“A homemade cipher disk.” Xander crowded me to get a better look. “See how the A on the outside disk aligns with the A on the smaller one? Twist either disk so that different letters align, and it generates a simple substitution code.”
Clearly, Toby Hawthorne had been raised the same way his nephews had: playing the old man’s games. Were you playing with me, Harry?
“Wait a second.” Xander straightened suddenly. “Hear that?”
I listened. Silence. “Hear what?”
Xander pointed his index finger at me. “Exactly.” The next second, he took off. I tucked the cipher disk into the band of my pleated skirt and followed. In the hallway, Jameson was silently lowering a marble tile back into place.
He’d found something—and apparently hadn’t planned on sharing that with his brother or me.
“Aha!” Xander said triumphantly. “I knew you were being too quiet.” He strode over to Jameson and squatted beside him, pressing on the floor tile Jameson had just lowered. I heard a popping sound, and the tile released, like it was on a spring.
Glaring at Jameson, who winked back at me, I knelt next to Xander. Beneath the tile was a metal compartment. It was empty, but I saw an inscription on the bottom, engraved into the metal.
A poem.
“I was angry with my friend,” I read out loud. “I told my wrath, my wrath did end.” I glanced up. Jameson was already standing and walking away, but Xander’s eyes were locked on the inscription as I continued. “I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.”
The words hung in the air for a few seconds after I said them. Xander whipped out his phone. “William Blake,” he said after a moment.
“Who?” I asked. I glanced back at Jameson, who pivoted and paced back toward us. I’d thought he was off and running, but really he was thinking, concentration in motion.
“William Blake,” Jameson echoed, an almost chaotic energy marking the words and his stride. “Eighteenth-century poet—and a favorite of Aunt Zara’s.”
“And Toby’s, apparently,” Xander added.
I stared down at the engraving. The word wrath jumped out at me. I thought about the alcohol and drugs we’d found in Toby’s room. I thought about the fire on Hawthorne Island and the way the press had lauded Toby as such an outstanding young man.
“He was angry about something,” I said. My mind raced. “Something he couldn’t say?”
“Maybe,” Jameson replied pensively. “Maybe not.”
Xander handed me his phone. “Here’s the entire poem.”
“A Poison Tree,”by William Blake, I read.
“Long story short,” Xander summarized, “the author’s hidden wrath grows into a tree, the tree bears fruit, the fruit is poisoned, and the enemy—who doesn’t know they are enemies—eats the fruit. The whole shebang ends with a dead body. Very catchy.”
A dead body. My mind went, unbidden, to the three bodies that had been recovered from the fire on Hawthorne Island. Exactly how angry was Toby that summer?
Don’t leap to conclusions, I told myself. I had no idea what this poem meant—no idea why a nineteen-year-old would have had these words inscribed on a hidden compartment. No idea if this was Toby’s handiwork, rather than the old man’s. For all we knew, Tobias Hawthorne had done this after his son went missing, right before bricking up the door.
“What the hell are you kids doing in here?” That question sounded like it had been ripped forcibly from someone’s throat. My head whipped toward the doorway. Mr. Laughlin stood there, on the other side of the demolished bricks. He looked tired and old and almost hurt.
“Just putting everything back where we found it!” Xander said brightly. “Right after we—”
The groundskeeper didn’t let him finish. He stepped through the opening in the brick wall and pointed his finger at us. “Out.”
CHAPTER 9
That night, I lay in bed, thinking about the poem and staring at the cipher disk. I turned the smaller wheel, watching as it generated code after code. What exactly had Toby used this for? Answers didn’t come, but eventually sleep did. I woke the next morning with “A Poison Tree” still on my mind. I was angry with my friend: / I told my wrath, my wrath did end. / I was angry with my foe: / I told it not, my wrath did grow.
A knock on my door interrupted that thought. It was Libby. She was still dressed in her pajamas—skull print, with bows.
“Everything okay?” I asked.