Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Library

“Did he?”

“He may have, but I couldn’t turn up anything. They have some of his papers at Columbia, and I spent a few hours going through them with a very helpful librarian, and I found plenty of references to Chandler and Hammett, but nothing to confirm Chandler ’s trip east, let alone his second meeting with Hammett.”

“I don’t suppose he mentioned Fontenoy, either.”

“’Fraid not.”

“Maybe Ross dreamed the whole thing up.”

“That occurred to me,” I admitted. “It also struck me that I was searching in a coal mine for a black cat that wasn’t there. I gave up, finally, and months later I started seeing a woman with a mad passion for the England of tea cozies and corpses in the gazebo, and I heard something about Cuttleford House, so I called them up and asked them to send me a brochure.”

“And they did.”

“And they did,” I agreed, “and it was pretty impressive. I was going to show it to you earlier, but I can’t remember what I did with it.”

“That’s okay, Bern. I’m going anyway, so what do I need with the brochure?”

“I almost took the same position. After a quick glance I knew it was the perfect place to take Lettice, so why bother reading the history of the place? But it was interestingly written, and business was slow that day.”

“For a change.”

“Right. So I started reading, and they mentioned the various hands the property had passed through, and it turned out that a man named Forrest Fontenoy had owned it for a couple of years. The chronology’s a little uncertain, but he definitely would have been the owner from the time The Big Sleep was published until the time Hammett was accepted into the United States Army.”

“That does a lot for Ross’s credibility, doesn’t it, Bern?”

“I’d say so. I checked the Times Index and found out a little more about Fontenoy. He was married to one of the Mellon heirs, and he had some family money of his own. He backed a few Broadway shows, and was a fairly substantial supporter of leftist causes in the years immediately preceding the war.”

“That would connect him to Hellman. The theater and the politics.”

“It would certainly explain how they happened to know each other. But none of that matters. The real question is what happened to the book.”

“ The Big Sleep. ”

“Right. Here’s what I think happened. Chandler, tight as a tick, whipped out the book, wrote something heartfelt, and presented it to Hammett. Hammett, whom everybody describes as an extremely polite man, took it as if it were the key to the Kingdom of Heaven. Then Chandler went home with the Coxes, and Hammett and Hellman went back to Hardscrabble Farm, or drove all the way home to New York.”

“And the book stayed behind.”

“That’s my guess.”

“Why, Bern? Wouldn’t Hammett take it with him?”

“He might,” I said, “if he thought of it. By the time he left Cuttleford House, he was probably too drunk to remember or too hungover to care.” I held out my hands. “Look, I can’t prove any of this. Maybe he took it home with him, read a couple of chapters, and tossed it in the trash. Maybe he lent it to somebody who passed it on to somebody else who gave it to the church rummage sale. Maybe it’s rotting away in somebody’s basement or attic even as we speak.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No, I don’t. I think he left it on a table in Cuttleford House, accidentally or on purpose, and I think one of the maids stuck it on a shelf in the library. They’ve got a classic formal library-there’s a photograph of it in the brochure. Shelves clear up to the twelve-foot ceiling.”

“And that’s where you think it is.”

“I think it might be. Oh, a lot of people have been in that house since then. Monks, drunks, workmen, guests. Any one of them could have picked up The Big Sleep and walked off with it.”

“Bernie, it’s over fifty years.”

“I know.”

“I don’t suppose any of them are still alive, are they? I know Hammett and Chandler aren’t, or Lillian Hellman. What about Coxe and Ross?”

“Gone.”

“And Fontenoy and his wife?”

“Long gone, and I don’t know what became of their children.”

“Over fifty years. How could the book still be there?”

“The house is still there. And so’s the library. I saw the photo in the brochure, and those shelves are chock-full of books, and I don’t think the Eglantines trucked them in by the pound to make a decorating statement. I think they’ve been there forever.”

“And somewhere, tucked away on some high shelf-”

“ The Big Sleep, ” I said. “Signed by Raymond Chandler, and inscribed to Dashiell Hammett. Sitting there, just waiting to be found.”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, a few hours later at the Bum Rap. “About that book.”

“I can understand that. I’ve been thinking about it myself for months now.”

“Suppose it’s actually there,” she said, “and suppose you actually find it, which would take another miracle all by itself.”

“So?”

“So is it worth it? Aside from the fact that you’re obsessed, and it’s hard to put a dollar value on an obsession. But in terms of actual dollars and cents-”

“What’s it worth?”

“Right.”

I didn’t have to think. I’d worked it out often enough over the months.

“ The Big Sleep is Chandler ’s scarcest book,” I said. “A first-edition copy in very fine condition is legitimately rare. With a dust jacket, the jacket also in top condition, you’ve got something worth in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars.”

“That much, huh?”

“But this one’s signed,” I said. “With most modern novels, an author’s signature will boost the price by ten or twenty percent. But it’s different with Chandler.”

“It is?”

I nodded. “He didn’t sign a lot of books. Actually, nobody did back then, not the way they do now. Nowadays just about everybody with a book out goes traipsing around the country, sitting in bookstores and signing copies for all comers.”

“Ed McBain signed his new book for me,” she said. “I told you about that, didn’t I?”

“Repeatedly.”

“Well, it was an exciting day for me, Bern. He’s one of my favorite writers.”

“One of mine, too.”

“Whenever I read one of his Eighty-seventh Precinct books,” she said, “I wind up looking at cops in a new light. I see them as real human beings, sensitive and vulnerable and, well, human.”

“That’s how he portrays them.”

“Right. And then Ray Kirschmann walks in the door and drives me right straight back to reality. I’ll tell you, I like Ed McBain’s fantasy world a whole lot better, and it was a thrill to meet him in person. That book’s one of my proudest possessions.”

“I know that, but you’re not the only person he signed a book for. He’s signed thousands of books, and so have most of the writers around today. Back in Hammett and Chandler ’s time, authors just signed books for their friends. And Chandler didn’t even do that.”

“He didn’t?”

“Not often. If you were a friend of his he might give you a book, but he wouldn’t sign it unless you made a point of asking him. So a genuine Raymond Chandler signature is valuable in its own right. On one of the later, more common books, it might increase the value from a few hundred dollars to a couple of thousand. On The Big Sleep, it could double the value.”

“So we’re up to ten grand.”

“And we’re not done yet. If Ross is telling the truth, Chandler didn’t just sign his name on Hammett’s copy. He inscribed it personally to Hammett.”