The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [152]
We rang on the doorbell of number 216. After a few moments a large middle-aged woman of ruddy complexion opened the door. Her hair looked newly coiffured and she was dressed in a lurid Prospero-patterned dress that might have been her Sunday best, but not anyone else’s.
“Mrs. Hathaway34?”
“Yes?”
We held up our badges.
“Cable and Next, Swindon Literary Detectives. You called the office this morning?”
Mrs. Hathaway34 beamed and ushered us in enthusiastically. As we stepped in we noticed that on every available wall space were hung pictures of Shakespeare, framed playbills, engravings and commemorative plates. The bookshelves were packed with numerous Shakespeare studies and volumes, the coffee table was carefully arrayed with rare back issues of the Shakespeare Federation’s weekly magazine, We Love Willy, and in the corner of the room was a beautifully restored Will-Speak machine from the thirties. It was clear she was a serious fan. Not quite rabid enough to speak only in lines from the plays, but close enough.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” asked Hathaway34, proudly putting on an ancient 78 of Sir Henry Irving playing Hamlet that was so bad it sounded as if he had recited it with a sock in his mouth.
“No, thank you, ma’am. You said you had a copy of Cardenio?”
“Of course!” she enthused, then added with a wink: “Will’s lost play popping up like a jack-in-a-box must come as quite a surprise to you, I imagine?”
I didn’t tell her that a Cardenio scam was almost a weekly event.
“We spend our days surprised, Mrs. Hathaway34.”
“Call me Anne34!” she said as she opened a desk and gently withdrew a book wrapped in pink tissue paper. She placed it in front of us with great reverence.
“I bought it in a garage sale last week,” she confided. “I don’t think the owner knew that he had a copy of a long-lost Shakespeare play in amongst unread Daphne Farquitt novels and back issues of Vintage Toaster Monthly.”
She leaned forward.
“I bought it for a song, you know.”
And she giggled.
“I think this is the most important find since the King Lear fragment,” she went on happily, clasping her hands to her bosom and staring adoringly at the engraving of the Bard above the mantelpiece. “That fragment was in Will’s hand and covers only two lines of dialogue between Lear and Cordelia. It sold at auction for one point eight million! Just think how much Cardenio would be worth!”
“A genuine Cardenio would be almost priceless, ma’am,” said Bowden politely, emphasizing the “genuine.”
I closed the cover. I had read enough.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Hathaway34—”
“Anne34. Call me Anne34.”
“—Anne34. I’m afraid to say I believe this to be a forgery.”
She didn’t seem very put out.
“Are you sure, my dear? You didn’t read very much of it.”
“I’m afraid so. The rhyme, meter and grammar don’t really match any of Shakespeare’s known works.”
There was silence for a moment as Hathaway34 digested my words, frowned to herself and bit her lip. I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does, and she retorted belligerently:
“Will was adaptable to the nth degree, Miss Next—I hardly think that any slight deviation from the norm is of any great relevance!”
“You misunderstand me,” I replied, trying to be as tactful as possible. “It’s not even a good forgery.”
“Well!” said Anne, putting on an air of aggrieved indignation and switching off Henry Irving as though to somehow punish us. “Such authentication is notoriously difficult. I may have to seek a second opinion!”
“You are more than welcome to do that, ma’am,” I replied slowly, “but they will say the same as I. It’s not just the text. You see, Shakespeare never wrote on lined paper with a ballpoint, and even if he did, I doubt he would have had Cardenio seeking Lucinda in the Sierra Morena mountains driving an open-top Range Rover whilst playing ‘It’s the Same Old Song’ by the Four Tops.”
“Goodness!” said Bowden, amazed by the effrontery of the forger. “Is that what