Cheyenne was examining the room as well, taking everything in.
“But Guinevere was married to King Arthur at the time, right?”
“Exactly. Galeotto arranged for their licentious meeting and encouraged them to kiss.” Dr. Bryant studied the spines of the books on one of the top shelves. Based on the titles on that shelf, it appeared he was looking for a commentary on Dante, rather than a collection of Arthurian legends as I’d suspected.
“However,” Dr. Bryant said, “as a result of Guinevere’s meeting with Lancelot, she consequently fell in love with him and they had an affair that destroyed the famed harmony of King Arthur’s court.” He pulled a dusty, leather-bound volume from the middle of a group of other dusty, leather-bound volumes. “Boccaccio took the reference to Galeotto from Dante’s Inferno, one of the three sections in his Divine Comedy. ”
The Inferno.
Great.
The world’s most famous description of hell.
“By the way, a bit of trivia.” Dr. Bryant was flipping through the pages of the well-worn copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy he’d chosen from his bookshelf. “Boccaccio was a big fan of Dante. He’s the one who gave this book the title ‘Divina.’ Dante had just named it ‘Commedia.’”
Trivia or not, I made a note of it on my notepad.
He stopped paging through the book. “By the time Dante wrote his masterpiece, Galeotto had come to signify unhappiness or disappointment in love…” His voice trailed off as he perused the page, then he nailed the center of it with his finger. “Here: Canto V, lines 137-138.” He tilted the book so that we could see the passage.
Cheyenne had been standing across the room from me and now edged closer to get a better look at the page.
“See?” Dr. Bryant said. “Dante wrote, ‘Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. That day no farther did we read therein.’”
“So what does that mean?” I asked. “Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it?”
“Well, there are different interpretations, of course, but I would say that Dante means that Galeotto was both a part of the tale and a shaper of the tale. Some literary critics believe that by giving The Decameron the subtitle Prencipe Galeotto, Boccaccio was placing himself in the role of Galeotto.”
“So you’re saying that Boccaccio saw himself as a matchmaker of a love affair?”
“Yes.”
I considered the implications. “Between whom?”
“His book and his readers.”
“But how does that follow?” Cheyenne said. “Lancelot’s love affair with Guinevere was illicit. There’s nothing illicit about reading a book.”
“You have to remember,” Bryant said, “The Decameron was written in the fourteenth century. Boccaccio’s stories might not be controversial today, but in those days his book caused quite a stir.”
Dr. Bryant was slipping into the familiar role of the professor-being the one with the answers, the one in charge, and that seemed to help him open up. He began to pace, although the cramped room gave him little space to do it. “Reading lurid tales was not considered a valuable use of one’s time in the 1300s.”
“The soap operas of the middle ages,” Cheyenne said.
“Something like that.” He gazed from Cheyenne to me. “Although I think it would be more accurate to say that the church of those days regarded The Decameron in much the same way as they would regard Internet pornography today. Thus, the reason it was condemned.”
His eyes flicked, probably subconsciously, to his computer, and I decided that, taking into account his sword collection, his intimate knowledge of The Decameron, and his lack of an alibi for yesterday, it might not be a bad idea to have my friends in the Bureau’s cybercrime division do a little checking on the professor’s Internet surfing history. We should have enough probable cause to get the request cleared.
But maybe not.
Then a thought.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to wait for them.
I wrote a few more notes on my pad, then rolled the pen through my fingers. “All right,” I said to Professor Bryant. “You’re proposing that, to Boccaccio, the relationship between the reader and the text, between the person and the story, was an illicit affair?”
“Yes.”
I surveyed the bookshelves again, laid the notepad and pen on his desk. “And Boccaccio was the one bringing them together, playing the role of the knight, Galeotto.” I still hadn’t seen any 853 commentaries, but the professor had thousands of books.
“That is correct.”
Yesterday, Jake had suggested that all of the killer’s stories were about the tragic consequences of love: “Cruel, fatal tales of love and loss.”
Is John acting as a matchmaker between lovers and death? Is that his game?
Professor Bryant looked impatiently at Cheyenne and me. “Now, if that’s all, I really need to-”
My phone rang. “Excuse me.” I stepped into the hallway. Through the door I could hear Cheyenne asking the professor about the specific literary significance of the stories told on day four.
As I answered the phone I walked softly to the kitchen to check on something. “Yes?”
“It’s me,” Ralph said. “I had an agent watching Calvin. She said he was at home, but he wasn’t returning my calls so I swung over to invite him to lunch. He’s not there.”
“What?” I was silently looking over Dr. Bryant’s countertops, then I quickly searched his cabinets.
“Somehow he slipped past us.”
“He’s nearly eighty years old.” Quickly, quietly, I checked the contents of the professor’s dishwasher.
“I know. I’m looking into it.”
“We need to find-”
“I said I know.” He turned his words into hammer blows. “I’m looking into it.”
“OK,” I said. “Thanks.”
He ended the call abruptly. I didn’t find what I was looking for in Dr. Bryant’s kitchen, and, discouraged on both counts, I returned to the study.
74
As I entered the room, I heard Professor Bryant wrapping up his explanation to Cheyenne: “You see, while the ten pilgrims were trying to escape the Black Plague, death was only one step behind them, but of course it would eventually catch up with them, just as it catches up with us all. So, in all of the stories told on this fourth day of the journey, we find the underlying, unstated theme that love itself is a plague, a sickness, that tracks us down and ends unhappily, that love inevitably leads to misery.”
Based on what we knew about the killer and his crimes up until that point, Bryant’s analysis seemed right on target.
I caught Cheyenne looking at me. I guessed that she was just checking to see if I had any follow-up questions. I shook my head.
She handed Dr. Bryant her card. “Well, thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful. Please call us if you think of any students who’ve shown particular interest in The Decameron.”
“I will.” But by the look on his face I suspected he’d throw the card away as soon as we were out the door.
“And if we have any more questions,” Cheyenne said, “we’ll be in touch.”
“Yes.” He led us to the front door. “All right.”
“Oh, wait.” I patted my pockets. “I forgot my notepad and pen in your office. I’ll be right back.”
A few seconds later I was in Professor Bryant’s office again, this time, alone. I went around the desk to his keyboard and tapped the spacebar to still the fish swimming across the screen and wake up his iMac.
Sometimes you have to poke around for evidence to find out if there’s enough reason to even bother getting a search warrant.
At the end of the hall I heard Cheyenne say, “So, when does the semester finish up?”
The desktop screen appeared. I quickly clicked on the apple on the upper left-hand corner, scrolled to System Preferences “Two weeks,” Bryant told Cheyenne.
I clicked the “Sharing” icon. Turned on “Remote Login” and “File Sharing.”
Dr. Bryant’s voice drifted down the hall. “If you would excuse me.”