there: Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Socrates, da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, Darwin.

He paused.

He stepped back a pace.

He put his hand out to one of the da Vinci manuscripts.

Everything went dark.

XXXX

At the other end of the building from Stone, Flynn and Ezekiel made their way around the formerly locked room. It was a small, comfortably appointed, study. A computer was gracefully built into a bookcase that covered one wall from floor to ceiling, with the exception of the area in the centre that projected outward to make a desk. The retractable shelf for the keyboard suggested that the writing level above was more often used. Leather clad armchairs with foot rests turned their backs to the modernity and towards the opposite wall, complete with traditional fireplace and mirror in the midst of antique wood panelling. To the right of the fireplace, a console table held a trio of decanters and variety of appropriate glassware. Ezekiel, bored with the books, attempted an assault on the computer. Flynn, bored with nothing and everything all at once, inspected the decanters. They held the old fashioned labels of Yeksihw, Ydnarb and Mur. A nod to the days when the arrogant rich believed their ill-educated servants would not know what the bottles contained. They were wrong. Of course the servants knew what they contained. They contained alcohol.

A bitten back curse made Flynn glance round to see Ezekiel having no luck with the computer. He turned back to the console table and then the fireplace. The grate was cold, but not unused. The mirror above it was old and of the French style, its elegantly carved wood painted with gold leaf and enamel. He moved on. He paused.

Walking out to the middle of the room, Flynn turned to look at the fireplace, with the drinks table on one side and nothing on the other. There was no accounting for taste, of course, but it looked odd. He walked over and started tapping the wall. At no point did it sound hollow.

There was the tiniest movement of air though.

He scrutinised the wood panelling, examining every blemish, every knot, until eventually he reached the mirror. He examined the wood carvings. He spotted the tiniest crack in the enamel. He smiled.

Moments later there was a rush of air as a door swung inward. Flynn heard Ezekiel turn and give an exclamation of surprise. The youngest Librarian reached the door alongside Flynn and together they stepped into what could have been a minor rocket mission control.

"It's a panic room!" Ezekiel laughed, looking all around him. "The monitors will tune into the security cameras around the house. The fridge freezer will contain water and frozen meals. The cupboards will have tinned stuff. There's an entire mini kitchen over here..."

The door swung shut.

The thief held up both hands. "I swear I didn't touch anything!"