Pursued by Shadows (14 page)

“Very interesting,” muttered Sanders. “When did she come in?”

“About a week and a half ago,” said the efficient Ashley. “You can check that, of course. We filed a report with the police. We always do when we're offered what we consider to be stolen goods. Just for our protection.”

“That's right,” said Ellis. “If she tries to sell it to anyone else around the province, she'll probably be picked up. But she's safe enough in New York—unless someone down there turns her in on his own.”

“Is a map really worth stealing?” asked Harriet. “I mean, would it fetch enough to be worthwhile? What kinds of figures are we talking about? Like Picassos?”

“Oh, dear me, no,” said Mr. Ellis, laughing. “There are lots of very old maps—they're not that rare. And some of them are extremely beautiful. Those are quite valuable. But really they don't bring enough at auction to make them worth the trouble of stealing. A few thousand dollars, most of them.”

“What about forging?” asked Harriet, suddenly. “Would they be worth forging?”

“Dear lady,” he said, expanding further and further, “think of the immense trouble you'd have to go to if you wanted to forge a map. Getting the right medium—the inks, the colours, the parchment or whatever. It all has to be genuine, you know, for the exact period you're trying to establish. Anything else can be spotted by the apprentice sweeping the floors at a good auction house. A map would have to be aesthetically overwhelming or of enormous historical importance to be worth the trouble.”

“What do you mean, enormous historical importance?”

“Oh—you know—the map that Eric the Red used to get to North America, with his notes in Old Norse scribbled all over it. ‘Great food here, watch the booze at Eddy's,' all that sort of thing,” said Ellis, laughing cheerfully.

“Speaking of Eric of Red,” said Harriet, “didn't I read somewhere that the map that Columbus used to find North America has been found?”

“No doubt,” said Ellis. “For the four hundredth time.” He and his assistant both broke into peals of even merrier laughter. “We've been offered at least a thousand Columbus maps, haven't we, Ashley? Especially these days.”

“Well,” said Ashley, “two or three, anyway.”

“All the dealers must be getting them,” said Ellis. “You'd have to be crazy to fall for that one.”

“What would the real Columbus map be worth?” persisted Harriet. “Just out of curiosity.”

“If it existed?” He paused. “A lot. Depending on who was buying, in the millions. Yes. Probably in the millions.”

“A map?” said Dubinsky uneasily. “What makes you think that?” The only other noise to disturb the after-lunch calm of the restaurant came from the two waitresses finally eating their own meal. The two men sat alone in an island of quiet, free to conspire, safe from eavesdroppers.

Sanders began to layout his evidence. “Anyway, it sounds as if his girlfriend has the map right now.”

“I wonder if his agent knows about it,” muttered Dubinsky. “It sounds like her territory.”

“What was she doing when Beaumont got drowned?”

Dubinsky laughed. “Shit. There's a picture for you. Drowning him with one hand while she gives him this lecture about fate and brushes the water off her clothes with the other hand. She was at a cocktail party on Tuesday, from five to about seven-thirty or eight, and then she went home, ate a cold supper, and went to bed where she read for an hour or so and went to sleep. Touching, isn't it?”

“Verified?”

“Cocktail party is. Not the rest. Her son Christopher ate his cold supper at six and went up to his room to study for exams. He didn't hear his mother come in. Jesus. Living in a house so goddamn big you can't hear people coming in. And there's her other son—Dean. His room is over the garage with its own entrance and he can't hear anything either. He said he grabbed a hamburger after work—he doesn't like cold suppers—and then went home and watched television all evening by himself. The housekeeper had the evening off. Cozy family, aren't they? So she could have gone over after eight o'clock, drowned Beaumont, dragged his body up the stairs and tossed everything from one end of the apartment to the other. By the way, is the map real? And how much is it worth?”

“Who the hell knows?” snapped Sanders.

“There's a whole fucking university full of people about a block away who should know,” Dubinsky snarled back. “You want to come?”

“I'd better not. I'm deep enough in shit at the moment to last me for a while.”

“Columbus's map,” said Professor Richard Martin in a musing tone. Despite his show of confidence in the resources of the University of Toronto, Dubinsky was astonished to find himself, within an hour, sitting in the office of a certified expert. His telephone call to the History Department had given him the Medieval Center; when he reached that ancient-sounding institution, its departmental secretary had said, without a second's hesitation, “You want to speak to Professor Martin. I'll put you through.” Her speed suggested that during Columbus Year Dubinsky's question had not been the only inquiry on the subject.

After a suitably long pause, the resident expert favoured the two policemen with a smile. “My first reaction is that it has to be a fraud.”

“There is no such map?” asked Dubinsky.

Professor Martin frowned to let the sergeant know he had interrupted a valuable train of thought. “I didn't say that. There has always been a strong—almost folk, you might say—tradition that Columbus's map has survived—”

“You mean, like Elvis lives?” asked Dubinsky.

“Actually, yes,” said Professor Martin with a humanizing grin. “Like Elvis lives. And a certain percentage of these deeply held beliefs exist because there is some evidence to support them—others, like Elvis lives, only exist because people want them to. The question is,” he went on, leaning forward with his elbows on the desk and his hands forming a triangle behind which he could hide, “which category does the Columbus map fall into? Tradition based on fact or wishful thinking? After all, as you no doubt know, Troy turned out to have a physical, provable existence, although for centuries scholars believed it to be a myth. And to give weight to the positive side of the controversy, we have the state of the archives in the Iberian Peninsula.”

McNeill, his jaw set with a suspicious fury, jotted down rapid notes, convinced that this silver-haired, elegantly attired, arrogant bastard was sending them up. He considered asking him how to spell Iberian, and decided, on the whole, that he would rather look it up. There was a prolonged pause, during which Professor Martin did not explain to them what the state of the archives was. “And what's that?” asked McNeill irritably.

“Oh,” said the professor, feigning a start of surprise. “Well, as you know, official Spanish history during the time of Franco was built on—shall we say—a narrow range of historical facts. Documents that could be used to contradict the official view of history were suppressed.”

“Destroyed?” asked Dubinsky.

“Oh no,” said Martin, clearly shocked. “Nothing that drastic. Franco was a dictator, not a vandal. They just closed off the archives and only allowed a favoured few to look at the documents. Those who wrote Spanish history the way he saw it. It isn't as horrifying as it sounds. Every report on past events,” he added casually, “is biased one way or another. Officially sanctioned history has always been pretty commonplace. Here and everywhere. It was a nuisance for us, though, because it was so hard to get at original documentation. Whether the material in the documents was controversial or not.” He favoured them with an understanding smile. “Of course, access to rare material is always a chancy business. And not just in Spain. But since Franco's death official policy has changed. Honesty is in and things have opened up.”

“Okay,” said Dubinsky, with a clearly hostile edge to his voice. After wasting all this time listening, he was still no wiser. “Now what does that all mean?”

“Mean?” Martin leaned forward, dropping his hands and allowing a lock of silvery hair to droop forward over his forthright brows. “It means that there could have been a Columbus map in the library in say—Seville—or someplace else, for the past five hundred years and that no one but the archivist—and perhaps not even he—would have known about its existence except for faint and persistent rumours.”

“But if the archivists are so damned careful, how would it get out of there?” asked McNeill, who had followed the argument closely enough to catch some of its major flaws. “Why isn't it still in Seville?”

“Or wherever. Let's not blame Seville. Well, we hear terrible stories about poorly paid assistants and cleaners and people like that who cut pages out of manuscripts and sell them for twenty-five dollars each to tourists for the sake of the illuminated lettering. A true tragedy,” he said solemnly. “If it actually happens,” he added, in a voice now tinged with skepticism. “What is to stop such a person—if he exists—from removing a map and handing it over to some unscrupulous dealer for a larger amount of money? I'm not saying that this is what happened, you understand, but it's a possible scenario.” He leaned back again. “And once out of Seville—or wherever—it could turn up anywhere.”

“Even in Toronto?”

“Even in Toronto. There are collectors everywhere. Of course, a library or a museum or university could not buy a stolen document,” he said solemnly. “At least, not a
recently
stolen document. But there are plenty of people who can and will.”

“And it would be worth?”

“To a collector? I don't know. I don't deal in sums like that in my own poor existence, but I might hazard a guess that it could be worth something over a million. Maybe even more.” And as the two police officers left, Professor Martin pulled the telephone closer to him and began to punch in some numbers very rapidly. In his haste, his finger slipped onto the wrong button, he swore softly and began again.

Sitting on Ed Dubinsky's desk when he returned from the University of Toronto history department was a memo that had made its way painfully from London, to Montreal, to Metro Toronto (fraud) and finally to him, regarding the death of one Malcolm Whiteside in London (UK), on May 11. Whiteside was known to have consorted with a Montreal artist by the name of Guy Beaumont (the word Montreal was penciled out, presumably by someone in that city, and Toronto written in), who, it was thought, might be able to assist in inquiries into Whiteside's death.

Dubinsky read it through and began to laugh.

“Something funny?” asked McNeill, stopping in his progress toward the dictionary.

“The Brits want us to interview a corpse. About another corpse. Just what I need right now.”

McNeill looked over Dubinsky's shoulder at the request. “I wonder who this Malcolm Whiteside was?”

“I dunno,” said Dubinsky, yawning. “But maybe we should find out. That'll shake them up a bit. What time is it in London?”

“Anyone know what time it is in London?” asked McNeill, too tired to figure it out for himself.

“Ten o'clock,” said a voice from the hall. “In the evening. Tuesday, the second of June.”

“Smartass,” said Dubinsky. “Who was that?”

McNeill shrugged his shoulders and reached for the phone to call London.

“An artist?” said Dubinsky.

“That's what they said.”

“Oh, shit. So now we have to find that goddamn girl.”

“Yeah, I'll have a beer. Thanks,” said Dubinsky, accepting the bottle and glass from Harriet with a faint touch of awkwardness.

“What brings you here?” she asked. It was a thinly veiled challenge.

“A lot of things,” he said. “One of them is that I knew I'd find him.” He jerked a thumb behind him in direction of the deck, and then turned to walk out. “Are you coming?” he asked, halfway through the door. It was as close to an invitation as she had ever received from him.

John Sanders was slouched in a deck chair, his feet up on the large wooden crate that Harriet used as a table, head dropped back, soaking up the evening sun. He opened one eye and shut it again. “Hi, Ed. What brings you here?”

“You,” said Harriet, pulling up more chairs. “I asked him that already.”

“I'm off duty,” said Sanders, without opening his eyes. “Very busy learning how to relax. It's not bad once you get the hang of it.”

“So I see,” said Dubinsky. “How about you take a five-minute break, then? We're hearing funny things from London about Beaumont—when he was living there,” he went on without pausing.

“Define funny,” said Sanders. He still had not stirred.

“A Brit was killed. Three weeks ago. He knew Beaumont and he knew Bellingham. They were drinking buddies. He was an artist, too, sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“He illustrated books and stuff like that for a living. For a while before that he taught art history at some university in the UK—and for years before that he worked on old paintings and things, restoring them.”

“A real Renaissance man,” said Harriet. “Why did he keep changing jobs?”

“Dunno. Didn't ask. What I'd like to know is if you ever heard of him.” He turned to Harriet and went on briskly. “His name was Malcolm Whiteside and he was fifty-one, six foot three, a hundred and seventy-five pounds, had black hair mixed with gray, very marked features, dark brown eyes, pale complexion.”

“Tall,” said Harriet.

“And scrawny,” said John.

Harriet shook her head. “Sorry. The description doesn't ring a bell. The name doesn't even sound familiar. He must have come on the scene after I left it. Did you ask Peter Bellingham about him?”

“I did. He said he never heard of him.”

“You know that restorers make the best forgers, don't you?” said Harriet. “They know all the techniques, and they know what the other experts are looking for.”

“Could be,” said Ed. “But the other problem is that now we really do have to find that girl. Are you hiding her?” Ed Dubinsky turned toward Harriet, his huge light brown eyes filling suddenly and deeply with pain and betrayal and hurt.

Harriet looked in those eyes and had one of those crystalline moments of Absolute Truth. This was how Ed Dubinsky managed to rearrange the world to his liking; it wasn't his imposing appearance but his melting eyes that disarmed everyone, including Sally Dubinsky, and turned them into putty in his hands. Harriet, however, was not Sally. She was fascinated by the technique, but unmoved. “No, I'm not,” she said, flatly.

Ed shrugged his shoulders and turned the light off.

“I have been searching for her, off and on, for almost two weeks,” Harriet continued, “and either she is hiding much more successfully than I would have thought possible or she is dead.” She paused a second to reorder her thoughts. “We went to upstate New York to look for her. I'm sure she was there, but aside from searching every house in the village of Skaneateles, I don't know how we were supposed to find her.” She stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. “I have a feeling that her family knows—or knew—where she was hiding. They told us perfectly calmly, not at all concerned, that since Jane left the baby with them a year ago, she's scarcely been in touch, hasn't seen or even inquired about the baby, anything. I just don't believe that. But I'm also sure she isn't in Lindsay.” She put her beer down on the table and looked hard at Ed. “This is what I think might have happened. She came to Toronto from London, got in touch with her family, was planning on staying with me, but Guy arrived in town and she found out he was here. She had this map to sell—”

“Where did she get it?”

“I have no idea,” said Harriet simply. “Possibly from Guy. But I have no theories on where he got it. Anyway, she went down to Skaneateles to try to sell the map to the antique dealer there, a man named Harmon who specializes in rare maps, and Guy followed her down, found her, and killed her. And then he came back to Toronto with the map, hid it, and someone else killed him while searching for it.”

“Bullshit,” said Ed. “I don't care what that so-called expert says. Two people getting killed by two different people over a map that's almost impossible to fence? And who's the mysterious someone?” He looked around with a challenging eye.