The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime, Volume 8

The Lover and Lever Society Robert Barnard

The new (and most unlikely) literary society finally came into existence in one of the buildings of Pisa University, hardly more than a hop, skip, and jump from the world-renowned torre pendente. The hall where the delegates to the “Lover and Lever Conference” gathered was more than large enough to accommodate those who were interested in the two Irish writers being honoured, but the specialness of their enthusiasm more than made up for the relative sparseness of their numbers. By 10.30 officers for the new society had been elected, and over coffee the delegates got to know each other. The Irish delegates had to apologize that interest in these two admittedly Anglo-Irish writers was not greater, but the Englishness of their take on Ireland was controversial. There was a strong undertow of Italian interest (this was the country in which Lever spent his last years), and the rest of Europe had provided most of the other delegates, mostly Ph.D. students, with one jet-lagged customer from Australia.

By lunchtime there had been the election (actually nomination and election by acclamation) of a secretary and a treasurer, and in addition, two lectures had been given. It was over lunch, in fact, that things began — not to go wrong, no no! — but to acquire an edge. When they reached the fifth and last course, the prime mover in the conference, a man called Terry Butterfield whose bloodhound good looks had over the years set hearts of all sexes aquiver, rose to give the speech of welcome.

“It is a great pleasure,” he began, “to welcome to Pisa all those lovers of Irish literature who believe that much more needs to be done to celebrate the impressive body of work of two unjustly neglected literary figures, Samuel Lover and Charles Lever. Here I would pay particular tribute to Professor Mario Pollini, of the English Department here in Pisa, without whose sterling work this two-day conference — really almost a festival — could never have taken place. Also Professor Jim Northcote, newly retired from his august position at London University, and Brian Bracewell, the well-known writer of... the well-known writer.”

He paused.

“We also owe a great debt to Declan Donnelly, my friendly rival in matters bibliographical, for his custodianship of the financial side of this wonderful coming-together of Lever-lover and Lover-lovers.”

Smiles all round, rather self-satisfied. It was a joke they had seen coming since the day they registered. One or two in the audience thought that in the references to Declan Donnelly they had heard the sound of gritted teeth.

“Does it sound like friendly rivalry to you, mate?” asked the delegate from Australia, any trace of Irish in his accent being subsumed into the cockney tones which are the Australian language.

“No,” said Brian Bracewell, on the other side of the table. “But why rivalry? Does Lever fetch astronomical prices? It seems unlikely. And Lover didn’t write all that much fiction.”

“I should say it’s a question of numbers, mate. Lever went on writing long after anybody much wanted to read him. Scarcity value, that’s what it’ll be. There’s not much logic in the secondhand trade, apart from that. Some subject is taken up, or some writer, often following a television series, and suddenly all the books on Vermeer, or Franz-Joseph of Austria, or Ned Kelly, are fetching sky-high prices. It’s a mad world, and I’ve always kept well out of it.”

Terry Butterfield was coming to the end of his speech, working up to a bit of eloquence.

“I leave it to others to talk about Samuel Lover. I am a Lever man. Charles Lever spent the later years of his life not in Ireland, not in England, but mainly on the continent of Europe, for most of the last twenty-two years in Italy. He was, in his thoughts and spirit, a European. It may seem that his years here have left little trace. We can see buildings that he knew, but we can see buildings that Attila the Hun knew, and he was around fifteen hundred years before Lever.” (Some laughter.) “But if there are only one or two buildings that we know that he lived in, places we know he went to regularly, like the Casino in Bagni di Luca, we are perhaps looking in the wrong place. We should be looking for Italy in his books. And there we find the sun, the love of pleasure, of sheer fun, the realized life which Englishmen find difficult to cope with but which suits Irishmen down to the ground. Instead of looking for traces of Lever in Italy, which are few, we should be looking for traces of Italy in Lever, and they are legion.”

He sat down to warm applause.

Sitting opposite him at the table was the delegate from Helsinki, a man who had made no impression hitherto except for an unquenchable thirst. Now he leaned across the table and put his mouth close to Terry Butterfield’s ear.

“He left something in Italy. There’s a descendant lives in Siena.”

Terry Butterfield’s eyebrows shot up.

“Surely not.”

“Quite legit, at least I think so. Descendant of one of his daughters. Name of Teresa Spagnoli. You should have asked her to be here.”

“I would have if I’d known,” said Butterfield. But he was lying. If she really was a descendant of Charles Lever he would have kept her very quiet from everyone, which meant in particular from his “friendly rival” in matters bibliographical, Declan Donnelly. Their “friendly rivalry” was particularly “friendly” when it came to first editions of Malcolm Merrivale — that late Lever novel, published reluctantly by Newby, and given the sort of print run usually only awarded to silly girls from Yorkshire who thought they had written great novels.

Further down the table Declan Donnelly was taking in the little scene that had taken place after the speech’s end.

“What the hell’s going on there?” he mused.

“Don’t know,” said Morag O’Connor, a close friend of Terry’s. “But he’s interested, Terry is. I know the signs.”

“What in the world could that Finn be telling him?”

“Search me. Does it matter? I could ask him.”

“No. Don’t do that. Things always emerge in conversation. I always get to know things if I go about it in the right way.”

“Aren’t you a judge? I can’t imagine many people gossiping with a judge.”

“Oh, I’m not the sort of judge who used to enjoy putting on the black cap! People talk to me as if I’m an agony aunt. My current wife says I’m ‘the judge next-door’.”

This particular agony aunt, Morag noticed, went in search of agony. When the lunchtime was drawing to a close and groups were breaking up she saw Declan Donnelly, glass in hand, casually wandering up towards the talkative Finn. Or not towards him, but taking a path that, with the odd stop and detour, would land him next to the rather unsteady university lecturer.

“Declan Donnelly,” he said, holding out his hand. “And you must be Jyrki Kaapola. Did I pronounce that right?”

“Not really. Nobody doesh. Why bother? Just call me Jerk.”

“All right, Jerk, I will. I’ve been called worse things than that in my time, by people in the dock.”

“Are you a pleeshman?”

“Judge, Jerk. Terry’s just been telling me what you told him.”

“Oh, yes? This woman — the descendant on the distaff side. Did I say that right?”

“No, but I get the idea. On the female side.”

“Thash right. Daughters — more than one. I mean: daughter of a daughter of a daughter.”

“Daughters of—?”

“Charles Lever, of course. Lives in Shiena. No distance. She should have been asked to come.”

“How do you know about her?”

“Colleague in the English Department in Helsinki. Has a holiday home in Tuscany. Liquor’s cheaper here. He’d met her.”

“Her being...?”

Jerk swayed. He looked as if he had only seconds in which he would remain upright. But he put his hand on the table and with practised skill maintained a vertical stance.

“Name... It’s gone... I had it, but Shpanish shounding... Like an ancestor from... di Spagna. That’sh it. Di Spagna.”

“Christian name?”

“Oh... Matilda, Teresa, or... one of those.”

“I don’t see the connection between the two.”

“End with ‘a’. Trishyllabic.”

Though Declan was about to say practically all Italian women’s names ended with an “a”, the Finn at last lost out in his battle with gravity and sank with a grunt to the floor. The delegates clustered around him, but not before Judge Donnelly had made a strategic retreat. He did not feel himself compromised in the least by talking to a drunk, but he didn’t want Terry Butterfield to see him doing it.

He considered what to do next. He could, of course, take off for Siena at once. He was just one of many delegates, and he had no special duties during the weekend. On the other hand, he was the financial brain behind the weekend and the new society, and he had just been elected treasurer. It would not look good. And judges these days had to be very aware of what would and would not look good.

And the other token in the balance was that Terry Butterfield was occupied the whole weekend. He was in overall charge, and down to do this or that pretty much till midnight that night, and till lunchtime on Sunday, when the conference ended. He, Donnelly, could take off midmorning on Sunday without his absence attracting any comment. And he could be in Siena by around lunchtime, or mid-siesta, if they still had them in Siena. Meanwhile, he slipped back to his hotel, secured the Siena telephone directory, and established the existence of a di Spagna, M — living in Via Fontegiusta 41. He went to the nearest bookshop and bought himself a road map of Siena.

Meanwhile, Terry Butterfield pursued a similar course. His hotel was a more modest one than the judge’s, but it was close to one of the entrances to the Campo Santo, and the famous tower was only a few yards away from its windows. Terry recognized the cheapness as his duty as conference organizer, and his view of the tower as one of the perks of office. The proprietor came up with a telephone directory of Siena and also a very grubby street guide to the town which had obviously been lent to generations of tourists. No one noticed during the Sunday lunch that he was itching to get away: Terry had the reputation of a solid bloke, unflappable, with a touch of gravitas. But he was, in fact, on tenterhooks, and the moment he could say his farewells and get away to the station without arousing any thoughts of a quick getaway he did so.

Judge Declan Donnelly stood on the step of Via Fontegiusta 41 and pulled an antique door handle, resulting in a cacophony inside and outside the dwelling. He heard footsteps in the house, and then he was conscious of being observed through the spy-hole in the door.

“Che vuole?”

“My name is Declan Donnelly. Do you speak English?”

“Yes. What you want?”

“I—” It sounded to his ear a bit absurd however he put it “—I want to talk to you about an ancestor of yours who wrote books.”

There was a long pause. He was conscious of being observed closely, and was glad he had dressed with the utmost care, and had assumed the facial expression of one of the pillars of the community.

“You come in,” said the voice. The door opened and closed behind him, and he followed an ample (but not fat, let alone obese) figure down the ill-lit hallway into a large room furnished with the usual bulky pieces that spoke of plush and respectability. Miss or Mrs di Spagna was an attractive and lively forty-something, and she spoke the language of the plush of her flat, but less so the language of respectability.

“Who this writer, then?”

Declan sat down where she gestured him to.

“The writer is an Irish novelist called Charles Lever. He wrote in the mid-nineteenth century and he lived the last years of his life in Italy. I was hoping—” the hope was fading though “—you had a collection of his novels.”

The well-upholstered shoulders shrugged.

“I never ’eard of ’im. Maybe my ’usband.”

“Your husband? I heard that the descendant of Charles Lever was a woman.”

“Oh, maybe ’is first wife. She died last year. She was a great reader, ’e’s a great reader, they ’ave a fine library. I lock it up. I don’t give ’im time to read. I didn’t marry ’im for books.”

She gave him a meaningful glance, a slight smile, then looked away.

“And your husband — can I talk to him?”

“No. ’E is away. Three ’ole weeks. Can you imagine? It is so lonely.”

“It must be. And you not long married.”

“Esattamente! You are good-looking man. Well-dressed, smooth, a touch James Bond. Experienced, eh?”

“I have been married more often than was perhaps wise. People assume that you are fickle, like a bee flitting from flower to flower.”

“What is that — a bee?”

“Bzzzz,” said Declan. “They think you want variety.”

“And you?”

“I want variety.”

“Then what say we ’ave a little bargain. A deal you call it, no? You come to bed with me for an hour or two. That is a pleasure for both of us. And I give you the key to my ’usband’s library. ’Is and ’is first wife’s, the book people.”

Declan was sorely tempted. His devotion to his habitual parade of a respectable façade never applied once he was behind closed doors. None of his wives had been in any doubt as to what he did when exposed to sexual temptation. He did what Oscar Wilde recommended.

“Done,” he said.

When he banged on the peeling door of the small, ancient house in Via Dante, Terry had no idea what to expect. The steps to the door were so faint that he could hardly hear them. Or the voice, either.

“Si — chi è?”

“Signora Spagnoli? I am English. Do you speak English?”

“Yes, a little. What do you want?”

“I want to speak to you on important business.”

There was a pause. Then he was shocked to hear the chains on the door being taken down — just what he had always advised his mother never to do. It’s a good job it’s just me, he thought. The door was pulled open with difficulty.

“Well, come in,” said the tiny lady, all skin and bone, wrapped up against the cold that did not exist. She closed the door as he came in, and led the way through the unlighted hall to a high-ceilinged room, once rather grand, but now dirty, peeling, without pictures, almost without furniture — nothing more than two chairs and a cupboard. She led him to one chair and sat down herself in the other.

“It’s very good of you to see me,” said Terry. “But you really shouldn’t—”

“Open the door. So people tell me. But why not? If it was someone who wanted to batter me and rob me, wouldn’t he see at once there was nothing to be gained? And if he did assault me and leave me to die, what would I be losing? A few months of a life that is no longer worth living. As I’m sure you can see, and guess, all is gone, little by little. To the man who gives little bits of money for nice things. Now there are no nice things, and no money. That is why I do not offer you even a cup of coffee.”

Terry was struck by the precise, almost literary English she spoke.

“You have excellent English,” he said.

“Oh, it was Miss Cavendish, who helped in the shop. A very precise and prim person. She came to live in Italy because of her admiration for Mussolini — one I did not understand or share. After the war she had nothing except her beautiful voice and her precise and grammatical English. Some of the English tourists thought she was funny, but luckily Siena does not attract many of that type.”

“You had a shop. What was it? A bookshop?”

“Oh dear, no. Leather goods, just off the Piazza del Duomo. Lovely soft gloves, elegant handbags, evening shoes. All beautiful and expensive. But when my husband died—” She gestured with her hand, downwards. Terry nodded.

“Your name was given to me as a possible descendant of an English — well, Irish — novelist called Charles Lever.” He saw no response in her eyes. “He was fairly well known in his time — the Victorian era.”

“I have never heard of him. I have seen Charles Dickens on television and Jane Austen. Oh, I like Jane Austen very much. But the television broke down and could not be repaired, and of course I could not afford... The Bible says we take nothing out of this world. I shall soon have nothing even though I am still in it.”

“So you have never heard of Lever?”

“Never in my life. I know my grandfathers and my great-grandfathers. I assure you there were no English novelists among them. One fought for a time in Garibaldi’s red-shirted army, but that is as near to fame as we have ever got.”

“And your husband? You never heard him talk of a writer in his family tree?”

She laughed, almost merrily.

“Never! Not a chance of it. My Aldo, he fought the Germans all the way up Italy, and was wounded in Pisa. Perhaps one day those brave Italians will be as famous as Garibaldi’s men. But he and his family were shopkeepers, men of commerce. There was not a literary person among them.”

“So you have no copy of Malcolm Merrivale, no first edition?”

“No, alas. I have never heard of it, yet it must be famous for you to come all this way in search of it.”

“Not famous at all. Almost unknown, even to specialists in Irish literature. But we collectors — we must have our holding complete: a first of every title.” He saw incomprehension in her gaze. “I am wasting your time.”

“What else can I do with my time but waste it?”

Terry stood up and fumbled in the back pockets of his jeans.

“I must pay you for it nevertheless,” he added hurriedly, in case she was insulted. “Please regard this like any other commercial transaction, like selling a pair of gloves.”

But she was not insulted, and sat fingering and looking at the note.

“Oh, it’s the new stuff. So shoddy-looking...”

“But much the best stuff for buying things: food, coffee, medicines.”

“Oh, I know that. But the old stuff was so much more like real money, and the price looked so good on a pair of gloves in the window — so many lovely noughts in it, you felt like a millionaire if you sold anything.”

Terry escaped from the room, feeling as if he had escaped from a very classy sort of madhouse.

Declan Donnelly got out of bed, after two eventful hours. Every part of him seemed exhausted, and his legs seemed to have gone off on a separate existence. He pulled on his trousers and then put on his shirt, buttoning down the front in the wrong buttonholes. He tried to tie his tie, failed, and threw it down on the floor in disgust. He grabbed his coat and pulled it on. He was aware of a movement from the bed.

“You want to see the library?”

“Delightful and exciting though the last few hours have been,” he said in his suavest voice, “the library was part of our deal, as I’m sure you remember.”

“It is very good. You like,” said Signora di Spagna, jumping to the floor and leading him from the bedroom. They went back to the sitting room, the signora fetching a key from the mantelpiece and throwing open a door in the corner of the room and switching on a light.

Declan found himself looking into something between a large cupboard and a small room. It was packed with books, almost all paperbacks. The first title that met Declan’s eye was Kane and Abel. Then he saw a whole shelf-ful of Wilbur Smith. Then Riders, Joanna Trollope, Andy McNab. Another shelf-ful, this time of Barbara Cartland. Gaudy Night, which Declan had often thought the dullest book he had ever read. Goldfinger and Casino Royale. Several James Hiltons and The Blue Lagoon.

Declan Donnelly turned to his hostess.

“I ought to recommend you to take up reading,” he said. “There is a lifetime of experience awaiting you here. However, I am loath to direct you away from the activity which clearly you do best.”

And he turned tail and fled the flat.

There were many small bars between the Via Dante and the railway station. Terry went into several of them, and began to lose sight of which direction the railway station lay in. It was as he was coming out of the bar in the Via Rossi that he saw a familiar face.

“Scellerato! Ladro! Traditore!”

“Nothing of the sort,” said Declan, putting out a hand to steady Terry’s wavering body (though the hand itself shook). “Perfectly normal behaviour between competing collectors.”

“I saw you talking to that bloody Finn.”

“Why shouldn’t I talk to a Finn? Particularly one with information for a Leverite.”

“Ha! Information! Well, I can save you a bit of time if you’re on your way to talk to Signora Spagnoli.”

“To who? Never heard of her. I’ve been talking to Signora di Spagna. I can save you a bit of time if you’re on your way to talk to her.”

“I’m not.” They looked at each other. “That bloody Finn,” said Terry. “He couldn’t even remember her name, he was so drunk.”

“Finns are always drunk,” said Declan. “I wouldn’t mind betting there’s no descendant of Lever here, legit or illegit... Here’s a bar. Have another drink. Then we’ll get a taxi and take the last train home.”

So they had a last drink, swore eternal friendship, swore the finding of a first edition of Malcolm Merrivale was a game not worth the candle, and they’d give it up pronto. Then they went back out into the street, hailed lots of taxis, none of whose drivers wanted to pick up two drunken Brits (for they were both, in their different ways, respectable and casual, very recognizable) then began to make their way on foot to the station.

By chance, as they made their way like silent-film drunks, they walked along Via d’Orti, where at number 46, in a neat little upstairs flat, Valentine della Spanna was eating from a large box of chocolates, drinking from a bottle of finer wine than she had drunk for years, and contemplating a small gap in the dusty books on a high shelf in a dim part of the room — books written by some old geezer who somehow or other was connected with her, and which the slightly tipsy man from a country she had barely heard of had bought from her for a price (for he was a fair-minded man, this Finn, drunk or sober) which was a bargain for him and a prodigious windfall for her. He was a nice man, she thought, as she took another soft centre. And he had a lovely sense of humour.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: It should be emphasized that there is no resemblance in the characters or events in this story to the characters or events at the International Conference on Charles Lever in Pisa in September 2006, which the author attended.