The Simeon Chamber (13 page)

“They belonged to James Spencer and they were sent to Dorothy Spencer. That was your mother’s former name, wasn’t it, before she met your stepfather?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yes. That’s my mother. But I don’t know how the parchments could have been sent to her and later to me. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“My thoughts exactly. Your mother never talked to you about the parchments?”

“Never.”

“Who else knows about them?”

“Me, you, whoever you’ve spoken to concerning them.”

“Your stepfather doesn’t know about them?”

“No.”

Sam sensed that with mention of her stepfather he had touched a raw nerve. Was it simply her concern for him, the loving interest of a child to protect a parent in their old age? Or was there something more?

“Tell me a little about your stepfather. What’s he like?”

“There’s not much to tell. He’s old. His life’s wrapped up mostly in the vineyard and his wines.”

Jennifer was clearly uncomfortable as she discussed Louis Davies. Sam’s mind wandered, paying little attention to her words. Instead he watched her easy gestures and listened to the melodic tone of her voice. There was something exotic about the woman—her dark hair framing the angular features of her face, her voice easy and soothing.

There was an obvious look of compassion 141

in her eyes whenever her sight wandered to the wound on Sam’s head.

Bogardus had dealt with enough con artists during his days with the public defender’s office that he was not easily beguiled. And he knew that he was not getting the whole story, not yet. His daydream was broken by Jennifer’s silent stare as she finished the brief description of her stepfather.

“You have no idea who might have sent the parchments to you?”

“None.”

“Yes, well, that will unfortunately remain a mystery for the time being,” said Sam. “I think that you are probably safe, at least for the present. Whoever attacked me must have been fairly certain that I had the parchments. That should leave you in the clear …”

Jennifer broke in. “Listen I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. It’s not worth it. Perhaps we should go to the police with the parchments and let them take care of it.”

“That would be a mistake,” said Sam. “We don’t know enough yet. The police aren’t going to invest resources investigating a hunch. There’s no solid evidence linking my assault with the parchments. No. Trust me. Let’s wait a little while and get more information before we go to the cops.”

Jennifer shrugged her shoulders. “If you think so …”

“I do. For the moment, don’t take any chances. If anyone contacts you regarding the parchments, call me immediately. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And I don’t want you doing any checking on your own. Wait until I get out of here and I’ll take care of that.”

She nodded.

Sam looked at the woman. She was vulnerable and appealing. A part of him wanted to help her, to answer all of her questions, to assure her that she was safe, that he would protect her, and most of all, that he would find her father, if he lived. But there was a schism to Jennifer Davies, a hard businesslike facet to her personality. It had been present on the telephone that morning when he’d called her stepfather’s house and again moments earlier when she’d suggested that he find more information on Raymond Slade. Bogardus could not be certain at any moment which of the two women 143

he was dealing with—the hapless client who required his assistance or the stiff pursuer who seemed to follow some private agenda.

“I’ll call you in the morning to see how you’re feeling.” And then she was gone.

Sam lay motionless for several moments, then reached for the telephone. He dialed the office and Carol answered.

“Hi. Sam here.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Better today. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll be out of this place and back to work.”

“There’s no rush.”

“Yeah, Pat said the same thing. It’s good to know that I’m so vital to the enterprise. Listen, there’s something I want you to do. Do you still have that lawyer’s directory there on your desk?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a name I want you to check.”

“What county?”

Sam considered for a moment. “Let’s start with Napa.”

Pat had gone nearly four blocks after leaving the Jade House and was nearing an alley a half block from her bus stop when a distinguished man carrying an ornate walking cane approached from the opposite direction. The man asked Pat for directions to the Civic Center. Dressed in a knee-length camel hair coat and a felt homburg, the man appeared as an elegant anachronism, an image from a Movietone newsreel—the caricature of a diplomat in prewar Europe. It took her several seconds to get her bearings and point the man toward City Hall. He trudged off in that direction.

Consequently she was surprised twenty minutes later when she saw him again near the end of the block as she waited for her bus. But this time he was not alone. Standing with him near a long, dark stretch limousine was the chauffeur she had seen in the Jade House. She watched the two from the corner of her eye as she milled with the other commuters around the Muni signpost. The studied gaze of the two men never left her. A chill began to settle down Pat’s spine.

As she boarded the bus she quickly handed her pass to the driver and headed for the rear bench seat.

From the large rear window Pat saw the 145

two men enter the limousine and pull out behind the Muni as it headed down Broadway. Her mind scrambled for an escape. But there was no reason to panic. She was surrounded by people on a crowded bus. At each stop more passengers boarded. By the time the bus crossed Columbus Avenue the only available space was standing room in the center aisle.

Casually Pat leaned over and whispered to the old lady seated next to her. She was dressed in a frayed orange coat that covered her nearly to her feet and on her head was a print bandanna.

The woman looked up at Pat as if the younger woman was demented. Pat leaned over and whispered a second time. This time the woman hesitated for a moment then shrugged and nodded in agreement.

Two stops later four passengers disembarked from the bus: two businessmen carrying briefcases, a jogger of dubious gender and an old woman, her head shrouded in a print scarf and her bulky frame bundled against the chill of the October afternoon by a long orange coat. The passengers scuttled off in opposite directions to the roar of diesel fumes as the bus pulled away from the curb, followed closely by a large dark limousine. The old lady stood motionless for several seconds as the vehicles moved out of sight, then straightened her posture and hailed a cab. Gingerly Pat disappeared into its backseat.

A smile spread across her lips. “Screw with Susan Paterson will you?”

She looked through the windshield at the bus caught in traffic near the Embarcadero and directed the cab driver to turn left at the next intersection. The limo and its passengers would plant themselves at the law office once they discovered they’d lost her. Pat would head for her apartment and call Carol from there. A quick visit to the limousine by Jake Carns and some of his friends would put an end to it. If the chauffeur and his fare were involved in Sam’s assault, the cops could have what was left when Jake and his friends were finished.

It wouldn’t be much.

Pat pulled the briefcase and her purse from under the old lady’s coat, lazily dangled one well-shaped thigh over the other and wallowed in smug indifference in the rear of the cab as it headed around the block and west on Broadway, through the tunnel toward the Sunset District and 147

her apartment. Ten minutes later she stepped from the cab and crossed the street a half block from the shingle-sided, condo-converted apartment she called home. She was taking no chances, and dressed in the long coat and bandanna she shuffled along the sidewalk, the only telltale sign of youth the two-inch spike heels on her shoes. She ambled down the rear alley and into the building through the laundry room and went up the stairs. Pulling the scarf from her head and shedding the coat, she moved briskly down the corridor, inserted the key in the lock and entered her apartment. She leaned heavily against the inside of the door, closing it and fastening the security chain, and stood for several seconds breathing a deep sigh of relief as her hand felt for the switch plate and turned on the lights in the entry hall.

The searing pain prevented even the slightest gasp of sound from exiting her lips. Slowly, in quarter steps, she turned to face away from the sealed door, her eyes open, her vision already beginning to fade. For a fleeting instant she caught sight of her assailant’s face, then her downward gaze fixed on the comic glimpse of a single yellow glove, its turned cuff mired in blood. She staggered backward against the door, impaling the object deeper into her vital organs, the mind-piercing agony causing the lids to drop over her eyes. She stood transfixed against the door. Warm blood trickled down onto her legs as her feet slid on the tiled entry, her buttocks coming to rest on the floor, her back propped against the door.

A single word passed her parted lips as the air was purged from her lungs … “Why?”

The word seemed surreal. The unendurable torment of the wound had already begun the process of separating mind from body. It was as if she were a dispassionate observer hovering somewhere over the scene, watching as the lifeblood coursed from the body of another. The mind-altering agony began to subside. She made no effort to breathe, knowing it was futile, and she was slowly engulfed by a warm dark void as her mind danced in the playgrounds of her childhood. She saw herself cradled in the serene comfort of her mother’s lap, and somewhere between visions of childhood bliss Susan Paterson slipped quietly from existence.

Anthony Murray was perhaps the foremost archivist in the western United States. He was a man on constant call to some of the largest and most prestigious museums in the world. He was skilled not only in the preservation of ancient documents and books but was called upon regularly to authenticate them.

Murray worked in a small laboratory carved out of the archeology department on the Berkeley campus, in a maze of tables, test tubes, Bunsen burners and various optical devices ranging from microscopes to a large round magnifying glass set into the center of a fluorescent lamp.

It was mid-afternoon. Murray and Nick Jorgensen had been at it all day, examining the Davies parchments.

Earlier in the day Murray had dispatched Nick to the campus library for two books on Drake that contained clear reproductions of authenticated correspondence known to have been written in the explorer’s hand. They worked in complete silence, Nick searching the texts for any mention of the journal and Murray inspecting the parchments and comparing the lettering with large-scale reproductions in books spread on the table.

Murray ran his right hand through strands of his thinning white hair. His features were fine and his complexion fair and soft from years of constant work in the dim recesses of museums and laboratories. He wore a white smock, and his fingers moved with the deftness of a surgeon as he returned them to the calipers to measure the dimensions of letters on the pages. He passed a magnifying glass from the library books to the words on the parchments, seeking points of similarity and difference.

It was ten minutes to three when Murray stood upright over the table, arched his back with a mild sigh and turned off the lamp that had illuminated the parchments. Nick, who by this time was snoring quietly in the corner with his shoes off and feet propped on top of the desk, sensed the movement in the room and woke with a start. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and focused on Murray, who was in the shadows across the room.

“Well, what do you think?” asked 1

Nick.

Murray unhooked a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from behind his ears, lifted them from the bridge of his nose and walked slowly around the table toward Nick.

“They’re either the best forgeries I’ve ever seen or they’re authentic,” said Murray. “If you were asking my professional opinion …”

“I am,” said Nick.

“I think they’re genuine.” Murray wrinkled the skin on the bridge of his nose. “Listen, no two people form their letters or angle the script of their writing in precisely the same way.

Moreover, an individual’s hand changes little between early maturity and old age. No. The handwriting from Drake’s known correspondence and the words on those parchments are peas from the same pod.

“And it’s not easy stuff to forge,” he added.

“The script on those pages is very different from the writing we might scratch out today.” His voice became high and resonant. Murray rubbed the bridge of his nose and replaced his glasses.

“The handwriting of the cultured nobility of Europe before the use of typewritten words took on a uniformity of style that hasn’t been seen for several centuries.”

Murray stretched out his arms high over his head and arched his back to relieve the tension brought on by hours bending over the table. He reached for one of the library books, looked at the index and thumbed the pages, searching as he spoke. “Until the early 1500’s a form of script known as `secretary hand` was commonly used by men of learning in most of Europe. But in the late 1400’s and early 1500’s a variation on this form imported from Italy crept into the writing of most of Europe including England.” Murray walked from the table to the desk where Nick was seated. He placed the open book on the desk and spun it around to face Nick, open to the page that Murray had found.

“Here’s an excellent example of this so-called secretary-Italic hand.” Murray pointed to an enlarged photographic reproduction of a portion of a letter in elegant uniform script. To Nick’s eye the letters on the page appeared to have been printed. The only telltale signs of a human hand were minute wisps of ink around the tops of certain of the letters where the fibers of the quill pen left their 153

traces.

“Elizabeth learned this style from her penmanship tutor, Roger Ascram, as a young girl,” said Murray. “There was a great deal of peer pressure on the nobility to follow her lead. By the late 1500’s virtually everyone who was anyone in England had mastered the Italic form and used it in any formal writings—including Drake.”