reported the incident to any of the other people he corresponded with.”
“Did he?”
“He may have, but I couldn’t turn up anything. They have some of his papers at Columbia, and I spent a few hours going through them with a very helpful librarian, and I found plenty of references to Chandler and Hammett, but nothing to confirm Chandler’s trip east, let alone his second meeting with Hammett.”
“I don’t suppose he mentioned Fontenoy, either.”
“’Fraid not.”
“Maybe Ross dreamed the whole thing up.”
“That occurred to me,” I admitted. “It also struck me that I was searching in a coal mine for a black cat that wasn’t there. I gave up, finally, and months later I started seeing a woman with a mad passion for the England of tea cozies and corpses in the gazebo, and I heard something about Cuttleford House, so I called them up and asked them to send me a brochure.”
“And they did.”
“And they did,” I agreed, “and it was pretty impressive. I was going to show it to you earlier, but I can’t remember what I did with it.”
“That’s okay, Bern. I’m going anyway, so what do I need with the brochure?”
“I almost took the same position. After a quick glance I knew it was the perfect place to take Lettice, so why bother reading the history of the place? But it was interestingly written, and business was slow that day.”
“For a change.”
“Right. So I started reading, and they mentioned the various hands the property had passed through, and it turned out that a man named Forrest Fontenoy had owned it for a couple of years. The chronology’s a little uncertain, but he definitely would have been the owner from the time The Big Sleep was published until the time Hammett was accepted into the United States Army.”
“That does a lot for Ross’s credibility, doesn’t it, Bern?”
“I’d say so. I checked the Times Index and found out a little more about Fontenoy. He was married to one of the Mellon heirs, and he had some family money of his own. He backed a few Broadway shows, and was a fairly substantial supporter of leftist causes in the years immediately preceding the war.”
“That would connect him to Hellman. The theater and the politics.”
“It would certainly explain how they happened to know each other. But none of that matters. The real question is what happened to the book.”
“The Big Sleep.”
“Right. Here’s what I think happened. Chandler, tight as a tick, whipped out the book, wrote something heartfelt, and presented it to Hammett. Hammett, whom everybody describes as an extremely polite man, took it as if it were the key to the Kingdom of Heaven. Then Chandler went home with the Coxes, and Hammett and Hellman went back to Hardscrabble Farm, or drove all the way home to New York.”
“And the book stayed behind.”
“That’s my guess.”
“Why, Bern? Wouldn’t Hammett take it with him?”
“He might,” I said, “if he thought of it. By the time he left Cuttleford House, he was probably too drunk to remember or too hungover to care.” I held out my hands. “Look, I can’t prove any of this. Maybe he took it home with him, read a couple of chapters, and tossed it in the trash. Maybe he lent it to somebody who passed it on to somebody else who gave it to the church rummage sale. Maybe it’s rotting away in somebody’s basement or attic even as we speak.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“No, I don’t. I think he left it on a table in Cuttleford House, accidentally or on purpose, and I think one of the maids stuck it on a shelf in the library. They’ve got a classic formal library—there’s a photograph of it in the brochure. Shelves clear up to the twelve-foot ceiling.”
“And that’s where you think it is.”
“I think it might be. Oh, a lot of people have been in that house since then. Monks, drunks, workmen, guests. Any one of them could have picked up The Big Sleep and walked off with it.”
“Bernie, it’s over fifty years.”
“I know.”
“I don’t suppose any of them are still alive, are they? I know Hammett and Chandler aren’t, or Lillian Hellman. What about Coxe and Ross?”
“Gone.”
“And Fontenoy and his wife?”
“Long gone, and I don’t know what became of their children.”
“Over fifty years. How could the book still be there?”
“The house is still there. And so’s the library. I saw the photo in the brochure, and those shelves are chock-full of books, and I don’t think the Eglantines