Читать книгу Booking In - Jack Batten - Страница 12

The John P. Robarts Research Library at the University of Toronto went up forty years ago when the brutalist style in architecture was all the rage in some influential Toronto circles. The university happened to be one of those circles, and Robarts was erected, massive and aggressively uninviting in the brutalist manner. But Annie told me if I cut to the left halfway up the broad sweep of cement stairs leading to the front doors, I’d find architectural relief in an adjunct to Robarts called the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library. She also said that someone at the Fisher could no doubt enlighten me further about the world of antiquarian book forgeries.

The bearded guy in denim at the Fisher’s reception desk said Ms. Berrigan was the likeliest person to solve puzzles on the subject in question. He spoke in a voice somewhere between a whisper and a hush, telling me to step past his desk and into the library while he summoned Ms. Berrigan.

Inside, an atrium soared through five open storeys of shelved books. The look was both majestic and serene. No wonder the bearded guy spoke softly. It was a natural reaction to so much peace and calm. No hint of brutalism in these tranquil surroundings. I could have heard a pin drop if I had one to drop. The Fisher was making me feel light-headed, an effect I didn’t mind at all.

In the midst of my musing, the woman I took to be Ms. Berrigan approached.

“You’re Mr. Crang, the criminal lawyer who wants to know about forged antiquarian books?” she said.

I allowed that I was.

“I’m Kate Berrigan,” she said.

Ms. Berrigan was in her fifties. She spoke softly and had the sort of peaches-and-cream complexion you saw on actresses in old English films on Netflix, Deborah Kerr for one, Greer Garson for another.

“Why don’t you tell me how widely you’re already informed?” Ms. Berrigan said.

“Harry Buxton Forman and Thomas James Wise aren’t total strangers to me.”

“They’re a classic case,” Ms. Berrigan said. “Greed combined with cunning.”

“Tell me about the cunning.”

We settled down at a long table behind the reception desk, and Ms. Berrigan began what seemed to be a practised dissertation. She described how Forman and Wise had devoted years to priming the market for a supposed earlier edition of Barrett Browning’s Portuguese Sonnets before the two fraudsters reached the actual selling stage. This was a part of the forgery story Fletcher hadn’t told me. As Ms. Berrigan explained, Forman and Wise planted announcements of the existence of the early Portuguese Sonnets in obscure literary journals; they arranged for its listing in a Barrett Browning bibliography; and they conned a much-respected critic of the day named Edmund Gosse into writing an elaborate explanation for why the sonnets were produced in Reading in 1847. Once Forman and Wise had established this past history of the earlier edition of the Portuguese poems, phony as it all was, they allowed a copy of the Reading Sonnets to come up for sale at an auction in 1901.

“It brought a very substantial four hundred and forty dollars,” Ms. Berrigan said to me.

“And the money kept rolling in from other copies of the Reading Sonnets?”

Ms. Berrigan nodded. “Not to mention the profits from their forgeries of other poets. Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and so on.”

“The two scamps prospered?”

“Wise particularly because he outlived Forman by twenty years.”

“And,” I said, getting to the issue that was more to the immediate point, as far as my assignment from Fletcher was concerned, “their legacy lives on in a sense?”

Ms. Berrigan let a bit of time go by before she tried to answer my question.

Then she said very deliberately, “You’re implying that the fraudulent Reading Sonnets still circulate in the book trade? That they’re still worth a good deal to collectors, even though they began their existence as forgeries? And forever remain forgeries.”

“I’m saying that.”

“You’re quite right about their continuing value,” Ms. Berrigan said, still proceeding in a measured fashion. “Collectors now seek out the forgeries for their own sake.”

“And I’m implying something in addition to that.”

“I gathered you were.”

“Would you like me to go on?”

“You’re a lawyer acting for a client who has in his or her possession a copy of the Reading Sonnets? Or at least something that is represented as being a Wise and Forman Reading Sonnets? Is this what we’re now talking about?”

“You’ve put your finger on my dilemma, Ms. Berrigan,” I said. “I’m actually representing the agent for the collector who owns the supposedly genuine Reading Sonnets, but you and I are talking about the same principle.”

Ms. Berrigan paused while she ran her tongue across her upper lip. “You know, Mr. Crang,” she said, “a library is a great place for gossip.”

“Not unlike a law office.”

“And what we’ve been whispering about for the last month or so at the Fisher is the possibility that someone is marketing a fake of the Reading Sonnets.”

“How interesting.”

“A fake of a fake.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard the expression before.”

Ms. Berrigan looked like she was having trouble keeping a check on herself. I was beginning to gather the notion that all the talk about a contemporary forgery must be cause of major outrage for a librarian.

“According to library gossip,” I said, “is there a particular piece of supposition that maybe justifies the suspicions?”

“You bet your boots,” Ms. Berrigan said.

“And what’s that?” I said. “The supposition?”

“The new fake, the version of the Reading Sonnets that has recently come on the market, it’s thought to have originated from an unexpected source.”

“The source is something that definitely would not pass the smell test?”

“That would necessarily be true, but what I’m saying is that the single source isn’t in London or New York, as one would naturally expect.”

“If not London or New York, then where?”

“Right here,” Ms. Berrigan said, her voice rising. “In Toronto. At least, that’s the location we suspect.”

“Really?” I said. “Based on what kind of evidence?”

“For the most part it’s the flimsy kind. None of our associates at important libraries in England or the United States have heard a whisper from the collectors they have connections with of any sort of trade in Reading Sonnets. It seems to be strictly a Toronto phenomenon.”

“And not widespread in Toronto, I’m betting.”

“Just one collector at the moment as far as we’ve divined,” Ms. Berrigan said, speaking cautiously again and giving me an eagle-eyed look.

“And you’ve got a name for the collector in question?”

“If it isn’t the client of the person you represent, I’ll be very surprised.”

“We’re talking Meg Grantham?”

Ms. Berrigan shifted in her chair. She’d lost the eagle-eyed look, and when she spoke again, it was in a more relaxed tone.

“Meg Grantham’s name was known to everybody around here at the library. I mean, who hasn’t heard of the richest woman in Canada? But she doesn’t have a reputation as a collector of any kind of books. So when she emerged as the potential owner of a supposed Reading Sonnets, all of us in the Fisher were at a complete dead end.”

“You don’t have any ideas about where Ms. Grantham bought the forgery?”

“We’re quite sure it wasn’t by way of dealers in Europe or the United States.”

“You made inquiries through your contacts in libraries abroad?”

Ms. Berrigan nodded. “Such a sale was news to them.”

“What about Fletcher Marshall?”

Ms. Berrigan paused, looked me in the eye, and smiled. “Well,” she said, “now I assume you’re revealing to me by implication the identity of your client in whatever negotiations are going on over the Reading Sonnets, real or faked?”

“Fletcher, yes,” I said with a smile.

“You’re asking if I think he might have sold the document to Ms. Grantham?”

“I guess I am.”

“Mr. Crang, do you take me for a nitwit?”

“That’s the last thing I’d take you for,” I said. “But Fletcher’s the only person I know who’s independently in the antiquarian book trade.”

“There have been a few more, but that’s not the issue.”

“It isn’t?”

“All of us Fisher people have heard it said that Fletcher’s the man hired by Ms. Grantham to verify the validity of her Reading Sonnets.”

“So your reasoning is that Ms. Grantham wouldn’t hire the man from whom she’d bought the sonnets to do the independent validating job on the same sonnets?”

“Not unless Fletcher was a truly Machiavellian manipulator.”

“He’s good, but probably not that good is what you’re saying?”

“Approximately.”

“I haven’t asked about price,” I said. “What do you suppose a copy of the Reading Sonnets would go for today, if authentic?”

“Close to two hundred thousand dollars, we think. Say one hundred and seventy-five at the most conservative estimate.”

“Not an immodest figure,” I said.

I moved a little in my seat, providing a different angle on my view up to the soaring heights of the library. Any way I looked at it, this was a glorious building.

“What about the other Toronto traders in antiquarian books you referred to a minute ago, presumably Fletcher’s contemporaries?” I said. “Anybody I should look into?”

“You’re asking me to, ah, finger somebody?”

“Do you read police procedurals?”

“You’re wondering where I got the jargon?

“‘Finger’ is good.”

“Well,” — Ms. Berrigan looked like she was putting deep thought into the question — “there are fewer dealers than ever these days, especially those who have a particular fondness for Victorian literature.”

“I’m not going to accuse anyone of anything,” I said. “I’m just looking for people who might have some ideas that’ll lead me to a useful path.”

“If you put it that way, there’s of course old Christopher Thorne-Wainwright. You must know of him.”

“You’ll have to enlighten me,” I said.

“He’s generally considered a kind of long-time wizard of the business.”

“You don’t know what he’s currently up to?”

“He let his store go four or five years ago,” Ms. Berrigan said. “Since then, he’s not been that much in evidence, not to me at any rate. I’ll ask about him among my colleagues here at the library and let you know if I learn anything that might help you.”

I typed Thorne-Wainwright’s name into my iPhone. Ms. Berrigan supplied the names of two other veteran dealers. I typed them in too, but almost immediately Ms. Berrigan told me to forget about both. One guy was in his late eighties and having forgetfulness issues. The other had dropped out of the antiquarian book business and opened a fishing guide operation in northern Manitoba. Both were unlikely to be still dealing in books, forged or otherwise.

“What I thought earlier,” Ms. Berrigan said, “was that you could take some kind of action, whereas all of us at the library can only gossip. That’s why I decided on the spot to be frank with you.”

“I get the impression you library people don’t kid around when you figure someone’s playing fast and loose with the subject of your life’s work.”

“Treating books without respect — is that what you mean?”

“It is.”

“People think of librarians as milquetoast characters.”

“But that’s not the whole story.”

“Under the surface,” Ms. Berrigan said, “in certain circumstances, as with book fraudsters, we’re seething with total vexation.”

There seemed nothing more to discuss after Ms. Berrigan’s small explosion. She stood up and told me to follow her downstairs to her office. She said she had a present to give me before I left. I was glad to obey her every wish. Under the peaches-and-cream complexion, Ms. Berrigan possessed an iron in her character that I didn’t intend to challenge in any way.

Besides, I loved receiving presents, especially the kind that were unexpected.