Scholar's Plot by Hilari Bell

chair. Its saucer had broken in half, but the cup was intact.
    “Because we’ve been in every room, and they’ve all been tossed. If he’d found what he was looking for he’d have stopped. There’d be at least part of some room untouched.”
    “And nowhere is. Here’s the teapot, what’s left of it.”
    Unlike the thin cup, its thick ceramic had shattered into a dozen pieces.
    “Someone smashed this,” Michael said. “Deliber-
ately.”
    “Maybe he was frustrated, and wanted to smash something.”
    “Mayhap.” He picked up a fragment of the bottom and sniffed it. Then he went and sniffed the teacup. “Spice tea.”
    “He died from a blow to the head,” I said. “Not 
poison.”
    “Then why smash the pot?”
    “Because it would be pretty frustrating to kill a man, and then not be able to find what you came for. In fact…” I reached down and pulled a paper from under a tumbled book. “Look what I found.”
    It was a pass to last night’s lecture, a bit sloppily printed. Understandable, in something that only had to last a few weeks. I watched Michael’s face change as comprehension dawned.
    “If he was leaving for the lecture, as Captain Chaldon said, why was that not in his pocket? He must have been killed earlier,” Michael said. “After dinner, but before ’twas time to depart.”
    “Then why was he dressed to go out when he was killed? Did he plan to go somewhere else first?”
    “Either that or the killer dressed him, to make it look as if he was on his way to the lecture. But why?”
    We stared at each other in bafflement.
    “We don’t know enough,” Michael said.
    “Then let’s see if we can learn more.” I went to the desk, righted the chair, and began running my hands over the frame and under the belly drawer. “People who are frustrated, they miss things.”
    It wasn’t that well-hidden, once you started pulling out the drawers, though the lower drawer was deeper than the others, making the fact that it didn’t slide out as far less obvious. I had to do some searching to find the catch that released it from the desk, but once you removed the drawer, the narrow compartment at its back was visible. How to remove the lid fitted over the top wasn’t so obvious, and the light was beginning to dim. I carried it over to the window, to see better.
    “How did you know ’twould be in the desk?” Michael asked, as I felt and pried at the panel.
    “I didn’t. But there’s no reason to build a secret compartment in a house meant for your mother-in-law, so it would probably be in the furniture.”
    “Why not the bed, or the bookshelves, or—”
    “The desk doesn’t match the rest of the furniture, which I’m guessing came with the house. Some past librarian might have moved it in, but it was a logical place to—” The lid came off in my hand.
    The drawer was deep enough he’d only had to fold the papers once to fit them in, all four sheets, with symbols and letters on the outside. Once they were unfolded…
    “Ledgers,” said Michael. “They’re not supposed to look like it, but those are the initials of all the months, Hollyon, Junipera, Crocusa, Grassan.”
    “The numbers after that are amounts paid,” I said. “But it doesn’t say by who, or for what.”
    “That’s on the other side,” Michael said. “’Tis a code.”
    I turned the pages over once more. “Not a code. Just a symbol and letter so he can tell which sheet is whose. Heart, ‘PN.’”
    Master Hotchkiss’ writing was as neat as you’d expect from a man who spent his days painting numbers and letters onto book spines. The small heart drawing, and capital P and N were quite clear.
    “Professor N?” I speculated. “There’s a PB as well.”
    “Professors? Surely not.”
    “Why surely? Do you know the difference between a professor and a bandit? You usually forget what professors teach you. The lessons you learn from a bandit stick.”
    Michael grimaced — and I have to admit, I’ve done