“Downstairs.” The eyebrows raised in complicit understanding. “Downstairs! Of course. Of course they would be.” And then, hoping against hope, “I wonder if I could see them?”
“Of course, John.”
The eyebrows collapsed in gratitude.
“Thank you!” He beamed like the sun.
But a new moon had risen from above, and the center of the solar system was put in its shadow.
“John, this is my wife, Dorothy.”
“Dorothy.” It was profoundly stated, as if it revealed all truth.
“Mr. Borchard,” she said. And she smiled, more gracious than truth. “Charles has told me so much about you.”
His return smile made up in quantity what it lacked in quality. “And he’s mentioned you as well.” He took her hand and almost seemed to kiss it, but in fact only very gently and momentarily held it, and then released. “What an honor.”
“We were just going downstairs,” Charles said.
“Go ahead,” Dorothy said. “I just need to talk with Alice.”
John tore his attention from Dorothy and turned to follow Charles. “Here we are,” Charles said, unlocking the basement door and turning on the light.
John Borchard stared and blinked and stared again. “Incredible!” For a moment he was truly amazed. He walked slowly along the wall, studying each shelf. “What treasures!”
“This is more what you imagined?”
“Yes, quite.” John took a breath. He had still not recovered his bluster. “May I look at one?”
“Here.” Charles gave him white gloves from the desk, and then a volume from the shelf.
John peered closely to make out the title. “ Gulliver’s Travels. It is incredible! Is this a first edition?”
“No. That is a 1780 printing. If I had a first edition, it would be in a bank vault.”
“This is quite a vault itself. Who would think, just walking past this old house, what treasures it has hidden!”
“Well, perhaps anyone who looked at the sign that says Rare Books .”
“Well, perhaps! Absolutely. May I look inside?”
Charles carefully opened the book. “Some dealers don’t touch them, but I hate to think of a book never opened. If it’s in good condition like this, it won’t hurt it.”
John moved his finger across the page. “Absolutely amazing! And how much would this book be worth?”
“For its age and condition and rarity, about six thousand dollars.”
“Amazing.” He handed it back to Charles. Then a new expression emerged on his Brobdingnagian face as the cheeks pushed against the eyes, and the chin pushed up and out, and other features drew together conspiratorially. “And you said that you had Derek’s books?”
“Yes. I bought them at the auction last week.”
Then a whisper, but with a doglike eagerness. “They would be down here?”
“Yes, they are.”
“All of them?”
“Well, actually, I’ve determined that one isn’t. I hadn’t realized at first, but one book that I’d sold him was not part of the set I bought back.”
Then another new expression appeared, less dog-eager and more cat-watchful.
“I wonder where it went.”
“I don’t know, of course,” Charles said. “He might have sold it. Or it might have been stolen the night he was killed.”
“The night he was killed.” John nodded at a chair. “May I?”
“Of course. Sit down.” Charles sat at the desk. “Not as nice as the chairs in your office.”
“But quite functional. The night he was killed…” John sighed, very deeply, but the cat eyes didn’t share the unhappiness. They were only alert. “I keep thinking about that night. Derek must have been very courageous to walk into that office. In the dark. By himself.”
“He was usually willing to take risks.”
“Yes, he was.” John seemed very satisfied with Charles’s answer. “I knew him to take a number of risks through the years.”
“You must have been very shocked the next morning.”
“I was shocked when I found out. It was actually two days later.”
“Two days?”
Now the eyes were veiled as the whole broad face went blank. “I was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Not much cell phone coverage there.”
“The bottom of the Grand Canyon!” Charles said.
“My wife and I take a trip each year for our anniversary. Five days of rafting and camping.”
Charles allowed a smile, between friends. “I would never have guessed you did such things, John.”
“It wasn’t what you would call roughing it.” He matched Charles’s smile, and raised it by an eyebrow. “We had comfortable tents and beds, and excellent food. Just right for a sedentary bureaucrat to pretend he was having an adventure!”
“I’m sure it was an adventure. A real one. But I can see that you wouldn’t be getting much news from the outside world.”
“It was only as we came out that I received the messages from my staff. And then it absolutely was a shock.” John’s face metamorphosed into a thoughtful frown. “But coming back to Derek’s books. You say they’re here in this room?”
“They are.”
“May I see one?”
Charles smiled. “Of course.” He stood and turned to a shelf behind the desk. John Borchard’s eyes followed him exactly. “John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States.” He set the volume in the waiting hand.
“Like the other book, it isn’t a first edition, I assume.”
“No. But it was printed during Adams’s presidency.”
“Remarkable,” he remarked. “Absolutely remarkable.” He opened the book and shifted pages. “And it seems to be in good condition.”
“That one, yes,” Charles said. “Very good.”
John lingered over the yellowed pages. “Are there actual ratings?”
“There are generally accepted criteria. Poor, fair, good, very good, excellent. Most dealers would understand what each means.”
“And you would inspect a book to decide what condition it’s in?”
“Yes,” Charles said. “That’s fairly straightforward.”
John’s lips had become dry. He paused a moment to wet them.
“Did you inspect Derek’s books?” he asked.
Charles shrugged. “Having sold Derek the books in the first place, I already knew their condition. And of course he’d taken very good care of them. I knew they wouldn’t have deteriorated.”
“I’m sure he did take very good care of them,” John said. “Absolutely sure.”
Then Charles waited. John’s face had again rearranged, with the brow down and the eyes squinted and the lips jutting, all with words pent up behind them.
“Charles, was there anything unusual about Derek’s antique books?”
“He collected the standards of Enlightenment philosophy.”
“The books themselves. I mean their physical condition.”
“What do you mean, exactly, John?” Charles said.
John ran his finger along the line of his chin. “You know, Charles, I’m still not completely sure why you came last week to see me. Was it really just innocent curiosity?”
“I did want to meet you.”
“All these months had passed after Derek’s death, but it was only two days after the auction that you
