Oliver locked the papers away in the same drawer as before. “Exactly what has accelerated?”
“The war, Ignatius. You English have shown more pluck than we anticipated. And the Americans have become something more than bothersome. We have reached a critical point.”
“I thought it all critical, every moment of it, except for the funny parts, of course.”
“You will have your little joke. So what do you have for me? You are always prepared. That is what we like about you.”
In answer, Oliver walked over to a bookcase, reached up, and plucked a tome off a high shelf. “This is quite a good one. I think you will enjoy it.” He handed it over.
Cedric took the book. “Consuelo by George Sand?”
“Many consider this her best work.”
“Her? But the name is—”
“George Sand is a pseudonym. Her real name is Amantine Dupin, a Frenchwoman. She died in the last century.”
“French, eh?” said Cedric, looking mildly disgusted. He opened the book and looked at the papers secreted inside the space where the pages had been cut out. They contained numbers, symbols, and letters in long columns. “My superiors tell me that your encryption technique rivals that of Enigma in its cleverness, Ignatius.”
“High praise indeed.”
“It is fortunate for us that you chose to work for our interests. Cheers, as you English say.”
“I’ll see you off,” said Oliver, holding the door open for him. When Cedric disappeared down the alley, Oliver glanced over at Macklin. She was behind the counter completing a purchase for a customer, but her eyes were directly on Oliver. He smiled and waved again.
She smiled back, but there was nothing save suspicion behind it.
When she finished with her customer she came out to the alley and said, “So your collector is back in town, I see.”
“Yes, yes he is.”
“Another book then?”
“He’s quite fond of certain French writers.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Oh he is, is he?”
“He is,” said Oliver. Then he went back inside his shop and locked the door.
The Lofty Domain of Another
Later, Oliver checked his watch; it was time. He placed the closed sign in the front window, poured a cup of tea, and pulled on an old woolen cardigan against a clammy chill that had overwhelmed the shop. He took the fat key from his pocket, glided down the short flight of steps and over to the door. He set the cup and saucer down on a small table set against the wall, drew an uneasy breath, and unlocked the door. He swung it open, replaced the key in his pocket, and picked up the cup and saucer. He ventured through the opening and closed the door behind him.
He took a few moments to look around the space.
This had been Imogen’s study. They had lived in the apartment over the shop, where there was situated a small bedroom, a smaller kitchen, a miniscule sitting room that almost never had anyone actually sitting in it, a tiny guest bedroom, and one loo. It was all spare and common, the pipes forever rattling and the water never warm and the stove never that hot. It was cold when you wanted heat, and insufferably hot when you desperately sought coolness.
However, the study made up for all of that and was Imogen’s pride and joy. It had been her father’s before her. John Bradstreet had been a highly respected public official, serving in important capacities in several governments. He was the author of a shelf full of learned books and had received a number of illustrious prizes for his writings. Imogen had revered him, and she had bitterly missed him after he passed away.
After his public career was over, her father’s private one had begun with this bookshop. This room had been his particular province, and he had furnished it in a way that Imogen thought perfect, for she had changed nothing when she had inherited the business and along with it her father’s cherished sanctum.
First, there was the desk. Solid oak with bountiful carvings on the sides, and a large work surface with tooled hunter green leather overlaid on the wood; brass tacks surrounded the leather pad, like columns of steadfast ants. The highbacked chair had a faded brown leather backrest. Along three walls were shelves bulging with Imogen’s and her father’s personal collection of books, many of them autographed. Against the fourth wall was a stout fireplace with a brick surround and wooden mantel. Fires would regularly simmer there before the war. Now it was a luxury to burn anything in it.
The rest of the space was a comfortable clutter of old chairs with worn seats, rickety tables, and a life’s worth of collected objects, along with a rug that was as wonderfully aged and worn as everything else in the room. The floor underneath was darkened walnut planks that had absorbed the mingled scents of countless cheery fires and smells from her father’s Barling briar pipes.
In the middle of the desk, and situated directly on the leather, was a fine Crown typewriter with a blank piece of paper wound into its maw. Next to the typewriter was a tin dispatch box. In front of the typewriter was an open journal with elegant writing in pen flowing sumptuously across its pages. And next to the journal was the pen that had done the markings. It was an Onoto work of art with a golden-tipped nib that Oliver had bought Imogen for their first wedding anniversary. It had cost him a packet, but it represented a physical specimen of his love for her cast in delicately crafted metal and lustrous mother-of-pearl.
He took some paper slips from a vase on the mantel, placed them in the fireplace, then drew two lumps of coal from the scuttle and tossed them in there as well. He lit the match, ignited the slips, and let the damper draw, until a meager bit of soothing warmth and delicate glow invaded the space. He settled in the chair, looked over the writings in the journal for a few minutes, and carefully positioned his fingertips on the Crown’s keys.
This was always the hardest part. Well, all of it was difficult, but this... this was Oliver’s long-standing nemesis. His Waterloo, as it were.
The half-finished and as yet untitled manuscript was Imogen’s. She had written one hundred and sixty-five pages before her life had ended. They were in the tin dispatch box next to the typewriter. He had read every single page. The story was good — no, it was better than good; he actually thought the unfinished manuscript exceptional. In those mass of words was his late wife’s perspective on the war, or at least the war’s effect on the city of her birth woven into a novel and told through various points of view, rich to poor, Mayfair to Stepney, pacifists to military heroes, larger-than-life leaders to prosaic followers, Tory backbenchers to energetic anarchists. She had completed page one hundred and sixty-five, placed it in the tin box, wound the next blank paper into the Crown in preparation for the next day’s labor, then rose from this desk, walked out of her study, and never walked back in due entirely to the cruelty of war.
Page one hundred and sixty-six was still curled into the typewriter awaiting the imprint of the keys.
Nearly a year without her. Nearly a year since that page was placed into the typewriter by her capable fingers. Nearly a year since she left me behind forever. Alone. And utterly bereft.
Oliver came here every day at this same exact time. He came here hoping for inspiration, intending to finish his dead wife’s novel and see it in print under her name. And every day he sat in this chair, took in long whiffs of the long-ago remnants of coal fires and pipe smoke, drank his tea until it turned cold, and not a single word came to his mind to transfer to the paper. He did all the right things, he assumed. He placed his fingers on the keys, composed his thoughts, and waited for the organized epiphanies to come. They never ventured within a mile of him.