The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession

by Charlie Lovett

  “She likes you,” said Amanda. “She’ll be happy to hear from you.” Peter thought he sensed encouragement to do more than just make this phone call, but before he could respond to Amanda, Liz answered the phone.

  “Peter Byerly, what a surprise,” she said. Peter found himself without a voice and the line was silent for a moment. “You’re not having second thoughts about our arrangement, I hope,” Liz prompted.

  Peter felt overwhelmed by the sudden feeling that the phone was inadequate for what he needed. If he was to have any chance of convincing Liz to help him, he had to talk to her face-to-face. “I’m coming to London today,” he managed to say at last, “and I wondered if you might like to have lunch. I mean, you know, have lunch with me.”

  “Lunch would be brilliant,” said Liz. “My office is in Bloomsbury, but I could meet you anywhere you like.”

  “I’ll be working at the British Museum,” said Peter.

  “How would it be if I meet you on the steps of the museum at one o’clock?”

  “Fine,” said Peter. “That would be fine. I’ll see you at one, then.”

  “Super,” said Liz cheerfully, and hung up.

  Peter stopped by W H Smith for the morning paper, then settled himself into a seat on the Piccadilly Line train into London. Only after he had read the entire front page of the Times did Peter realize that Liz Sutcliffe might think he had asked her on a date.

  —

  The morning fog had burned off and the winter sun shone on Russell Square when Peter emerged from the tube. He gulped in the crisp air as he walked briskly the few blocks to the British Museum. It was ten-thirty when he presented his reader’s pass to the attendant at the door leading to the book department.

  “It’s excellent to see you, Peter,” said Nigel, as he showed Peter into a modest-sized reading room with a library table in the center and books lining the walls. “It’s been far too long.”

  “Seven years,” said Peter. He was afraid for a moment that Nigel might ask him what had transpired in those years, but he needn’t have worried. Nigel, Peter should have remembered, was quintessentially British, and thus only one topic of conversation would suffice with a relative stranger.

  “Remarkably fine weather today,” he said, “though I don’t expect it will last.”

  “Still, we can enjoy it for now,” said Peter, knowing that deep in the bowels of the British Museum, neither man was likely to do anything of the sort.

  “I’ve called up the first edition of Pandosto and a few other Robert Greene items for you,” said Nigel. “You’ll find the collator just down the corridor in the room to your right. I’m having an assistant make some printouts of the 1592 and 1595 editions of Pandosto—those we only have on microfilm, but you can still do a collation if you need to. I hate to leave you unoccupied, but I really must get back to work. I’ll have the materials sent in as soon as they arrive.”

  Thus Peter found himself alone in a book-lined room far below the tourists and the schoolchildren who now surged through the galleries on their way to the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles. He set his satchel, containing the Pandosto, on the table and began to scan the shelves. The books were primarily standard reference works—the thick, heavy volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary, shelves of bibliographies, and long rows of the short, squat volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography, known to scholars as the DNB.

  Peter thought he might as well do a little research on the Pandosto’s provenance while he was waiting; the DNB might well give him further clues on several of the owners. He took the book out of his bag, wishing as he did so that he had returned it to its folding case before he had left home. The acid-free envelope in which he had placed it seemed insufficient to protect such a treasure. Opening Pandosto on the table, he positioned his satchel so that anyone entering the room would not see the book. Once again he read through the list of owners, trying to construct a story that would connect them to one another.

  R. Greene to Em Ball

  Bart. Harbottle

  Wm. Shakspere, Stratford

  R. Cotton, Augustus B IV

  Matthew Harbottle, Red Bull Theatre

  John Bagford

  John Warburton

  R. Harley, Oxford

  B. Mayhew for William H. Smith

  B.B. / E.H.

  The author had given the book to his mistress who had subsequently sold it to the bookseller Harbottle. Harbottle had then sold or given the book to Shakespeare, who had been inspired by the bookseller to create the character of Autolycus. Shakespeare had given the book to Robert Cotton, perhaps in thanks for allowing him access to his library. Harbottle had then gotten the book back from Cotton, by means legitimate or illegitimate, and passed it on to a relative, probably his son. The younger Harbottle had disposed of the book sometime in the seventeenth century, probably outside of London, thus avoiding the great fire of 1666, and it had eventually been purchased by John Bagford, who then sold it to John Warburton.

  Peter pulled down the DNB volumes for Bagford and Warburton. Bagford, he confirmed, was a sometime bookseller, who had also compiled a famous collection of printing samples. Warburton’s biography noted that he had, “after much drinking and attempting to muddle Wanley, sold in July 1720 to the Earl of Oxford many valuable manuscripts on Wanley’s own terms.” Humfrey Wanley was librarian to Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford. The collection formed by Harley and his son was donated to the British Museum and became part of the British Library. So how had Pandosto escaped?

  Peter took a microcassette recorder from his bag and began to dictate notes. He had gotten into the habit of using the recorder at Ridgefield. Rare-book rooms forbade the use of pens, and Peter had a habit of breaking sharp pencil points almost immediately. A recorder provided him with an easy way to take notes without posing a risk to delicate materials.

  Peter could find no listing in the DNB for a “B. Mayhew,” and he was on the verge of pulling down the volume containing the Smiths when a young man entered the room with an armload of books.

  “Mr. Byerly?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Peter answered.

  “I believe these are for you,” said the man, setting the books on the table.

  Peter left the volumes of the DNB scattered on the table and rushed to examine the pile of books. Most were in simple protective folders, nothing like the complex and elegant cases created at the behest of Amanda Devereaux, but sufficient to protect four-hundred-year-old books and pamphlets from the stresses of being pulled off shelves. Despite several tantalizing rarities, Peter searched the pile for the one book that held his interest—the only recorded copy of the 1588 first edition of Pandosto.

  As Peter saw it, the question of the authenticity of the Evenlode Manor Pandosto was twofold: was the printed book genuine and were the marginalia genuine? His task that morning was to begin answering the first question. The British Library copy of Pandosto, which he now removed carefully from its folding case, was not complete—it lacked the second signature. If Peter could prove that the Evenlode Manor copy was a complete and genuine first edition, it would be a significant find even if the marginalia proved to have been forged.

  Peter carried the two copies of Pandosto from the reading room down a narrow corridor to a room not much larger than a closet and almost completely filled by the six-foot-tall, five-foot-wide gray metal bulk of the museum’s Hinman collator. The collator, an optical comparison device, had been invented by Shakespeare scholar Charlton Hinman in the late 1940s to assist with his research in comparing copies of texts to one another. A researcher placed two copies of a book on the machine’s two platforms, then looked through a binocular viewer and adjusted the image so that, through a series of mirrors, the two copies overlapped exactly. In this way one could tell at a glance if the texts were identical or if there were some variation, as differences would seem to dance before one’s eyes. Hinman had used his collator to compare copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio, meticulously cataloging
the various changes and corrections that had been made during the course of the press run.

  Peter carefully opened the two copies of Pandosto to their title pages and clamped each gently onto one of the collator’s platforms. He flicked the power switch, and the machine hummed as lights illuminated the texts and fans whirred. Peter leaned over the binocular viewer and adjusted the knobs until the two pages that floated before him gradually merged into one crisp image. It was a perfect match. Over the next hour, Peter repeated this process with every page, excepting of course those that were missing from the British Library copy. Everything matched precisely.

  Until he reached the final page, he did not realize that his back ached from leaning over the viewer. Leaving the books in the collator, he stepped back into the reading room, where his eyes took a moment to adjust to the light. He stretched to relieve the tension in his back and had walked several laps around the library table when he noticed, next to his bag, a pile of photocopies—the printouts of the later editions of Pandosto that Nigel’s assistant had made from the microfilm copies.

  Peter now knew that all the pages of the British Library first edition matched the Evenlode Manor copy, but what about the missing signature? If the Evenlode Manor Pandosto were a forgery, the text must have been copied from extant copies—and the only recorded copy of the first edition was incomplete. If the text of the missing signature matched a later edition, the Evenlode Manor copy would be suspect indeed.

  He returned to the collator and removed the British Library Pandosto, replacing it with the photocopy of the 1592 edition. This time he compared only the pages that had been missing from the library’s first edition. On each page the jiggling text that indicated differences on almost every line swam before his eyes. The same was true of the 1595 edition. Finally removing the Evenlode Manor Pandosto from the collator, Peter exhaled a long sigh of relief. He had found exactly what he had hoped for. There now seemed only two possibilities. Either the text of the Evenlode Manor Pandosto was a genuine first edition, or it had been brilliantly forged from a complete copy of the first edition. Of these two possibilities, the former was not only more appealing but more likely.

  Peter switched off the machine and removed the Evenlode Manor Pandosto and the photocopies. The latter he placed in his bag, in case he needed to refer to them later. He sat at the table in the reading room and opened Pandosto to the final page—the rear endpaper crowded with notes. There was a large smudge of brown ink in the lower-right corner. Taking a pair of scissors from his satchel, Peter carefully snipped a tiny piece from this corner and placed it in an envelope. The sample should be sufficient to test the age of the ink and paper. He slipped the book into its protective envelope and back into his bag.

  Peter knocked on the open door of Nigel’s office to attract the attention of the librarian and gave him the envelope containing the sample.

  “I’m hoping it’s sixteenth century,” said Peter, “but there’s a chance it’s a nineteenth-century forgery.”

  “We’ll check the ink and paper for you,” said Nigel. “Don’t know if we’ll be able to prove anything conclusively, but I’ll let you know what we find out.”

  Peter jotted his number down on a scrap of paper and handed it to Nigel. “If there’s any way to get results by the end of the week, I am under a bit of a time crunch,” he said.

  “I’ll do my best,” said Nigel, smiling. Peter would have liked a more definitive promise, but he didn’t want to seem like a pushy American, so he let the matter drop. “And how’s the collating coming?” asked Nigel.

  “Quite well,” said Peter.

  “I’m just off for lunch,” said Nigel, “but if you need anything, my assistant James should be back in a few minutes.”

  At the mention of lunch, Peter felt a jolt of panic. The clock on Nigel’s wall read 1:10. “I must be going,” said Peter, backing out of the office. “I’ve an appointment myself. Call me as soon as you hear anything.” Peter dashed back down the hall and grabbed his bag. Without stopping to reshelve the volumes of the DNB scattered across the table, he made for the door and took the stairs toward the galleries above two at a time. By the time he reached the front doors of the museum, it was 1:15.

  Peter burst through the doors, breathless from his dash up the stairs and through the galleries. The sharp winter air struck his cheek with the force of a slap, as a gust of wind rushed up the wide stone stairs to meet him. A mass of schoolchildren loitered on the steps. Peter scanned the crowd for Liz, wondering if she had given up and left. He was suddenly struck by the vivid memory of another day, years ago, when he had met Amanda on these steps. He had been late then, too.

  “I suppose Robert Cotton is to blame,” Amanda had said, smiling and giving Peter a quick peck on the cheek. That day had been even colder, and he felt the kiss on his face long after Amanda had led him down the steps.

  “Looking for someone?” said a voice, jerking him back to the present. “I guess if your watch is set to American time, you’re four hours and forty-five minutes early,” said Liz, winking at Peter as he turned to her.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Got caught up in some research.”

  “Well,” said Liz, slipping her arm through his in exactly the way Amanda used to do, “that’s at least an excuse I can understand.”

  Liz looked different from when he had seen her three days ago, and it took Peter a minute to realize that her hair, which had been a dirty brown streaked with blond on Friday night, was now a rich, even honey color. She must have had it cut, too. It wasn’t much shorter, but it was considerably less frizzy, the ends were even at her shoulder, and even when the wind swirled around and strands of hair whipped her face, it stayed altogether more kempt than it had on Friday. Peter’s arm was tensed almost to the point of pain where Liz’s was draped through it. Every muscle in his body seemed to be crying out to him—she thinks this is a date; don’t lead her on. Yet in spite of this, Peter found himself saying, “I like your hair.”

  “Thanks,” said Liz. “I got home on Friday night and I thought, Jesus, this guy had to sit across from me all night looking at this crap hair, so I decided what the hell, I’d do something about it.”

  Peter felt like he was in a wrestling match between his body, which now tried to pull slightly away from Liz, and his mouth, which was just on the verge of saying something else nice. True, he had had a pleasant enough time with her on Friday night, but if he had been driven by curiosity about the watercolor then, his motives today were far more powerful, and he needed her to understand that this lunch was not a social engagement. “A lot’s happened since Friday,” he said, finally managing to disengage his arm from hers as they got caught in a crowd of tourists crossing Great Russell Street.

  “You’ll have to tell me all about it,” said Liz, grabbing Peter’s bare hand in the softness of her suede glove and pulling him past Museum Street. “I know a fab little Italian place just around the corner.” Peter resigned himself to the hand-holding, reasoning that it was necessary to avoid separation in the crowds that surged along the pavement. In another moment they had turned a corner into the comparative calm of Coptic Street—its bookshops and art galleries of little interest to the bulk of the tourists that teemed along Great Russell Street. Yet Peter did not drop Liz’s hand; it would be impolite, he thought.

  He followed her around another corner and through the door of a tiny Italian bistro, but neither of them spoke again until they were seated at a table by the front window.

  “I have something for you,” she said, reaching into her voluminous bag and pulling out a stiff buff envelope. “Your watercolor. Thanks for the loan.”

  Peter took the envelope from her. In all the excitement of Pandosto, it seemed somehow less weighty than it had when he had handed it to her three days earlier. “You’re welcome,” said Peter, slipping the envelope into his satchel.

  “You don’t want to look at it?” Liz asked.

  “I trust you,” said Peter.

&n
bsp; “It’s not that,” said Liz. “It’s just . . . it seemed to me you sort of, I don’t know, needed to look at it every so often.”

  Though the watercolor, and what Liz knew about it, was his reason for wanting to see her today, Peter’s obsession with the image had faded considerably since his discovery of the Pandosto. The painting was a worthless artifact of interest only to him because of its coincidental resemblance to Amanda; the book was quite possibly one of the great discoveries in the history of English literature.

  The waiter set two glasses of red wine on the table and Liz raised hers to Peter. He responded to the toast, clinking his glass against hers slightly too hard, the wine almost sloshing onto the crisp, white tablecloth. He took a gulp and set the glass on the table.

  “Easy does it there, cowboy,” said Liz. “So what is it that’s happened since Friday?” Her voice seemed tinged with insecurity, and Peter felt suddenly ashamed that he should be thinking only of trying to get information from her, not of how she might legitimately feel about going out for two meals with the same man in three days. He felt a surge of tenderness for her, such as he had not felt for anyone since he lost Amanda. It was a feeling as frightening as it was unexpected.

  “I have a problem,” he said. “Maybe two problems.”

  “I’m listening,” said Liz, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her chair.

  Peter wasn’t sure how to start. He desperately wanted the name and address of the mysterious scholar from Cornwall who seemed to be the only person in the world who knew anything about the identity of B.B., and now he had some leverage in trying to pry this information out of Liz. On the other hand, he couldn’t help thinking, as he looked at her defensive posture across the table, that the air was rife with unspoken feelings, and if he didn’t address those first, she would never tell him anything.