Mystery, Inc. Read online

  Of course, before embarking up the coast to Seabrook, New Hampshire, in my (ordinary- seeming, unostentatious) vehicle, attaché case on the seat beside me, and plan for the elimination of a major rival memorized in every detail, I did some minimal research into my subject who has the reputation, in bookselling and antiquarian circles, of being a person who is both friendly and social and yet values his privacy highly; it is held to be somewhat perverse that many of Neuhaus’s male friends have never met his wife, who has been a public school teacher in Glastonberry, N.H. for many years. (Dinner invitations to Neuhaus and his wife, from residents in Seabrook, are invariably declined “with regret.”) Neuhaus’s wife is said to be his high school sweetheart whom he first met in 1965 and married in 1977, in Clarksburg, N.C. So many years—faithful to one woman! It may be laudable in many men, or it may bespeak a failure of imagination and courage, but in Aaron Neuhaus it strikes me as exasperating, like Neuhaus’s success with his bookstore, as if the man has set out to make the rest of us appear callow.

  What I particularly resent is the fact that Aaron Neuhaus was born to a well-to-do North Carolina family, in 1951; having inherited large property holdings in Clarksburg County, N.C., as well as money held for him in trust until the age of twenty-one, he has been able to finance his bookstore(s) without the fear of bankruptcy that haunts the rest of us.

  Nor was Neuhaus obliged to attend a large, sprawling, land-grant university as I did, in dreary, flat Ohio, but went instead to the prestigious, white-column’d University of Virginia, where he majored in such dilettantish subjects as classics and philosophy. After graduation Neuhaus remained at Virginia, earning a master’s degree in English with a thesis titled The Aesthetics of Deception: Ratiocination, Madness, and the Genius of Edgar Allan Poe, which was eventually published by the University of Virginia Press. The young Neuhaus might have gone on to become a university professor, or a writer, but chose instead to apprentice himself to an uncle who was a (renowned, much-respected) antiquarian bookseller in Washington, D.C. Eventually, in 1980, having learned a good deal from his uncle, Neuhaus purchased a bookstore on Bleecker Street, New York City, which he managed to revitalize; in 1982, with the sale of this bookstore, he purchased a shop in Seabrook, N.H., which he renovated and refashioned as a chic, upscale, yet “historic” bookstore in the affluent seaside community. All that I have learned about Neuhaus as a businessman is that he is both “pragmatic” and “visionary”—an annoying contradiction. What I resent is that Neuhaus seems to have weathered financial crises that have sent other booksellers into despair and bankruptcy, whether as a result of shrewd business dealings or—more likely—the unfair advantage an independently well-to-do bookseller has over booksellers like myself with a thin profit margin and a fear of the future. Though I do not hate Aaron Neuhaus, I do not approve of such an unfair advantage—it is contrary to Nature. By now, Neuhaus might have been out of business, forced to scramble to earn a living in the aftermath of, for instance, those hurricanes of recent years that have devastated the Atlantic coastline and ruined many small businesses.

  But if Mystery, Inc. suffers storm damage, or its proprietor loses money, it does not matter—there is the unfair advantage of the well-to-do over the rest of us.

  I want to accuse Aaron Neuhaus: “How do you think you would do if our ‘playing field’ were level—if you couldn’t bankroll your bookstore in hard times, as most of us can’t? Do you think you would be selling Picasso lithographs upstairs, or first editions of Raymond Chandler; do you think you would have such beautiful floor-to-ceiling shelves, leather chairs and sofas? Do you think you would be such a naïve, gracious host, opening your store to a ginger-whiskered predator?”

  It is difficult to feel indignation over Aaron Neuhaus, however, for the man is so damned congenial. Other rival booksellers haven’t been nearly so pleasant, or, if pleasant, not nearly so well-informed and intelligent about their trade, which has made my task less of a challenge in the past.

  The thought comes to me—Maybe we could be friends? Partners? If …

  It is just 7 P.M. In the near distance a church bell tolls—unless it is the dull crashing surf of the Atlantic a quarter-mile away.

  Aaron Neuhaus excuses himself, and goes to speak with his young woman clerk. Without seeming to be listening I hear him tell her that she can go home now, he will close up the store himself tonight.

  Exactly as I have planned. But then, such bait has been dangled before.

  Like any predator I am feeling excited—there is a pleasurable surge of adrenaline at the prospect of what will come next, very likely within the hour.

  Timing is of the essence! All predators/hunters know this.

  But I feel, too, a stab of regret. Seeing how the young blond woman smiles at Aaron Neuhaus, it is clear that she reveres her employer—perhaps loves him? Laura is in her mid-twenties, possibly a college student working part-time. Though it seems clear that there is no (sexual, romantic) intimacy between them, she might admire Neuhaus as an older man, a fatherly presence in her life; it will be terribly upsetting to her if something happens to him … When I acquire Mystery, Inc., I will certainly want to spend time in this store. It is not far-fetched to imagine that I might take Aaron Neuhaus’s place in the young woman’s life.

  As the new owner of Mystery, Inc., I will not be wearing these gingery-bristling whiskers. Nor these cumbersome black plastic-framed glasses. I will look younger, and more attractive. I have been told that I resemble the great film actor James Mason … Perhaps I will wear Harris tweeds, and red cashmere sweater vests. Perhaps I will go on a strenuous diet, jogging along the ocean each morning, and will lose fifteen pounds. I will commiserate with Laura—I did not know your late employer but ‘Aaron Neuhaus’ was the most highly regarded of booksellers—and gentlemen. I am so very sorry for your loss, Laura!

  Certainly I will want to rent living quarters in Seabrook, or even purchase property in this beautiful spot. At the present time, I move from place to place—like a hermit crab that occupies the empty shells of other sea creatures with no fixed home of its own. After acquiring an old, quasi-legendary mystery bookstore in Providence, Rhode Island, a few years ago, I lived in Providence for a while overseeing the store, until I could entrust a manager to oversee it; after acquiring a similar store in Westport, Connecticut, I lived there for a time; most recently I’ve been living in Boston, trying to revive a formerly prestigious mystery bookstore on Beacon Street. One would think that Beacon Street would be an excellent location for a quality mystery bookstore, and so it is—in theory; in reality, there is too much competition from other bookstores in the area. And of course there is too much competition from online sales, as from the damned, unspeakable Amazon.

  I would like to ask Aaron Neuhaus how he deals with book theft, the plague of my urban-area stores, but I know the answer would be dismaying—Neuhaus’s affluent customers hardly need to steal.

  When Aaron Neuhaus returns, having sent the young woman home, he graciously asks if I would like to see his office upstairs. And would I like a cup of cappuccino?

  “As you see, we don’t have a café here. People have suggested that a café would help book sales but I’ve resisted—I’m afraid I am just too old-fashioned. But for special customers, we do have coffee and cappuccino—and it’s very good, I can guarantee.”

  Of course, I am delighted. My pleasurable surprise at my host’s invitation is not feigned.

  In life, there are predators, and prey. A predator may require bait, and prey may mistake bait for sustenance.

  In my leather attaché case is an arsenal of subtle weaponry. It is a truism that the most skillful murder is one that isn’t detected as murder but simply natural death.

  To this end, I have cultivated toxins as the least cumbersome and showy of murder weapons, as they are, properly used, the most reliable. I am too fastidious for bloodshed, or for any sort of violence; it has always been my feeling that violence is vulgar. I abhor loud noises, and witnes
sing the death throes of an innocent person would be traumatic for me. Ideally, I am nowhere near my prey when he (or she) is stricken by death, but miles away, and hours or even days later. There is never any apparent connection between the subject of my campaign and me—of course, I am far too shrewd to leave “clues” behind. In quasipublic places like bookstores, fingerprints are general and could never be identified or traced; but if necessary, I take time to wipe my prints with a cloth soaked in alcohol. I am certainly not obsessive or compulsive, but I am thorough. Since I began my (secret, surreptitious) campaign of eliminating rival booksellers in the New England area nine years ago, I have utilized poisoned hypodermic needles; poisoned candles; poisoned (Cuban) cigars; poisoned sherry, liqueur, and whiskey; poisoned macaroons; and poisoned chocolates— all with varying degrees of success.

  That is, in each case my campaign was successful. But several campaigns required more than one attempt and exacted a strain on nerves already strained by economic anxieties. In one unfortunate instance, after I’d managed to dispose of the bookseller, the man’s heirs refused to sell the property though I’d made them excellent offers … It is a sickening thing to think that one has expended so much energy in a futile project and that a wholly innocent party has died in vain; nor did I have the heart to return to that damned bookstore in Montclair, New Jersey, and take on the arrogant heirs as they deserved.

  The method I have selected to dispatch the proprietor of Mystery, Inc. is one that has worked well for me in the past: chocolate truffles injected with a rare poison extracted from a Central American flowering plant bearing small red fruits like cranberries. The juice of these berries is so highly toxic, you dare not touch the outside of the berries; if the juice gets onto your skin it will burn savagely, and if it gets into your eyes—the very iris is horribly burnt away, and total blindness follows. In preparing the chocolates, which I carefully injected with a hypodermic needle, I wore not one but two pairs of surgical gloves; the operation was executed in a deep sink in a basement that could then be flooded with disinfectant and hot water. About three-quarters of the luxury chocolates have been injected with poison and the others remain untouched in their original Lindt box, in case the bearer of the luxury chocolates is obliged to sample some portion of his gift.

  This particular toxin, though very potent, is said to have virtually no taste, and it has no color discernible to the naked eye. As soon as it enters the blood stream and is taken to the brain, it begins a virulent and irrevocable assault upon the central nervous system: within minutes the subject will begin to experience tremors and mild paralysis; consciousness will fade to a comatose state; by degrees, over a period of several hours, the body’s organs cease to function; at first slowly, then rapidly, the lungs collapse and the heart ceases to beat; finally, the brain is struck blank and is annihilated. If there is an observer it will appear to him—or her—as though the afflicted one has had a heart attack or stroke; the skin is slightly clammy, not fevered; and there is no expression of pain or even discomfort, for the toxin is a paralytic, and thus merciful. There are no wrenching stomach pains, hideous vomiting as in the case of cyanide or poisons that affect the gastric-intestinal organs; stomach contents, if autopsied, will yield no information. The predator can observe his prey ingesting the toxin and can escape well in time to avoid witnessing even mild discomfort; it is advised that the predator take away with him his poisoned gift, so that there will be no detection. (Though this particular poison is all but undetectable by coroners and pathologists. Only a chemist who knew exactly what he was testing for could discover and identify this rare poison.) The aromatic lavender poisoned candles I’d left with my single female victim, a gratingly flirtatious bookseller in New Hope, Pennsylvania, had to work their dark magic in my absence and may have sickened, or even killed, more victims than were required … No extra poisoned cigars should be left behind, of course; and poisoned alcoholic drinks should be borne prudently away. Though it isn’t likely that the poison would be discovered, there is no point in being careless.

  My gracious host Aaron Neuhaus takes me to the fourth floor of Mystery, Inc. in a small elevator at the rear of the store that moves with the antique slowness of a European elevator; by breathing deeply, and trying not to think of the terrible darkness of that long-ago closet in which my cruel brother locked me, I am able to withstand a mild onslaught of claustrophobia. Only a thin film of perspiration on my forehead might betray my physical distress, if Aaron Neuhaus were to take particular notice; but, in his affably entertaining way, he is telling me about the history of Mystery, Inc.—“Quite a fascinating history, in fact. Someday, I must write a memoir along the lines of the classic My Life in Crime.”

  On the fourth floor Aaron Neuhaus asks me if I can guess where his office door is—and I am baffled at first, staring from one wall to another, for there is no obvious sign of a door. Only by calculating where an extra room must be, in architectural terms, can I guess correctly: between reproductions of Goya’s Black Paintings, unobtrusively set in the wall, is a panel that exactly mimics the room’s white walls that Aaron Neuhaus pushes inward with a boyish smile.

  “Welcome to my sanctum sanctorum! There is another, purely utilitarian office downstairs, where the staff works. Very few visitors are invited here.”

  I feel a frisson of something like dread, and the deliciousness of dread, passing so close to Goya’s icons of Hell.

  But Aaron Neuhaus’s office is warmly lighted and beautifully furnished, like the drawing room of an English country gentleman; there is even a small fire blazing in a fireplace. Hardwood floor, partly covered in an old, well-worn yet still elegant Chinese carpet. One wall is solid books, but very special, well-preserved antiquarian books; other walls are covered in framed art-works including an oil painting by Albert Pinkham Ryder that must have been a study for the artist’s famous “The Race Track” (“Death on a Pale Horse”)—that dark-hued, ominous and yet beautiful oil painting by the most eccentric of nineteenth-century artists. A single high window overlooks, at a little distance, the rough waters of the Atlantic that appear in moonlight like shaken foil—the very view of the ocean I’d imagined Aaron Neuhaus might have.

  Neuhaus’s desk is made of dark, durable mahogany, with many drawers and pigeonholes; his chair is an old-fashioned swivel chair, with a well-worn crimson cushion. The desk top is comfortably cluttered with papers, letters, galleys, books; on it are a Tiffany lamp of exquisite colored glass and a life-sized carved ebony raven—no doubt a replica of Poe’s Raven. (On the wall above the desk is a daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe looking pale-skinned and dissolute, with melancholy eyes and drooping mustache; the caption is Edgar Allan Poe Creator of C. Auguste Dupin 1841.)

  Unsurprisingly, Neuhaus uses fountain pens, not ballpoint; he has an array of colored pencils, and an old-fashioned eraser. There is even a brass letter-opener in the shape of a dagger. On such a desk, Neuhaus’s state-ofthe- art console computer appears out of place as a sleek, synthetic monument in an historic graveyard.

  “Please sit, Charles! I will start the cappuccino machine and hope the damned thing will work. It is very Italian—temperamental.”

  I take a seat in a comfortable, well-worn leather chair facing Neuhaus’s desk and with a view of the fireplace. I have brought my attaché case with the brass initials CB, to rest on my knees. Neuhaus fusses with his cappuccino machine, which is on a table behind his desk; he prefers cappuccino made with Bolivian coffee and skim milk, he says. “I have to confess to a mild addiction. There’s a Starbucks in town but their cappuccino is nothing like mine.”

  Am I nervous? Pleasurably nervous? At the moment, I would prefer a glass of sherry to cappuccino!

  My smile feels strained, though I am sure Aaron Neuhaus finds it affable, innocent. It is one of my stratagems to ply a subject with questions, to deflect any possible suspicion away from me, and Neuhaus enjoys answering my questions which are intelligent and well-informed, yet not overly intelligent and well-informed
. The bookseller has not the slightest suspicion that he is dealing with an ambitious rival.

  He is ruefully telling me that everyone who knew him, including an antiquarian bookseller uncle in Washington, D.C., thought it was a very naïve notion to try to sell works of art in a bookstore in New Hampshire—“But I thought I would give myself three or four years, as an experiment. And it has turned out surprisingly well, especially my online sales.”

  Online sales. These are the sales that particularly cut into my own. Politely, I ask Neuhaus how much of his business is now online?

  Neuhaus seems surprised by my question. Is it too personal? Too—professional? I am hoping he will attribute such a question to the naïveté of Charles Brockden.

  His reply is curious—“In useless, beautiful art-works, as in books, values wax and wane according to some unknown and unpredictable algorithm.”

  This is a striking if evasive remark. It is somehow familiar to me, and yet—I can’t recall why. I must be smiling inanely at Aaron Neuhaus, not knowing how to reply. Useless, beautiful … Algorithm …

  Waiting for the cappuccino to brew, Neuhaus adds another log to the fire and prods it with a poker. What a bizarre gargoyle, the handle of the poker! In tarnished brass, a peevish grinning imp. Neuhaus shows it to me with a smile—“I picked this up at an estate sale in Blue Hill, Maine, a few summers ago. Curious, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed, yes.”

  I am wondering why Aaron Neuhaus has shown this demonic little face to me.

  Such envy I’ve been feeling in this cozy yet so beautifully furnished sanctum santorum! It is painful to recall my own business offices, such as they are, utilitarian and drab, with nothing sacred about them. Outdated computers, ubiquitous fluorescent lights, charmless furniture inherited from bygone tenants. Often in a bookstore of mine the business office is also a storage room crammed with filing cabinets, packing crates, even brooms and mops, plastic buckets and step-ladders, and a lavatory in a corner. Everywhere, stacks of books rising from the floor like stalagmites. How ashamed I would be if Aaron Neuhaus were to see one of those!