The Whole Megillah Read online

  ‘All right. What about Lowther? Is he hard to find?’

  ‘He has an office at Bloor and Bathurst. He does have to look in on his law practice from time to time. I shouldn’t think he’d be too difficult to track down.’ There was a trace of a sneer on his face as he said that. Dalton ran from sneers to the look of a scared child without much in between. Just the same, I could have kicked myself for not having looked up Lowther in the phone book. I don’t mind being a little slow, but I hate it when I get found out.

  ‘What do you know about Moore’s widow, Honour Griffin?’

  ‘Ha! She’s lucky! I don’t think old Tony had a chance to cut her out of his will.’

  ‘They were separated for over a year. How long does it take in Toronto? In Grantham it can be done with a phone call and a visit to the lawyer the next day.’

  ‘Moore wanted Honour back for most of that time. They’d been on fairly good terms. Then he began to suspect that she was seeing somebody. It’s been a bumpy ride for the last month or so.’

  ‘Still enough time to change his will.’

  ‘You didn’t know Tony. He was fairly disorganized in his private life. She was trying to prove that the stories were just gossip, that she was still trying to decide whether or not to return to Albany Avenue. If he believed her, he hadn’t seen his lawyer yet; if he didn’t, then she’ll be looking for a job. Tony was quite well off in a modest way. She may not have the money to break the will.’

  ‘Do you know who she was seeing--if she was seeing someone?’

  ‘Oh, no! I’m not going to get mixed up in this! I’ll say this, though: Honour was always more woman than Tony could handle. He should have realized that a long time ago.’

  ‘Was she more your style?’

  Dalton’s face became stern. He lost that fingers-in-the-cash-drawer look of a few moments ago. This was Dalton on the offensive. ‘If I had to, Cooperman, I could have handled Honour, but I had no inclination to do so. Your research on me is now revealed to be limited, I see. A look into Who’s Who would show that I’m happily married with three kids and a stableful of horses. There is no mistress on the side, Cooperman. And if there were, it wouldn’t be Honour Griffin Moore. Stanley Griffin, her first husband, was my best friend; when she divorced him, he took to the bottle and died within the year. No, my feelings for Honour Griffin may be strong, but they are not inclined at all in the direction you’re thinking. You’d better go and check out Kurian and Lowther on that score. But leave me out of it.’

  After that, there wasn’t much I could say. Whatever subject I introduced, he was ready for me. He even had an iron-clad alibi for last Saturday night when the book was taken: he’d been in Montreal at a meeting of collectors of lead and tin soldiers. I was glad the interview was running down. I needed to go away and play back in my head what Dalton had said. There may have been some golden nuggets in there with the dross and I didn’t want to miss them in the run-off of sluice water.

  Dalton looked down at the check that had just arrived. He decided to ignore it. He knew I was without a client, but that was my problem. Since I’d asked the questions, I paid the bill. He didn’t say anything; he just turned, grabbed my hand, shook it and was gone. When I got into the bustle of Bloor Street, I couldn’t even see which way he went. I didn’t know it then, but I was not finished with Wells Dalton for the day.

  Chapter Six

  The sunny day had darkened. Black clouds were moving west with the speed of highway traffic heading for cottage country. In spite of the grim sky and the future it held for me, I decided that I still had time to spring back to Book City before my lack of an umbrella would become a practical shortcoming. As I passed Mary, the local bag lady, she shook her head at the sky. I tried to help her move some of her bags and bundles out of the way, but she shrugged and said it was God’s will. Mary was trying hard to become a modern saint without leaving Toronto. She was pious and peculiar; she kept to herself. Not one of the city’s vast array of social services had been able to remove her from Bloor Street. She pulled her many cartons and green garbage bags from alley to alley and from one storefront to another as soon as business hours were concluded. I once tried to give her some money, but she accused me of setting her up for a mugging. She said that poverty was her only defence, and why didn’t I leave her in God’s hands. This time, with the sky about to split, she was more appreciative. As the first great drops began to fall and she yanked two bags under a projecting roof in the alley, she gave me a blessing as my bundle landed next to hers. I ran off between the raindrops to the bookstore. She began spreading plastic sheeting over her treasures.

  The pavement was awash with the splashing downpour when I joined the company of weather-induced browsers on the main floor of Book City. The woman behind the cash register looked as though that was all normal, so I thought no more about it. I went up the stairs to the second floor, passing as I went the painted mural of a long-limbed reader carrying a stack of books, wearing glasses and a bowler hat. He was a friendly creation and I began to think of this lanky painted bookman as the spirit of the store.

  My place at the round table was free, so I moved the books on painting and architecture to the far side to clear a spot. First I made notes on my talk with Dalton. In regurgitating it, interesting facts emerged. Things were looking up. Then I found another book on rare books and two on book collecting. I found a reference to the Gerson Soncino Megillah in all of them. Its value, one of the authors explained, is its uniqueness. It is a one-of-a-kind phenomenon, like a lot of hand-written texts. Printed seventeenth-century folios of Shakespeare and early copies of Shelley and Keats may be rare, but every decent library has some. So these are rare books, but they are numbered at least in the hundreds. The megillah, on the other hand, is special: only one copy escaped destruction when books in Hebrew were burned in Italy and elsewhere from the end of the fifteenth century down to our own time. This single copy had somehow been hidden or lost, thus protecting it from the bonfires of the righteous of one generation after another. Another factor in the value of the book was that it was a completely executed copy: the pictures and initial letters were fully coloured and gilded. I read that in most editions, such decoration might only have been sketched in.

  When I came up for air, I noticed that the pale young man who had been straightening books in the room had been exchanged for a tidy young woman who asked if I’d like a cup of tea. I accepted, and soon we were talking about rare books, a subject that she—Alison--knew quite a bit about. From books, we moved on to the personality of the late Tony Moore, who was, according to Alison, a wonderfully clever man, very shrewd in business. She described two dealings in which he had beaten out the other competitors. In each case, he used a device that might have been invented by a cunning conjuror or magician. At the critical moment, he managed to deflect the other dealers’ attention so that they missed the vital manoeuvre. As Alison went back to her computer terminal, I reflected on what that meant about Moore’s untimely death. I was thinking about this when I walked down the stairs past my painted friend in the bowler and out into Bloor Street.

  The pavement was drying in what sunlight was able to push through holes in the clouds. The sidewalk smelled as sweet as Bloor Street ever smells. It was not the smell of a country lane after the benediction of the rain, but it was close.

  I was wondering whether or not to return to Brunswick Avenue, when I saw Honour Griffin walking on the other side of the street. She was coming out of a store called The Yarn Mill. She looked both ways, as though to see whether or not she was being followed, and then crossed the street to my side. I pretended to be examining the books under the plastic sheets covering the Book City bargain bins. She didn’t notice me. The widow of Tony Moore went up the steps into a vegetarian restaurant called the Renaissance, a name I couldn’t figure out. Whatever Raphael’s and Tintoretto’s the sixteenth-century Italian dukes admired, I imagined them eating a Spartan fare, tearing off the wings of roasted fowl and gnawin
g on marrow bones.

  I crossed Borden Street and ordered coffee at Dooney’s. While waiting for it to come, I settled the question of why Honour Griffin was looking over her shoulder. Through the window of Dooney’s, on the terrace, I could see, in addition to the Renaissance Cafe, Wells Dalton talking to two young men in T-shirts. Both had heavily tattooed arms. I’d seen better designs on the walls of pay telephone booths.

  In forty-five minutes, Honour Griffin came out of the Renaissance, now in company with a solidly built man in a tan suit. He had shoulders like a fullback and a wide stride. Dalton was taking this in as well, and ducked behind a newspaper when Honour turned back to inspect the terrace. The man gave Honour a quick hug and they separated on the corner. When they walked in opposite directions, I decided to follow him. Meanwhile, Dalton and the tattooed young men had their heads together as though oblivious to the passing parade.

  Honour crossed the street in front of Dooney’s, looking neither to the right nor left and cutting through the traffic like a bullfighter braves the horns of the approaching bull. Through the rubber plant in the window I watched her tidy shape disappear up the street. I paid my bill and started after her friend. I suppose Dalton saw me, but if he did, he saw me cross the street and move along the north side of Bloor without any reference to the movements of Honour’s friend on the south side.

  The quarterback in the tan suit didn’t go far. After skirting the window of a large, dim, empty-looking store that sold wrapping paper and paper napkins (in spite of a sign that advertised Crist’s Billiards), he turned into my home-away-from-home, Book City. I followed him in.

  I played on the fact that Honour’s boyfriend was ignorant of my existence and that my presence so close to the counter as he talked to the stocky blond man behind the cash would mean nothing to him. They were talking about Moore’s death. The well-dressed stranger was addressed as Mr. Lowther, which was really more information than I’d hoped to learn. Lowther was paying for a copy of the afternoon paper he’d picked up outside.

  ‘The police still have no leads,’ he said, as he pocketed his change.

  ‘There must be a psycho loose in the Annex, that’s all.’

  ‘Sure,’ said the bookseller, tilting his glasses up to his forehead. ‘Who but a nut would want to kill a nice fellow like Mr. Moore? You know I served him right here in the store a few hours before he was killed. Weird, isn’t it?’

  Lowther was satisfied that he would learn nothing fresh from this source. He left his paper at the cash and went up the stairs into what I now regarded as my part of the bookstore. I followed him. Lowther’s long hair, which at first I thought looked messy, was cut to look that way. There were signs of careful barbering near his ears, but a hard, newly cut line had been avoided at the back of his head. It was like the head of a kid from a private school; they always look like they need a trim even after they’ve just had one.

  Lowther had headed directly for the section I’d been haunting: the books on rare books. He must be trying to get his hands on the megillah like everybody else. In order to get some action around the murder, I should offer to auction the damned thing off to the highest bidder. That would flush out the murderer fast enough. But first I had to get my hands on it. And then I had to recognize that what I had was the megillah and not some other old book.

  ‘Mr. Lowther,’ I said, surprising myself, since I had no idea that I was on the point of breaking radio silence. He turned abruptly, as though I’d caught him with his nose in what we used to call a ‘skin book.’

  ‘Yes?’ he said evenly, with the trace of a smile.

  ‘My name is Cooperman. I’m a private investigator who was doing some work for Mr. Moore at the time he was killed.’

  ‘Oh, you’re the one! I’ve heard about you. Were you able to find any leads before...?’

  ‘Not many. But of course, I’m out of a job now. Mr. Moore was paying my fee and expenses. I don’t think I can go on working in hopes of dunning his estate later on.’

  ‘No, that would hardly do, would it? What can I do for you, Mr. Cooperman?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure, unless you want to hire me to find out who killed Anthony Moore.’

  ‘I think the police have a man or two on that.’ He was humouring me. I didn’t like it.

  ‘They might not recognize the megillah when they stumble on it. And even when they do, it will become Exhibit A, won’t it? Nobody will see it for years, will they? And only then by going to visit the Metro Police Black Museum, where they’ll have it in a glass case along with all those butcher knives and guns. I’ve never seen it, but I hear that it is very interesting.’ Lowther didn’t blink when I mentioned the megillah, nor did he like the idea of the megillah being permanently out of the running as an addition to his collection.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right. What are your rates, Mr. Cooperman? I’m not promising anything, but I’d like to think over the possibility.’

  I told him the numbers, which didn’t make him fall over, and asked him how I could get hold of him.

  ‘I’m a moving target these days,’ he said with a schoolboyish grin. ‘Best you tell me how to get hold of you.’

  I didn’t like the idea of telling anybody where I was staying. And it wasn’t just because I was trying to save Sam’s carpet from bloodstains. But with the smell of a new client in the air, I broke down and gave him the phone number but not the address.

  Lowther made a note and then extended his hand. ‘I’m going to be in court a lot during the next few days, but I’ll get in touch if I think there’s something you can do for me.’

  We parted. He started down the stairs. I walked to the back room and climbed down the rear stairs just in time to see Lowther walking through the door and out into the street with his paper. I waited thirty seconds and followed, crossing the street at the intersection.

  From the north side of Bloor, I could see him working his way through the heavy pedestrian traffic around the Brunswick House. A jazz group was playing in the upper space called Albert’s Hall. Lowther got through the crowd without having to take to the pavement. He crossed to my side of Bloor. At the corner of Bloor and Walmer, he ducked into a doughnut store and came out with a white paper bag. I followed him up Walmer, which twisted in an ‘S’ curve to a small park islanded in the middle of the road. From a bench with an old man feeding the pigeons, I watched Lowther go into the condominium where Honour Griffin lived. I checked inside the front door a few minutes after Lowther had passed through: there was no name remotely like Lowther’s on the directory. I rang the bell beside Honour’s name and heard Lowther’s voice ask ‘Yes?’ before I returned to the park bench and the pigeons.

  Lowther was still looking for the megillah. Did that clear him of the murder? I wasn’t sure. Although the murder may have occurred because Moore interrupted an attempted theft, I wondered who would have tried to steal a book that had already been stolen?

  Chapter Seven

  That night, Anna and I dined quietly in a place she knew on Harbord. It was an Italian restaurant called Porretta’s. On the wall were prints by Salvador Dali of dissolving landscapes and watches--puns in paint that take a lot of looking at.

  ‘But you’re not giving up?’ Anna asked. It was more a statement than a question. ‘Nobody’s paying you for the work you’re doing.’

  ‘Moore gave me a little to get started on.’

  ‘You’re not facing it, Benny. Your client is dead.’

  ‘This fellow Lowther might hire me. He wants the megillah bad enough. I could see it in his face. And then there’s Dalton. He might drop a few bucks my way. He can afford them.’

  ‘The point is, can you afford to go on putting your neck on the line on the chance that somebody’s going to pay you?’ She tilted her head and quizzed me over the top of her dark-rimmed reading glasses.

  ‘Anna, to be honest with you, I feel I owe it to Moore to give this some of my own time.’

  ‘But you told me you weren’t even sure
he was being straight with you!’

  ‘I know, I know. I’m a tangle of contradictions. Tell me about it. If I could change my spots, Anna, I would have a long time ago. What can I tell you? I feel a debt. It won’t go away, so I’m working it out. Maybe that will make me feel better. This is very good spaghetti,’ I added, just to change the subject.

  ‘I’ll never figure you out, Cooperman. But I’ll keep on trying.’ Anna was looking lovely sitting there across the table from me. She was in a dark blue dress with hardly any make-up. After a while I got her talking about the lecture she was going to give the following afternoon. I listened and asked a few questions, but I couldn’t keep my mind wholly on the development of the American constitution. Anna was one of the good things that had happened to me, and I’ll never figure out how it happened.

  When I got home a couple of hours later, I was interrupted in my gerbil feeding by the telephone. ‘Cooperman? Is that you?’ I was about to say that Dr. Cooperman was out of town, when I recognized Lowther’s voice. He confirmed my guess and continued. ‘I’ve decided to put you on the payroll,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want you getting involved with the police.’

  ‘You want me to stay away from them? I usually try to when I can.’

  ‘Don’t misinterpret me, please. What I mean is don’t make their investigation any more complicated than it already is. The principle of too many cooks, if you follow me.’

  ‘Sure, I get you. What do you want me to concentrate on?’ I was sure of what he was going to say, but I wanted to hear him say it.

  ‘The book, damn it! Find the Gerson Soncino Megillah and you won’t have to worry about your next job. Not for a long time.’