Lee Child - MatchUp

“Madam LeBlanc.” Chubb pauses and bows, gesturing. “Allow me to present a valued friend, Mr. Harold Earl ‘Cotton’ Malone.”

She’s tall, with blond hair not her own as a trace of light brown can be seen at the roots. The color, though, suits her swarthy skin. Her smile reveals curious marks of fun that surround twinkling hazel eyes. I draw the conclusion that she’s of money, accustomed to the finer things. She holds out a hand, and before I can decide whether I’m supposed to kiss it, she grabs mine and gives me a pleasantly firm clasp.

“Enchanted, Mr. Malone,” she says. “Call me Eleanor, if you like.”

I catch a faint French accent, but her direct manner is straight American business.

“Call me Cotton.”

“Such a name. I bet there’s a story there.”

I grin. “Quite a long one.”

I’d like to speak to her more, but Chubb is ushering me onto the next of the kilted guests. My eidetic memory, a gift at birth from my mother’s side of the family, catalogs them all. There is John Simons, a London bookseller, short and spectacled, sporting a black kilt with a tartan tie. Wilhelm Fenstermacher, from Berlin, whom I met once long ago, of the Deutsches Historisches Museum. Nigel Soames from Edinburgh, a private collector, who I see now and then at Sotheby’s. And Alexsandr Kuznyetsov, a saturnine sort whose predétente steel teeth clash with his Black Watch kilt. Most likely a private shopper for an oligarch, the people now with the real money in Russia. But who am I to judge. I too am here on behalf of others.

At dinner, I find myself seated next to Eleanor LeBlanc. She’s adroitly dividing her attention between me on one side and Fenstermacher on the other, the effort made even more impressive as she is conversing in both English and German. Languages come easy to me, another benefit of my unusual memory. I’m fluent in several, so I catch all of her conversation with Fenstermacher. Finally, I ask whether she has a particular interest at the auction, as it’s always good to know the competition.

“Most definitely,” she says, tossing me a slight smile. “The same as yours, I believe. The incunabulum grimoire.”

I had not been trying to disguise my interest, but I’m a little surprised that she’d been watching close enough to notice.

Her smile deepens, as she sees the question on my face.

“I have a personal interest in that book,” she explains. “It was in my own family for generations. An impoverished ancestor sold it in the late 18th century, and it wandered, as you might say, for some time, owner to owner. I was excited to see it in the catalog here.”

“So if you get it, you plan to keep it? Expensive bit of sentimentality.”

She lifts one shoulder in a graceful shrug and twinkles at me. “Or perhaps I mean to use it. I’m told there are a great many interesting spells in that book.”

I chuckle at her dismissal of my questions.

Conversation thereafter becomes more general, a genial dinner, but one at which the undercurrents of calculation are clear, everyone sizing up everyone else, deciding just how deep a given pocket might be. I love private auctions. They come with all the intrigue of my former profession without the risk of dying.

By the time the dessert plates are cleared a tiredness has crept over me, and I’m glad when the meal ends. Some of the guests ask for another brief look at the books on display in the drawing room, but I pass, leaving Madame LeBlanc to the others with a gallant kiss of her hand.

I SLEEP LONG AND HARD, surely the aftereffects of the whisky, the dinner, and exhaustion from yesterday’s travel from Denmark. I awake early, feeling fresh as the day outside. A bright sun shines through the slit in the drapes and, when I open them, the moor stretches out before me in a brilliant, rolling green under a cloudy sky.

A mass of crumpled shirts and creased slacks confront me when I open my travel bag. I’d been too tired last night to hang anything up. I glance again out the window and, shrugging, find the least-wrinkled shirt and an Arran sweater from the bag, pairing them with my kilt, sporran, and hose from the night before. Might as well stay in the mood.

A shower and shave refreshes me even more.

Downstairs, breakfast is full Scottish, meaning full English, with a choice of eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, muffins, fried tomatoes, grilled mushrooms, and a disemboweled haggis. A discreet notice advises the availability of porridge, which I think is probably the only thing saving the Scots from epidemic constipation. I help myself liberally from the groaning sideboard and place a request for the porridge, then make my way across to a table at which Madame LeBlanc has just sat down.

“May I join you?” I ask.

“By all means.”

She’s chosen a light breakfast of sliced melon with raspberries—obviously a special order from the kitchen as I’ve seen none of that on the buffet—with a tiny medallion of steak and a dab of baked beans.

She leans toward me. “Have you heard?”

“All I heard this morning was a lot of seagulls screaming on the roof.”

She laughs. “I caught those too.”

I butter my toast, add a few slices of bacon, a fried egg, fried tomatoes and mushrooms, then another slice of buttered toast and create my own Scottish Egg McMuffin. She observes me with an indulgent smile, but one that doesn’t quite erase the deep line of concern between her brows.

“It appears that one of the books for the auction has gone missing,” she tells me, glancing sideways to be sure she isn’t being overheard. But the dining room is sparsely filled. Most of the guests appear to be sleeping in.

A thump of adrenaline forms in the pit of my stomach, one that has always primed me for action in my former occupation. But I also know the value of a poker face. So I keep my attention on the sandwich and ask, “I take it you don’t mean mislaid? Missing as in gone?”

Her mouth twitches with mischief, but her eyes are serious. “Malcolm didn’t want to raise an alarm. Not yet. He hasn’t made an announcement, but I couldn’t sleep last night, and when I came down about two o’clock, all of the lights were on. The servants were everywhere, quite plainly making a thorough search. Malcolm saw me on the landing and told me what had happened.”

I listen as she explains that the books had all been locked inside their glass cases following the cocktail hour. Malcolm and his factor, John MacRae, had come into the drawing room at midnight to see that all was in order for the detailed inspection to be held at eleven this morning. All had seemed to be as it should, but something had tingled Malcolm’s antiquarian sense and he returned for a second look.

“It was the incunabulum. The little grimoire,” she says. “There was a book in the case of the same size and also with a rough leather cover. But it had been put there so only the back cover showed. When turned over, it was revealed to be a first edition of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler. Certainly valuable, but nothing compared to the 15th-century grimoire.”

My porridge arrives, fresh and steaming, along with a silver cream jug and a dish of sugar lumps.

“Oh, that looks good,” Eleanor says, sniffing the heady steam that rises from the bowl.

“I tell you what. You have this one. I have to make a phone call. I’ll order another when I come back.”

I stand and place the bowl ceremoniously in front of her with a bow.

Then leave the breakfast room.

I’m concerned about the gun in my travel bag.