The Club Dumas

Makarova smiled contemptuously at the fate of Torchia the printer, or maybe at the executioners who hadn’t been able to make him confess. La Ponte was frowning.

“You say that only one of the books was saved,” he objected. “But before, you said there were three known copies.”

Corso had taken off his glasses and was looking at them against the light to check how clean they were.

“And that’s the problem,” he said. “The books have appeared and disappeared through wars, thefts, and fires. It’s not known which is the authentic one.”

“Maybe they’re all forgeries,” Makarova suggested sensibly.

“Maybe. So I have to find out whether or not Varo Borja was taken for a ride. That’s why I’m going to Sintra and Paris.” He adjusted his glasses and looked at La Ponte. “While I’m there, I’ll see about your manuscript as well.”

The bookseller agreed thoughtfully, in the mirror eyeing the woman with the big breasts. “Compared to that, it seems ridiculous to make you waste your time on The Three Musketeers....”

“What are you talking about?” said Makarova, no longer neutral. She was really offended. “It’s the best book I ever read!”

She slammed her hands down on the counter for emphasis, making the muscles on her bare forearms bulge. Boris Balkan would be happy to hear that, thought Corso. Besides the Dumas novel, Makarova’s top-ten list of books, for which he was lit­erary advisor, included War and Peace, Watership Down, and Patricia Highsmith’s Carol.

“Don’t worry,” he told La Ponte, “I’ll charge the expenses to Varo Borja. But I’d say your ‘Anjou Wine’ is authentic. Who would forge something like that?”

“People do all sorts of things,” Makarova pointed out sagely.

La Ponte agreed with Corso—forging such a document would be absurd. The late Taillefer had guaranteed its authen­ticity to him. It was in Dumas’s own hand. And Taillefer could be trusted.

“I used to take him old newspaper serials. He’d buy them all.” He took a sip and then laughed to himself. “Good excuse to go and get a look at’ his wife’s legs. She’s a pretty spectacular blonde. Anyway, one day he opened a drawer and put ‘The Anjou Wine’ on the table. ‘It’s yours,’ he said straight out, ‘provided you get an expert opinion on it and put it on sale immediately.’ “

A customer called, ordering a tonic water. Makarova told him to go to hell. She stayed where she was, her cigarette burning down in her mouth and her eyes half-closed because of the smoke. Waiting for the rest of the story.

“Is that all?” asked Corso.

La Ponte gestured vaguely. “Almost. I tried to dissuade him, because I knew he was crazy about that sort of thing. He would sell his soul for a rare book. But he’d made up his mind. ‘If you don’t do it, I’ll give it to someone else,’ he said. That touched a nerve, of course. My professional nerve, I mean.”

“You don’t need to explain,” said Corso. “What other kind do you have?”

La Ponte turned to Makarova for support. But one glance at her slate-gray eyes and he gave up. They were about as warm as a Scandinavian fjord at three in the morning.

“It’s nice to feel loved,” he said bitterly.

The man wanting a tonic water must really have been thirsty, Corso thought, because he was getting insistent. Makarova, looking at the customer out of the corner of her eye and not moving a muscle, suggested that he find another bar before she gave him a black eye. The man thought it over. He seemed to get the message. He left.

“Enrique Taillefer was a strange man.” La Ponte ran his hand again through his thinning hair, still watching the blonde in the mirror. “He wanted me to sell the manuscript and get publicity for the whole business.” He lowered his voice so the blonde wouldn’t hear. “ ‘Somebody’s in for a surprise,’ Taillefer told me mysteriously. He winked at me, as if he was going to play a joke on someone. Four days later, he was dead.”

“Dead,” repeated Makarova in her guttural way, savoring the word. She was more and more interested.

“Suicide,” explained Corso.

She shrugged, as if to say there wasn’t that much difference between suicide and murder. There was one doubtful manu­script and a definite corpse: quite enough for a conspiracy theory.

On hearing the word suicide, La Ponte nodded lugubriously. “So they say.”

“You don’t seem too sure.”

“No, I’m not. It’s all a bit odd.” He frowned again, suddenly looking somber and forgetting the blonde in the mirror. “Smells fishy to me.”

“Did Taillefer ever tell you how he got hold of the manu­script?”

“At the beginning I didn’t ask. Then it was too late.”

“Did you speak to his widow?”

La Ponte brightened. He grinned from ear to ear. “I’ll save that story for another time.” He sounded like someone who has just remembered he has a brilliant trick up his sleeve. “That’ll be your payment. I can’t afford even a tenth of what you’ll get out of Varo Borja for his Book of the Nine Lies.”