“Such as?”
“Oh, he was promised a Shakespeare seminar, and some graduate courses, but instead he was given freshman composition sections, rather like a brain surgeon being asked to tidy up the wards, mop up the blood, and empty the pans. When he complained of this outrageous treatment, Haas told him he was lucky to have anything at all, he was lucky not to be on the dole, or selling watches on the street. Andrew called and told me about this gruesome business, and of course I demanded that he tell Haas what he could do with his bloody appointment and come straight home. But that he would not do. I think he felt it was a kind of expiation for his scholarly sin. And…you know I see that this will sound odd, as if Andrew were descending into some hell of paranoia, but he told me that he believed Haas was tormenting him in more underhanded ways as well. His salary cheques would go missing. Little items would vanish from his briefcase, from his room. Someone changed the lock on his office door. One day he came to work and found all his things in the hall. He’d had his office moved without notice. Classes he was meant to meet in one room were mysteriously scheduled for another room on the other side of the campus, and he had to rush to meet them in the heat of the summer. Those terrible New York summers, and he suffered so from the heat. Not used to it, you see, being from here. And his air-conditioning was always breaking down…”
“Did he blame Mickey for that too?” I asked unkindly.
“Yes, I see where you’re going and I confess I thought that as well. Is he running mad? But it was the weight of evidence, you see, I mean the accumulation of horrible details-could he possibly have made them up? Unlikely, in my opinion: poor Andrew wasn’t a fantasist, not in the least. We used to joke that he had no imagination at all, and then there’s what I saw when he returned last August.”
He paused here and drank some of his beer. His eyes looked wet to me, and I fervently wished for him not to break down about poor Andrew. I took on some of my own pint, my third.
“It’s difficult to describe. Manic and frightened at the same time. He had a young woman with him and insisted she had to stay in our house, although there are some perfectly adequate hotels nearby.”
“Carolyn Rolly,” said Crosetti.
“Yes, I believe that was her name. She was helping him in some research…”
“Did he say what the research was?” Paul asked.
“Not really, no. But he said it was the most important find in the whole history of Shakespeare scholarship, and dreadfully hush-hush. As if I would blab. In any case they were out and about. He seemed to have plenty of ready money, renting a car, staying away for days, returning in a mood of exhilaration. One thing he did say, that he was authenticating the antiquity of a manuscript and couldn’t be seen to be doing so. That was the main reason for Miss Rolly tagging along. From what I could gather, they did authenticate it by technical means and then they were off to Warwickshire.”
“Where in Warwickshire, do you know?” I asked.
“Yes, I happened upon some papers Miss Rolly left behind that suggested they had visited Darden Hall. Andrew returned alone, and he seemed much deflated and more frightened. I asked him about Miss Rolly, but he put me off. She was ‘away’ doing research. I didn’t believe him for a moment-I thought perhaps they’d had some sort of falling-out. In any case, as I say, he was a changed man. He insisted on having all the curtains drawn and he would stalk the house at night, holding a poker and shining a torch in dark corners. I begged him to tell me what the problem was, but he said I was better off not knowing.”
Crosetti pressed March on what had become of Rolly. Did he think she had gone back to the States when Bulstrode had? He didn’t know, and that was more or less the end of our interview. After assuring the don that we would have all of Bulstrode’s personal items delivered to him and that Ms. Ping would handle the decedent’s will (and of course avoiding the issue of the lost manuscript), we took our leave.
Back in the car, we had a small disagreement about what to do next. Paul thought that we should continue with our original plan of following Bulstrode’s tracks, which meant going to Warwickshire and visiting Darden Hall. Crosetti objected that Bulstrode did not seem to have found anything there and why did we think we’d do any better than an expert? He was for staying and investigating at March and Bulstrode’s home and looking at these “papers” March had mentioned. I observed that he seemed far more interested in finding Ms. Rolly than in locating the Item. He replied that Rolly was the source, key, and engine of the entire affair. Find Rolly and you had all currently available information about the Item, including in all probability the purloined grille. We tossed this bone back and forth for some minutes, with increasing irritation on my part (for, naturally, I knew it was Miranda who had stolen the grille!) until Brown reminded us that other agents would be cruising these roads and asking the locals whether anyone had seen a Mercedes SEL, of which there were probably not many on the lanes of rural Oxfordshire, and by such means arriving back on our heels.
Paul suggested that Crosetti return to the inn and ask if March would consent to an inspection of these papers; he could stay at one of the perfectly adequate hotels. March was not averse to this plan, and we left Crosetti there with him. I was relieved, for I’d been finding the man ever more annoying. I mentioned this to Paul as Brown drove us away from the pub and he asked me why that was, since Crosetti struck him as mild enough. He’d hardly said a word in the car during the journey north.
“I don’t like him,” I said. “A typical poseur from the outer boroughs. A screenwriter, for God’s sake! Completely untrustworthy. I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I invited him along.”
“You should pay attention to the people who irritate you,” said Paul.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, I think you know,” he said in that irritatingly confident tone he sometimes has, like a voice from the clouds.
“I don’t know. I would have said if I knew, or have you been vouchsafed the power to read minds?”
“Hm. Can you think of another poseur from the outer boroughs, this one an actor rather than a screenwriter? But this one didn’t have a family as happy as Crosetti’s, didn’t have a loving mom, didn’t have a heroic dad-”
“What, you think I’m jealous of him? That I’m like him?”
“-who decided to play it safe and go to law school instead of taking a shot at what he really wanted to do, and he sees a kid with a warm and loving family who has the guts to follow his dreams-”
“That is such horseshit…”
“Not. Plus, you practically accused him of trying to seduce your wife, in fact, you encouraged him to do so. Just before you wrecked the bar in your hotel and put the bartender in the hospital.”
“I did no such thing,” I said spontaneously.
“I know you think you didn’t, but you really did. Have you ever had blackouts like that before?”
“Oh, thank you! I’m sure you have an AA group in your church basement that I’d fit right into.”
“No, I don’t think you’re a drunk, or not yet, although three pints of strong English beer is a lot to drink in the middle of the day.”
“I’m a big guy,” I said, a little lamely, for it was all starting to come back, little fragments of horrid memory. I am not a drinker ordinarily.
The hell with this.
We got to Darden Hall about four, under sodden skies. The surprisingly short autumn day of these latitudes was nearly gone and our headlights illuminated dark drifts of leaves on the long drive up from the road. The place had recently come into the National Trust, on the demise of the final Baron Reith in 1999, and had not yet been renovated for public view. We had called ahead to arrange a conversation with the resident conservator, a Miss Randolph.
The place was the usual crumbling pile familiar to us all from horror films and Masterpiece Theatre anglophiliac fantasias, although the hour and the weather gave it the look more of the former’s sort of prop. It had a
Jacobean core, a couple of Georgian wings, and some Victorian gewgaws despoiling the facade. We chance to meet a workman on a tiny tractor in front of the house and he directed us around to what was once the servants’ entrance. Our knock was answered by a solid fortyish woman of the English Rose type who wore half glasses, a tweed skirt, and two cardigans, wisely in the case of these last, for the room she showed us into was almost cold enough to show breath. A tiny electric fire hummed valiantly, but clearly to little avail. It was the old steward’s office, she explained, the only habitable room in the house, and her headquarters.
She asked what she could do for us and I said, “We’re here to see Count Dracula.” She grinned and replied in an appropriately Masterpiece Theatre-ish accent, “Yes, everyone says that, or else something about the peasants coming for Frankenstein. Too many Gothic novels and films, but I think there’s something in all that nonsense, you know. I think that even then, in the nineteenth century, when it seemed as if the life that produced these houses would go on forever, writers knew there was something wrong with them, that they rested ultimately on the most dreadful suffering, and it bubbled up in the Gothic tale.”
“What sort of suffering is this one built on?”
“Oh, take your pick. The original Lord Dunbarton stole it courtesy of Henry VIII from some Benedictine nuns who ran a charity hospital here. None of that for the baron, of course, and afterward the Dunbartons made their pile in sugar and slaves. That funded the Georgian buildings and afterward they had coal and gas and urban property in Nottingham and Coventry. None of them ever did an honest day’s work in their lives and they lived like emperors. But…”
“What?” Paul asked.
“It’s difficult to explain. Come with me, I’ll show you something.”
We followed her out of the office and down a dim corridor lit by wall sconces holding fifteen-watt bulbs. The chill in that room was coziness itself compared with the damp cold of the corridors, cold as the grave I recall thinking, slipping easily into Gothic mode. We went through a door and she pressed a light switch. I gasped.
“This was the Jacobean dining hall and later the breakfast room. It’s considered the finest example of linenfold walnut paneling in the Midlands, not to mention the carving on the sideboards and the inlaid parquet flooring. Look at the detail! This was done by English craftsmen for thugs who couldn’t tell a dado from sheep dip, so why did they put their souls into this walnut? Love is why, and I honor them for it, which is why I’m in the business of preserving it. Come, there’s more.”
The next room was a ballroom. “Look at the ceiling. Giacomo Quarenghi, circa 1775, Britannia ruling the waves. There she is in her amphibious chariot drawn by dolphins and all the darkies paying homage around the border. The room itself is by Adam. Look at the proportions! The windows! The parquet! No one will ever build a house like this again, ever, even though we have people in this country who could buy any of the Lords Dunbarton with the change in their pockets, and that means that something wonderful has gone out of the world, and I’d love to know why.”
“So would I,” said Paul. “I know the feeling. It’s one I often have in Rome. Corruption and vice of every sort, the ruin of real religion, and yet…what gorgeous stuff they made!”
After that, they chatted animatedly about Rome and aesthetics while I stared up at Britannia and tried to ID the subject peoples. Then we went back to the half-warm office and the business of the day. Paul did the talking, he having already established a relationship, and besides he had the collar-who cannot trust a priest? After he’d finished she said, “So you’ve come all this way because of a miscarriage of justice? You’re following the track of this Bulstrode fellow in the hope of pulling a thread that will lead you to his real killer?”
“You have it,” said Paul. “Do you recall his visit at all?”
“Oh, yes, of course I do. I don’t get many vistors with whom I can discuss anything more than the football and the price of petrol, so I’m afraid I rather seized on them and simply chatted their heads off. As I did with you, shame upon me. Yes, Professor Bulstrode, ex Brasenose, seconded to some university in the States, and he had a young woman with him, Carol Raleigh? Is that right?”
“Close enough. Do you happen to recall what they were looking for?”
The woman considered the question for a moment, staring at the coils of the electric fire. “They said they were researching the family history of the Dunbartons, but there was something else going on, I think. They were exchanging looks, if you follow me, and they were rather short on details. Scholars, I’ve found, are typically expansive on their subjects, and Professor Bulstrode and his assistant were distinctly not. But it was none of my affair after all, he had the proper scholarly credentials, and so I gave them the key to the muniment room and went on with my own affairs. They were up there for the entire day, remarkable really, because the place is a mare’s nest, never really been properly cataloged, and they descended covered in the dust of ages. I asked them if they’d found what they’d been looking for and they said yes, and thanked me and the professor made a contribution to the trust to help with the restoration, a hundred pounds, actually, very generous, and they left.”
“Did they take anything?”
“You mean make off with a document? I shouldn’t think so, but they might have taken rafts of them. I wasn’t looking, and I certainly didn’t search them before they left.”
At that point the telephone rang, and Miss Randolph picked up the heavy antique instrument and listened, and said she had to take this call, it was the builder, and they thanked her and left.
Back in the warmth of the car I asked Paul what he thought.
“My guess,” he replied, “is that they did find something and Rolly ran off with it. She seems to be quite a piece of work.”
“I suppose. Well, brother, what now? We seem to have exhausted our possibilities.”
“Yes, on this line anyway.” He looked at his watch. “Today is shot, obviously. I suggest we return to Oxford, spend the night in a perfectly adequate hotel, pick up Crosetti in the morning, and go over to Aylesbury.”
“What for? What’s in Aylesbury?”
“Springhill House, one of Her Majesty’s prisons. I want to have a talk with Leonard Pascoe, the internationally famous forger of old documents. Mr. Brown, do you think we could arrange to be followed there?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure some wicked person might tip someone off about our destination.”
“Yes, there’s a great deal of wickedness in the world,” said Paul, with such a look of sly satisfaction on his face that I wanted to punch him.
“Oh, and Mr. Brown?” said Paul.
“Sir.”
“Would you try to locate a farm along the way? One that raises geese.”
“Geese,” said the driver. “Yes, sir.”
“What’s going on, Paul?” I asked him.
“Oh, we’re just going to meet Richard Bracegirdle,” he said, and would yield no more information, that smug bastard.
T HE S IXTH C IPHERED L ETTER (F RAGMENT 3)
we to the George & conversed late: Mr W.S. saies as to hym-selfe I have killed a man I must be shriven & where shal I fynde a priest in these tymes. Then saies hee, Dick, now have we sent your two rogues to Hell but Hell hath yet a greater store, the devil hath ’em in barrels lyke haringes, soe when yon Piggott shal heere of this afray he shal send more & yet more til we are o’er-come at last, nay we must strike at the roote & that is my lord Dunbarton. Now we must crye out to greater than wee, for great lords are ne’er toppled but by greater ones. Now I am well with the Montagues & the Montagues are well with the Howards, being both friends of the old religioun & Frances Howard hath the harte of my lord of Rochester, as all the court knoweth & she shal carrie the letter & sware it be true, for true it is & thus shall my lord Dunbarton be disconfited & you saved. What letter is that, sir, saies I. Nay, saies he, I ought to have sayde two letters, the first being the one gave thee b
y the false Verey, that pretended issue of my lord Rochester his hande & the other one that thou shalt write to-night, wherein thou shalt tell all youre tale. And soe I wrote My Lord what you read now & when done hee readeth it & makes markes where I shall change it mayhap but I say nay for tis my letter do not make me one of your creatoures because this be all earnest & no play. He laughs & cries mercie sayinge lad, thou hast the right of it for like some butcher I must poke anie calf I pass be it mine own or no.
Then I ask hym, Sir art certayn this will sauve us or must we doe else & saies he I think twil sauve thee but as for mee that I know not. But why, an you are freyndes with the great as you have sayde & hee answereth mee thus: thynges change ever & the tyde floweth not in my favour. Royal Henry of France lately slain, and by a monk too, turnes royal James’s minde onece again to Papist plots. He appointeth a fanatick Puritan to be Archbishop of Canterbury & his partie presses ever harsher upon us plaiers. I myself am attacked in publick print & none dare rise to my holpe. The power of my friends in the house of Montague & others of worship wanes, theyre houses, formerly secure, are now searched like common dwellinges. I saie: yet still you wrote the playe. Aye, saies he, I did, as a prisoner long hobbled may sport & click heeles when the fetters drop. O lad did you imagine that I thought such a playe could e’er be heard? Nay, but it flowed from mee upon the smale excuse you gave it & would not stop; a grete foolishenesse I know but here it is still-borne & what shal be done with it? It must be burnt, saies I. Yes, burnt it must be, saies he, my paper heretic.
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The Book of Air and Shadows Page 39