—Marcel Proust
Annie shoved it into her bag along with the rest of the purloined manuscripts. There wasn’t much to learn from dead-writer quotes, but as the Diet Coke incident proved, sometimes there was more to a page than the words written on it.
Before heading out the door, Annie paused to stare at the desk. It had two drawers, she noticed for the first time. She doubled back to case them out, but found both were stuck.
“Hmm,” she said, eyes skimming the room. “Hmm. If a thief wanted to bust open a furniture lock, what would he use?”
The bed, she thought with a startling quickness. The very bed where Pru and Win had their maybe-salacious, maybe-innocent drunken evening. Surely there was a loose spring she could use to jimmy open the drawers.
Chin held high, she moved swiftly, assuredly across the room.
“Hello, coil,” she said, yanking one from the frame.
With a grimace and a heretofore-untapped physical strength, Annie stepped on one end and pulled the entire spring taut. Then, after only a few minutes, she was able to force open both locks. If fake researcher didn’t pan out, Annie had burgling down pat. The CIA wasn’t too far from Goose Creek Hill, maybe they needed a new covert operations specialist.
But despite her efforts, the drawers revealed nothing more than a smattering of pencils, several spools of errant typewriter ribbon, and some blank sheets of paper.
After Annie tossed her findings onto the bed, she reached farther back in the drawers, where her hand made contact with a set of plastic cartridges. Audiotapes, eight in total, all of them damaged with thin brown ribbons gnarled and kinked. What Annie might do with broken tapes and nothing to play them on, she hadn’t the faintest but she added them to her backpack of thievery nonetheless.
As Annie went to leave, she gave the bed one last look. Poor confused Pru Valentine. A feminist and Victorian lady both.
Smiling, Annie headed toward the stairs, no longer afraid she might fall right through them. Somehow it felt safer knowing Win and Pru had been there first.
After reaching the bottom step, Annie swung around the banister. She skipped forward a few paces then froze.
Something caught her eye.
“Huh?” she said, backing up.
Annie crouched down and saw, lodged in the banister, a tan, rectangular piece of leather, across it a strip of metal. It was a luggage tag, caught on a spindle.
She picked it up and ran her finger along the brass plate. The metal was blackened and mottled but the inscription was decipherable. She’d seen the address before.
JAMES E. SETON
24 QUAI DE BéTHUNE
PARIS
Forty
BASIL’S WATCHES & SUCH
BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 2001
Annie stood at the counter, staring down at the luggage tag in her right hand, a cluster of cassette tapes in her left.
James E. Seton. Paris.
Gus had never mentioned the J in “J. Casper Augustine Seton” stood for James. Granted, Annie cared far more about what happened between Win and Pru than the details behind their given names, but Gus’s ongoing fact embargo needled. It was another hidden tidbit, a plot point withheld.
“Hello, miss, can I help you?”
A man bumbled out from behind a mauve curtain.
“Oh, hello there.” Annie slid the tag back into her pocket and extended a hand over the counter. He stared at it with suspicion. “My name is Annie Haley.”
She let her arm drop back to the counter, hand untouched.
“Anyway,” she said. “Nicola Teepers gave me your contact information. I’m in possession of some damaged audiocassette tapes.”
As Annie pushed the cartridges forward, they squeaked against the glass.
“She thought you might be able to repair them,” she said.
The man, who was reed-legged but round across the middle, twisted his mouth in confusion. And who could blame him? They were in a clock shop and she was handing him a pile of broken tapes.
“Right,” Annie said and dragged them back toward her. “I can see where this would be a crazy place to come. I must’ve misunderstood. Well, have a splendid day. Cheers!”
“Stop.”
He grabbed her hand. His fingers felt cold and dry.
“I can help you,” he said.
“Really?”
She slipped out of his hold, then glanced at a cuckoo on the wall. The poor bird was getting himself stuck each time he tried to exit the doors.
“We’re mostly watches in this shop,” the man said. “And clocks. But I do the odd job here and there.”
He pulled a magnifying glass from his shirt pocket and studied each tape.
“I think I can fix these,” he said.
“That’s terrific news!”
Annie smacked her hands together, which sent the cuckoo once again spiraling out of its hole.
“I do appreciate it,” she told the man as he shook his head wearily. “You see, I’m a researcher and trying—”
“It’ll take about a week.”
“A week? Mister … I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name. Are you … might you be the eponymous Basil?”