The Book of Air and Shadows

not lost. I will be happy to meet this Bulstrode and tell him what I think of his sly tricks. Let me begin with the transcription of the cipher first. It should not take too long. Will you stay?”
    “No, I have to get back to work. I don’t know a lot about crypto but maybe it’s a simple substitution. They couldn’t have been all that sophisticated back then.”
    “Oh, I think you would be surprised. There are ciphers in French of the ancien régime that have never been broken. Still, we could be lucky.”
    “Who’s this cipher expert you mentioned?”
    “Oh, Klim? He is a Polish person too, but a more recent immigrant. He was a cryptanalyst with the WSW in Warsaw, that is, military counterintelligence. Now he drives a hearse. If you leave me alone now, I will have this done in a little bit. And don’t feel too bad about yourself, Albert. There was a woman involved, after all, and you are still young.”
    Feeling as old as Fanny, however, Crosetti slumped out of the library and took the Madison bus uptown to the bookstore. There was a new woman working there, Pamela, this one genuinely ex-Barnard: short, earnestly intellectual, attractive, well-turned out, engaged to someone on Wall Street. It was as if Carolyn Rolly had never been, except that occasionally Glaser would mention that she had vanished without telling him what she had done with the prints from the Churchill
Voyages.
When Crosetti entered the shop today, however, Glaser hailed him and ushered him into the little office he kept in the rear of the shop.
    “You’ll be interested to know that Rolly has surfaced,” Glaser announced. “Take a look at this.”
    He handed Crosetti a brown envelope with the slick crinkly feel that announced it as foreign. It had a British stamp and a London postmark. Inside Crosetti found a letter written in Rolly’s beautiful italic hand, black ink on heavy cream paper. He felt his face grow hot and a pang darted down his center, and he had to restrain himself from raising the paper to his nostrils and sniffing it. He read:
    Dear Sidney,
    Please forgive me for leaving you in the lurch like this, and for not contacting you to let you know what I was doing. Since I didn’t know when the shop would reopen, I thought it would not be too much of a burden on you and would give you sufficient time to find a replacement. But I was rude not to call you earlier and I am sorry. What happened was that I was called away to London on urgent family business, which then turned into a career opportunity, so it looks like I will be staying here in the UK indefinitely.
    The good news, from your perspective, is that I was able to sell the maps and plates from the broken Churchill for what I believe was a far higher price than we would have received on the American market-3,200 British pounds! They seem to have an insatiable appetite here for good-quality prints from their glory days. I enclose an international money order for $5,712.85. I paid the various fees out of my pocket, to make up for any inconvenience you might have suffered.
    Do say good-bye to Mrs. Glaser for me and to Albert. You’ve all been far kinder to me than I deserved.
    Best,
    Carolyn Rolly
    Crosetti handed the letter back with lead in his belly. He had to clear his throat heavily before saying, “Well. Good for her. I didn’t know she had family in England.”
    “Oh, yes,” Glaser replied. “She once mentioned that the name was originally Raleigh, as in Sir Walter, and she implied that there was some connection to the famous one. Maybe she inherited the family castle. That’s quite a sale, anyway. I always figured our Carolyn was heading for higher things than bookstore clerking. Did you print out those auction notices I wanted?”
    “This morning. They should be in your in-box.”
    Glaser nodded, grunted an acknowledgment, and walked off, and Crosetti clumped down the stairs to his cave. It was a more pleasant work environment than it had been before the fire, for the insurance had paid for a complete renovation, including neat steel shelves and a new Dell computer with all the latest stuff attached. The cellar now smelled of paint and tile adhesive instead of dust and cooking grease, but the improvement did not noticeably help Crosetti’s mood. Each time “How could she?” appeared in his mental theater, the answer came swiftly: “Schmuck! You had one date. What did you expect, love forever? She got a better deal and split.” On the other hand,