Dreaming Spies: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

  The northern end of the mews had been rebuilt, its roofline raised for another level of flats, but this end still had three storeys, and looked much as it had since the days of George III. The inner stairs suggested that the upper levels were a part of the Bourke realm, not those of a different business or residence.

  We had seen no lights from the upper windows, but there was a risk that Bourke and his son were asleep on the next floor up.

  I went first, being both lighter and—if a door came open—faster down the stairs. I crept my way upwards, trying each step before committing my weight to it. The wood was stouter than it appeared, and the squeaks were minimal.

  The landing at the top of the first flight of stairs had a locked door on one side, but the carpet on the stairs going up was just as worn as that on the first section, indicating that the living quarters were over our heads, not on this middle level. I gave Holmes a small hiss, and as he climbed the stairs, I bent again to my picklocks.

  This latch, interestingly, was a lot sturdier than that on the front door. After sweating over it for a while, I deferred to the more experienced Holmes. He, too, had problems, but at last the final pin slid aside and the cylinder turned. The door began to creak when its edge was ten inches from the jamb. Holmes held it while I squeezed inside. I ran my light quickly around the space, an odd and dusty foyer, then worked spittle into the hinges to allow Holmes inside as well. When the latch had clicked shut again, I pulled the red cloth off my light and studied our surroundings.

  It looked like an unused sitting room, with a thin layer of dust on the side-table, the armchair, and even on the book that lay face-down on an ancient leather ottoman before the chair. As if someone had walked away from their evening read, weeks before.

  The room was the same size as the shop downstairs, but where the door to Mr Bourke’s workshop was, here stood a bookshelf. A ceiling-to-floor bookshelf with a narrow track of disturbance in the floorboard dust. Either the reader habitually fetched volumes from just one section, or the reader was not interested in the books.

  The latch for the hidden door was attached to an old Balzac novel I’d never heard of, but clearly Holmes recognised. The moment he spotted Pierre Grassou, he gave a grunt of amusement and reached for the upper edge of the spine. A click came from deep within the shelves. We shoved, and opened the door to gold—better still: gilt.

  The artist’s current project was a series of oil paintings. Pinned up to a wall were a dozen or so reproductions of landscapes by the Dutchman van Gogh, whose odd perspective and lively technique had, since his death a generation ago, been of growing interest to collectors. It was the ideal situation for a dealer in fakes: when an artist’s work had gone unsold and uncollected during his life, who was to say how many versions of a wheat field or cypress tree he had actually produced?

  Coincidentally, the piece was appropriate to our own search: a blossoming cherry tree with a geisha looking coyly out from under its branches. Three large colour photographs lay on the table beside his easel, with what I assumed were actual van Goghs: a flowering tree with Fuji in the background; a geisha with a frog; and a bearded man with a hat, seated in front of various Japanese scenes. A strong light hung overhead, and a large magnifying glass distorted the frog on the geisha scene.

  Leaning against the wall were two other very fresh-looking oil paintings, signed “Vincent.”

  A brief search gave us the evidence we had come for: a file-box on one of the shelves with sketches, colour swatches, close-up photographs of every section of the Kisokaido illustrations and calligraphy, including three incomplete but full-sized versions of the book itself, discarded for various reasons including a large black drop of ink in the middle of one. There was even a trial version of the cover boards.

  “He’s very skilled,” I murmured.

  “A wonder Mycroft hasn’t adopted him.” Holmes was looking at the contents of its neighbouring box, which contained treated pages and sketches for a very old-looking will.

  The one thing we did not locate was, who hired Bourke?

  We spent an hour looking through every box, every file, prodding for hidden corners, but came away with nothing but dust and sore knees. Finally, we migrated back to where we had begun, and stood contemplating Vincent’s geisha.

  “Do you think this could be a one-man operation, from beginning to end?” I asked. “That he comes up with ideas, constructs the forgeries, and sells them?”

  “That might be so for the forgeries themselves, but the blackmail?”

  It was true: the son almost certainly came across the Kisokaido book in his father’s workshop, awaiting restoration. From there, he might have chosen it as a candidate for a lucrative forgery—but how did one go from forgery to international blackmail? A restoration might have uncovered the hidden document, but once found, how would a forger have guessed at its meaning?

  “We need to speak with him,” I said.

  “You have your revolver?” he asked.

  “The ladies’ accessory,” I said, pulling it from my pocket.

  He chose a precarious stack of paint-stained tin bowls, and prodded it with a forefinger.

  The clatter was satisfying. Even more so the sudden squeak of bedsprings overhead, followed by the thump of feet hitting the floor. We left the studio, closed the hidden bookcase entrance, and took up positions at the doorway.

  That the man came through the door armed with nothing more deadly than a torch and a metal poker was both reassuring and informative: this was not a person who thought in terms of £100,000 extortion demands. Indeed, considering the podgy, middle-aged figure’s sleep-rumpled hair and down-at-the-heels carpet slippers, he appeared at first glance someone whom £100 might impress.

  Holmes flipped the light switch; at the same instant, I said in a firm whisper, “I have a gun.”

  The forger’s reaction was not quite what I had expected. He took a step back, poker clattering onto the dirty carpet, and stared at me with the blood draining from his face. I spoke again before he could pass out, keeping my voice low so as not to wake the elder Bourke.

  “We’ve been in your workshop, we see what you do. We’re not the police, but if you want to avoid having us call them in, you need to talk to us about a piece of forgery you did two years ago.”

  Again, his reaction was unexpected. He frowned, tilting his head a little. Was he hard of hearing? I raised my voice a fraction.

  “We can see this operation is yours and not your father’s. You’ve been working right under his nose—you even laid out this sitting room for him to see, if he happened to pass while you had the door open. We need—sit down, man!” My sharp order came as I saw him begin to sway. He did not argue, but dropped onto the ottoman and put his head in his hands, breathing deeply.

  Holmes and I exchanged a glance: one might think the man had never seen a gun before. How could he have worked amongst criminals and never faced a threat of robbery and violence? Belatedly, I realised that there could be another explanation for his going weak-kneed: shellshock lasted a long time and carried a wide array of symptoms; faintness at the sight of a weapon could easily be one. I supposed I should be grateful he hadn’t left his supper on my shoes.

  I went on more gently. “Mr Bourke, we don’t intend to hurt you, and we’re not interested in most of your work. We merely want to know about the Japanese folding book you forged in the spring of 1923. A book with prints and calligraphy.”

  He held still for a while, as if letting the words sink in. When he responded, it took a couple of throat-clears before the words would come. “The Hokusai.”

  “That’s right.”

  He sat for a bit longer, head down. His body seemed to pull together somehow, losing its shakiness. When at last he raised his head, the extremity of his fear was gone, replaced by a look of calculation that seemed far more natural to his features. Certainly, he seemed less concerned with the gun. He looked at Holmes, studying him for a minute, then got to his feet.

&n
bsp; “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. I help my father with restoration, that’s all.”

  “Mr Bourke, we’ve been through your workshop. There’s enough there to keep Scotland Yard busy for a long time. And you can’t tell me your fingerprints aren’t all over it.”

  After a moment, he gave a little shrug. “Had to try. What was it you were interested in? That Japanese book, right? I could do you a copy of your own, if you like. I knew you were going to be trouble,” he muttered. “When my father told me there was someone asking about my painting. Shouldn’t have left it up.”

  Holmes interrupted his monologue. “How many copies did you do?”

  “Just the one.”

  Holmes’ voice went hard. “Young man, that is the last lie you are permitted. At the next one, you will find yourself explaining your operation to an official detective.”

  Young Bourke believed him. He ran his eyes over me for a last time, then turned to Holmes. “Look, can we go into the other room? My father might hear us, this end.”

  We filed through the bookcase, keeping a sharp eye on our prisoner, but the forger made no fast move towards a weapon, merely came to a halt in the centre of his workshop, as if wondering how his tools had come to betray him.

  “How many copies?” Holmes reminded him.

  “There were two. One was better than the other. The best work I’ve ever done. Took me weeks. I even got the wear on the cover just right.”

  “It was impressive,” I agreed.

  “You saw it?”

  “In the Bodleian.”

  “You can’t tell them,” he said thickly. “The Library. They’ll never hire my father again.”

  He seemed actually to care—whether for his father’s welfare or for his own supply of candidates for fakery, I could not tell. “How much were you paid?”

  “I …” His eyes shifted rapidly about the room, searching for a place to hide this secret.

  “How much?” Holmes growled.

  “Six hun—” He gave my gun a glance, and retreated from the lie. “A thousand. For the two.”

  “Who hired you?”

  This was the question he had been dreading. He answered instantly and with fervour. “I don’t know. Honest to God, I swear I don’t know who it was. There was a voice on the telephone, and letters, and twice a man with a scarf up around his face and his hat pulled low. He was young, and a gentleman—educated. That’s all I know.”

  Holmes allowed silence to fall, and to remain. Surprisingly, Bourke kept still, and eventually Holmes went over to the man’s drinks cabinet and splashed a dose of whisky into a glass. He placed the drink on the work-table, shoved a stool over with his foot, and settled onto another stool. I took a chair. Young Bourke gave an unhappy sigh, and sat.

  Sometimes when a witness is wrought up over some piece of his testimony, the best approach is to step well back from the sticking point. Holmes waited until the man had the drink inside him, then began.

  “Tell us how you got started, forging art works.”

  “Restoration, of course. I apprenticed to my father, learned how to restore damaged paintings. I had a knack with watercolours, which aren’t easy. Not that there’s much money in it, even before Pa’s eyes started to go.

  “Anyway, one night when Pa was out, one of our regulars came to pick up a piece, and we got to talking. Nice enough fellow, so I closed the place and we went for a drink. After—”

  “The man’s name?”

  “Collins. Bart Collins. So after a couple of pints, he said that if I ever felt like making a copy of something in the shop, he’d be happy to find a buyer. Reproductions, you know? I knew my father would never go for it, but I didn’t see any harm in trying. The first one was an Italian drawing—Pisanello, was the name—that came out pretty nice. Collins took it, sold it, and gave me half. Twelve pounds! Couple months later I did another, then another. Then a year or so later, after I’d done maybe a dozen different pieces, Collins got to talking about how good they were, and how much more I could earn if I switched mine for the originals. I said absolutely not, and he said that was fine, but that I should think about it.

  “So I did. And I thought that since I do most of our deliveries, it wouldn’t be all that much of a risk. Sure, if my father looked, he’d know, but most times, the owners themselves haven’t a clue, and they’re all the happier if the thing looks new again. So that’s what we’ve been doing, for seven, going on eight years now, in between the work I do downstairs. Most of the time it’s paintings some rich American has bought: we give him my piece and send the original to someone in France or Germany. A couple of times, Hong Kong.”

  “The Bodleian is a far cry from a rich American,” I pointed out.

  “Yes.” He cast a wistful glance at his empty glass. Holmes renewed it, and its strength got him through the next part. “All of my Bodleian Library copies have gone to outside collectors. Until now.”

  “Tell us about the Hokusai book.”

  “We got it in … April? May? Two years ago, any road. The Library sends things by special messenger usually, but this time it was one of the sub-librarians who brought it. I’m not sure if that was because the thing didn’t actually belong to them—it was a gift from Japan’s Prince to the King—or because they wanted to check that Pa could still do the work. Pa said sure, no problem. I was here, too, and I could see that it was something I could handle. I’d been doing more and more of the really delicate stuff, see. The old man’s hands are getting a little shaky.

  “I just wanted the job. I didn’t plan on making a copy, since it wasn’t Collins’ kind of thing. But then he happened to come by with a couple of nice paintings some pub had been letting people blow smoke on for a century or two. I was alone at the time, so we went back into the workshop to look at them under the light.

  “That’s where he saw the book. Now, we’d had it a couple of weeks and I’d made some sketches and a few notes about what I’d need to do and in what order, but just that morning I’d discovered a little puzzle about it. The front cover was coming apart—that’s the Japanese front, which is around the back, understand?” We nodded to indicate that yes, we were familiar with the contrary nature of Japanese writing. “Anyways, the cover was separating, just a little, and when I put it under the big glass, it didn’t seem to be made like the others. I mean, for the most part, if you want a cover to stay together, you wrap the material—in this case, silk—around the edges and seal it on the inside. You see? And although the back cover was like that, the front cover was only that way on three sides. The fourth side, on the back where the spine would be on a normal book, it was more like a sandwich. The two pieces just pressed together?” He waited until we had nodded, then went on.

  “I put it in the clamp and worked at the separation—gently, so as not to tear anything. That’s when I found that my sandwich had a filling.”

  “A document,” Holmes supplied. “In Japanese writing.”

  Bourke’s expression went from surprise to reflection, ending up with something very like fear. “So it was important, then.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  He rubbed his hand across his face. “It was part of what I showed to Collins. And when he saw the book, he said he might know someone who’d be interested in a copy, but when he looked at that folded-up page, he said he’d take that then and there. I didn’t want him to, but he said he just wanted to borrow it, had a friend who might be able to read the thing. But he also said to ease off working on the book, while he asked around for anyone who might like a copy of it. We took some pictures of it for him, then days went by, more than a week. When he came back, he was excited. Tried not to show it, but I could tell. He said he’d found a client who wanted me to do two copies of the book. And I’d get six hundred for the two, and maybe more work in the future, if they were really good.”

  “What happened to the document?”

  “He did bring it back. It was the original,” he said, the voice
of expertise. “Told me to put it back where it was, restore the cover around it, but not to bother making copies of the document inside my two fakes.

  “Six hundred is a lot of money, with more where that came from, so I took my time with it. When he came to pick them up, he couldn’t tell the three of them apart, not without strong light and a magnifying glass.” He paused. The pause went on, indicating that we had returned to the sticking point in his tale.

  “What happened next?” Holmes pressed.

  “He paid me. Said I should let the Bodleian know I had their book ready, at last.”

  “And?” Holmes was getting impatient.

  “And then Collins told me that he was taking the original, and I’d have to hand one of the copies over to the Library. I said absolutely not. They’re not fools there, and any reader who asks for that book is going to be somebody who knows what he’s looking at. I told him the chances of getting away with it were too small. I couldn’t risk it.”

  “But Mr Collins changed your mind?”

  “Wasn’t him. It was the ’phone calls.” He shuddered, and cast another longing look at the bottle. When Holmes made no move towards it, Bourke just wrapped his hands around the empty glass and stared into his empty future. “Two ’phone calls. The first one said that if I didn’t do as Collins asked, a list of my forgeries would go to the police, and my father would end up in the poorhouse, if not in prison. The next day Collins came again and I tried to explain how really impossible it would be to get away with it. That night … It was late. Pa had gone to bed hours before, but I had a piece I wanted to finish. And the ’phone rang. There was that same muffled voice, a whisper, that said, ‘If you did a good enough job, it won’t be discovered.’ I started to say that it wasn’t what I wanted, it was what was possible, but that damned whisper cut me off. That’s why I went funny when you started in whispering,” he told me. “Gave me a turn.”

  “What did the voice say then?”

  “ ‘If you did a good enough job, we will pay you a thousand pounds. If you did a good enough job, your father will live. If you failed, or if you speak to the police, he will not. Go downstairs and look at the shop ledger.’ And then the earpiece went dead.”