INTO THE DARK : A TOM DEATON NOVEL

by Richard B. Schwartz

  “Is that all that you’ve found?” Tom asked.

  “That’s all that we consider suspicious,” Baker said. “It will take weeks to check everything. We can’t just make a public announcement, of course. These things must be done quietly. We don’t want to alarm the people and we don’t want to let the thieves know that we’re checking. How about yourself? Any news from your end?”

  “It’s too early for us as well,” Tom said. “The world is filled with art and filled with Germans. Even if we narrow the time frame to a period of three or four years there’s a great deal of material to sift through. I’ll call in a few minutes and see if they have anything. How about Sechrist?”

  “Still checking when I left. I’ll call in as well. Let’s just give them a little time,” Baker said, as the waiter poured the wine. “You won’t let them overcook those steaks, will you?” Baker said.

  “Certainly not, sir,” the waiter answered.

  The chilled celery accompanying the stilton looked a bit wilted by the time Tom returned to the table. He had been crunched in a corner of the second floor of the restaurant, just beyond the stairway, balancing his notebook on his knee, listening to Dietrich’s voice through a succession of transatlantic crackles and blips and jotting down information quickly and carefully. At times Dietrich’s voice broke as if he was using a respirator to speak and the words were stopped in mid-syllable while he caught his breath. The walls above the steps were covered with photographs of famous diners and testimonials from happy tourists. The air was as heavy as the red, flocked wallpaper. When Dietrich had asked where he was calling from, Tom replied that he was in an institution.

  “Port?” Baker asked.

  Tom hesitated for a second.

  “You’ve certainly earned it. You were gone for nearly thirty minutes.”

  “All right,” Tom said, “thanks.” Baker signalled to the waiter.

  “There’s not much yet,” Tom said. “The people in Washington have to work with multiple parallel agencies so we lose a little time with each account. So far most of the reports have to do with thefts from museums and private collections, but many of the works were later recovered and authenticated. We’ve also found a lot of material on Kepler. Nothing that suggests that he was dirty, but a long list of references to his qualifications. He was the art expert in postwar Europe; there’s no doubt about that. There are also the usual accounts of Nazis in South America, but no connections with art or Tenedos, at least not yet. There is one interesting thing . . .”

  “Yes?” Diana said.

  “A man named Bachmann was detained in Chile in 1975.”

  “Karl Bachmann?” Diana asked.

  “They don’t have a first name yet. The paper didn’t report one. They’re checking the Chilean police records.”

  “What was the charge?” Baker asked.

  “It’s very vague at this point. There was a fire in a house that contained an art collection. Apparently there was the suspicion of arson. Bachmann’s name turned up in a police report, but the details were vague and sketchy.”

  “Was it Bachmann’s collection?” Baker asked.

  “Apparently not. Bachmann was found near the scene, taken in, and briefly questioned. The reports make it sound as if he could have been a bystander who was asked routine questions. The curious thing is that the home with the collection was in the Maipo Valley, forty-five minutes outside of Santiago. The house was on a remote road, not the kind of place that would attract bystanders, unless they were lovers or burglars.”

  “What happened to the collection?” Diana asked.

  “Apparently it was saved. There were no details on how it was done, but the article spoke of a near-catastrophe that was luckily averted.”

  “It sounds very lucky to me. There wouldn’t have been a fire department down the street,” Diana said.

  “No, the owner probably had a sprinkler or some other security system,” Tom said. “If the collection was valuable the owner would have taken steps to protect it.”

  “Was this Bachmann alone?” Baker asked.

  “Apparently not. He was part of a group of people near the scene. It’s not clear that they were linked in any way. They may have been drawn separately, attracted by the fire. There were no other names reported, except Bachmann’s.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Diana asked.

  “That the house contained forgeries that had been detected and Bachmann was trying to destroy the evidence?” Tom said.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a distinct possibility, but some things don’t fit. For example, why wasn’t he prosecuted by the owner? If the owner knew he had been bilked he would have been more interested in bringing Bachmann to justice than in saving a room full of fakes.”

  “Assuming that he knew Bachmann was the one who cheated him,” Baker said.

  “Yes. He could have been dealing with one of the other Tenedos partners and Bachmann was sent in because he wouldn’t be recognized. Still, it’s a bit of a stretch to find a German citizen wandering around on a dirt road above the Maipo River in central Chile. If I were the owner of the collection I’d be suspicious, wouldn’t you? The story made the Santiago papers, so the collector would have been aware of Bachmann’s presence there. If that were me I’d be on the phone to the police instantly.”

  “Unless he didn’t want the police involved,” Baker said. “Perhaps he had something to hide . . . or perhaps he wanted to exact his own punishment.”

  “Yes. It’s certainly worth pursuing. The problem is that there were a lot of Bachmanns in South America in the 1970’s.”

  “Were there any other leads?” Diana asked.

  “As a matter of fact there was one. It has to do with Erhard. Remember—he was the one whose empty car was found by the side of the road. He was on his way to visit his sister in Austria.”

  “And?” Baker asked.

  “We’ve been hypothesizing that he might have arranged for his own disappearance.”

  “Yes,” Baker said.

  “When the car was found and the family was contacted the sister had been waiting for him at the airport.”

  “That changes everything,” Diana said.

  “Not necessarily,” Tom said. “It only means that the sister wasn’t aware of what he was planning to do. It could all just be further mystification for the police. He was using his sister to buttress his story. You could fill in the blanks easily: he knew he was being followed so he arranged to leave Berlin. Then something happened and he had to leave in a hurry. He tried to elude them by flying to the west and renting a car. They followed him, caught up with him, and now he sleeps with the Danube fishes. That is what you’re supposed to believe.”

  “Or it could mean that he was taken,” Baker said.

  “It could mean that as well,” Tom said. “From this distance it’s very hard to determine what actually happened, but the sister’s ignorance could suggest further evidence of foul play. Organized foul play. If he was taking a plane directly to Vienna, someone had to take him down and later rent a car and abandon it, unless they had someone else to do that part. My guess is that if he actually was abducted there were almost surely several individuals involved. Taking a man from a crowded airport or intercepting him on a major highway is not simple. Neither is driving a missing car half way across West Germany to Austria without being noticed. It would be much easier if the two were done simultaneously. It doesn’t sound like the work of a freelancer with a vendetta. It sounds like something that was carefully organized.”

  “Like the theft of a major prehistoric artwork from a French cave,” Diana said.

  “Possibly,” Tom said. “It could, of course, simply mean that he was very clever in crafting his story.”

  “It could also mean that he was the victim instead of the perpetrator,” Diana said insistently. />
  “Or some of both,” Tom said. “The Tenedos partners could have betrayed one another.”

  They paused, letting that sink in.

  “I suppose it’s my turn to check with the lads,” Baker said. “By the way, how is your Port?”

  “Very nice,” Tom said.

  “I won’t be long,” he said, rising and walking toward the stairs in the southwest corner of the restaurant.

  “Was that everything?” Diana asked.

  “Yes,” Tom answered. “There are endless reports of Erhards and Driessens and Bachmanns and Bertholds, but they don’t have anything to do with art and at least so far they don’t have anything to do with violence or death, except, of course, for the case in Chile.”

  “What was the name of the man whose house was burned?”

  “It wasn’t reported in the paper,” Tom said.

  “Interesting.”

  “Maybe,” Tom said. “There was a lot to hide in Chile in those days. Pinochet’s country house was only fifteen minutes away from the house that burned and a later attempt on his life occurred less than six miles up the river. The fire may not have been accidental but it still may have nothing to do with our case.”

  “The Chilean wineries are in the Maipo Valley, aren’t they?” Diana asked.

  “Yes, the best ones.”

  “It sounds like the kind of place a rich collector might live—outside of the city, away from prying eyes.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I had a valuable collection—or believed that what I possessed was valuable—I’d do all that I could to protect it.”

  “Yes . . .” Tom said.

  “I’d have security systems, weapons, attack dogs . . . there isn’t any neighborhood watch in the Maipo Valley. If you’re rich you have to look out for yourself.”

  “Right,” Tom said.

  “So if someone managed to get in and set fire to my house . . .”

  “They’d have to be very skilled and very well organized.”

  She nodded, holding his glance with her eyes.

  “We’ve got something,” Baker said. He stood next to the table, finishing the rest of his Port.

  “Sechrist?” Tom said.

  “Yes, there’s part of a document. They’ve just found it.”

  IV

  HEATH STEPPER

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Ludgate Circus

  Saturday, 11: 47 p.m.

  Sechrist’s office was a small suite of rooms on the southwest side of Ludgate Circus. One flight up from an antiquarian bookshop, the door was marked with a small brass tablet with simple Roman lettering:

  M. SECHRIST, LTD.

  APPRAISALS

  The knob turned in Baker’s hand and he, Diana, and Tom entered without knocking. The room was chilly; Baker’s men had kept on their raincoats while they worked. There were three of them, all seated around a short, walnut library table.

  “What do we have?” Baker asked.

  A bald man with bushy brown-and-gray eyebrows slid a clear plastic folder to the center of the table. Inside was a single sheet of thick paper. The paper was scorched, with burn marks around the edges. It was brittle; several of the edges had been taped to the plastic folder to prevent further disintegration.

  “There, Guv,” the man said, pointing to the bottom section of the sheet. “You can just make out three words.” Two of the words were side by side on the same line. A little below and to the right was the third word. The first two words appeared to be in medieval lettering. An h could be seen, then an æ, and finally what appeared to be a letter d with a line through the arm above the circle. The second word began with a long s, followed by the letters t-a-p-a. The third word also began with an s and t but they were followed by an o and a letter which looked like a bent p.

  Tom bent over the table for a closer look as one of Baker’s men lit his pipe and slid his chair back from the table with an air of authority. The oldest man in the room, his eyes and forehead were heavily lined and his arthritic fingers were pointed in odd directions. “What do you make of it, Leonard?” Baker asked.

  He puttered some more before he spoke, toasting the top of the ash a second time. “It looks old, but it’s not. We put a piece from the corner under the microscope. It’s good stock all right, but it’s modern paper. No doubt of that. The fibres are wood, not flax or hemp.”

  “Which would date it . . . when?” Baker asked.

  “Mid to late nineteenth century at the earliest,” Leonard answered.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” Baker said, “Ralph Leonard . . . Diana Bennett and Tom Deaton.” Each offered the other a polite nod.

  “And the language?” Baker asked.

  “Not my line,” Leonard said. “We’ve rung up an expert. He’s on his way.”

  “An expert?”

  “You know him . . . Roberts . . . the language chap.”

  “From St. John’s Wood, the retired don?”

  “Yes.”

  “You awakened him?”

  “Yes, he seemed quite game to join us.”

  Tom lifted the corner of the plastic cover enclosing the sheet of burned paper. “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “No, of course not,” Leonard said. “Just hold it under the center so that it doesn’t flake any further.” Tom took the paper to a side table with its own lamp. The man with the bushy eyebrows offered him a magnifying glass. “Thank you,” Tom said.

  He studied it for several minutes. “It could be Old English. What do you think?” he asked.

  “It may be some old Scandinavian language; it looks like Scandinavian writing,” Bushy Eyebrows said. Leonard remained silent, not wishing to hazard a guess that might later prove to be wrong. The pipe was in the corner of his mouth now, the smoke escaping from his lips in measured wisps.

  “Well then,” Baker said, “when is Roberts due to join us?”

  “Any time now,” Leonard answered.

  “Then we don’t have time for a drink,” Baker said. Tom caught Diana’s expression of surprise out of the corner of his eye but he quickly turned away and continued to study the burned sheet of paper.

  “There’s some coffee, Guv,” Bushy Eyebrows said, “but only one.”

  “Oh,” Baker said, “I couldn’t . . .”

  “Go ahead,” Diana said. “I don’t care for any.”

  “Neither do I,” Tom said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Perfectly sure,” Diana said. Tom just nodded.

  “Well all right then,” Baker said, his expression warming as he raised the cardboard cup to his lips. “Still hot,” he said. “Lovely.”

  Roberts arrived ten minutes later. Tall, with stark white hair and red cheeks, he was wearing wool trousers, a loose wool sweater, and a heavy brown jacket. His scarf was wrapped tightly around his neck, with the two ends hanging in parallel along his back.

  “So . . .” he said to Baker, “out and about again, are we?”

  “Thank you for coming,” Baker responded.

  Roberts turned to Tom and Diana, realized he didn’t know them, and took a step closer. “Roberts,” he said. “Deaton,” Tom answered, “and Dr. Bennett.”

  “American, eh?”

  “Yes,” Tom said.

  “Say something else,” Roberts said.

  “What would you like me to say? I hope you appreciate the fact that we’re in a hurry here.”

  “You’re from the west coast.”

  “Yes.”

  “South, not north, I’d say.”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “Hard to be too precise.”

  “Orange County,” Tom answered.

  “Quite. What do we have?”

  “A forged manuscript, we believe,” Baker answered.
>
  “What makes you think it’s forged?”

  “The language appears to be medieval or older, but the paper is new.”

  “People do still write old words on new paper,” Roberts said.

  “Deaton thinks it’s Old English,” Leonard said, with a tinge of skepticism in his voice.

  “Let’s have a look,” Roberts said. Tom handed him the sheet of paper in its plastic folder. Roberts sat down under the light. Tom handed him the magnifying glass, but Roberts politely waved it away and took out his reading glasses. The rims were red, complimenting his bright cheeks.

  “It is Old English,” Roberts said. “Very good. It looks Scandinavian, doesn’t it?”

  Bushy Eyebrows scooted forward in his seat.

  “But of course, it’s not,” Roberts said.

  He studied it for at least four full minutes. “You found this here, in Sechrist’s shop?”

  “Yes,” Baker said.

  “Fascinating.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I know what it is,” Roberts said. “And it’s either a conscious forgery or someone practicing to be a tenth-century scribe.”

  “What does it say?” Baker asked.

  “It’s quite simple, really. The first two words are really one word. The scribe often separates them. The word is hæthstapa. The d with the flag on top is pronounced t-h. The word itself is a kenning.”

  “What’s that?” Baker asked.

  “Deaton?” Roberts said, as if he was calling on a favored pupil.

  “It’s an expression. It’s in apposition with the primary noun, but a more poetic rendering.”

  “Very good,” Roberts said. “Where did you learn about such matters as apposition?”

  “In high school.”

  “Loyola?”

  “Actually no, in a Catholic high school in San Juan Capistrano,” Tom said.

  “I visited at UCSD for a term, back in the early nineties. We lived in Oceanside; we could barely afford that.”