by Oliver Tidy
‘That would be worth something if it were an original’ I said, showing off a bit.
‘It is an original, Mr Booker. But selling it would be out of the question.’
I was made temporarily speechless. We followed our hostess down the darkened winding passageway to the library. And it too was impressive. The large, light room was at the side of the property that looked out over the Marsh. From our height the uninterrupted views must have been pretty commanding and spectacular on a clear summer’s day. But Mrs Swaine hadn’t invited me up to look out of the window, admiring the scenery. I turned my attention to the books. I was confronted with a bookcase of discouragement.
Because we had been taken straight to the library I took my cue that Mrs Swaine didn’t want to socialise with me, at least, and that I should get on with what I’d been invited along for, like a tradesman. ‘Anything you want me to look at in particular?’ I said, getting immediately down to the reason I was there, thereby letting Mrs Swaine know that two could play at that game.
She gave me a keen, appraising look, like someone thinking about buying a piece of furniture. ‘I take it you do know about books, Mr Booker.’ After my painting comment I could forgive her this.
I tried to smile confidently back. ‘I know enough, Mrs Swaine. Tell me what you have in mind.’
Her gaze intensified and I felt a little awkward for it. ‘Am I able to expect the same level of confidentiality with you that I trust I can with Ms Cash?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, just a little too loudly and pompously, like someone accused of something they didn’t do.
‘Good. I’d like to raise a little capital. Since the idea occurred to me to sell some of these old books, I thought that I might as well take the opportunity to raise a little more. I need ten thousand pounds. And I’d like to do it with as few books as possible. Clearing out whole bookcases will make holes in the collection, which I might be obliged to explain.’ She didn’t say to whom. ‘And I do not wish to. Do I make myself clear?’
I nodded and said, ‘Crystal, Mrs Swaine. Ten thousand pounds is a lot of money for books. If you want to raise the capital quickly your best bet is to sell to a dealer and as I’m sure you appreciate dealers have to make a living. You won’t get open market price or anything like it, assuming, that is, you have books to attract those sorts of offers in the first place.’
‘I understand,’ she said, although she didn’t look happy about it. ‘And your fee, of course, Mr Booker?’
I hadn’t thought about that. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got first, Mrs Swaine, before we decide whether my fee will be something we have to consider. Incidentally, what’s the provenance on the library?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Any dealer who is looking at parting with large sums of money for books will naturally want to know where they came from.’
‘My late father liked books. He was a collector all his adult life. Everything here was his. Will that do?’
‘It’ll have to, Mrs Swaine,’ I said, trying to hide the irritation I was feeling for simply asking pertinent questions and getting frosty responses.
‘Good. I’ll leave you alone while I show Ms Cash what she needs to see. I can’t offer you hot refreshment, I’m afraid; the housekeeper only does mornings.’ Clearly, Mrs Swaine wasn’t able to make tea for herself or her guests. She offered no cold alternative. She gave me one last look up and down. It made me feel she was checking to see if I wore clothing with poacher’s pockets. As if I would.
‘We’ll be just next door,’ she said, before leading Jo away.
My first impression of the library was that I would have to make a big hole in it to start getting the kind of returns Rebecca Swaine was looking for. But ask any old Trojan warrior and he’ll tell you that first impressions aren’t always the most reliable. He might be smiling, too. I’d been looking at the popular fiction section. Around the back of one of the four bookcases that came at ninety degrees off the wall was a set of volumes that made me inhale sharply. And my first thought after bloody hell was that maybe Rebecca Swaine wasn’t entirely ignorant of what she had and she was testing me. I didn’t aim to disappoint her. Just to be sure, I took out my Internet-enabled smart phone and looked them up on the biggest booksellers’ website in the virtual world. Even at dealer’s prices they would fetch a good part of what she was looking for. I had to remove each of them to ascertain their condition and edition and when I was satisfied that all was as it should be I considered myself privileged to have been in the same room as such important books and allowed to handle them privately.
Encouraged, I looked along the other shelves. I whistled to myself a few more times along the way. I felt like Aladdin moving through his cave. I ran my fingers over beautifully-tooled spines. I slid a few out, opened them and inhaled their majesty. Mr Swaine senior had had a good eye, a sensitive nose or deep pockets to indulge his book collecting passion – or maybe he was another book thief – to have accumulated such a splendid and valuable little library. Maybe he’d been a rescuer of books. While his collecting leanings were not in my particular sphere of interest that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate what I was looking at. I did a bit more Internet research and whistled some more.
The door to the library being pushed open hard made me start. It wasn’t the door that Jo and Mrs Swaine had left by. A man stood there. He was a bit taller than me but thinner. His thick bright blond hair was combed harshly back from his brow and held there with some form of goo. His green eyes told me he was mean and intelligent. His expression told me he was suspicious and angry. Then his thin tight mouth opened and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. It was then I noticed he was carrying what looked like a poker.
***
6
‘Whoa there,’ I said. ‘I’m a guest of Rebecca Swaine. She’s in there.’ I jerked my thumb at the door behind me.
‘Who gave you permission to touch those?’
‘The same Mrs Swaine who invited me in and provided me with slippers. Go and ask her if you don’t believe me.’
He looked to be made angrier by my disrespectful response, and I had to consider the possibility that he might go for me yet. He had that sort of look in his eyes.
‘Who are you, anyway?’ I said, pushing my luck.
‘None of your bloody business. Rebecca!’ He had a good shout on him. It sounded well practised. I hoped this wasn’t the husband returned unexpectedly to surprise us all. That could be embarrassing.
Rebecca Swaine came quickly out of the room next door.
‘Sigmund, what are you doing up?’ Mrs Swaine’s rebuke told a story.
‘Who is this?’ he said, pointing the poker in my general direction.
‘He’s a friend of someone who is visiting me. Calm down.’
‘Who is visiting you? Why didn’t you say something?’
‘Sigmund. Go away. I’ll come and find you and tell you all about it later. Go and watch some television in your room.’
He shot me a murderous look then he looked down at what was in my hands. ‘Put that back,’ he said. ‘Some of those are valuable.’ He turned and left us, slamming the door behind him.
Rebecca Swaine heaved out a big sigh. It was full of melancholy and regret. ‘Sorry.’ She sounded like that was an effort she didn’t make often. Jo had wandered out to see what all the commotion was about.
She said, ‘Was that your husband?’
Mrs Swaine snorted like a spooked horse. ‘Lord, no. That was my brother.’ I could see on her face that she’d rather we hadn’t met each other.
I said, ‘I don’t think much of his manners.’
She shot me a sharp look and relaxed it quickly. ‘No. Have you found anything... appropriate? Saleable?’
‘Mrs Swaine, you have some of the finest books it has ever been my pleasure to handle and my uncle was a book dealer all my life.’
‘Is that a yes, Mr Booker?’
Fine. It was like that. Co
uldn’t say I didn’t try. ‘Yes. It’s a yes. This set here,’ I moved back to the three leather-bound volumes of William Henry Pyne’s detailed and comprehensive early nineteenth century history of royal residences, ‘should fetch a healthy four-figure sum for starters. There are some other single volumes that will take the total to the figure you’re looking for. Is this library insured?’
The question surprised her, or perhaps it was my impertinence. ‘We have contents insurance, of course.’
‘If you want my advice, you’ll have someone come out and value this lot and then get them properly insured. Incidentally, why not get a dealer out in the first place. Something tells me that you know more about these than you’ve let on.’ With nothing to lose, I was challenging her in her own home and I was enjoying the feeling.
She smiled that thin painful line again. ‘I’ve dealt with dealers before, Mr Booker. I didn’t enjoy the experience. You have an honest face. Will you help me sell what I need to or not?’
I wanted Jo to get the job and in order for her to get the job her prospective employer would have to be in funds.
‘I’ll help you, Mrs Swaine. I still have details of a number of contacts in the trade in my uncle’s office.’
She looked at me differently then. ‘They died rather unpleasantly, I believe.’
I held her gaze. ‘They did.’
‘And you... saw that their murderers got their just desserts?’ She sounded curious.
‘Actually, Mrs Swaine, it was Jo, Ms Cash, who did that. At the time they met their makers, I was temporarily incapacitated.’
She looked between us both and something she found amusing played at the corners of her mouth.
She sighed heavily and said, ‘Well, let’s hope we don’t need anything heavy-handed this time. Take what you think you can sell for what I need, Mr Booker.’
‘If you have a pen and paper I’ll write them down for you.’
‘I prefer to trust you.’ She turned to Jo. ‘We understand each other, Ms Cash?’ Jo nodded. Then to me, Mrs Swaine said, ‘As soon as you can sell the books, I can pay your bills.’
She provided me with a small holdall and I carefully placed the three Pynes and five other promising titles into it. There wasn’t much of a gap on the shelf.
Apparently, Jo and her client had concluded their business. Mrs Swaine saw us out and closed the door before we reached the car.
As Jo manoeuvred the car around so that we could exit the driveway front-first I looked up to see Sigmund Swaine’s furious features at one of the dormer windows.
‘What a surreal little experience that was,’ I said.
‘Sigmund? I reckon Freud would have had something to say about that, don’t you?’ said Jo, as she accelerated away down the hill, heading for home and smiling at her wit.
I said ‘boom boom’ and it started raining.
***
7
The drive home started sedately. I attributed this to Jo being full of thought.
As we recrossed the canal, she said, ‘She got me up there to show me a document she’d found in her husband’s desk. She said it was demanding the return of fifty thousand pounds or he’d be exposed for, quote, what he is.’
‘Fifty grand’s a lot of money.’
‘It is to some of us,’ she said, and she might have been having a playful dig.
I waited until she’d passed an approaching Land-Rover on the narrow road before saying, ‘That was it?’
Jo nodded her head once. ‘Yep.’
‘Did she give it to you?’
‘No. She couldn’t even show it to me. She said he must have removed it because now she can’t find it.’
‘So what are you going to do? I can’t see how you can do anything.’
‘I told her to talk to her husband.’
‘Good move. It’s not like you need the work, is it? So why is she still talking about paying you?’
‘Because she said no to option A. You’re being quite dumb this afternoon.’
‘The question still stands: what are you going to do?’
‘For a start, assume that it’s genuine – that’s what she’s paying me for. I think she’s more concerned about the bit threatening to expose him for what he is than she is about anything else. She’s worried about her reputation. That’s my guess, anyway. She wants me to find out about any skeletons he’s got rattling around in his tallboy.’
‘So you’re going to investigate him?’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘Can you do it?’
Jo took her eyes off the road and looked in my direction for answer. I gestured for her to look back where she was going before she got us both killed.
I said, ‘You said he works in the City.’
Jo made a noise in her throat and then said. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘You’ll be going up there?’
‘What on earth for? What would be the point?’
‘I don’t know. I thought you might want to see where he works.’
Jo started laughing. She laughed most of the way home. As we pulled up on the gravel out the back of the shop, I said, ‘I’m going to have to take these books to London. I was just thinking that if you were going to see where he works we could go up together.’
‘That’s very sweet, David. I’ll let you know.’
I let us in the back door. Jo said she was going to start her new job by looking for information on the Internet. She said it should prove more fruitful than staring at the building he worked in. I had to suffer her laughter as it died away. I went into the shop for some respect.
***
8
There wasn’t anything that needed the owner/manager’s attention. Mel and Linda said they could cope with the two geriatrics who were sipping their afternoon tea and behaving themselves. I got myself a drink and sat down with my laptop. While that was powering up I nipped upstairs to my uncle’s old office. It was still pretty much as I’d inherited it. It depressed me to go in there, but the thought of throwing everything out was worse. It was easiest just to leave the door shut. It wasn’t like I needed the room. I lifted the contacts books off the shelf and started flicking through it. Then I remembered I’d just left a few thousand pounds worth of antiquarian books in a very portable bag in the shop and hurried back down to do a bit of Internet research myself.
I was still there two hours later when Jo came looking for me. The shop was shut up and the ladies had gone home. I had the books out of the bag and on a clean table next to me. Jo made herself a drink and sat down. She set her mug on the same table as the books. A little bit of brown liquid slopped over the side. I made a meal of moving all the books to another table. Jo rolled her eyes.
She said, ‘Are they really worth ten grand?’
‘More, on a good day.’
‘Amazing.’
‘Aren’t they.’
‘I mean amazing that people would waste ten grand on a few grubby old books. More money than sense, if you ask me.’
‘Don’t knock it. And don’t knock your drink over it. That’s your fee remember.’
‘When are you thinking of going up to town?’
‘Day after tomorrow. I’ve found someone who’s interested to take a look at these.’ I patted the book on top of the pile, like I might the head of a small boy who was being good. ‘Why? Changed your mind?’
‘I never said I wasn’t interested. Nigel used to work at Hudsons. They’re an investment management company. Looks like he might have left under a bit of a cloud. I’ve found someone who said they’ll talk to me about it.’
‘Who’s Nigel?’
‘The husband. Keep up.’
‘I didn’t know. No one mentioned his name to me. And you didn’t say he’d lost his job.’ I was aware that I was sounding a bit defensive and whiney.
Jo said, ‘I only just found out myself.’
I said, ‘Why didn’t Mrs Swaine tell you?’
‘Maybe she doesn’t know.’
<
br /> ‘How did you manage to get someone to talk to you?’
‘I asked. Sometimes that’s all it takes.’
‘Great. We can go up together then. I’ll buy you lunch.’
‘Talking of food. Got any of last night’s curry left.’
‘I thought you didn’t like it.’
‘Only on principle.’
‘I have actually. I’m warming it up later. Want some?’
‘No. If you’re having that I’ll get a Chinese.’
Sometimes I had to honestly wonder if it was me.
***
9
As neither of us had a significant other in our lives, Jo and I would often gravitate to each other for company of an evening, if company was what we were looking for.
We ate our meals off our laps watching the local news. Then we watched a film. Over the last few weeks I’d been introducing Jo to some of what I considered classic movies of my DVD collection. The whole exercise had been a bit hit and miss. Mostly, miss. Recently, she’d lasted ten minutes of 2001 A Space Odyssey, and fallen asleep halfway through Silent Running. For that evening I’d chosen Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It was a sure sign she wasn’t enjoying it when she started yawning.
I said, ‘Are you excited?’
‘Actually, for a psychological thriller, I think this is a bit boring.’
‘Not the film; your investigation. Your job.’
‘Of course I am.’
‘If nothing else it’ll make a change from all that insurance work you’ve been doing.’
‘And the spying on cheating partners and that missing cat.’
I dissolved into a fit of proper laughter at Jo’s bitter memory of being called out to investigate a missing moggy.
When I realised Jo wasn’t laughing with me, I stopped and said, ‘I’ll be honest with you: when you said you wanted to start up on your own I didn’t think Romney Marsh was going to provide you with an income.’