What Time Devours (28 page)

“Apparently.”

“Not me. Not anyone at Demier.”

“Taittinger then.”

“This is ridiculous, what you say,” said Tivary, with a dismissive Gallic wave.

“Because you are all fine, upstanding citizens, though your men came armed to catch me, beat me, and imprison me.”

Tivary shrugged.

“Some precautions are necessary,” he said. “We do not work in the light of the streets where the police patrol. We work deep in the earth, in the shadows of the stone underground. The rules are a little different down there. We have to protect our work. It is what we love and it is our livelihood. But this does not make us monsters.”

“And you can prove this, I take it.”

“No,” said Tivary. “As far as I am concerned, you found the body of the American while being pursued—lawfully—by my workers. Gresham was his name. Miles Gresham. The police know about the unfortunate victim, though they do not know about you. To tell them that we were pursuing another American at the time this Gresham died . . . It makes things,
untidy,
does it not?”

“I’m sure it would,” said Thomas. “But they will find out I was here.”

“Probably,” Tivary agreed. “In time. But by then they will be on the trail of the murderer, and your involvement will be an irrelevance. But you still seem to be suggesting that I—or people I employ—killed this man and that you are also in danger. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

“But you’ve just explained why you would want Gresham dead.”

“No. I explained why we would not want a rival winemaker snooping—that is the word,
snooping
?—snooping around our cellars. But this Gresham was not a winemaker.”

“He told me he was,” said Thomas, surprised out of his defiance.

“Yes,” said Tivary. “It is interesting, is it not? He pretended to be the one thing that would draw the greatest attention. But, according to the police, he was not a winemaker. Not even a wine dealer.”

“So he was killed by mistake?”

“I do not think so,” said Tivary. He was half smiling and considering, as if sampling an intriguing glass of wine. “I think he was probably killed for what he was, not for what he pretended to be.”

“What was he?”

“The police say Gresham was indeed from California, but he was not involved in the wine industry. He was involved in another business entirely, one in which California is second to none in the world.”

“Movies,” said Thomas, becoming very still. “He was a producer.”

“
Précisément
,” said Tivary.

CHAPTER 55

Blackstone had talked to someone in movies about
Love’s Labour’s Won
. Escolme had said so. She had been looking for ways to make the most possible profit off the newly revealed play, and films had obviously figured large: this despite the relative failure of Kenneth Branagh’s film version of
Love’s Labour’s Lost
, which was widely considered the low point of his career. But a new film of an old play was one thing, and the first film of a newly discovered play was something entirely different. It would market itself into the record books.

So Blackstone had talked to Gresham. Perhaps she had revealed something about the provenance of the original manuscript as a way of attesting to its authenticity. He had come looking for it. On his own? Because someone at his studio wanted proof that the script was genuine before they made a commitment to another Shakespeare film? Perhaps. He doubted there would be many script doctors in Hollywood who could reliably say whether something was or was not Shakespeare based solely on a handwritten copy. Whatever she had shown him was clearly not enough. He was looking for the original.

“Please,” said Tivary. He offered Thomas a flute of pale golden champagne.

“I’m not really a champagne drinker.”

“Please,” said Tivary again.

Thomas shrugged, took it, and sipped. It was dry and intoxicating, alive with flickers of festivity and celebration.

“Yes?” said Tivary, smiling broadly, his eyes on Thomas’s.

Thomas swallowed and couldn’t help returning something of the old man’s smile.

“Yes,” he said.

Tivary gave a little cough of a laugh and gestured with his index finger triumphantly.

“Good,” he said, as if Thomas had conceded some point in an important debate. “Now, this Gresham,” said Tivary, “is not the first to go wandering my cellars with no good reason. Only the first to die. Most of the spies come from other houses we know, and most of them are not so rude or clumsy to go wandering the caves like that. I had word about this Gresham—and yourself—from my colleagues at Taittinger in Reims because I have been looking out for such people. In the last few months there have been several. So I ask myself: what are they looking for? I think you know, Mr. Knight. I think you know because you are also looking for this thing, are you not?”

Thomas considered the man seriously, but said nothing.

“Come this way, please.”

The old Frenchman’s gait was stiff, his strides short, and he strutted a little like a bantam rooster. Still, he moved quickly and Thomas, his physical opposite in many ways, had to jog to catch up, thudding through the delicately furnished room like the proverbial china-shop bull.

They left the room and went back the way Thomas had come, past the elevator, to the double doors at the far end of the hall. Tivary unlocked them with a tiny brass key from his waistcoat and trotted inside. He waited for Thomas, then shut and locked the door behind him.

The room was the architectural mirror of the one they had just left, though this was red instead of blue, and the furnishings seemed less designed for sunny and elegant entertainment. It was darker, more lived in, and the desks were heaped with papers and other clutter. The walls were hung with paintings—more portraits—and the credenza and bookcases were laden with framed photographs, mostly black and white, many sepia with age. Thomas glanced at them politely as Tivary turned his back to the room in order to fiddle with the dial of a safe.

“I asked you if you knew what they were looking for, these others,” said Tivary.

“Perhaps,” Thomas conceded, staring at the elderly man’s back.

“Very good,” said Tivary, turning, pleased to face him. “And for your honesty you will be rewarded.”

He leaned on the handle of the safe and the door opened.

CHAPTER 56

“Mister Knight,” said Tivary, “are you familiar with Charles de St. Denis, Marquis de Saint Evremond?”

Thomas stared as the little French man stood up. He was beaming, his disarming blue eyes bright with amused excitement. In his hand was a stained leather folder bound with ancient scarlet ribbon. Thomas’s breath had caught. He nodded but could think of nothing to say.

“Voilà,” said Tivary, reverently laying the folder on the desk, considering it for a moment, and then busying his clever fingers with the bow. In a second the two ends fell untied. Tivary gave Thomas an expectant look.

“Be my guest,” he said.

Thomas smiled, suddenly nervous, and stooped to the leather folder. Gingerly, holding only the edge between thumb and forefinger, he opened it.

The folder contained two pouches. The one on the left contained what looked to be a letter in fine and florid script. The other contained a small book about the size of a paperback, but much slimmer. An old book. Instantly, Thomas knew he was looking at a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century quarto, or a damn good forgery.

“Is it . . . ?” he faltered.

“A play,” said Tivary. “Yes.”

“By Shakespeare?”

Tivary’s eyes fluttered and something complex passed through his mind.

“No,” he said. “See for yourself.”

Thomas hesitated, momentarily crushed with disappointment, but then his fingers gently prized the quarto from the leather folder and he was able to read the cover.

Volpone,
he mouthed. “Ben Jonson’s
Volpone
?”

He opened the little book to the first page.

“To the most noble and most equal sisters,” he read aloud, “the two famous universities, for their love and acceptance shown to his poem in the presentation, Ben Jonson, the grateful acknowledger, dedicates both it and himself.”

He stared at it.

“Sixteen oh seven,” said Tivary, almost chuckling with delight at Thomas’s reaction. “Purchased by Saint Evremond, used as a source for his own play,
Sir Politick Would-Be
, and sent as a gift to his lord the King of France and Navarre. You see the letter?”

Thomas looked up. Tivary had removed the single piece of parchment from the other pouch and unfolded it. Thomas, half-dazed, looked from the letter to the pouch, aware of Tivary watching him closely.

The folder’s two pouches were both empty, but that only made the way they both bulged in the exact same way the more striking. Though the left one had held only a single sheet of paper, it was stretched into an outline perfectly matching that which had held the quarto. Unless Jonson’s play had been routinely moved from one side of the folder to the other over the intervening three-hundred-plus years . . .

“There was something else in here,” said Thomas. “Another play.”

“Quite,” said Tivary. “The letter to the king suggests as much. See?” he said, tapping the letter with his finger. “ ‘
Les livres
,’ plural. There was another book in the folder.”

“So where is it now?” said Thomas, fighting back the urge to scream the question.

“Alas,” said Tivary with a shrug that lasted at least three seconds, “we do not know. We think it came here from Versailles with the folder, but then . . .
pouf
!”

He gestured:
into thin air
.

Thomas felt his whole body sag as if some great pressure that had been holding him upright had suddenly been released.

“We have no details of what the folder contained,” said Tivary. “So we cannot say if the other book disappeared after it reached us, or before.”

Thomas looked for a chair and sank into it.

“More champagne, I think,” said Tivary, frowning. “Or perhaps, cognac would be more appropriate. You have had a minor shock. A . . . what? A
letdown
, no?”

“No,” said Thomas, trying to be polite. “A little. I had hoped . . .”

“That there was a Shakespeare play here,” he said. “So I see. But why?”

“I had thought . . . well, I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“You thought Saint Evremond had a play by Shakespeare,” said Tivary, apparently thinking aloud. “That would be valuable. But the Jonson quarto is also valuable, though perhaps not worth so much. Yet you clearly have no interest in the
Volpone
. So it is not simply about the value of an old book. Also, others have come looking for this missing play, so there is something special about it. What?”

“I thought—and others apparently thought—that there may be a play by Shakespeare that has otherwise been lost.”

“A new play by Shakespeare?” said Tivary, his eyes flashing again.

“New to us, yes,” said Thomas. He glanced around the room, not wanting to reveal the disappointment in his eyes. “But I guess not. Or if it ever was here, it has somehow . . . subsequently . . .”

Thomas stopped, his eyes fixed.

“Monsieur?” prompted Tivary, turning to see what Thomas was staring at.

On the edge of the credenza were a pair of yellowed photographs in a hinged silver frame.

“Who is that?” Thomas said.

“
Mon grand-père
,” said Tivary, smiling at the image of the slender man with the archaic mustache and the fat cigarette. “My grandfather. Etienne Tivary. He died before I was born . . .”

“No,” said Thomas. “The other man. The one in uniform.”

The man was tall. The uniform that of a First World War British officer.

“I do not know,” said Tivary. “A friend of my grandfather’s, I suppose. Probably stationed here during the war. There were barracks all over this region and soldiers used the cellars as places to get away from the . . . the bombs?”

“Shells?”

“Yes, the shells. There were trenches cut all through this area. For almost the whole war there was fighting here. Almost continuous. And the line between German and Allies moved. There were two battles of the Marne—the river—in 1914 and 1918. The Germans moved very quickly at first and took much of this region, but after the first battle, they were pushed back, just not far enough to stop them from shelling the area. For most of the war, my family lived in the cellars.”

“But this man is in two pictures with your grandfather and he looks different in each. They both do.” Thomas pointed. “In this one his hair is longer, and this one he has no mustache. So they knew each other for some time.”

“Why else would my family have kept his picture?”

As Tivary spoke, he was considering the back of the frame.

“Would you?” he said, offering it to Thomas. “My fingers are not as strong or steady as they were.”

Thomas twisted a pair of clasps and popped the black-velvet-covered back off the frame. One of the pictures was unmarked on the back, but the other had a simple inscription in faded pencil:
Monsieur Etienne Tivary avec son ami, Captain Jeremy Blackstone, Janvier 1918
.

Thomas reconsidered the smiling Englishman in the picture, the same face he had seen staring down at him from an oil painting over the fireplace in Daniella Blackstone’s sitting room. So now he knew the story of the missing play book, how it had found its way to France and then, three hundred years later, back to England. The circle was closed at last.

CHAPTER 57

He couldn’t be sure, he supposed, but Thomas felt he had an edge on the competition now, including those who had beaten him to the Demier cellars, because they still thought the book was there. He had no idea how Daniella’s grandfather had first seen the lost play or how he had come to take it back to his family in England. Was it a gift from the Tivary family, the returning of a work of English literature to its homeland in the hands of a man they had come to like and trust? Or had the English officer stumbled on the play in one of his many visits to the château, perhaps when the rightful owners had been moved off by the imminence of the fighting? Had he simply stolen it? Thomas couldn’t say, and with everyone from that increasingly remote period dead, he doubted he would ever know for sure.