The Bookman's Tale

by Charlie Lovett

  In the case of the “Oath,” he had established a provenance by planting a page with a hymn printed on it at the Argosy Bookstore in New York City. He wrote the title “Oath of a Freeman” on the hymn, then returned to buy it. That gave him a receipt from a reputable bookseller.

  He then set to work to forge the “Oath” on a piece of seventeenth-century paper he had stolen from a rare book. He wrote out the text, copying a typeface of the period, then had his lettering made into a zinc plate that he used to print the “Oath.” He used a seventeenth-century recipe to mix his ink, and added to it carbon that he had captured in a glass chimney while burning a piece of paper from the same period. This gave him an ink that would pass all tests, including carbon dating.

  It was a brilliant job, Peter had to admit, and it fooled a lot of people. The “Oath” was finally revealed as a fake by a new technique measuring the migration of ions in ink over time, but Hofmann had come very close to pulling off the greatest forgery ever. Peter wondered if there was someone out there in rare-book history who had achieved what Hofmann almost did—if there were forgeries sitting on the shelves of the Devereaux Room that were so perfect they would never be detected.

  —

  Peter and Amanda lay entwined on the floor of the Devereux Room on the quietest Saturday night of the year. Graduation had been the previous Sunday and summer school didn’t start for another week.

  “I have a graduation present for you,” said Amanda.

  “I’m only a junior,” said Peter. “I didn’t graduate.”

  “Well, it’s a present and it comes right after graduation, so what else am I going to call it?”

  “What is it?” Peter asked.

  “It’s in the pocket of my jeans,” said Amanda.

  “But your jeans are all the way across the room.”

  “Whose fault is that?” said Amanda.

  “Okay, okay,” said Peter. He crawled across the room to where he had pulled off Amanda’s pants just as they had stumbled in the door. Final exams and graduation festivities had kept them away from the Devereaux Room for two weeks, and they had been more than a little impatient. “There’s nothing here but your car keys,” said Peter.

  “Those are your car keys.”

  “I don’t have a car, how can they be my car keys?”

  “You do have a car,” said Amanda. “It’s your nongraduation present.”

  “You bought me a car?” Peter had spent the first three years of his college life walking the streets of Ridgefield. On those rare occasions when he did go home, he had the choice of asking someone for a ride or calling his parents and hoping one of them would actually show up sober.

  “Well, it’s not like I got you a Porsche or anything. It’s a six-year-old Volvo station wagon, but I thought it would be good for hauling books around. You said you wanted to spend the summer going around to bookstores—well, now you can.”

  Peter crossed the room, Amanda’s pants in one hand, the car keys in the other. Her nakedness nearly distracted him from the question he had been burning to ask since he first found out she was a Ridgefield. He had told himself over and over that the answer didn’t matter, that his love for Amanda had nothing to do with her bank account, but still, he was curious. More than curious.

  “So do you have, like, a gazillion dollars?”

  “Not exactly,” said Amanda, welcoming him back into her arms. “I have a trust fund that I’ll get when I turn twenty-one and I have an allowance. It’s a good allowance for a college student, especially since I don’t eat out all that much or buy a bunch of junk—but I still had to save up most of this year to get you the car.”

  “You are the sweetest,” he said, kissing her shoulder. “I didn’t get you anything.”

  “Maybe you can take me for a drive sometime,” said Amanda, running her hand down his chest. Her hand traveled slowly lower and lower, and Peter knew what she was up to, but he wasn’t quite ready to let the subject drop and return to lovemaking.

  “This trust fund,” he said, “does it mean you’ll be . . . I don’t know, rich?”

  “Why, are you going to leave me if I only have five million?”

  “No, it’s just, I know you come from a rich family and all . . . ,” said Peter, his words trailing off.

  “Peter, seriously,” said Amanda, sitting up and crossing her arms over her breasts. “You’re the only guy I never thought was after me for my money, and now you want to know how rich I am?”

  “It’s not that at all. I don’t even care about the money—I mean, not exactly.”

  “ ‘Not exactly?’ ”

  “It’s just that this career plan of mine—becoming an antiquarian bookseller—it’s not exactly a get-rich-quick scheme. And I want to be able to support you, but you’re used to certain things and, well, I don’t want you to feel like you’re living in squalor.”

  “Will you be there?” said Amanda, softening.

  “Always,” whispered Peter.

  “Then it will never be squalor. You’re the only thing I’m used to that I couldn’t give up.” And she leaned over and kissed him for a long minute, her breasts grazing his chest. “Besides, I’ll be working, too—until we’re ready for kids, at least.”

  Peter shivered. It was the closest they had ever come to seriously discussing marriage and family. Peter assumed Amanda wanted to get married, but he was still saving money for a ring so he hadn’t officially asked her. As for children, he knew she loved them and he relished the thought that he might be able to succeed where his own parents had failed. Amanda’s tongue on his nipple brought him back to the present.

  “Now,” she whispered, her tongue sliding down his chest, “let’s talk about the things I can’t live without.”

  London, 1875

  The first few times Phillip Gardner met the young woman who referred to herself only as Isabel, the two merely walked in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. She had told him of how she came to Europe for a grand tour, chaperoned by her former governess, Miss Prickett. Isabel had been so captivated by London and its vibrant world of art and theater that she had abandoned the planned tour and insisted that she and Miss Prickett take a flat in Chelsea. Miss Prickett had argued that Paris, Florence, Rome, Vienna, and Berlin had their fair share of art as well, but Isabel had been adamant—London was the city for her. She had already met the Rossettis, who lived a few blocks away in Cheyne Walk, and had, through their acquaintance, begun to circulate among the painters, poets, and actors of the day.

  “Do you know,” said Isabel as they strolled the banks of the Serpentine, “the other day I walked up to the home of Mr. Leighton, knocked on the door, and was admitted to his studio merely on the strength of being a visiting American interested in art?”

  “Remarkable,” said Phillip, who had found that one-word responses to Isabel’s rambling narratives were enough to prod her into further anecdotes and helped divert the conversation from the twin topics of his own history and his growing desire for her. The first he had no wish to reveal to her, including, as it did, the fact of his marriage; the second he hoped might be reciprocated in time. Phillip had also visited Leighton’s studio in Kensington, to lobby the great painter and associate of the Royal Academy for admission into that august body. Leighton had been kind, but unimpressed by Phillip’s portfolio.

  “And last week I saw Ellen Terry as Portia in The Merchant of Venice. I sent her a note backstage during the interval and she invited me around to her dressing room after the performance. We spoke for twenty minutes about Shakespeare and Shylock and Henry Irving. Twenty minutes while the luminaries of London waited for her. Can you imagine? And she didn’t even know who I am.”

  “And who are you?” asked Phillip, always quick to detect any hint of Isabel’s true identity. She was curiously silent about any part of
her life prior to her arrival on English shores. Whenever Phillip asked her about her family, she changed the subject to poetry or sculpture or pointed out some sight that was far more mundane than she made it seem. She must be from a wealthy family, thought Phillip, or else she could not have undertaken a grand tour of Europe; and she must have had some education, or else she could not discourse on art and literature as she did.

  “I’m a young lady who’s quite worn out with walking, thank you, sir,” said Isabel. “Shall we turn toward Chelsea?” Phillip flagged down a cab just outside the park and they were soon rattling toward Isabel’s lodgings in Wellington Square. In the open air of Hyde Park, he had not been as overcome by her scent as he was here in the cab. As the driver turned onto King’s Road, she was thrown up against him for a moment, and he thought he might swoon from the combination of her aroma and the pressing of her soft body against his.

  In the quiet of Wellington Square, Phillip told the cabby to wait while he showed Isabel to her door. He did not care for the way the driver winked at him when he said this.

  “Miss Pricket does not approve of my walking in the park alone,” said Isabel, as they stood on the steps of the elegant white row house with its wrought iron railings.

  “But you were not alone,” said Phillip.

  “She would approve of that even less, I daresay.” Isabel nodded obliquely to a window above where the drapes were pulled back ever so slightly. “No doubt she is watching us even now,” she said. “Who knows what she writes in her letters to Mother.”

  “Our relationship may be somewhat unconventional, but surely it is completely innocent,” said Phillip, wishing it were anything but.

  Isabel leaned forward as if to look into the gated garden at the center of the square. With her head parallel to Phillip’s, but her eyes fixed in the distance, she whispered. “Miss Prickett is taking a day off next Thursday to visit her second cousin in Brixton. I shall not be feeling well, so I shall remain at home. Perhaps you would care to call on me.”

  Before Phillip could respond, Isabel had whirled around and was at the top of the stairs, opening the heavy door and disappearing into the house. The intent of her words could not have been clearer, and the reaction they called forth was so instant and powerful that he staggered back to the cab and demanded immediate transport to Covent Garden where he might seek relief.

  Cornwall, Western England, Tuesday, February 21, 1995

  Peter walked across the sodden ground toward Graham Sykes’s cottage where he was surprised to find the front door unlocked, especially after Sykes’s reluctance to let him in the night before. The fire had died, and the sitting room was nearly as cold as the barn had been. Peter stood listening for a moment but heard nothing.

  “Mr. Sykes,” he called gently, and then he repeated the name more loudly, but no answer came. Either Sykes was sound asleep or he had left. To the left of the fireplace was the doorway through which Sykes had disappeared to make tea the night before. In place of a door hung a piece of pale blue cloth spattered with paint. Pushing the fabric aside, he found himself in what could only have been Sykes’s study.

  One wall was lined with rough pine bookcases; on the others hung Victorian watercolors and prints—mostly landscapes, but also the occasional portrait or religious scene. Opposite the doorway was a wide farm table, apparently used as a desk, with a computer printer on one side of it. Everywhere there were papers. Stacks of papers on the floor, papers on the desk, papers cascading down bookshelves, papers on the windowsill. For a moment, Peter thought that Sykes must be a far less organized scholar than he had imagined. It wasn’t until the fact registered that every painting and print on the wall was askew on its hook that Peter began to suspect something was wrong.

  His stomach began to churn and he felt the sweat forming on his forehead in spite of the chill in the room. Books had been pulled from their shelves and lay facedown on the floor, spines broken. A filing cabinet next to the table had all its drawers pulled open and manila file folders and their contents were strewn across the room. A lamp lay on its side on the table, its bulb shattered. Graham Sykes’s study had been ransacked, and judging by the tea that still dripped from the edge of the table, it had happened recently. There was little hope now of finding any evidence of Sykes’s scholarship on B.B. Even if whoever had done this had left such papers behind, it would take hours to sort through the mess in the study. Peter drew a sleeve across his sweaty brow and then saw something that made his hopes sink further. In the center of the table, next to the printer, was a neat square of clean wood framed by an accumulation of dust. Someone had stolen Graham Sykes’s computer.

  Peter felt certain that whoever had done this had come to Sykes for the same information he sought. There would be no papers here about B.B., about whether he was a forger, because Thomas Gardner or Julia Alderson or someone whose identity Peter had yet to discover had taken those papers away. And what reason was there to cover up the trail of B.B. if the Pandosto were genuine?

  Across the room from the bookcases was another crudely curtained doorway—Peter assumed it led to the kitchen. Though he had completely lost his appetite, he thought a glass of water might calm his nerves, especially if he used it to wash down one of his anxiety pills. He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into a tiny kitchen, with room just for a stove and a sink. A single window sunk through a thick stone wall let in barely enough of the gloomy morning light for Peter to see, sprawled across the floor, the body of Graham Sykes.

  At first he did not comprehend the scene. All he could think was how uncomfortable Sykes must be sleeping on a stone floor, with one arm bent behind his back. As Peter’s eyes adjusted to the light, however, the grim truth struck him. Sykes’s skin was ashen, his eyes were open and unmoving, and a dark pool of blood spread across the floor. A neat red line was carved across the front of Sykes’s neck. And in the sink, to which Peter now turned to be sick, lay a bone-handled carving knife, covered in blood.

  Peter heaved violently but produced only a sour taste of bile. He pulled his wallet from his pocket and yanked out a small envelope in which he always kept several pills. He feared the present situation was beyond medicating but shoved two of the tablets in his mouth anyway, not bothering with water but chewing them to a bitter powder. When he stepped back into the study, his foot slid on the floor and he looked to see that he was now tracking blood through the house.

  He staggered across the study and through the sitting room, not bothering to close the cottage door behind him as he lurched into the cold, wet air of morning. He stopped for a moment, drawing deep breaths in an effort to stop his head from spinning. As soon as he felt slightly steadier, he began running across the field, skidding on the wet grass. He pulled his keys from his pocket, fumbling to get them into the car’s lock. He had started the engine and was backing up, trying to point the nose of the Vauxhall toward the menacing slope of the lane that he had traveled down the evening before, when he realized he had left his satchel in Sykes’s study.

  Peter sat for several minutes in the idling car, willing his medication to take effect, turning off the engine only when he felt slightly less irrational, though no less ill. No matter what the consequences, he knew he had to retrieve the Pandosto. The killer was certainly gone by now, and the police were unlikely to arrive for many hours. Who knew, it could be days before someone else discovered Sykes’s body. Peter’s fingerprints were already all over the house, his footprints already in the garden and the field, his tire tracks already in the lane. Another trip back to the house would not give the forensic investigators anything they didn’t already have. Peter pulled himself out of the car and trudged slowly back toward the house. The satchel was just where he had left it, on the floor of the study. Just as he was picking it up, he noticed something on the floor that he had not seen before—the business card he had give
n to John Alderson, with the same torn corner, but now speckled with the blood of Graham Sykes. Here, surely, was proof that Julia Alderson had been involved in the murder.

  Peter’s first effort to navigate the steep, muddy lane ended with the Vauxhall sliding back to where he had started, but the second time he gunned the engine and managed to make it to the top, wheels spinning and mud spewing until he finally gained traction. He was halfway to Exeter, when it suddenly occurred to him that the killer had not found what he was looking for. Thomas and Julia may have succeeded in silencing Graham Sykes, and they may have stolen his computer, but there was still an extant copy of his manuscript. Sykes had posted it to Liz Sutcliffe, and Peter realized that she was now in danger of meeting the same fate as Sykes. At the next service area he screeched to a halt next to a phone box and leapt out of his car to call Liz.

  The answering machine at Bloomsbury Art Publishers informed Peter that the office was open from nine until four on weekdays. Peter’s watch read 10:15. He tried the number again and got the same message. Liz Sutcliffe’s home phone had no answering machine—it just rang and rang. Could Thomas and Julia have made it to London already? Peter had assumed that the sound he heard that morning had been the murderers making their escape, but what if Sykes had been killed late the night before, and Thomas and Julia had headed straight to London in search of the B.B. manuscript? If all were well in London, wouldn’t someone answer the phone at Liz’s office? Should he call the police? If he did so, he would have to explain that Liz was in danger without revealing himself as the prime suspect in the Sykes murder. As the panic rose within him, Peter slammed down the phone and ran back to his car. Two minutes later, he was racing down the motorway at eighty miles an hour.