Free The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

―This appears to be blood, too. Don‘t worry; it may or may not be Professor Rossi‘s. That ceiling‘s too high for a person to reach it easily, even with a step stool. We‘ll have everything tested. Now think hard. Did Rossi mention a bird getting in that night? Or did you hear any sounds as you left, maybe like something getting in? Was the window open, do you remember?‖
    ―No,‖ I said. ―He didn‘t mention anything like that. And the windows were shut, I‘m sure.‖ I couldn‘t take my eyes off the stain; I felt if I stared hard enough I might read something in its horrible and hieroglyphic shape.
    ―We‘ve had birds in this building several times,‖ the chairman contributed behind us.
    ―Pigeons. They get in through the skylights once in a while.‖
    ―That‘s a possibility,‖ the policeman said. ―Although we haven‘t found any droppings, it‘s certainly a possibility.‖
    ―Or bats,‖ the chairman said. ―What about bats? These old buildings probably have all kinds of things living in them.‖
    ―Well, that‘s another possibility, especially if Rossi tried to hit something with a broom or umbrella and wounded it in the process,‖ suggested a professor in the doorway.
    ―Did you see anything like a bat in here, ever, or a bird?‖ the policeman asked me again.
    It took me a few seconds to form the simple word and get it past my dry lips. ―No,‖ I said, but I could hardly make sense of his question. My eyes had finally caught the inner end of the dark stain and what it seemed to trail away from. On the top shelf of Rossi‘s bookcase, in his row of ―failures,‖ a book was missing. Where he had replaced his mysterious book two nights before, one narrow black crevice now gaped among the spines.
    My colleagues were leading me out again, patting my back and telling me not to worry; I must have looked white as a piece of typing paper. I turned to the policeman, who was shutting and locking the door behind us. ―Is there any chance Professor Rossi is already in a hospital somewhere, if he cut himself, or if someone injured him?‖

    The officer shook his head. ―We‘ve got a line to the hospitals, and we‘ve done a first check. No sign of him. Why? Do you think he might have injured himself? I thought you said he didn‘t seem suicidal or depressed.‖
    ―Oh, he didn‘t.‖ I took a deep breath and felt my feet under me again. The ceiling was too high for him to have smeared his wrist on, anyway—that was a grim consolation.
    ―Well, folks, we‘ll be on our way.‖ He turned to the department chairman, and they went off in low-voiced conference. The crowd around the office door was beginning to disperse, and I moved away ahead of them. I needed above all a quiet place to sit down.
    My favorite bench in the nave of the old university library was still being warmed by the last sun of a spring afternoon. Around me three or four students read or talked in low voices, and I felt the familiar calm of that scholar‘s haven soak through my bones. The great hall of the library was pierced by colored windows, some of which looked into its reading rooms and cloisterlike corridors and courtyards, so that I could see people moving around inside or outside, or studying at big oak tables. It was the end of an ordinary day; soon the sun would desert the stone tablets under my feet and plunge the world into twilight—marking a full forty-eight hours since I‘d sat talking with my mentor. For now, scholarship and activity prevailed here, pushing back the verges of darkness.
    I should tell you that usually when I studied in those days I liked to be completely alone, undisturbed, in monastic silence. I‘ve already described the study carrels I often worked in, on the upper floors of the library stacks, where I had my own niche and where I‘d found that weird book that had changed my life and thoughts almost overnight. Two days ago at this time I‘d been studying there, busy and unafraid, about to