Page 60 of The Bookshop of Forbidden Books

“A prosecutor has been killed, Mitch.” Anna leaned forward in her seat. “That inspector isn’t going to give up. He needs to pin this murder on someone – and fast. He’s already got enough evidence to press charges again and send you back inside. I’m your only defence. But my testimony could put me under scrutiny too.”

Mitch thought about it. Yes – things would very likely only get worse.

“You have to retract your statement first thing in the morning,” he told Anna. “Just say you got the date wrong.”

“We have to beat him to the finish,” Anna went on, as if Mitch hadn’t spoken. “Give him what he needs before he comes to any definitive conclusions, because once he does, it’ll be too late. For both of us.”

“And what would the person who betrayed me have to do with Salinas’s murder?”

“Maybe nothing. But the cops wouldn’t have got their hands on so much evidence so quickly unless they knew what they were looking for. I really think there’s a connection. At least, I want to believe there is.”

And as if she’d been holding out just long enough to say that, she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

Mitch pondered her words for the rest of the drive back, wondering who could have wanted to put him behind bars – and why. The antique dealer had acted strangely after selling him the bookshop, and his sudden interest in the cellar might have been a reason to report Mitch. Verner had no reason to hurt him, and neither did Madame Ateltow. Her local bookseller… maybe, out of jealousy or conviction. Old Madame Bergol had spent a lot of time in the shop, and had begged him to join the secret meetings. Then she’d miraculously recovered her sight – which was an odd coincidence, but hardly enough to suspect her. And as for Mathilde…

“It can’t be Mathilde,” Mitch blurted aloud, determined not to give in to paranoia. “Anyway, the police never found the entrance!”

“What entrance?” Anna asked, yawning.

“To the secret bookshop.”

“I’m sorry, what? What secret bookshop?”

“After House Bill 1467 came into effect, I hosted meetings for students twice a week, sharing banned books with them. I wasn’t the only one involved; Mathilde and Madame Ateltow – you met her yesterday, she was my old literature teacher – they led the discussions with me.”

“Mathilde really was everywhere, wasn’t she?” Anna mused. “How many people came to these meetings?”

“Sixty or so at first, then more. There were almost a hundred and fifty students by the time I was arrested.”

“What did you do – move the tables out of the way so everyone could cram into the shop?”

“No, that’s the thing. The antique dealer who sold me the place had told me about a big walled-off room in the cellar. He claimed it was only a legend, but I suspected he knew more than he was letting on. One day I broke through the bricks and found out the room really existed. Not long afterwards, he came back to see me and asked if I’d found it, because he wanted to rent it from me. I lied and said I hadn’t even looked for it. That made him furious – because he’d been watching from his window as I carted materials in and out. The discussion never went any further than that—”

Anna motioned for him to stop. She reached into the back seat for her canvas bag and rummaged around. She pulled out a small spiral notebook and a pen.

“What are you doing?” Mitch asked.

“This is where I usually write down my recipes, but I don’t have anything else to write on, and I want to take notes. So,” she went on, scribbling, “why was the antique dealer so desperate to rent the cellar from you?”

“The room I found under my shop was a lot more than just a storage space. It was a hidden auction house – likely for high-end stolen goods.”

“And the antique dealer was the auctioneer?”

“Probably. In any case, the room had been sealed off in a hurry, because it was still fully furnished when I found it – sofas, tables, chairs, even a bar. Everything you’d need to accommodate quite a lot of people. Originally, it could only be accessed by going down through the coal chute in the courtyard. I created a trapdoor in the floor of my storeroom and built a staircase so you could get in directly from the shop without having to go around the back. That way, guests could enter without being seen. It was all a big success – far more than I’d expected – until the day…”

“Until the police raided the place,” Anna supplied. “But you say they never found the secret room?”

“No. Thank God. If they’d taken the trouble to move a rug, Salinas would have had me put away for ten years.”

“And they never checked the chute?”

“Yeah, they did, but all they found down there was a dusty old cellar with nothing much in it. I’d built a fake bookshelf to hide the room. I used old panels and planks so it looked like it had always been there.”

“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Anna said thoughtfully. “So the antique dealer spies on you from his window, realizes you’ve found his old lair, then quickly comes back to reclaim it. But if it meant that much to him, why sell you the shop in the first place?”

“I wondered about that for a long time. I suppose there could have been a couple of reasons. He might have got worried that someone had worked out his legitimate business was a front for the illegal stuff he was doing in the cellar – and fencing goods that valuable would have earned him a long prison sentence. Once he lost a major part of his income, he’d have got desperate for money and been forced to sell the property.”

“And then once things calmed down, he wanted to start up fencing again,” Anna concluded.