The Sword of the Templars by Paul Christopher Read Free Book Online

me!” Holliday stood and went to the wall of photographs. He gazed over Peggy’s shoulder and looked at the picture. Uncle Henry and Carr-Harris were little more than silhouettes, insignificant against the grotesquely out-of-scale room they were standing in. It really was enormous. The snowy peaks of the Salzburg Alps were clearly etched in the distance.
    “Remind me where Berghof is again?” Peggy asked.
    “Not where, what,” explained Holliday. “The Berghof was Adolf Hitler’s name for the summer house in Bavaria that Broadbent mentioned. The Führer was trying to be a man of the people. It means ‘Mountain Farm.’ ”
    “Which explains the flag the sword was wrapped up in,” said Peggy. “But what was Grandpa doing there with that Englishman? What was he doing there at all?” She paused. “I thought the lawyer said his father was with Grandpa when he found the sword.”
    Holliday nodded. “So did I.”
    “So where is he?”
    “A lot of questions about Henry today and not enough answers.”
    “So what do we do now?”
    “Ask more questions,” said Holliday.

6
    Holliday stepped out of the office. Ms. Branch, the secretary, was sitting at her desk. A large purse stood waiting beside her computer screen, now shrouded with a plastic cover. She was reading a pale green hardcover book. It looked very old; Holliday couldn’t see the title. Ms. Branch looked up, closing the volume, her index finger inserted to keep her place.
    Holliday saw the cover. There was a picture of a beautiful young woman with long auburn hair inset into the fabric. The title was stamped beneath it in faded gold: Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. Surprise, surprise; it seemed there was still a romantic little girl hidden inside the secretary’s arid soul. The book looked as though it might have come straight off Uncle Henry’s shelf of children’s books.
    “Yes?” Ms. Branch said.
    “According to his passport my uncle traveled to Canada a few months ago.”
    “That’s right, in March.”
    She didn’t even have to consult a day book. Interesting.
    “Do you know where he went?”
    “Toronto.”
    “Do you know why?”
    “Yes,” said Ms. Branch. “He went to see a colleague at the Centre for Medieval Studies. The University of Toronto. Dr. Braintree.”
    “And then he went on to England and Frankfurt?”
    “Yes.”
    “Any particular reason?”
    “Certainly,” said Ms. Branch, her tone crisp. “The Master’s Lunch.”
    “The Master’s Lunch?”
    “Balliol College, Oxford. They have a lunch for the senior Old Members every two or three years.”
    “He went to England to have lunch?” Holliday asked.
    “He had a great many friends at Oxford,” said Ms. Branch.
    “Any in particular?”
    “I wouldn’t know.” Icy.
    “What about Frankfurt?”
    “Are you asking me if I know why the professor went to Germany?”
    “Yes.”
    “I have no idea,” said Ms. Branch. She stiffened in her ergonomically designed chair. “And I’m not sure I like being interrogated.”
    “I’m sorry,” said Holliday. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”
    “I’m afraid it did.”
    Holliday paused. Something was nibbling at his subconscious. More than a year ago Henry had been diagnosed with early-stage macular degeneration: his eyes were failing. He’d voluntarily stopped driving. He tried to visualize his uncle riding the Greyhound. Somehow it didn’t compute.
    “How did he get to Toronto?”
    “I drove him to Buffalo,” said Ms. Branch. “He caught the afternoon train.”
    A little bit of color flushed her cheeks. Her eyelashes fluttered slightly. She clutched the book in her lap like a drowning sailor. She looked almost demure—Bambi caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Years peeled away in an instant. Suddenly, Holliday got it. Curtains parted, the fog lifted, the veil dropped from before his eyes, and all was revealed.
    Of course.
    The old copy of Anne of Green Gables probably had come from