The Forger's Daughter

by Bradford Morrow

  “Listen to me, Nicole. If things go wrong with this, any of it, you have to promise me you’ll let me accept responsibility. No one can know you had anything to do with it.”

  “That’s not—,” she began, but I cut her short.

  “That’s how it has to be. No further discussion. It’s settled law between us. Now let’s get these shovels back to the house before the others come home.”

  Never before had I spoken to my daughter about anything with such finality, in such a demanding, conspicuously clipped, even unfriendly tone of voice. It needed to be laid out in so many words, though, and my sense was she’d heard me and would accede to my wishes.

  If, as it’s said, everything that rises must converge, then by the same token do all things that fall converge as well? News of Henry Slader’s disappearance came as a surprise, but not a shock. Back in the city, I hadn’t expected to hear from Atticus until after the auction, nor was I sure how safe it was for him to reach out to me by phone—paranoia strikes deep?—although we ourselves weren’t under a scintilla of suspicion.

  “Seems he’d been taken in for questioning,” Atticus continued, “and released for lack of evidence. As you know, he’s a seasoned obfuscator.”

  “What did they pick him up for?” I asked, pausing at a corner to wait for the light to change as I walked home from the auction house—Atticus wisely had waited for my workday to end before calling.

  “Avarice and stupidity.”

  Despite myself, I laughed. “When those become crimes, the whole world will end up behind bars.”

  “And suspicion of murder.”

  All laughter ceased. My first worry, assuming Ginger-head was the victim, was what kind of legal jeopardy Meghan could be in for falsely reporting she’d seen nothing on that abandoned road, although who could contradict her, unless there was another witness, say, the highly unreliable Slader himself. My second was whether Atticus could manage, if and when Slader surfaced, to ensure his silence about the Poe business, prevent him from ratting me out along with everyone else. Shadows of uncertainty that had cast their ugly pall over my world now thickened and darkened.

  “Cricket?” I asked.

  “Guy named John Mallory, if that’s who you mean.”

  “I don’t know Mallory any more than you seem to know Cricket. Who is—was he?”

  “Seems to have been a fourth- or even fifth-generation plate- and papermaker out of Fall River, up in Massachussetts,” Atticus said.

  My pulse skipped. That would explain the very high quality of the paper, possibly even vintage, dating back to the nineteenth century, as well as the superior plates themselves, expertly crafted. Idiot, I thought. Why do such an obviously self-defeating thing? Why take out such an invaluable resource? It quickly became clear to me how Slader had managed to produce such superlative forgeries over the years, with odd-lot and leftover papers that might well have been sitting in warehouse drawers for a century or more. I asked Atticus if he had any idea about motive, assuming Slader was behind the murder.

  “As I said, greed and lunacy. He’d told me that Mallory, who must be this Cricket, redheaded fellow—”

  “Right, ginger.”

  “—followed him down to New York state. He had a piece of the action and, who knows, wanted to check on his investment. I assume a certain somebody lied to him about the value of his contribution, the papers and plates—real picnic—and he demanded a heftier cut, or else he would blow the whistle on Slader. Simple and banal as that.”

  “Simple, maybe,” I said, as I found an empty bench in Union Square and sat. “Not sure about banal, since how do we know Slader hasn’t been swindling Mallory for years?”

  “I’ve tried never to delve too deeply into Henry’s history,” Atticus told me. “Call it a rational instinct for self-preservation, plus an aversion to picking up rocks to see what’s squirming underneath. Bottom line is, I don’t know and don’t care. What I do care about is that our sale goes off without a certain party gumming up the works.”

  I couldn’t help but recall Henry Slader criticizing me during our first meeting in the Beekman Arms tavern, scornfully asking if he was wrong in remembering me as a cooler cucumber back when I was younger. It stung, although now I had no recollection of what prompted his snide taunt. Whatever its genesis, going into hiding after being questioned by the police was the opposite of a cucumber-cool move. We both had been trawled, netted, and grilled, so to say, before being tossed back into the stream of life in the wake of the Adam Diehl murder. Neither of us was fool enough to vanish from sight afterward. Running gave every appearance of guilt. To run was to confess. That he knew Nicole’s cell number only made me more unnerved.

  Agreeing there was nothing either of us could do about our mutual not-friend just then, Atticus asked about Tamerlane, and if I had any insight into how much it might bring when the day finally came. I told him that thanks to widespread media publicity following the release of our online announcement and catalog supplement, interest was higher than the house’s highest expectations, absentee bids were stronger than was typical, and agents of potential buyers both private and institutional continued to pass through our doors, making discreet notes, trying and failing to mask their zeal. Interest was not limited to American buyers, either, given Poe’s international popularity. France, Japan, Abu Dhabi, England—the cosmos of Poe devotees was far-flung. I shared with Atticus that the auction estimate had been set at half a million to six hundred thousand, conservative numbers by my lights.

  “I plan to take the train down there to preview it myself.”

  “I would have thought you’d already seen it when you were working on the Fletcher library.”

  “To be sure. Just not in its new extra-illustrated incarnation.”

  “No offense, but if you’re coming, let me know so I can be elsewhere.”

  “Understood, and done,” Atticus agreed. “And if you hear from the fugitive, please get in touch. He may be a fool, but he’s not a moron. My guess is he’ll keep a low profile until after the sale, rightfully demand his rake-off, then spirit himself away to blend into the wallpaper somewhere overseas.”

  “Tomorrow is today’s dream, as they say.”

  Ignoring my platitude, Atticus asked after Maisie. I told him that she was doing well, back in school, then we got off the phone. If still perplexed by his solicitude about Maisie, I was far more concerned about Slader, who appeared to have plummeted into darker precincts of craziness than before. My mind roiled with other worries as well. Such as whether Abigail Fletcher would hear about her—rather, our—Tamerlane and proclaim to the world, finally, that she had a copy too, albeit a respectable fake. Such as whether the Tivoli lawyer, contract or not, might attempt to declare our ownership of Tamerlane null and void, reclaiming it for his client’s estate even though said client likely never laid eyes on Poe’s first book, and certainly never possessed a copy. Such as whether Meghan, jittery and guilt-ridden beneath her forced facade of appeasement, might drop the plot and, in an attempt to clear her conscience, end up sparking the fires of virtue to scorch and finally cinderize us all.

  On the first of these counts, I didn’t have to wait long for my concern to rise, like a malign flower born of toxic soil, and challenge me. Delivered to the apartment the day after my call with Atticus, it came in the form of a letter from my longtime icon and sometime benefactor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The missive was brief; its phrasing pure Slader.

  William the Tell, it read. My time has run out, & thus so has yours. We must meet at once if your secret is to remain safe with me. You know that figure of speech, A murder of crows? Ours will be, if you’ll indulge me in a little joke, A crow of murderers.

  Slader’s sense of humor was never his strong point, I reflected, then read further to find the general date and place of his proposed meeting. Fully within character, if character it could be called, he demande
d I come with money, an advance on his projected take, though of course none of us possibly knew what that might amount to until the hammer fell. And that presumed the lot wouldn’t be withdrawn at the behest of a controversy of critics. However much I might want to debate the panic-stricken logic behind Slader’s demands—a crow of murderers, really?—I wasn’t feeling a shred of confidence. The reason was simple. If he had managed to convince Nicole of my guilt in Adam’s death—to prevail upon my daughter who believed in me, iniquities and all, more than anyone outside of Meghan and Maisie—then little more than a snap of the fingers and a couple of photographs would be required to bring my world down.

  That night at the dinner table, I told Meg that I needed to run upstate in the morning for the day, maybe even a quick overnight.

  “Can’t it wait until the weekend, when we’re all going up?”

  “It can’t, actually,” and went on to explain that a man was coming to do refurbishment and repair work on the proof press. “He’s hard to schedule, so I have to be there.”

  “I’m free tomorrow,” Nicole said, no doubt seeing through my story as if it were a clear sheet of acetate. “In case you want company.”

  “No need,” I responded. “You have better things to do.”

  After so many years of silence, speaking with Atticus again for the second time in as many days felt both curious and comforting. Did he have any notion what amount of money Slader was looking for as a down payment on his percentage? How dangerous would the man be if I refused to front him a red cent? Knowing I was out of my mind to meet with him, I saw no way around it.

  I got up next morning not with the early doves and chickadees but with the garbage trucks and street sweepers. At the deli downstairs I grabbed an everything bagel with a schmear and a coffee to go, then walked the few blocks to where our car was garaged. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to find Nicole waiting for me, and, a thousand small cuts of worry aside, I didn’t bother to argue against her decision to come along. Truth was, her company was calming. The eight thousand in cash that I’d removed from my personal safe-deposit box the afternoon before would, Atticus and I had agreed, have to suffice. We reasoned it could give Slader enough to survive comfortably in hiding for the next week and a half before the auction. Because successful bidders are required to pay promptly after a sale ends, part of the Poe balance to be dispersed would end up in Slader’s pocket via Atticus. Meghan, although she didn’t yet know it, was to wire half the proceeds, after commission, to Providence. All of this might have been much simpler if Slader were possessed of a modicum of the restraint and coolness he so revered in others. He wasn’t going to like my eight in cash, but many thousands more awaited, Atticus had advised me to assure him, if he kept himself out of further trouble. After that, the list of countries without an extradition agreement with ours was long and promising. Montenegro, Tunisia, Vietnam, Bhutan, perchance Mongolia—he was free to purchase a one-way ticket to wherever he chose, and good riddance.

  “Beautiful day,” said Nicole, as we got onto the Saw Mill River Parkway.

  “Let’s hope it stays beautiful,” I said, thinking, such are the clichés of the apprehensive.

  We arrived hours before I was to meet with him. A quick search around the rooms of the house, as well as nearby outside, suggested he hadn’t intruded in our absence. Nothing was out of place, nothing seemed to be missing. To kill time, we gravitated into the printing studio and set up the press to run off samples of the new Stone Circle logo on different test stocks, see how it looked. Ripley rewarded us for having filled her bowls by putting in a purring appearance at the back door, which was open to let in the rich autumn air redolent of fading hydrangea flowers, Russian sage, and asters drying on their stalks. No music played, just the gentlest breeze soughing in the upper branches of white pines. On any other late September day, here with my much-loved daughter in our studio, I would have felt as free as the birds out back that swooped over the field and garden finally fallen into desuetude, playing under the warm sun in the last days before their migration south.

  Oddly—though when were his methods anything but?—Slader had chosen not to stipulate exactly where I was to meet him, but rather wrote that when the time came, it would be self-evident. Annoying as ever, I thought. Hide-and-seek was a children’s game rather than the deadly serious one we were engaged in.

  Half past three, blue-green afternoon shadows on the grass lengthening, and still no sign of Henry Slader. By five, I began to fret that he might be playing a trick on me, so I phoned Meg to make sure she and Maisie were all right, which they were. Just after six o’clock, I called Atticus to see if maybe the man had been taken into custody again, but my colleague, for that’s what Atticus was now, had heard nothing of the kind.

  “My advice is to hang tight,” he said. “He’s the one who wants something, not you.”

  How I wished that were comprehensively true.

  “Did you ever open that bottle of Meursault?” Atticus continued.

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, it’s meant for a celebratory moment, which this decidedly isn’t. But maybe crack it open anyway, especially if Nicole’s there with you. Calm the nerves.”

  “Maybe so, thanks,” and signed off.

  When I filled my daughter in on our conversation, we agreed the Meursault would remain corked for a happier occasion. Moreover, if Slader had graduated from maiming people to murdering them, I needed to be sharp. It even occurred to me that by forcing me to wait around, his intention could be to dull my edges and drain my focus.

  In the end, the sign of his presence nearby came not from sighting or hearing him, but through an inexplicable smell, of all things. Smoke, not thick or pungent, cut into the scent of ink. We searched around the studio, but nothing was on fire. Checked the kitchen next, but neither the oven nor stove was lit. Then I glanced down the long hillside to the woods and saw it. A thin curl of gunmetal-bluish smoke was wafting out from the woods, wending its way vaguely toward the house. Back in the printing studio, I grabbed my letterpress composing stick just as I had the night Maisie was accosted, slipped it under my waistband back along my spine, and told Nicole to remain in the house.

  The smoke had grown a little denser, not billowing but like a skein or drawn-out ghost, as I strode down the long field, knee- to midthigh-deep in grasses and waning wildflowers. Halfway to where I was headed, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Nicole wasn’t following. The look on her face, even from this distance, was unusual, a melding of terror and anger, and I raised my arm in her direction to reiterate that I wanted her to stay put. As I neared the curtain of trees, I slowed down, then stopped. Shading my eyes, I squinted into the dappling shadowed woodland from the relative brightness of the bottom of the field.

  “Slader?” I called out.

  No response, so I lunged forward through a low hedge of barberry laden with bright berries and needle-sharp tiny thorns, then spotted him a hundred feet ahead, crouched over a fire surrounded by a girdle of stones. As I approached, he stood up, still saying nothing.

  “What’s the big idea?” I asked, standing on the opposite side of the crackling, dingy makeshift firepit. “Poor man’s papal conclave? Adding arson to your list of offenses now?”

  Slader bared his chipped tooth with a disdainful smile. He hadn’t shaved in days, looked as if he hadn’t slept, and the crescent-moon smudges under his eyes were sooty and damp. But none of his presumptuousness had abandoned him. “Papal conclave, funny. It got you down here, didn’t it? No, in fact I figured we could burn the lovely shots I have of you leaving Adam’s that morning in Montauk. I even brought negs,” he said, pulling a large mailer from the knapsack at his feet and waving it in my direction. “You’ve got my money, right?”

  “Some of it,” I said. “If you spoke with Atticus you’ll know I’ve brought enough to tide you over until the auction.”

  “Y
es, and I told him I didn’t like that plan.”

  “Like it or not, it’s what we’re able to do,” noticing a glint of silver winking in the open mouth of his canvas bag. “Your percentage—and I’m not privy to any arrangements you made with Atticus or that poor dead guy—is based on what the Poe brings. For all I know, it’ll be withdrawn from sale for some reason, and the money I’m prepared to give you now will be the only profit anybody makes off this whole goddamn mess.”

  “Let me ask you a question, Will,” said Slader. “Do you think I’m capable of killing another person? You of all people know that when I came after you, I did so without a murderous thought in my head. Sure, I could have finished you, but I only wanted to punish you. Butchered the wrong hand, as it happened. Still, I never had it in mind to kill you like you killed Adam Diehl.”

  Shifting my weight from one foot to the other, I said, “I’m not here to counsel you or console you, Slader, not here to listen to your excuses. I’m here to make that exchange we discussed back at the Beekman Arms, when I agreed to counterfeit a Poe letter and forge the Tamerlane, for supposedly incriminating photos. Whether you killed Cricket or Mallory or whoever the sorry sucker was is of zero interest to me.”

  Slader looked up through the leaves to the dimming sky above before leveling his eyes at me. “You know, I’ve just realized something important—”

  “Important to you maybe, not me.”

  “No, no, no,” and with that he began to chuckle, however softly, as he dropped into the same crouch as when I first approached, his knees apart and forearms resting on both thighs with the knuckles of his hands gently touching. He looked limber, apish. “Important to you too. Maybe more important,” he said, glancing up at me through the smoke, and winking before returning his gaze to the fire.