There was a twelfth-century illuminated leaf from the book of Joshua that Max insisted she had to see. Her mind wandered back to the gold calligraphy on blue vellum and to her wish to hold that piece in her hands. She could see that the book of Joshua leaf was special; she was skeptical but not blind to the winged creature inked in blue dividing the columns of text. She let Max haggle, knowing that with a starting cost of $5,900, there was no amount of bargaining that would reduce the fee to something reasonable for a single sheet.
“Well,” she said when they walked off empty-handed. “There will be others.”
“What a thing to think. You don’t believe that?”
“Won’t there?” she said. “Hundreds of exhibitors here would disagree.”
“That piece is singular,” he said.
“Of course I understand that,” Liesl said.
He let it hang there. She knew he didn’t think she understood at all.
“Somewhere in France, eight hundred years ago, a Dominican monk labored over that piece,” Max said. To avoid a lecture about Dominican monks, she was willing to write him a check for the $5,900 from her own bank account.
“We’re responsible for the pieces that are singular,” he said, his hand back at his collar, always at that collar.
“Like the Plantin?” she asked. A lecture about the Plantin would still be a lecture, but it might be of use to her.
“Like the Plantin,” he agreed.
“How are you taking the loss? It must be a blow.”
“All right,” he said. “I feel powerless, but I’m a Catholic, so it’s a familiar feeling.”
“That’s funny,” Liesl said in a tone that made clear that it wasn’t, not really. “What were your plans for the Plantin? Exhibition? Digitization? Research?”
“You have a lot of questions,” he said.
A map seller in a newsboy cap pulled Max into a hug as they walked by. He expressed his sorrow at Christopher’s condition. He didn’t acknowledge Liesl. They walked on.
“I had no plans yet,” Max said when they were out of the map seller’s earshot. “I just wanted a chance to see it.”
“But you had a chance, didn’t you? During the acquisition? I’m certain that you and I talked about it when it first went missing. You inspected it before the purchase?”
Max crossed his arms over his chest.
“I did no such thing.”
“You’re responsible for religion collections.”
“Christopher didn’t ask me to weigh in,” Max said. “He went to the auction alone, and he handled the acquisition alone.”
“Why didn’t you say that? In our meeting, when I first asked?”
“I didn’t realize I was under investigation.”
She wondered about Max, and then she felt guilty for wondering about Max, but there was nothing she could do to keep from wondering. She wished she could remove the thought from her mind, but the truth was that Max was a man who had made certain promises to the church and had failed to keep them. She didn’t know the details, but the broad strokes were enough to make an impression.
“Better to offer all the information you have from the outset, though, isn’t it?”
“I’ve found that isn’t always the case,” he said. She wondered if a man who broke those big promises would not violate other types of trust.
They stopped for a coffee at the stand on the far end of the exhibition hall. It was watery and served in maroon paper cups. The aisles of the fair were properly full now. The professional collectors and cultural institutions already halfway through their days, the moneyed private collectors resting their elbows on glass cases as far as the eye could see, and the spaces in between occupied by the garage-sale set in their cargo shorts, looking for a treasure for less than the cost of a tank of gas and oblivious to how much the book dealers disdained them. They were all so old, Liesl thought. Was she that old?
“There wasn’t any point where you saw or handled or were alone with the Plantin?”
“No. There wasn’t any point. You can ask Dan if you like, since it’s obvious that this is an investigation. Just make it clear that you’re looking to humiliate me, not exonerate me. He can confirm that I never got the chance to help with the Plantin, because he was delighted by the idea of my exclusion.”
Liesl slid in closer, rested her fingers on her pursed lips, thinking that this disclosure that he was embarrassed to have been excluded was as open as Max had ever been with her. Max was ramrod straight, eyes on his empty cup instead of her, but Liesl wanted to believe that she’d be able to tell if he was lying. And she didn’t think he was.