If, as it’s said, everything that rises must converge, then by the same token do all things that fall converge as well? News of Henry Slader’s disappearance came as a surprise, but not a shock. Back in the city, I hadn’t expected to hear from Atticus until after the auction, nor was I sure how safe it was for him to reach out to me by phone—paranoia strikes deep?—although we ourselves weren’t under a scintilla of suspicion.
“Seems he’d been taken in for questioning,” Atticus continued, “and released for lack of evidence. As you know, he’s a seasoned obfuscator.”
“What did they pick him up for?” I asked, pausing at a corner to wait for the light to change as I walked home from the auction house—Atticus wisely had waited for my workday to end before calling.
“Avarice and stupidity.”
Despite myself, I laughed. “When those become crimes, the whole world will end up behind bars.”
“And suspicion of murder.”
All laughter ceased. My first worry, assuming Ginger-head was the victim, was what kind of legal jeopardy Meghan could be in for falsely reporting she’d seen nothing on that abandoned road, although who could contradict her, unless there was another witness, say, the highly unreliable Slader himself. My second was whether Atticus could manage, if and when Slader surfaced, to ensure his silence about the Poe business, prevent him from ratting me out along with everyone else. Shadows of uncertainty that had cast their ugly pall over my world now thickened and darkened.
“Cricket?” I asked.
“Guy named John Mallory, if that’s who you mean.”
“I don’t know Mallory any more than you seem to know Cricket. Who is—was he?”
“Seems to have been a fourth- or even fifth-generation plate- and papermaker out of Fall River, up in Massachussetts,” Atticus said.
My pulse skipped. That would explain the very high quality of the paper, possibly even vintage, dating back to the nineteenth century, as well as the superior plates themselves, expertly crafted. Idiot, I thought. Why do such an obviously self-defeating thing? Why take out such an invaluable resource? It quickly became clear to me how Slader had managed to produce such superlative forgeries over the years, with odd-lot and leftover papers that might well have been sitting in warehouse drawers for a century or more. I asked Atticus if he had any idea about motive, assuming Slader was behind the murder.
“As I said, greed and lunacy. He’d told me that Mallory, who must be this Cricket, redheaded fellow—”
“Right, ginger.”
“—followed him down to New York state. He had a piece of the action and, who knows, wanted to check on his investment. I assume a certain somebody lied to him about the value of his contribution, the papers and plates—real picnic—and he demanded a heftier cut, or else he would blow the whistle on Slader. Simple and banal as that.”
“Simple, maybe,” I said, as I found an empty bench in Union Square and sat. “Not sure about banal, since how do we know Slader hasn’t been swindling Mallory for years?”
“I’ve tried never to delve too deeply into Henry’s history,” Atticus told me. “Call it a rational instinct for self-preservation, plus an aversion to picking up rocks to see what’s squirming underneath. Bottom line is, I don’t know and don’t care. What I do care about is that our sale goes off without a certain party gumming up the works.”
I couldn’t help but recall Henry Slader criticizing me during our first meeting in the Beekman Arms tavern, scornfully asking if he was wrong in remembering me as a cooler cucumber back when I was younger. It stung, although now I had no recollection of what prompted his snide taunt. Whatever its genesis, going into hiding after being questioned by the police was the opposite of a cucumber-cool move. We both had been trawled, netted, and grilled, so to say, before being tossed back into the stream of life in the wake of the Adam Diehl murder. Neither of us was fool enough to vanish from sight afterward. Running gave every appearance of guilt. To run was to confess. That he knew Nicole’s cell number only made me more unnerved.
Agreeing there was nothing either of us could do about our mutual not-friend just then, Atticus asked about Tamerlane, and if I had any insight into how much it might bring when the day finally came. I told him that thanks to widespread media publicity following the release of our online announcement and catalog supplement, interest was higher than the house’s highest expectations, absentee bids were stronger than was typical, and agents of potential buyers both private and institutional continued to pass through our doors, making discreet notes, trying and failing to mask their zeal. Interest was not limited to American buyers, either, given Poe’s international popularity. France, Japan, Abu Dhabi, England—the cosmos of Poe devotees was far-flung. I shared with Atticus that the auction estimate had been set at half a million to six hundred thousand, conservative numbers by my lights.
“I plan to take the train down there to preview it myself.”
“I would have thought you’d already seen it when you were working on the Fletcher library.”
“To be sure. Just not in its new extra-illustrated incarnation.”
“No offense, but if you’re coming, let me know so I can be elsewhere.”
“Understood, and done,” Atticus agreed. “And if you hear from the fugitive, please get in touch. He may be a fool, but he’s not a moron. My guess is he’ll keep a low profile until after the sale, rightfully demand his rake-off, then spirit himself away to blend into the wallpaper somewhere overseas.”
“Tomorrow is today’s dream, as they say.”
Ignoring my platitude, Atticus asked after Maisie. I told him that she was doing well, back in school, then we got off the phone. If still perplexed by his solicitude about Maisie, I was far more concerned about Slader, who appeared to have plummeted into darker precincts of craziness than before. My mind roiled with other worries as well. Such as whether Abigail Fletcher would hear about her—rather, our—Tamerlane and proclaim to the world, finally, that she had a copy too, albeit a respectable fake. Such as whether the Tivoli lawyer, contract or not, might attempt to declare our ownership of Tamerlane null and void, reclaiming it for his client’s estate even though said client likely never laid eyes on Poe’s first book, and certainly never possessed a copy. Such as whether Meghan, jittery and guilt-ridden beneath her forced facade of appeasement, might drop the plot and, in an attempt to clear her conscience, end up sparking the fires of virtue to scorch and finally cinderize us all.
On the first of these counts, I didn’t have to wait long for my concern to rise, like a malign flower born of toxic soil, and challenge me. Delivered to the apartment the day after my call with Atticus, it came in the form of a letter from my longtime icon and sometime benefactor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The missive was brief; its phrasing pure Slader.