by James Runcie
Sidney returned to see his old friend Quentin Torrens. The antiquarian bookseller was in the middle of lighting a pipe that had been hand-carved in Ethiopia by a gnostic sect. ‘What was this fake cathedral agent like?’ he asked.
‘The man was very well tailored, I must say. His dinner suit had silk lapels and he wore rather too much cologne – more than any man would normally do, come to think of it. It was strange, but he knew his stuff. For example, when looking at the Bury Bible from the twelfth century – the first book in the collection that names its artist, Master Hugh – he remembered that the parchment used came from Scotland rather than East Anglia. But, at the same time, he didn’t seem to know much about the broader English culture. He pronounced Caius College as “Kai-ous”, rather than “Keys”, which was unusual for a member of the establishment.’
‘Could he have been Italian?’ Quentin suggested.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘There is a renowned book thief called Luca Simeone,’ Torrens continued. The police have nearly caught him on a number of occasions, but he’s always managed to give them the slip. His mother is English aristocracy, so he knows how to fit in. His father is one of those dubious Italian counts from around Verona. Simeone is more of a Renaissance specialist, but I wouldn’t put it past him . . .’
‘Why would he want to take the gospel book?’
‘For pleasure, for money or, perhaps, to return it to what he considers to be its rightful place.’
‘Which is?’
‘The Vatican Library in Rome; amongst Pope Gregory the Great’s possessions. You know what these people think: that the book was given to the English as an act of faith and trust. We broke that trust when Henry VIII severed our ties with Rome. As well as raising cash, the theft could be, in part, a punishment for the foundation of the Church of England, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the persecution of Catholics and the fact that we no longer recognise the Pope.’
‘Seems a bit extreme. Although I would think that the demand for cash is paramount,’ said Sidney.
‘But the ecclesiastical politics provide moral justification.’
‘I didn’t know thieves were so scrupulous.’
‘If they are anything like Luca Simeone, then they are. It will all have been planned very carefully. The secretary at Canterbury was clearly in on it; and he must have had someone at the college too. What about the chaplain? Do you think he could have taken a bribe?’
‘Julian Wells? I very much doubt it,’ said Sidney.
‘It’s amazing how the man fooled you all. In plain view.’
‘Even the scientists were taken in.’
‘Perhaps it only goes to show how gullible intellectuals can be,’ said Quentin. ‘They may not believe in God, but they trust a man who says he comes from Canterbury without there being any empirical evidence.’
‘Where do you think the manuscript could be?’ Sidney asked.
‘If Luca Simeone is behind the ransom demand, he’s probably still in England, unless he’s decided to take the book to the Vatican. But if he did that, then he wouldn’t get the money.’
‘I don’t know if he’ll get it anyway,’ said Sidney.
‘You mean the college won’t pay up?’
‘They don’t intend to.’
‘Then I wonder how long they’ll hold their nerve. The stakes are high enough already, Sidney. I just hope they realise who they might be dealing with.’
‘Well, if they don’t, then we’ll just have to tell them, won’t we, Quentin?’
Back at Corpus, the Master was slow to take in the latest development, embarrassed that so many intelligent men had been duped, especially now that he found himself in the presence of Inspector Keating. ‘Do you mean to say that we have been visited by an impostor?’
‘Exactly that.’
‘But I lent him my Illustrated History of the Coptic Church! The man was so convincing I can hardly believe it.’
‘And was he ever alone in the Lodge?’ Sidney asked.
‘Only for a minute or two.’
‘Enough time to take the key?’
‘It must have been when I went to fetch the book from the living room.’
‘Was your guest in the study?’
‘Our guest,’ the Master insisted. ‘He was.’
‘And is that where you keep the keys to the library?’
‘It is. But they were never missing.’ He walked over to the sideboard and picked them off the rack. ‘I still have them.’
‘Are you sure those are the right keys?’ Geordie asked.
‘I think so. I haven’t checked them in the lock. Are you implying the thief might have swapped them over when I was out of the room?’
‘It’s been done before,’ said Geordie. ‘He probably had some help from inside too; perhaps your cleaner or one of the kitchen staff. We’ll make some enquiries. You do hire temporary staff, Master?’
‘All the time. They come highly recommended.’
‘Yes,’ said Geordie. ‘I bet they do.’
Sir Cecil Kendall’s funeral took place in Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, a church where some thirteen years previously Sidney had stopped Amanda marrying a bigamist. Then the priest had asked the family to be careful with the confetti in order to spare the feelings of those who were due to attend a memorial service the next day. Now, the situation was reversed.
There were some two hundred people in attendance; one of the few advantages of Sir Cecil dying at the comparatively young age of seventy-four meant that most of his friends and colleagues were still alive. The last autumn flowers (November roses, winter chrysanthemums) were bulked out with ivy and other assorted greenery in expansive decorations throughout the church, but the atmosphere was uneasy, caught between mourning and thanksgiving.
Because it was such an establishment ‘do’, Sidney took great pains over his appearance, making sure that his funeral Oxfords had a proper ‘army polish’, remembering his pastoral director’s other great dictum: ‘Always clean your shoes before a funeral because the family will certainly have polished theirs.’
He preached on the theme of love, duty and a life well lived. Sir Cecil Kendall had been determined to pack as much into his time on earth as possible. He was a straight-backed man with what might be called ‘old-fashioned values’, believing in manners, decency and respect. He was slow to judgement and quick to praise. Despite his achievements he remained modest, hoping that, like great cricketers, when you returned to the pavilion after your innings people should not be able to tell from your demeanour whether you had scored a duck or a hundred.
Sidney ended with Cardinal Newman’s great prayer for God’s blessing: ‘May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest and peace at the last.’
He then told the congregation that Sir Cecil had asked him, on his last visit, what he thought ‘a safe lodging was’. When Sidney had paused for thought, the dying man had said simply: ‘I think it’s probably a rather good B&B.’
Amanda had asked if Hildegard could sing. Her father had enjoyed the St Matthew Passion and he had specifically requested a reprise of ‘Aus Liebe’ when planning the order of service before his death. As a result, Rolfe arrived with two oboe da caccia players and accompanied the choir for the ‘Pie Jesu’ from Fauré’s Requiem.
Sidney tried not to mind.
They held the wake in Chester Row. Amanda soon tired at the relentless meeting and greeting, the loud concerns (‘Poor you’), the quiet solicitations (‘If there’s anything I can do . . .’) and even the suggestive invitations (‘We really should have dinner together. Just the two of us. It would help take your mind off things. I know this little place . . .’).
She kept her bright face on for as long as possible but collapsed onto the sofa with a stiff whisky as soon as the last of the guests had gone.
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‘In the past when people lost their parents I tried to be as sympathetic as I could, but I knew nothing. All my sympathy was superficial.’
‘We cannot know what we don’t know.’
‘We can make a better effort, Sidney. Your sister told me that Daddy was proud of me, but I didn’t really believe her because he never told me himself. I always thought I was a disappointment. I wanted to impress him: with money, achievement, property, even my career. And I didn’t manage any of those things. What did you talk about when you saw him near the end?’
‘We spoke mainly about you. He told me about your godfather bailing you out. You should have said, Amanda. I was worried about you.’
‘I was too embarrassed. It would only prove your theory that I’m spoilt.’
‘I don’t think that.’
‘You don’t really approve of money, though, do you, Sidney?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps I’m just jealous.’
‘There’s no need to be. The rich do have their problems.’
‘It’s just that poverty isn’t one of them, and, for the poor, that’s all that matters. But let’s not spoil the day. Wealth is a relative term. Compared to most of the world’s population I’m rich too. Any revolutionary coming into this room wouldn’t be able to tell us apart. We’d both be rounded up and shot.’
‘Is this your normal funeral chitchat, Sidney?’
‘I think it’s because I’m with you. I can be myself.’
‘You preached a good sermon. I’m so glad we asked you. It was Daddy’s idea. I think he knew you’d smooth over his faults. You were very kind.’
‘The occasion does rather demand it.’
‘I know. But my father was wrong about so much: how Britain should never have come off the gold standard; how we would have won the war without the Americans. Goodness, he was even anti-Semitic when he could be sure of the company. But none of his mistakes ever seemed to trouble him, perhaps because my mother never contradicted him. She just wanted everything to be “lovely”.’
‘Or nothing was ever as bad as the death of your brother?’
‘Yes, “the thing we never spoke about”. Daddy wouldn’t countenance it. So they’ve been living in some kind of afterlife since 1944 when everything in this house came to a halt. Nothing mattered: not my job, my marriage, my life. I just had to be the dutiful daughter.’
‘And you’ve done that. Now you can stop.’
‘And find myself again. Not that there’s anything left to find any more. I think I’m lost, Sidney. My life is as mislaid as your gospel book. Have you had any joy in finding it?’
‘Let’s not talk about that now.’
‘I don’t know. I rather miss your investigations.’
‘Not when you are the subject of them.’
‘I think book thievery is beyond me. Will you show me the scene of the crime?’
‘You can come to Corpus any time you like.’
‘We can have lunch, like the old days. Take in the Fitzwilliam . . .’
‘We were so young. Now look at us.’
‘You’ve done well, Sidney. You’re so lucky. I never did have good judgement. With Hildegard you knew straight away, didn’t you?’
‘No. It took me nearly seven years to make up my mind. And I still don’t really understand her.’
‘She likes an air of mystery.’
‘I wish she wouldn’t. Sometimes I don’t know what’s going on at all. I can’t read her, Amanda. I never know what she really thinks.’
‘You’re not worried about her friend Rolfe, are you?’
‘I try not to be.’
‘Because that would be double standards.’
‘I don’t know. I have a clear conscience.’
‘So you are worried?’
‘Not so much about him or whatever they do or say; but the fact that she seems to need him. He can offer something I cannot.’
‘And has she told you what it is?’
‘“Time”, she says, although I think it’s more than that. The fact that he’s German must help. And music is very much a part of it and I can’t do anything about that. I can’t play any kind of instrument and it’s too late to start now.’
‘I presume you don’t like talking to her about it?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Isn’t it strange,’ said Amanda, ‘that you should be so curious about the lives of other people and yet so reluctant to get to grips with your own?’
By the time Sidney was next in Corpus a third ransom demand had been made.
Cut from the manuscript was an illustration of the Last Supper and a warning: ‘It’s autumn. The leaves disappear. This is your last chance before I destroy the gospel book page by page.’
‘My God,’ said the librarian. ‘This is desecration.’
‘We still can’t pay,’ said the Master.
‘We have to.’ Ralph Mumford spoke with a desperation that suggested he might kill anyone who disagreed with him. ‘Otherwise we will lose the entire manuscript.’
Enclosed with the demand was the key to a locker in the London Library. Inside, when they left the money, they would find a shelf mark telling them where the gospel book was waiting.
‘It must be a library member,’ said Sidney. ‘I wonder how many people belong both to the University and the London Libraries and have a ticket to the Reading Room in the British Library?’
‘It would take too long to correlate.’
‘The London Library is the smallest. There can only be three or four thousand members. We could, perhaps, get your friend Quentin Torrens to go through the list?’
‘But if it is Luca Simeone he is unlikely to be using his real name,’ said the Master.
‘And we can’t even be sure it’s him,’ Ralph continued. ‘Why would a bibliophile want money rather than the book? Any true lover of the manuscript would want to keep it. I don’t think it’s him.’
‘But who else can it be?’ Sidney asked.
‘We don’t have any time to worry about who is responsible,’ said Ralph. ‘The important thing is to get the book back. Then we can worry about the finances and who might have done it.’
‘It’s all very well for you to say that,’ said the Master. ‘The insurance company is creating one hell of a stink. They are accusing us of carelessness and threatening not to pay up.’
‘That is all the more reason to get the book back safely. Then we can get the police to recover the money.’
‘And how easy do you imagine that’s going to be?’ Sidney asked. ‘Don’t you think we should ask Geordie to keep watch on the lockers at the London Library and make our move when the thief does?’
‘But if he makes a mistake, everything is ruined,’ said Ralph.
‘The book, our endowment and our reputation,’ the Master agreed. ‘All in one crime. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
After a long consultation about how much to involve the police, it was agreed not to tell them anything and simply pay the ransom. However, there still remained the question of how much they could trust the thief to hand the book back safely after the money had been collected.
The cash was to be left as the London Library closed and no one was to remain in the building. The thief presumably planned to stay on after hours and then make his escape.
Sidney offered to spend three or four hours with Ralph on the lookout, but when they opened the locker to leave the money they found a further note. ‘No witnesses. I can see you watching.’
‘Where is he?’ Ralph asked.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps we should do what he says?’
They heard a noise, footsteps receding on the stairs, a crack, and the smell of burning. A fire was starting outside the Reading Room.
‘My God, what the hell is he doing?’ Ralph shouted. ‘We have to put it out.’
He ran with Sidney to get extinguishers and then, when they realised the fire was out of control, they telephoned for assistance. An incen
diary device had been left behind the enquiry desk, conveniently placed to enable the flames to take advantage of the draught up the stairs, the dry paper of books waiting to be collected, the soft leather chairs and the oak library tables that might just as well have been ready-chopped for the blaze.
It was twenty minutes before the fire brigade arrived. By that time, the flames had reached the Reading Room. It took six men to get the main hose going and, for a while, it looked as though the London Library was undergoing its second Blitz.
‘My God,’ said Ralph, ‘how could anyone who loves books do this?’
Any chance of keeping tabs on the suspect was lost in the pursuit of a greater good: putting out the fire.
Once the conflagration had been quelled, Ralph and Sidney returned to the lockers, where they found another note: ‘That’s better.’
The money was gone but The Gospel Book of St Augustine had been returned. As the firemen sorted through the rubble and a distraught librarian tried to feel grateful that the situation had not been worse, they went up the back stairs to the fifth floor, across a vertiginous walkway, following an eccentric cataloguing system (Eccles. Hist. Tithes, Unitarianism, Vulgate, Wales, Wiclif, Zephania, Zoroaster) to find the stolen book shelved in Religion, Quarto, next to The Missal of St Augustine’s Canterbury, with excerpts from the antiphonary and lectionary of the same monastery, from a manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
A few days later, Quentin Torrens telephoned to say that he had an intriguing possibility. An Italian book dealer had asked if he might be interested in acquiring a series of Renaissance volumes that he had picked up ‘on his travels’. On checking the list of prospective volumes, he was pretty sure that they had been stolen from the Bodleian Library in Oxford and that there was a high chance the seller was none other than Luca Simeone in one of his guises. Perhaps Sidney would like to come along with his friend Geordie, make a few enquiries and even an arrest?
It was a late morning of mist and tired rain. The windows of Antiquaria Torrensiana had steamed so that only a few precious items on display were visible beside drying umbrellas and tables of second-hand books that still had to be sorted and priced: editions of Anselm, Aristotle and Aquinas, a medieval Book of Hours, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain and a Kelmscott Chaucer. Torrens was so keen to avoid any suspicion of a sting that he had taken his idea of ‘normality’ to eccentric levels, with yesterday’s tea and cake together with last night’s whisky glass lying on top of precarious piles of books, maps, letters and bills. He appeared to have little interest in tidying. There were no customers in his shop other than the man who had pretended to be Sir Leslie Manning.