“Oh!” I looked up and saw Conrad Winslow standing at the door. “Mr. Winslow. You caught me off guard. Come in.”
He was alone, thank goodness. I didn’t think I could take another round of dodge-the-poison-dart vibes with darling Meredith.
“I’m sorry, my dear.” He looked a little embarrassed as he walked in.
“That’s okay, I get lost in my work sometimes.”
“You must love what you do.”
“I do,” I said. “How can I help you?” It sounded obsequious to my ears, but as Ian had pointed out earlier, Mr. Winslow was the boss and kowtowing was the word of the day.
He stared at the Faust for a long moment. “It’s something, isn’t it?”
I smiled. “Yes, it is.”
With a shy smile, he said, “I’ve never been much of a book reader. Sports page and financial section are more my speed. So how did I end up with all these books?” He chuckled. “That is irony.”
“It just figures, doesn’t it?” I turned a page and ran the brush along the seam. “But it’s a beautiful collection and the Faust is fantastic.”
“Yah, well.” He looked around the room, then back at the book, not meeting my gaze. Then he stepped a few inches back from the table. “You’ve heard it’s cursed.”
I scribbled a note to myself about the foxing on the next page. “Yes, of course. Fascinating, isn’t it?”
He stared hard at me. “You don’t mind working on something that might kill you?”
My smile faded. “Mr. Winslow, that’s just a legend. A book can’t-”
“No legend,” he said firmly. “The thing is cursed. My grandfather was given the book and died of poisoning a few days later. It was passed on to my great-uncle, who barely had it a week before he died, crushed under a trolley. Two cousins met a similar fate. It is no legend.”
“But that’s-”
“They found one cousin swinging from a rope. He was not suicidal.” Mr. Winslow pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and swiped his brow. “Now Karastovsky’s dead because of it. I want to pull it from the exhibition before someone else suffers.”
“But you can’t,” I insisted, closing the book and stroking the rich, jewel-encrusted leather cover. “Look at this. It’s priceless, exquisite. It’s the centerpiece of your collection for good reason. It’s an extremely important work of art, both historically and aesthetically. You can’t pull it. It would be a crime to-”
“It’s just a book,” he said sharply. His German accent grew thicker and he jabbed his finger in the air for emphasis. “Do you want to die over a stupid book?”
I edged back. “Abraham may be dead but this book didn’t kill him.”
Easy for me to say.
He stared at me, looked at the book, then up at the ceiling, frowning all the while.
“Hell, you’re right,” he finally said.
I was?
He weighed his words before speaking. “Karastovsky called me the afternoon of the opening, said he needed to meet with me that night. Had something to show me. I told him I couldn’t make it.” He shrugged. “I didn’t like him, so I put him off.”
“You didn’t like Abraham?”
“No. A personality conflict, I suppose. And I overheard a shouting match between him and McCullough that sealed my opinion.”
Abraham and Ian had argued?
“What was the argument about?” I asked.
He frowned. “You don’t want to hear about that.”
“If it has anything to do with the books, I do.”
He wiped the edge of his hairline and let out a breath. “Karastovsky had taken one of my grandfather’s Bibles and put a new binding on it, a pale pink leather, and Sylvia was thrilled with it. But McCullough went ballistic. He told Karastovsky he hadn’t hired him to-” He stopped, gave me an apologetic look. “You’ll pardon the expression, ‘fuck up’ a priceless collection by throwing designer leather on everything.”
“Oh dear.”
“Yah, he was angry.”
“But Abraham was doing the Bible for your wife, right? It wasn’t part of the exhibition.”
“It was supposed to be,” he confessed. “It belonged to my grandmother.”
“I see.”
“Yah,” he said. “So that’s why we were all very happy when Ian told us you would be taking over the work. You have ethics and respect for books.”
“Thanks.” I took the compliment with a smile, but now it was my turn to be uncomfortable. This problem came back to the basic argument between Abraham and me. He’d never worked with conservation methods, didn’t really understand them or care about them. The conservation field was relatively new and he didn’t accept it, didn’t trust it.