Lee Raven, Boy Thief

by Zizou Corder

  He just shook his head wearily. ‘I trust no one,’ he said. ‘I have been deceived, and by one who above all should have my trust… This is why I have to trust a stranger. God knows, don’t you think I would rather do this any other way? Just keep it,’ he said, pressing the case into my hands, ‘until I return.’

  I resisted his offering – but it was futile. I could no more let a rare book drop to the ground than a nurse could a baby. I found myself taking it from him, and as I did so he was retreating from me, his arms still out in front of him, pressing the briefcase to me, smiling tiredly and saying, ‘Just until I return. Just until I return.’

  And he was gone. The door closed behind him, and until I had put the case down – it was bulky enough to occupy both my hands – I could not pursue him. By the time I could, it was too late. I heard the front door swing slowly shut; heard the echo of running feet down the steps to the square, and he had vanished into the night.

  I returned to my study, sat at my desk and stared at Monsieur de Saloman’s metal briefcase. It was tigrenium, I realized. For precious things.

  I sighed, fetched myself a small glass of whisky, and opened the case.

  It was lined with padded velvet, no doubt for protection. The book within was foolscap size. Its binding was certainly unusual: a rough vellum with a curious tooled and printed design. It could, at first glance, have been French, and late eighteenth century – but it could have been made at almost any time. It looked home-made, to tell the truth. Its spine was loose, I could see, and there was a lot of wear and tear, but it seemed strong, in decent condition.

  Only for a second did Monsieur de Saloman’s instruction on no account to look at it cross my mind as I picked it up.

  The paper was rather foxed, there were no identifiable endpapers… no publisher’s mark or title page – almost certainly hand-bound, by an amateur, not that well.

  I glanced inside. Unlike some book dealers, I am quite interested in what is written on the page, as well as the provenance and value and edition and condition and so on.

  Well, Monsieur de Saloman certainly hadn’t even looked at the book. Or he was either mad or lying or having some peculiar little joke. This wasn’t an account of Mesopotamian myths and legends. It wasn’t even in French. It was…

  How can I say?

  My heart beats faster now even to think of it. Of what it seemed as if it might be.

  It was handwritten in English, in a fair secretary hand – taught in all the grammar schools at end of the sixteenth century. I can’t read that script fluently, with its ligatured letter’s and annoying abbreviations, which could be anything – but I can pick things out.

  In the front of the book, it said ‘Mortlake, 1603–4, House of Ag. Phllps’.

  It was set out in paragraphs, dated. It looked like a diary.

  Words jumped out at me: ‘Her Maiesties death’; ‘Mr Johnson calls for me’; ‘My Ladie Pembroke inuites to Wilton… her son refuses still to marry…’

  I gulped.

  ‘In the scilens here my mind wanders freely… looking again at Boccaccio…’

  The date was right. The place was right.

  On the opening front page was written: ‘Librum Wm Shkspr’.

  Oh, lord, it could not be, it could not be.

  But it looked like…

  Oh, lord, it looked so like…

  Shakespeare kept no diary. Shakespeare’s diary is Atlantis, El Dorado, the Philosopher’s Stone, the Holy Grail. These are not things you find in a box on your desk.

  Queen Elizabeth died in 1603. Augustine Phillips was one of Shakespeare’s players.

  Oh, lord… oh, lord.

  I quickly availed myself of the Internet.

  The Internet told me that there was plague in London in 1603, and even before the Queen’s death the theatres were closed to prevent it spreading further. Shakespeare and his company went out of town to wait for it to clear. To Mortlake, to Augustine Phillips’s house.

  But that proves nothing. Any forger could know this.

  In 1603 Shakespeare wrote All’s Well That Ends Well. It is based on a story from Boccaccio. The young earl, Bertram, refuses to marry.

  Mary Sidney, Lady Pembroke, invited Shakespeare to stay at Wilton at that time.

  Any forger could find these things out…

  But even as a forgery, what quality! It would be almost contemporaneous!

  I was beside myself with excitement. It was all I could do to prevent myself from ringing Mr Maud, the palaeographer, at Cambridge. I would not speak to the great Shakespeare scholars yet. First speak to the handwriting expert, and to the… No! Freddy, our seventeenth-century specialist, is coming in tomorrow. First of all I will show it to him. We must first of all confirm the age of the document. Be calm, Maggs. We do not yet know what this is.

  Oh, my giddy aunt.

  I sat up very late staring at the pages. The hooked aitches seemed to dance across the page. Finally, very tenderly, I put the book back in its box and shut the lid. I put it in my safe, locked it, and went up to bed.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Story According to Janaki,

  Mr Maggs’s Assistant

  The very next morning Mr Maggs’s second peculiar visitor came.

  I knew about Mr de Saloman turning up because although Mr Maggs is a fine, honourable, good man he doesn’t always remember what’s what and he gets his words in the wrong order from time to time, so I keep an eye on him. As soon as the knock came on the door in the middle of last night I was down there to deal with it in case he’d gone to bed, but he beat me to it, so I just hung about to hear what it was, and didn’t go back upstairs till Mr de Saloman had left. It’s not nosy of me. It’s responsible. Someone’s got to keep track.

  The next morning I was up before him, opening the emporium, bringing in the milk and the post, and all that. When the bell rang, I assumed it was someone arriving early for work. Mr Nobbs-Jones, perhaps, the incunabulist, who was always prompt and was perhaps today even more so than usual. I disarmed the alarm system that covers the main part of the building (I’d already done the apartment’s one – my little room is there by Mr Maggs’s, so that was the first thing to do), drew back the long bolts of the front door and unlocked it with the great old key. Picking up the post from the hall floor, opening the door and saying ‘Good morning’ kept me occupied so that I did not immediately notice that this was not Mr Nobbs-Jones, nor yet Mrs Sykes, nor Freddy Llewellyn, nor Lady Ursula, who deals with music. It was in fact a young girl, about my own age, in a velvet cloak.

  ‘Mr Maggs?’ she said cheerfully and politely. ‘Is he in?’

  She seemed rather pert.

  I peered at her, first through my glasses, then over them. I didn’t know her.

  ‘Yes?’ I said, in a not very welcoming tone.

  ‘Good morning!’ she said. ‘I’ve come for Mr de Saloman’s book.’

  Her cheeks were clear and pink, her hair bright and bouncy under her hood. You never saw such a healthy, virtuous-looking girl. And yet, within this one sight of her, I trusted her not an inch.

  ‘And you are?’ I said.

  ‘Jenny Maple,’ she said. For a moment I thought she made a little bob, like a Victorian child.

  Jenny Maple! Nonsense. No one could be called Jenny Maple.

  ‘Has Mr de Saloman sent you?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. She held out a letter in her clean pink paw.

  I accepted it and turned away slightly to read it.

  ‘It’s addressed to Mr Maggs,’ she pointed out.

  ‘I,’ I said rather grandly, ‘am Mr Maggs’s assistant. I deal with all his correspondence.’

  The letter read:

  I folded it up again. ‘I’ll take it to Mr Maggs,’ I said. ‘He’s not available at the moment.’ (Of course he wasn’t. It was only 7.30 in the morning.) ‘Perhaps you could call later.’

  ‘Well, I’m meant to fetch the book immediately,’ she said, looking a little worried.
‘Mr de Saloman is leaving the country.’

  I squinted at her.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said, and turned on my heel, and shut the door.

  Before taking the letter to Mr Maggs, I went into his office. I opened the safe and peeked in to check that the book was there, but there was no time to look at it properly, as I had something on my mind.

  Mr Maggs is quite old-fashioned in his way. Almost everybody now uses texts and email and internal commchip systems, but Mr Maggs likes pen and paper, especially for his records. I went across to what he likes to call his filing system – trying to maintain order there is one of my tasks – and attempted to locate in this paper labyrinth something that might pass as a file of correspondence from people whose names start with S.

  By a miracle, there was a file, labelled S, in the drawer marked Correspondence. I took the file out and riffled through letters from shoemakers, about Shakespeare, to the Swedish ambassador and – ah yes – one from Ernesto de Saloman. I thought I’d remembered right. It was from several years ago, enquiring about a first edition of D. L. Flusfeder’s Man Kills Woman.

  The signature on it was nothing like that on the letter I held in my hand.

  I was just thinking that I might just pack the girl off without bothering Mr Maggs about it, when I heard him come rustling in.

  ‘Ah, Janaki,’ he said. He was still wearing his silk dressing gown and carrying a cup of coffee. ‘It’s you. Couldn’t think who would be in here. Bit early for filing, isn’t it? Anyway, I wanted to talk to you… What’s that letter?’

  So I showed it to him. Along with the old letter from Mr de Saloman. And told him about the girl on the doorstep.

  ‘Little baggage!’ he said. ‘Who sent her? Bring her in – let’s have a word with her.’

  But when I returned to the doorstep, there was no one there. Which rather gave Mr Maggs and me to think, as we ate our chocolate croissants. We had them there on the doorstep, as the sun had come out and it was still so early.

  It was very pleasant, sitting there, looking out over the square.

  Some people may think it peculiar that I live here with Mr Maggs, but because it is my only life, I find it normal. I should explain. Long ago, long before I was born, and when he was a young man, Mr Maggs won me in a poker game. My father was a particularly honourable man, in his own funny way, and when I eventually came into this world, he felt obliged to honour his debt. That’s all. I can’t suppose my mother liked it very much, but she died soon after. Sometimes I wonder about the life I might have had in the apricot-filled valleys of Kashmir. Very occasionally, I allow myself to wonder whether my mother might have lived longer had her baby not been taken away. But it doesn’t help anything to think like that.

  Mr Maggs, so he tells me, was delighted to have me because he had himself been lost at cards as a boy and as a result had spent several very happy years in the household of my great-uncle the Maharaja of Ratnapur. He makes a point of buying me dried Kashmiri apricots at Fortnum’s. I love Mr Maggs.

  But I digress.

  As we ate, Mr Maggs told me about Mr de Saloman’s visit. I was glad he did, otherwise I would have had to pretend not to know, and that would have been inconvenient and difficult to maintain. He was much bemused by the situation that had developed and he seemed very excited about something, though he did not mention what.

  ‘So we have a book, which… which isn’t what its owner says it is, and we’re not allowed to touch it, and now someone has attempted to inveigle it from us!’ he said.

  I agreed it was a bit peculiar. I was wondering whether to ask him more when the phone rang, and it was his call from Hong Kong. Then he was very anxious to speak to Freddy, who wasn’t coming in till after lunch, and meanwhile everybody started to arrive, and he had to have a meeting. At around quarter to nine I went off to the study in the back building, to get on with sorting the diaries and letters of J. K. Rowling. (We’d recently acquired 243 boxes from her estate and I had only just begun.)

  Around 12.30 lunchtime I went out to fetch some sandwiches for Mr Maggs and I – grilled eel, from one of the fish-stalls in Green Park. There seemed to be some sort of drama going on down there. The far end of the park had been roped off with blue and white striped police crime-scene tape, and there were rather a lot of policeguys around. I got that little dark feeling of thrill in my belly that you get when something dangerous or interesting is going on but you feel ashamed to be thrilled because somebody might be hurt. The stallguys Were chatting in what I couldn’t help noticing to be that tone of awe and interest and a touch of fear which denotes gossip of a ghoulish nature.

  ‘Well, he hadn’t been robbed,’ said the cockleguy to the smoked fish guy.

  ‘What about…’ nudged the smoked fish guy.

  ‘Not that I heard,’ said the cockleguy.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ said Mavis Ubsworth, who does the eels. ‘You can’t feel safe.’ Then she caught sight of me and, following the logic that because I am young I mustn’t be allowed to hear anything bad, even when I’ve already heard it, she put on a big fake smile and shouted, ‘Your usual, dear? With lemon?’

  It didn’t matter anyway. The early edition of the evening paper was out as I came back on to Piccadilly with my sandwiches, and the placard outside the Ritz said in big black letters: MYSTERY OF GREEN PARK LAKE CORPSE.

  Well. A corpse! In the park!

  I bought a copy and stopped off for a moment on the bench in Berkeley Square to scan the pages. I wanted to prepare how I told Mr Maggs. He sometimes got upset about things.

  It’s lucky I did.

  The mystery corpse was of a gentleman in his forties, tall, sallow-skinned, foreign-looking and believed to be French by his coat and the sodden, bloodstained hat found nearby.

  It was like a punch of shock to my heart.

  I must go immediately to Mount Street and tell the police that it sounded very like Mr Ernesto de Saloman, bibliophile, of Paris…

  But then I started thinking…

  That girl who had come this morning…

  When had the body been found?

  It was only last night that…

  The book!

  This was all looking a bit complicated.

  I must, unfortunately, speak to Mr Maggs.

  CHAPTER 4

  Continuing the Story According

  to Lee Raven

  Well, I was pretty concerned about what I was going to do about this sniking wallet situation. For all I knew, Mr Maggs had found the wallet, missed the book and called the police already.

  I could take the risk – nip straight back to the house, say I’d left the wallet, pick it up, drop the book and scarper. But I might already be too late.

  And breaking in? It was a daft idea. One, they had serious security. Two, I for sure wasn’t going in daylight and, three, by the time it was dark it would be way too late.

  It all stank, frankly. I wasn’t going in. Frankly, I was just going to have to leave the neighbourhood quickly and quietly. Just… scoot.

  A girl with black polished hair was sitting on the bench people sit on to eat. She had a bag of grilled eels with her, which I could smell, and she was looking at a newspaper. When she’d gone, I’d up and leave.

  Of a sudden, she gasped and her hand flickered, and then she stared into space for a while. Then she got up and went across the road into Maggs’s.

  Thank crike I’d stayed under my bush. Otherwise she’d have seen me… I felt a bit ill. Time to leave, Lee. Just leave.

  So I upped and headed for the Piccadilly end of the square, and down Curzon Street, where I looked across towards Green Park.

  Piccadilly and the park were crawling with police. Crawling. Beyond the fish grills there was stripy tape between the trees, vans parked up, commchips going and rows of blokeys in white-paper boiler suits, walking very slowly and looking down at their big boots.

  After my normal moment of panic – any time I see police I always think they’re
after me – it didn’t take me long to cotton that they weren’t there in their masses just because I’d dipped a wallet. Drastic as my crimes were, they didn’t require fingertip searches by half the forces in London. I’d only kicked a dodgy old bird and nicked a wallet and lifted a Beano Annual by mistake. Even so, my heart gave a big splat and I did not want to amble down there and mix with them in a sociable fashion.

  We’ll be heading back up to Berkeley Square then. I took the other side, so no one would come roaring out of Maggs’s at me. I slipped up Lansdowne Row, skirting the cafe tables and looking as if that had been what I was intending all the time, attempting to proceed swiftly but without calling attention to myself. Just a London lad, busy about his business. Head down. Leaving the neighbourhood.

  Just past the Tropicana, a voice called my name.

  Pause, or rush on? To rush on would invite comment. I looked back to see who it was being so untimely.

  It was my brother Finn.

  ‘Oi, Lee!’ he yelled, cheerful and loud.

  I would have been pleased to see him because he’s all right, Finn. He’s a bit older than me and not always the first off the line but he’s not treacherous like some. I grabbed his arm and said, ‘Voice down, man, I’m in trouble…’

  He responded well and steered me up Bruton Lane, saying, ‘So, what, was it you then?’

  ‘Was it me then what?’ I replied.

  ‘Pushed the Frenchman into Rosamund’s Pond?’

  ‘What Frenchman?’

  ‘Aintcha heard? There’s a dead Frog in the pond.’ He laughed a bit at his own joke, then got back to the more interesting thing of the mystery. ‘This fella, in a fancy hat, found drowned, only they think he was dead when he went in. Right there in the pond…’ Finn gestured behind him to where the Frenchman’s watery grave lay, beyond Piccadilly, surrounded by peaceful green grass and police tape barriers.

  ‘Parrently,’ he continued, leaning in on me like everyone was trying to listen to our important conversation but his words were for my lugs only, ‘he’d been hanging round here last night in his hat, with a tigrenium case, Marco said, because he’d seen him, and had thought of clocking him for the case himself, only didn’t because the fella was tall, and Marco is a little chicken, and anyway, while Marco was stalking him, he made a rather late visit to Maggs and when he came out he didn’t have it no more – anyway, today Marco’s full of how it would have been good luck for the Frog if Marco had done him, because then he might not have got topped, and how someone probably done him for the case, cos it had something fabulous in it only he didn’t have it no more only they didn’t know…’