Left Turn at Paradise

by Thomas Shawver

  I told her.

  “My partner discovered his years ago at a shop in the Cotswolds,” she said, speed-dialing on her cell phone. “It was as much a steal as I gather your find was. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way in this business.”

  While she waited for the connection I couldn’t help but wonder what was under all that silk and cashmere. The scar, as shocking as discovering a crack in an otherwise perfect Etruscan vase, didn’t seem so important when considering the rest of her. Pillow Wilkes was the real thing, all right: a smart, refined beauty whose proud carriage indicated she was nobody’s fool.

  No lover’s easy conquest, either, I figured, unless the game was played according to her rules.

  “Bloody hell, he’s turned the damn thing off again.”

  “I’ve got to get back to my booth,” Sexton said, after Pillow had left her message.

  “I appreciate your bringing this to our attention, Clive,” she said. “I hope you’ll agree that it’s best we keep this knowledge to as few people as possible.”

  “Of course. Aside from Bartow, I’ve not mentioned the existence of Adrian’s journal to anyone.”

  Pillow’s cell phone beeped and she excused herself to answer it behind one of the high cases.

  After a minute, she returned and handed the phone to me.

  “Hello, Mr. Bevan. Adrian Hart here. I understand we share something in common. I’m stuck for another hour negotiating a purchase. What say we meet where you are staying to compare notes? I’d prefer not to do this at the Center—too many inquiring eyes.”

  “Sure. I’ll be at the Marines’ Memorial Club, Mason and Sutter. Three o’clock sound okay?”

  “Right. See you there.”

  When I gave the cell phone back to Pillow, she was staring intently at something down the aisle. I followed her gaze. Billy Bartow was heading toward a delivery exit. He looked furtively over his shoulder before opening the door and disappearing into the steady rain.

  Chapter Six

  Adrian Hart looked every inch the English public school product gone a bit soft in early middle age—medium height, compact build, a snub nose, blond hair spilling across an unlined forehead, the beginning of a double chin below thin Protestant lips. He sported a black velvet blazer, a silk tattersall weskit in alternating sky and navy plaid with matching bow tie. The shirt was pale pink, the pleated trousers gray. Hart’s eyes matched the color of his pants. He held a leather-bound copy of Montaigne’s Essays in the stubby fingers of his left hand.

  I normally like the English. After all, I married one. But I didn’t cotton to Hart at first. Maybe it’s because his soft leather shoes and the weskit cost more than my first car, or that he spoke with a highly affected accent, emphasizing the end of certain pronouncements with the arch of an eyebrow and a condescending sniff of the nostrils.

  He also said “indeed” a lot; the British equivalent of the tiresome “ya know?” that has infiltrated American speech.

  For all his snobbish airs, Hart didn’t seem the type to spend hours behind a counter debating with customers as to whether fore-edge paintings were nothing more than a “cottage style” adornment. There was a fey hardness to his look. He was no doubt a knowledgeable bookman, and I suspected that once Adrian Hart set eyes on a volume so scarce as to be nearly unprocurable he’d resort to any means to get it in his bag.

  We settled into leather chairs before a marble fireplace in the eleventh-floor library of the Marines’ Memorial Club. The blue-green waters of San Francisco Bay shimmered beyond the high windows of the classic Beaux Arts hotel.

  “Nice place,” Hart remarked, studying the crystal chandelier above us. “Reminds me of the East India Club in London.”

  “A brief career in the Marines has had some benefits.”

  “Indeed. I served Mars as well. Royal Navy.”

  “Aboard a ship?”

  “My skills along military lines were rather more plebian; did seven years with Special Boat Service.”

  That got my attention. The SBS is a commando regiment equivalent to our Navy SEALs and Marine Recon.

  “You’re surprised,” he said.

  “Sorry, you…”

  “Don’t seem the type? I’m one of those odd ducks who may prize Vogue fashion photographs from the 1930s, but also find time for the occasional hike up Mount Elbrus. I might say the same of you. Who’d ever suspect such a big strapping fellow to be a bookman?”

  “What would you have me be? A golf pro?”

  “No,” he said, rubbing his chin and narrowing his eyes at me. “Something rather more sinister—a Jesuit defrocked for all the wrong reasons, perhaps?”

  I glanced at my watch. Hart took the sledgehammer hint.

  “Now, Mr. Bevan, how came you by the journal?”

  “It was in an old desk given me by a retired admiral in Newport, Rhode Island. He was an avid collector of naval artifacts and may have acquired this while serving at Allied Command in London during the war.”

  I pulled the packet from my briefcase and handed it to Hart. He took his time studying the middle pages, at one point turning the rough canvas at different angles to observe the childlike figure of a Tahitian canoe Gibson had drawn in one of the margins.

  “It’s our Marine, all right,” he concluded, in a businesslike voice. “The handwriting, the phrasing, the remarkable insight into the foibles of his betters as well as his shipmates—it all points to a remarkable young man. Coming from a rural Hampstead background, yet able to write like this, I’ll wager his father was a village vicar.”

  He set the journal on the coffee table next to the Montaigne.

  “Mine is considerably more detailed,” he continued, “and the penmanship is less crabbed. Gibson was a seasoned hand by the second voyage, promoted to corporal and into the good graces of Captain Cook despite his attempted desertion on the first voyage. But yours contains that ripping tale of how, besotted by a Tahitian beauty, he absented himself, only to be dragged back to the ship in chains. It says a great deal about the captain that he didn’t hang the spirited young fellow from the yardarm.”

  “Cook’s leniency paid off. No other Marine served on all three voyages.”

  “Nor, I suspect, as loyally. Did you know Gibson learned to speak the native lingo? He was always at his captain’s side during negotiations with the island chiefs.”

  When I said I hadn’t known that, Hart eyed me carefully. Then, as if making a decision, he bent forward and spoke in a confidential tone, although we were alone.

  “How long have you been in the trade?”

  “Seven years this spring. Used books, mostly. Nothing particularly special.”

  “Open shop?”

  “Yes, although a lot of sales are through the Internet now.”

  “What were you before?”

  “A trial lawyer.”

  “Ah, a barrister. Why give that up?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “One doesn’t abandon a hard-earned and respectable profession merely because you love the smell of old parchment.”

  “And why not? There’s nothing I enjoy more than finding a rare edition, particularly one I’ll be able to turn for a nice profit. But I’m preaching to the choir, aren’t I?”

  Hart smiled with his eyes. When he did that, I began to like him. More important, I began to trust him.

  He nodded. “Of course you are. I’ve yet to meet a bookseller who was a paragon of commerce. Both of us could be doing something more lucrative with our time. I suspect, however, that if you had been more successful as a barrister you would have become a collector of fine volumes, not a tradesman. Sorry to be blunt, but time is limited.”

  “I was a good lawyer once. Certain things happened.”

  “Run off with the church funds?”

  “Something like that.”

  I didn’t mention my wife’s death, the subsequent drug use and emotional breakdown. I guessed Hart knew anyway. In the hour before our meeting he would have ty
ped my name on his computer and the Internet would have produced the newspaper account of my disbarment. There was no hiding place on the World Wide Web.

  “Would you return to the law if you could?”

  “I’ve thought about it. More so lately, what with technology all but taking over and making us nothing more than data processors. How did you manage to get where you are?”

  Hart eyed me warily, distrust mixed with the desire to know more about me. I gathered he was more comfortable asking personal questions than answering them.

  The seconds passed slowly. I picked up the Montaigne and opened to a page that began, The gladiator, prone on the sand, clings to hope although the thumb points down on every threatening hand….

  “I was headed for silk,” Hart answered, following a long stare at the floor, “but the Lloyd’s insurance debacle wiped out my father’s estate and, with it, my chance for a law career. I joined the military for free room, board, and a bit of challenge, then attended university, followed by an apprenticeship with Maggs Brothers. My reputation seemed made when I discovered a box of Boswell’s letters to Samuel Johnson behind a pantry at Lord Auchinleck’s estate. The firm’s management denied me promotion, however. They claimed my methods in gaining access to the country house were unethical. Of course, that didn’t stop them from keeping the acquisition. I resigned and opened The Book and Bell.”

  “With Pillow Wilkes as your partner?”

  Hart nodded. “She lacks literary acumen, and her bartering skills, so necessary in this trade, are little better than a Moroccan rug dealer’s. She has gobs of money, however, and finds it great fun to support a quality shop in Cecil Court. It’s been a profitable match for both of us.”

  “In other ways as well?”

  “Dear Bevan,” he said, smirking, “my interest lies on the other side of the fence—or bed, as it were. As for Pillow, I’ve not detected much interest of that sort with either sex since her marriage to that dreadful baronet, Alistair Wilkes-ffolkes, ended.”

  “A pity. She’s beautiful.”

  “Do you think so?” Hart sniffed. “A book with broken bindings never appealed to me, no matter the provenance or rarity.”

  “She can’t help…”

  “The burns?” he said, reaching into his satchel and pulling out a folder. “She could look like a lizard and it wouldn’t matter to me. It’s what’s broken inside. Let’s get down to business, shall we? I found this while researching old police records at the British National Library. It should explain some things.”

  He handed me the folder. Inside was a photocopy of an eighteenth-century news sheet titled The Quarterly Pursuit that reported an affidavit of Robert Anderson, Royal Navy. It had been given in the presence of Sir John Fielding, a London magistrate, on 18 September 1780.

  “Who is Anderson?”

  “A friend and shipmate of Gibson’s on all three voyages,” Hart said. “Go ahead, read it.”

  I, Robert Anderson, Gunner’s Mate, Royal Navy, declare the following to be true to the best of my knowledge. On the second day of August in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty, and in the twentieth Year of the Reign of his Majesty King George the Third over Great Britain, France and Ireland, etc, I did journey to London with Samuel Gibson, Serjeant of Marines, formerly of His Majesty’s Sloop the Resolution. Our intent being to visit John Hawkesworth, L.L.D., for to sell certain personal records penned by Serjeant Gibson during his last voyage with the late Capt James Cook.

  The publisher’s offices being closed due to the late hour of our arrival, we stopped for supper and other sustenance at the Lucky Bull Tavern, Cheapside Dock. Serjeant Gibson quaffed more gin than proper sense demands and did boast to all within, rogues and good men alike, of the riches his book would most assuredly bring him. At the calling of curfew we departed the Bull in search of lodging not very sober. It was near a butcher’s stall in the shadow of the Tower that a linkboy led us to a pack of thieves and murderers who set upon us with clubs and knives. I awoke to find poor Gibson dead and all our possessions taken. I recognized one of them from the Bull, but know not his name. He is a large brute, 14 stone or more….

  I know a thing or two about ill fortune, most of it caused by my own doing, but Gibson took the prize when it came to snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.

  “Obviously, he wasn’t killed for his money pouch,” I said to Hart.

  “Indeed. Thames watermen, a disreputable bunch under any circumstances, would have appreciated the importance of a firsthand account of Cook’s last adventure. We can assume the thieves hocked it to a bookseller or printer, but criminal investigations being what they were, the trail grew cold. It has remained so for 250 years.”

  “Have you determined the previous owners of your journal? Or mine, for that matter?”

  Hart gave me one of those tilted-head looks, like a robin sizing up a worm.

  “You really are most fortunate to have found me, Bevan. I should expect some consideration for the time and effort I have placed over the years in tracing their provenance.”

  I didn’t like the tone of his voice any better than the implicit threat behind the words.

  “What provenance? You haven’t told me anything yet, Hart. Do you want to work with me or not?”

  He flexed the fingers of his left hand as if clutching a knife.

  “Well?”

  After a long moment, his smarmy smile returned and he pulled from his satchel a July 1978 edition of the Antiquarian Book Monthly Review.

  “An article in here by George Lewisohn, since deceased, reports that the first two journals were sold in the spring of 1780 to a Penrith book dealer near England’s Lake District. The author presumes the seller was Gibson’s wife, because the transaction took place before her husband’s return from the third and last voyage.”

  “Gibson must have been enraged when he returned to find what his wife had done without his consent.”

  “Indeed,” Hart said. “But news of Cook’s murder and that of four Marines was received in England in January 1780, ten months before the ships returned to London. I’ll wager Mrs. Gibson assumed he was one of the dead and sought to ease her sorrow by selling his scribblings, which meant nothing to her. She received one guinea for them, enough to buy new bedsprings and then some.”

  “Quite a coup for the Penrith bookman.”

  “It would have been, but according to Lewisohn’s research, the admiralty soon caught wind of the unauthorized writings. They confiscated them, storing both within the basement archives of the Royal Navy near Whitehall. There they remained until the Second World War, when a direct hit from a German V-2 rocket destroyed much of the structure along with thousands of rare documents. Luckily, the tin box containing our two journals protected them from the resulting fire. They were taken to a location for sorting out, where the archivist decided that a bookseller friend—and not the Crown, which had ignored the diaries for 250 years—should profit by them. They ended up in a bookshop on Fulham Road, London.”

  “What did they sell for?”

  “Not as much as you’d think. Postwar England was devastated economically, and rare books and documents were going for absurdly low prices. No one appears to have been interested in the hard-to-decipher writings of an enlisted Royal Marine when you could get first editions of Keats and Shelley for a pittance. The book dealer was old, he’d lost two sons in the war, and the provenance of the journals was shaky, given that the archivist wasn’t going to admit he’d stolen them from the Navy.”

  “Admiral Taylor probably bought the first journal from him,” I said. “He remained in London for a year after the war.”

  “That fits. But he wasn’t offered or couldn’t afford both. The second ended up with a bookseller named Potter whose shop was in the Cotswold village of Burford. It’s where I bought it a decade ago. When I inquired of this gent if he knew of any other journals by Gibson, he thought the first had been sold to an American—undoubtedly, your friend Ta
ylor—but he was vague concerning the existence of a third.”

  There was more silence as Hart pondered whether to divulge the next bit of information. His eyes widened. Mine didn’t. I was getting tired of the dramatics. I threatened to begin reading the Montaigne again.

  “However,” Hart finally said, “Mrs. Potter was rather more forthcoming. There are times, after all, when I’ll do anything for the cause.”

  I imagined the two of them in the back room of a rural shop thrashing about on creaking wood floors while Mr. Potter, oblivious to being cuckolded, recalculated his dwindling accounts for the twentieth time.

  “She gave me the name of a former clerk at the pensioners’ hospital in Greenwich rumored to possess the diary of one of Cook’s below-deck men. I located the old man in Bath, but dementia had clouded his wits. His daughter, however, thought that he’d sold it through an ad in Antiquarian Bookman magazine. She remembered wrapping it for shipping to an address in Hawaii, but the customer’s name and any records of the transaction had been consigned to the trash bin long ago.”

  “Does your trail end there?”

  Without bothering to answer, Hart folded his arms across his chest and changed the subject with a question of his own.

  “I take it you hope Private Gibson’s first journal will enable you to become a ‘legitimate’ antiquarian dealer?”

  “I prefer the term ‘respected.’ ”

  “Very well. Individually, each of our journals is a treasure, providing valuable and previously undisclosed insight into Cook the man. Given its primacy, yours is equally as important as mine. If I may say so, however, the second journal appears to be far more detailed and interesting. By then, Corporal Gibson had come to realize the significance and uniqueness of his point of observation. He knew he was witnessing history. In the first voyage he was merely a spirited youth focused on his own exploits.”

  “But together,” I said, “their value increases exponentially.”

  Hart leaned forward. “Precisely. For that reason I am prepared to offer you considerably more than anyone else. I should think one hundred thousand dollars would allow you a considerable upgrade of your stock.”