The Hours of the Virgin Page 2

  The venue was one of the larger galleries open to visitors. The ceiling was high and the indirectly lit walls were painted an unobtrusive shade of white. We were surrounded by bold slashes of color on old canvas: reclining duchesses, simian-faced royal families, and sundry atrocities involving scythes and sabers and French soldiers in uniform, still vibrant under layers of varnish ancient and modern. The Goya exhibit was in its second week.

  “I thought the DIA was in a money crunch,” I said.

  “A chronic condition. I’m paying for the renovation out of my own pocket. You see, I’m a collector as well as a consultant. Books and antiquities are one market that never goes down, and I’ve done well by keeping track of what happens at auction. I spend a great deal of time in that office and I don’t share my predecessor’s infatuation with sisal and bleached oak.”

  “I’m stuck with an avocado-green stove and refrigerator myself.” We were alone in the room with a guard, this one female. “Lonely work.”

  Boyette rearranged his ripe lips into a scowl. “There’s an auto show going on at Cobo Hall and the Red Wings are in the running for the playoffs. That’s stiff cultural competition for a simple Spaniard whose paintings changed the course of empire in Europe. It wasn’t always this way, not even in a blue-collar town like Detroit. Society’s gone into a tailspin with God knows what waiting at the bottom.”

  “Probably a private detective. You want to go somewhere, or do you plan on yodeling later?”

  “Sound does travel here. I’ve converted a storeroom in the south wing into a workspace, if you have no objection to clutter.”

  “Clutter is my business.”

  We passed down a series of carpeted corridors and through a couple of thousand years of Roman emperors, South American fertility gods, gaunt mummies, and fat prosperous Flemish silk merchants done in slick marble; up a shallow flight of stairs, through a fire door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, and along a dusty linoleumpaved hallway with splotches of gray spackle on the unpainted walls. Here the hum of an industrial-grade humidifier—or maybe it was a dehumidifier, I never get that straight—clicked on and off like the respirator for a culture on the critical list. Near the end he fished out a black leather key case, unlocked a blank door, and switched light into a room that was a kind of charnel-house of dead civilizations.

  “Be it ever so ugly,” he said, stepping aside for me to enter ahead of him, “it’s home to me. At least for the time being.”

  It was a big space, whitewashed and windowless, with a bare plywood floor and exposed ceiling joists. A large worktable like the kind tailors used to cut out patterns on took up most of the room, piled high with rolled documents, empty plaster frames, and miles of bubble wrap. A network of narrow aisles wound among odd items of statuary, leaning canvases, porcelains in crates, and chunks of classical architecture, some of it sheeted, the rest naked under a skin of chalky dust. It looked like Charles Foster Kane’s basement.

  I brushed a plaster bust off a pedestal with my elbow and rescued it in a diving catch. The subject was a bald geezer in a toga, with a seriously hooked nose and that skeejawed expression you see on the face of an antiques dealer when you’ve traded a hundred dollars for a rusty Coleman lantern you could buy new in an Ace Hardware for less than fifteen. I set the bust back up without shaking or wetting myself.

  “Reproduction of a Victorian attempt at neoclassicism.” Boyette closed the door. “Thirty-eight bucks plus tax in the gift shop. Did it give you a turn?”

  “No, green is my natural color. Is all of this stuff fake?”

  “No, much of it’s genuine, either awaiting exhibition or in transition to better storage. Trivia, for the most part; students of students and one-time great masters forgotten by history and the fickle antiquities market. We keep the really valuable stuff in a vault.” He stood looking around, like a visitor. “I come here often to order my thoughts. There’s so much hope in these objects, so many grand plans untainted by reality. The authentic geniuses burned themselves out young. Rembrandt became prosperous and dull, then just dull. Rodin grew as cold as his stone. In their prime they never approached the kind of wide-eyed, pathetic hope you find in these fellows. Too rich a diet can make you just as miserable as plain bread and water.”

  “I thought your specialty was books.”

  “Sorry. It’s the building. You can’t pass someone in the hall without some of his obsession rubbing off on you. I know quite a bit about early American rugs as well, and far too much about Chinese bottles.”

  We were standing on opposite sides of the big table. He cleared a corner and laid down his briefcase while I hung my coat on a convenient centaur.

  “I checked your references,” he said. “I hope you don’t consider those people your friends.”

  “I don’t work for friends. Did they say anything actionable?”

  “That’s between you and your counsel. They did say you’re honest, in a slippery sort of way. They also said you get results. I was given to understand those results might not be what I requested.”

  “They almost never are.”

  “You haven’t said yet who told you I needed a private investigator.”

  “I wouldn’t wait.”

  After a moment he nodded, as if that were the right answer. “I assume you have a badge, or something else that will prove you’re who you say you are.”

  I got out the folder and flipped it onto his side of the table. “You won’t find that badge number on the active list in Wayne County,” I said. “The sheriff’s department called them all in years ago, but they forgot that one. It scares away kids on Devil’s Night. The ID’s current.”

  He looked at it carefully, then slid the folder back toward me. “You take a lousy picture.”

  I put it away without comment.

  “I suppose I was foolish to think a secret can survive in the Age of Information. That’s the reason I didn’t go to the police. However, you’re here, and if what I learned about you is the worst of it, I’m satisfied.” The strawberry lips formed a smile. “All this is an academic’s long-winded way of saying the job is yours if you want it. You may not, once you’ve heard the details.”

  “I heard there’s a finder’s fee involved.”

  “The missing item is worth at least a hundred thousand dollars. It could sell at auction for as high as a million, but I’ll guarantee to pay ten thousand based on the original estimate, when the item is in my hands and I have determined it to be genuine.”

  “I’d like that in writing.”

  “You’ll have it.”

  “So far I’m okay with the details.”

  “I’m not an employee of the DIA,” he said. “I’m an independent consultant, currently under contract here as an authority on the illuminated manuscripts of the fifteenth century. Are you familiar with the subject?”

  “Monks, right?”

  “That’s the popular conception: hooded ascetics hunched over desks in drafty cloisters, laboriously copying out devotional passages letter by elaborate letter. But they had competition in the secular world. For four hundred years, a handful of monasteries and commercial workshops were the sole producers of books in Europe. In many cases they enhanced the beauty of their work by creating illustrated borders and further decorating, or illuminating, the ornamental first letter of each page with precious metals and semiprecious stones.

  “My area of study involves the manuscripts of the late period,” he went on. “They reached their exquisite peak just before Gutenberg and the invention of movable type; but I’m pontificating. We’re here to discuss the Plymouth Book of Hours.”

  “That’s what’s missing?”

  “Have just a little more patience with me. The Horae, or Books of Hours, were commissioned from workshops as manuals of private devotions. They contained a calendar of saints’ days and feast days, lessons of the gospel, specific hours of services, and assorted prayers. The Plymouth book is a masterpiece, executed on vellum in letters of gold and lapis lazuli for the wedding of a royal duke. It’s in the British Museum in London.”

  “So it isn’t missing.”

  “Only part of it. One section, devoted to Mary, the Holy Mother, disappeared at the end of World War Two. I found it.”

  “Congratulations.” I wanted a cigarette, but the air in the room was dry and I didn’t want to burn any history.

  “Thank you. More precisely, I supervised its acquisition for the DIA. During the Blitz, the various sections were divided and removed for safekeeping to the country homes of certain trusted museum employees. All of them were returned after the war, except the Hours of the Virgin.

  “I was approached last fall by a prelate with the local Catholic archdiocese, who informed me that upon the death of a parishioner, certain of the man’s personal possessions were donated to the church in accordance with the terms of his will. It seems the deceased was an American infantryman billeted in the English countryside during the war. He brought home a number of souvenirs. At the end of his life he had a change of heart and made arrangements to return the most religious of these items to God’s house. Of course I’m talking about the long-missing section of the Plymouth Book of Hours.”

  “The church decided to give it to the DIA?”

  “To keep it would have been illegal,” he said. “It’s a British national treasure. Let’s just say the prelate’s honesty was rewarded by a generous contribution to the archdiocese. It would have been cheap at many times the price. The Hours is a major find.”

  “I’m surprised I didn’t read about it.”

  “We were keeping it quiet until we could negotiate with the U.K. for the Hours’ return. I have my eye on some incunabula the British Museum is sitting on; an exclusive U.S. exhibition would be the envy of
every library in the country.” He rested a hand on his briefcase. I was beginning to wonder about that case. “Only a few here were let in on the secret. But it’s a large, echoing building. People hear things. You heard.”

  “When did you notice it was missing?”

  “Christmas Day. I came in to remove some things from my office before the carpenters came. The manuscript was gone from the cabinet where I’d put it the day before. I should have placed it in the vault, but I wanted to finish translating it while it was in our hands. The cabinet was locked. It just never occurred to me there was any real danger. It’s not the sort of theft one associates with Detroit.”

  “Don’t underestimate the place. Who do you suspect?”

  “A former employee. We’ll go into that later. The office was locked, but there are any number of keys floating around. I planned to have the lock changed when I remodeled. So far as I know, I have the only key to the cabinet.”

  “Cabinets are easy. How does one go about fencing a thing like that?”

  “One doesn’t. One sells it back to the people he stole it from.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said; and I meant it. “What’s in the case?”

  He tapped his fingers on it, lips pursed. Then he stood it up facing him and used his thumbs on the combination wheels.

  3

  “This arrived Friday,” Boyette said. “Priority mail, not even registered.”

  When the lock clicked, he unlatched the briefcase and drew out a scuffed leather portfolio tied with a cord. He set the case on the floor, moved aside a Chinese dog with one ear broken off, and laid the portfolio on the table. He paused with his fingers on the cord, looking at me.

  “An old Celtic legend maintains that only the clean in spirit may read the words of the Lord. All others are struck blind.”

  “Fortunately, I flunked Latin.” I waited.

  He slipped the knot and spread open the portfolio. There was a fold of something inside, unbleached flannel or thin fleece, followed by a sheet of gauzy paper, and he peeled that away like a silken undergarment. When he finally got down to it, it was smaller than I thought, no larger than a leaf of ordinary drugstore bond, buff-colored and wrinkled all over like very old skin, which is what it was, the membrane of unborn lamb or something like that. The fetus it belonged to had died nearly six hundred years ago without ever seeing the light.

  The first letter of the text was an L. It was hard to miss because it covered most of the page, raised slightly and chased with gold and the purplish blue that Boyette had identified as lapis lazuli, ground with a stone pestle into a fine dust and sprinkled over animal adhesive or whatever else passed for glue in the days when Columbus was still floating ships in his bathtub. A bordered background depicted biblical scenes in fine lines of brown ink, colored in with vegetable dye, faded but still vivid long after the illustrator had returned to the soil. The writing itself, done in Gothic pointed letters, was Latin, which as I said was all Greek to me.

  “Nice,” I said, straightening.

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “It’s a little gaudy. Is there any more to it?”

  “There are nine pages in all. This is the only one that was returned.”

  “Sure it’s genuine?”

  “Of course,” He rummaged among the clutter on the table, found a Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass with a fat wooden handle, and held it above the bottom left corner of the page. “Take a look.”

  I bent over the glass. What looked at first like an old bubble in a blob of ink turned out to be horseshoe-shaped and serrated inside, like a tiny pincer. It was smaller than the head of a pin. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Pthirius inguinalis,” he said. “The common crab louse. This is one fellow who preferred not to spend all his time at his desk. I’d noticed it the first time this page was in my possession. I seriously doubt anyone could duplicate it.”

  “Nor want to. Was there a note?”

  “No.” He put down the glass, recovered the page, closed and tied the portfolio, and returned it to the briefcase. “Yesterday he called with his demand.”

  “He?”

  “The suspect is a man. He didn’t even try to disguise his voice. He wants a hundred thousand dollars for the safe return of the remaining pages. He knows they’re worth at least that, and that we’ll pay it to keep him from destroying the Hours of the Virgin. A loss like that can’t be calculated in dollars and cents. As well try to write a fire insurance policy on the great library at Alexandria.”

  “Then you’re going to pay it.”

  “I jeopardized an irreplaceable treasure once. I won’t repeat the mistake.”

  “Who’s coming through with the cash, you or the shop?”

  “I can’t ask this institution to foot the bill for my mistake.” He locked the briefcase. “The instructions for the exchange were explicit. It’s an enormous responsibility, particularly on the way back, as we’ll be in actual possession of the manuscript. That’s why I’m willing to pay you ten thousand dollars for your protection. I assume you own a gun.”

  I said I might have one lying around. “We might need it on the way in too. There are still a few unenlightened mugs who would rather put their mitts on a hundred grand than an old picture book. You don’t have to go along,” I added. “I’m bonded up to a million.”

  “That’s not the point. This person knows me, and I’ve been told to come alone. I can’t accept the risk of a clumsy substitution.”

  “The alone part’s a poser too. I won’t fit in your briefcase.”

  “Oh, but it’s a public place. We could go in separately.” He produced a fold of paper from an inside breast pocket and snapped it open. “I’m to bring the money to a place called the Tomcat Theater on Telegraph Road at seven o’clock tomorrow evening. Do you know it?”

  “By reputation. Lobby, auditorium, or toilet? Pardon the redundancy. The Tomcat isn’t the Fox. The Detroit Vice Squad has season passes.”

  “Auditorium. I’m to put the money in a large mailer in hundred-dollar bills, seal it with tape, and sit in the front row, putting the package on the floor beside my seat. The feature begins at seven. If I turn my head or leave before it ends—”

  “Standard. He must be planning to jump town or he’d ask for smaller bills. They’re easier to pass, but they’re less portable. Can you get the money together on such short notice?”

  “I have it already.” He read my face. “I told you I’m a collector. Sometimes collections that have been out of circulation for many years suddenly become available on terms of a rapid sale. I maintain a liquid operating fund for just such a contingency.”

  “I do the same thing with cigarettes. You probably could have bought more time. If he thinks you’re too eager he might bump up the price at the last minute.”

  “Time isn’t on my side. Apart from the threat of deliberate destruction, every minute the manuscript is exposed to oxygen and modern pollutants contributes to its decay. He knows that as well as I.”

  I sucked a cheek. I shouldn’t have mentioned cigarettes. “Museum theft is FBI jurisdiction now. Those spooks in the federal building can hang on to a secret in a hurricane. You might have tried them.”

  “I’m not satisfied the Justice Department would approve of any of the actions that have been taken in this affair,” he said. “An American GI succumbs to the common temptation to smuggle a souvenir home, his priest comes to me in confidence and with the thought of helping his parish, I take steps to restore a native document to its rightful owner and incidentally contribute to the prestige of the institution for which I work. Then Washington steps in and it all becomes perverted. If I honestly thought federal involvement would improve my chances of recovering the Hours of the Virgin, I’d take my chances and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. My loyalty belongs to something bigger than any one government.”

  “You sound like a one-man militia. Okay, no feds. I don’t like them either.” I sneezed.

  “Bless you. That’s a nasty cold. Are you doing anything for it?”