‘I find it very difficult to fathom people like Strange,’ observed Louise. ‘To see a book merely as a collectable object is very alien to my habit of mind. Books to me are sources of knowledge. I can see no virtue – or pleasure, even – in merely owning them.’
M.R. James laughed.
‘That’s because you’re not a dedicated book collector, Miss Whittaker. There are two varieties, you know. One is the bookseller, a man who loves all the books that he acquires, and knows all about them, their contents, their history, and the history of their various owners over the centuries. When a client picks up one of his treasures, he longs to cry, “No! Please, sir, put it back on the shelf. I love that book. It is part of me.” But then, the voice of commerce prevails, and he immediately urges his customer to buy. And so he parts with what he loves.’
‘And the other variety?’ asked Louise.
‘The other variety is the man who wishes to acquire a volume in order never to part with it. Its value to him lies in its rarity, its uniqueness, and its monetary value. It is virtually certain that he will never read it! I call such men bibliomanes, because they are afflicted with the disease of bibliomania. Such a man is Sir Hamo Strange, and, to a lesser extent, his dreaded rival Lord Jocelyn Peto. Like all obsessions, bibliomania can de dangerous.’
When it was time for Arnold Box to leave, Louise Whittaker preceded him into the narrow hallway of her house, closing the study door behind her. Little Ethel was evidently engaged elsewhere, and it was Louise who handed Box his hat. She opened the front door, and walked with him down the garden path to the gate. The road was deserted, and the strong summer sun made the white shale of the carriageway glow, so that Box’s eyes were dazzled.
‘After you’ve solved this case, you must come to tea, Mr Box,’ said Louise. ‘Tea for two, with a special chocolate cake from Fortnum and Mason. Ethel can act as duenna.’
‘I’ll look forward to that, Miss Whittaker,’ said Box. ‘Had you been alone this morning, I’d have told you much more about this seance business that’s worrying me. Something’s going to happen, but I don’t know what it is.’
Louise laid a hand on his arm.
‘Arnold,’ she said, and it was one of the very rare instances of her using his Christian name, ‘I don’t like this spiritualism business. You’ve heard of the darkness of ignorance? Well, these seances encourage the ignorance of darkness. Their ghosts and wraiths can’t abide the light! Devotees may be content to whisper to shadows of the dead in a darkened room, but I’d rather remember them with gratitude here, beneath the honest brightness of the summer sky.’
In the grand reception room of Medici House in Blomfield Place, Sir Hamo Strange awaited his visitors. ‘Guests’ would have been too intimate a term to use for his fellow banker and deadly enemy, Lord Jocelyn Peto, and the two scholarly experts whom he had retained to help him gloat over Peto’s failure to secure the great prize.
Strange turned from the window, from which he had been contemplating his favourite view of the Bank of England’s Lothbury elevation, and crossed the sumptuous room to a long table placed below a great mirror, which had come from the palace of a seventeenth century Duke of Florence.
He caught sight of his face, with its sallow skin stretched like parchment across his prominent cheekbones, and smiled. It was the smile of a spectre in a haunted ruin, but it pleased him, for all that. He was certainly not as handsome as Lord Jocelyn Peto, but he was assuredly more powerful, and, to all appearances, infinitely richer. For a moment his mind reverted to his interview with Sir Charles Napier and Colonel Temperley. How intoxicating it had been to talk familiarly and as an accepted equal with such high-placed gentlemen!
He dropped his gaze to the table where, upon a long green baize cloth, the six quarto volumes of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible had been carefully laid out for inspection. He had appreciated their fine bindings, and the quite beautiful array of typefaces in which they had been printed, but what he appreciated most of all was that they were his.
Two young maidservants entered the room, curtsied, and positioned themselves behind a small buffet in a corner near the window. A tempting selection of sandwiches lay on porcelain plates under glass domes, together with an array of decanters and sparkling wine glasses. Sir Hamo Strange opened his watch. Half past two. There was nearly an hour before the visitors would arrive.
‘Scholes,’ he said to one of the two maids, ‘I may as well sustain myself before the visitors arrive. It was a mistake to have skipped luncheon. Bring me a plate of cinnamon toast and a pot of Earl Grey tea. Lemon, and no sugar. Temple, go with her.’
The two maids curtsied again, and hurried from the salon.
‘Curteis!’ Sir Hamo called out for his secretary, and the man appeared instantly from the adjacent study.
Sir Hamo chuckled, and rubbed his hands together in a kind of controlled glee.
‘What do you think Peto’s up to, Curteis? He accepted my invitation to view the Bible with suspiciously commendable speed. In fact, he sent up his reply from the Strand by messenger.’
‘He may be trying to save face, sir. Pretend that he doesn’t care, you know, just to vex you. But I wonder at times if he’s as big a fool as we think he is. We’ll find out soon enough, I expect.’
‘Good, well perceived, Curteis. I wonder about him, too. He was all smiles the other day when I called on him at his club, and told him that I’d snatched the prize from under his nose. All smiles…. You’d better find Mahoney. He’s dropped from sight since he and I returned from Austria. He’s a brutal villain, by all accounts, but he makes an excellent bodyguard when I decide to visit the more lawless parts of Europe. Drag him out of the ale-house, bail him from prison: do what’s necessary to get him ready for service – just in case. I expect you know what I mean.’
‘My dear Strange,’ said Lord Jocelyn Peto, ‘once more, I congratulate you. A priceless acquisition. And now, duly fortified with those tasty sandwiches and excellent claret, your renowned experts can reveal the secrets of these unique volumes!’
Damn it, there was something wrong! The fellow had been laughing and smiling since he’d arrived, pretending that his vitals hadn’t withered up with envy of what he had failed to acquire. The servants had deferred to him as though he were the master of Medici House, and he had shaken his abundant curls in their direction as a sign of his loathsome aristocratic condescension. Confound him! Why was he so confoundedly cheerful?
‘You are very kind, Lord Jocelyn,’ said Strange. ‘As you see, I arranged a small reception, but limited the guests to yourself, and these two gentlemen. You will, of course, have heard of Mr M.R. James, who has agreed to authenticate the volumes. Neither of us will have met Dr Alois Krenz, specialist epigraphist from University College, London. Gentlemen, would you please now examine the volumes of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible?’
M.R. James began to conduct a careful examination of the precious volumes, while Dr Krenz, a taciturn, lightly bearded man in his thirties, sat down on a chair near the long table, and watched James at work. The two bankers kept their eyes fixed on M.R. James as he peered through a series of hand lenses at the bindings, and then at a selection of pages, evidently chosen to a pre-arranged scheme, turning the heavy, hand-made folios with a pair of ivory tweezers. Each volume received the same attention, and the process occupied nearly half an hour.
‘Gentlemen,’ said James, when he finally straightened up to face his audience of two, ‘these volumes are all undoubtedly authentic, and part of a single impression. The bindings are contemporary with the paper, dating from about 1520, and ornamented in the restrained Castilian blind-stamped fashion of that time and locale. Without any doubt, this is one of the original editions of the Complutensian Bible.’
Sir Hamo Strange sat back in his chair with a little sigh of satisfaction. It was as well that all doubt on the matter of authenticity should be removed. He glanced at Lord Jocelyn Peto, sitting beside him. The man seemed subdued enough, but w
as that a gleam of suppressed merriment in his eye? Nonsense. The fellow was devastated.
‘The title page,’ James continued, ‘is dated at the foot in the Arabic numerals 1519, confirming that this is indeed the unique copy of the Bible, pulled from the press a whole year before its official issue in 1520. And here, in the special pocket let into the front board of the first volume, is the fabled document, written in the Chaldaean script, which is said to reveal the secret passages in the lives of Charles the Fifth and Isabella. Dr Krenz will now give the document his attention.’
Nobody spoke while the taciturn Krenz used James’s ivory tweezers to remove the fragile sheets of paper inserted into their special pocket centuries earlier. He carefully smoothed out the pages on the green baize, and then selected a hand lens from James’s little collection. They could see the curious ancient characters inscribed in bold black and red on the old document.
After a few moments, Dr Krenz put down the lens, and turned to M.R. James.
‘Mr James,’ he said in a low voice, ‘would you care to examine the paper upon which these characters are written?’
James sat down near him at the table, and peered closely at the first sheet of paper. Then he carefully felt it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Ignoring his audience, James strode towards the window, and held the sheet up against one of the panes.
‘A watermark!’ he exclaimed. ‘It shows a bear holding a staff, with a star above its head. This paper is from the mill of Jacob Müller of Nuremburg. It’s seventeenth century. There’s something seriously amiss here, gentlemen.’
Dr Krenz stood up. He had thrown the remaining sheets down on the table in contempt.
‘That confirms what I know to be the truth,’ he said. ‘These characters are Chaldaean, sure enough, but what they spell out is gibberish. It’s a forgery, and not a very clever one. The ink – I’m sure the ink’s modern—’
‘But the volumes themselves are genuine,’ said James, returning to the table. ‘As for the date on the title page – ah, yes! I can see the true date now, 1520, partly scratched out with an etching knife, and the numerals 1519 substituted.’
‘A forgery?’ cried Sir Hamo Strange. He rose from his chair, and began quite literally to tear his hair in rage. One of the two maids began to cry. ‘A forgery? They shall pay for this. They will be hunted down without remorse— A forgery? Scholes, Temple – take those rubbishy volumes away. Take them down to the basement, and throw them in the furnace!’
Both maids stood petrified with fear behind the buffet. Neither of them moved.
‘Do you think it was Sudermann?’ asked Peto. His voice held grave concern, but Strange could see that he was writhing with concealed glee.
‘Sudermann? No, it’s not Sudermann. He’s honest enough. It’s Fuentes who has engineered this. Count Fuentes de la Frontera. He contrived to sell Sudermann a fake, while the real Bible – well, he will have sold that, too. Oh, yes. He will have sold that, too….’
With some effort, Sir Hamo Strange recovered his equanimity.
‘Mr James,’ he said, ‘and you, Dr Krenz, I thank you for coming here today, and revealing this squalid sham. Lord Jocelyn, thank you for your commiseration and support. I am naturally a little upset, so I will bid you all good day.’
As soon as the last guest had departed, the imperturbable Curteis appeared from the study.
‘Curteis,’ said Sir Hamo, ‘he’s got it himself. He beat me to the post, and has been laughing ever since. He came here today simply to gloat at my loss. But he’ll not get away with it. The money is nothing to me. What is five thousand pounds? It’s the shame, the sense of loss…. He’s got my book – my book – out there in that gimcrack house of his at Croydon. Get out now, and find Mahoney. Tell him to sober up, and come to see me, here.’
‘Do you think that’s wise, sir? You have great projects in train, and in any case it’s getting perilously near the twenty-eighth—’
‘Damn it all, man, do you expect me to take this personal affront lying down? Do as I tell you. Get out there now, and find Mahoney!’
6
The Murder at Duppas Park
In the crowded public bar of The Recorder, a popular hostelry for clerks in a narrow lane near Barbican, Mr Arthur Portman took a delicate sip from his glass of port, and addressed a few words to the man sitting beside him.
‘To be quite frank with you, Mr Beadle,’ he confided, ‘I’ve been considering a move for the last year. I’ve been very comfortable at Peto’s Bank, as you know, but — well, the time’s come for a change.’
Mr Beadle, a large man in a black three-piece suit, shifted his bowler hat further along the bar to make room for his elbow, and stared gloomily into his empty porter pot. Presently he turned his shrewd grey eyes on Portman, and regarded him with a look which held the fathomless wisdom of a man who had been secretary to a private banker in Gresham Street for over forty years.
‘A change, hey? What do you want a change for? You look as gorgeous as Peto himself in that fancy rig of yours. I’d say you’re not short of a few bob working for Lord Jocelyn Peto.’
Mr Beadle glanced round the crowded, stuffy bar, where the lunchtime noise level was rising to a crescendo. He liked his daily pie and porter in The Recorder, especially when there was any juicy item of City gossip to retail. When he spoke again, he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Or are you hinting at something, Portman? A change, hey? Why, do you think there’s something fishy in the wind? If that’s the case, then for God’s sake, man, guard your words. Any little hint that all’s not well with Peto’s and you’ll have the crowds battering at your doors.’
He expected Arthur Portman to begin an indignant denial, but the chief counter clerk at Peto’s Bank merely frowned, and said nothing. Presently, he bade his companion a rather stiff farewell, as though he regretted having said too much, and left the old secretary to finish his lunch at the crowded bar. A rather rusty-looking elderly man clutching a tankard of mild beer pulled him by the sleeve.
‘What was all that about, Beadle? What’s that insufferable hypocrite Portman been telling you? You look worried.’
‘I think he was dropping me a hint. You know that our people are involved in joint guarantees with Peto’s Bank? Portman was suggesting that all’s not as well as it should be at Peto’s. Rumour’s a deadly thing, but I wonder whether I shouldn’t drop a hint myself to my guvnor? If Peto’s goes to the wall—’
‘Hush, man: there’s a hundred pairs of ears in here, all listening for tips and rumours, and bits of gossip. Still, it’s odd … Peto’s are one of the parties to the Scandinavian loan. It’s hardly the moment, you’d think, for Portman to start hinting at closure, unless there were something in it. If I were you, I’d tell your guvnor what you think. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll drop a word in the right direction at my place….’
The handsome and urbane Mr Curteis, private secretary to Sir Hamo Strange, leaned against a wall near the narrow opening to an alley in a poor quarter of Stepney, and watched an impoverished ragged man perform a lively tap dance on the pavement. He was accompanied by another man who was beating a complex and regular time by using a pair of china dinner plates, which he rattled together, then banged on his knees and elbows in a very effective and cleverly patterned percussion.
Really, thought Curteis, it was a very creditable performance, lively and entertaining. Both men were highly skilled in the exercise of their lowly arts. The tap dancer’s eyes showed only bleak despair, though his companion, a younger man, still retained some natural jauntiness. They were performing at the end of a near-derelict street, the open channel running its length choked with rubbish, and many of the mean houses shuttered and barred.
The dance came to an abrupt stop, and the small audience of working men and women managed a clap and a cheer. One or two of them threw a halfpenny in the dancer’s ragged cap. They had all moved aside when Curteis, in tailored overcoat and silk hat,
had alighted from a cab, and joined them on the pavement. Now they drifted away, and Curteis felt in his pocket for a half crown, which he threw into the cap. The poor man looked at it in disbelief, and then bowed clumsily to Curteis, uttering some grotesque sounds. The secretary realized that the man was dumb.
He turned aside, and made his way down the narrow alley. It smelt of garbage and decay, and not for the first time Curteis wondered how people could be content to live in such squalid places.
Suddenly, a menacing figure lurched out of a side-entry, and blocked his way. It was another poor man, but a man whose face was bloated with drink, and brutalized by a life of unremitting toil allied to vice. He smiled contemptuously at the gentleman whom he had waylaid.
‘Free with your money, aren’t you?’ the man sneered. ‘Well, you can give me some of it, unless you want me to break your arm for you. Come on, blast you! Don’t keep me waiting or—’
Without the slightest warning, Curteis lunged forward, and his right arm shot out to seize the man’s throat. His fingers seemed to find their own way to the vital spot on the man’s neck that sent him crashing with a strangled shriek to the ground. He lay writhing and gasping, his eyes wide with fear. His would-be victim calmly extracted a penny from his purse and flung it in the man’s contorted face.
At the same time, a heavy, brutal fellow appeared at the mouth of the alley. His massive face was pitted and disfigured by the legacy of smallpox, and he stood with his arms hanging loosely at his sides, fists clenched. There was more than a little of the simian about him, thought Curteis, but behind those fists was the power of an ox.
The brute glanced at Curteis, then turned his attention to the thug, who was still writhing on the ground. He delivered a savage kick to the man’s back, and his whines turned to a yelp of pain. Summoning up what strength remained to him, the would-be robber rose to his feet and staggered away along the alley.
The Gold Masters Page 7
