Number 7, Rue Jacob

by Wendy Hornsby

  “You were saying that Isabelle told you about the origins of the Russians,” I said.

  “That was before you arrived, Billy,” Madame Volz said. “But we have talked about it. Yes, Madame, your mother told us that she had a letter; I don’t remember who she said it was from—this was maybe fifteen or more years ago—demanding that the Russian texts be handed over to the Metropolitan of the Eastern Orthodox Church, or the Patriarch of Moscow, or maybe someone else. I was never convinced, however, that there was such a letter or that all of the books were part of a church library.”

  “Why?”

  “Many of them were, let us just say, too personal. A book of hours—” She extended a hand toward me. “You know what that is? A book of prayers, a diary of sorts, the sort of thing a person might read at certain times during the day, over the seasons.” When I nodded, she continued. “There is an exquisite book of hours, and several psalters, some meditations on sermons, and so on. There is a lectionary of the sort a priest might read from to his congregation, or, perhaps, a father or master of a household might read to his dependents. Several of those books belong in a museum, and not on the shelf of a damp church somewhere, so I was happy they were in a controlled environment.”

  “Did you ever try to acquire the Russians for the museum?”

  “I let Isabelle know we would be happy to have them, if they came without complications. Our resources were already stretched by the war between us, the Vatican, and the local diocese. When she told us that the Eastern Orthodox Church wanted those books, we abandoned all interest in acquiring them; a second legal-war front would be too much. In the interest of scholarship, we offered to catalogue them, but Isabelle declined.”

  “I would think she would be happy to have that done for her.”

  She started to say something, but hesitated. It was Billy who answered. “We think she didn’t want to make it easy to trace books that disappeared.”

  “You’re saying books did disappear?” I asked.

  “Now and then, yes.”

  “Where do you think they went?”

  The two of them exchanged a glance before Billy said, “To the highest bidder.”

  “Did you ever challenge her?”

  “We had no right to do so,” Volz said. “What you need to remember is, your mother and the property’s co-owner, a very influential man, had already donated two collections to us. We were delighted they had, but our lawyers reminded us that they were a gift. The owners of rue Jacob could as easily have sold them on the open market or tossed them into a trash bin, or disposed of them any way they chose, despite what the Vatican believes.”

  “Did you ever mention the disappearing Russians to this very influential man you referred to?”

  “No. I’m sure that Jean-Paul Bernard had other things on his mind. He was sitting on an international war tribunal during much of the negotiation period.” She leaned forward and spoke in a soft, conspiratorial voice. “Do you know who he is?”

  “Jean-Paul Bernard? I’ve heard the name, yes.”

  “I have met him, of course. A very charming man, but a very busy man. He made it clear early on that he would handle issues with the Pope, and Madame Martin would handle the curators of the Louvre. He is not the sort of man one interrupts to chat about unsupported concerns over something that was not our business. Besides, he may have agreed with her completely.”

  “But you doubt that he did.”

  A little shrug told me she did doubt.

  I asked, “Is it possible for scholars who use the library to walk out with a volume?”

  “Anything is possible,” she said. “But I am certain that has never happened. No one is ever in the reading room alone. Scholars are always proctored by one of very few approved people when they are working with the texts. Every entry into the library is electronically registered, so we know who comes and goes. And the door is alarmed should someone try to break in. If anything did go missing, we would know exactly who to ask about it.”

  “Unless someone entered through the back door.”

  “There is no back door.”

  “I’ll be happy to show it to you. Just give me a call when you’re available.”

  “I had no idea. Billy, did you?”

  He shook his head. “I would have seen another door.”

  “A secret panel,” I said, “to a buried treasure.”

  “Marie,” he said, “do we need to do an inventory?”

  They both looked at me, but I held up my hands. “I only learned about the library a few days ago. I can’t help you.”

  Her polite smile told me she agreed that I knew nothing. She asked, “Have I answered your concerns?”

  “In part, yes. Thank you. One more question: Do you know, or have you heard of a man named Boris Barkov?”

  “I have not,” she said. “But Billy is nodding, so he may have a different answer.”

  “A man with that name contacted us several times,” he said. “He wanted to know about getting permission to use the library. I sent him to the site on our web page where application for access is explained. Sometime later, he called again. The application on the web asks scholars to list the texts they wish to study by catalogue number. But, he was interested in the Russians, and they are not catalogued. When I told him that those books are not part of the museum’s holdings and I had no authority to grant him access, he was not happy.”

  “How not happy?” I asked.

  “He got quite huffy. Wanted to go over my head, so I gave him the director’s number, and Celine transferred the call right back to me. He said something that sounded very spitty, probably in Russian, and slammed down the phone.”

  “When was that?”

  He shrugged and held up his hands. “A month ago? Six weeks?”

  “But you remember him?”

  “I was curious, so I Googled him. I didn’t learn very much. Except that he is Russian and he gives talks on old texts.”

  “That’s all I found out, too.” I looked at my watch. “Thank you for your time. Please excuse me, but I need to run. I have an appointment.”

  I did not mean that I literally had to run, but Billy walked so fast that’s what it felt like. I came out of the dim, gray back halls of the Louvre into the dim gray of the Paris afternoon. The notaire’s office was five blocks away, above a very expensive children’s clothing shop, and I needed to maintain the pace Billy had set to get there on time. Jean-Paul was already chatting with the notaire, Levi Gosselin, when I arrived. I could hear their laughter as soon as I opened the door from the outside hall. A male clerk took my coat and ushered me into Gosselin’s private office. The two men stood when I walked in. Jean-Paul came to me, and under the pretext of sharing les bises, he asked, “All go well?”

  “Good meeting,” I whispered as my lips touched his ear. He seemed very happy to hear that.

  Introductions were taken care of, demitasses of coffee offered and accepted. Jean-Paul and I were taken into a small conference room where stacks of legal files were laid out, ready to be explained, and it was time to settle in for the big talk. There was a fresh pad of paper and several pens on the table in front of the seat I was shown to. Jean-Paul was on my left, Monsieur Gosselin on my right.

  “Madame MacGowen,” Gosselin said, looking at me over the top of his reading glasses. “Ordinarily I would be reluctant to take on a client, such as you, who is being advised by a fully competent colleague. However, after speaking with your original notaire, it became clear to the two of us that issues concerning language had created some unfortunate confusions, and that you would be better served by someone with greater fluency with English. So, I am delighted to be of service to you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “And now, we start from the beginning.” He opened a file folder and took a breath. Flashing an impish grin, he said, “I promise you that most of this conversation will be very dull no matter what language we use, full of legal and financial terms. However, i
n the end, I know that you will have found our discussion to be most interesting. If, at any time, I have failed to explain something adequately, please tell me so. When you walk out of here this afternoon, my greatest hope is that you will have a clear understanding of the terms of your late mother’s will, as well as the terms of the partnership between you and Monsieur Bernard in the property at number seven, rue Jacob.”

  He was correct: the passage through the legal papers was excruciatingly boring at times, but at others I found myself fascinated. As if I needed confirmation, Isabelle was an odd cookie. She could also be petty and vindictive, and Freddy seemed to be her favorite target. He had every right to be angry about the uneven distribution of her assets, but I wished he, and his wife, had focused their anger on the source, Isabelle, and not on me, her designated primary heir. Some of the arcane French property laws, however, protected his inheritance rights to several very valuable assets.

  I was surprised that my grandmother’s will was among the files that Gosselin explained to me. In France, real estate follows blood. When Grand-mère married my grandfather, she received the right to live on and derive her support from the Normandy estate for the rest of her life, if she never remarried. Because she was not of her husband’s blood, actual ownership of the property would pass to their children when she died. When Isabelle died before Grand-mère, her claim to half the estate passed equally to me and Freddy. Gérard, of course, would inherit the other half. If my daughter gave formal permission, I could assign my share to either my uncle or my brother. Or, the three immediate heirs could decide together to sell. The message I took from that was, things could get very messy if anyone disagreed with the other heirs. I dog-eared the page of notes I took about the Normandy estate, and turned to a clean sheet.

  Grand-mère, the only surviving child of her parents, had inherited from her father the Paris townhouse in the Marais he had purchased before the war. Grand-mère, then, owned the house outright, and could do whatever she wanted with it during her lifetime. But, if she didn’t dispose of it before she died, then it came half to me and Freddy, and half to Uncle Gérard. I dog-eared that page, too.

  Rue Jacob was complex. The most interesting part of the contract of sale between the Vatican; the diocese; and Isabelle, Jean-Paul, and Gérard, was the language that gave the purchaser full ownership of the land, its improvements, furnishings, fixtures, and residual movable property.

  “Would movable property include rare books found in the basement of the property?” I asked.

  “It should, yes,” he said.

  “Let’s say the seller forgot about the books and left them behind when he sold. After he signed the sale contract, could he say, Oops, and reclaim them?”

  “In my opinion, he could not.”

  “Could he make a claim if his grandparents left the books and he didn’t know they were there until later?”

  “If the grandparents acquired the books legally, then no. If the grandparents stole them, then the heirs of the legal owner could probably make a case.”

  “If the books had been in the basement for a hundred years, and no living person knew how they got there, who would own them?”

  “I suspect that you’re referring to a specific situation. Would you care to explain it to me?”

  We did. Jean-Paul gave Gosselin a wonderfully succinct summary of how there came to be a library in the basement at number seven, rue Jacob. Gosselin folded his hands over the open file on the table in front of him, and listened. Twice, he raised a finger to signal that he had a question, and then continued to listen until Jean-Paul finished. I added the nuggets of information I had learned from Marie Volz and Billy Fouquet, and then it was his turn.

  “Madame, Monsieur, if you found an old table, even a very fine antique table, in the basement, or a basket of scanties left behind by the nuns, would there be questions of ownership once the sale was final?”

  Jean-Paul turned to me for my answer. “No. The table I might dust off and use, or sell. The scanties I would probably laugh over before throwing out.”

  “But you would not question your right to whatever you chose to do with them, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bernard, you agree?”

  He nodded.

  “I believe that the curator at the Louvre was correct. If you had chosen to sell the books when you first found them, or even to throw them out, you would have been within your rights. Instead, you donated them. Or, at least, most of them. And because no good deed goes unpunished, complications ensued. But that does not change your rights of ownership. Does that answer your question?”

  “It does,” I said. “So it was legal for Isabelle to sell any of the books that had not been donated, if her co-owner agreed, correct?”

  “Yes. If anyone has recourse against her, it is Jean-Paul, though it is a bit late to pursue anything now, I believe.”

  I put my hand over Jean-Paul’s and looked him in the eye. “I think it’s time for us to tell the Vatican to go to hell, and for us to tell the Louvre to come and get their books. What do you think?”

  “I agree. I wanted to do that a long time ago, but Isabelle had other ideas.”

  Gosselin cleared his throat. “Other questions?”

  “Not at the moment,” I said. “But may I call you if I do?”

  “Bien sûr,” he said.

  We collected our coats and walked back out into the gathering dusk, though in the shadows of the buildings around us, it was difficult to know whether the sun was already gone from the sky or not. Arm in arm, we walked toward the Seine with no particular destination in mind.

  “Who calls the Louvre?” he said. “You or me?”

  “You do. Marie Volz is so thoroughly intimidated by your exalted status that when you tell her to come and get the books, she just might back the truck in herself.”

  “Exalted status?” He laughed. “I know she didn’t say that.”

  “No. She said, ‘very influential’ in reverential tones.”

  “All right, I’ll speak with her. And you call the Vatican.”

  “After what I’ve heard today, I am persuaded that the Holy Father has no standing. I only hope the Louvre doesn’t put out another press release to alert him.”

  “Are you in a hurry to get the collection out of the house for some reason?”

  “I am. For the moment, let’s just look beyond the probability that someone damn near killed us trying to get at the books, and think about something else. To begin, yes, the meeting went well. Guido and I both like these people very much. That may change after we’ve worked them for a while, but I don’t think so. They want the Normandy project, and asked us what was next. Their legal department is already talking to Uncle Max about terms.”

  “What does Guido think?”

  “He’s working things through. When I last saw him, he was walking toward the Eiffel Tower with a goofy look on his face, so I think he’s aboard. The next big issues are, housing and work space. In Paris.”

  “I’m guessing you’ve given the issues some thought.”

  “You are free to veto any of this, but, if the convent collection goes home to the mother ship, the Louvre, where it belongs, the space the library takes up now would make an excellent workroom for me and Guido. It’s climate-controlled, and secure. Next, I cannot figure out where to put a second bathroom in Isabelle’s apartment, so the only alternative is for us, the you-and-me us, to move our feast to your house in Vaucresson.”

  “Let me guess: and Guido moves into the rue Jacob apartment.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I like that better than having him as a permanent house guest. Anything more?”

  “Just one thing. We have an appointment to speak with Boris Barkov tomorrow at eleven. In London.”

  9

  The London office of InterCentro was a single cavernous room off the lobby of a two-star hotel in Chelsea, in a space that had once been a barbershop. The glass front was draped in heavy
brocade that I can only describe as faded imperial red. It was 10:30 when Jean-Paul opened the door and preceded me in.

  Two big men, body builders from the look of them, stopped us from getting more than a few feet inside. Except that one was black and one was Asian, they could have been twins in their matching black polo shirts with PX4 embroidered on identical places on their similarly exaggerated pecs. We gave them our business cards and didn’t argue when they asked us to hang our coats on a rack. Very politely, they asked me to open my bag so they could peek inside, and for Jean-Paul to open his suitcoat and raise his sweater so they could see that he wasn’t hiding a gat under his waistband. They smiled during the entire process. When they were finished, the black man turned and walked across what looked like half an acre of red carpet to the back of the room and handed our cards to a man who was seated behind a desk in the far corner. After they exchanged a few words, we were signaled to come.

  The man behind the desk rose and walked to meet us. He was as Philippe described him, short and round. Wearing a beautifully tailored Harris tweed suit, he presented a fair imitation of a traditional Englishman, until he spoke. Looking from our cards to us, he said, “Miss MacGowen, Mr. Bernard, how can I help you?”

  “We’re a little early,” I said. “We have an appointment at eleven.”

  “Ah.” Flicking the edges of the cards with his pinkie, he studied us for a moment, clearly unsure about trusting us. “We share an interest in fine books?”

  “I think we share an interest in some very particular books, Mister Barkov.”

  His eyebrows rose when I said his name. “Please, have a seat, and let’s talk about these books.”

  I checked on the guards at the door as we followed Barkov to an arrangement of chairs and a low table opposite the desk; one guard watched us, the other the door.

  The room was sparsely yet comfortably furnished to accommodate one man and two guards. I got the impression that Barkov did not have many visitors. We were offered tea from an electric kettle, served Russian-style in tall glasses.

  “Now, then,” he said when we had settled in. “You first. What brings you?”