The Paper Grail (22 page)

“Don’t mention it,” Howard said, walking back toward the porch. He didn’t believe her suddenly. There was something in him that distrusted wide swings in temperament, and he suspected that she had come to some conclusion about him since their struggle at Uncle Roy’s house yesterday. She had determined that he was important, and he wondered why.

Howard noticed the printed figures on her kimono for the first time: little squared-off mechanical gadgets and loose coils, blocked-out patches of computer circuitry and radio schematics and what looked like tiny robotic bugs. It was all highly stylized and hard to sort out, but the little figures seemed anatomical somehow—bits and pieces of internal organs reduced to webs or skeletons or very sketchy computer graphics. He was certain he knew who had designed the fabric.

Howard realized suddenly that if he were going to catch Sylvia in time for lunch, he would have to hurry. He checked his watch and looked surprised at what he saw. “I guess I’ll be off,” he said.

“So soon? I was rather hoping to show you my collection of miniatures. It’s seldom that there’s an expert in town.”

“I’ll have to take a rain check,” Howard said.

“Good. I’ll tell you what. I have a little … circle, I suppose you would say. A salon. We meet on Tuesday nights. You’d be surprised at the number of artists and writers living around here. It’s not rare that people drive up from San Francisco and even farther south just to be part of my little circle. I’m a queen mother to them, you could say—their fiercest champion and critic both. They’re my
real
collection of miniatures. All of them full of potential, like seeds that want a little water and soil. Why don’t you drop past? The conversation is stimulating.”

“I’m not any kind of artist,” Howard said. “I only meddle with what other people do—try to talk learnedly about it.”

“Learned talk is the order of the evening. Say around six.”

“I’ll try, certainly. I’ll bet Mr. Stoat is a member of this circle.”

She burst into laughter at the suggestion—cackling and waving her hand almost coyly as if he’d suggested something bordering on indecent. “Nobody calls him
Mister
Stoat except me. It’s merely ‘Stoat.’ He’s very defensive about that. You’ve met him, then?”

“Just briefly. Seems fascinating.”

“He’s a little bit nervy, too. Don’t let him bother you. He’s very glossy and hard on the outside, but a terrible pussycat inside who thinks he’s a panther. I can keep him on leash, but I don’t suppose anyone else can. He’s a genius, really, and a man of many talents. A fearful decadent, I’m afraid.” She winked at Howard and said, “I’m glad we had this little talk, then. You’d make a welcome addition to my little circle. You’d fit right in. And I hope you harbor no ill will toward me for my shameless behavior yesterday afternoon.”

“Not at all.”

She stood for another moment regarding him, and suddenly he felt self-conscious and a little embarrassed, as if something more were expected of him.

“Do you know,” she said, “you look a little bit like someone I knew once, many years ago.”

“Really?” Howard said. “I have a common face, I guess.”

“On the contrary, it’s … remarkable.” For a moment Mrs. Lamey’s features betrayed a look of profound longing and remorse, and it struck Howard, sadly, that this was the only
honest expression that had crossed her face during their conversation. The rest was veneer. Even the gardening enthusiasm had sounded false, nearly demented. This wasn’t false, though, even Uncle Roy would agree to that.

She smiled abruptly, dissolving the sorrow by an act of will, and said, “Tuesday night, then.”

‘Tuesday night.”

She held her hand out, limp-wristed and palm down, as if she expected him to be gallant and to kiss it. He gave it a small shake instead and hurriedly crossed the street, climbed into his truck, and turned the key, letting the engine idle for a moment. This last exchange had unsettled him, and although he didn’t want to hobnob with anyone’s “little circle,” he felt as if he had made a solemn and necessary promise to her, and he told himself that on Tuesday he would pay her a visit. He wouldn’t have to stay long, and it would give him an opportunity to be a sort of spy for Uncle Roy.

Except that she was something more of a mystery to him now, and it seemed less likely that she and her salon were the “enemy” that Uncle Roy had talked about at breakfast. His uncle was full of exaggeration and wild metaphor, a habit which made jumping to conclusions a dangerous thing.

Sitting alone in the car, free of persuasions, it seemed entirely possible to him that all this north coast plotting might have a very simple and mundane explanation—greed, likely as not, or a consequence of a lot of backwater types nursing grudges over the long years.

Then he remembered the shrine in the woods and old Graham hiding out in the cabin, and his own truck having been ransacked, and the talk about the attempt to burn down Bennet’s house. After a moment he admitted to himself that what he really knew was nothing at all yet. Just to keep things smooth, as he drove away he waved out the window to Mrs. Lamey, who was crouched in front of the hydrangea bush now, burying rusty nails. The Humpty Dumpty on Bennet’s roof waved, too, as if in sarcastic imitation.

I
T
was still early afternoon when they bumped down the drive toward Graham’s house on the bluffs. Sylvia had taken two hours off and had sent Howard out to buy sandwich makings so as to supply poor Jimmers with a decent meal. They had a picnic basket full of food and drink in the back of the truck. Howard meant to beard Mr. Jimmers on the subject of the Hoku-sai
sketch. Either Jimmers had it or he didn’t, and if he had it, then he ought to be willing to discuss Howard’s claim on it. He was free to refuse to hand it over, after all; there was nothing that could be done to force him. Graham’s properties were tied up by law for who knows how long from the date of his death—except that he wasn’t dead, anyway, and so Jimmers had no business meddling with the old man’s property. He no doubt thought he was protecting it somehow, which you had to admire.

Howard went round and round in his head, arguing all this out with an imaginary Mr. Jimmers. The wind off the ocean drove right through his sweater when he stepped out of the truck, and there wasn’t much heat in the noonday sun floating orange and cool in the sky. They could see Mr. Jimmers out on the bluffs, hoeing in a little garden that was sheltered from the sea wind by a long lean-to of wavy squares of yellow fiberglass. They had clumped nearly up to him before he caught sight of them and stood up straight, resting against the hoe, still dressed in the shabby tweed coat but wearing a pair of heavy rubber boots now.

Off by itself stood the tin shed, locked and mysterious. Howard purposefully avoided looking at it so as not to arouse suspicion. Above them in the wall of the house, facing the meadow, was the mysterious door-that-led-nowhere, and the broken-off stairway built of stones that went two thirds of the way up the wall toward it.

“Swiss chard,” Mr. Jimmers said, nodding down at the meager-looking greens poking up through the soil.

“Good, are they?” asked Howard.

“Wretched, actually, but easy to grow if you don’t let the wind blow them to bits. Not enough sun, though, so you’ve got to grow a lot of them if you want to harvest enough to eat. You should have seen the garden in the old days, before Mr. Graham declined.” He shook his head sadly, hacking at a weed with the comer of the hoe blade. “Now it’s reduced to these few rows of Swiss chard. It’s a disgrace is what it is. But a man can stay healthy on a diet of greens. Taken in sufficient quantity, with eggs, they’ll provide a human being with a full range of nutrients, a complete diet. Postum is made entirely of vegetable matter. Did you know that?”

“No,” said Howard. “Really? Vegetable matter?”

“Wheat, mostly.”

“Speaking of eating,” Sylvia said, “we’ve brought along this basket.”

Mr. Jimmers dropped his hoe and set off toward the house, rubbing his hands together as if he hadn’t eaten anything except Postum and Swiss chard in days. “I’ll just put on a tablecloth,” he said, prying off his rubber boots on the front porch. Sylvia slipped her shoes off, and Howard did, too, realizing too late that his socks had holes in the toes. Maybe it would make him look vulnerable, he thought, and would be a good ploy. He’d have to suffer cold feet again, though.

It was at lunch that he brought up the topic of the sketch. Awkwardly, and pretending not to care very much, he said, “About the Hoku-sai, Mr. Jimmers.”

“That would be the sketch on rice paper?” Mr. Jimmers said.

“That’s correct.”

“It’s damned rare, you know.”

“I do know that. That’s what explains my interest in it in the first place.”

“I mean to say that Hoku-sai woodcuts abound, but original sketches, especially from the Mangkwa, are rare as hen’s teeth. And items with this history, I should think, are rarer still.”

“What Howard wants to know,” Sylvia said bluntly, “is whether you’ve got the thing, Mr. Jimmers, and whether you’re willing to fork it over.”

Jimmers smiled hugely and raised his eyebrows at Sylvia. “Have another slice of this wonderful cheese, my dear,” he said. “I’m in a precarious position, of course. Mr. Graham was never found, was he? Who’s to say he’s dead? He’s
assumed
dead, of course, but the lack of a body rather complicates the dispersal of his property.” He winked at Sylvia before going on. “And if I’m not really certain he’s dead, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I can hardly go about giving his things away, regardless of quite possibly spurious letters.” He held his hand up in order to put a stop to Howard’s protests. “There are no end of awful people in the world, who would be entirely happy to think they’ve fooled Mr. Jimmers and gotten their hands on this curious—ah, sketch, as you put it. What makes you think it’s a Hoku-sai?”

“Isn’t it?” Howard asked.

“Of course it’s not. You see the problem, then. You’re blundering around, aren’t you? You haven’t any idea what you want. All you know is that you want it. Should you have it, though? That’s the question.”

“So my letter of acquisition, signed by Graham, means nothing to you?”

“On the contrary, my boy. It means ever so much. It means you might easily
be
the man who now or very shortly will own this valuable object that we’ve been discussing. For the moment, I mean to say, you are
not
the man. What we would like is not always what is, but it might be what will be, if I make myself clear.”

Mr. Jimmers nibbled a piece of bread contentedly, as if it didn’t take more than a good crumb or two to satisfy him. “I wish I could find something here to offer you two by way of dessert,” he said regretfully. “I had a paper bag full of horehound drops somewhere. I can’t remember quite where. I haven’t seen them for the better part of a year. Wild horehound, put together by the Sunberry people.”

“That’s all right,” Howard said quickly.

“It’s not all right, not entirely. I’ve become a regular Mother Hubbard. Nothing to offer guests. You’re the first I’ve had, though, in years. I promise that next time I see you I’ll have something nice. I’ve developed a taste for canned-spaghetti sandwiches on a superior-quality white bread. Nothing fancy, just bread, margarine, and spaghetti—canned spaghetti. Doesn’t really matter what brand.”

So the subject of the sketch had been brought up and abandoned in the space of a single minute, buried beneath Mr. Jimmers’ spaghetti sandwich. He had half promised something, but Howard couldn’t be sure what. What was it he had said? That Howard might well be “the man”—as if Mr. Jimmers were waiting not simply for someone with a letter of requisition, but for someone who knew the answer to a riddle, or would know the riddle itself, or would have the secret password.

“About the sketch, then,” Howard said. “I understand your hesitation, and I hate to keep bothering you with it. That’s the problem. I don’t want to make a pest of myself, but I’ve got the letter from Mr. Graham, which I believe to be perfectly authentic, and—”

“I’m certain of it,” Mr. Jimmers said, interrupting. “Perfectly authentic. May I see the letter again?”

“Absolutely,” Howard said, pulling it out of his coat and handing it across.

Mr. Jimmers studied it, nodding and squinting, and then abruptly tore it into fragments and threw the pieces over his shoulder.

“Wait!” Howard shouted, getting up out of his chair. It was too late, though: the pieces lay on the floor. He sat back down,
his mouth open. Sylvia was smiling faintly, as if she thought the whole production was funny, but didn’t dare laugh out loud.

“Now you’ve got one fewer scrap of paper to worry about,” Mr. Jimmers said to him. “Avoid focusing your energies on trash. That wasn’t worth anything to you. It was meant to draw you up here, that’s all. This isn’t a matter of museums. This is something more. You don’t need letters of ‘requisition,’ as you put it. The whole world is tired of your letter of requisition. It makes them sick. Remember the promise in the adage—everything will be revealed in the fullness of time.” Then he held his hand up again, as if he would prevent Howard from commenting.
“The fullness
of time.”

He touched his mouth with his napkin and said, “Come along. I’ll show you something noteworthy—something that will relieve your mind immensely.” He tipped Howard a wink now, as if he were going to let the both of them in on a secret, and they followed him into the parlor with the fireplace, which was lit but had died down into a pool of embers. He threw in a handful of brown pine needles and blew on them and then laid a half dozen cedar sticks on top, which flared up immediately and began to pop and crackle, lighting up the little area around the hearth.

Mr. Jimmers stood very still, listening, and then tiptoed to one, then the other doorway, and stood listening at each for a moment. Then, putting a finger to his lips, he eased a stone out of the face of the fireplace, reached back into the recess, and pulled out a carefully folded bit of paper.

Howard caught his breath. Here it was, still in its hidey-hole but no longer in its case. Mr. Jimmers nodded at him and unfolded it with steady hands. “Not another of this quality in the world,” he whispered. “Never again will be.” Howard could see inked images through the paper.