The Bookman's Tale

by Charlie Lovett

  “You’re welcome,” said Amanda, spooning herself around him.

  “It makes me feel like a real bookseller, to have a cottage in England.”

  “Do all booksellers have cottages in England?” said Amanda.

  “Actually I don’t know any who do,” said Peter, “but it lends a . . . I don’t know, a legitimacy to my putting myself out there as an expert on English books.”

  “Darling, you are an expert on English books,” said Amanda.

  “It’s going to be great, isn’t it?” said Peter.

  “It’ll take some work,” said Amanda, “but yes.”

  “How long do you think the renovations will take?”

  “Well, if British contractors are anything like the ones here, I’d be surprised if it takes less than a year,” said Amanda. “Maybe next year we can go for Christmas.”

  “That sounds nice,” said Peter. Amanda was running her hand up and down his chest and he lay quietly for several minutes, enjoying the slow arousal that came with the promise of lovemaking.

  “These sheets seem awfully soft,” she murmured, as Peter moved his hand up her side and across her breast.

  “I was hoping you’d notice,” said Peter. “They’re a little present for you. They’re eight hundred thread count.”

  Kingham, Tuesday, February 21, 1995

  Peter and Liz had been trapped in the Gardner chapel for nearly an hour and were no closer to discovering any secrets than they had been when the door slammed shut on them. They had examined every memorial on the walls as well as the three stone effigies, but other than tracing the Gardner family tree from the sixteenth century they had accomplished nothing. They had found no sign of Phillip Gardner.

  They were sitting on the cold stone floor, their backs against the immovable door when Peter saw, as he played the flashlight around the chapel’s interior, a discernable pattern in the scratches on parts of the floor.

  “I think there are graves in the floor,” he said, crawling forward and running his fingers along the fine lines.

  “I can’t tell what it says,” said Liz, “the words are almost worn away.”

  “I doubt our friend Phillip has been dead long enough for his stone to be worn so smooth,” said Peter.

  “Here’s another one,” said Liz, and soon they were crisscrossing the chapel on their hands and knees, occasionally making out part of a name or date. They were in front of the chancel steps, Peter holding his flashlight close to a stone trying to read what came after the date 1705, when Liz dropped the lug wrench just outside the light’s beam and the two froze as they heard a hollow clonk, which seemed to echo below them.

  “What was that?” said Peter.

  “Sorry, I dropped the . . .”

  “Do it again,” said Peter.

  Liz picked up the wrench and dropped it onto the stone and again the eerie sound of hollowness hung in the air for a second. “There’s something under there,” said Liz.

  “Or more to the point, there’s nothing under there,” said Peter. “Nothing solid at least. Let me see your wrench.”

  Liz handed him the lug wrench and he tried to fit the flat end into the floor at the edge of the stone, but the joints with the abutting stones were hairline—there was no room for the prying end of a lug wrench. “How are we going to get the stone up?” said Peter.

  “Give me the wrench,” said Liz.

  “It’s no use,” said Peter. “There’s no space for . . .” But before he could finish his sentence, Liz brought the wrench down hard in the center of the stone and a splintering, crashing sound echoed throughout the chapel. The stone shattered and the pieces fell away into darkness.

  “That worked,” said Liz.

  Peter and Liz knelt at the edge of a hole less than two feet square. The darkness seemed to devour the beam of Peter’s flashlight when he shone it into the hole, but he thought he glimpsed a floor far below.

  “I’ll go first,” said Peter.

  “Are you crazy?” said Liz. “You’ve no idea what’s down there.”

  “That’s why I’m going,” said Peter. He was rather surprised at his own courage—it was not a feeling he had experienced since he lost Amanda. He dropped his feet into the hole and gradually lowered the rest of his body, wriggling to squeeze through the narrow opening. He managed to maneuver his arms above his head and found himself holding on to the floor of the chapel with his fingertips, dangling in space. Above him he could still see the concerned face of Liz Sutcliffe illuminated by the glow of the flashlight, but just as his fingers began to ache, her face was replaced with Amanda’s, who blew him a kiss and whispered, “Trust me; let go.”

  Peter let his fingers slip from the stone and felt a rush of cold air as he plunged through the darkness and thudded onto a rough stone floor. He felt a sharp pain in his ankle as his legs buckled beneath him, but after lying in the darkness for a moment and panting, he stood up, feeling relatively undamaged.

  “Are you all right?” said Liz, her voice edged with panic. Peter looked up at the surprisingly small square of light in the ceiling, perhaps ten feet overhead, and saw Liz’s concerned face.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Toss me my bag and the flashlight and I’ll be able to see to help you down.”

  “I’m not going down there,” said Liz. “It’s bad enough being trapped up here. I have a little claustrophobia.”

  “I think it’s a pretty big room,” said Peter. “Let me see the flashlight.” Liz leaned into the hole and dropped the bag and then the flashlight into Peter’s waiting hands. He swung the beam quickly around the chamber in which he now stood. A few feet away stood a heavy oak table. He managed to shove this under the hole and climb atop it.

  “Look,” he said. “Now I can help you down. It’s not any smaller a space than where you are.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” said Liz. “On the other hand, you do have the flashlight.” She sat on the edge of the hole, her feet dangling above Peter’s head, then took a deep breath and slowly lowered herself. Peter grabbed first her feet and then her calves, and then as she released her grip on the world above, he let her body slide through his arms until she was standing safely on the table. She kept her arms wrapped around him for a long minute, and Peter felt her trembling. He hugged her tightly, to comfort her, he thought, but when she returned his embrace with equal pressure, he felt an electricity in his veins. For a second he forgot his quest and wondered if he should kiss her.

  “So how do you plan to get out of here?” said Liz, breaking the embrace and climbing off the table.

  “I’m sure the police will help us out when they come to arrest me for murder,” said Peter, shaking the ridiculous thought of romance out of his mind.

  “What is this place?” said Liz, when they had both climbed off the table. Peter had not looked closely at the room yet, in his hurry to get Liz safely down. Now he moved the flashlight beam slowly across every surface as they stood in the center of the chamber taking it all in. They were in the crypt of the chapel. The ceiling was highest directly overhead where they had entered, elsewhere low arches created a series of nooks. The first few of these into which Peter shone his light were furnished not with altars or tombs but with tools, bottles, tables, and chairs.

  “It looks like some sort of workshop,” said Liz.

  “That’s exactly what it is,” said Peter. “Or what it was.” He crossed to one of the tables and examined a series of corked bottles next to which l
ay a row of ancient-looking pens and quills. In the next alcove was a small hand printing press; beyond that another table with tools carefully laid out on it. Peter recognized a lifting knife among the other tools arrayed before him. “Now why would someone need a printing press, old pens and ink, and a bunch of bookbinding equipment?”

  “Sounds like everything you’d need to forge a sixteenth-century book,” said Liz.

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” said Peter.

  “So you think the Pandosto really is a fake?” said Liz.

  “It’s looking more and more that way,” said Peter, as he made his way through the alcoves that ringed the chamber. One was empty except for some old lumber stacked against the back wall; in the next was an unadorned stone sarcophagus. “Come hold the light for me,” he said. “I think this is someone’s tomb.”

  Liz shone the flashlight on the lid of the sarcophagus but Peter could not see what was carved there without climbing onto the tomb and running his fingers along the letters as he read aloud: “Having made his mark, Phillip Gardner eighteen thirty-two to eighteen seventy-nine, beloved brother, and all his secrets rest here.”

  “Beloved brother?” said Liz.

  “B.B.,” said Peter. “We’ve found him.”

  “What does it mean ‘all his secrets rest here’?” said Liz.

  “We’ve got to look inside,” said Peter.

  “But it’s a tomb. You can’t desecrate a tomb.”

  “I’m not desecrating it,” said Peter. “But more than Phillip Gardner is entombed here, and as long as I’m sitting around waiting to be arrested, I’m going to find out his secrets. Hand me the lug wrench.”

  Peter’s initial attempts to pry the top off the tomb resulted in little more than a few scratches on the stone. He tried banging on the stone slab with the wrench, hoping it might break like the entrance stone to the crypt had done, but this slab was much thicker. After fifteen minutes of straining to no effect, Peter slumped against the wall, panting and sweating.

  “How are we going to get this thing off?” he asked, gasping.

  “I don’t think we are,” said Liz.

  “Don’t you see,” said Peter. “I have to know. If I’m going to rot away in an English prison for a murder I didn’t commit, I at least have to know the whole story of the Pandosto.”

  “You’re not going to prison,” said Liz.

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Peter.

  “Besides,” said Liz, “I thought what you really wanted to know about was a watercolor that looked like . . .”

  “That looked like Amanda,” said Peter softly. He had almost forgotten what had started this whole business. It had been Amanda who had led him here. What would she have done? When he looked up, she was sitting at the table where the bottles of ink and pens were laid out.

  “You can’t solve everything by force, Peter,” she said.

  “I know,” said Peter.

  “You know what?” asked Liz.

  “That I can’t solve everything by force,” said Peter as he watched Amanda fade away.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” said Liz, who was now on her hands and knees with the flashlight, examining the base of Phillip Gardner’s tomb.

  “So what do we use if we don’t use force?” asked Peter.

  “A key,” said Liz.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s something here that looks like a keyhole.”

  “I didn’t see any keys down here,” said Peter.

  “Well, I doubt he’d just leave the key lying around.”

  “Wait a minute, what did the first part of the inscription say again?” asked Peter.

  “ ‘Having made his mark,’ ” said Liz. “What does that mean? What sort of mark? Does he mean the Pandosto?”

  “Having made his mark,” Peter murmured to himself as he ran a finger along the table of bookbinding equipment. On a series of shelves above the table lay row after row of wooden-handled brass tools, like the ones he had used to decorate the binding of Amanda’s At the Back of the North Wind. “I wonder if it could mean a binder’s mark?”

  “What’s that?” said Liz.

  “Bookbinders sometimes have a special mark that they put on all their bindings to identify the work as their own.”

  “So we have to go through all those tools,” said Liz.

  “No,” said Peter. “I’ve just realized it. I’ve seen Gardner’s mark. His copy of Collier’s book, the one that was inscribed to him—it was a rebind. Gardner must have bound it himself.”

  “What was the mark?”

  “Sort of a butterfly shape,” said Peter. “He put it just inside the back cover. Give me the light.”

  It took Peter no more than five minutes to find the butterfly stamp among Gardner’s tools. “Try this,” he said, handing the stamping tool to Liz. He trained the flashlight on the tiny hole in the stone as Liz inserted the tool.

  “It fits,” she said, “but it doesn’t turn.”

  Peter thought about how Hank had taught him to use the brass stamps on a piece of fresh leather. “Press on the handle with the heel of your hand,” he said, “and then rock it back and forth very gently, starting from the right and moving toward the left.”

  “What makes you think that—”

  “Just try it, okay?” Peter interrupted impatiently.

  “Okay, okay,” said Liz. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.” Peter held his breath and watched as Liz’s shoulders tensed while she applied pressure to the stamp. Nothing happened.

  “Now gradually increase the pressure,” said Peter, closing his eyes and remembering the sensation of the leather yielding to the stamp. “Not too hard, though, or you’ll tear the leather.”

  “What do you mean I’ll . . .” But Liz was interrupted by a loud click that echoed through the chamber. Peter opened his eyes and saw that a wide crack had appeared between the stone slab on top of the sarcophagus and the tomb beneath.

  “What was that?” asked Liz.

  “I think you just unlocked Phillip Gardner’s tomb,” said Peter.

  “I’m sure he’s going to be so pleased about that,” said Liz, standing up.

  Peter had already begun to push on the stone top and found that it now slid easily off, so easily that before he could stop it, the slab toppled to the floor where it broke in two with a thundering crash. It took several seconds for the noise to subside and several more for the dust to settle.

  “Wonderful,” said Liz. “Now we’re trapped in a crypt with a dead body we have no way of re-entombing. I’m feeling more comfortable all the time.”

  “There’s no body,” said Peter, shining the flashlight into the tomb.

  “What do you mean there’s no bloody body?” Liz asked, taking a tentative step toward the tomb.

  “There’s no body in here. There’s nothing but a metal box.”

  “A metal box? What is it, his ashes?”

  “Doubtful,” said Peter as he pulled the heavy box toward him. It struck him that the box, scraping loudly across the stone as he pulled it, was about the size and sha
pe of a Shakespeare First Folio. He hoisted it out of the tomb and carried it to the table in the center of the room. There was no lock, and Peter pulled back the hinged top with ease.

  “A bunch of papers?” said Liz, gazing into the box.

  “We’ve got some time before the flashlight batteries die out,” said Peter. “Let’s read, shall we?”

  Atop the pile of papers lay a sealed envelope addressed in a neat slanting script only to “Phillip.” Peter took his lifting knife out of his satchel and slit the envelope open with one smooth slice. He pulled out the contents, unfolded the four sheets of paper, and read aloud. The first page was written in the same script as the outside of the envelope.

  I, Phillip Gardner of Evenlode House, Kingham, here direct that my estate shall pass to the children of my brother Nicholas. I do not include in this bequest the contents of this box, or other items from my collection of rare books and documents, which, wheresoever they may be, I leave in their entirety to my son, born Phillip Gardner, or to his youngest living heir.

  “That must have been the bastard child,” said Liz. “Otherwise why the secret will?”

  “So Sykes was right,” said Peter, perusing the testament again. “And what’s this about ‘wheresoever they may be’?”

  “Could that be because some of them were in Reginald Alderson’s collection?” said Liz.

  “It must be,” said Peter. “I wonder if the son has any living heirs. I can’t imagine John Alderson would be too happy to have the terms of this will enforced.”

  “But how could you prove that Alderson’s documents really belonged to Phillip Gardner?”

  “This might help,” answered Peter, holding up a letter with the words EVENLODE MANOR printed at the top.

  Mr. Gardner,

  I have spent a most revealing evening with my dear friend Miss Evangeline Prickett and her young charge. Imagine my shock at discovering that Miss Isabel has given birth to a child and named it Phillip Gardner. I shall not bore you with the unsavory details of the affair that led to this bastard child—you are well acquainted with them already. However, I imagine that Mrs. Gardner would find the story most enlightening. Should you wish to prevent her from learning the truth about her husband, you will transfer to me your collection of historical and literary documents. I realize that the loss of the entire collection might arouse suspicion, so I think it best if you send them to me one or two at a time over the next few months. In that way you can be said to have lost interest and sold the pieces to finance your considerable construction at Evenlode House.