Free The Murders of Richard III by Elizabeth Peters

priceless old tapestries from Weldon’s collection.
    The real glory of the room was its ceiling. Sculptured, painted beams intersected in complex patterns, with bosses and hanging ornaments at the points of intersection. Enough of the natural wood had been left to provide a mellow brown background for the designs in crimson and green and shining gold. Thomas had never asked, but he felt quite sure that the gilt was genuine gold leaf.
    On the dais at the far end Weldon had placed a table, as long as a fallen oak, surrounded by chairs that were copies of fifteenth-century furniture, with high, carved backs and seats of crimson velvet. Weldon was already seated at the head of the table. His mammoth chair dwarfed his slight body, and Thomas’s mouth pursed in a silent whistle as he observed the chair. It was new since his last visit, and from the crown on the back to the shape of the arms it rather suggested a throne.
    Perhaps it was the throne that had cast a hushover the assembled group. The silence continued as Thomas escorted Jacqueline down the length of the room. He felt like the victim of some formal ceremony, marriage or investiture or coronation, and he wondered if the floor was as slippery as it looked. Jacqueline paced solemnly at his side, looking neither to right nor to left. Thomas knew she was enjoying herself immensely.
    Liz winked at him as he took his seat. Philip was sitting next to the girl; he nudged her and said something in a whisper, so close to her ear that his breath stirred the curls on her cheek. Liz giggled. Her mother glared.
    Frank was the only one who had not arrived. Thomas wondered if the boy really was nervous. Surely a lawyer ought not to suffer from stage fright. It was a hard audience for a novice to face, though. Frank was new to Ricardian controversy, having joined the society after he became engaged to Liz. Now he had to perform before a group of critical experts, and in the presence of his fiancée’s equally critical family—including the wealthy, expert head of that family.
    Thomas glanced at the program. Weldon didn’t do things by halves; the document was printed on expensive paper and bound in calf. Frank’s was the first paper of the evening, and Thomas sighed inwardly as he read the title.
    â€œWho Murdered the Princes?”
    That was the trouble with amateur societies, they kept rehashing the same old material. The “murder” of the princes had been written about so often; there was nothing to be said that hadn’t been said a thousand times. But it fretted Ricardians like a bad tooth. They couldn’t leave it alone. And some of the poor innocents couldn’t tell the difference between logic and wishful thinking, between the relevant and the extraneous. They threw everything in together and served it up, assuming that the warmed-over mixture of fact and fancy would appeal to an audience.
    However, Thomas had to admit that amateur historians were not the only ones who suffered from this particular weakness. The scholarly journals were full of trivia and faulty argument.
    Absorbed in his own mildly pompous thoughts, he was unaware of the rising murmur of impatience until Philip called out, “Sir Richard, what’s happened to Frank? It’s nearly half past eight.”
    â€œProbably he’s hiding under the bed,” said Percy, with a hoarse chuckle. He was eating jelly beans, or some form of confectionery that resembled them, brightly colored and very slippery. There was a constant rattle of fallen candies from his direction.
    â€œCan he have fallen asleep?” Lady Isobel wondered. She looked groggy herself, and if there was the odor of jelly beans from Percy’s direction, a scent of another kind wafted from Lady Isobel. Seeing her flushed face, Thomas felt sure she had taken a nip or two in the privacy of her room before coming to the meeting.
    Jacqueline glanced at her watch.
    â€œIs he often