Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016

She wasn’t ready to give in, at least not right then, which was pretty much what I expected, knowing that the pigheadedness gene had to be dominant throughout Julius’s family. But it was a seven-hour-and-fifteen-minute flight, which gave me plenty of time to pester her. Since she didn’t have a valid reason not to provide me the details I was asking for, I finally wore her down at the five-hour-and-eighteen-minute mark of the flight, and that was only after I told her I wasn’t having much luck whittling away at her list of known killers.

Her latest assignment was to enlist a Frenchman named Jean-Pierre Laffont, who had ties to an enemy spy network. Laffont had agreed to be a double agent for Julia’s organization, but only if Julia first returned to him a treasured family heirloom that went missing during World War II — a copy of Our Mutual Friend which Charles Dickens had inscribed with a personal message to Laffont’s great-grandfather, Marcel Bretel. Six days earlier, which was three days after her meeting with Laffont, the first attempt on her life was made when an assailant tried to stick her with a hypodermic needle on a Paris sidewalk. She was able to knock her assailant flat on his back, but had to run when two of his accomplices came after her. The second attempt happened at a Paris underground station when she narrowly escaped a high-powered-rifle shot. The third attempt had been yesterday in London, where she again narrowly escaped, this time from being run down as she tried crossing the street. I spent four point three seconds digesting what she told me, then commented on the obvious fact that it wasn’t a single assassin trying to kill her but a team of them.

“True, but there’s one person in charge, and that’s who I have to find.”

“Are you thinking that the enemy agency discovered that you’re trying to recruit Laffont, and they’re out to eliminate you to keep you from accomplishing that task?”

“That’s one possibility, and if that’s the case I need to know how badly I’ve been compromised — namely, whether they know my identity or only the front I’ve been using for this assignment. Another possibility is that Laffont sent me on a wild-goose chase, and that he’s the one trying to have me killed so I don’t cause him any further trouble. While he could be a great asset to my organization, if he can’t be turned, I need to know that so I can handle the situation differently.”

I didn’t want to press her on how differently she would be handling Laffont — that was something I didn’t want to know. Instead I asked her about the inscription Charles Dickens wrote in the book.

“I don’t know what it is. Laffont refused to tell me as a way to safeguard against my commissioning a forgery.” She hesitated for several seconds, then typed the message, “I wonder if any Dickens experts have compiled a list of all known inscribed copies of Our Mutual Friend. Why don’t you dig around and see if there’s any record of an inscription made to Marcel Bretel.”

“So you can have a copy forged,” I said.

“Of course.”

I didn’t bother questioning the ethics of cheating a man like Laffont who was duplicitous enough to become a double agent. Instead I mentioned that an inscribed copy of Dickens’ book could be worth a hundred and twenty grand.

“That’s a lot of money,” I said. “Is it possible he wants it so he can raise enough cash to run?”

“No. He’d need significantly more if that was his intention.”

“Let’s say he had asked for a large sum of money instead, how much would your organization have been willing to pay him?”

“Nothing. That’s not how we handle people like Laffont. My bosses decided in this case we’d make an exception and deliver the book to him because of his sentimental attachment to it.”

“And because you have no intention of giving him the actual book, only a forgery.”

Her reflection in the smartphone screen showed a wisp of a smile forming over her lips. She typed, “Exactly.”

I considered what she had told me for the next thirty-seven milliseconds, then asked her about the steps she had taken to locate the book, at least before the first attack on her. From my vantage point, I could see her eyes narrowing to a squint as she had the same thought that I had. Without any hesitation, she typed in the names and addresses of the seven rare-book dealers she had contacted in Paris, London, and Berlin, and asked me not to contact any of them directly.

A short time later I told her that there was one whom I wouldn’t be able to contact even if I wanted to. “Two days ago Daniel Bouchard was found dead in the back room of a vacant storefront three blocks from his shop. The newspaper accounts are sketchy regarding how he died.”

“Archie, I need more details.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m looking.”

It was tougher for me to locate the police report than I would’ve thought, and it took me twenty-eight minutes before I was able to hack into the right computer system. I hit pay dirt, though, finding also an autopsy report.