Buried Secrets by Anne Barbour Read Free Book Online Page B

now.”
    Cord crossed his legs. “Indeed I have, and his sister and niece as well. Do you know them?”
    “Mm, yes,” replied Ned noncommittally. “Not nearly as well as I’d like to know the niece, however.” He upended his pipe to tap the dottle into a nearby bowl.
    Cord’s eyes lit in amusement. “Ah, Miss Tate. Are you smitten, then, Ned, with the lovely spinster?”
    Ned shifted in his chair. “Oh, no. Not smitten, precisely. At any rate, you know me. I’m more the sort to worship from afar. Besides, I wouldn’t care to further my association with her uncle.”
    “Sir Henry? He seems an affable chap.”
    “Oh, yes, a completely decent sort—he’s simply mad as a March hare.”
    “What?”
    Ned shrugged again. “Well, perhaps that’s coming it too strong, but the old fellow definitely has a rat or two in his attic.”
    “I must admit he gave me that impression.”
    Ned, after fishing in the pocket of his dilapidated coat for some moments, came up with a tobacco pouch, from which he began filling his pipe. “Wasn’t always that way, of course. He’s been a fellow here at Magdalene since before God created rain, I think, and for almost as long was one of the college’s shining ornaments. Held the Chair of Restoration Literature, or some such.” He waved negligently. “Don’t keep up on that sort of thing much. At any rate, it wasn’t until a few years ago that he began turning at bit balmy. That was when he got a bug up his arse about Samuel Pepys.”
    “Pepys?” asked Cord, his interest truly caught. “And who might he be?”
    Ned, having completed the pipe-filling ritual, drew a straw from a container near the dottle bowl and rose to light it from the fire. Returning, he plunged once more into his chair. “Well you may ask,” he muttered, beginning the next ritual, that of creating the perfect draw. “Samuel Pepys graduated from Magdalene some time in the early 1600s. He took up residence in London, married, and obtained a position with the navy—became a procurement official, I believe. In any event, he did very well for himself and by the time he died, he was living quite comfortably. In addition, he’d amassed an impressive collection of books, all leather-bound. However, his main claim to fame at the present is that for a number of years he kept a diary.”
    “Oh?” So far, reflected Cord, he could see no reason for Sir Henry’s reverence for Mr. Pepys.
    “Yes, ‘oh’. Nearly a hundred years after his death— in 1725 or thereabouts, his nephew bequeathed the diary, along with the rest of Pepys’s library to Magdalene, where it was housed in the building directly behind this quadrangle. It’s called the New Building, though it must have been built over a hundred years ago.”
    Cord was puzzled. “Did the diary contain anything of import?”
    “Aha!” Ned drew manfully on his pipe, producing the desired glow in its bowl. “That’s just it. No one knows— for he wrote the thing in some sort of code!”
    “Code! You mean it’s been sitting there all this time, and no one can read it?”
    “Precisely. There have been one or two efforts, because according to tradition, Pepys brushed elbows with some fairly influential people—up to and including King Charles—the Second, that would be.
    “Now, of course, interest has increased in the work because of the publication of John Evelyn’s diary last year. I think it is not too much to say that its popularity swept the country. A new edition is coming out shortly.”
    “Yes, indeed. I read it when it first came out. A fascinating glimpse into Charles’s court. Mmm,” Cord added speculatively. “I think I see where this is going.”
    “You always were a perspicacious chap, Chris. Yes, the powers that be at the college are now most anxious to garner a coup of their own by publishing Pepys’s work. However—”
    “No one can read it,” finished Cord with a chuckle.
    “Precisely,” said Ned again. “The efforts have