The Ludwig Conspiracy Read Free

Steven was alone again.
    The bookseller took another sip of his tea, which by now was getting unpleasantly cool. Frau Schultheiss just wouldn’t let it be! She’d already offered him eight thousand euros to give notice to his landlord, old Seitzinger, and leave the premises available for her boutique. Kurt Seitzinger used to have his joinery workshop in these rooms, but he had retired twenty years ago. At the time, just as Steven finished studying literature at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, he had been entranced by the shop at once; he still thought he could smell the wood, the wood shavings, and the glue. He had never regretted his decision to open his antiquarian bookshop in the Westend district. But that had been at a time when it was still a genuine working-class district with a high proportion of foreigners and students among its inhabitants; now boutiques, trendy bars, sushi takeouts, and hairdressing salons were shooting up like colorful toadstools. The Westend was hip, and his antiquarian bookshop seemed to belong to a forgotten epoch. Even the way Steven dressed seemed old-fashioned compared to the people living here. Other men of his age wore tight-fitting sweatshirts printed with hip logos or band names, paired with sneakers and baseball caps. Steven preferred tweed and corduroy, combining them in suits that, together with his graying, neatly combed hair and reading glasses, made him look like an impoverished British country gentleman. In a Scottish castle, he would look like the rightful heir; here, he sometimes felt twenty years older than he really was. Only a few months earlier, he had quietly celebrated his fortieth birthday. He didn’t fit in with his times. He preferred the company of very old books to that of most people, and on most days, he was perfectly happy if the store remained empty of customers.
    Sighing, Steven rose from his mahogany desk and wandered around the little shop into which he had put so much of his heart—and so much of his money—for twenty years. Lovingly, he stroked the spines of individual books, straightening one here or there, putting copies gone astray back in their proper places. Finally he began emptying the crates from the estate of the old lady in Bogenhausen and putting the books in the few open spaces on the shelves. Among the books he had bought were an 1888 Baedeker travel guide to Belgium, an eighteenth-century work on chess, and Shelton’s standard work on shorthand,
Tachygraphy,
in one of the later editions—treasures, all of them. Whether he would ever sell them was another question.
    On one point at least Frau Schultheiss was right: business was going badly, in fact very badly. Not that it had ever really gone well, but until now Steven hadn’t minded that so long as he could rummage around in flea markets, libraries, and other antiquarian bookshops to his heart’s content. But now the once-handsome inheritance left by his parents was exhausted, and he had to turn his mind to one of the least edifying aspects of human existence: earning money.
    When people did come into the shop, most of them were just passersby who didn’t want to wait out in the rain for the next bus, or who hoped to buy a cheap Perry Rhodan or the latest Dan Brown. Not to mention drunks visiting Oktoberfest and looking for a public toilet.
    The distinguished old gentleman with glasses and an ivory walking stick that morning, however, had been different. He had shown a great deal of interest in Steven’s life in the antiquarian book trade, and he had asked him many questions about an early copy of the diaries of Samuel Pepys. Experts considered particularly valuable the rare work that Steven had acquired only recently.
    But knowledgeable as he was, the man had seemed to Steven slightly distracted—indeed, almost as if he were being hunted. His hands had been nervously clutching a package done up with gray wrapping paper and string, obviously a fairly large book. When Steven