The Dumas Club: The Ninth Gate Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR Arturo Perez-Reverte’s

  The Club Dumas

  “Perez-Reverte has... improved on the detective story, taking the often predictable formula and con-voluting it with delicious material about eclectic aspects of the literary world.”

  — Los Angeles Times

  “The action parallels the design of 19th-century serial-adventures such as The Three Musketeers, in which crisis after crisis explodes like a string of firecrackers. The Club Dumas rises above the level of the formulaic thriller.”

  — Boston Globe

  “Mystery addicts who believe that the genre has certain rules of fair play will be infuriated by Mr. Perez-Reverte’s gothic eccentricities. Readers with a taste for Dumas and demonology will enjoy his devious inventions.”

  — Atlantic Monthly

  “Among the pleasures of The Club Dumas is the intimate sense it conveys of this highly specialized type of commerce... An intelligent and delightful novel.”

  —Margot Livesey,

  The New York Times Book Review

  “Suspense-filled and ingenious ... a witty meditation on the relationship between book lovers and the texts they adore.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “The richly reported book trade, the European landscape, and the inventive plot provide much to recommend in this murky tale, which drips with atmosphere.”

  — San Jose Mercury News

  “Tightly crafted and entertaining.... Filled with elaborate twists and turns, and steeped in book and literary lore, it’s bound to be a bibliophile’s delight.”

  — Denver Post

  “Puzzles and secrets of the occult are the driving forces behind this tale, and Perez-Reverte pulls it all together with elegance.”

  — Chicago Tribune

  “A fast-paced, joyously complex and inventive book... Prepare to be amused and amazed by this funny, bizarre set of puzzles within puzzles ... this novel is an unforgettable feast.”

  — Detroit Free Press

  “Fascinating ... a wonderful vehicle for speculations about the nature and range of what people want to know, might know and should know, and some cautions about trusting what you think you finally find out.”

  — San Francisco Chronicle

  Arturo Perez-Reverte

  The Club Dumas

  Arturo Perez-Reverte was born in 1951 in Cartagena. He is a television journalist who has reported on some of the world’s most dangerous crises. He is the author of two previous books, The Fencing Master and The Flanders Panel.

  The Club Dumas

  A Novel

  Arturo Perez-Reverte

  Translated from the Spanish by

  Sonia Soto

  CONTENTS

  I. “The Anjou Wine”

  II. The Dead Man’s Hand

  III. Men of Words and Men of Action

  IV. The Man with the Scar

  V. Remember

  VI. Of Apocrypha and Interpolations

  VII. Book Number One and Book Number Two

  VIII. Postuma Necat

  IX. The Bookseller on the Rue Bonaparte

  X. Number Three

  XL The Banks of the Seine

  XII. Buckingham and Milady

  XIII. The Plot Thickens

  XIV. The Cellars of Meung

  XV. Corso and Richelieu

  XVI. A Device Worthy of a Gothic Novel

  The flash projected the outline of the hanged man onto the wall. He hung motionless from a light fixture in the center of the room, and as the photographer moved around him, taking pictures, the flashes threw the silhouette onto a succession of paintings, glass cabinets full of porcelain, shelves of books, open curtains framing great windows beyond which the rain was falling.

  The examining magistrate was a young man. His thinning hair was untidy and still damp, as was the raincoat he wore while he dictated to a clerk who sat on a sofa as he typed, his typewriter on a chair. The tapping punctuated the monotonous voice of the magistrate and the whispered comments of the policemen who were moving about the room.

  “... wearing pajamas and a robe. The cord of the robe was the cause of death by hanging. The deceased has his hands bound in front of him with a tie. On his left foot he is still wearing one of his slippers, the other foot is bare....”

  The magistrate touched the slippered foot of the dead man, and the body turned slightly, slowly, at the end of the taut silk cord that ran from its neck to the light fixture on the ceiling. The body moved from left to right, then back again, until it came gradually to a stop in its original position, like the needle of a compass reverting to north. As the magistrate moved away, he turned sideways to avoid a uniformed policeman who was searching for fingerprints beneath the corpse. There was a broken vase on the floor and a book open at a page covered with red pencil marks. The book was an old copy of The Vicomte de Brage-lonne, a cheap edition bound in cloth Leaning over the policeman’s shoulder, the magistrate glanced at the underlined sentences:

  “They have betrayed me,” he murmured.

  “All is known!” “All is known at last,” answered Porthos, who knew nothing.

  He made the clerk write this down and ordered that the book be included in the report Then he went to join a tall man who stood smoking by one of the open windows.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  The tall man wore his police badge fastened to a pocket of his leather jacket Before answering, he took time to finish his cigarette, then threw it over his shoulder and out the window without looking.

  “If it’s white and in a bottle, it tends to be milk,”he answered, cryptically, at last, but not so cryptically that the magistrate didn’t smile slightly.

  Unlike the policeman, he was looking out into the street, where it was still raining hard. Somebody opened a door on the other side of the room, and a gust of air splashed drops of water into his face.

  “Shut the door,” he ordered without turning around. Then he spoke to the policeman. “Sometimes homicide disguises itself as suicide.”

  “And vice versa,” the other man pointed out calmly.

  “What do you think of the hands and tie?”

  “Sometimes they’re afraid they’ll change their minds at the last minute ...If it was homicide, he’d have had them tied behind him.”

  “It makes no difference,”objected the magistrate. “It’s a strong, thin cord. Once he lost his footing, he wouldn’t have a chance, even with his hands free.”

  “Anything’s possible. The autopsy will tell us more.”

  The magistrate glanced once more at the corpse. The policeman searching for fingerprints stood up with the book.

  “Strange, that business of the page,” said the magistrate.

  The tall policeman shrugged.

  “I don’t read much,” he said, “but Porthos, wasn’t he one of those... Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d’Artagnan.” He was counting with his thumb on the fingers of the same hand. He stopped, looking thoughtful. “Funny. I’ve always wondered why they were called the three musketeers when there were really four of them.”

  I. “THE ANJOU WINE’

  The reader must be prepared to witness the most sinister scenes.

  —E. Sue, THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS

  My name is Boris Balkan and I once translated The Charterhouse of Parma. Apart from that, I’ve edited a few books on the nineteenth-century popular novel, my reviews and articles appear in supplements and journals throughout Europe, and I organize summer-school courses on contemporary writers. Nothing spectacular, I’m afraid. Particularly these days, when suicide disguises itself as homicide, novels are written by Roger Ackroyd’s doctor, and far too many people insist on publishing
two hundred pages on the fascinating emotions they experience when they look in the mirror.

  But let’s stick to the story.

  I first met Lucas Corso when he came to see me; he was carrying “The Anjou Wine” under his arm. Corso was a mercenary of the book world, hunting down books for other people. That meant talking fast and getting his hands dirty. He needed good reflexes, patience, and a lot of luck—and a prodigious memory to recall the exact dusty corner of an old man’s shop where a book now worth a fortune lay forgotten. His clientele was small and select: a couple of dozen book dealers in Milan, Paris, London, Barcelona, and Lausanne, the kind that sell

  through catalogues, make only safe investments, and never handle more than fifty or so titles at any one time. High-class dealers in early printed books, for whom thousands of dollars depend on whether something is parchment or vellum or three centimeters wider in the margin. Jackals on the scent of the Gutenberg Bible, antique-fair sharks, auction-room leeches, they would sell their grandmothers for a first edition. But they receive their clients in rooms with leather sofas, views of the Duomo or Lake Constance, and they never get their hands— or their consciences—dirty. That’s what men like Corso are for.

  He took his canvas bag off his shoulder and put it on the floor by his scuffed oxfords. He stared at the framed portrait of Rafael Sabatini that stands on my desk next to the fountain pen I use for correcting articles and proofs. I was pleased, because most visitors paid Sabatini little attention, taking him for an aged relative. I waited for Corso’s reaction. He was half smiling as he sat down—a youthful expression, like that of a cartoon rabbit in a dead-end street. The kind of look that wins over the audience straightaway. In time I found out he could also smile like a cruel, hungry wolf, and that he chose his smiles to suit the circumstances. But that was much later. Now he seemed trustworthy, so I decided to risk a password.

  “He was born with the gift of laughter” I quoted, pointing at the portrait. “... and with a feeling that the world was mad...”

  Corso nodded slowly and deliberately. I felt a friendly complicity with him, which, in spite of all that happened later, I still feel. From a hidden packet he brought out an unfiltered cigarette that was as crumpled as his old overcoat and corduroy trousers. He turned it over in his fingers, watching me through steel-rimmed glasses set crookedly on his nose under an untidy fringe of slightly graying hair. As if holding a hidden gun, he kept his other hand in one of his pockets, a pocket huge and deformed by books, catalogues, papers, and, as I also found out later, a hip flask full of Bols gin.

  “... and this was his entire inheritance.” He completed the quotation effortlessly, then settled himself in the armchair and smiled again. “But to be honest, I prefer Captain Blood.”

  With a stern expression I lifted my fountain pen. “You’re mistaken. Scaramouche is to Sabatini what The Three Musketeers is to Dumas.” I bowed briefly to the portrait. “ ‘He was born with the gift of laughter....’ In the entire history of the adventure serial no two opening lines can compare.”

  “That may be true,” Corso conceded after a moment’s reflection. Then he laid the manuscript on the table, in a protective folder with plastic pockets, one for each page. “It’s a coincidence you should mention Dumas.”

  He pushed the folder toward me, turning it around so I could read its contents. The text was in French, written on one side of the page only. There were two types of paper, both discolored by age: one white, the other pale blue with light squares. The handwriting on each was different—on the white pages it was smaller and more spiky. The handwriting of the blue paper, in black ink, also appeared on the white pages but as annotations only. There were fifteen pages in all, eleven of them blue.

  “Interesting.” I looked up at Corso. He was watching me, his calm gaze moving from the folder to me, then back again. “Where did you find it?”

  He scratched an eyebrow, no doubt calculating whether he needed to provide such details in exchange for the information he wanted. The result was a third facial expression, this time an innocent rabbit. Corso was a professional.

  “Around. Through a client of a client.”

  “I see.”

  He paused briefly, cautious. Caution is a sign of prudence and reserve, but also of shrewdness. And we both knew it.

  “Of course,” he added, “I’ll give you names if you request them.”

  I answered that it wouldn’t be necessary, which seemed to reassure him. He adjusted his glasses before asking my opinion of the manuscript. Not answering immediately, I turned to the first page. The title was written in capital letters, in thicker Strokes: LE VIN D’ANJOU.

  I read aloud the first few lines: “Apres de nouvelles presque desesperees du roi, le bruit de sa convalescence commengait a se repandre dans le camp....” I couldn’t help smiling.

  Corso indicated his approval, inviting me to comment.

  “Without the slightest doubt,” I said, “this is by Alexandre Dumas pere. ‘The Anjou Wine’: chapter forty-something, I seem to remember, of The Three Musketeers.”

  “Forty-two,” confirmed Corso. “Chapter forty-two.”

  “Is it authentic? Dumas’s original manuscript?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I want you to tell me.”

  I shrugged slightly, reluctant to assume such a responsibility.

  “Why me?”

  It was a stupid question, the kind that only serves to gain time. It must have seemed like false modesty, because he suppressed a look of impatience.

  “You’re an expert,” he retorted, somewhat dryly. “As well as being Spain’s most influential literary critic, you know all there is to know about the nineteenth-century popular novel.”

  “You’re forgetting Stendhal.”

  “Not at all. I read your translation of The Charterhouse of Parma.”

  “Indeed. I am honored.”

  “Don’t be. I preferred Consuelo Berges’s version.”

  We both smiled. I continued to find him likable, and I was beginning to form an idea of his style.

  “Do you know any of my books?” I asked.

  “Some. Lupin, Raffles, Rocambole, Holmes, for instance. And your studies of Valle-Inclan, Baroja, and Galdos. Also Dumas: the Shadow of a Giant And your essay on The Count of Monte Cristo.”

  “Have you read all those?”

  “No. I work with books, but that doesn’t mean I have to read them.”

  He was lying. Or at least exaggerating. The man was conscientious: before coming to see me, he’d looked at everything about me he could lay his hands on. He was one of those compulsive readers who have devoured anything in print from a most tender age—although it was highly unlikely that Corso’s childhood ever merited the term “tender.”

  “I understand,” I answered, just to say something.

  He frowned for a moment, wondering whether he’d forgotten anything. He took off his glasses, breathed on the lenses, and set about cleaning them with a very crumpled handkerchief, which he pulled from one of the bottomless pockets of his coat. However fragile the oversized coat made him appear, with his rodentlike incisors and calm expression Corso was as solid as a concrete block. His features were sharp and precise, full of angles. They framed alert eyes always ready to express an innocence dangerous for anyone who was taken in by it. At times, particularly when still, he seemed slower and clumsier than he really was. He looked vulnerable and defenseless: barmen gave him an extra drink on the house, men offered him cigarettes, and women wanted to adopt him on the spot. Later, when you realized what had happened, it was too late to catch him. He was running off in the distance, having scored another victory.

  Corso gestured with his glasses at the manuscript. “To return to Dumas. Surely a man who’s written five hundred pages about him ought to sense something familiar when faced with one of his original manuscripts.”

  With the reverence of a priest handling holy vestments I put a hand on the pages protected by plastic.

 
“I fear I’m going to disappoint you, but I don’t sense anything.”

  We both laughed, Corso in a peculiar way, almost under his breath, like someone who is not sure whether he and his companion are laughing at the same thing. An oblique, distant laugh, with a hint of insolence, the kind of laugh that lingers in the air after it stops. Even after its owner has been gone for a while.

  “Let’s take this a step at a time,” I went on. “Does the manuscript belong to you?”

  “I’ve already told you that it doesn’t. A client of mine has just acquired it, and he finds it strange that no one should have heard of this complete, original chapter of The Three Musketeers until now.... He wants it authenticated by an expert, so that’s what I’m working on.”

  “I’m surprised at your dealing with such a minor matter.” This was true. I’d heard of Corso before this meeting. “I mean, after all, nowadays Dumas ...”

  I let the sentence hang and smiled with the appropriate expression of bitter complicity. But Corso didn’t take up my invitation and stayed on the defensive. “The client’s a friend of mine,” he said evenly. “It’s a personal favor.”

  “I see, but I’m not sure that I can be of any help to you. I have seen some of the original manuscripts, and this one could be authentic. However, certifying it is another matter. For that you’d need a good graphologist... I know an excellent one in Paris, Achille Replinger. He owns a shop that specializes in autographs and historical documents, near Saint Germain des Pres. He’s an expert on nineteenth-century French writers, a charming man and a good friend of mine.” I pointed to one of the frames on the wall. “He sold me that Balzac letter many years ago. For a very high price.”

  I took out my datebook and copied the address for Corso on a card. He put the card in an old worn wallet full of notes and papers. Then he brought out a notepad and pencil from one of his coat pockets. The pencil had a chewed eraser at one end, like a schoolboy’s pencil.