"Forgive me, Mrs. Heywood, but I seem to have forgotten my receipt," he said abstractedly, not turning around.
"Humph."
Van Richten straightened after a moment. "Is there something amiss?"
She shook her head at his show of innocence. "I know very well that you left it on purpose to have an excuse to return."
He produced a rueful smile in response. "Indeed, I did. Guilty as charged, good lady. It's only that I had a feeling I should see what he was up to."
"Smelling wood smoke, were you?"
"You might say that." He looked at the book on her counter as a starving man might at a fresh loaf of bread. He started to reach for it, but checked himself. "May I?"
Sensing a quick turnover sale in the air, she nodded. "Of course."
He spun the book sideways, allowing them both to study the title. The lettering was very ornate and old, of a style that had been in brief use in Barovia some fifty years earlier, brief because it was so ornate as to be nearly impossible to read. Van Richten opened the cover. The inside script, on a different kind of paper, was much more legible, with lines of firm black ink marching across the pages. Not from a printer's press, but real handwriting. Its style was of a quite unique sort and very puzzling to her.
There were unbound pages as well. The paper was very thin and fine, as was the nib of the pen used, but, the handwriting was the same. It was as though the writer had put those in after the binding, and at first glance they did seem to be addendums to the main text. Van Richten read aloud the first of them from the very front of the book:
I, Strahd of Barovia, well aware that certain events of my reign have been erroneously recorded as "history," do hearby set down an exact record concerning my war with Azalin of Darkon. Many versions of what happened exist, and all are inaccurate over one point or another, but this is the one true accounting of…
He stopped and swallowed, having gone very pale.
"What is it, Doctor?" she demanded, shaken at his reaction. He was always so cheerful and confident, and to see him like this was most alarming.
He took command of himself and tapped a finger lightly against the page. There was an earnest light in his eyes. "I should like to hear your professional opinion about this book's characteristics."
Slightly taken aback, she nonetheless rose to the occasion. "Well, for a start, the penmanship looks to be from a period some four centuries past, yet I would judge the paper to be not more than a hundred and fifty years old."
"Yes, yes, please go on."
She held the book up in such a way as to let light shine behind a single page. "There, see that? I'm right on the dating. It's a Barovian paper maker's watermark from that time."
"How would you account for the combination of these elements?"
"It seems obvious that someone's taken an old Barovian diary and slapped a new cover on it about fifty years ago. But the puzzle is how anyone who learned to write some four centuries past was able to put that writing on such relatively new paper."
"You've an idea, though?"
"A disappointing one, sir."
"Which is-?"
"This book is a forgery."
Instead of disappointed, Van Richten looked, if anything, quite taken with the prospect. He was all but quivering, like a hunting dog catching a scent. "A forgery?"
"So it would seem, but why would anyone bother to forge a diary? And do such a clumsy job of it? Even an apprentice bookseller would be able to spot this one."
"Perhaps it was meant to draw attention," he murmured.
"But whose attention?"
"Who, indeed?"
She shot him an annoyed look, disliking it when people answered a question with a question, then studied the pages again. "The language is an old one, I find the phrasing rather hard to follow. Whoever did the forging made a thorough job of it, but they botched it on the age of the paper."
"Perhaps," he said, sounding abstracted again.
"What do you know that I don't?" she demanded.
"Um?" He broke away from reading the text and blinked at her.
"You know something about this book, don't you?"
"Not really, but I should very much like to find out more. Might I borrow it for the day and look it over? I'll bring it back first thing in the morning. I can promise you right now that I want to buy it, I just don't have the coin with me."
Now this was very atypical behavior even for the quietly eccentric doctor. "It's not that I don't trust you, sir, but I can hardly allow you to take it from the shop. It was left with me in good faith, and until I buy it from that man I can hardly sell it to you."
"Oh, yes, of course," he said, his initial excitement visibly dampened.
"Besides, I have to look it over to set a fair price on it…" but she could see he wasn't really listening. "Doctor?"
"Perhaps you'll allow me to read it here, then?"
"Here? The whole thing?"
"I should be very quiet."
"I don't doubt it, but why are you in such a hurry?"
He gave her his self-depreciating shrug again. "Call it the passion of a collector, madam."
She didn't believe that one, but was willing to let him get away with it. "Well, the truth be told, I want to have a read of it as well, and you seem to have a better command of the old language than I do. What if I closed the shop up for the rest of the day and you read this book to me? That way we both get what we want."
"I have serious reservations that you would want to hear what is in this tome. It could give you more nightmares."
"In which case I shall avail myself of some of your herbal teas," she smoothly returned.
"You'll lose the afternoon's business," he stated, sounding hopeful.
"It's always slow during this day of the week. I'll likely lose nothing. I'm determined to know what is in this mystery volume."
Van Richten finally sighed and nodded. "Very well, but afterwards please refrain from telling me that you weren't warned."
"Warned against what? A few nightmares? I think I can survive them. Now if you would be so kind as to move those two chairs to the table over there, I'll lock up so we won't be disturbed."
Van Richten obliged her request while she took a brass key from her apron pocket and secured the shop door. She then closed the curtains and bustled into the rear of the premises for a moment, returning more slowly. She carried a large, beautifully carved crystal lamp and gently placed it in the center of the table.
"My dear departed mother's prized possession," she explained, when Van Richten offered a compliment on it. "One cannot be too careful in this neighborhood, so I always keep it in the back. It gives a very good bright light, though, some trick of the way the crystal was fashioned."
"Excellent," he said. "If this book is indeed about grim topics, then it is not one to be read amongst the shadows."
Mrs. Heywood paused as she worked to coax a flame from her tinderbox. She didn't like his ominous tone, but refused to let herself be discouraged. She got the lamp lit, adjusted the height of the flame, and sat next to him. "What sort of grim topics?"
"There's but one way to find out," he said, and turned to the first page.