He handed her the large book, and she caressed it as she carried it to her desktop. “Contemporary Nuremberg binding of blind-stamped calf over wooden boards.”
The front cover was decorated in an elaborate fleur-de-lis pattern with a leafy border, gilt flowers, and gryphons adding to its striking appearance.
“Only thirty-three copies of this work survived,” Bea said. “And before the Second World War, this library owned a pair.”
“The gift of Jasper Hunt?” I asked.
“At the time, yes, it was. He decided to take one of these atlases back. Long before my time, mind you, but no one here ever saw it again, though I’ll bet Jill will still include it on the list of our acquistions she gives you tonight.”
“Sure, rather than agitate-or challenge-any of the Hunt heirs,” Mike said. “Why are you looking for this version?”
“Because it might have been exactly the kind of idea that would have amused our eccentric friend Jasper Hunt Jr.,” Bea said. “Remember-no use of the word ‘America’ appeared in any cartography until the 1507 map. It certainly never entered into anything Ptolemaic. But with the development of the press and the incorporation of all the new explorations of the period, the Strassburg Ptolemy of 1513 was the first book to print a solo map of America. Only America. The first map devoted uniquely to this continent.”
Bea was turning pages in the great volume with painstaking care as she talked.
“A fitting place for Jasper to hide the panel from our map that depicts America,” Mike said.
“Yes, but I think I’m striking out,” she said, separating and flattening the pages as she went.
“There is a second copy of this book though,” I said. “It never surfaced again?”
“Only in rumors,” Bea said. “And then from the mouth of Eddy Forbes.”
“How reliable was he at gossip?”
“Almost as good as he was at stealing,” she said. “In the 1940s, the deals between collectors were a lot different than they are today. With the Internet, we can all keep track of books and maps-who’s got something to sell and who’s in line to buy. Back then, there was much more discretion, many more one-on-one interactions, and lots of secrecy.”
“What did Eddy tell you?” Mike asked.
“His story was that after the war, Jasper Hunt sold the second Strassburg atlas to Lord Wardington. He was always unhappy when the library didn’t treat his bequests like they were their most important gifts of the year. He represented to the buyer, of course, that he had the title free and clear.” Bea pushed the glasses to the top of her head. “It didn’t take long for Wardington, who was a real gent, to learn the truth. He returned the map to Hunt at once to let him make amends with the library.”
“But Hunt never did that,” Mike said.
“Much to my regret,” Bea said. “Now, I had this conversation well before Eddy got in trouble.”
“You mean before he got caught for all the trouble he’d been causing.”
“Right again, Mike.” Bea closed the large book and rested her hand on its lid. “Eddy told me that when Lord Wardington returned the book to Jasper Hunt, the old boy kept it for a while-he had no intention of ever letting it collect dust in our stacks again. Eventually, he gave the book to his granddaughter, Minerva.”
“What?” Mike seemed stunned.
“I’m only the messenger, Detective. That’s what Eddy said, and he knew Minerva Hunt-they’d had some dealings with each other. Why wouldn’t I believe him? None of this had any significance until you found that panel under the water tank yesterday. Till you told me this map-which I wasn’t even certain existed-might be connected to the murder of Tina Barr.”
Mike was circling the table now, punching his right fist into the palm of his left hand.
“We’ve got to get to Eddy Forbes, Coop. You talk to the feds on Monday,” Mike said. “What else did he tell you, Bea?”
“Of course, my angle was selfish, too. I asked about the map because I wanted to get it back from the family. Have it here, where it belonged,” the librarian said. “Eddy told me that for most of her life, Minerva had kept the atlas in her father’s library. She had no use for it, and no real idea of its value. Then, shortly before his arrest, Eddy Forbes reintroduced her to Alger Herrick, who offered to pay her dearly for the atlas, not withstanding its clouded provenance.”
“For a reason?”
“Herrick’s collection is heavy on Ptolemy,” Bea said. “He’s got the most important library of maps in private hands, now that Lord Wardington is gone.”
“Yes, he told us about his Bologna Ptolemy,” I said. “But Herrick also said Minerva dabbled in maps. Why wouldn’t she have wanted to hold on to it?”
“If you ask me, you’re making too much of the fact that Alger Herrick was after that book. It’s much more like the rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees,” Bea said. “Herrick’s a Ptolemy guy. He’s been trying to corner the market on all the great editions of that work.”
“And Minerva?” I asked.
“Strictly Mercator,” Bea said, handing the book back to Mike to reshelve.
“Sorry? I don’t get what you mean.”
“Mercator was one of the greatest sixteenth-century geographers, Alex. Mercator maps? Every schoolkid knows them.”
“Sure,” I said, recalling the famous images of the cylindrical projection maps, with parallels and meridians and perpendicular chartings all neatly aligned.
“Gerardus Mercator. His maps were designed for marine navigation, so that sailors could use a straight line to determine their position at sea, even without instruments.”
“What’s it called when sailors do that?” I asked.
Mike brushed back his hair and answered. “Dead reckoning.”
Bea Dutton wagged her finger at Mike. “That’s just what Eddy Forbes said about that girl. Back then, I thought he was joking. He said she was total Mercator all the way.”
“What did he mean?” I asked.
“If Minerva Hunt is doing the reckoning,” he used to say, “anyone who gets in the way of the straight line between her and whatever she’s after, the odds are they’ll be dead. That’s what he meant by dead reckoning.”
FORTY
By nine o’clock, curators and cops had been returning to the map division room in rolling waves, like eager kids gathering clues on a scavenger hunt.
Bea was in charge of examining each volume they found in hopes of coming across a panel of the missing map, but none of the rare books and atlases yielded any treasure. Jill Gibson sat glumly in a corner of the room, checking her master list against the items that had been retrieved, noting those that were reported to be missing from their proper places.
“I’m so hungry, I’m losing it,” Mike said.
“There are some places in the neighborhood,” Bea said. “We could take a walk.”
“No time for that. Coop, you got enough cash for about eight pizzas to feed these guys?”
I dug into my pants pocket and handed him my money.
“We can’t eat in here, Mike,” Bea said. “You can lock me up before I let you get food into this room.”
“Deal.” He signaled to one of the rookies. “Send your partner for as many pies as this will buy. Anything but anchovies. Get me some tarps from the Crime Scene wagon. Set them up on the ground at the receiving dock.”
Mike turned to Bea. “A little brisk for an al fresco picnic, but that’s what I’m offering.”
“Accepted.”
While we waited for the takeout order, Bea continued to study the books, most of them from the Hunt Collection. I caught glimpses of the Asian sex lithographs, the Curtis photos, and several versions of Marco Polo’s journals. The erotic drawings were as visually stunning as the sepia prints of Native Americans and the brilliant notations made by the great Italian traveler, but nothing she searched turned up any unexpected bonus.
Twenty-five minutes later, when our dinner arrived, Mike and I-joined again
by Mercer-led our bleary-eyed soldiers out to the freight entrance and tried to get our minds off work while we ate.
“I bet you’re real good at trivia,” Mike said to Bea. He was sitting cross-legged on a tarp while she parked herself on one of the steps a few feet away.
“Not many topics. Why?”
“Mercer, the Coopster, and I bet on the Final Jeopardy! question most nights. I’m asking you to be my teammate, okay?”
“I won’t be much help.”
Mike was on his second slice of pepperoni and sausage. “You were taking your crazy cab ride last night, kid, so I know you didn’t see the show. And Mercer was with me. Lucky that I’ve got TiVo and no life. Twenty bucks, everybody. Coop, I’m taking it out of your change.”
“Help yourself. It would have been the first time you ever gave me change.”
“The category is Animals. Animals, ladies and gents.”
“No fair, Chapman. You know the Q and A,” Mercer said.
“Double or nothing. I’ll keep my mouth shut, and if Bea gets it, I’m buying dessert.”
“So what’s the answer?” Mercer asked.
Mike did his best Alex Trebek imitation. “The answer is…Oldest living animal on the planet. Oldest living animal on the planet.”
“Wait a minute, Bea,” I said. “I’ve got another idea, another possible literary hiding place for Jasper Hunt.”
“Hold that thought, Coop,” Mike said. “I’m looking to score.”
“I give up. This is more important. Whales, elephants, rhi-noceri.”
“Bad sport, Blondie. Don’t spoil it for the others.”
Bea was wiping the crumbs from her veggie pizza off her sweater. “Tell me, Alex. What are you thinking?”
“Aw, Bea. Give me an old animal,” Mike said. “In the form of a question.”
“What’s a snail?”
“Bad answer, Bea. You’re letting me down. Mercer?”
“What’s a…?”
“I’ll give you a hint. Coop’s favorite restaurant in the world. Martha’s Vineyard. The Bite.”
The Quinn sisters’ tiny shack by the side of the road in Chilmark served the very best chowder and fried clams I’d ever tasted. But Mike revealed the question before I could shift my train of thought from rare books to shellfish.
“What’s an ocean quahaug?” Mike said. “Trebek said some researchers dredged up a four-hundred-year-old clam near Iceland this year. It’s got growth rings, just like trees, so you can tell its age. Check your chowder next time. Those old quahaugs could get chewy.”
He was eating his third piece of pizza, with no sign of slowing down.
I went back to the thought I had while Mike was quizzing us. “Bea, I’m sure the library must have a good sampling of Shakespearean originals.”
“Absolutely. I’m not familiar with them, but I know we have several copies of the four folios. Someone in this group will be able to tell us,” she said. “And we’ll find out if any have to do with Jasper Hunt. What’s his connection to the Bard?”
Mike wiped his mouth. “Slip of paper on the corpse. ‘The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.’”
Bea bent down to help me stack the empty boxes and collect the trash. “So why are you looking for the books?”
“Because Hunt was into pranks and tricks,” I said. “Seems like it would have appealed to that eccentric part of him to hide pieces of the map in a Shakespearean folio, if that was his favorite passage. Make it hard for his greedy heirs to put them back together.”
“Maybe that was the evil part of him,” Bea said, straightening up. “Maybe the good-the rest of the panels to complete the map-maybe they’re interred with his bones.”
Mike Chapman was on his feet faster than a bolt of lightning could strike a tree.
“You’re my girl, Bea. Didn’t Talbot tell us that his grandfather wanted to go out like a pharaoh, surrounded by all his worldly goods? Let’s find out where Jasper Hunt was laid to rest. Let’s see what’s buried with his bones.”
FORTY-ONE
I rang Jasper Hunt the Third’s apartment, and the butler answered.
“He’s asleep, madam. Do you know the hour?”
“I apologize for calling so late. I’m trying to find out where his father is buried. Would you happen to know?”
“Certainly, madam. In Millbrook, on the family estate. We shall all be in Millbrook one day, God willing.”
I thanked him and hung up.
We were back in Bea’s office. The helpful curators were still searching for books, with a new emphasis on volumes related to Shakespeare.
Mike was on Bea’s computer. He had Googled Jasper Hunt’s obituary and was reading aloud to us. “Yeah, looks like Junior and his father were laid to rest beside their wives-no mention of mistresses-and their beloved pets. The reinterment took place in the 1980s, when Jasper Three created a plot for them on the back forty of the horse farm-immediate family, servants, and still plenty of room for Patience and Fortitude. Looks like the Dutchess County society event of the season.”
“Does it say why there was a reinterment?” I asked.
“Guess they had a layover someplace else, Coop. I see a road trip up the Hudson in your future,” Mike said. “No mention of books, Bea.”
“Bibliomaniacs have done it forever,” she said. “Put their favorite books in their burial chambers with them. You’re the military buff. You know the name Rush Hawkins?”
“Civil War general. Led a volunteer cavalry troop called Hawkins’s Zouaves.”
“Well, he built himself a mausoleum in Providence so he could be surrounded by all his books after he shuffled off his mortal coil,” Bea said. “Elizabeth Rossetti, too.”
“The writer’s wife?” I asked.
“Yup. Dante Gabriel Rossetti placed his unpublished poems in his young bride’s grave at Highgate Cemetery, along with a Bible. The poet had a change of heart a year later and reclaimed his work for publication-somewhat dampened by exposure. The vellum pages are at Harvard now. It’s been done forever.”
“Worth considering,” I said.
“You’re good at exhumations, Coop.”
My only other experience like that had been the sad task of reexamining the body of a teenage girl whose original autopsy had missed the telling signs that motivated her killer.
“How long do you want to keep the staff going at this tonight?” Bea asked.
“I think most of them are about to hit a wall,” I said. “Maybe we should knock off and start them fresh in the morning.”
My cell phone vibrated and I reached for it to see whether it was a call I wanted to take.
“We can secure everything right here,” Mike said. “We’ll have a detail at this very door around the clock.”
Bea grimaced. It was obvious she didn’t like the idea of entrusting all these treasures to outsiders who didn’t respect the integrity of each book, atlas, map, and document the way these curators did.
“I promise you, they’ll be fine,” I said, pressing the talk button as I recognized the number of Howard Browner, one of the senior forensic biologists at the DNA lab. “Howard? It’s Alex.”
“Am I catching you at a bad time?”
“Still working, Howard. You, too?”
“Yeah.”
Browner-whom Mike called the Brainiac-was brilliant and dedicated to his work, one of the first experts in DNA technology who had trained many of us in this evolving science since its introduction in the criminal justice system.
Mike spun his finger in a circle, telling me to hurry the call so we could help Bea close up. I rolled my eyes at him.
“You have something for me?” I asked.
“I’ve been in the lab all day. Got handed this assignment late afternoon. It’s kind of interesting, along the lines of what Mattie’s been working on with you for the Griggs case.”
“Wrap it up, Coop,” Mike said.
“Thanks for thinking of me, Ho
ward. I’m sort of tied up with Mike right now.” Interesting was not what I needed at the moment. “Can it wait till Monday?”
“Sure, Alex. It’s just a bench hunch.”
Browner wasn’t calling about a match in the databank but something his gut instinct was feeding him as he looked at profiles at his bench, as the lab workspaces were called.
“You mean a familial search?” I asked. “Is it Wesley Griggs?
Despite Mike’s prodding, I was anxious for a development that might impact Judge Moffett’s decision.
“No. Nothing new on that front.”
“I’ll call you first thing when I get to the office, Howard. Okay? You know how Mike is. We’re trying to shut down for the night.”
“Understood. Just make a note to tell me if the father of one of your witnesses is still around. I’d like to get a swab from him.”
“A witness in which murder case?” I asked. “Are you talking Griggs?”
Mike stood still and put his hands on his waist, staring at me as I listened to Browner.
“No, no, Alex. They’ve added me to the team on the BarrVastasi homicides. I’m working on a cigarette butt Chapman submitted.”
“That’s got to be the one he picked up from the floor of the squad. The smoker is a woman named Minerva Hunt,” I said. “What’s so interesting about it?”
“I had it right on my bench when the fax came through from London a few hours ago. I’m looking through all the profiles, and I see that the smoker and this guy, the drunk driver from England-well, they’ve got an allele in common at each one of thirteen loci we’ve tested. They match perfectly,” Browner said, his normally flat delivery lifted a decibel with excitement. “I know how you like this forensic stuff, Alex.”
My mind was racing to make the connection between the players. “Tell me what it means, Howard.”
“I can’t be certain till I get a paternal swab, but if I enjoyed betting as much as Mike does, I’d have to say I’m looking at a half brother and sister here. Same father, different mothers. Isn’t that wild?”
Alger Herrick-the infant who’d been abandoned by his teenage mother on the steps of an orphanage in England-was in all likelihood the illegitimate child of Jasper Hunt III, the blood brother of Talbot and Minerva Hunt.
Lethal Legacy Page 31
