Lethal Legacy

THIRTY-NINE

The combined forces of Commissioner Keith Scully and District Attorney Paul Battaglia were enough to open the great doors of the New York Public Library on Saturday evening at seven p.m.

Jill Gibson, obviously not pleased to be in the dark about what had prompted the gathering of her senior curators and her own police escort, stepped out of a patrol car as we approached the side door.

Uniformed cops had been stationed at all the entrances for almost forty-eight hours now, as investigators continued to work on processing the vast spaces within the sub-basements of the library.

“Excuse me, Alex?” Jill called out. “May I talk with you a minute?”

“Whatcha got, Jill?” Mike said, stepping between us.

“I’d like to ask Alex a few questions.”

Mike tapped my shoulder to keep me moving. “She’s fresh out of answers, but we’re looking, Jill. We’re holding court in the map division.”

The sergeant in charge moved us through the doors of the old carriage entrance and down the twisting corridors until we could see our way to Bea’s department at the farthest end of the main floor.

Curators from the various private collections were seated at the trestle tables. Arents, Berg, Pforzheimer, and the rare books division were represented. A dozen young cops, at Mike’s request, stood around the room, ready to help.

Mike sat on the edge of one of the tables and started to explain what he wanted the librarians to do.

“How fast can you get together a list of the volumes donated to this institution by Jasper Hunt the Second?” Mike asked.

Jill Gibson didn’t wait to be acknowledged. “If you’ll allow me to go to my office, I can print that out for you immediately.”

Mike looked toward one of the rookie cops at the door and told him to take her there. Jill seemed shocked to be under guard in her professional home.

One of the men spoke up before she left. “It’s not that simple, Detective. Many of the Hunt gifts have been in and out of the library over time. I think each of us, in our own collections, could be more helpful than any master list.”

Jill’s lips clamped together.

“What do you mean?” Mike asked.

“Take World War Two, for example. You know the windows in the reading room were entirely blacked out,” the man said. “There were legitimate fears of an air raid, and decisions had to be made about the safety of the most valuable books.”

“I get it.”

“The Gutenberg Bible, Washington’s Farewell Address, the Medici Aesops,” he went on. “Things like these were actually carried off-site for protection.”

“And some of the books that were taken away were once the property of Jasper Hunt?” Mike asked. “Is there some confusion about where they were housed after they were returned?”

“That, of course, Mr. Chapman. As well as the fact that some of the finest volumes simply never came back to us.”

“Because the Hunts kept them?”

The man looked to Jill Gibson before he answered, aware that he was crossing a line. “That’s my understanding. Jasper Hunt Jr., as well as several trustees, decided, rather quietly, it might be a good time to reclaim some of the things they’d given away.”

“Don’t wait around, Jill,” Mike said. “Something you already knew, apparently, and didn’t feel the need to tell me. Go ahead and get me your list anyway.”

Then he turned to Dutton. “You’re up, Bea. Tell them what you need.”

She addressed her colleagues, apologized for not being able to say exactly what we were after, and asked them to brainstorm for any insights that went beyond card catalogs, computer lists, and digitization.

“Let’s talk about the Napoleonic Description de l’Égypte,” Bea said.

She was starting with the most obvious hiding place-the one in which Prince Albert of Monaco had found the copy that Jasper Hunt Jr. purchased in 1905. It was logical that Hunt might have chosen to mimic the Grimaldis. Talbot had told us the day before that his father-probably unknowingly-had given a set of the twenty-volume classic to the library just two decades ago.

“Orientalia,” one of the men said. “I believe we have three sets of the Napoleonic expedition, all in Orientalia.”

“You know that’s not politically correct,” the older woman beside him joked. “It’s the Asian and Middle East department now.”

“Yeah. Rugs are the only things left you can call Oriental,” Mike said. “People-and I guess books-are Asian.”

I could tell he liked his new team. They were smart and sincere, and seemed to love the rare objects in their care.

“Any of you seen them, these books?”

A man in a madras plaid shirt, with a crew-neck sweater tied around his shoulders, raised his hand. “I’m Bruce. Bruce Havens. I used to work in that department. The Napoleonic expedition volumes have been completely digitized. You can view the entire thing online, without leaving home. The originals are locked away. Only scholars with a really good reason to see them can get access under a curator’s supervision.”

“Do you know the three copies, Bruce?”

“Let’s say I’ve seen them, Bea. Is that what you mean?”

“Provenance, Bruce. What’s their provenance?”

“Whew. It’s a tough issue in that particular collection. Much of what came in was without designation.”

Bea turned to us to explain. “Bruce means a lot of the photographs and foreign-language volumes were-what’s a polite word?-pilfered by explorers during their travels.”

“Sort of like the Elgin Marbles?” Mike asked.

“You got it,” Bea said to him. “Bruce, do you know the donors of the three Egyptian sets?”

“The prize of the three was a Lenox endowment. An absolutely pristine set of books, in a contemporary French speckled calf, board edges with gilt roll tool. Exquisite.”

“Under lock and key now?”

“Yes, it is. I know you’re interested in whether any of them are Hunt acquisitions,” Bruce said, “but I simply don’t know.”

“Any of them submitted to the conservators for repair?” I asked.

“Possibly, but not on my watch. They were actually shelved in the stacks.”

Mike heard the word “stacks” and stood up, signaling to one of the cops. “This gentleman’s going to take you downstairs to look for something. Stay with him.”

“I wouldn’t have access, Detective.”

“Why not?”

“In each department, there are cages-metal cages,” Bruce said. “Sort of wire mesh, where the rare books are locked.”

“Who’s got the keys?” Mike asked.

Bea answered. “We each have control of our own section. The front office has all the masters.”

Mercer walked to the door. “I’ll take them to Jill Gibson and make sure she gives up the key. You keep at it with Bea.”

“What’s next?” Mike asked her.

“The Most Noble and Famous Travels of Marco Polo,” Bea said. “How many different versions of that would you think we have?”

“Jill will know,” one of the men said.

“Forget Jill.” Bea was on a tear.

The older woman spoke. “We’ve got the Elizabethan translation by John Frampton in the Berg Collection. It was an Astor gift,” she said. “Not the Hunts’.”

“I know,” Bea said. “I’ve got a version with large folding maps, but it came to us recently out of Lord Wardington’s collection.”

I recognized Wardington’s name. He had been a mentor to Alger Herrick.

“There must be half a dozen of those spread around,” another man said.

“You.” Mike pointed at him as he spoke. “Take two cops and scout them out. Any copies you find come right back to this room before anyone cracks the cover, okay?”

Bea was calling on the remaining curators. “Think Hunt, ladies and gents. And then give me regions of the world. Japan, China, Africa, America-North and South.”

“I’ve got a huge box that Jasper Hunt donated,” a young woman said. “Erotic color prints of the Ming period. Sort of Chinese sex life from Han to Ch’ing.”

“We’ll take it,” Bea said.

“You got pornography here?” Mike asked.

“Art, Mr. Chapman,” Bea answered with a laugh. “Only the French library system has the backbone to exhibit the stuff, if that isn’t true to type. The rest of us just keep it hidden. Handwritten manuscripts by the Marquis de Sade, English ‘flagellation novels,’ Parisian police reports about nineteenth-century brothels, and shelves full of Japanese prints and Chinese illustrations. Some of them courtesy of Jasper Hunt.”

“Sounds like the Jasper Hunt who collected photographs of Alice Liddell,” I said.

“The Slavic and Baltic Collection has an elephant-folio chromolithographed account of the coronation ceremonies of Alexander the Second, the Tsar Liberator,” another voice chimed in, catching Bea Dutton’s enthusiasm for her task.

Mike paired the young man with a cop, and they were off to search.

“We’ve got several editions of the Edward Curtis American Indian photographs that are in folio form in our rare-books division,” a man said, standing and ready to move.

“You want Americana, Detective, we should give those a shot.”

“Tell me more.”

“Curtis took more than two thousand photographs of native Americans between 1907 and 1930 in an effort to document their lives. Tried to sell five hundred sets but went bankrupt before he could.”

“Are they Hunt connected?”

“The set I know was donated by J. P. Morgan. That usually made Hunt try to find something as good, or more elegantly bound. I’d like to look.”

“Go for it.”

Mike, Bea, and I were now alone in the room with a few of the officers still waiting to be assigned to a task. I imagined the library coming alive at night, just like in Jane Eliot’s stories, with curators and cops unlocking the cages and exploring the deep recesses of storage areas and stacks.

“I want you to see my thinking,” Bea said, unfolding and respreading the copy of the 1507 map on one of the trestle tables. “Track these books and drawings as they report back to us.

“It’s going to be a long night, guys, but maybe we can match some of these panels to the parts of the world they represent.” She cleaned the lenses of her glasses on the hem of her sweater, then took a red marker from her pocket and numbered each of the map sections from one to twelve, starting in the top left corner. “Keep an eye on me, Mike. I’ve got some atlases to search, too.”

“I’d trust you with my firstborn, Bea. Need any help?”

“Come into my cage, if you don’t mind.”

We walked through the room and behind the reference desk, past Bea’s personal work area. She removed a key chain from her pants pocket and shuffled through the assortment until she found the one that opened the gate to a space that reminded me of safe-deposit vaults.

“These are where the oldest maps are stored,” she said, weaving between chest-high rows of long metal filing cabinets with large horizontal drawers. “The loose ones, of course.”

Farther back, out of sight from the front desk, was shelf after shelf of old books, all oversized and many of them splendidly decorated.

“All the great cartographers are represented here,” she said. “Mercator, Ortelius, Blaeu, Seller.”

“Are you looking for something in particular?” Mike asked.

“One of my favorite map-meisters, Detective. Claudius Ptolemaeus.”

“I know. I know all about Ptolemy,” Mike said, looking at the shelves above Bea’s head. “First guy to give us a mathematical picture of the universe. AD 150, right?”

He was quoting the information he had learned from Alger Herrick.

“You’re a quick study, Mike.”

His head was moving from side to side as he scanned the shelves. “The guy is everywhere. What do you want?”

“Once the printing press was invented, illustrated books of every kind became available. Ptolemy’s work was translated from the Greek text into all the European languages. The Romans tried to outdo the Florentines, Strassburg’s scholars thought they could color the maps more beautifully than in Ulm. Vicenza, Basel, Venice, Amsterdam-all over the continent printers were racing to get these maps in the hands of the rich and the royal. First, second, third editions. It may seem like a lot of them to you, but each volume in its own way is quite rare.”

“Any of these come from Jasper Hunt’s collection?” I asked.

“Sore point, Alexandra,” Bea said.

“Why?”

“There it is, Mike. You mind lifting it down?” Bea had spotted the volume she wanted. “It’s a Strassburg Ptolemy. 1513.”

He handed her the large book, and she caressed it as she carried it to her desktop. “Contemporary Nuremberg binding of blind-stamped calf over wooden boards.”

The front cover was decorated in an elaborate fleur-de-lis pattern with a leafy border, gilt flowers, and gryphons adding to its striking appearance.

“Only thirty-three copies of this work survived,” Bea said. “And before the Second World War, this library owned a pair.”

“The gift of Jasper Hunt?” I asked.

“At the time, yes, it was. He decided to take one of these atlases back. Long before my time, mind you, but no one here ever saw it again, though I’ll bet Jill will still include it on the list of our acquistions she gives you tonight.”

“Sure, rather than agitate-or challenge-any of the Hunt heirs,” Mike said. “Why are you looking for this version?”

“Because it might have been exactly the kind of idea that would have amused our eccentric friend Jasper Hunt Jr.,” Bea said. “Remember-no use of the word ‘America’ appeared in any cartography until the 1507 map. It certainly never entered into anything Ptolemaic. But with the development of the press and the incorporation of all the new explorations of the period, the Strassburg Ptolemy of 1513 was the first book to print a solo map of America. Only America. The first map devoted uniquely to this continent.”

Bea was turning pages in the great volume with painstaking care as she talked.

“A fitting place for Jasper to hide the panel from our map that depicts America,” Mike said.

“Yes, but I think I’m striking out,” she said, separating and flattening the pages as she went.

“There is a second copy of this book though,” I said. “It never surfaced again?”

“Only in rumors,” Bea said. “And then from the mouth of Eddy Forbes.”

“How reliable was he at gossip?”

“Almost as good as he was at stealing,” she said. “In the 1940s, the deals between collectors were a lot different than they are today. With the Internet, we can all keep track of books and maps-who’s got something to sell and who’s in line to buy. Back then, there was much more discretion, many more one-on-one interactions, and lots of secrecy.”

“What did Eddy tell you?” Mike asked.

“His story was that after the war, Jasper Hunt sold the second Strassburg atlas to Lord Wardington. He was always unhappy when the library didn’t treat his bequests like they were their most important gifts of the year. He represented to the buyer, of course, that he had the title free and clear.” Bea pushed the glasses to the top of her head. “It didn’t take long for Wardington, who was a real gent, to learn the truth. He returned the map to Hunt at once to let him make amends with the library.”

“But Hunt never did that,” Mike said.

“Much to my regret,” Bea said. “Now, I had this conversation well before Eddy got in trouble.”

“You mean before he got caught for all the trouble he’d been causing.”

“Right again, Mike.” Bea closed the large book and rested her hand on its lid. “Eddy told me that when Lord Wardington returned the book to Jasper Hunt, the old boy kept it for a while-he had no intention of ever letting it collect dust in our stacks again. Eventually, he gave the book to his granddaughter, Minerva.”

“What?” Mike seemed stunned.

“I’m only the messenger, Detective. That’s what Eddy said, and he knew Minerva Hunt-they’d had some dealings with each other. Why wouldn’t I believe him? None of this had any significance until you found that panel under the water tank yesterday. Till you told me this map-which I wasn’t even certain existed-might be connected to the murder of Tina Barr.”

Mike was circling the table now, punching his right fist into the palm of his left hand.

“We’ve got to get to Eddy Forbes, Coop. You talk to the feds on Monday,” Mike said. “What else did he tell you, Bea?”

“Of course, my angle was selfish, too. I asked about the map because I wanted to get it back from the family. Have it here, where it belonged,” the librarian said. “Eddy told me that for most of her life, Minerva had kept the atlas in her father’s library. She had no use for it, and no real idea of its value. Then, shortly before his arrest, Eddy Forbes reintroduced her to Alger Herrick, who offered to pay her dearly for the atlas, not withstanding its clouded provenance.”

“For a reason?”

“Herrick’s collection is heavy on Ptolemy,” Bea said. “He’s got the most important library of maps in private hands, now that Lord Wardington is gone.”

“Yes, he told us about his Bologna Ptolemy,” I said. “But Herrick also said Minerva dabbled in maps. Why wouldn’t she have wanted to hold on to it?”

“If you ask me, you’re making too much of the fact that Alger Herrick was after that book. It’s much more like the rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees,” Bea said. “Herrick’s a Ptolemy guy. He’s been trying to corner the market on all the great editions of that work.”

“And Minerva?” I asked.

“Strictly Mercator,” Bea said, handing the book back to Mike to reshelve.

“Sorry? I don’t get what you mean.”

“Mercator was one of the greatest sixteenth-century geographers, Alex. Mercator maps? Every schoolkid knows them.”

“Sure,” I said, recalling the famous images of the cylindrical projection maps, with parallels and meridians and perpendicular chartings all neatly aligned.

“Gerardus Mercator. His maps were designed for marine navigation, so that sailors could use a straight line to determine their position at sea, even without instruments.”

“What’s it called when sailors do that?” I asked.

Mike brushed back his hair and answered. “Dead reckoning.”

Bea Dutton wagged her finger at Mike. “That’s just what Eddy Forbes said about that girl. Back then, I thought he was joking. He said she was total Mercator all the way.”

“What did he mean?” I asked.

“If Minerva Hunt is doing the reckoning,” he used to say, “anyone who gets in the way of the straight line between her and whatever she’s after, the odds are they’ll be dead. That’s what he meant by dead reckoning.”