From Gwen’s side, Oliver and Felipe watched her examine the book from all angles before slowly flipping through the pages. As they suspected, every page was blank, apart from the inky purge stains. Gwen paused, her brow furrowing as she stared at a page before flipping back to the beginning and inspecting the book’s spine.
“What do you make of it?” Oliver asked.
“Early to mid-sixteenth century based on the construction and style. Very well made, but there’s ghosting on the page. Look.”
Turning on the bright, mirrored light over the autopsy table, Gwen angled a page, so the light shone through it. Oliver squinted and could just make out brown blotches that he would have assumed were natural variations in the parchment if they hadn’t been in regular lines.
“I can’t tell if that’s ghosting from the words coming off the page to infest your dead man, or if the pages are palimpsests.” At Oliver and Felipe’s confused looks, she added, “Reused pages. It isn’t that out of the ordinary to find a few pages in old books with scrubbed mistakes or ones that were recycled from other projects, but if it’s on every page, it could mean this isn’t the book the agent said it was.”
“Is this whatThe Corpus Arcanumis supposed to look like?” Felipe asked.
Gwen shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m fairly certain we have a copy in the library’s catalog, but I don’t know if it’s a reprint or an original. I’m leaning toward an original because Mr. Turpin mentioned it while we were inventorying the library. More than likely, it’s in the special collections because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.”
Oliver’s blood pulsed loudly in his ears. “So it is dangerous?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking. If it could kill the people who read it, I doubt Mr. Turpin would keep it in the catalog, let alone in the library at all. It would be under lock and key in the archives. That’s the protocol for dangerous objects.”
“If the library does have a copy, would it be possible to find out who last checked it out or read it in the special collections?” Felipe asked as Gwen opened to the front cover and rotated it in the light.
“I should be able to check. Oliver, do you have a jeweler’s loop or magnifying glass I could borrow?”
Grabbing a magnifying glass from the drawer, Oliver handed it to Gwen. She held it close to the inside of the book’s cover for a long moment before sucking her teeth and motioning for them to come closer.
“I had already planned to talk to Mr. Turpin about this book, but now, I definitely am. See that smudge right there?” Gwen asked, pointing to a yellowish spot roughly the size of a calling card on the endpaper. “It’s very faint, but there are words. Can you make any of them out?”
From afar, it looked like a stain, but when Oliver looked through the magnifying glass, he thought he could make out the faintest strokes of faded script. “I’m not sure. Ink? Dealt, no, death. Day? That’s all I can read with any certainty. Why? What is it?”
“I think it’s a book curse.”
Oliver lurched back from the book as if it might come alive and attack him only to have Felipe’s hand close around his shoulder to steady him. He and his partner exchanged an uneasy look as Felipe asked, “What does that mean?”
“In most cases, not much, but in this case, it might be something. So back in the Middle Ages, books were very expensive, and at the time, libraries were often located withinmonasteries. Between the precious stones, gold, relics, beer, cheese, and books, they became prime targets for thieves and Viking raiders, so to protect the books, the monks would try to put the fear of god in the thieves by writing things inside of them like ‘steal this book and god will smite thee’ or ‘he who doesn’t return his book will have his backside roasted in hell.’ Of course, the threat was predicated on the fact that the thief could read, but they have appeared in books on and off ever since. Most are just harmless threats or poems. Occasionally, though, they do have magic behind them.
“The only reason I even know about them is because after we finished the inventory and discovered some missing books, Reynard asked Mr. Turpin if there was a spell or something that could be done to prevent future thefts, and Turpin mentioned book curses. He said that some libraries would use them to make the books get very hot or poof a bit of ink onto the thief to mark them should they try to leave with the book. Apparently, the Vatican libraries have very severe book curses, but Mr. Turpin didn’t think we could use them here because there are too many ways things could go wrong. You can really only use them when people aren’t allowed to take them out of the library because it needs a border to trigger them. Somehow, I doubt your rich socialite or his agent put a curse on his books.”
“The man also diedinthe library, so unless it somehow knew he was a thief, then how did he manage to trigger the book curse?” Oliver replied.
“We’re assuming the magic had to be triggered by leaving a library. Gwen, do you think it could have been some sort of bastardized book curse or one that went wrong?” Felipe asked.
Gwen pursed her lips and frowned as she turned to the pages covered in black purge. “I don’t know. We’re going to have to ask Mr. Turpin about it. He would know more about the theory and mechanics behind them than I do. I have no idea how one puts acurse on a book or sets those parameters. What I can say is that I don’t think the book curse, if that’s what this is, was original to the book.”
“How can you tell that?”
“Technically, I can’t, but the curse doesn’t make sense for the time period. Even with the invention of the printing press and wood block printing before it, books were still expensive and labor intensive to produce. Someone in the sixteenth century wouldn’t destroy a book irreparably because someone took it. They would want to get it back.”
Oliver stared atThe Corpus Arcanumas Gwen carefully pried the clotted pages apart, hating how much sense that made. A legal document or a letter meant for a commander in the midst of battle self-destructing made sense but not a book. Oliver had hoped their John Doe’s death might have been caused by a very unfortunate accident, but that was looking less likely. Then again, there were three centuries between the book’s creation and now, so perhaps, it had been a trap set to murder someone decades ago. They would definitely need to speak to Mr. Turpin about book curses. At least he could kill two birds with one stone, and Felipe being there for moral support wouldn’t seem suspicious. He needed to go over everything again before he came to any conclusions. As if reading Oliver’s mind, Felipe pulled his notepad from his pocket and jotted down Gwen’s observations. When Oliver opened his mouth to ask Gwen a question, his eyes went wide as she scraped at the black gunk with the end of her glove.
“Did you say your dead man turned purple?” Gwen asked before Oliver could sputter a warning.
“Purple, black, and grey,” Felipe replied, flashing Oliver a placating look. “Why?”
Gwen rubbed the powdered purge between her fingers thoughtfully. “Because if this book is from the sixteenth century,then there shouldn’t be purple dye or paint in black ink or at least not enough to tint his skin. Most ink back then was either iron gall ink, which turns reddish brown over time, or charcoal oil-based inks for printing and woodblocks. Reynard makes both kinds when he’s doing book repairs, and I have never seen one with purple in it.” Holding out her cotton glove, Gwen revealed a black smear streaked with blood brown and purple across her fingertips. “Nowadays, some companies add synthetic blue or purple dye to their black inks to make them appear darker.”
“Oliver, can you test the man’s blood or purge to see if there is mauveine or another purple dye in it?”
Oliver nodded, though he could scarcely hear over the steady thump of his heart in his ears. Felipe often talked about detective’s intuition, and while Oliver didn’t like to make conclusions without the full evidence, he didn’t like the picture that was forming.
“So if it does test positive for a synthetic dye, then that means the curse or whatever this is must have been set within the last few decades if not very recently.”
