Book of Souls by Glenn Cooper

by Glenn Cooper

  “What an odd question.”

  He pressed for an answer.

  “Well, I’m not a builder or an accountant, but I’d imagine it’s in the millions!”

  Will smiled impishly. “I may have something in my bag that’ll solve your problems.”

  She arched her eyebrows, suspiciously, and said dryly, “Wouldn’t that be marvelous. Why don’t I see what’s keeping Granddad?”

  Just as she rose to find him, the old man shuffled into the Great Hall, staring quizzically at Will.

  “Who’s that?” he called out.

  She answered at a volume he could hear. “It’s Mr. Piper from America.”

  “Oh, right. Forgot about that. Long way to come. Don’t know why he didn’t just use the telephone.”

  She ushered Lord Cantwell over for introductions.

  He was well into his eighties, mostly bald except for an unruly fringe of silvery hair. His red, eczematous face was a weed garden of hairy tufts the razor missed. He was dressed for a Sunday afternoon, twill trousers, herringbone sports coat and an ancient university tie, shiny with wear. Will noticed his trousers were too large for him, and he was using a fresh belt hole. Recent weight loss, not a good sign in an older fellow. He was stiff with arthritis and had the gait of a man who hadn’t loosened up yet. When Will shook his hand, he got a stronger whiff of urine and concluded he’d been sitting on the fellow’s favorite chair.

  Will ceded Cantwell his usual seat, a courtesy Isabelle approvingly noticed. She poured her grandfather a coffee, then improved the fire and offered Will her chair, pulling up a footstool for herself.

  Cantwell was not given to subtlety. He took a loud slurp of coffee and boomed, “Why in hell did you want to spend 200,000 quid on my book? Obviously pleased you did, but for the life of me, I don’t see the value.”

  Will spoke up to penetrate the man’s hearing impediment. “I’m not the buyer, sir. Mr. Spence called you. He’s the buyer. He’s very interested in the book.”

  “Why?”

  “He thinks it’s a valuable historical document. He has some theories, and he asked me to come over here and see if I could find out more about it.”

  “Are you an historian like my Isabelle? You thought the book was worth something, didn’t you, Isabelle?”

  She nodded and smiled proudly at her grandfather.

  Will said, “I’m not an historian. More like an investigator.”

  “Mr. Piper used to be with the American Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Isabelle offered.

  “J. Edgar Hoover’s gang, eh? Never liked him.”

  “He’s been gone for a while, sir.”

  “Well, I don’t think I can help you. That book’s been in our family as long as I can remember. My father didn’t know its provenance, nor did my grandfather. Always considered it a one-off oddity, some sort of municipal registry, possibly Continental in origin.”

  It was time to play his cards. “I have something to tell you,” Will said, looking each one of them in the eye, playing out a melodrama. “We found something hidden in the book, which may be of considerable value and might help answer questions about the book’s origins.”

  “I went through every page!” Isabelle protested. “What was hidden? Where?”

  “Under the back endpaper. There was a sheet of parchment.”

  “Bugger!” Isabelle cried. “Bugger! Bugger!”

  “Such language,” Cantwell scolded.

  “It was a poem,” Will continued, amused by the girl’s florid exasperation. “There wasn’t time to vet it, but one of Mr. Spence’s colleagues thinks it’s about the book.” He was milking it now. “Guess who it’s written by?”

  “Who?” Isabelle demanded impatiently.

  “You’re not going to guess?”

  “No!”

  “How about William Shakespeare.”

  The old man and the girl first looked to each other for reaction, then turned back to the certifiable American.

  “You’re joking!” Cantwell huffed.

  “I don’t believe it!” Isabelle exclaimed.

  “I’m going to show it to you,” Will said, “and here’s the deal. If it’s authentic, one of my associates says it’s worth millions, maybe tens of millions. Apparently there isn’t a single confirmed document that exists in Shakespeare’s handwriting, and this puppy’s signed, at least partially—W. Sh. Mr. Spence is going to keep the book, but he’s willing to give the poem back to the Cantwell family if you’ll help us with something.”

  “With what?” the girl asked suspiciously.

  “The poem is a map. It refers to clues about the book, and the best guess is that they were hidden in Cantwell Hall. Maybe they’re still here, maybe they’re long gone. Help me with the Easter egg hunt, and, win or lose, the poem’s yours.”

  “Why would this Spence give us back something he rightfully paid for?” Cantwell mused. “Don’t think I would.”

  “Mr. Spence is already a wealthy man. And he’s dying. He’s willing to trade the poem for some answers, simple as that.”

  “Can we see it?” Isabelle asked.

  He pulled the parchment from his briefcase. It was protected by a clear, plastic sleeve, and, with a flourish, he handed it to her.

  After a few moments of study, her lips began to tremble in excitement. “Can’t be well,” she whispered. She’d found it immediately.

  “What was that?” the old man asked, irritably.

  “There’s a reference to our family, Granddad. Let me read it to you.”

  She recited the sonnet in a clear voice, fit for a recording, with nuances of playfulness and drama as if she had read it before and rehearsed its delivery.

  Cantwell furrowed his brow. “Fifteen eighty-one, you say?”

  “Yes, Granddad.”

  He pressed down hard on the armrests and worked himself upright before Will or Isabelle could offer assistance, then started shuffling toward a dim corner of the room. They followed, as he muttered to himself. “Shakespeare’s grandfather, Richard was from the village. Wroxall’s Shakespeare country.” He was scanning the far wall. “Where is he? Where’s Edgar?”

  “Which Edgar, Granddad? We’ve had several.”

  “You know, the Reformer. Not our blackest sheep, but not far off. He would have been lord of the manor in 1581. There he is. Second from the left, halfway up the wall. You see? The fellow in the ridiculously high collar. Not one of the most handsome Cantwells—we’ve had some genetic variation over the centuries.”

  Isabelle switched on a floor lamp, casting some light upon a portrait of a dour, pointy-chinned man with a reddish goatee standing in an arrogant, puffy-chested, three-quarter pose. He was dressed in a tight, black tunic with large gold buttons and had a conical Dutch-style hat with a saucer-shaped brim.

  “Yes, that’s him,” Cantwell affirmed. “We had a chap in from the National Gallery a good while back who said it might have been painted by Robert Peake the Elder. Remind your father of that when I pop off, Isabelle. Could be worth a few quid if he needs to flog it.”

  From across the room, a woman’s foghorn voice startled them. “Hallo! I’m back. Give me an hour, and I’ll have lunch ready.” The housekeeper, a short, sturdy woman, was still in her wet scarf, clutching her handbag, all business.

  Isabelle called to her, “Our visitor is here, Louise.”

  “I can see that. Did you find the clean towels I put out?”

  “We haven’t been upstairs yet.”

  “Well, don’t be rude!” she scolded. “Let the gentleman have a wash. He’s come a long way. And send your grandfather to the kitchen for his pills.”

  “What’s she going on about?”

  “Louise says, take your pills.”

  Cantwell looked up at his ancestor and shrugged emphatically. “To be continued, Edgar. That woman strikes fear in my heart.”

  The upstairs guest wing was cool and dark, a long, paneled hall with brass valances and dim-watted bulbs every few yards
, rooms on either side, hotel-style, long, worn runners. Will’s room faced the rear. He gravitated toward the windows to watch the intensifying storm and absently brushed dead flies off the sills. There was a brick patio below and a wild expanse of garden beyond, fruit trees leaning in the stiff wind and sideways rain. In the foreground, off to his right, he could see the edge of what looked like a stables, and over its roof, the top of an outbuilding, some sort of spired structure, indistinct in the downpour.

  After he splashed some water on his face he sat on the four-poster and stared at the single bar of service on his mobile phone, probably just enough for a call home. He imagined the awkward conversation. What would he say that wouldn’t just get him into more trouble? Better to get this over with and start to thaw out his marriage in person. He settled for a text message: Arrived safely. Home soon. Love U.

  The bedroom was old-ladyish, lots of dried flowers and frilly pillows, gossamer, lace curtains. He kicked off his shoes, laid out his heavy body on top of the floral bedspread, and dutifully napped for an hour until Isabelle’s voice, chiming like a small bell, called him for lunch.

  Will’s appetite took everything that Louise could throw at him and more. The Sunday roast dinner sat well with his meat-and-potatoes predilection. He ate a small mountain of roast beef, roast potatoes, peas, carrots, and gravy but stopped himself from drinking a third glass of Burgundy.

  Isabelle asked her grandfather, “Is there any history of Shakespeare visiting Cantwell Hall?”

  The old man answered through a mouthful of peas. “Never heard of anything like that, but why not? This would have been his stomping ground in his youth. We were a prominent family that largely maintained its Catholicism throughout that dreadful period, and the Shakespeares were probably closeted Catholics as well. And even back then, we had a splendid library that would have interested the fellow. It’s perfectly plausible.”

  “Any theories why Edgar Cantwell would have gone to the trouble of having a poem written, hiding clues, then stashing the poem in the book?” Will asked.

  Cantwell swallowed his peas, then drank the rest of his wine. “Sounds to me like they had the inkling the book was dangerous. Those were trying times, easy to get killed for your beliefs. I suppose they couldn’t bring themselves to destroy the book. Thought it better to hide its significance in a fanciful way. Probably a rubbish explanation, but that’s what I think, anyway.”

  Isabelle was beaming. “I have visions of my dissertation taking a rather more interesting turn.”

  “So what do you say?” Will asked. “Do we have a deal?”

  Isabelle and Lord Cantwell nodded. They had discussed the matter while Will had napped.

  “Yes, we do,” Isabelle answered. “Let’s begin our little adventure after lunch.”

  THEY BEGAN IN the library. It was a generous room, with bare, plank floors shiny with wear, a few good rugs, and one front-facing exterior wall that let gray, stormy light in through diamond-paned leaded windows. The other walls were lined with bookshelves except for the space above the fireplace, which had a soot-darkened canvas of a traditional English hunting party.

  There were thousands of books, most of them premodern, but one section on the side wall had a smattering of contemporary hardcovers and even a few paperbacks. Will took it all in with heavy, postprandial eyes. Lord Cantwell had already announced his afternoon nap, and despite Will’s anxiousness to get the job done and get home, the thought of flopping in one of the overstuffed library chairs in a darkened corner and shutting his eyes again was appealing.

  “This was my magic place when I was a child,” Isabelle told him as she drifted through the room, lightly touching book spines with her fingertips. “I love this room.” She had a slow, dreaminess, a languid contrast to the reference set in his mind of flighty college kids. “I played in here for hours at a time. It’s where I spend most of my time now.” She pointed at a long table crowded with notebooks and pens, a laptop computer, and stacks of old books with slips of paper sticking out, marking passages of interest. “If your poem’s authentic, I might have to start from scratch!”

  “Sorry. You’re not going to be able to use it. I’ll explain later.”

  “You’re joking! It would launch my career.”

  “What is it you want to do?”

  “Teach, write. I want to be a proper academic historian, a stuffy old professor. This library’s probably responsible for that odd ambition.”

  “I don’t think it’s odd. My daughter’s a writer.” He didn’t know why, but he added, “She’s not much older than you,” which made her giggle nervously. He headed off the politely inevitable questions about Laura by abruptly saying, “Show me where the book was kept?”

  She pointed at a gap in one of the eye-level shelves in the middle of the long wall.

  “Was it always there?”

  “As long as I remember.”

  “And the books next to it? Was there a lot of rearranging?”

  “Not in my lifetime. We can ask Granddad, but I don’t recall any shifting about. Books stayed in their place.”

  He inspected the books on either side of the gap. An eighteenth-century botany book and a seventeenth-century volume on monuments of the Holy Land.

  “No, they’re not contemporaneous,” she observed. “I doubt there’s an association.”

  “Let’s start with the first clue,” Will said, retrieving the poem from his case. “The first one bears Prometheus’s flame.”

  “Right,” she said. “Prometheus. Stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals. That’s my sum total.”

  Will gestured around the room, “Anything come to mind?”

  “Well, it’s rather broad, isn’t it? Books on Greek mythology? Hearths? Torches? The barbecue pit!”

  He gave her a “very funny” look. “Let’s start with the books. Is there a catalogue?”

  “Needs to be one, but there isn’t. Another problem, of course, is that Granddad has been rather vigorous in his selling.”

  “Nothing we can do about that,” Will said. “Let’s be systematic. I’ll start on this end. Why don’t you start over there?”

  While they focused on the first clue, for the sake of efficiency, they kept the others in mind to prevent redoing the exercise if possible. They kept a lookout for any Flemish or Dutch-themed books and any text that seemed to refer to a prophet of any sort. They had no inkling how to tackle the “son who sinned” reference.

  The process was laborious, and an hour into it, Will was growing discouraged by its needle-in-a-haystack quality. And often, it wasn’t as easy as pulling a book out, opening the title page, and shoving it back. He needed Isabelle’s help with every book in Latin or French. She would come over, give a quick peek, and hand it back with a light, “Nope!”

  The afternoon light, as muted as it was, faded completely, and Isabelle responded by turning on every fixture and taking a match to the fireplace kindling. “Behold, I give you fire!” she said as the flames licked the logs.

  By early evening, they were done. Despite a not-very-old volume of Bullfinch’s Mythology, there wasn’t a single book that sparked a modicum of interest. “Either the poem’s not referring to a book, or it’s not here anymore. Let’s move on,” Will said.

  “All right,” she said agreeably. “We’ll have a look at all the old fireplaces. Hidden panels, false mantels, loose stones. I’m having fun! You?”

  He checked his phone again for a text messages from Nancy. There were none. “Having a blast,” he answered.

  By Isabelle’s reckoning, there were six fireplaces that predated 1581. Three were on the ground level, the library, the Great Hall and the dining room, and three were on the first floor—in her grandfather’s bedroom above the Great Hall and in a second and third bedroom.

  They began their inspection in the library, standing before the roaring fire and wondering what to do. “Why don’t I just knock on the panels for hollow bits?” she suggested. It sounded like a perfectly go
od idea to him.

  The ancient walnut mantel sounded solid to her knuckles. They checked the bevels of the mantelpiece for hidden latches or hinges, but it appeared to be one immovable carpentered board. The stones of the hearth floor were solid and level, and all of the mortar looked similar. The fire was still going, so they wouldn’t be checking the brickwork in the firebox for a while, but nothing stood out to cursory inspection.

  The fire in the Great Hall had long died out. Lord Cantwell was half-reading, half-dozing in his chair, and he seemed nonplussed over their investigative work as they tapped and felt their way around the massive fireplace. “Really!” he snorted.

  The surround was beautifully fluted and shiny with age, and the mantelpiece was a massive beveled slab, hewn from one huge timber. Isabelle hopefully tapped on the blue-and-white square tiles, which were inlaid on the surround, each one bearing a little decorative country scene, but they all had the same timbre. Will volunteered to hunch over and crab-walk into the huge firebox, where he tapped at the bricks with a poker. But for his efforts he was rewarded only with patches of soot on his shirt and trousers. Isabelle pointed the smudges out and watched in amusement as he tried to brush them away with his palm.

  The three other fireplaces got the same treatment. If something were hidden in one of them, they’d need a wrecking crew to find it.

  It had gotten dark. The rain had stopped, and a cold front was racing through the heart of the country, bringing frigid, howling winds. Cantwell Hall lacked central heating, and the drafty rooms were getting chilly. Louise loudly announced she would serve tea in the Great Hall. She had restarted the fire and switched on the electric heater by Lord Cantwell’s chair, then made clear she was anxious to be off for home.

  Will joined Isabelle and her grandfather in a light assortment of meat-and-pickle sandwiches, shortbread biscuits, and tea. Louise scurried around, doing some last-minute chores, then inquired if they intended to stay in the Great Hall for the evening. “For a while longer,” Isabelle answered.