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  “That’s just one option.”

  “But not to be overlooked.”

  “Damn it, Crang, you’d better not make a mess of this assignment.”

  “Mess it up? That’s another one.”

  “Another what?”

  “Option. Somebody involved in the theft may have just happened to screw up the burglary operation. Very simple explanation, but that brings us up to three options already.”

  Fletcher looked like he had something else profound to say. But he changed his mind. “I’ll just leave you to your task,” he said. “Retrieve the contents of the safe. Start with the letters or the poems. Either one. Preferably the letters first, in my view. But whatever order you work in, do it swiftly, for god’s sake!”

  Fletcher finished the last of his double espresso, gave Maury and me a quick nod, and left the table, heading smartly away in the direction of his store.

  “Man’s in a huff,” Maury said, watching Fletcher depart.

  “Hang around Fletcher a little bit,” I said, “and you learn that a huff is his semipermanent state.”

  Chapter Seven

  It was late afternoon, and Annie and I were standing in the dining room looking out at the garden. Annie had arrived home a half hour earlier, dropped off at the house by Meg Grantham’s car and driver. She looked fresh and tanned, dressed in brown chinos and a plain white t-shirt, as slim as the young girls in Kensington Market. Her hair was cut short, still its natural inky black, and nothing but the laugh wrinkles around her eyes even hinted at the fifty-year-old Annie was. She greeted me with a full-on two-minute hug, then took a slow tour of the garden.

  “The GG’s crew came in today,” Annie said back in the dining room. It wasn’t a question.

  “You can tell after one inspection?”

  “That’s the only explanation, sweetie, unless you’ve reinvented yourself as a master pruner.”

  “Lee, Pony, and Larissa dropped by.”

  “Oh my god, half the GG’s A-Team,” Annie said. “No wonder it looks so dreamy out there.”

  We went inside, and Annie folded back the dining room window to let the fresh air drift in. The window was built in a series of four large partitions, which sat on a network of coasters. With a little application of muscle, Annie pushed the partitions into a collection against the wall on the right side. The result was direct contact from the dining room to the great outdoors.

  In the meantime, I went up the four steps to the kitchen and made two martinis. Straight up and a twist for me. On the rocks, two olives for Annie. Polish potato vodka from the fine old distillers at Luksusowa for both drinks.

  “The interviewing went well up there at the Grantham cottage?” I said after we’d settled at the dining room table with our drinks.

  “Please, it’s a beach house, not a cottage. The place is like a Rosedale minimansion dropped onto a quarter mile of Georgian Bay beachfront.”

  “But conducive to creative endeavours?”

  “Six hours a day, I did interviews with Meg,” Annie said. “I got to hand it to the woman, she understands the way this is supposed to work. I ask the questions, she answers, and eventually, maybe eight or nine months from now, I organize the material and start writing her story in what will read like her own words.”

  “Meg’s not going to go all egotistical like the opera diva you ghosted for a couple of years ago?”

  “The woman thanked me for editing her memoirs.”

  “You wrote every word.”

  “The diva’s thinking was she couldn’t call the book her own unless readers were under the impression she herself had put every word on the page.”

  “The insults of the freelance life.”

  “And the answer is no, I don’t think Meg’s ego extend to claiming credit for roles she didn’t fill.”

  “And she’s seeing to it you’re well paid.”

  “A freelancer’s dream,” Annie said. “I’ve never come close to anything as lucrative as this job.”

  “All thanks to Fletcher Marshall, as he mentions at every opportunity.”

  Annie gave me a questioning look. “You’ve been speaking to the man himself?”

  I took a long sip of my martini and told Annie all about my Fletcher dealings, a summing up of how the Walter Hickey letters and the forged Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems had vanished from the safe in his store, how he hired Maury and me to recover the missing papers.

  “This involvement of mine with Fletcher’s case,” I said, “it isn’t going to trample on your Meg territory?”

  “Maybe a little,” Annie said. “But it’s not going to cost me the job or anything else dire.”

  “In that case,” I said, “let me ask a question. Has Meg mentioned faked copies of Sonnets from the Portuguese?”

  “To be precise, you’re talking about what would be a fake of a fake, if I follow your description of Meg’s possible problem.”

  “Double fake maybe, you’re right.”

  “Not a hint of the subject so far,” Annie said. “But then she and I are going at her life story chronologically. So far, up at Georgian Bay, we just finished covering Meg’s noble ancestors. This is all before Meg was ever born.”

  Both of us took sips of our martinis.

  “Off the immediate topic, but have you and Meg touched on the part in her life about the source of all her moolah?”

  “We won’t get to the specifics till later, but generally, if you’re keen to know, she made her money in blood testing.”

  “Like when I go to our GP, and she says let’s have a look at how your liver, kidneys, and cholesterol are functioning, and I go down to the department where they take eight vials of blood out of my arm, that kind of testing?”

  Annie nodded. “No need for the vials in the method Meg conceived. Only a bunch of little pinpricks.”

  “They work just as well?”

  “And are way cheaper. Meg’s marketed the method in a couple of American states, most of Japan and maybe a dozen European countries. Now she’s working on a deal with China.”

  “You make it sound straightforward.”

  “Always the best way,” Annie said. “But listen, sweetie, back to you and Fletcher, when you say you’re going to investigate the Elizabeth Barrett Browning forgeries, aren’t you overlooking something?”

  “Probably a lot of things, but which one have you got in mind?”

  “From what you’re telling me, Fletcher doesn’t want you to bother about the forgeries for now.”

  “Except tangentially.”

  “You’re supposed to concentrate on the Hickey letters first, the insurance on them, a possible two-million-dollar claim and so on.”

  “Personally,” I said, “I’m more partial to the whole idea of two ambitious book collectors forging volumes of poetry, outfoxing the literary critics of the day.”

  “You want to find out whether the break-in at Fletcher’s place was primarily to swipe Meg’s forged poems?”

  “It sounds like it has more potential for intrigue.”

  “But come on, Crang, that’s contrary to the direction Fletcher wants you to steer your investigation.”

  “Your point being that Fletcher is the guy paying me to find the stolen collections.”

  “And he’s siccing you on Walter Hickey’s daughter.”

  “I’m having second thoughts about Fletcher’s order of priorities.”

  Annie shrugged. “Oh well, you’re the guy who has to deal with Fletcher.”

  “Except for the difference of opinion over options, it’s been comparatively smooth going with the guy so far.”

  Annie held out her empty martini glass. “Before we go any further in this little discussion, you think we could have another? As perfect as the first?”

  I stood up, kissed Annie on the lips, and went u
p to the kitchen. The Luksusowa, vermouth, lemon, olives, and melting ice cubes waited on the counter. I mixed the drinks. From the cupboard I took down a can of unsalted nuts, opened it, dumped the nuts into one of Annie’s gorgeous deep-blue bowls, and carried the bowl and the drinks back to the dining room.

  Annie took a sip of her second martini and made a small humming sound, indicating pleasure. Then she leaned forward in the manner of a person about to deliver a piece of confidential information.

  “The last month or so,” Annie said, “two things about our man Fletcher have been driving me a little crazy.”

  “These are associated with him leading you to the Meg Grantham memoir?”

  “Entirely independent of it, I’m positive.”

  “You’ve got no beef with Fletcher on that score?”

  “I’m deliriously happy and eternally thankful.”

  “But there are these two irritations, which are what?”

  Annie took a deep breath, then said in a small rush, “Fletcher has halitosis, and he’s nursing a small crush on yours truly.”

  “A crush? How do you define a small one as opposed to the kind composers once wrote song lyrics about?”

  “In Fletcher’s case,” Annie said, “he stands so close to me, he’s invading my space, and he praises what he calls my entrancing beauty. My shell-like ears. The nobility of my cheekbones. The soft swell of my breasts.”

  “Breasts?” I said. “When breasts get mentioned, it’s usually a prelude to hitting on the woman.”

  “Crang, my darling, coming from Fletcher, his lines sound like he memorized a teenage boys’ guide to romancing adolescent girls.”

  “Is this an insecurity thing of some brand that Fletcher’s labouring under?”

  “Obviously,” Annie said. “But not often found in a man of sixty or more.”

  “Maybe if he cleaned up the halitosis, his problem with women would fade.”

  “Forget the halitosis. I’m beginning to feel sorry I mentioned it.”

  “But if he’s standing in your space, the bad breath must be an annoying factor.”

  “Criticizing his mouth odours sounds too much like I’m belittling the man, which is the last thing I want to do.”

  “Okay, the halitosis is off the boards.”

  “Besides, as everybody knows, it’s a minor health problem that’s easily remedied.”

  “Somebody should tell Fletcher.”

  “I agree with all my heart,” Annie said. “But the somebody isn’t going to be me.”

  I fiddled in the bowl of unsalted nuts, looking for cashews. I found two and ate both of them.

  “Honestly, sweetie,” Annie said, reaching across the table for my hand, “don’t be hurt by what I told you about Fletcher and his weird brand of romance.”

  “Surely, my dear,” I said, affecting a deep Sam Elliott voice, “you’ve taken note of how studly I am in all manner of personal relations?”

  “Except when you get a bee in your bonnet.”

  “You think I’m going to get obsessed about Fletcher and his crush?”

  “Heavens, no, but you’ve got a bee about the forged Elizabeth Barrett Browning poetry.”

  “There’s that.”

  “And in my view it’s going to lead nowhere except trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  Annie held up a hand in to signal stop. “Don’t say it!”

  “Say what?”

  “‘Trouble is my middle name.’”

  “You just beat me to it. But it’s one of my mantras, so I’ll say it again.”

  “Please don’t,” Annie said.

  I thought about it, and in the end the line didn’t cross my lips again, but given my past experiences with bizarre cases, I couldn’t help thinking it was a line that accurately reflected part of my work-a-day life.

  Chapter Eight

  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. Berr
igan 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?”