The Dark Return of Time

by R. B. Russell

‘They did.’

  ‘But she is, nevertheless, missing. This is all very awkward, but I wanted to clear the air. I want you to trust me, but I understand that after everything she’s has told you that it’s not easy. All I’ll say is that I understand why you went to the police. All this stems from that day in the Passage des Abbesses, doesn’t it?’

  I nodded.

  He considered, ‘I should’ve really stayed and talked to the police. Not that it would’ve helped.’

  He came to an awkward halt, then put out his hand:

  ‘Flavian, I assure you that I’m not the monster that Candy believed me to be.’

  ‘Believed?’

  He frowned.

  ‘Past tense,’ I explained.

  ‘I’m not as educated as you. I don’t want there to be any bad feelings between us.’

  With him standing over me I found it impossible not to get up and take his hand. His grip was firm and he held my hand just a little too long.

  ‘Good,’ he said simply. As he left the office he said over his shoulder:

  ‘I hope you’ll still come and help me out in my library? I would appreciate your services.’

  ‘Of course, anything we can do to help,’ replied my father.

  ‘I have to admit that visits from the police have put me off Sherlock Holmes,’ Hopper said. ‘I need another recommendation; like Le Grand Meaulnes, or The Horse’s Mouth.’

  ‘Those are rather different books,’ replied my father. ‘But I may have something else for you.’

  He came through to the office and took down a copy of A Quest for Corvo by A.J.A. Symons.

  I knew that I ought to follow him out into the shop, I didn’t want to appear to be hiding, but I didn’t want to be in the same room as Hopper.

  ‘Literary detection,’ I heard my father explain, presumably handing the book to Hopper.

  ‘And will the first edition set me back as much as A Study in Scarlet?’

  ‘No, no, this copy is a first, but it’s only a couple of hundred euros.’

  ‘In that case I have confidence in your judgement and will write you a cheque now. I trust you, Mr Bennett. I just wish your son would trust me.’

  ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said my father airily. ‘His girlfriend died a little while ago and his mood is, understandably, all over the place. He’s upset about Candy because she reminded him of this girl.’

  I was furious with my father, but incredulous when I heard Hopper quietly reply, ‘I know’.

  ‘But it’s none of your business!’ I shouted at my father once Hopper and Handley had left. He apologised, which made it hard to have an argument, although I tried my best to prolong it. The remainder of the day dragged interminably; if we had been busy with customers it would have been easier, but there weren’t any and the phone did not ring. I spent the morning trying to clean up the books from the auction. Half of them had to be thrown away, but the others were quite respectable when they had been brushed down and their dust jackets put into protective plastic. There were a couple of Ruth Rendell first editions, albeit American ones, that almost passed as new by the time I had finished with them. When each was made as respectable as it could be, my father typed up descriptions, researched the prices, and uploaded them to sites on the internet. By the early afternoon we had finished, but I determinedly stayed until closing time. By the end of the day I regretted that there had been any kind of atmosphere between myself and my father, and I was pleased when he agreed to go to the Cine 13 theatre on Avenue Junot with me that evening.

  By unspoken, mutual consent we did not talk about anything that might start an argument for over a week. I didn’t mention to my father that I was thinking of leaving Paris; I tried not to think about it myself.

  PART TWO I

  I have never really liked spiders; it’s their sudden motion, or the possibility of it, that worries me. The long-legged specimen lurking on the shelf behind the travel guides appeared to be dead, but when I went to brush it out of the way it darted out of sight, causing me to jump back.

  I dropped the books I was holding, and felt doubly foolish because two men in suits had entered the shop at that moment. The first did not seem to have noticed my embarrassment; he immediately asked:

  ‘Do you have anything by Ruth Rendell?’

  I directed him to the shelf of contemporary crime novels, and then picked up the books I had dropped. The second man had already turned his attention to the paperbacks by the door.

  Taking the fallen books to the counter I affected to be inspecting them for any damage, although I was really peering over the top of my spectacles at the first customer. He had found the four titles by Rendell and considered them for a moment before taking down the first American edition of A Demon in my View. It was the copy from the sale at Brignole’s, and he immediately slipped the jacket off and appraised the maroon lettering on the tan cloth spine. There was a black mark at the bottom that I had been unable to remove and I guessed that this was what he was looking for. I watched him give the man who had come in with him the slightest of nods, and then he re-jacketed the book.

  ‘May I ask where you obtained this?’ he asked me. His manner was relaxed.

  ‘At an auction at Saint-Quentin. Why?’

  ‘You are Flavian Bennett?’

  He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a small black wallet. He showed me a business card; printed on it was a small symbol of a sword, scales and a globe.

  ‘My name is Saunders. My colleague is Grillet. We work for the International Criminal Police Organization,’ he explained.

  I must have looked disbelieving.

  ‘Interpol. We investigate crimes that overlap several member countries. In this case, we are making investigations that interest both the French and British police.’

  My father came out of the office. He had been listening, and said, ‘Would you like to talk to these gentlemen in here? Or in the apartment?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ I said, and gestured towards the door that led up the precipitous stairs. ‘Would you like to follow me?’

  My father’s rooms were always fussily tidy, despite the number of books that had migrated up there from the shop over the years. The living room had a sofa that I suggested the two men sit on, while I took the armchair on the other side of the coffee table. They looked comical, sitting side by side, but they were in earnest.

  ‘You know Reginald Hopper,’ the first man stated. ‘We’ve read the statements you’ve given the police. We’ve been told of your suspicions. We’re particularly interested in that lot of books that you bid on for Hopper in Saint-Quentin.’

  ‘He only wanted one book from it. He let us have the rest as a part of our commission.’

  ‘What particular book did he want?’

  ‘The Dark Return of Time.’

  The second man produced a notebook and wrote down the title.

  ‘The author?’

  ‘It was anonymous.’

  ‘Do you have any idea why he wanted it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He was willing to pay five thousand euros for it.’

  ‘He actually paid a lot less, even when you add on the commission he paid me.’

  ‘We understand that you paid the auction house eight hundred euros. That was an irregular transaction, but of no interest to us. What we’d like to know is why he wanted that book?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I get the impression that he thinks it might be about him. Or, at least, relates to him.’

  The man raised his eyebrows:

  ‘You sell books to Mr Hopper?’

  ‘Yes. And I’m meant to be helping him with his library.’

  He turned to his colleague and said quietly and quickly in French, ‘Une entrée?’

  ‘You have access to his books?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes, though not The Dark Return of Time. I don’t know where he keeps that. It wasn’t on his shelves the last time I was there.’

  ‘Would you be willing to hel
p us in our investigations?’

  ‘I’m not sure; I get the impression Hopper may be a dangerous man. He said he wasn’t too annoyed that I’d gone to the police, but if he knew I was actually helping you....’

  ‘We wouldn’t allow anything to happen to you. And it really is the best way of discovering what happened to your friend, Candy.’

  ‘She’s not really my friend....’

  ‘But you are worried about her? Of course you are, and we are too.’

  ‘So you’ve no idea what’s happened to her?

  ‘We’re specifically investigating Hopper, but Miss Smith’s disappearance, and her previous history with him, are not unrelated.’

  ‘And those two people who were abducted, and ended up dead in the Seine?’

  The second man said to his colleague, again sotto voce, ‘Il ne se produira pas. Il est impliqué.’

  ‘Mr Bennett,’ the first man asked. ‘We would like a favour from you?’

  ‘If I can help.’

  ‘We won’t try to persuade you to do anything you don’t want to. And we certainly don’t want to put you in any danger.’

  ‘That sounds fine by me.’

  ‘All we ask is that you let us see the next book that you sell Mr Hopper.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s best you’re not told the details. But it would help us immeasurably.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s downstairs. We recently sold him a copy of A Quest for Corvo, and a couple of days ago he asked for a first edition of Corvo’s Hadrian the Seventh.’

  ‘If we might be allowed to borrow it, it’ll be returned to you later this afternoon.’

  I found it easy not to ask why they wanted the book. I managed to pass it to them while my father was busy with a customer and so he didn’t realise it had gone. I was concerned because it was a very nice copy with the illustration stamped crisply in white on the purple cloth. I wondered if the whole thing wasn’t an obscure and elaborate hoax to try and steal a book, and I had to hold my nerve. If the men were genuine then the situation was rather surreal. I had felt once before as though I had stumbled into a children’s adventure story, and it now appeared to have restarted. I even had to look-up Interpol to see if they really existed outside of books written in the 1950s.

  A woman came in later that afternoon and left Hadrian the Seventh on the counter, in a paper bag. It seemed that our visitors had been genuine. She made the bland comment that it was from Monsieur Saunders, and left as nonchalantly as she had arrived.

  I put the book back into the office, but my father saw me and asked what I was doing.

  ‘Best not to ask any questions,’ I said, hoping that it was enough, but a few minutes later he went back into the office and I knew I should follow him. I found him flicking through the pages of the book.

  ‘They didn’t explain why they wanted it,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose you’d better take it to Hopper. We’re going to ask five hundred euros for it.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Whenever,’ he said, passing it to me. ‘I don’t understand what you’re up to.’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  Franklin answered the door and looked down at me disdainfully. He showed me through to the library, where Hopper got up from his desk and seemed genuinely pleased to see me. He took the parcel with some delight.

  ‘So, this is Hadrian the Seventh. But is it any good?’ he asked.

  ‘I only got half way through it myself. That was a few years ago, though. It starts well, but goes off-the-boil. Corvo was a strange man.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  Hopper appraised the boards. It was a good copy, despite its age, and he opened it up and scanned through a few pages appreciatively. I tried not to think about Saunders’ interest in it.

  ‘I will read this,’ he said, as though he thought that I doubted him. ‘And I might even start collecting Corvo.’

  ‘I’m not sure he’s really worth collecting. He didn’t write the kind of books that many people would want.’

  ‘You don’t believe in collecting just for the sake of it?’

  ‘No. Books are primarily to be read. But people want books for a myriad of different reasons, I suppose.’

  ‘They do,’ he said slowly, and with such a lack of expression that I was suspicious.

  I was sure that it wasn’t meant to be a cue to ask after The Dark Return of Time, but I saw it as a challenge.

  ‘Did you read the book you bought at Brignole’s?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is it about you?’

  ‘It appears to be about somebody I might have been, once, in a previous life.’

  ‘Have you any idea who wrote it?’

  ‘No. There’re no clues at all.’

  He walked over to a big heavy, old safe that sat on the floor beside his desk. It could have been Victorian, and when he knelt down, the key he used to unlock it was elaborate and old-fashioned.

  From where I stood I could see that the safe was full of bank notes and papers, and on the top shelf was the copy of The Dark Return of Time. When he took it out and put it on the desk in front of me it seemed to be in an even poorer condition than I remembered. It had been affected by damp and the boards wouldn’t have been able to lie true to the pages inside even if they hadn’t also been misshapen. When I lifted the front cover I could see the dark brown staining to the pages which were dirty, creased and torn, and barely clinging to the broken spine. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to own it; muck was coming off it onto my hands.

  ‘The book’s beyond any repair,’ I said. ‘Even rebinding it wouldn’t help.’

  ‘It has no value as a physical object. Open it at random and see what you think.’

  I put on my glasses and unwillingly opened the book at an arbitrary point. I read:

  When the young man in spectacles left the book behind in the house it was in the belief that he was helping to find the missing girl. However, it was not her that he really wanted to help as much as it was the dead woman she reminded him of. He may have blamed his mother for the accident, but he had been the one to insist that he could not drive her to work that morning…

  I jumped, as if the words on the page had suddenly moved, like the spider in the shop that morning.

  II

  I left Hopper’s house desperately trying to hide my agitation. I didn’t analyse what I had read; I simply told myself that I really had to leave Paris, and as soon as possible. My father listened to my reasons, but refused to consider leaving the city himself. I pleaded with him, but he was adamant that he would stay. I explained several times, why I thought Hopper and his people were dangerous. I pointed out how suspicious Candy’s disappearance was. The only thing I didn’t mention was what I had read in his book.

  I tried calling my mother, but back in Edgeware she was not answering the phone. I made sure, though, that I booked my ticket that afternoon, for a flight next morning; I was afraid of staying in Paris out of inertia.

  My father dutifully called the owner of my apartment to say that I was leaving. Although I insisted that a neighbour could be persuaded to look after the fish, the owner decided that he would come back later the next day to make those arrangements for himself.

  I felt less panicked once my return was announced, my seat on the aeroplane booked, and now I only had accommodation for one last night. While my father was out of the shop to do some shopping I phoned a friend in Brighton and found that not only did he have a room for rent, but there was a job available working with him in a new bookshop, if I wanted it. The moment for my departure was opportune.

  My usual route home from the shop was a narrow, constricted one that afforded no views, or any impression of the size of the city that had been my home for a year and a half. For my last journey back to the apartment I turned right out of the shop door and made my way towards the Sacre Coeur. I took the streets that climbed upwards so that I
would circle around the funicular railway and get the view that every holidaymaker in Paris made a point of appreciating. The pavements, then the roads themselves become choked with tourists, but they reminded me to value how pretty the area was; something I had almost forgotten. Familiarity had denied me the pleasure of the obvious picturesqueness of Paris, and it had taken my imminent departure from it to make me realise this.

  On the steps of the Sacre Coeur, I looked over the heads of a large group of Japanese tourists at the view made misty by the pollution of the city. From where I stood, through the trees, I could see the Eiffel Tower, and I realised that in all my time in the city I had never even visited it. I was annoyed at all the hours I had spent in a ‘british’ bookshop, on a dull side street, when I had left so much of Paris unexplored.

  By the time I had got back to the bottom of the steps, however, and was passing the tourists sitting outside the restaurants on the rue Tardieu, my premature nostalgia had left me. The idea of packing and waiting alone in the apartment until my flight the next day depressed me. I was impatient for my journey home to begin.

  The key that I was soon to give up let me into my apartment. Handley was standing just inside the door and before I could react he had grabbed my arm. He pulled me through to the living room where Hopper was sitting in the armchair, apparently studying the aquarium of fish.

  On the coffee table in front of him lay a copy of Hadrian the Seventh. The spine was torn half off.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  Hopper was impassive: ‘It contained a radio transmitter.’

  For a moment I genuinely did not understand.

  ‘Handley regularly sweeps the house for listening devices.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My paranoia was justified. What I don’t understand was why you brought it into my library.’

  ‘But I don’t know anything about transmitters,’ I half-lied. I tried to argue, ‘Why would I want to bug your house?’

  ‘I don’t suppose that you would. But there are other people out there; other people who presumably persuaded you to plant it.’