The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [50]
“I’m SO-27 just like you,” I replied quite truthfully. “Eight years in the London office under Boswell.”
Bight picked up an ancient-looking volume in a faded pigskin binding and passed it across to me.
“What do you make of this?”
I took the dusty tome in my hand and looked at the spine.
“The Vanity of Human Wishes,” I read. “Written by Samuel Johnson and published in 1749, the first work to appear in his own name.”
I opened the book and flicked through the yellowed pages. “First edition. It would be very valuable, if—”
“If?—” repeated Bight.
I sniffed the paper and ran a finger across the page and then tasted it. I looked along the spine and tapped the cover, finally dropping the heavy volume on the desk with a thump.
“—if it were real.”
“I’m impressed, Miss Next,” admitted Herr Bight. “You and I must discuss Johnson some time.”
“It wasn’t as difficult as it looked,” I had to admit. “Back in London we’ve got two pallet-loads of forged Johnsonia like this with a street value of over three hundred thousand pounds.”
“London too?” exclaimed Bight in surprise. “We’ve been after this gang for six months; we thought they were local.”
“Call Boswell at the London office; he’ll help in any way he can. Just mention my name.”
Herr Bight picked up the phone and asked the operator for a number. Victor guided me over to one of the many frosted-glass doors leading off the main chamber into side offices. He opened the door a crack to reveal two officers in shirtsleeves who were interviewing a man dressed in tights and an embroidered jacket.
“Malin and Sole look after all crimes regarding Shakespeare.”
He shut the door.
“They keep an eye on forgery, illegal dealing and overtly free thespian interpretations. The actor in with them was Graham Huxtable. He was putting on a felonious one-man performance of Twelfth Night. Persistent offender. He’ll be fined and bound over. His Malvolio is truly frightful.”
He opened the door to another side office. A pair of identical twins were operating a large computing engine. The room was uncomfortably hot from the thousands of valves, and the clicking of relays was almost deafening. This was the only piece of modern technology that I had seen so far in the office.
“These are the Forty brothers, Jeff and Geoff. The Fortys operate the Verse Meter Analyzer. It breaks down any prose or poem into its components—words, punctuation, grammar and so forth—then compares that literary signature with a specimen of the target writer in its own memory. Eighty-nine percent accuracy. Very useful for spotting forgeries. We had what purported to be a page of an early draft of Antony and Cleopatra. It was rejected on the grounds that it had too many verbs per unit paragraph.”
He closed the door.
“That’s all of us. The man in overall charge of Swindon SpecOps is Commander Braxton Hicks. He’s answerable to the Regional Commander based in Salisbury. He leaves us alone most of the time, which is the way we like it. He also likes to see any new operatives the morning they arrive, so I suggest you go and have a word. He’s in room twenty-eight down the corridor.”
We retraced our steps back to my desk. Victor wished me well again and then disappeared to consult with Helmut about some pirate copies of Doctor Faustus that had appeared on the market with the endings rewritten to be happy.
I sat down in my chair and opened the desk drawer. There was nothing in it; not so much as a pencil shaving. Bowden was watching me.
“Victor emptied it the morning after Crometty’s murder.”
“James Crometty,” I murmured. “Suppose you tell me about him?”
Bowden picked up a pencil and tried to balance it on its sharp end.
“Crometty worked mainly in nineteenth-century prose and poetry. He was an excellent officer but excitable. He had little time for procedure. He vanished one evening when he said he had a tip-off about a rare manuscript. We found him a week later in the abandoned Raven public house on Morgue Road. They had shot him six times in the face.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’ve lost friends before,” said Bowden,