The Bookman's Tale

by Charlie Lovett

  Protestations of love gradually crept into Ridgefield’s letters to Amanda Devereaux; her letters to him were concerned mostly with points of bibliography, but she did not rebuff his epistolary advances nor his increasingly frequent invitations to social events. This delicate dance between the aging banker and the brilliant book collector culminated in the spring of 1939. The final letter in the collection, which Peter felt compelled to hide from both Sarah Ridgefield and her daughter, was dated May 2.

  My Dear Mr. Ridgefield,

  I write to respond to your kind proposal of the twenty-fifth, for which I thank you. I have for many years considered myself a spinster and have had no thought of marriage—my books being both husband and children to me. However, as I approach the age after which such positions cannot be recanted, I begin to feel that not only a husband clothed in flesh and blood, but similarly attired children, if it be God’s will, would enrich my life in a way that my books, precious to me though they may be, have never done.

  It is my potential acquisition of the latter that compels me to write you. For years I have ignored the protestation of both family and friends that a woman’s life cannot be complete without children. I fancied myself a “modern girl” above such things. However, in more recent years I have gradually come to agree with a great collecting compatriot who once told me that children were the greatest blessing of his life and that the absence of them in my own would be my great sadness.

  You are not a young man, Mr. Ridgefield, and although you may represent my only opportunity to add a husband to my collection, I could not in good conscience accept your proposal without telling you this—at this late stage of my life, for I have completed four decades as you know, I have a deep yearning for motherhood, which I would expect any husband to honor. At your age, you may not relish the thought of becoming a father, and I would quite understand your feelings in that case. If, however, you are willing to give me a chance at motherhood, I will, with humility and genuine affection, accept your proposal of marriage.

  Yours,

  Amanda Devereaux

  Ridgefield had obviously agreed to the terms of Ms. Devereaux’s acceptance; eleven months later, Sarah Ridgefield had been born. But Peter’s heart ached for Ms. Devereaux’s granddaughter when he read this letter. No matter how much Amanda pretended not to be bothered by the fact that she could not bear children, Peter knew the day would come when she would feel that void in her life that her grandmother had felt. But for Amanda there would be no wealthy banker waiting in the wings to provide her with progeny. There would be only Peter, trying to help her cope with her loss.

  —

  Two weeks after filing the last of the folders containing the Devereaux papers in its archival storage box, Peter Byerly graduated from Ridgefield University.

  “Another year and this will be you,” said Peter, as Amanda found him in the crowd and admired his academic finery. Charlie Ridgefield clapped him on the back and Sarah kissed his cheek. Peter’s parents arrived late and missed the ceremony.

  For three years, Peter had successfully kept his own parents and Amanda’s from coming face-to-face—an effort in which he was abetted by the apathy of his mother and father. The Byerlys had met Amanda twice—once on campus and once when she insisted that Peter take her home for Thanksgiving dinner. On both occasions he had introduced her only as Amanda, and made no mention of her wealthy family.

  Though both the Ridgefields’ mansion and his parents’ farmhouse sat on several acres of undeveloped land, and though they were only eight miles apart, the inhabitants of those homes could not have come from more different worlds. Two hours after his graduation, at a reception given in his honor by Amanda and her parents, those worlds collided.

  Peter’s father, Joseph Byerly, looked stiff and uncomfortable in a pressed suit and ineptly tied tie, which his wife, Doreen, had obviously forced him to wear for the occasion. He lurked in the corner of the patio, within striking distance of the one thing in the world of the Ridgefields that he understood—the bar. His father’s unobtrusive, if increasingly inebriated, presence was far preferable to that of Peter’s mother, whose lime green concoction of a dress looked like something made from the curtains of a double-wide trailer. Doreen Byerly swept through the throng of professors, parents, recent graduates, and Ridgefields as if she were the hostess.

  “That’s my son, Peter,” she would say to anyone who would listen, loud enough to be heard at the end of the drive. “He’s engaged to Amanda Ridgefield, you know. All this will be his someday.”

  After an hour of this, Peter sought refuge in the guest room where Amanda found him. “Is the guest of honor hiding?” she teased, pushing him onto a bed and kissing him hard on the lips.

  “Are you sure you want to marry into that family?” asked Peter, nodding toward the door. He was just imagining his parents living in the guesthouse and frightening the grandchildren when he remembered there would be no grandchildren.

  “I’m willing to take the good with the slightly embarrassing,” said Amanda.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll tell Dad not to bring Mom back here again until the wedding. I’ll tell him as soon as he sobers up,” said Peter, now giggling as Amanda tugged at his belt. “That should be in about nineteen ninety-five.”

  “Parents are supposed to be embarrassing,” said Amanda, sliding a hand into Peter’s pants.

  “You do realize that every socialite in Ridgefield is on the other side of that door,” said Peter.

  “If they only knew,” said Amanda, “that prim and proper Miss Amanda Ridgefield is having her wicked way in the guest room with a college graduate.” When Peter and Amanda slipped back into the party a half hour later, Mr. and Mrs. Byerly had left.

  —

  As it turned out, they would not come back for the wedding. Two months after Peter’s graduation, his father drove his pickup truck, containing his wife and two empty scotch bottles, off I-40 at ninety-three miles an hour. The night after the funeral, as Peter lay in Amanda’s arms on the narrow single bed in his childhood bedroom, he was overcome by the feeling that he was now a child without parents on the verge of becoming a spouse without children. Though his parents had been, for most of his life, either a burden or an embarrassment; though he had resented them for their neglect, at times even hated them, they were nonetheless his parents. As much as he had tried to pretend they were not a part of who he was, he knew he had lost a part of his own being.

  “You never talked about them much,” said Amanda.

  “No.”

  “You can talk to me about anything, you know.”

  “I know that,” said Peter, squeezing Amanda’s arm. “That’s why I love you.”

  “Did you love them?”

  Peter stared at the ceiling for a long time before answering.

  “I wish I knew.”

  Oxfordshire, England, Tuesday, February 21, 1995

  About the time he and Liz were wending their way through Woodstock, past the imposing gates of Blenheim Palace, Peter glanced in the mirror and saw Amanda sitting in the backseat. She winked at him, but when he turned to speak to her, she was gone. On the seat was nothing but Peter’s satchel, containing his future—be it glory or doom.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said Liz, pulling Peter’s attention back to the front seat. “I found out about W. H. Smith. I called Lawrence last night. He’s the speaker I told you about. He’s a great-great-great-nephew, it turns out.”

  “What did you find out?” asked Peter, who had almost forgotten about this line of inquiry.

  “Well, if Shakespeare is part of this mystery, it’s not surprising Smith is involved. He was one of the original anti-Stratfordians.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Peter.

  “He thought Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays,” said Liz. “He wrote a pamphlet in the eighteen fifties, I think, and then a book a little aft
er that.”

  “And this is the same guy who ran the chain of newsagents and was . . . what did you call it, Lord of the Admiralty or something?”

  “Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. in H.M.S. Pinafore,” said Liz with a giggle. “The same man.”

  “Why would Smith think Bacon wrote the plays if he had seen the Pandosto?” said Peter.

  “Did he see it?” asked Liz. “What did the inscription say exactly?”

  Peter reached into the backseat and retrieved his bag. He carefully removed the book from its envelope. He cringed to think to what dangers he had exposed this potential treasure in the past two days. He gently opened the front cover and read the relevant entry in the list of owners. “B. Mayhew for William H. Smith.”

  “So I guess Mayhew sold books to B.B. and W. H. Smith.”

  “Maybe so,” said Peter.

  “It doesn’t exactly say Smith owned it, though, does it?” said Liz.

  “Even if he did,” said Peter, “what if he found it after he was on the record for Bacon?”

  “It could have been embarrassing,” said Liz.

  “Imagine this,” said Peter, warming to his hypothetical tale. “Mayhew gets hold of the Pandosto somehow. The previous name on this list is Robert Harley, who would have owned it in the early eighteenth century. So it’s been hidden away somewhere for a hundred and fifty years or so.

  “Mayhew knows W. H. Smith—he’s a customer—and Mayhew doesn’t want Smith exposed to the embarrassment of having his Bacon theory refuted. So he has a nice folding box made, because he can’t stand not to protect such a treasure. He was a bookseller, after all—he’d want to preserve the Pandosto.”

  “Yes, they’re such a noble breed,” said Liz, smiling.

  “And then he hides the book away in Evenlode House, figuring B.B. won’t realize what it is and it will stay safely undiscovered until after Smith is dead.”

  “Seems a bit risky,” said Liz. “I mean, if B.B. was a document collector, he’d know what he had. And if Mayhew really wanted to hide it, why not destroy it?”

  “He couldn’t bear to do that,” said Peter. “Not if he was a bibliophile. It’s in our blood to preserve such things.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot how upright and moral you all are. But what if Mayhew was a forger and he made this phony Shakespeare relic so he could extort the extremely wealthy W. H. Smith by threatening to disprove his Bacon theory?” asked Liz. “Wouldn’t that make more sense?”

  “But we think B.B. was the most likely forger,” said Peter. “He was the artist.”

  “He was also friends with Mayhew. It sounds to me like you just want a version of the story that lets the Pandosto be genuine.”

  “It would be nice,” Peter admitted.

  “What about this box you were talking about?” said Liz. “Where’s that?”

  “I left it at home,” said Peter. “But it’s definitely nineteenth century, so it had to have been made by one of the last names on the list—or for them, at any rate.”

  “So what are we going to do when we get to Kingham, exactly?” said Liz. “Walk up to Thomas Gardner and say, ‘Hello, are you a murderer, and if so, why?’”

  Peter recalled his last encounter with Thomas Gardner. He recalled, too, the rumors the old sisters in Kingham had spoken of—that Phillip Gardner had been murdered by his wife and buried in the family chapel, perhaps with his mistress.

  “I’d sure like to see the inside of the Gardner chapel,” said Peter, almost to himself.

  “Wait a minute—I think Graham might have seen it,” said Liz.

  “You’re kidding,” said Peter.

  “He said something to me about going through an old chapel in the country when he was doing his research. Said the whole thing made him nervous because the fellow who was showing him around carried a bloody shotgun the whole time.”

  “Thomas Gardner!” said Peter. “It has to be.”

  “Anyhow,” said Liz, “Graham said he spent an hour going over every stone in this chapel with Gardner or whoever it was.”

  “And did he find what he was looking for?” asked Peter.

  “No, he said it was a dead end. But he said he got the feeling this bloke with the shotgun was hiding something.”

  “I’ll bet he was,” said Peter.

  “Well,” said Liz, as she turned toward Chipping Norton, “whatever else we do when we get to Kingham, we’re going to have to get into that chapel.”

  Cambridgeshire, England, 1878

  Personal misfortune was part of Benjamin Mayhew’s stock-in-trade. Though he usually sold books to those whose lives were going well, he most often acquired new stock when someone had lost a career, a fortune, or a life. This morning was no different, he thought, spreading out the Times on his desk and perusing the obituaries. He was surprised to see the name of a certain nobleman whose library he had visited on several occasions. Benjamin had sold him a few books over the years, but not enough, perhaps, to be considered the family’s bookman of choice. Still, he well remembered one visit to the stately home in Cambridgeshire when the eldest son of the family had stood in the library and said, “It shall need to be culled a bit after father is gone.”

  Indeed it was an overstuffed library, with books so heaped upon books that few could be either found when needed or appreciated as things of beauty when not. Benjamin was on the next train out of King’s Cross. The son, whose remarks about the library Benjamin had recalled, recognized immediately the purpose of his visit.

  “I’m afraid you’re too late,” he said.

  “So I understand,” said Benjamin with sympathy. “I shall miss my friendship with your father.”

  “You and father were never friends,” said the son flatly. “And I meant that you are too late for the books. Father let me sell off nearly half the library three months ago.” Benjamin winced internally at this news, angry that some other bookseller had beat him to what was doubtless a treasure trove. “You can have a look at the Shakespeare folios if you like, though. Father insisted we keep them until he died, but I’ll be glad to get rid of them.”

  Benjamin remembered the deceased gentleman’s attitude toward his Shakespeare folios. Family legend, he said, described them as a Second and Fourth Folio, respectively. But he, like his father, refused to allow them to be removed from the shelf, or even touched. They were a revered family treasure, a precious relic of past glories off-limits to present generations. If they were as the old man had described them, Benjamin could almost certainly sell them to one of his wealthy American clients with a single telegram. He followed the son into the significantly pared-down library.

  “I shall expect a high price,” said the son. “Have a look and I’ll be back in half an hour. I’ve more important things to attend to than old books. They’re on the bottom shelf, under the Gainsborough.” He turned and left Benjamin alone.

  With trembling hands, Benjamin gently pulled from the shelf one of the tightly wedged folios bearing the name W. SHAKESPEARE on the spine. It thrilled him to think that no other hands had touched this book for at least a generation. The binding was in remarkable condition, and Benjamin suspected it was an early eighteenth-century rebind. He opened the book carefully to its center and stared dumbfounded at the pages. He didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry. They were completely blank.

  He flipped through the pages to the back of the book, without finding a single line of type. Turning to the front of the volume, he discovered that it did have the title page of the Second Folio edition of Shakespeare’s works, published in 1632. The works themselves, however, were missing. Following the title page there were eight pages comprising part of the third act of Othello. The rest of the volume was nothing but blank paper. No wonder the old man’s father hadn’t wanted anyone to touch the precious folios. Benjamin had seen this binding trick before used to make a pamphlet or other slim piece
look more like a complete book. He couldn’t believe that the lord of this manor had been so hoodwinked by his own father. He laid the book to one side and opened the second volume, the one that purported to be a Fourth Folio of 1685. Again the title page was correct, and as Benjamin fanned out the pages, he saw that they all contained type. Perhaps the day wouldn’t be a total loss. But as he began to carefully page through the volume, he discovered several plays were missing. Without Hamlet, King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and A Winter’s Tale a Fourth Folio was little more than a curiosity. Benjamin saw no point in doing anything but laughing, though he tried to keep as quiet as he could out of respect for the mourners.

  He was just about to replace the folios when he noticed, far in the back of the shelf, a slim volume that had apparently been pressed between them. Judging from the way the back half of the binding was compressed, Benjamin guessed that the book had been there at least as long as the ban on moving the folios had been in place—possibly longer. This binding, worn and battered, looked like it could date from the seventeenth century, or even earlier. He gingerly opened the cover to see if it might contain anything that would make his trip worthwhile.

  Benjamin knew the works of Robert Greene well—he had sold many of Greene’s pamphlets to customers in Britain and America, but he had never seen a copy of this, the first printing of the romance Pandosto. It was not the book itself, however, but the marginalia that caught Benjamin’s eye. It did not take him long to deduce exactly what he held in his hand. At a lecture given by his friend William Henry Smith, putting forth Smith’s theory of Francis Bacon as the author of Shakespeare’s plays, Benjamin had heard Smith say, “If anyone can present to me a single piece of contemporary evidence that links William Shakespeare of Stratford to the plays published under that name, I shall recant my position entirely.” But afterward, as the two men were walking to Smith’s club, he had confided in Benjamin, “It would be quite embarrassing, were it ever to happen.”