He had been shown the hidden library in Mrs. Hope’s apartment, accessed behind the vast, unused fireplace in a Spanish Colonial house that had been split into five separate dwellings. But she had shown him only how to open the secret door in case of trouble and had not let him examine the contents in any detail. In addition to the shelves of books, there had also been a cabinet of weapons, from the medieval to the modern, and a chemist’s bench—or, probably more accurately, an alchemist’s.
Mrs. Hope sounds fucking cool
