Lost in a Good Book

‘How do you do, Mr Cable? Bought one of the new Griffin Sportinas, I see. How do you find it?’

‘Usually where I left it, sir.’

‘Indeed? You must come inside. Victor sent you, yes?’

We followed Volescamper as he shambled into the decrepit mansion. We passed into the main hall, which was heavily decorated with the heads of various antelope, stuffed and placed on wooden shields.

‘In years gone by the family were prodigious hunters,’ explained Volescamper. ‘But look here, I don’t carry on that way myself. Father was heavily into killing and stuffing things. When he died he insisted on being stuffed himself. That’s him over there.’

We stopped on the landing and Bowden and I looked at the deceased earl with interest. With his favourite gun in the crook of his arm and his faithful dog at his feet, he stared blankly out of the glass case. I thought perhaps his head and shoulders should also be mounted on a wooden shield, but I didn’t think it would be polite to say so. Instead I said:

‘He looks very young.’

‘But look here, he was. Forty-three and eight days. Trampled to death by antelope.’

‘In Africa?’

‘On the A30 near Chard one night in ‘34. He stopped the car because there was a stag with the most magnificent antlers lying in the road. Father got out to have a peek and… well, look here, he didn’t stand a chance. The herd came from nowhere.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sort of ironic, really,’ said Volescamper, ‘but do you know, the really odd thing was, when the herd of antelope ran off, the magnificent stag had also gone.’

‘It… it must have just been stunned,’ suggested Bowden.

‘Yes, yes, I suppose so,’ replied Volescamper absently. ‘I suppose so. But look here, you don’t want to know about Father. Come on!’

And so saying he strutted off down the corridor that led to the library. We had to trot to catch up with him, but any doubts as to the value of Volescamper’s collection were soon dispelled. The doors to the library were hardened steel.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Volescamper, following my gaze. ‘Look here, the old library is worth quite a few pennies—I like to take precautions. Don’t be fooled by the oak panelling inside—the library is essentially a vast steel safe.’

It wasn’t unusual; the Bodleian these days was like Fort Knox—and Fort Knox itself had been converted to take the Library of Congress’s more valuable works. We entered, and I saw Bowden’s eyes light up at the collection of old books and manuscripts.

‘You didn’t just buy Cardenio recently or something, then?’ I asked, suddenly feeling that perhaps my early dismissal of the find may have been too hasty.

‘Goodness me no. Look here, we found it only the other day when we were cataloguing part of my great- grandfather Bartholomew Volescamper’s private library. Didn’t even know I had it. This is Mr Swaike, my security consultant.’

A thick-set man with a humourless look had entered the library. He eyed us suspiciously as Volescamper made the introductions, then laid a sheath of roughly cut pages bound into a leather book on the table.

‘What sort of security matters do you consult on, Mr Swaike?’ asked Bowden.

‘Personal and insurance. This library is uncatalogued and uninsured. Criminal gangs would regard this as a valuable target, despite the obvious security arrangements. Cardenio is only one of a dozen books I am currently keeping in a secure safe within the locked library.’

‘I can’t fault you there, Mr Swaike,’ replied Bowden.

I pulled up a chair and looked at the manuscript. At first glance, things looked good, so I quickly donned a pair of cotton gloves, something I hadn’t even considered with Mrs Hathaway34’s Cardenio. I studied the first page. The handwriting was very similar to Shakespeare’s and the paper clearly handmade. I smelled the ink and paper. It all looked real, but I had seen some good copies in my time. There were a lot of scholars who were versed well enough in Shakespeare, Elizabethan history, grammar and spelling to attempt a forgery, but none of them ever had the wit and charm of the Bard himself. Victor used to say that Shakespeare forgery was inherently impossible because the act of copying overrode the act of inspired creation—the heart being squeezed out by the mind, so to speak. But as I turned the first page and read the dramatis personae, something stirred within me. Butterflies mixed with a certain apprehension. I’d read fifty or sixty Cardenios before, but… I turned the page and read Cardenio’s opening soliloquy:

‘Know’st thou, O love, the pangs which I sustain—’

‘It’s a sort of Spanish thirtysomething Romeo and Juliet but with a few laughs and a happy ending,’ explained Volescamper helpfully. ‘Look here, would you care for some tea?’

‘What? Yes—thank you.’

Volescamper told us that he would lock us in for security reasons but we could press the bell if we needed anything.

The steel door clanged shut and we read with increased interest as the Knight Cardenio told the audience of his lost love, Lucinda, and how he had fled to the mountains after her marriage to the deceitful Ferdinand and become a ragged, destitute wretch.

‘Good Lord,’ murmured Bowden over my shoulder, a sentiment that I agreed with whole-heartedly. The play, forgery or not, was excellent. After the opening soliloquy we soon went into a flashback where the unragged Cardenio and Lucinda write a series of passionate love letters in an Elizabethan version of a Rock Hudson/Doris Day split screen, Lucinda on one side reacting to Cardenio writing them on the other and then vice versa. It was funny, too. The world was indeed poorer without it. We read on and learned of Cardenio’s plans to marry Lucinda, then the Duke’s demand for him to be a companion to his son Ferdinand, Ferdinand’s hopeless infatuation for Dorothea, the trip to Lucinda’s town, how Ferdinand’s love transfers to Lucinda—

‘What do you think?’ I asked Bowden as we reached the halfway point.

‘Amazing! I’ve not seen anything like this, ever.’

‘Real?’

‘I think so—but mistakes have been made before. I’ll copy out the passage where Cardenio finds he has been duped and Ferdinand is planning to wed Lucinda. We can run it through the Verse Metre Analyser back at the office.’

We read on. The sentences, the metre, the style—it was all pure Shakespeare. It filled me with excitement but worried me too. My father always used to say that whenever something is too fantastic to be true, it generally is. Bowden pointed out that the original manuscript of Marlowe’s Edward II only surfaced in the thirties, but I still felt uneasy.

The tea was apparently forgotten and, at midday, just as Bowden had finished copying out the five-page scene, a key turned in the heavy steel door. Lord Volescamper popped his head in and announced slightly breathlessly that owing to ‘prior engagements’ we would have to resume our work the following day. As we walked out of the house a Bentley limousine arrived. Volescamper bade us a hasty goodbye before striding forward to greet the passenger in the car.

‘Well, well,’ said Bowden. ‘Look who it is.’

A young man flanked by two large bodyguards got out and shook hands with the enthusiastic Volescamper. I recognised him instantly. It was Yorrick Kaine, the charismatic young leader of the marginal Whig party. He and Volescamper walked up the steps talking animatedly, and then vanished inside Vole Towers.

We drove away from the mouldering house with mixed feelings about the treasure we had been studying.

‘What do you think?’

‘Fishy,’ said Bowden. ‘Very fishy. How could something like Cardenio turn up out of the blue?’

‘How fishy on the fishiness scale?’ I asked him. ‘Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark.’

‘A whale isn’t a fish, Thursday.’