The Witches' Hammer Read online

  Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  The Witches’ Hammer

  For Arnold Cooper

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  It came as no surprise to those who knew him…

  Chapter 2

  That morning, I had an appointment in Harlem, to gather…

  Chapter 3

  Detective Monahan opened the library door, allowing me to pass…

  Chapter 4

  Detective Monahan departed, leaving behind a forensic team to search…

  Chapter 5

  Two weeks later, a memorial was held for my father…

  Chapter 6

  Simon Lovelock’s bookshop was located in a dilapidated building, above…

  Chapter 7

  “How’s Mr. Stephen?” Nellie inquired as she and I continued…

  Chapter 8

  We took a cab to Lovelock Rare Books. Stephen followed…

  Chapter 9

  “Beatrice, my dear, I’m delighted you called,” Father Morton said…

  Chapter 10

  The next morning, Stephen took me to the New York…

  Chapter 11

  I called Mr. Schroeder in Oklahoma that evening and he…

  Chapter 12

  The trip to Oklahoma had been useful. I had a…

  Chapter 13

  We arrived in Glenn Falls just after noon. It was…

  Chapter 14

  The next day, Stephen went to the German consulate while…

  Chapter 15

  I walked home, thinking a lot about Simon Lovelock and…

  Chapter 16

  I thought about Stephen and Lovelock and Díaz on the…

  Chapter 17

  On the flight to Rome, my anxiety mounted as I…

  Chapter 18

  “At what hotel are you staying?” the count asked me.

  Chapter 19

  The count picked up a rusty hurricane lamp that lay…

  Chapter 20

  I showered many times and in the little hotel room,…

  Chapter 21

  The next morning, I was awakened by the telephone. Simon…

  Chapter 22

  I awoke to the sound of dripping water. I was…

  Chapter 23

  I huddled against the wall for warmth. I couldn’t fall…

  Chapter 24

  Once again, they threw me back down into the underground…

  Chapter 25

  I sat alone near the back of the half-empty Greyhound…

  Chapter 26

  Sister Marleu supplied me with a small suitcase filled with…

  Chapter 27

  Two days later, I was standing in front of a…

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Epigraph

  In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

  Ecclesiastes 1:18

  The Malleus Maleficarum, or The Witches’ Hammer, is a lawbook published in 1486. It was accompanied by a papal bull, sanctifying it with supreme Church authority. For over two hundred years, the Malleus held sway over the courts in both Catholic and Protestant Christendom. Solidifying papal power, it was almost as popular as the Bible in its day and served as a basis for the Inquisition.

  Chapter 1

  It came as no surprise to those who knew him that my father, John O’Connell, named me for a character in a book. He called me Beatrice, after Dante’s guide in The Divine Comedy. A surgeon by profession, my father loved books: They were the passion that shaped his life. His library of rare books and manuscripts was well known to those in the field. Over the years, he had assiduously cultivated what he called his “little garden of knowledge,” using expert advice and his own shrewd instincts to form an eclectic but first-rate collection. Even at the beginning of his career, when some purchases were a financial strain on the family, my father could not resist a book that struck his fancy. Unlike most other collectors, who sell their finds or trade them up for rarer, more valuable ones, having bought a book, Dad never let it out of his possession. To him, books were friends; once acquired, they were his for life.

  The man most instrumental in helping my father form his collection was Giuseppe Antonelli, a renowned Italian book dealer, who sold him some outstanding treasures over the years, including a Book of Hours illuminated by del Cherico, Niclaus Jenson’s incunabulum of Pliny’s Historia naturalis, printed on vellum, and a complete set of the Divina commedia, with illustrations, published in 1804 by the master printer Giambattista Bodoni.

  Dad met Giuseppe Antonelli in Rome in 1964. He liked to recall the day he wandered into a tiny rare-book shop on the Via Monserrato, where a volume of Plutarch’s Lives on display in the window caught his eye. He bought the book on the spot and entered into a lengthy discussion with the proprietor, who spoke perfect English with a light Italian accent.

  “Giuseppe and I recognized each other immediately, like Rosicrucians,” Dad would say later. “We both knew a bookman when we saw one.”

  In the ensuing years, the relationship between the two men evolved into something more than that of client and dealer. They forged a genuine friendship with each other, based upon their mutual appreciation and love of rare books. Whenever Signor Antonelli visited New York, he paid a call on us in our town house overlooking the East River on Beekman Place, a quiet neighborhood, well away from the bustle of city life. Our four-story brownstone is one of a number of old-fashioned houses on the charming tree-lined block. Sometimes Antonelli brought with him a parcel of wares he thought might be of interest to my father. Dad, in turn, took pleasure in showing Antonelli his recent acquisitions. On occasion, a curator in the field or another bookman was invited to dine with the two gentlemen. Afterward, I remember how they would sit in the library, drinking brandy, smoking cigars, trading book stories, until long past midnight.

  Giuseppe Antonelli was a wiry little man. Angular cheekbones, a prominent nose, and meticulous grooming gave him a striking profile. His beady black eyes, sparkling with inquisitiveness, were forever darting about in search of an object or a person to pin with their penetrating gaze. My father, on the other hand, was big and stocky. His large features and gentle pale-blue eyes were dominated by a mane of white hair. A ready smile and a shambling, cozy appearance contributed to his aura of strength and intelligence.

  Signor Antonelli always wore a starched white shirt, a pinstriped suit, cut in the English style, and highly polished black shoes. He sported a cane, the handle of which was a gold hawk’s head with an elongated beak. The sculpted bird had red ruby eyes and I was a little frightened of it as a child. Antonelli presented a marked contrast to my Dad, whose clothes, casual or formal, never seemed to fit him.

  Even in their manner, the two men could not have seemed more dissimilar. Antonelli maintained a somewhat stiff, formal edge, while my father was naturally outgoing and friendly. However, there was an underlying remoteness in them both, which I believe expressed itself in their obsessive love of books and the solitary life of reading.

  In later years, Signor Antonelli, semiretired, made fewer visits to the United States. However, he and my father continued to correspond. A bachelor, Antonelli filled his days with his studies and the company of a few close friends, while Dad enjoyed the life of a family man. When my mother, Elizabeth, Dad’s wife of thirty-seven years, had died, two years before, Signor Antonelli sent his friend an incunabulum of Latin meditations on the life of Christ as a remembrance. Dad was a surgeon and he took a rather dim view of religion and its supposed consolations, but he much appreciated his old
friend’s gesture.

  In the wake of my mother’s death Dad grew pretty depressed, rattling around alone in his big house. Neither his work nor his library seemed to fill the void created by her passing. I, too, missed my mother very much. My own marriage had ended in divorce the previous year and I found myself drifting closer to my father because we comforted one another greatly. Eventually, I gave up my apartment and moved back home with him. We said it was only temporary, but as the days drifted on the arrangement suited us so well that no effort was made to change it.

  One day, my father announced that Signor Antonelli was coming to New York, after a four-year hiatus. As the day approached, I watched him anticipate his old friend’s visit with growing impatience, and I was pretty sure that his agitation somehow involved a book. I hadn’t seen him quite so jumpy since he’d discovered a copy of the rare and valuable Bay Psalm Book, one of the earliest examples of Colonial printing, at a rummage sale outside Boston over fifteen years earlier.

  Dad was often secretive about the books he acquired, or was thinking of acquiring, particularly if they had an odd provenance. Mom had learned early in their marriage not to intrude upon his collector’s mind, and she had taught me likewise. When he’d get into one of his moods, he’d retreat to his library after work and shut himself in for hours. During those periods, my mother, who had a wry streak, used to joke that Dad was “away with his mistresses” but that luckily for her, most of them were “several hundred years old.”

  A few days before Signor Antonelli was scheduled to arrive, my father spent increasingly more time alone in his favorite room. Insisting on early suppers, he didn’t linger over his coffee, listen to classical music, or discuss the news of the day with me as he usually did. He excused himself from the table abruptly and retreated to his library for the rest of the night, the door always closed. When I asked him why he was being so secretive, he responded evasively.

  I knew better than to press him. Encroaching old age and the recent sorrows of life had deepened and darkened all his moods, and I decided it was best to let this one simply run its course. I just went on about my own business, knowing that sooner or later he would tell me what was going on.

  Finally, the day of Antonelli’s visit came. I felt my father’s spirits lift when the doorbell rang promptly at seven-thirty that evening and Signor Antonelli, still the dapper dresser, still sporting the same hawk’s-head cane, walked through the front door.

  “Giuseppe! Welcome, welcome!” Dad cried warmly, shaking hands with the gaunt old gentleman.

  “My dear John, how good it is to see you! É cara Beatrice,” he said with a stiff smile and I figured it was because he was a bit taken aback by my appearance. Well, I was older, after all, and I was never one to pay too much attention to my looks.

  The last time he’d seen me, I was wearing my brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and I still had a fairly girlish face. But now my hair was shorter and I looked my thirty-two years of age, if not older. I didn’t wear any makeup or bother much about clothes. I just wasn’t all that interested in my appearance. The only feature of mine that I quite liked were my eyes, which were large and blue, like my father’s.

  “Giuseppe, I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to your visit,” Dad said as I led the two men upstairs. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Nor you, John.”

  “No? I feel old. We’ll have a drink before dinner, shall we?” he said, affectionately patting his old friend on the back as they climbed the stairs in tandem.

  In the living room, I fixed Dad and Signor Antonelli scotches and poured myself a glass of white wine. I sat by silently, listening to them as they entered into polite small talk. I stared at Antonelli—who looked jaundiced and juiceless, like a dried lemon of a man—casually wondering if he’d ever had a passionate relationship with anyone. He seemed so self-contained and cerebral.

  Signor Antonelli allowed as how New York had changed for the worse since his last trip. He said his regular hotel was under new management, which, not knowing him, took no pains to accord him the special treatment he was used to. Dad, in turn, spoke briefly of the escalating turmoil in the world, touching upon the political situation here and abroad. The four years between the two old friends quickly melted away, however, and the conversation took a more personal turn.

  “John,” Antonelli said, “please let me say again how sorry I am about Elizabeth. She was a lovely person, very simpatica. I remember her with great fondness.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Giuseppe…Yes, it’s god-awfully lonely here without her. Thank God for Beatrice,” my father said, beaming at me. “She’s moved back in with me for a while. Gave up her apartment to be with her old man, didn’t you, hon? Taking care of your dad now.”

  I gave him a little smile.

  “Ah, so you and your husband live here?” Signor Antonelli asked.

  “No, actually…I’m divorced,” I said.

  “Oh, I am so sorry,” Signor Antonelli said with an air of concern. “I never met your husband, but he looked like a fine fellow from the little wedding picture your mother so kindly sent me.”

  I recalled the small marriage ceremony, which had taken place in that very room over five years earlier, remembering it as the happiest day of my life. However, my thoughts quickly tumbled through the dissolution of the union and the painful breakup we had.

  “It was for the best,” I said. “Anyway, I was looking for another place when my mother died, and Daddy seemed so lonely here in this big old house that I thought, well, why not just move back in here for a while until things get a little more settled?”

  “She’s like the daughter who came for dinner. I can’t get rid of her!” Dad joked.

  “I couldn’t very well leave you to rattle around here all by yourself,” I said.

  “She’s a devoted daughter. She’s here because she knows I need her.”

  “Children must be a great comfort in one’s old age,” Signor Antonelli said with a wistful sigh. “I do not regret never having married. But I do regret never having had a child.”

  “So what are you up to, Giuseppe? Enjoying your retirement?” my father asked.

  “Well, as you know, John, in my profession, one never really retires. It is true I have sold my shop. But I continue to deal privately for a few very special clients, among them you, my dear friend.” He toasted my father with his glass of scotch. “In fact, I am very, very anxious to see this mysterious book about which you have written to me.”

  “I haven’t told Beatrice anything about it yet.”

  “Then it must be very mysterious indeed!” cried Antonelli with mock seriousness.

  “Oh, you know Daddy. He’s like that about his books sometimes. I’m used to it.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been pretty distracted for the last few days, haven’t I, Bea?…But she understands me,” he said with an affectionate wink.

  Just then, the clock on the mantelpiece chimed eight.

  “Come on, let’s eat,” my father said, putting down his glass decisively. “I’ll tell you the whole story at dinner.”

  Signor Antonelli and I followed my Dad downstairs to the dining room, where the round table in front of the bay window facing the tiny back garden was set for supper. The men helped themselves to the cold buffet laid out on the sideboard while I lit the candles around the room.

  “Please excuse our informality,” Dad said, pouring his friend a glass of red wine. “I let the cook go when Liz died, so it’s a little bit catch-as-catch-can.”

  “But this is delicious!” Antonelli exclaimed, forking in a bite of vitello tonnato. “Who made it?”

  “I did,” I said as I joined them at the table with a plate of food.

  “You are a marvelous cook. This is just the sort of supper I like.”

  I was pleased. I enjoyed cooking for my father even though he seldom noticed the finer points of my efforts. Dad didn’t care that much about food. “Fuel for the engine”
is what he called it and, indeed, how he thought about even the tastiest delicacies.

  “I must say, it is lovely to be in a proper house rather than an apartment. What one misses in a city is space.” Antonelli said, looking out onto the enclosed garden, where twilight was descending. “It is so relaxing and comfortable here—not at all like being in New York.”

  “It’s really too big for me now, even with Bea here. But I can’t leave it on account of my library.”

  “Not just because of the library, Daddy. All your memories are here. You said so yourself. Mother’s here.”

  “Yes, you’re right. Liz loved this house. Anyway, it’d be hell to pack up all those years of living. I don’t know what you’re gonna do when your old man croaks, Bea.”

  “Daddy, please. I can’t stand when you say things like that.” It pained me greatly to think that one day I might be without him, the only family I had left.

  “I’m leaving the library to Beatrice,” he went on. “She’ll decide what she wants to do with it.”

  “Signor Antonelli, you can see this is a subject I hate,” I said.

  “But rest assured my father’s library will remain intact. It will go to a public library or a university with my father’s name on it, so people can know what a wonderful collector he is.”

  “With one little exception, of course,” my father said.

  “And what is that?” Signor Antonelli inquired.

  “In fact, it’s an incunabulum you sold me. The Roman de la Rose. She’s always fancied it, haven’t you, Bea?”

  I nodded.

  “Ah, the poem of courtly love,” Antonelli said. “A very good choice.” He looked more closely at me as if divining for the first time a romantic streak in me.