“I grew up in Laguna.”
“And did you live in one of those little cottages that now cost millions?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all in the timing, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Baker had begun to pace. “Roberts . . . ?”
“Yes?” he answered.
“Could we trouble you . . . ?”
“It’s no trouble, Charles,” he said. “Hæthstapa is a kenning for the word deer. It simply means heathstepper. As Deaton said—a more poetic rendering. Instead of using the same word over and over the poet varies the line—not just lexically, of course, but also metrically. It’s music, Charles. Quite lovely in its simplicity, isn’t it? Heathstepper.”
Baker had stopped pacing but he was clutching his cardboard coffee cup with both hands as if he was trying to squeeze the liquid from its container.
“The word a few lines lower is stow. The w looks like a strange p. That’s the way they wrote it. Stow means place.”
“That’s damned little to go on,” Baker said.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Roberts said. “It’s just enough. The passage is quite well known.”
“You know the passage?”
“Why yes. You didn’t want me to come all of the way down to Ludgate Circus at midnight just to waste your time, did you?”
“No, of course not,” Baker said.
Leonard was tamping the ash in his pipe as if he was trying to crush some small animal.
“The description is of a lake. Actually a mere, like German meer. A terrible place. Wondrous. Frightening. I can’t do the whole text of course, but it would go something like this: ‘The heathstepper coming there—afflicted by hounds, the great hart with strong horns seeking the wood . . . will give up his life on the shore before he will put his head in those waters.’”
“What about the word place?” Baker asked.
“That’s in the next line. The passage is actually a good bit longer. There’s talk of mountain waterfalls and windy promontories, night mists and fearful wonders—all very sturm and drang. Then there’s the business about the deer. Lovely image that. What a terrible place: one would choose death on the shore to protection inside. The poet sums up all the nastiness and then adds a final comment. I’ve always remembered it. He says ‘Nis thæt heoru stow.’”
“Which means . . . ?” Baker asked.
“It means ‘nor is that a particularly nice place.’ Well, it doesn’t precisely mean that, but it’s close enough. And we call that . . . Deaton?”
“Litotes.”
“What a waste that you’re running around at all hours with the likes of Detective Chief Inspector Baker,” Roberts said. “You could have been a contender. I love that film, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Tom said.
“Litotes?” Baker asked.
“Understatement for rhetorical effect,” Roberts answered.
“It’s Grendel’s mere, isn’t it?” Tom asked, the realization sinking in.
Baker and Leonard looked at one another in mutual incomprehension.
“Yes it is,” Roberts answered. “It’s Grendel’s mere.”
“They’ve stolen the Beowulf manuscript,” Tom said.
“Stolen it?” Roberts asked, impatiently.
“The Beowulf manuscript?” Baker said. “Meadhalls and shaggy pants and all that?”
“Yes,” Roberts said. “Meadhalls and shaggy pants, Charles. The only surviving epic poem in Old English. We are talking about the most precious literary manuscript in Britain.”
“It’s in the Museum,” Baker said.
“Not for some twenty years or more,” Roberts answered.
Baker’s face fell.
“What happened to it?” Diana asked.
“They’ve moved the collection to the new, larger location,” Roberts said, “in St Pancras.”
Chapter Forty-Three
St. John’s Wood, London
Sunday, 2:10 a.m.
David Roberts’ flat sat above a small garden square a few blocks east of Abbey Road. It was filled with bookshelves and odd-sized tables wedged between overstuffed chairs. The musty smell of old leather from the books and chairs filled the room. Tom could taste it in his throat, along with the whiskey that Roberts had offered them.
“Here we are,” Roberts said, pulling a book from the top shelf of a bookcase near the front sitting-room window. Roberts opened the book on a nearby table and turned on a lamp with a green plastic shade. It took him a few seconds to find the right page. “Now let’s have the forged sheet.” Leonard handed it to him and Roberts said thank you.
“Here, you see,” he said. “This is a facsimile edition of the manuscript. Watch.” He took a piece of tracing paper, put it on top of the forged sheet and outlined the words. Then he placed the sheet over the page of the facsimile. The words fit precisely. “The words in between and those above and below were burned. Only these three words survived. Where did you find this?”
“In the dustbin at Sechrist’s office,” Leonard said.
“Yes, quite. You were very lucky. Someone intended to burn this a second time.”
“A second time? I don’t understand,” Baker said.
“Deaton?”
“I can’t help you on that,” Tom said.
“It’s really an interesting story,” Roberts said. “How is that whiskey?”
“Lovely. I could do with a bit more,” Baker said, as Roberts replenished the drinks. Leonard passed, as did Bushy Eyebrows. Roberts slumped in one of the chairs, a brown leather relic with worn arms.
“It’s quite fascinating really,” he said. “The Beowulf manuscript was found in the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, a seventeenth-century gentleman with a taste for old books and manuscripts. The original library contained a dozen bookcases; each had a bust on top of one of the Roman emperors and the manuscripts were categorized accordingly. The Beowulf text was in Cotton Vitellius A. xv, two codices joined by an early seventeenth-century binder. The resulting volume consisted of nine Old English texts, of which Beowulf is the most famous.
“We have no idea where he obtained the codices. Some people believe that they may have been preserved by a man named Laurence Nowell, the Dean of Lichfield, who died in the late 1500’s, a few years after Cotton’s birth. Remember—Henry VIII was paying his bills a few decades earlier by looting the monasteries. It also gave him the opportunity for a little revenge after his handling by Rome. God knows what was lost in the process. Nowell was an early student of Anglo-Saxon. Why he found and saved these books (if he did and if they came from one of the monasteries) and not others (if there were others) and how (indeed, how), we have no idea.
“The manuscript which Cotton obtained was copied by two different scribes, probably at some time near the end of the tenth century. Now comes the interesting part . . .”
Baker was beginning to pace. He was also looking at the remains of the whiskey in the bottle on Roberts’ table. Diana was leaning forward in her chair, as was Tom.
“In the eighteenth century the Cotton library was in Ashburnham House, in Little Deans Yard, Westminster. In 1731 Ashburnham House burned. The manuscript was saved, of course, but it was charred around the edges. If it had been promptly rebound the damage would have been halted but unfortunately it was not. Here, look . . .”
He held the book up so they could see it more clearly. “You see the marks around the edges? What Sechrist (or someone) was trying to do was burn the edges in such a way as to replicate the original manuscript. My guess is that this particular sheet was discarded and later burned, probably in a stack of similar sheets.”
“There were other burned sheets and black flakes in the dustbin,” Bushy Eyebrows said.
“There you have it,” Roberts said. “Some of the sheets were too clos
e together to burn but far enough apart to scorch. You were really very lucky. Your man’s work survived the flames just like the Beowulf poet’s. Sechrist, do you think?”
“Possibly,” Baker answered.
“You think he was doing the forgery for hire and not amusement.”
“Yes, probably under duress.”
“His reputation was impeccable,” Roberts said. “Michael Sechrist was highly skilled and scrupulously honest. And you think this forgery is part of a larger plot?”
“We believe that it may be,” Baker said. “As I said in the car, there have been other things as well.”
“You mentioned the Chevaux Ponctués. What cheek. And what skill. What else was there?”
“We’re not certain that anything else has been stolen,” Baker said, “but we have a report that a sword has been stolen from a museum at the University of Aberdeen.”
“The sword of Angus?”
“Why yes, as a matter of fact; how would you know that?”
“Your thief is a very learned man.”
“Why do you say that?”
“What do you know about the sword of Angus?”
“Nothing, really,” Baker said.
“Mind you, this is all theory . . .” Roberts said.
“What theory?” Baker said.
“A theory about the sword and its owner. Would you like more whiskey?”
“Yes, thank you,” Baker said, sitting down and holding out his glass.
“Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us that King Arthur’s coronation was attended by a king named Anguselus. However, Chrétien de Troyes, who also wrote about these matters, wrote in Old French. When the Latinized name Anguselus is translated into Old French it loses in perfectly regular, normal fashion its middle syllable. Thus, its second consonantal group, gu, which is in weak and unaccented position within the word, drops out.” Roberts picked up his pencil and the sheet of tracing paper and began to write.
“We are left with this: An + sel + o. Now, since o is the normal masculine ending in French, it is often written ot. We pronounce the French word resulting from this syncopation: An-sel-ó.”
“And the French writer could have added the article le and then contracted it,” Tom said.
“The Angus,” Roberts said.
“L’Anselot,” Tom added. “Lancelot.”
“But Lancelot was bloody French, not Scottish,” Baker said.
“I’m afraid he wasn’t,” Roberts said. “And he wasn’t involved with Guinevere. It’s all in here . . .” Roberts took a second book down from the shelf. “I’m afraid I’m the forger here,” he said, “or better, the borrower.”
The book was entitled King Arthur, by a woman named Norma Lorre Goodrich. “Arthur was not some dreamy-eyed Englishman running about in the west country. That’s all nonsense. He was half Roman and he was in the north, guarding the border country. He was close to Hadrian’s Wall and no farther north than the Antonine Wall, which connected what is now Glasgow on the west to what is now Edinburgh to the east. It also connected the Firth of Clyde to the west with the Firth of Forth on the east. This is Britain’s narrowest point, a ripe target for anyone considering invasion. Angus was Arthur’s principal battlefield commander, not some silly, adulterous Frenchman. Besides, Guinevere was not some swoony maiden later consigned to a nunnery. She was a Pictish queen, with her own army and wealth.”
“They’ve stolen the sword of Lancelot,” Tom said.
“So it would seem,” Roberts said. “His general. The military rock on Arthur’s right. Above the Firth of Forth; above Stirling. Above Fife and beneath Aberdeen. Angus.”
“When was this book published?” Tom asked.
Roberts opened the front of the book. “In 1986. Your man keeps up with these things.”
The phone sounded and the double ring startled them. Roberts started to get out of his chair. “I gave them your number,” Baker said. Bushy Eyebrows lifted the phone from its cradle at the third ring and handed it to Baker.
“Baker,” he said. “Yes . . . yes . . . thanks very much.” He replaced the phone in its cradle and turned toward the expectant group. “It will take awhile for full authentication,” he said, “but at this point it appears that the manuscript in the possession of the British Library is a forgery.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Stratton Street, Mayfair
Sunday, 4:18 a.m.
“And was the money transferred?”
“Yes. Just before Kepler’s death. His account was debited and the sum transferred to Sechrist.”
“And the amount?”
“We transferred £35,000.”
“Plausible enough.”
“We did it electronically. The bank’s computer system was child’s play.”
“One would expect as much from the English.”
“Yes.”
“Is your work finished then?”
“Yes. The Aberdeen holdings have been checked, as have those at St. Pancras. The police are running about like frightened children. They know that the objects have been replaced with substitutes, but Kepler is their only possible suspect and he is dead. Sechrist has now been suitably implicated but he is also dead, drowned in the same sea of guilt as Bennett and Kepler. A museum guard at Aberdeen has £5,000 in his personal account which he will be unable to explain.”
“And in France?”
“That’s finished as well. They should have our accomplice’s name soon. His account contains an additional 50,000 euros, a gift from Herr Kepler. The loop is now closed.”
“They will search for the antiquities rather than for us, but they will have no idea where to look.”
“Precisely.”
“And Deaton?”
“He returned with Bennett’s sister an hour ago.”
“Filled with information and suspicions, but too many steps behind.”
“Yes. They can be removed at any time.”
“When do you return?”
“Tomorrow.”
The red glow of the digital clock was blurred. Tom blinked and refocused: 5:54. As he rubbed his eyes the third digit flipped and revealed a third 5. Diana was still asleep, her arm limp at the side of the bed. Her hair covered the side of her pillow. He could hear her breathing gently.
He tried to think through the evidence of the case but his mind kept returning to the stolen objects. He thought of their uniqueness, their immeasurable value, and the weight of their loss. He had never seen the originals, only copies and facsimiles. In the case of the sword he had seen nothing but a drawing which Roberts had sketched, but as he watched Roberts’ hand, lovingly tracing the outline of the object, he could somehow feel its presence and its beautiful strength.
Hearing Diana’s breathing and feeling the warmth of the sheets and blankets, he closed his eyes and fell back into the darkness. He awoke at 6:30 and again at 7:10. At 7:25 his phone rang. Startled, he sat up and hit the ACCEPT button. “Yes?” he said.
“Tom, it’s Chris Dietrich.”
“What have you got, Chief?” Tom asked, feeling the distance between them in the echo in the phone line.
“A number of things. First, we found a Laguna Beach bank account of David Bennett’s. There was only one recent deposit: $175,000 dollars.”
“When was the deposit made?”
“A week before his death.”
“Is there a paper record?”
“No. It was an electronic transfer. The money came from a British account.”
“Probably a frame. What else do you have?”
“There’s more from Chile.”
“Yes?”
“It was Karl Bachmann who was taken into custody by the Chilean police. He was detained on suspicion of arson.”
“But he was released.”
“Yes.”
“Who sprung him?”
“We don’t know. The record said there was insufficient evidence. There’s more.”
“What?”
“The collection that nearly burned was apparently authentic. We found a long article in a Chilean art magazine. Two of the pieces had minor smoke damage, but after they were cleaned the restorer was interviewed by the local press. The collector later claimed that the restorer had been sworn to secrecy but he must have been excited by the job because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. The two pieces he talked about had never been seen before: a Rouault self-portrait and an early Modigliani. An art historian was called in from the University and he authenticated the two paintings. That caused a real dustup. The owner charged the restorer with breach of contract and invasion of privacy and sent in his lawyers. After two weeks the story died a quiet death.”
“Two lost masterpieces, both legitimate and by then very, very pricey.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s very helpful, Chief. Please give my best to your friend at Langley.”
“There’s more, Tom.”
“More?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m listening.”
“How would you like a name?”
“You’ve got the name of the collector?”
“It just came in. The proud owner of the lost Modigliani and Rouault is one Wilfred Alec.”
“You say is. He’s still alive then.”
“Yes, he’s very much alive.”
“In Chile?”
“Oh no. He left Chile right after the fire. He first went to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he stayed for three years. From Lausanne he went to Florence—Fiesole actually—where he stayed two and a half years. From Fiesole he went to Quito, Ecuador, then to Madrid and Nice; he even logged some time on the Greek island of Mykonos.”
“He gets around, doesn’t he? Where is he now?”
“I know what you’re thinking; he must be in England.”
“No, as a matter of fact, that’s not what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that our Wilfred Alec might be in southern California.”
INTO THE DARK : A TOM DEATON NOVEL Page 22