The Forgers Read online

  You see, I must make another confession in order to clarify. Addiction is always stronger than the addict. Or at least my addiction was. The degradation of arrest, all the attendant humiliations that followed, the loss of so many friends in the book trade, the long daily grinding journey back into society—none of these, each of which convulsed through my life like a merciless hurricane, deterred my eventual return to the forger’s art. Even my lemons-into-lemonade resurrection as a legitimate handwriting expert and scholarly cataloguer couldn’t save me from my truer self. It was probably my love for Meghan that held me back from a complete reversion to form, sweet Meghan who had remained at my side throughout the entire season of hell and even now, despite her own loss, was protective of me. But alone in the evening, left to my own devices, I found myself practicing, writing out some cherished Thomas Hardy poems in the master’s hand, penning Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches . . . we shall fight in the fields and in the streets . . . we shall never surrender” speech in Sir Winston’s script, and of course conjuring some will-o’-the-wisp Conan Doyle notes toward a “lost” essay in which he confesses to being the mastermind behind the Piltdown Man forgery. This latter was an idea I had toyed around with since my early twenties, when I first learned about the Piltdown hoax and theories that once abounded connecting Sherlock Holmes’s creator to it. He was, after all, a retired doctor and amateur archaeologist who collected old bones, and he certainly had the necessary knowledge as well as shrewd brilliance to pull off such a convincing stunt. Mine was as good an idea as the Piltdowner’s himself, whoever he truly was.

  Not without pangs of reluctance, I crumpled up these undeniably masterful doodlings and threw them out with the food scraps. Once stung, and all that. But forgery is as difficult a mistress to quit as she is to master, and before long I found myself keeping some of the finer examples for my own personal enjoyment. I knew I was but one step away from the garden path I’d already been down but trusted myself not to go that far. The sirens might be singing, to layer in another fine cliché, but I knew their song by heart and kept their invitation at bay.

  Our trip, wonderful in every way and restorative to us each, lifted my obsession from me for the two weeks we were in Ireland from just before Christmas and into the New Year. Even when the weather was rainy and wet chill wrapped itself around the very marrow of our bones, we went about our tourist ways, visiting the famous Cliffs of Moher in the fog and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the drizzle, and we were happy. And as for myself, I was for a time dispossessed of even so much as thinking about what to do regarding my recent tendencies toward relapse. Because I had packed none of my writing implements or anything else necessary to create a forgery, I couldn’t have acted upon my impulses even if I’d wanted to. No way meant no will. What was more, everyone here was friendly, open, kind, and none of them—aside from a couple of booksellers to whom I didn’t introduce myself when Meghan and I visited their shops in Dublin and Galway—had a clue or concern about who I was and what I’d done in the past. I was a blank slate with no shameful history and nothing to hide. I had forgotten how delicious anonymity was, especially the kind of anonymity that involves not looking over one’s shoulder.

  On a particularly nasty night in a pretty lodge in Kenmare, on the southwest coast of the country, Meghan and I were having dinner in the hotel restaurant as the wind whipped against the windows and the sky lit up now and then with silent lightning. We were nearing the end of our vacation and were in an especially peaceful mood. A peat fire burned bright and warm, giving off its earthen scent in the fireplace near our table, its flames dancing on our claret glasses like animate spirits, and without forethought or design I asked Meghan to marry me.

  “You sure that wine hasn’t gone to your head?” she teased, her eyes welling.

  “I’m sure I want to marry you. What do you say?” I told her, tightening my grasp of her hands on the table.

  “I say ‘Yes I said yes I will Yes.’”

  “That’s totally shameless, quoting Joyce in Ireland. A simple ‘yes’ will do.”

  “Then the answer’s simply yes,” and with that we reached across the table and kissed before signing for dinner and taking the unfinished bottle to our room upstairs.

  Back in Manhattan, the aura of happiness did not dissipate. At least for a while. We were quietly married at City Hall downtown. Meghan’s staff threw a lively reception for us at the bookshop, with homemade hors d’oeuvres and champagne, bouquets of white flowers that matched the snow delicately falling outside, and a carrot cake with raisins—Meghan’s favorite—topped by a vintage kitschy plastic bride-and-groom statuette. Atticus even made the trek down and presented us with some high-end Irish whiskies wrapped in fancy foil—Green Spot, Connemara, Redbreast. Despite the bitter cold, the night was radiant. We walked home through fresh-fallen drifts of snow that muffled the usual sounds of the city and smoothed away its hard edges. Few others were out and about so late, and it felt as if we were among the last living beings in this fantastical white world.

  Meghan and I decided that I would let my Gramercy apartment go as soon as the lease ran out and we would find a new place to live closer to Tompkins Square and the bookshop. My commute to the auction house wouldn’t be all that much longer, and rents were a little more affordable in her neighborhood anyway. For the first time in many a year, life was good. We were making plans for the future and I was committed to staying on the straight and narrow. I was a husband now and must not backslide into venal, corrupt habits of the past, I warned myself. I could only hope, even pray, that some of my worst actions—ones that had up until then slipped beneath the waves of notice like some drowning man pulled from shore by riptides—would never resurface but wash away for good.

  That said, I wasn’t foolish or deluded enough to believe such a transient, fragile thing as happiness would last forever, and of course it didn’t, but I cherished those times then and I cherish them even more now.

  THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of Adam’s death promised to be a melancholy day. Yet I might never have guessed it to be the day on which a pestilent cloud that I thought had long since dispersed would abruptly throw me into dark, distressful shadow again. My anonymous correspondent—a man I had believed was dead, in fact murdered in Montauk and buried in a cemetery far enough from the ocean that his remains couldn’t ever be wakened by the surf’s sizzle and boom in stormy weather—resurfaced. Even though I was out of the forgery business, I received yet another threatening letter from some unhinged soul who must have missed the memo about my forced retirement and ongoing rehabilitation.

  This time it was written to me in Arthur Conan Doyle’s hand rather than Henry James’s, which only made my anxiety deepen. Who on earth was this and what did he want? Whether it was Slader or somebody else, I represented no competition to him. Although I had years ago asked the police personally and through my lawyer to tell me who was behind the original series of letters and that bogus confession, they never divulged a name, insisting his identity wasn’t known to them, either. They considered him an anonymous tipster and since, first, his information proved accurate and, second, there was no reward involved and, third, they had better things to do with their time, they were disinclined to pursue him.

  Besides, they reminded me, they had not a shred of evidence that the accuser, skilled forger though he might have been, had ever used his talents to engage in any illegality, assuming he existed.

  Assuming he existed? I asked them, incredulous.

  Yes, assuming there had indeed been any forgeries involved beyond those brought into existence by your own hand.

  So you people are saying I created these forged letters and sent them to myself in some psychotic, labyrinthine scheme to commit professional suicide?

  Why not, was their response. They’d seen stranger.

  These exchanges were infrequent, unpleasant, and fruitless. I believed strongly the police were protecting their source and, seeing no easy way around th
eir blue wall, let the matter drop. I suppose there was a part of me that didn’t finally want to know. Sometimes the stone unturned is best, I remember thinking.

  But now he was back in all his pseudonymous glory. And what made his new letter even more vexing than any before was that its words replicated precisely those in the very first letter I had received, initiating that original onslaught. You shall be revealed, it read. Your deceptions will prove you to be nothing more than a common criminal & not the clever sophisticate you believe yourself to be, and so forth.

  Meghan noticed how agitated I was and in her innocence marveled at how unhappy at Adam’s grim anniversary I seemed to be. I weighed whether or not to tell her, but our early married life had been so serene, I dreaded that bringing her into what was clearly my own private battle would cause more harm than good. At the same time, she had proven herself to be such a pillar of sanity that she might see something here that I myself, blinded by worry, could not. I argued both possibilities without concluding anything.

  On the weekend after receiving this letter, we made our way out to Montauk to visit Adam’s grave and toss some stemmed roses into the ocean in his memory. Let me admit, I who had never known fear, not really, was now afraid. I found myself observing every stranger, especially men, with suspicion. Any of the mourners who lingered at Fort Hill cemetery could have been posing. It would not, after all, have taken a Sherlock Holmes to predict that the late Adam Diehl’s sister and now brother-in-law would decide to pay homage on such an important anniversary. We both had jobs, so a Saturday visit was logical. Having laid flowers at the base of the headstone and flung more into the waves, we made our way up the steps and into the bungalow to set a bouquet on his empty desk. Meghan wept, and I held her close to me, my heart beating hard and throat tightening. After I handed her a glass of water, my every gesture accomplished as if in slow motion, she asked if I would mind giving her a few minutes alone in the cottage.

  Out on the deck, I shivered a little. Not because it was cold. Indeed, the day was atypically warm for the season. No breeze, cirrus clouds above like ghostly fish bones. I watched a tanker edging its way across the horizon a dozen miles from shore and part of me wished I was aboard it, a crew member whose only vice was, say, a taste for drink, but was otherwise contentedly adrift on a toneless watery void.

  Meghan joined me soon enough and slid her arm around my waist. She had stopped crying and offered me a brave smile, then gazed out at the Atlantic, too.

  “I think the time has come to sell,” she said. “There’s nothing here for me any more. Nothing for either of us.”

  I couldn’t disagree, but said, “You’re sure about this.”

  “Never more sure of anything. Except marrying you, of course.”

  “Well, then, let’s do it.”

  Wasting no time, we drove into the village to speak with a couple of realtors, settled on one who eagerly drove back to the property—for it was a “property” now—and, having given it a preliminary, cursory examination, agreed to appraise it, consult on the asking price, and put it up for sale. A contract was signed, duplicate keys handed over, and we promised to have the books and other effects removed as soon as possible. He advised us that the best season to sell would be spring or summer, but Meghan, having made her decision, was firm about listing it as soon as was feasible.

  That night, back in the city, I marveled at my wife’s ability to resolve on matters and make things happen. “It’s a gift,” I said, head turned on my pillow so I could see her profile in the faint ambient light from the streetlamps out the window.

  “It’s the orphan’s imperative,” was her response. “You learn it early because it’s your only chance at survival.”

  “I love you,” I whispered, my heart again beating so hard that my breath was shallow as a mindless dog’s exhausted from running back and forth to fetch some meaningless stick. I needed to tell her my stalker, my epistolary nemesis was back, that he had never left, but just as I had lost what I loved the first time around, I was terrified that I would lose what I also loved, Meghan herself, this second go-around. If that happened there would be no surviving it, for I never learned the orphan’s imperative or for that matter any other surefire survival skills that might assure me safe passage through this renewed provocation.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered back, then asked, “Why are you breathing so hard?”

  “Desire,” I half-lied but was blessed that I did because after we made love I fell into the deepest sleep I had experienced since our halcyon days in Eire.

  The mail was my evening torture after work through the balance of February and March, but no further letters arrived. I began to wonder if that first one wasn’t somehow a weird prank by the authorities, some arcane attempt to flush me out. It wasn’t impossible, I reasoned with myself—no less credible than the possibility that I had sent myself those damning, damnable letters—given that the text was identical and they could surely locate someone skilled enough to make a passable forgery in Conan Doyle’s hand. This was freakish wishful thinking, however, and I knew it. Paranoia makes for insane speculation much as insane speculation makes for terrible actions. I tried, therefore, not to act or even speculate.

  April was here and Park Avenue’s median gardens were teeming with red and yellow tulips. Meghan and I planned on attending the Armory show, having missed it last year because Adam’s death was far too recent and raw and neither of us felt we could endure all the dealers’ condolences and curiosity. We had accepted an offer on Montauk with buyers who met the asking price, were more than qualified for a loan, and didn’t mind that a murder had taken place there because they intended to do a gut renovation. What furniture and other chattels failed to sell in an estate sale overseen by a local auction house were donated to a local hospice and a couple of other charities. The books were carefully boxed by Meghan’s shop packer and put into storage. It was as if both a beloved remnant of personal history and a ruinous burden of tragic memories had broken free of their moorings and lifted away from the sandy coast into the aether. The world felt lighter, for a brief and welcome tenure, not just for my wife but for myself as well.

  So mortifying was the second letter, which arrived a week before the book fair—They may not know who killed Adam Diehl but I do—that any impulse to tell Meghan I was under siege again was thwarted by the stomach-wrenching worry she might look at me with different eyes, eyes unduly suspicious. Not that this spectral madman could prove I had anything whatsoever to do with the death of her brother, this madman, I must say, who seemed more and more likely to be the elusive Henry Slader if only because he was the one person who could connect the various parties involved. If it was him, he had to want something, surely, more substantial than just jarring my nerves. What was it? Ask, already, you bastard.

  A follow-up letter the very next day both confirmed my suspicion and answered my angry, silent question. I thank you for enquiring around about me a while ago. I have an enquiry now for you. You are in possession of materials that are rightfully mine, it read. Your pretty wife’s brother saw fit to purchase that Baskerville archive from me, and bought a bunch of very valuable other things too, but never saw his way clear to finish paying for his pleasure. His untimely death brought an end to monthly payments he was making. I see you sold that nice beach house on the East End. In the interest of keeping things simple, let’s say half of what you got for it, after agent commission of course, will just about satisfy Diehl’s debt. That plus give me back the Baskerville archive & we can call ourselves even & nothing will happen. Revenge is a deadly enterprise as you know better than most.

  As before, no signature other than A Conan Doyle and no return address. I had no way to respond to either his statements or demands. Nor did I have any way of knowing whether his allegation that Adam had died owing him north of half a million dollars was a wild, delirious, wanton fabrication. While it was all well and good that he threatened to hang the blame for Adam’s death on me—
something the police never did—I noted that he himself had the motive if not the means, and had caught the investigators’ attention, surely not without reason. Still, any thought of being accused of the murder of my wife’s brother, any thought of facing the demeaning, debasing if not debased klieg lights of the criminal justice system, which as everyone knows has sent more than its unfair share of innocent people to prison, was beyond my ken. Unthinkable, untenable, impossible. Suicide was preferable to any prospect of reckoning minutes, days, months, years in a prison cell. No. Finally I had found happiness, the promise of a normal future, unclouded by torment, unstained by feelings of guilt. I wasn’t going to let money, extorted or not, and some fraudulent Conan Doyle letters stand between me and my future with Meghan. If I wasn’t reasoning with self-assurance, at least I was reasoning with what felt like pragmatism, or so I told myself as I charted my next move.

  I telephoned Atticus and asked him if he had time to have lunch with me when he was in the city for the fair. “I have something private I need to ask, a favor,” I said. “Don’t worry, it’s a favor that will benefit you, too.”

  “Why not just ask me on the phone?” I heard understandable and now somewhat familiar wariness in his voice, crackling like a partially spent fire at the edges of his words.

  “I’d rather do it in person if that’s all right. Day before the show opens?”

  “All right. That nice French brasserie off Madison?”

  We agreed on a time and I began that same evening inventorying what was left of my rare book collection—sadly somewhat decimated by the last time I needed to come up with money—including some of the better volumes from my father’s library, which I had inherited and preserved with devotion, figuring that one day they might be passed down to my own son or daughter, were I ever fortunate enough to have one.