When Slader finished, having at last studied the back cover by holding it up to a bar of sunlight and slowly tilting it back and forth to catch the sheen of the ink, or lack thereof, he set it down on the card table and said, “Superb, man.”
I didn’t thank him.
Next was the letter, about which I had more qualms, because naturally I’d had far less control over its production. Could a forger’s daughter, not even knowing with certainty she was making a forgery, produce an unsurpassable work—one that Slader, an artist near the top of our esoteric field, might sign off on? He held it up to the sunlight, then turned it upside down and squinted at the baseline and middle zones of the letters and words, their ascenders and descenders. He even touched the letter to his nose to make sure any ink smell was gone.
“Well?” I said, impatient. “Good to go?”
He looked me in the eye and nodded. “You’re a very intransigent person, my friend. You know that?”
“So my wife tells me.”
“First, where are the proofs and rejects? You were supposed to return them to me.”
“I shredded them into confetti, then burned them. You want the ashes?”
Ignoring my question, he continued, “Also, I’m not going to ask why your daughter didn’t change more of the text, because I don’t think it overly matters.”
Horror-struck by his mention of Nicole a second time now, I considered contradicting him, insisting I’d done all the work myself, but thought it best to wind down our discussion. Anyway, for all I knew he had telephoto pictures of her scribing it in the middle of the night.
“He sometimes didn’t, in point of fact,” I said.
“Besides,” Slader continued, “since there aren’t to my knowledge any other surviving examples to compare it with other than Fletcher’s, it’s hardly a concern.”
“Well, on that point we disagree,” lowering my voice as a hotel guest wandered into the room and, seeing there were only books and two preoccupied men here, left. “If Mrs. Fletcher hears the news, which she probably will, she’ll compare her letter with this one, which will surely be reproduced in the auction catalog, and red flags might rise.”
Slader adjusted himself in his chair, ran a palm over his head. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it would be best if the Tamerlane was discovered without any letter, and came to auction sans accoutrements, no autograph, just the pure goods—”
“I never knew you had the capacity to listen to reason, but it’s heartening to see.”
Ignoring me, he played out the rest of his idea. “It’s not like the letter couldn’t turn up later, all by itself.”
“That would need a clever backstory—how it surfaced, naked and alone, after almost two centuries out of the public eye. Twinned with Tamerlane, it wouldn’t need explanation.”
A genuine look of amusement broke on Slader’s gaunt face, prompting me to realize I was arguing both sides of the matter, and was doing it because I didn’t want Nicole exposed. But it was more than a little too late for that.
“You know as well as I,” Slader said, “that forging plausible narratives to bolster our documents is half the joy of operating in the foggy heaths of history, imps of the perverse doing our thing, as Poe might’ve put it. We’ve claimed the right to revise the past as we see fit, and so we do. We change facets of the world to fit our own agendas. No big deal, and half the time we’re never even noticed. I’d go so far as to say half the time people don’t have any definite recollection of what actually did happen. Fact and fantasy carry equal weight, as far as I’m concerned.”
Out of the blue, I told him, “You’re a strange guy, Henry. Not that I disagree.”
He looked at the Tamerlane with a blank expression, then began to busy himself with putting it back in the sleeve. “I’ll take that as flattery, coming from the likes of you. But enough fucking around. I need to let Atticus know the work is done.”
“Give him my regards,” I said, changing the subject. “Before everything went south, in no small part because of you, he used to be a friend.”
“How touchingly sentimental,” said Slader. “Any bad blood between you is your fault alone. If you want to mend fences, why don’t you tell him yourself? He’s on his way from Providence. Should have been here by now.”
Aware that my daughter was driving around Rhinebeck, waiting for me to finish, I checked my wristwatch, surprised at how late it had gotten. “That may have to wait for another time. Why’s he coming, anyway?”
“Would you trust any of this to the post office?”
“Understood,” I said. “So my part is done, right?”
“Part of your part.”
Though I knew it was coming, the way he uttered that quartet of words—stern but without inflection or the slightest pause—left me breathless. It reminded me once more, as if I needed reminding, that Slader had me in a lethal bind. If I wanted my life, and my family’s well-being, to return to how it had been before Maisie’s scream cut like a scythe through the tranquil evening air, I had no choice but to cooperate.
“All right,” swallowing rather than speaking my two paltry words. “So you still intend to bring it to auction?”
“We do,” he said, sliding the pamphlet and letter back into the stiff mailer.
“Next year? Year after?”
Defiant impatience spread across his face.
Finding my voice again, I said, “I’d assumed you might want to give the Fletcher woman time to settle in with her new copy. Make sure no suspicions are raised.”
Slader fully frowned at me, held up the mailer. “This is her Tamerlane, her Poe letter addressed to somebody whose name is slightly different from what she remembered—a difference the old girl will blame on the shortcomings of a faulty memory—and she’s going to be perfectly content with it, just like she was before.”
“So what do you have in mind?” I asked, though wanting to flee Slader rather than hear any further plan that he, in his calm amorality, might hatch.
“Atticus will be the final arbiter, but my understanding is that the book will need to be ‘discovered’”—he bracketed the word with finger quotes in the air—“within the next few days so it can go up for auction around the anniversary of Poe’s death.”
Candid incredulity was what I felt. “Slader, get real. That’s early October. You don’t have any idea how impossible that would be to arrange on such short notice.”
“The seventh, to be precise,” Slader said, rising from his chair. “Falls on a Sunday this year, so maybe you can schedule it for the Friday night before, in honor of Quarles”—the pseudonym Poe used when he published “The Raven.”