My Lady of the Bog Read Online Free Page B

My Lady of the Bog
Book: My Lady of the Bog Read Online Free
Author: Peter Hayes
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stakes removed, it almost seemed at any moment she might revive and speak to us.
    Her face was broad; her nose had a certain hawk-like flare. Her body was at once long-limbed, slender and broad-shouldered. Her ears (and her right nostril) were pierced—details that, for some reason, moved me.
    We turned to her effects. A small feathered purse found with her clothing contained a horn comb, a double oyster shell serving as tweezers (several short hairs still adhered to an edge), and three round lidded boxes, no larger than silver dollars, containing what smelled like traces of unguents. There were no coins that might have dated her death.
    “Why does it feel so creepy,” he asked, “going through the dead’s effects? You almost expect her to sit up, bat at your hand and say, ‘Leave my bloody purse alone.’ What are those?” he wondered, indicating the wooden dishes. “Medicine?”
    “Makeup. Some sort of lip gloss, probably. And kohl for the eyes.”
    “They had makeup? Back then ?”
    “Where there were women . . .” I said, “. . . there was makeup.”
    We went downstairs. The morning was warm, the elevator overheated. No sooner had it reached the bottom and its doors reopened than I saw a ring lying on the floor. This was not a happy sign—and stepping out I saw at once the wire cage had been broken into and the treasure taken.
    The coroner stopped, as though straight-armed by an invisible hand. “Pinched!” he screamed. “ Bastards !”
    I stared at the hill of moldering peat from which the hoard had been removed. “What bastards?”
    He looked at me, almost suspiciously. “How the hell should I know?”
    I won’t dwell upon the sea of dreariness into which the morning descended: the police interviews, the coroner’s alternately defensive and apologetic mien, or the appearance of the national press, for the discovery and theft of such a priceless treasure trove was news of the first order. The coroner was roundly criticized for his having left it in such a spot—though in his defense, the hoard was delivered on a Saturday evening when no museum or bank vault was open to receive it, and was partially embedded in a quarter ton of peat, from which he’d been cautioned it could not be removed. This had left him few options. He couldn’t have kept it in his office—it wouldn’t have fit—and the cage in the hospital basement had not seemed like a bad idea at the time.
    In retrospect, it was ludicrous. You don’t leave a treasure worth millions of pounds sterling overnight in a public building in a cage secured with a bicycle lock!
    The police speculated that sometime after midnight, the thief had overridden the key that disabled the elevator’s descent to the cellar, clipped the lock, and carried the treasure out through the loading bay to a waiting vehicle. The theft’s childish ease moved one bobby to remark, “Whoever did this had to know three things: one , how to use a lift; two, how to clip a wire; and three, how to drive a lorry.” He grinned. “Cunning.”
    Most worrisome was that the treasure wasn’t inventoried, and our fear was that the hoard would be dispersed, for there’s a booming market in looted antiquities.
    Which was when I remembered the photos I’d taken. Though documenting only the topmost level, they would identify at least some of the pieces. I downloaded the pictures to Strugnell’s computer, then copied them to a thumb drive which I gave the CID.
    There wasn’t anything more to do. Having squandered one archeological wonder, the police had concluded they must safeguard the body at all costs and were trying to devise some means. They were milling about; there was no way I could do any work or, more importantly, return the codex without answering a lot of difficult questions.
    A couple of the younger officers were ogling my Lady. This annoyed me. “Excuse me,” I said, and pulled the sheet up over her head. “ Plague ,” I whispered, nodding sagely. They looked
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