The Bookman's Tale (16 page)

Peter carefully opened the two copies of
Pandosto
to their title pages and clamped each gently onto one of the collator’s platforms. He flicked the power switch, and the machine hummed as lights illuminated the texts and fans whirred. Peter leaned over the binocular viewer and adjusted the knobs until the two pages that floated before him gradually merged into one crisp image. It was a perfect match. Over the next hour, Peter repeated this process with every page, excepting of course those that were missing from the British Library copy. Everything matched precisely.

Until he reached the final page, he did not realize that his back ached from leaning over the viewer. Leaving the books in the collator, he stepped back into the reading room, where his eyes took a moment to adjust to the light. He stretched to relieve the tension in his back and had walked several laps around the library table when he noticed, next to his bag, a pile of photocopies—the printouts of the later editions of
Pandosto
that Nigel’s assistant had made from the microfilm copies.

Peter now knew that all the pages of the British Library first edition matched the Evenlode Manor copy, but what about the missing signature? If the Evenlode Manor
Pandosto
were a forgery, the text must have been copied from extant copies—and the only recorded copy of the first edition was incomplete. If the text of the missing signature matched a later edition, the Evenlode Manor copy would be suspect indeed.

He returned to the collator and removed the British Library
Pandosto
, replacing it with the photocopy of the 1592 edition. This time he compared only the pages that had been missing from the library’s first edition. On each page the jiggling text that indicated differences on almost every line swam before his eyes. The same was true of the 1595 edition. Finally removing the Evenlode Manor
Pandosto
from the collator, Peter exhaled a long sigh of relief. He had found exactly what he had hoped for. There now seemed only two possibilities. Either the text of the Evenlode Manor
Pandosto
was a genuine first edition, or it had been brilliantly forged from a complete copy of the first edition. Of these two possibilities, the former was not only more appealing but more likely.

Peter switched off the machine and removed the Evenlode Manor
Pandosto
and the photocopies. The latter he placed in his bag, in case he needed to refer to them later. He sat at the table in the reading room and opened
Pandosto
to the final page—the rear endpaper crowded with notes. There was a large smudge of brown ink in the lower-right corner. Taking a pair of scissors from his satchel, Peter carefully snipped a tiny piece from this corner and placed it in an envelope. The sample should be sufficient to test the age of the ink and paper. He slipped the book into its protective envelope and back into his bag.

Peter knocked on the open door of Nigel’s office to attract the attention of the librarian and gave him the envelope containing the sample.

“I’m hoping it’s sixteenth century,” said Peter, “but there’s a chance it’s a nineteenth-century forgery.”

“We’ll check the ink and paper for you,” said Nigel. “Don’t know if we’ll be able to prove anything conclusively, but I’ll let you know what we find out.”

Peter jotted his number down on a scrap of paper and handed it to Nigel. “If there’s any way to get results by the end of the week, I am under a bit of a time crunch,” he said.

“I’ll do my best,” said Nigel, smiling. Peter would have liked a more definitive promise, but he didn’t want to seem like a pushy American, so he let the matter drop. “And how’s the collating coming?” asked Nigel.

“Quite well,” said Peter.

“I’m just off for lunch,” said Nigel, “but if you need anything, my assistant James should be back in a few minutes.”

At the mention of lunch, Peter felt a jolt of panic. The clock on Nigel’s wall read 1:10. “I must be going,” said Peter, backing out of the office. “I’ve an appointment myself. Call me as soon as you hear anything.” Peter dashed back down the hall and grabbed his bag. Without stopping to reshelve the volumes of the
DNB
scattered across the table, he made for the door and took the stairs toward the galleries above two at a time. By the time he reached the front doors of the museum, it was 1:15.

Peter burst through the doors, breathless from his dash up the stairs and through the galleries. The sharp winter air struck his cheek with the force of a slap, as a gust of wind rushed up the wide stone stairs to meet him. A mass of schoolchildren loitered on the steps. Peter scanned the crowd for Liz, wondering if she had given up and left. He was suddenly struck by the vivid memory of another day, years ago, when he had met Amanda on these steps. He had been late then, too.

“I suppose Robert Cotton is to blame,” Amanda had said, smiling and giving Peter a quick peck on the cheek. That day had been even colder, and he felt the kiss on his face long after Amanda had led him down the steps.

“Looking for someone?” said a voice, jerking him back to the present. “I guess if your watch is set to American time, you’re four hours and forty-five minutes early,” said Liz, winking at Peter as he turned to her.

“Sorry,” he said. “Got caught up in some research.”

“Well,” said Liz, slipping her arm through his in exactly the way Amanda used to do, “that’s at least an excuse I can understand.”

Liz looked different from when he had seen her three days ago, and it took Peter a minute to realize that her hair, which had been a dirty brown streaked with blond on Friday night, was now a rich, even honey color. She must have had it cut, too. It wasn’t much shorter, but it was considerably less frizzy, the ends were even at her shoulder, and even when the wind swirled around and strands of hair whipped her face, it stayed altogether more kempt than it had on Friday. Peter’s arm was tensed almost to the point of pain where Liz’s was draped through it. Every muscle in his body seemed to be crying out to him—
she thinks this is a date; don’t lead her on
. Yet in spite of this, Peter found himself saying, “I like your hair.”

“Thanks,” said Liz. “I got home on Friday night and I thought, Jesus, this guy had to sit across from me all night looking at this crap hair, so I decided what the hell, I’d do something about it.”

Peter felt like he was in a wrestling match between his body, which now tried to pull slightly away from Liz, and his mouth, which was just on the verge of saying something else nice. True, he had had a pleasant enough time with her on Friday night, but if he had been driven by curiosity about the watercolor then, his motives today were far more powerful, and he needed her to understand that this lunch was not a social engagement. “A lot’s happened since Friday,” he said, finally managing to disengage his arm from hers as they got caught in a crowd of tourists crossing Great Russell Street.

“You’ll have to tell me all about it,” said Liz, grabbing Peter’s bare hand in the softness of her suede glove and pulling him past Museum Street. “I know a fab little Italian place just around the corner.” Peter resigned himself to the hand-holding, reasoning that it was necessary to avoid separation in the crowds that surged along the pavement. In another moment they had turned a corner into the comparative calm of Coptic Street—its bookshops and art galleries of little interest to the bulk of the tourists that teemed along Great Russell Street. Yet Peter did not drop Liz’s hand; it would be impolite, he thought.

He followed her around another corner and through the door of a tiny Italian bistro, but neither of them spoke again until they were seated at a table by the front window.

“I have something for you,” she said, reaching into her voluminous bag and pulling out a stiff buff envelope. “Your watercolor. Thanks for the loan.”

Peter took the envelope from her. In all the excitement of
Pandosto
, it seemed somehow less weighty than it had when he had handed it to her three days earlier. “You’re welcome,” said Peter, slipping the envelope into his satchel.

“You don’t want to look at it?” Liz asked.

“I trust you,” said Peter.

“It’s not that,” said Liz. “It’s just . . . it seemed to me you sort of, I don’t know, needed to look at it every so often.”

Though the watercolor, and what Liz knew about it, was his reason for wanting to see her today, Peter’s obsession with the image had faded considerably since his discovery of the
Pandosto
. The painting was a worthless artifact of interest only to him because of its coincidental resemblance to Amanda; the book was quite possibly one of the great discoveries in the history of English literature.

The waiter set two glasses of red wine on the table and Liz raised hers to Peter. He responded to the toast, clinking his glass against hers slightly too hard, the wine almost sloshing onto the crisp, white tablecloth. He took a gulp and set the glass on the table.

“Easy does it there, cowboy,” said Liz. “So what is it that’s happened since Friday?” Her voice seemed tinged with insecurity, and Peter felt suddenly ashamed that he should be thinking only of trying to get information from her, not of how she might legitimately feel about going out for two meals with the same man in three days. He felt a surge of tenderness for her, such as he had not felt for anyone since he lost Amanda. It was a feeling as frightening as it was unexpected.

“I have a problem,” he said. “Maybe two problems.”

“I’m listening,” said Liz, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her chair.

Peter wasn’t sure how to start. He desperately wanted the name and address of the mysterious scholar from Cornwall who seemed to be the only person in the world who knew anything about the identity of B.B., and now he had some leverage in trying to pry this information out of Liz. On the other hand, he couldn’t help thinking, as he looked at her defensive posture across the table, that the air was rife with unspoken feelings, and if he didn’t address those first, she would never tell him anything.

“I’m having a hard time dealing with this,” said Peter finally, making a limp gesture with his hand meant to encompass the two of them but looking more like a request for the waiter to clear the table.

“This?” said Liz.

“You and me, I mean.”

“What about us?” Liz seemed to draw her arms more tightly across her chest.

“Well, I think it’s possible, I mean, I think maybe I might . . . I might like you.”

“Wow, you sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet,” said Liz.

“You see, this is my problem. I’m absolutely no good at this,” said Peter. “I’ve only ever been out with one woman in my entire life and I’m not . . . I don’t think I’m over her, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“What idea would that be?” said Liz coldly.

“That I like you. I mean that I like you . . . you know, that way.”

“Well, you’re honest. When you said you’re no good at this, you knew what you were talking about.”

“Look,” said Peter, feeling the sweat bead on his forehead and his appetite drain away. “I don’t really know how to explain this, but there’s a big part of me that doesn’t want you to think this is a date. But then there’s this other part, this part I didn’t even realize was there until I saw you on the steps, that does want you to think it’s a date. Does that make any sense?”

“First of all,” said Liz, “you can relax, because this is not a date; it’s just two friends meeting for lunch. And secondly, that’s all we are, Peter, two friends. I know you come with a lot of baggage, and apparently being friends is not one of your great talents, but trust me here—it’s not that hard. Besides, to be friends all you have to do is sort of think that you might like me.” She finally smiled and uncrossed her arms, reaching for her wineglass and holding it up toward Peter again.

“Now, gently this time,” she said. “To friendship.”

Peter tapped his glass lightly against hers and took a long drink of wine. As he set down his glass, Liz picked up his napkin and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Peter shivered from the intimacy of the gesture, but before he could think of what to say, Liz settled back in her chair and went on.

“You still want to know about B.B., don’t you?”

“But it’s not for selfish reasons anymore.”

“Not for selfish reasons?”

“Well, it’s for reasons that are less selfish than the original reasons.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“Listen,” said Peter, struggling to explain. “I found something else signed by B.B., not a painting but more of a . . . a document. It was in a house that I’m pretty sure your mysterious Cornish scholar visited, only I don’t think he saw this item.”

Liz leaned forward, a glint in her eye. “What sort of document?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“I thought you trusted me,” said Liz.

“I do,” said Peter. “It’s just that I need to find out more about this . . . this document before I tell anyone. This may sound crazy, but there’s a chance it could be dangerous to know about.” Peter thought of the cold eyes of Julia Alderson and the cold steel of Thomas Gardner’s shotgun. If the
Pandosto
was a forgery, he could imagine those two doing a lot to keep that fact a secret.

“It sounds less crazy than you think,” said Liz. “I had a call this morning from my Cornish scholar. I can’t call him because he doesn’t have a phone, but every now and then he goes into town and rings me from the phone box. He said he sent the final manuscript to me by overnight post, but I’ve never heard him sound so . . . well, so jittery. He told me he was afraid.”

“Of what?” asked Peter, the image of Thomas Gardner, prowling the wilds of Cornwall with a shotgun slung over his shoulder, springing to mind.

“He wouldn’t say. He just said he kept hearing strange noises and he was worried. I told him he was being paranoid. He lives on the edge of Bodmin Moor, for Christ’s sake, of course he hears strange noises. I mean as big a deal as the manuscript about B.B. is to him and me, most of the world will never even notice it. And as jealous as they’ll be, no one in the Historical Watercolour Society has the imagination or the balls for academic espionage. Still, I’m worried that he should be so scared.”