Harvard Yard (55 page)

For the really big ones, you might have to move fast, or you might have to sit patiently and wait and not watch the pot you were hoping would boil. Right now, he was waiting and wishing he could go out and dig up Lydia and ask her what she meant by “a century turns.” Did she mean 1900 . . . or something else?

He sipped his coffee and imagined a wide plain, like something Salvador Dalí would have painted. Time as a place, as real as Harvard Yard. Across this plain, where decades and centuries sometimes pooled and sometimes ran together, there were old buildings and new buildings, men in tricornes and women in miniskirts, all meeting and mingling. Over there was a meetinghouse where people were listening to Reverend Thomas Shepard, and over there, someone was restoring a Copley portrait, and Lydia Wedge was writing a poem in a house on Brattle Street, and Charles William Eliot was announcing that women needed to spend a few more generations in the kitchen, while Dorothy Wedge Warren and Mrs. Agassiz were discussing a name for the new women’s college. . . .

It had all happened and was all happening. Shepard’s meetinghouse sat on the spot where J. Press now sold suits. Maybe the people in the meetinghouse were straining today to hear a sermon over the sound of the traffic on Mount Auburn Street. Or maybe the salesmen were puzzling over a linen waistcoat with brass buttons, hanging among the Harris tweeds. Or maybe . . .

Peter looked into his cup and wondered what Bernice was putting in the coffee.

The simple fact was that the trail had gone cold. As long as nobody was trying to kill him, and it seemed that Bingo Keegan had taken care of that, he could afford to do a day’s work. After reading the catalogs, he had phone calls to make, copy to write for his own catalog, a private library to appraise in Chestnut Hill, and—

The phone rang.

It was Evangeline. “You have to come and see this.”

The Massachusetts Historical Society was one of the great repositories of America’s past—the papers of the Adams family, the personal correspondence of Jefferson, the table from which Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural, the gorget that Washington wore in the French and Indian War, rare books and manuscripts, daguerreotypes and photographs, portraits, paintings—all housed in a deceptively prim-looking double bowfront on the corner of Boylston Street and the Fenway.

Peter Fallon was a fellow of the society and sometimes an adversary. More than once, he had found himself bidding against the society for some rare book or manuscript, and individual buyers were usually more willing than institutions to spend that extra money for a cache of letters from Wendell Phillips or that very fine copy of Bail’s
Views of Harvard to 1860.
But Peter had also seen to it that a few of his clients had bequeathed libraries to the MHS, so he was always welcome.

He signed in and found Evangeline in the reading room overlooking the Fenway. Portraits of old Colonials looked on curiously as Evangeline transcribed notes onto her laptop.

“What’s so important?” he said.

“Good morning to you, too.” She gestured to the folders. “I’ve found the journals of Theodore Wedge, an assistant librarian at Harvard.”

“I thought you were researching Dorothy Wedge Warren.”

She gave him one of her looks. “Theodore was her brother.”

“I know, but so what?”

“His journals have been misfiled for ninety-seven years.”

“That’s rich.” Peter laughed. “The guy could keep thousands of volumes straight in the Harvard libraries, and he couldn’t get his own writing cataloged.”

“Somehow, his journals ended up in the papers of Edward Bunting, Class of 1870. Bunting was a munitions manufacturer and art collector. Had a big stake in the Watertown Arsenal. Made a fortune in government contracts. Endowed a chair in art history at Harvard. Left three boxes of family papers to the MHS in 1922. They were accessioned, cataloged, and forgotten.”

“So”—Peter thumbed a few pages—“what’s the Bunting-Wedge connection?”

“In the Artemus Pratt letter from Gettysburg, a Confederate named Hannibal Wall asks for Douglass Wedge and Jason Bunting. Then Artemus talks about elms and old men weeping in Harvard Yard. The old men were Theodore and Samuel Bunting.”

“You know,” said Peter, “for someone who insists she’s doing her own book project, you keep finding ways to get into mine.”

“Yours keeps getting in the way,” she said.

“It’s fate.” He sat down across the table from her.

“We’ll see about that,” she said. She turned back to business. “In her letters to Theodore, Dorothy would often write, ‘Say hello to Mr. Bunting,’ or, ‘It was a pleasure to have you and Mr. Bunting stay with us. . . .’”

“So, they were gay?”

“I found this in the back of one of Theodore’s journals.” She slid a letter to him. “It’s from Theodore’s nephew, Heywood.”

Peter picked it up. “‘Dear Edward—’”

“The munitions manufacturer. He and Heywood probably knew each other.”

“All those old Brahmins knew each other,” said Peter. “‘Dear Edward, Thank you for the offer of my uncle’s papers, which you have found amongst those of your own late uncle Samuel. My condolences on his death, but I have little interest in my uncle’s writings, as he and I had little to do with one another. His friendship with your uncle was, as you know, a somewhat “unconventional” one.’”

“Unconventional,” said Evangeline.

“Code for gay.”

“Which itself is code,” she said.

Peter continued reading: “‘It is a relationship that I do not care to embrace, so as not to indicate approval of it, especially in the eyes of my grandson Victor. Since the death of his father in Cuba, I have become a father to him. I wish to raise him with the same strong sense of masculinity that invested his father, the sense of sacrifice my generation learned on the battlefields in our youth. Keep my uncle’s papers with those of your own uncle. If they are commingled, perhaps they will reproduce.’”

“So,” said Evangeline, “a wonderful chronicle of Harvard life ended up as a file in the Bunting family papers, not cataloged, never read.”

“Unless you follow that trail.” Peter flipped through the books. “
Look
at this stuff . . . Emerson’s Divinity School speech . . . Eliot’s inaugural . . . the birth of Radcliffe . . . football . . . and hello—”

“You’ve come to one of his speculations about the book?”

Peter read: “. . . ‘the fate of a book I sometimes hear them argue over. They never bring up this subject in my presence and brush it away when I enter . . .’ And nobody saw this?”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” She flipped to a page she had marked, near the end.

Fallon began in a read-to-yourself mutter, but his voice rose quickly to “‘But I have my speculations, which herewith, I set down: it is a . . .’” He flipped the page and said, “Shit.” Right out loud.

So, who tore out that last page? And when?

“Someone who had access,” said chief librarian James J. Fitzpatrick, Harvard ’72, a skinny bachelor with an explosive laugh and an encyclopedic knowledge of . . . well . . . just about everything in the collection.

Peter had never been able to stump him. That was why it was surprising that the Theodore Wedge Papers had been buried for so long. Peter and Evangeline were sitting in Fitzpatrick’s office. On the wall was the original of Burgess’s
View of Harvard,
an antique engraving from 1759, another treasure.

Evangeline said, “Wouldn’t it have been someone who had access to the papers and knew enough about the family to know what he was looking for?”

“Right,” said Fitzpatrick. “To find the Wedge diaries, you have to access the Bunting Collection. There’s the further complication that the Bunting Collection was cataloged under Edward, not Samuel.”

“In short, only someone who knew about Theodore and Samuel Bunting could figure this out.”

“Or someone very lucky,” said Fitzpatrick. “But stories like this abound, particularly with papers that were accessioned in a more”—he searched for a word—“
gentlemanly
era. Fortunately, we have records.”

“Records?” said Evangeline. “Of what people
read?
Isn’t that an invasion of privacy?”

“Some librarians think so, especially these days,” said Fitzpatrick. “In certain collections, your call slip is destroyed as soon as you return the book. But in other libraries, records are kept. Harvard’s Houghton Library keeps call slips forever.”

“Please tell me that’s what you do here,” said Peter.

“Please don’t,” said Evangeline. “Patriot Act or not.”

“I’ll please you both and disappoint you. All of our call slips from 1936 to about 1982 are on microfilm. Since then, we keep call slips for two years, so that if something turns up missing—”

“I don’t think I like this,” said Evangeline.

Fitzpatrick picked up a sheet of paper. “Do you want this information or not?”

“We’ll worry about the ACLU later,” said Peter. “Just give us the names.”

“Only because you might help us apprehend a book vandal.”

“Apprehend?”
said Evangeline. “That makes us sound like cops.”

Fitzpatrick said, “I wish the cops—and the courts—cared a little more about the theft or defacing of material like this. It’s cultural vandalism.”

“Agreed,” said Peter. “But the Bunting Collection?”

Fitzpatrick said, “It’s been requested half a dozen times, but you’ll find these two names of interest: in 1969, Harriet Webster Wedge requested the file. And last September, William Wedge asked for it.”

“Are you sure?” said Peter. “Will Wedge? Did you see him?”

“He’s a fellow of the society, so he’s around often enough.”

“So you saw him. So you’re sure he saw this material?” asked Peter.

“I didn’t see him, but” . . . Fitzpatrick showed them the slip. Signed:
William Wedge.

“Shouldn’t we call first?” asked Evangeline.

“And miss a golden opportunity to catch Will Wedge unawares? I’m going to see him right now, and you deserve to be in on it.”

She stopped in the middle of the Boylston Street sidewalk. “A lightning strike? Like we were TV reporters? Don’t you ever get tired of all this?”

“Yes, a lightning strike. No, not like reporters, like intrepid historical detectives. And no, I never get tired of it.”

She rolled her eyes.

“And now that you’ve had a taste of it again,” he said, “I think you’re enjoying it, too. Otherwise, you’d be back in there, reading old manuscripts.”

After a moment she said, “I just wanted you to convince me.” And she started walking beside him.

“Now,” he muttered, “if I could just convince you to go to bed with me again.”

“Stop trying to plan it. Plan what you’re going to say to Wedge instead.”

“All right,” said Peter. “I’ll do the talking and you watch his reaction.”

“How about if
I
do the talking and
you
watch his reaction?”

“That works, too. Except he thinks I’m the one who knows what’s going on. If we preserve the illusion, it leaves you free to use your brilliant powers of observation.”

“‘Brilliant powers of observation.’ I like that more than ‘women’s intuition.’”

The offices of Wedge, Fleming, and Royce were at One Federal Street. Perfect for Will Wedge, because the downtown Harvard Club occupied the top floor.

In the reception area, the ambience was modern day moneymaking rather than Yankee dollars reproducing the old-fashioned way. Phones were ringing. Young women in business suits and young men in bow ties and wireless telephone headsets were hurrying here and there. Clients were sitting on sofas, reading the
Journal
or watching the stocks slide by on a television screen, courtesy of CNBC with the sound turned down.

In the corner office, Wedge’s view was west, up the river, all the way to Harvard. On the wall were two portraits, his father and grandfather.

Wedge gave Peter and Evangeline his grin and good handshake, gestured for them to sit on the sofa, then settled in behind his desk. The venture capitalist in midmorning mode: gray suit jacket hanging behind the door, white shirt so starched that it crackled when he moved, crimson braces and yellow bow tie. With the grin still plastered, he said, “My instinct says you wouldn’t be here unless this was very important.”

“My instinct,” answered Peter, “says you’ve been jerking me around for five months.”

Wedge did not move a muscle, nor did his color rise or his voice change. He simply said, “How would that be?”

Peter put a copy of the call slip on the table in front of Will Wedge. “Did you rip the back page from a journal at the MHS on September thirtieth of last year?”

“That signature’s a forgery.” Wedge checked his desk calendar. “I was in Los Angeles September thirtieth.”

“So who would forge your name to get a look at something? Your daughter?”

“The late Ridley, more likely, or maybe Keegan’s goons. You said they were sniffing around. And I have to tell you, they frighten me.”

“They frighten me, too,” said Peter.

“Bingo Keegan,” said Wedge, “is a name to conjure with. But someone should tell him that the play is worth exactly zero to anyone but the president and fellows of Harvard University.”

“How do you figure that?” asked Peter.

“A priceless Shakespeare manuscript, part of the original John Harvard bequest, survives the Harvard Hall fire and comes onto the market in, say, 2005.” Wedge stood and started pacing behind his desk, as if to take control of the conversation. “Do you really think that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men of Harvard will say, ‘Oh well, finders keepers’? Does the expression ‘Harvard lawyer’ mean anything to you? They’ll claim it’s belonged to them since day one, and they won’t rest till they get it.”

“But if Keegan finds it, he won’t announce it,” said Fallon. “He’ll sell it to some Midas who’ll be happy just to own it, even if no one else knows about it. There are guys like that all over . . . Japan, London, even out in a fancy private library in Weston.”

“Charles Price is completely legitimate.” Wedge went back around his desk.

“He does business with a bookseller who isn’t,” said Fallon.