Free Our Man in Camelot by Anthony Price

“Just wait and let me finish, don’t get over-heated, Doc. He talked to his bookseller, the man he got all his books from. Hunted all over for him, the bookseller did—far as the Russian Embassy, to find out about the Novgorod Bede. Not that they told him anything, but he sure tried. ‘Cause Davies was just about the best customer he had, so it made good sense.”
    Mosby looked at Howard Morris. “The bookseller’s on the level?”
    “The bookseller’s straight down the line,” Merriwether’s hand cut through the air. “We’ve checked him out every way, and he’s one hundred per cent pure. Part from the fact that if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have given us so much so easy.”
    “Right,” said Finsterwald. “And apart from the fact that he’s 78 years old.”
    “So what did he give you?”
    Merriwether glanced at Howard Morris. “Okay I tell Doc, then?”
    Mosby frowned. “What the hell? Shirley and I are supposed to have been friends of Davies, according to the cover story.”
    “Which ‘ud make you about the only friends he had,” said Merriwether. “Only person we can trace he ever spoke to was the bookseller. He was a real loner.”
    Morris nodded. “Go ahead, Cal. Not that there’s much of it.”
    “Well, there is and there isn’t according to how you look at it… but seems he first went to Barkham’s four-five months back—Barkham being the bookseller. Old-fashioned firm. Talk to you about books as soon as sell you one, and rather you bought nothing than something you wouldn’t like.” Merriwether smiled reminiscently. “Took him quite a time deciding I was a fit and proper customer for him to do business with—I had to sweet-talk him round.”
    Shirley laughed. “What did you buy?”
    “What did I buy?” Merriwether pointed to the table, grinning. “Most of those books your husband’s been reading, that’s what I bought. I told Barkham I was a friend of his Major Davies, who’d been posted back to the States suddenly and I’d come to settle his bill—“
    “Yes?”
    Merriwether held up a small black tape-recorder. “You want to hear the real thing?” He glanced towards Morris. “We got time?”
    “When’s Audley coming here?” Morris asked Mosby.
    “Not till nine. We got all the time in the world.”
    “But we haven’t… Keep it short, Cal.”
    “’Tisn’t long anyway. But I’ll give you the bit that counts…”
    “—thirty-eight pence, Sir. Thank you—“
    Sharp ‘ting’ and slither of cash drawer.
    Clink.
    “—and sixty-two pence change… fifty—“
    Clink.
    “—and ten and two… and your receipt, sir—“
    Merriwether cut off the tape. “Not quite far enough. You don’t want to hear about how interested I am in ancient history. I’ll just run it some more.”
    “He owed only thirty-eight pence?” asked Shirley.
    “Always paid cash money except the last time. Which was lucky for us, we’d never have got on to Barkham otherwise. Here we go—“
    “—depends where your particular interest lies, sir. There is the formal history of the period, as represented by Collingwood and Myres, and by Stenton for example… and what might be termed the Arthurian history, by—ah—by those who take his historical existence for granted… which is a literature in itself.”
    Dry chuckle.
    “Some might say more literature than history, a good deal of it… Malory and Spenser, for example, and the early French writers… But I don’t think they would be your taste, sir… very specialised… And there’s the modern literature of fiction—Miss Sutcliffe’s Sword at Sunset and T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone are the superior representatives of that, I would say.”
    “Isn’t that a kid’s book— The Sword in the Stone !”
    “Indeed it is, sir. And Miss Sutcliffe’s book is also popular with the younger readers. But they are both a great deal more—ah—adult than much of the fiction their elders ask me for—“
    “Get that,” said