So: greetings, questions about his sisters, his mother, himself (although Crosetti was sure she had been elaborately briefed on this by Mary Peg), and swiftly to business. He drew the pages out of the tube and handed over the roll. She carried them to a broad worktable and spread the sheets out in three long parallel rows, the copies of what he had sold Bulstrode and the retained originals.

When she had them spread out she uttered some startled words in what he supposed was Polish. “Albert, these eighteen sheets…they are originals?”

“Yeah, they’re what looks like enciphered letters. I didn’t sell them to Bulstrode.”

“And you are rolling them up like calendars? Shame on you!” She walked off and came back with clear plastic document envelopes, into which she carefully placed the enciphered sheets.

“Now,” she said. “Let us see what we have here.”

Doubrowicz looked at the copies for a long time, examining each sheet with a large rectangular magnifying glass. At last she said, “Interesting. You know there are three separate documents in all. These copies are of two different ones and these originals.”

“Yeah, I figured that part out. Those four sheets are obviously the printer’s copy of some sermons and I’m not interested in them. All the rest is the letter from this guy Bracegirdle.”

“Umm, and you sold this letter to Bulstrode, your mother said.”

“Yeah. And I’m sorry, Fanny, I should have come straight to you.”

“Yes, you should have. Your dear mother thinks you were cheated.”

“I know.”

She patted his arm. “Well, we shall see. Show me the part where you thought he mentioned Shakespeare.”

Crosetti did so, and the little librarian adjusted a goosenecked lamp to cast an intense beam at the bright paper and peered at it through her lens. “Yes, this seems a clear enough secretary hand,” she remarked. “I have certainly had to deal with worse.” She read the passage aloud slowly, like a dim third-grader, and when she reached the end exclaimed, “Dear God!”

“Shit!” cried Crosetti and pounded his fist into his thigh hard enough to sting.

“Indeed,” said Doubrowicz, “you have been well cogged and coney-catched, as our friend here would have said. How much did he pay you?”

“Thirty-five hundred.”

“Oh, dear me. What a shame!”

“I could have got a lot more, right?”

“Oh, yes. If you had come to me and we had established the authenticity of the document beyond any reasonable doubt-and for a document of this nature and importance, that in itself would have been a considerable task-then there’s no telling what it would have fetched at auction. We would probably not be in it, since it’s a little out of our line, but the Folger and the Huntington would have been in full cry. More than that, to someone like Bulstrode, having possession, exclusive possession, of something like this-why, it’s a career in itself. No wonder he cheated you! He must have seen immediately that this thing would place him back in the center of Shakespeare studies. No one would ever mention that unfortunate fake again. It would be like an explosion opening up an entirely fresh field of scholarship. People have been arguing for years about Shakespeare’s religion and his political stance and here we find an official of the English government suspecting him not only of papistry but papistry of a potentially treasonous nature. Then you have a whole set of research lines to explore: this Bracegirdle fellow, his history, who he knew, where he traveled, and the history of the man he worked for, this Lord D. Perhaps there are files in some old muniment room that no one has ever explored. And since we know that Shakespeare was never actually prosecuted, we would want to know why not, was he protected by someone even more powerful than Lord D.? And on and on. Then we have a collection of enciphered letters apparently describing a spy’s observation of William Shakespeare, an actual detailed contemporary record of the man’s activities-an unimaginable treasure in itself, assuming they can be deciphered, and believe me, cryptographers will be fighting with sticks to get hold of them. But at least we have these in original.”

Doubrowicz leaned back in her chair and stared up at the coffered ceiling, fanned herself dramatically with her hand, and laughed her sharp little bark. It was a gesture familiar to Crosetti from his childhood, when the children had brought what they imagined was an utterly insolvable puzzle. “But, my dear Albert, all that, enticing as it is, is mere trivia compared to the real prize.”

Crosetti felt his throat dry up. “You mean that an autograph manuscript might still exist.”

“Yes, and not just that. Let me see, does he give a date anywhere?” She lifted her magnifier and cast over the sheets, like a bird seeking a scurrying bug. “Hm, yes, here is one, 1608, and here, ah yes, he seems to have begun his spying career around 1610. Do you understand the significance of that date, Albert?”

“Macbeth?”

“No, no, Macbeth was 1606. And we know how it came to be written and there were no secret Bracegirdles involved. The year 1610 was the year of The Tempest, and after that, except for some small things, collaborations and the like, Shakespeare wrote no more plays, and that means…”

“Oh, God, it’s a new play!”

“An unknown, unrecorded, unsuspected play by William Shakespeare. In autograph.” She placed her hand on her chest. “My heart. Darling, I think I am a little too old for this kind of excitement. In any case, if genuine, I say again, if genuine, well…you know we say ‘priceless’ very easily nowadays, by which we mean very expensive, but this would be truly in a class by itself.”

“Millions?”

“Pah! Hundreds…hundreds of millions. The manuscript alone, if proved authentic, would be certainly the most valuable single manuscript, perhaps the most valuable portable object, in the world, on a par with the greatest paintings. And then, whoever owned the manuscript would have the copyright too. I am not an expert here but that would be my guess. Theatrical productions-every director and producer on earth would be selling their children for the right to mount the premiere, and don’t even mention films! On the other hand, lest we build too high a castle in the air, the whole thing could be an elaborate fraud.”

“A fraud? I don’t get it-who’s defrauding who?”

“Well, you know Bulstrode was caught once by a clever forger. Perhaps they thought he was ripe for another try.”

“Really? I’d think he’d be the last person to go to. Who’d believe him? The whole point is that his credibility is shot, that’s why he’s so desperate to recoup.”

She laughed. “You should go up to Foxwood sometimes, to the casino. If those who lost heavily did not desperately try to recoup, as you put it, they would have to close their doors. Of course, were I a villain, I would not attempt such a scheme.”

“Why not?”

“Because, darling, how would you create the prize? The play itself? It is one thing to forge a bad quarto of Hamlet. We have Hamlet and we have bad quartos and we have some idea of Shakespeare’s sources for the play. And the text does not have to possess any particular quality. In parts it need not even make sense; bad quartos often do not. You know what a bad quarto is, yes? Good, so you must realize that here it is entirely different. Here you must invent an entire play by the greatest dramatic poet who ever lived, and who was then at the height of his powers. It can’t be done. Someone tried it already once, you know.”

“Who tried it?”

“A silly little fellow named William Henry Ireland, back in the eighteenth century. His father was a scholar, and Willie wanted to impress him, so he started finding documents related to Shakespeare in old trunks. Completely ludicrous, but with the state of analysis and scholarship that then was, many people were taken in. Well, nothing would do but that he had to find a new play by Shakespeare, and he did, an abortion he called Vortigern, and Kemble produced it at the Drury Lane Theatre. It was howled off the stage, naturally. Meanwhile the great scholar Malone had exposed all the other manuscripts as fraudulent and the whole thing collapsed. Now, Ireland was a dullard and easily exposed. Pascoe, the man who tricked Bulstrode, was a good deal smarter, but what we’re talking about is of another order. It could not be a mere pastiche, you see: it would have to be Shakespeare, and he is dead.”