Michael Gruber - The Book of Air and Shadows

“Such as?”

“Oh, he was promised a Shakespeare seminar, and some graduate courses, but instead he was given freshman composition sections, rather like a brain surgeon being asked to tidy up the wards, mop up the blood, and empty the pans. When he complained of this outrageous treatment, Haas told him he was lucky to have anything at all, he was lucky not to be on the dole, or selling watches on the street. Andrew called and told me about this gruesome business, and of course I demanded that he tell Haas what he could do with his bloody appointment and come straight home. But that he would not do. I think he felt it was a kind of expiation for his scholarly sin. And…you know I see that this will sound odd, as if Andrew were descending into some hell of paranoia, but he told me that he believed Haas was tormenting him in more underhanded ways as well. His salary cheques would go missing. Little items would vanish from his briefcase, from his room. Someone changed the lock on his office door. One day he came to work and found all his things in the hall. He’d had his office moved without notice. Classes he was meant to meet in one room were mysteriously scheduled for another room on the other side of the campus, and he had to rush to meet them in the heat of the summer. Those terrible New York summers, and he suffered so from the heat. Not used to it, you see, being from here. And his air-conditioning was always breaking down…”

“Did he blame Mickey for that too?” I asked unkindly.

“Yes, I see where you’re going and I confess I thought that as well. Is he running mad? But it was the weight of evidence, you see, I mean the accumulation of horrible details-could he possibly have made them up? Unlikely, in my opinion: poor Andrew wasn’t a fantasist, not in the least. We used to joke that he had no imagination at all, and then there’s what I saw when he returned last August.”

He paused here and drank some of his beer. His eyes looked wet to me, and I fervently wished for him not to break down about poor Andrew. I took on some of my own pint, my third.

“It’s difficult to describe. Manic and frightened at the same time. He had a young woman with him and insisted she had to stay in our house, although there are some perfectly adequate hotels nearby.”

“Carolyn Rolly,” said Crosetti.

“Yes, I believe that was her name. She was helping him in some research…”

“Did he say what the research was?” Paul asked.

“Not really, no. But he said it was the most important find in the whole history of Shakespeare scholarship, and dreadfully hush-hush. As if I would blab. In any case they were out and about. He seemed to have plenty of ready money, renting a car, staying away for days, returning in a mood of exhilaration. One thing he did say, that he was authenticating the antiquity of a manuscript and couldn’t be seen to be doing so. That was the main reason for Miss Rolly tagging along. From what I could gather, they did authenticate it by technical means and then they were off to Warwickshire.”

“Where in Warwickshire, do you know?” I asked.

“Yes, I happened upon some papers Miss Rolly left behind that suggested they had visited Darden Hall. Andrew returned alone, and he seemed much deflated and more frightened. I asked him about Miss Rolly, but he put me off. She was ‘away’ doing research. I didn’t believe him for a moment-I thought perhaps they’d had some sort of falling-out. In any case, as I say, he was a changed man. He insisted on having all the curtains drawn and he would stalk the house at night, holding a poker and shining a torch in dark corners. I begged him to tell me what the problem was, but he said I was better off not knowing.”

Crosetti pressed March on what had become of Rolly. Did he think she had gone back to the States when Bulstrode had? He didn’t know, and that was more or less the end of our interview. After assuring the don that we would have all of Bulstrode’s personal items delivered to him and that Ms. Ping would handle the decedent’s will (and of course avoiding the issue of the lost manuscript), we took our leave.

Back in the car, we had a small disagreement about what to do next. Paul thought that we should continue with our original plan of following Bulstrode’s tracks, which meant going to Warwickshire and visiting Darden Hall. Crosetti objected that Bulstrode did not seem to have found anything there and why did we think we’d do any better than an expert? He was for staying and investigating at March and Bulstrode’s home and looking at these “papers” March had mentioned. I observed that he seemed far more interested in finding Ms. Rolly than in locating the Item. He replied that Rolly was the source, key, and engine of the entire affair. Find Rolly and you had all currently available information about the Item, including in all probability the purloined grille. We tossed this bone back and forth for some minutes, with increasing irritation on my part (for, naturally, I knew it was Miranda who had stolen the grille!) until Brown reminded us that other agents would be cruising these roads and asking the locals whether anyone had seen a Mercedes SEL, of which there were probably not many on the lanes of rural Oxfordshire, and by such means arriving back on our heels.

Paul suggested that Crosetti return to the inn and ask if March would consent to an inspection of these papers; he could stay at one of the perfectly adequate hotels. March was not averse to this plan, and we left Crosetti there with him. I was relieved, for I’d been finding the man ever more annoying. I mentioned this to Paul as Brown drove us away from the pub and he asked me why that was, since Crosetti struck him as mild enough. He’d hardly said a word in the car during the journey north.

“I don’t like him,” I said. “A typical poseur from the outer boroughs. A screenwriter , for God’s sake! Completely untrustworthy. I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I invited him along.”

“You should pay attention to the people who irritate you,” said Paul.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, I think you know,” he said in that irritatingly confident tone he sometimes has, like a voice from the clouds.

“I don’t know. I would have said if I knew, or have you been vouchsafed the power to read minds?”

“Hm. Can you think of another poseur from the outer boroughs, this one an actor rather than a screenwriter? But this one didn’t have a family as happy as Crosetti’s, didn’t have a loving mom, didn’t have a heroic dad-”

“What, you think I’m jealous of him? That I’m like him?”

“-who decided to play it safe and go to law school instead of taking a shot at what he really wanted to do, and he sees a kid with a warm and loving family who has the guts to follow his dreams-”

“That is such horseshit…”

“Not. Plus, you practically accused him of trying to seduce your wife, in fact, you encouraged him to do so. Just before you wrecked the bar in your hotel and put the bartender in the hospital.”

“I did no such thing,” I said spontaneously.

“I know you think you didn’t, but you really did. Have you ever had blackouts like that before?”

“Oh, thank you! I’m sure you have an AA group in your church basement that I’d fit right into.”

“No, I don’t think you’re a drunk, or not yet, although three pints of strong English beer is a lot to drink in the middle of the day.”

“I’m a big guy,” I said, a little lamely, for it was all starting to come back, little fragments of horrid memory. I am not a drinker ordinarily.

The hell with this.

We got toDarden Hall about four, under sodden skies. The surprisingly short autumn day of these latitudes was nearly gone and our headlights illuminated dark drifts of leaves on the long drive up from the road. The place had recently come into the National Trust, on the demise of the final Baron Reith in 1999, and had not yet been renovated for public view. We had called ahead to arrange a conversation with the resident conservator, a Miss Randolph.