A Book of the Dead

by John Blackburn

  “Good God.” The thing was a photocopy and as he read its contents, the print seemed to twist and blur before Tom’s eyes. “But he never told me – never gave me a hint that he’d done such a thing.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t, Mr Mayne, but that’s Pike’s will all right. Properly drawn up and witnessed by his solicitors three weeks ago. You are named as his executor and sole heir, and the estate includes a couple of thousand pounds in cash, the lease of his flat, and what I understand is a fairly valuable collection of books.

  “Just how valuable is not for me to say, of course, but I can see no reason why you shouldn’t inspect your property as soon as possible, Mr Mayne. A bit irregular of course, but I’ll take a chance. There’s no doubt that the coroner will bring in a verdict of suicide, and the solicitors anticipate no bother about the will.

  “Don’t sell anything before probate is granted or you’ll get me into trouble, but here are the keys.” He held them out and his smile flickered over Tom as though awarding him some high honour.

  “I think you’ll find everything just as you last left it, sir.” He raised his hand and the smile faded. “Apart from one dead body, of course.”

  “And now, Mr Mayne, I’ve got a lot of work to do and I’m sure you want to examine your inheritance, so goodbye and good luck.” He shook Tom’s hand and then opened the door for him. He watched him walk away down the corridor and then returned to his desk and lifted a telephone.

  “That you, General?” he said when the call was answered. “Charles Pounder here, and though this may not interest you, I’m reporting progress as the super instructed. Just had a chat with Pal Mayne as it happens. Gave him the keys of Pike’s flat and tried to put a stop to his ideas of murder.

  “What – no.” He laughed at the question. “Tom Mayne wouldn’t have the guts to kill anybody himself and it was a clear case of suicide. In my view we can close the file now.

  “Thank you, sir. Yes, that is still a point and though we’ve checked with the records people, they can’t help us. Apart from the fact that he used a false name for almost thirty years, we’ve no idea who Pike really was.”

  “Suicide – my foot!” Pounder had rung off and the man he had called leaned forward and massaged his hands against an electric fire. The man suffered from cold and, though the room was warm, he was dressed in thick tweeds and wore a pullover. “Suicide,” he repeated, partly to himself and partly to his companion. “How many people has that damned book killed to date, Sergeant?” He raised his right hand which lacked three fingers and was mottled with greyish scar tissue. “We don’t know, but I’m going to make you a promise. One day, someday, I’ll break those bastards and make ’em squirm.”

  Three

  Pounder was wrong. Not everything was as he’d left it. One thing was missing.

  Tom sat behind Pike’s desk and he’d been there for hours. The ashtray was piled with cigarette stubs and around him lay Pike’s correspondence and record books. They told him nothing, or next to nothing. Nothing about his past background. Nothing about his hopes and fears or private feelings. Just notes of business transactions stretching across the years; copies of quotation cards, order forms and invoices. “Dear Sir, We can offer the following.” “Thank you for your order, but I regret the book has been sold.” “Please send me the copy of Greener’s Gun and Its Development, as kindly quoted.”

  Yes, a lot of correspondence. Letters to suppliers and customers. Offers to buyers and enquiries to dealers, but not one single note from a friend or relative. Piles of catalogues and back numbers of the Clique. A list of regular clients with their requirements marked beside them. Harold Wilkes Esq. “All on antique guns and pistols.” Lord George Lampton. “Back numbers of the Rock and Fell Club Journal.” Chief Librarian, University of Boston, Mass. “Manuscript material relating to American or British Sport.” Pike had written a great many letters, but nothing about himself or why he had committed suicide with a German dirk.

  But Inspector Pounder obviously knew his job. Pike had been old and was slightly unbalanced, and only he, Tom Mayne, had a clear motive for killing him. With Pike’s death, he was probably ten thousand pounds better off, so “Why worry?” “Not your business,” “Let the dead bury their dead.”

  And yet he had to be sure. Tom got up and searched the shelves a second time, checking each title against a big bound catalogue in Pike’s neat hand, giving the date, price of purchase and what he hoped it would fetch, entered in the margin. Many items had been crossed off and marked “Sold”, but one volume had not been entered and it was not on any shelf or on the floor. Men of Courage was missing.

  Tom finished his search and returned to the desk, lighting another cigarette and trying to concentrate. He had left Pike at roughly six o’clock and he had died around nine. The local post offices shut at five thirty, so he couldn’t have posted the book. Had somebody called to collect it?

  And just what was interesting about Men of Courage? A rather pretentious volume of reminiscences about people who had mostly died years ago. A book worth no more than twenty pounds, for which an eccentric but very old and astute dealer had paid three hundred and claimed he could sell for over a thousand.

  Yes, it would be interesting to know the name of the customer who would fork out that kind of money for Men of Courage. Plots of half forgotten detective stories started to run through Tom’s head. Wills hidden in the spine and incriminating documents stitched among the pages, a map showing the way to buried treasure. Had there been something about that one copy which Pike had spotted?

  No, that was unlikely, to say the least. Tom thought of the sale and the knockout which followed. Everybody grinning and gaping as the price went up and up and the boys knew they’d have a dividend beyond their wildest dreams. Pike nodding his head and Goldsmith raising a grimy finger. Yes, Sam Goldsmith must have been sure there was something special about the book. He would never have risked putting Pike up otherwise. Horrid Sam with his bulging face and cunning eyes, like an illustration from a book of animal stories in which the characters have human clothes and occupations. Mr Toad, the dealer, with a great bloated belly poking out above his baggy breeches. It would be interesting to have a word with “Good Old Sam Goldsmith”, as he called himself.

  “878 78321.” The voice which answered the telephone was thick and muddy and sounded as though its owner’s mouth was full of food. Tom imagined that that was probably true. Goldsmith must have shut up shop and was tucking into dinner in the room above. Sam had cast off his religious principles years ago, and proved the point by favouring Gentile and highly non-Kosher dishes. Bacon and sausage, and pork chops washed down with mugs of scalding tea.

  “Tommy – Tommy Mayne, how kind of you to ring me.” The voice changed to a peal of delight as though the call was the one thing that made Goldsmith’s day. “And what can I do for you, Tommy? Bought something nice? Want to sell it to me? Well, go ahead. Plenty of cash here and you know I always pay tops for anything in me own line.”

  “I’ve heard that, Sam.” Goldsmith was one of the meanest payers in the trade and Tom had not been able to discover what his “own line” actually was. On the surface he specialized in history and literature but there were rumours that he had another and more profitable interest. If those rumours were true Goldsmith ran a lending library of expensive smut from the back room of his shop.

  “No, Sam, I haven’t bought much lately,” Tom said. “All the same, I think I have something which might interest you. You see, I’ve recently been left about three thousand books and I want your help . . .”

  “Left – left is it?” The voice rose to a whoop of joy. “Three thousand left to you and you need my help to sort ’em out.

  “I appreciate that, Tommy. It’s nice to hear a young man pocketing his pride and asking an old stager like me to lend a hand, and of course I’ll be delighted. I pay a f
air price for anything I can use. Ask anyone in the trade and you’ll hear the same thing. ‘Good old Sam Goldsmith pays top-notch,’ they’ll say.

  “But what are the books, my boy, and who left ’em to you? Some rich uncle with a taste for leather bindings, maybe?”

  “No, not a relative, Sam, and there aren’t many bindings. You might say the library contains mainly military books and a few on sporting subjects.”

  “Sporting subjects?” The voice became slightly guarded and Tom sensed that Goldsmith was thinking of the rumoured erotica in his back room, then it changed back to excitement again. “You mean – you don’t mean old Pike’s books, son? He left ’em to you, did he, Tommy. Well, well, the poor old devil. He had no family, so he made you his heir, just because you ran him around to the sales now and then. How crazy can some people get?” He paused for a moment and Tom heard the clink of china. Sam Goldsmith was considering his next move and fortifying himself with a swig of tea.

  “And who better should he choose, Tommy? I know how fond you were of Johnny Pike. Always acting like his private chauffeur and putting yerself out for him. Very, very kind you was, and I’m delighted to know he made you his heir. Why, I was only saying to me young lady the other day, ‘He’s a good friend to Mr Pike, is Tommy Mayne.’

  “And you’re doing the right thing in coming to me, Tommy. Old Pike would have liked the idea of us sorting through his stock together.

  “Oh, I’m not denying that we had our little differences in the past – who hasn’t? But deep down we were close as brothers. Like all the trade, he could trust me with his last farthing.”

  “Then let’s get down to business, Sam.” Tom cut the eulogy short. “I know you’d give your eye-teeth to look at those books and Pike told me you almost forced your way into his flat on a couple of occasions.” He ignored the squeaks of denial on the line and continued. “What was so special about that copy of Men of Courage the other day?”

  “Men of Courage. Ah yes, I remember. You were at the sale, weren’t you?” Goldsmith lost all his false friendliness and became more guarded. “What do you want to know about the book, son? It’s listed in Auction Records and Book Prices Current.”

  “They tell me nothing, Sam, and what I need to know is this. You and Pike were supposed to be business men, so what happened? Why did you bid over two hundred pounds for three books not worth more than thirty?”

  “All right, I’ll tell you, son.” Goldsmith paused and then his words came out with a rush. “Let me have a few of Pike’s books on the cheap and I’ll tell you the full story. I thought the old fool had got hold of a Kamtsen.”

  “Kamtsen!” Tom remembered the Yiddish word, which could be roughly translated as ‘a hoarder’.

  “That’s right, son, a Kamtsen. The crazy collector we dream about like we dream about finding a first of Alice in Wonderland or a page from the Gutenberg Bible. A man who craves for a certain book and doesn’t care what he pays or where it comes from. You often find ’em in the picture trade. Some mad bastard buying a stolen painting he can never show, but gloats over in a cellar. A form of sickness, I suppose, but a bloody profitable form if you can land a rich one.”

  “Even a poor one is useful, Sam.” Tom remembered a customer of his own. A retired clerk living on a pittance who bought copies of a local print at ten guineas a time and was quite frank about his motives. “I can’t bear the thought of anybody else owning them, Mr Mayne.”

  “But Men of Courage isn’t that kind of book, Sam,” he said. “Too general for one thing. If it had just dealt with a single kind of bravery to attract the nut’s hero-worship, I could understand, but . . .”

  “Listen, Tommy, I’m no psychologist, boy. I’m just a poor bloody bookseller and I’ll tell you what happened.” A chair creaked as Goldsmith shifted his bulk into a more comfortable position. “Four – five months ago Pike came into me shop and spotted a copy of Men of Courage. Paid the full trade price and didn’t try to haggle, which was unlike him. That didn’t really surprise me, but a few days later, I heard he’d bought other copies from Dan Jackson and Archway Books. I pricked my ears up and kept me eyes open as you can imagine.”

  “I can imagine, Sam.” As he listened, a horrible image appeared in Tom’s mind. A great, grey toad with Goldsmith’s face, hopping around the alleys in search of scraps.

  “Sure I did, Tom. I talked to dealers and porters at the sale-rooms and I read magazines. The Clique, London Daily News and a dozen others. I found out that Pike was desperate to get hold of that damn book. He’d not only advertised for copies, he’d already bought forty of ’em. Almost a third of the whole edition.”

  “The devil he had! And you checked this, Sam?”

  “I checked all right, Tommy, and when I saw there was a copy for sale at Richmond, I decided to risk a little money. Two hundred and a half I’d go up to for the book and if Pike outbid me, the boys would make a nice profit. If not – if I bought the book I might get my own teeth into Pike’s Kamtsen.”

  “Sorry, Sam, But I’m still not with you.”

  “You should be if you use your head a bit and think about hoarders. Them people ain’t normal, you know. They crave for things they collect like a drug addict craves for dope. Suppose this man had told Pike to go up to one hundred for the book and Pike lost it. The man would be upset, I think. He would sit at home and feel that he’d just lost his wife or mother, and decide he should have offered more. His crazy mind would tell him that copies, any copy of Courage was worth every penny he had to his name and he’d better make some enquiries. Enquiries which would bring him running to me and I’d have a share of Pike’s Kamtsen.”

  “I see,” Tom said and he really did see how it might have ended. He saw Pike sitting alone with the book and the dirk beside him and waiting for his customer to call. And then, the doorbell rang and he’d got up to admit his customer.

  But the customer might have been a poor man, and Pike might have been greedy and asked more than he could afford. Perhaps his sick mind had considered what he had in his wallet, what he owed on the mortgage and what his bank manager had written, and he realized he couldn’t pay the price. But all the time that book lay on the table like the Holy Grail and he knew he had to have it. And as he watched the treasure he had also seen the key – the means to get it – and his hand had crept out for the German dirk.

  Impossible – no! Tom knew a great deal about collectors and their cravings and another example came to mind. A large, florid and happy man who collected copies of the Lilliput magazine. “January and May ’49, Mr Mayne. Thank you very much and I only need a dozen to complete the set.” His eyes sparkled as Tom wrapped up the purchases.

  Then one day they’d met in the street and Tom hardly recognized his customer, because the man wasn’t florid and his eyes did not sparkle. He’d lost weight too, his body sagged and he wasn’t happy any more.

  “Lilliput, Mr Mayne,” he said. “Oh no, I’ve got the lot, now, the full set, and I can relax.” What he meant was that all the fun had gone out of life.

  Yes, collectors were a strange breed, and if Pike had found one who was not strange but ruthless too, if he’d driven the generous client a little too far, he might have met his killer.

  “Thank you, Sam,” Tom said into the phone. “That’s exactly what I wanted to know and you can have the first refusal of any of Pike’s books I decide to sell. I’ll let you know when to come round and look at them.”

  He replaced the receiver and looked round himself. What he saw almost gave him a heart attack. “A great pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr Mayne.” The woman was huge. Sixteen stone if an ounce but, like many large people, she could move like a cat and had walked silently into the room and was browsing through the books when Tom spotted her. Her reddish hair was done up with curlers, she wore pyjamas and bedroom slippers, her name was Mrs Margaret Tey, bu
t she soon asked Tom to call her Peggy or Peg for short. She smelled strongly of Guinness and belched at frequent intervals. She lived upstairs and knew, or claimed to know, everything.

  “Oh yes, me and Mr Pike were very good friends, Mr Mayne, and I was so very sorry to hear that the poor gentleman had gone and done himself in.” She prodded one of her bulging breasts with a scarlet fingernail. “To stab himself with that knife. What a way to go, though I suppose one can’t blame the poor soul.” She hitched her rump onto the desk and sighed soulfully.

  “You don’t think he did kill himself, Mr Mayne. You believe he may have been murdered. Well, I never!” She belched loudly and Tom drew back from the blast of stout. “I suppose there might be one or two people about with a reason for wanting the old chap dead, but only a handful nowadays, and your notion about a nutty customer doin’ ’im in is nonsensical. Oh, I’m not sayin’ that there ain’t a lot of nutters around, but see for yourself and listen to what Mr Pike told me.” She stood up, tightened the cord of her pyjamas and moved across to a pile of magazines. “Surely the name K. 107 rings a bell for you.”

  “Sounds like a model of a car.”

  “Well, you’re wrong, Mr Mayne. Not a car, but an aircraft. An aircraft which crashed and killed a lot of people.” She returned to the desk with a slim volume in her stubby hand and flicked it open. “Here’s the joker who got the blame, so have a squint at him.”

  “Thanks.” The magazine was dated 1948 and showed a picture of a slim, bearded man leaning against an airframe. “Mr J.R. Price, designer of the Kingston K.107, taken shortly before the disaster”, ran the caption below the print, but even without the beard and the difference in age, Tom recognized the face. “Price, that’s who he really was.”