The Atlantis Scrolls

Chapter 16

“Where are we going?” Nina asked after Agatha procured a rental car.

“Halkirk,” she told Nina as they started driving. The vehicle bore south and Agatha looked at Nina with a peculiar smile. “I’m not kidnapping you, Dr. Gould. We’re going to see a graphologist I was referred to by my client. Beautiful place, Halkirk,” she added, “right on the River Thurso and not more than a fifteen-minute drive from here. Our appointment is at eleven, but we’ll get there before then.”

Nina could not argue. The landscape was breathtaking and she regretted not getting out of the city more to see the countryside of her native Scotland. Edinburgh was beautiful in its own right, fraught with history and life, but after her consecutive ordeals of the recent years she considered taking up residence in a smaller village on the Highlands. Here. Here would be good. From the A9 they turned onto the B874 and headed westward to the small town.

“George Street. Nina, look for George Street,” Agatha told her passenger. Nina whipped out her new phone and activated her GPS mapping with a childish grin that amused Agatha into a hearty chuckle. When the two women found the address, they took a moment to catch their breath. Agatha hoped that analysis of the handwriting could somehow shed light on who the writer was, or better yet, what was written on the obscure page. Who knows, Agatha reckoned, a professional who looked at handwriting all day would surely be able to make out what was written there. She knew it was a stretch, but it was worth exploring.

As they stepped out from the car the gray skies breathed a pleasant light drizzle over Halkirk. It was cold, but not uncomfortably so, and Agatha clutched her old case against her chest, covering it with her coat as they ascended long cement stairs up to the front door of the small house at the end of George Street. It was a quaint little dollhouse, Nina thought, that looked like something from a House & Home edition of Scotland. Impeccably shorn, the lawn looked like a patch of velvet just thrown in front of the house.

“Ooh, hurry. Come out of the rain, ladies!” a woman’s voice cried from the crack in the front door. From the dark beyond it peeped a hefty, middle-aged woman with a sweet smile. She opened the door for them and gestured for them to hurry.

“Agatha Purdue?” she asked.

“Aye, and this is my friend, Nina,” Agatha replied. She omitted Nina’s title as not to alert the hostess to how important a document it was that she needed analyzed. Agatha intended to pretend that it was just some old page from a distant relative that came into her possession. If it merited the sum she was paid to locate it, it was not something that should be advertised.

“Hello, Nina. Rachel Clarke. Lovely to meet you ladies. Now, shall we go to my office?” the cheery graphologist smiled.

They left the dark, cozy section of the house to enter a small room, brightly lit by daylight that seeped through the sliding doors that led out to the small swimming pool. Nina looked at the pretty circles that pulsed from the plunge of rain drops on the pool’s surface and admired the ferns and foliage planted around the pool so as to dip into the water. It was aesthetically stunning, sharp green in the gray of the wet weather.

“You like that, Nina?” Rachel asked as Agatha handed her the papers.

“Aye, quite striking how it looks so wild and natural,” Nina answered politely.

“My hubby is a landscaper. The bug bit him while he made a living digging through all kinds of jungles and woodlands and he started gardening to alleviate that bad old case of the nerves. You know, stress is a horrid thing that nobody seems to notice these days, as if we are supposed to have the jitters from stressing too much, eh?” Rachel rambled as she opened the document under her magnifying lamp.

“Indeed,” Nina agreed. “Stress kills more people than anyone leads on.”

“Aye, that is why hubby took up prettifying people’s gardens instead. More like hobby-type work. Much like my job. Right, Miss Purdue, let’s have a look at this scribble of yours,” Rachel said, putting on her work face.

Nina was skeptical as to the whole idea, but she did enjoy getting out of the house, away from Purdue and Sam. She sat down on the small couch by the sliding door, looking at the bright ornaments among the leaves and branches. Rachel was silent, for once. Agatha watched her intently and it became so quiet that Nina and Agatha exchanged a series of expressions, both very curious why Rachel took so long to scrutinize one page.

Finally Rachel looked up, “Where did you get this, dear?” Her tone was serious and a little unsettled.

“Oh, mum had some old stuff from her great gran and she shoved it all on me,” Agatha lied expertly. “Found this among some rubbish bills and thought it was interesting.”

Nina perked up, “Why? Can you see what it says?”

“Ladies, I’m no ex… well, I am an expert,” she chuckled dryly, taking off her glasses, “but if I am not mistaken, by this photograph…”

“Yes?” both Nina and Agatha exclaimed.

“It looks like this was written on…” she looked up, thoroughly bewildered, “papyrus?”

Agatha put on her most ignorant expression while Nina just gasped.

“Is that good?” Nina asked, playing dumb for the benefit of information.

“Why yes, my dear. It means this paper is very valuable. Miss Purdue, do you have the original per chance?” Rachel asked. She placed her hand on Agatha’s with an elated inquisitiveness.

“I’m afraid I don’t, no. But I was just curious about the photo. Now we know it must have been an interesting book, then, that it came from. I suppose I knew that all along,” Agatha acted naïvely, “because that is why I was so hell bent to figure out what it said. You could perhaps help us make out what it says?”

“I can try. I mean, I see a lot of handwriting samples and I must boast to having somewhat of a trained eye for it,” Rachel smiled.

Agatha shot her eyes to Nina, as if to say “I told you so” and Nina had to smile as she turned her head to look out at the garden and pool where the rain had now started to splash.

“Give me a few minutes, let me see if… I… can…” Rachel’s words drifted off as she adjusted the magnifying lamp to see better. “Whoever photographed this made his own little note, I see. The ink on this section is fresher and the hand of the writer is considerably different. Hang on.”

It felt like an eternity, waiting for Rachel to write word for word as she deciphered the writing bit by bit, here and there leaving a dotted line where she could not discern. Agatha looked around the room. Everywhere she could see samples of pictures, posters of different slants and pressure, indicating psychological predispositions and character traits. It was a fascinating vocation, in her opinion. Perhaps, as a librarian, the love for words and meanings behind structure and such appealed to Agatha.

“It looks like a poem of sorts,” Rachel mumbled, “that is divided by two hands. I wager two different people wrote this poem — one the first part and the other the last bit. First lines are in French, the rest in German, if my knowledge serves me. Oh, and here at the bottom it is signed by what looks like… this first part of the signature is difficult, but the last part clearly looks like ‘Wenen’ or ‘Wener.’ You know anyone in your family by that name, Miss Purdue?”

“No, unfortunately not,” Agatha replied with an inkling of regret, playing her role so well that Nina smiled and shook her head furtively.

“Agatha, you must follow up with this, my dear. I will even venture to say the material, the papyrus this is written on, is downright… ancient,” Rachel frowned.

“Like 1800s ancient?” Nina asked.

“No, my sweetheart. Like a thousand odd years before the 1800s — ancient,” Rachel revealed, her eyes wide with wonder and sincerity. “This is the kind of papyrus you’d find in world history museums, like the Cairo Museum!”

Uncomfortable with Rachel’s interest in the document, Agatha diverted her attention.

“And the poem on it is equally old?” she asked.

“No, not at all. The ink is not half as faded as it would have been had it been written that long ago. Someone went and wrote on paper they had no idea of the value of, my dear. Where they got it is a mystery, because these types of papyrus would be boxed up in museums or…” she laughed at the absurdity of what she was about to say, “it would be preserved somewhere since the days of the Library of Alexandria.” Holding back her urge to laugh out loud at the ludicrous statement, Rachel just shrugged.

“What words did you get from it?” Nina asked.

“It’s in French, I think. Now, I don’t speak French…”

“That’s all right, I do,” Agatha said quickly. She looked at her watch. “My goodness, look at the time. Nina, we’re going to be late for the luncheon at Aunt Milly’s housewarming!”

Nina had no idea what Agatha was on about, but she construed it as bullshit she had to play along with to get out of the growing tension of the discussion. She assumed correctly.

“Oh, shit, you’re right! And we still have to get the cake! Rachel, know any good confectionary placed around here?” Nina asked.

“That was a close call,” Agatha said as they drove down the main road back to Thurso.

“No shit! I have to admit I was wrong. Getting a graphologist was a very good idea,” Nina said. “You’ll be able to translate what she wrote from the wording?”

“Yep,” Agatha said. “You don’t speak French?”

“Very little. Was always more of a Germanic language lover,” the historian sniggered. “Liked the men better.”

“Oh, really? You prefer German men? And you bother with the Scottish ones?” Agatha remarked. Nina could not tell if there was a little bit of menace in Agatha’s statement, but then with her it could be anything.

“Sam is a very likable specimen,” she jested.

“I know. I wouldn’t mind getting a review from him, I dare say. But what the hell do you see in David? It’s the money, right? Got to be the money,” Agatha asked.

“No, not the money as much as the confidence. And his passion for life, I suppose,” Nina said. She did not like being coerced into exploring her attraction to Purdue so finely. In fact, she would rather forget what she found appealing about him in the first place. She was far from safe when it came to writing off her affection for him, much as she vehemently denied it.

And Sam was no different. He did not let her know if he wanted to be with her or not. Finding his notes on Trish and his life with her confirmed that, and at the risk of getting her heart ripped out if she confronted him about it, she kept it to herself. But deep inside Nina could not deny that she was in love with Sam, the elusive lover she could never have for longer than a few minutes at a time.

Her heart ached every time she thought about those memoirs of his life with Trish, how much he loved her, her little idiosyncrasies, and how close they were — how much he missed her. Why would he write so much about their life together if he had moved on? Why did he lie to her about how precious she was to him if he was secretly writing odes to her predecessor? Knowing that she would never live up to Trish was a stab she could not process.