Bland Beginning (13 page)

“Maybe. But you’ll not convince me that a woman who’s been with me for years is a thief. And Ellen, the maid, has been with me ten years too.”

Basingstoke was lost in thought. “Really, it’s very odd. What about windows –”

“Oh, come
on
,” said Vicky. “It’s past four o’clock now. If we don’t start soon we shan’t get to see that bookseller.” She pecked her uncle’s cheek. “Goodbye, Uncle Jack. You never gave us that cup of tea, but I forgive you. We’ll keep in touch, and let you know when we’ve tracked down your book and caught the forger, won’t we, John?”

Basingstoke looked at her half-ironically. It was the first time that she had used his Christian name.

Lewis’ bookshop in Peaceful Alley, just off Peaceful Vale, Blackheath, was not impressive in appearance. It had a fairly large frontage with an outside stall containing books priced from
2d.
to
6d
. More expensive books were in the window – but not very expensive ones;
Napoleon and Prince Eugene
priced at half a crown, volumes of the Mermaid poets, books of nineteenth-century memoirs, the collected works of Charles Lever and Lord Lytton. The shop looked faintly incongruous among the fruiterers and grocers which surrounded it. A bell clanged when Basingstoke pushed open the door.

Was imagination playing tricks, he wondered, or was it really exceptionally dark inside this shop? He blinked his eyes and saw books arranged on the shelves, and piled untidily on the floor. There seemed to be no one inside the shop, and he took a step forward. As he did so, Vicky screamed, not loudly, but with a certain penetrating power. A black cat, with a protesting miaow, jumped on to a pile of books by her side, and the figure of a man became apparent, standing at the door of an inner room. A voice, soft but with something like an amused purr in it, said, “Did March frighten you?”

A light was switched on, and they both blinked again at the very fat man who waddled forward to meet them. Although he was little more than five feet in height, he must have weighed more than fifteen stone, and the phrase, which is so often casually used, “He was as broad as he was tall” was almost true of him. His fat was not firm, but drooping. Balls of fat hung down from his cheeks, his ears seemed pulled down by a weight of flesh, his chin merged imperceptibly with a short, thick neck, and the enormous paunch he carried before him drooped visibly downwards. He was wearing a dirty pair of flannel trousers, and a greasy waistcoat which was too small for him, and had lost most of its buttons. His shirt was collarless, and he wore no jacket.

“What do you mean – March?” Vicky asked faintly, and his face quivered with amusement.

“This one of my cats I call March. I have one for each month of the year. They will not disturb you. Can I be of help to you?”

“We should like to see Mr Lewis,” Basingstoke said, and the fat man’s face quivered again. His voice was high and thin.

“There has been no Mr Lewis since twenty years ago, when I bought this shop from him.” He made a movement of the head and shoulders that might have been interpreted as the ghost of a bow. “Jonathan Jacobs at your service.”

Vicky jumped nervously again, as a whistle sounded, sudden and shrill. The fat man turned and waddled towards the curtained recess from which he had come. “My kettle. Will you join me in a cup of tea? I think it is time to close the shop now. I do not like to be disturbed at teatime.” He waddled past them again to the door. There was an ominous click as he turned the key. He clapped fat hands. “Come, March, April, May. Tea is ready.” They followed him behind the curtain and found themselves in another smaller room filled with books. Here, however, there was less attempt at arrangement, and more books were lying piled in heaps. A Siamese and a blue Persian cat lay asleep on two of the piles, but they woke up when he said, “October, December. Tea is ready.” He spoke to them as he might have spoken to human beings, not with the changed inflection which most people use in talking to animals.

In the middle of the room stood a rickety table. On it were half a dozen pink-and-white cream cakes, a teacup and a large empty bowl. The fat man got two more cups while the cats moved round his legs, purring and rubbing against him. He poured nearly a pint of milk into the bowl, sat down heavily in an old armchair, and with a visible effort put the bowl of milk on the floor, where the cats lapped it greedily. He poured three cups of tea, pushed two towards them and sank again into the armchair. Vicky, feeling rather prim (the pursuit of forgers led into such strange ways!), sat on the edge of a dusty kitchen chair, and Basingstoke sat down on some books. With a sigh the fat man said, “A cake perhaps?” When they refused he did not press them, but took one himself, and ate it in two gulps. The blue Persian cat, purring, jumped on to one arm of his chair. “Tell me now, what can I do for you?”

“We are looking for a copy of
Passion and Repentance
,” Basingstoke said. He was conducting the interview on lines that they had agreed in the car.

“
Passion and Repentance
,” the fat man said. Below his great fleshy forehead small eyes were alert. “I think I have a copy.”

“We are looking for the
first
edition
.” Basingstoke spoke with what he hoped was peculiar emphasis, and Vicky looked at him a little uneasily. A white cat sprang up on the other arm of the fat man’s armchair and stared at her.

“Oh burning, burning,” the fat man said in his squeaky voice, and both of them looked at him in surprise. He continued:

“Oh burning, burning! That red sky at night

And the hot mind that’s ashes in the morning,

Nor ever hope that any bird of dawning

Can put the record of past sin to flight.

I dreamed a gull whose lucent lovely wing

Knew not the savage colours of desire.

But waking knew your body like a fire

And neither of us recked a reckoning.”

With some care, the fat man selected another cream cake, and Basingstoke said in his solemn baritone, like an actor taking up a cue, “All that is past –

“All that is past. Now within quiet gardens

My spirit feels the silken air of rest

And is no longer torn. Not torn? A quest

Goes on within me that must make the worst

Of mankind shudder. The spirit quivers, hardens.

No pietistic God can stop its thirst.”

Sitting uncomfortably on her dusty kitchen chair, Vicky felt slightly sickened by the smell of cats. Then she realised that they had been quoting from one of the sonnets in
Passion and Repentance.
The realisation brought relief, and she cried: “Why, that’s grandfather Martin’s poem.”

“Precisely,” said Basingstoke, and looked annoyed. It had been agreed that they should not mention Vicky’s relation to Martin Rawlings. The fat man heaved with pleasure.

“I am honoured by your presence, ma’am. And may I compliment you, sir, upon your memory? I was brought up in days when a man of culture read poetry aloud. Those days are past, but my memory – I say it in all modesty – is still prodigious.” He sighed, brushed crumbs off his waistcoat, and seemed to dismiss the question. “And so you are looking for a first edition. If I can find one, how much would you be prepared to pay for it?”

“Anything up to a hundred pounds.”

“Not enough.” He broke another cake into segments, and put a small piece into his mouth, but did not eat it. The piece remained pursed between thick violet lips until the blue Persian stretched forward delicately and took it. Basingstoke did his best not to seem disconcerted by this procedure, which was rendered more curious by the fact that the bookseller looked steadily at him while the cat took the piece of cake.

“It’s well above market price.”

“No, sir.” The bookseller’s great egg-head moved gently from side to side. “I have a client who is prepared to pay a hundred and fifty pounds for a first edition. I know where one is to be found, and I offered a hundred and fifty pounds for it. The offer was refused.”

“You know of one,” Vicky said excitedly. “Oh, but so do –” She stopped in mid-speech with her mouth open, remembering that the copy which had been refused to the bookseller must of course be Anthony’s.

Basingstoke continued without glancing at her: “I think you know of two.” Vicky admired the venomous note in his voice.

“Two?”

“Some years ago you sold a copy to Mr Rawlings of Millingham.”

“Ah!” Jacobs crumbled another piece of cake and placed a piece in his mouth, where it was taken by the white cat. “That copy also is for sale?”

“Come now, Mr Jacobs, you know as well as I do that that copy has been stolen.” Basingstoke spoke harshly, and the scar on his face stood out.

“Nonsense,” the fat man said calmly.

“And you know as well as I do that this so-called first edition is a fake.”

For the first time the fat man seemed disturbed. He shifted uneasily on his seat, and pulled at a fat jowl with a fat hand. The blue Persian cat moved its face forward to him, and he absently pushed it away. “That is a bold word, sir. By what authority do you ask these questions?”

“I am a private investigator from Scotland Yard,” Basing-stoke said. “Miss Rawlings here has applied to us for assistance.”

The fat man returned his glare with a look that was at first hostile, but softened slowly to a smile. The smile broadened, and he began to laugh. As he laughed, his body shook all over. Even the calves of his legs, Vicky noted with disgust, wobbled under his dirty trousers, and the chair in which he sat vibrated with the movement of his body. The cats, alarmed, jumped off the arms of the chair, and one of them ran out into the shop. The laughter moved up into the high well of this room, and rebounded from the book-lined walls to die away in a menacing silence. Vicky looked from the fat man’s wobbling face to Basingstoke’s ugly scar and shivered suddenly, as a presentiment of evil crossed her mind for the second time. Now the fat man was speaking.

“Impudence, my young friend, is an admirable quality. It achieves results not always obtained by the most judicious and intelligent of men. Impudence, as La Rochefoucauld would undoubtedly have observed if he had happened on the phrase, is the wisdom of the young. Now, Mr – what is your name?”

“Basingstoke.”

“Transparently a pseudonym, but we will let it pass. You come here, you introduce to me rather clumsily a young lady as the granddaughter of Martin Rawlings who very possibly has no connection with him at all –”

Vicky moved indignantly on her dusty chair, but a fat hand asked for silence. “And you make this outrageous pretence that you are an emissary of Scotland Yard. It happens that years ago one of my best friends was a police inspector. What I saw of the police force at that time makes me certain that you do not belong to it. Do not interrupt me. I do not know, then, Mr Basingstoke, who you are, except that the credentials you present are false. I do not know either, what your interests are in this matter, or whether they are identical with mine. Would you care to elaborate your charge against
Passion and Repentance
?”

“No,” said Basingstoke. He added, “It is true that I am not a Scotland Yard man myself, but I have friends there. I shall certainly get in touch with them if you don’t give satisfactory answers to my questions. I want to know why you’ve had so much to do with selling copies of this book, and the name of the client who is willing to pay so much for it.”

The fat man’s stomach heaved in a sigh. “You make things very difficult. Youth is always impetuous. But how I envy you that impetuosity. It is time you went out,” he said, and they understood after a moment that he was speaking to the cats. He opened a door leading to the back of the house and six cats walked obediently out of it. It was as if, Vicky reflected with another shiver, he did not want them to hear what he had to say. They heard him walk down a passage and open another door. While he was out of the room, Vicky and Basingstoke did not speak to each other.

“What would you think,” the fat man said when he waddled back into the room, “if the Prime Minister gave you old Cabinet documents to dispose of secretly? If a descendant of Charles Dickens asked you to dispose privately of the manuscript of a complete unpublished novel by that writer?”

Basingstoke said sharply, “I should think the documents were forged.”

“Just so. But let us suppose that the person who offered them to you was beyond reproach, and that he assured you of their authenticity?”

“I don’t know.” Basingstoke was impatient. “Do you want me to say that I should have accepted them and sold them? I suppose I might have done.”

“Just so,” said the fat man again. He sat back placidly, feeling, apparently, that he had gained a point. “Now twenty years ago, soon after I had taken over this bookshop from Lewis, I was approached by a respected figure – I might say
the
most respected figure – in the world of bibliography. I am prepared to make no mention of names. We will call this figure Mr X, if you please. Mr X asked me to dispose of first editions of certain works of Victorian authors on his behalf. I did so, through my list and in sales-rooms. I was paid a percentage, and thought no more of the matter. The only uncommon thing about the transaction was that Mr X stipulated that his name must not appear – and even that, after all, was not so very uncommon, for he naturally did not wish his name to be linked with the sale of books.

“I was a little surprised, however, when a few months later another batch of first editions, some of them the same titles and some fresh ones, came to me from Mr X with the same instructions as before. And during the next few years these instructions were repeated again and again, and again and again I carried them out.

“Had the vendor of the books been anybody but Mr X my suspicions would have been aroused regarding them, although I should have suspected not forgery, but theft. But his name, as I have suggested, is above reproach, and I had no reason to suppose that the books, which fetched very good prices, were anything other than the first editions they pretended to be. It was not until two years ago that any doubt about the authenticity of some of these books as first editions occurred to me. I was approached then by a Mr Arthur Jebb –”