“I could think of any number of reasons.” He paused. “Why do you want to know?”
Here it was at last, the question I had prepared for but still dreaded. I told him about finding the envelope of money in the book. To my surprise, he took my explanation at face value.
“Well, I must say, sir, that’s very honest of you,” he said. “Very honest, indeed. And honesty’s a quality I appreciate. There’s not many as, coming across a twenty pound note, like, wouldn’t simply put it in their pocket and spend it down the pub. But you want to return it to its rightful owner.”
“Yes,” I said, with a sigh. “Indeed I do.”
“Commendable. Highly commendable.”
“Can you help me?”
“I’m afraid not,” Gorman said. “At least, not as much as you’d like me to.”
“How, then?”
“I have a list of books bought and sold.”
“And what will that tell me?”
He put his finger to his nose. “We’ll have to see, won’t we?”
And his chair legs scraped against the floorboards as he moved to stand up.
It seemed to take an eternity, but Gorman disappeared into a backroom and reappeared carrying the sort of large hardbound ledger one might expect to encounter in a Dickens novel. He set it down on the counter before him.
Smiling to reveal stained and crooked teeth, he tapped the tome. “If it’s to be found, it will be found in here,” he said gnomically and started turning the pages, stopping occasionally to mutter to himself, moving back and forth through the ledger, running his index finger down a page, then pausing and turning back to the beginning to inspect some sort of list of contents. I didn’t know what system he used to organize his sales and purchases ledger, but it seemed to take him a long time to emit that little “Ah-ha” of success which indicated to me that he had found what he — and I — was looking for.
“What is it?” I asked, leaning forward, finding it impossible to rein in my enthusiasm. “Have you found it?”
He looked up at me. “Now hold your horses a moment,” he said. “I think I have. Yes. Like I said right from the start, you’re lucky it’s Browning. We don’t get many of his books in, so this must be the one.” He consulted the list with his index finger again, muttering all the while. “Yes,” he said, looking up at me. “That’s the one. Well, that is a surprise.”
“What is?”
“The date. That batch only came in a month ago, and there was me thinking Browning had been on the shelf for years.” He made that strange dying coffee machine sound again, which I placed halfway between a chuckle and sniffle. Perhaps one should call it “snuckling” or “chiffling?” “Poor old Browning. Left on the shelf. Get it?”
“A month isn’t very long. Do you remember who brought it in?”
“Can’t say as I do. I told you not to get your hopes up.”
“What do you remember, then?”
He snuckled again. “You might well end up spending that twenty quid in the pub tonight, after all,” he said. “All I can tell you is that your Browning came in on the 28th of September, along with seven other books. Eight in all.”
A month was certainly not long. “Do you remember anything at all about the person who sold them to you?” I asked.
“Afraid not. I’ve got a terrible memory for faces. Besides,” he went on, “have you considered that whoever brought the books in to sell might not have been the original owner? Second-hand books go through a lot of hands sometimes. Might be third hand, or fourth hand.”
I had thought of that and countered it with my own observations and theory. I had examined the book closely and saw no signs of other price markings other than the original Waterstones sticker. Usually a second-hand book dealer will pencil a price on the flyleaf, and pencil marks always leave some traces. But there was nothing. And judging by the book’s condition, I had concluded that it hadn’t been read, and that it was more than likely Miss Scott had not seen the inscription, as the pages had been somehow stuck together. Gorman had obviously missed it, too. His penciled price appeared on the page after the flyleaf.
The only stumbling block to my theory was that Miss Scott must have either been given the book by hand or received it through the post. In either case, the odds were that she knew who had given it to her. Perhaps, if she saw by the postmark that it was from Barnes, she had dropped it straight into the box of items to be taken and sold, wanting nothing to do with him. It was a theory. “Do you have any other useful information?” I asked.
“Depends what you think is useful. The price I paid, which I am not willing to divulge to you, no matter who you might be. And the titles of the accompanying volumes in the batch.”
I brightened a little at that. “Accompanying volumes?”
“Yes. Like I said, it came in a box with seven other titles.”
“Would you tell me what they are? These titles.”
Gorman chewed his lower lip. “I don’t see why not,” he said finally. “After all, you are a customer. There might be something you’re interested in. You might actually buy one or two of them.”
I took his hint. “Naturally,” I said. “Goes without saying.”
He nodded, satisfied, then started to reel off a list of titles, Penguin, Virago or Oxford World’s Classics, for the most part, which I jotted down in my notebook. As he said, there was nothing remarkable about any of them — Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Elizabeth Taylor, a selection of Rilke’s poetry, a biography of Mary Shelley — but I was already thinking that if the books were still in the shop, then one of them might reveal a bit more information about the seller. A slip of paper with an address, used as a bookmark, for example. Wishful thinking, I know, but one can always hope.
“Might I have a look around your shop for them?” I asked.
“Be my guest,” said Gorman. “But just so you’re not wasting your time, I’ll tell you now that Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice have already been sold. I told you I couldn’t keep Victorian fiction on the shelves. And before you get all pedantic with me, yes I know Jane Austen wasn’t a Victorian, strictly speaking.” I crossed the two novels off my list, which left me five more to find, then I headed into the maze of interconnected rooms along the corridor and got to work.
Though I am used to not being noticed, it did occur to me that a man of my age and appearance, especially in the old mac I was wearing against the chilly rain, might be regarded as somewhat suspicious if seen hanging around a public — which is to say private — school, even a minor one like the Linford School. I determined, therefore, to make my entrance speedy and decisive by driving straight up to the front door and getting out of the car with a confidence and determination that announced I was here for a reasonable and legitimate purpose, and there was no need to call the police.
I had struck it lucky in Gorman’s shop on the fourth book, the biography of Mary Shelley. There was no name and address, but there was, on the title page, a stamp bearing the name of the school and its address, a small village just over the Humber Bridge, on the flatlands of northern Lincolnshire. I had been right, I thought, in assuming Miss Scott to be a teacher, and the Linford School was no doubt where she taught. Along with the Mary Shelley biography, I also bought both Elizabeth Taylor’s In a Summer Season and Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Falling — all at what I thought to be a fairly exorbitant price, I must say — just to make Gorman happy, and set off.
The school building, Linford Hall, was Elizabethan or Jacobean in origin, in the “prodigy house” style, a redbrick mansion with a busy roofline, mullioned windows and extensive grounds. Rather than benefitting from the landscaping genius of an Inigo Jones, these grounds had been given over to playing fields and running tracks, deserted on the day of my visit. If Linford Hall didn’t quite match the palatial grandeur of Longleat or Temple Newsham, it was still impressive enough to the unsuspecting visitor.