Chapter 7: The old novelist signs her name under the glass roof

The bookstall stands in the Long Hall, third pitch from the clock, where the light is poor and the rent is cheap. It moved there two winters ago from the old pitch by the Fish Hall door. It is three trestle tables long. The books stand spine up in rows, packed so tight that pulling one out is like pulling a player out of a rugby scrum, and the whole stall smells of dust, paper and the café's coffee drifting across the aisle.

Cecily Grove has kept it for thirty years, and her father kept it before her. She tells you, without being asked, why the poster is up, and her voice goes soft at the edges. Forty years ago a young woman with dark hair sat at the corner table in Mrs. Odile Fenn's café, in the days when Mrs. Fenn's mother ran it, and wrote her first novel in pencil in school exercise books, one pot of tea at a time.

That young woman is now Augusta Heron, eighty years old, author of eleven novels, who has not left her house in ten years. When she heard the Old Market would close at the end of the year, she wrote to say she would come and sign her books under its roof, once, on an April evening. Or rather, her companion wrote for her.

First: A poster forty years out of date

The photograph on the poster is the one from the back of her first book: dark hair, dark eyes, a pencil behind one ear. Nobody at the market has seen Augusta's face since. Cecily has never seen it at all; the letters came from the companion, Gemma Corbett, in a neat round hand.

“Half the people coming tonight will be collectors,” Cecily says. “A signed Heron sells for ten times the price of a plain one. I've ordered every copy I could find. If anything goes wrong, Sergeant, I'm finished.”

She shows you a yellowed price label kept in her cash box. Her father sold the very first copy of Augusta's first book from this same trestle, back at the old pitch by the Fish Hall door, to a fishmonger's wife, for less than the price of a cabbage. He told the story every Christmas until the family begged him to stop.

Second: Little glass saucers in Mrs. Fenn's cupboard

At four you have tea in the café, and Mrs. Fenn, polishing, opens a cupboard you have never seen opened. On the top shelf sit a dozen tiny glass saucers, each no bigger than the palm of your hand.

“Mother's,” she says. “She served the lemon on these, on the side, never in the cup. Said a lemon in the cup was like a goal scored before kick-off. When she retired, thirty years ago, I stopped. Nobody's asked for a lemon on a saucer since. Nobody missed them but me.”

Third: A dedication you read while you wait

Back at the bookstall you help Cecily stack the eleven novels, oldest at one end, newest at the other. While she counts, you open the first and the last, the way you would read the team sheets before a match.

Each begins with the same line, printed alone on the page before the story starts: “For Hazel Dunmore, who has edited every word.” Cecily nods. All eleven carry it, she says. Augusta never had any other editor, from the first book to the last. Collectors call them the Hazel books.

Fourth: The author orders her tea the old way

At half past five a taxi stops at the main gate. Gemma Corbett, brisk and young enough to be her granddaughter, helps out a tiny, white-haired woman in a black coat, who walks with a stick and stops twice to look up at the glass roof. “The third pane from the clock is still cracked,” she says to nobody in particular. It is. She says very little. Gemma answers most of the questions for her.

Before the signing, the old woman asks to sit in the café, at the corner table. Mrs. Fenn comes to take her order. “Tea, please,” the old woman says, “with the lemon on a little saucer on the side, the way your mother did it.”

Mrs. Fenn says nothing at all for a moment. Then she goes to the cupboard, and her hands are not quite steady as she reaches up to the top shelf.

At seven the signing begins. The queue runs from the bookstall to the egg stall and round the corner. Pim rings the evening bell and stays to watch. Under the trestle, nose on paws, a brown dog sleeps through the whole noisy business and does not even lift an ear.

Fifth: A man in the crowd says she is somebody else

At half past seven a man in a good grey suit steps out of the queue and holds up his hand.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “my name is Hubert Eldon. For twenty years I was Augusta Heron's editor. I would know her anywhere. This lady is not Augusta Heron. I am sorry to say that every signature tonight is false.”

The queue turns into a crowd. People wave their books at Cecily. Gemma goes white.

Somebody near the egg stall shouts that the companion has hired an actress to sit in a black coat and sign for a fee, and the word travels down the queue faster than a ball along a line of passes. The old woman lays down her pen and looks at the man for a long time without a word, the way a chess player looks at an opponent who has just made a move that is not allowed.

Then Hubert does a kind thing, or what looks like one. He offers to take the “worthless” copies off people's hands, a few coins each, to save them the trouble of a refund. Six people sell to him before you can reach him.

Sixth: What Dorn asks you to look at

Dorn stands beside you at the end of the trestle with a copy in her hand, perfectly calm in the noise, and gives you the list.

Check who gains. When a man shouts that something is worthless, watch who is buying it.

Check the things nobody could have learned in a week. Old customs, old rooms and old habits are hard to fake.

Check what is printed, not only what is said. Print does not change its story when the crowd starts shouting.

Check your own afternoon. You may already have seen the answer before anybody asked the question.

So decide. Is the woman at the trestle Augusta Heron?

Seventh: The first way, by the lemon on the saucer

The old woman asked for her lemon on a little saucer on the side, “the way your mother did it.” Mrs. Fenn's mother served it that way and nobody else did, and nobody has asked for it in thirty years, since the day her mother retired.

So the woman at the corner table sat in that café, and was served by Mrs. Fenn's mother, more than thirty years ago, often enough to remember the saucer. That is exactly what the young Augusta did, one pot of tea at a time, while she wrote her first novel. No stand-in hired last month could know it.

Even the companion, Gemma, is far too young. A stand-in could only have learned it from Augusta herself, and nobody coaching a stand-in thinks to teach her how to take her lemon.

Eighth: The second way, by the line printed before page one

Now forget the café and listen to Hubert. He says he was Augusta's editor for twenty years.

But you have read the dedication in the first book and in the last, and all eleven carry the same line: “For Hazel Dunmore, who has edited every word.” Augusta had one editor from beginning to end, and her name was Hazel. Whoever Hubert is, he was never Augusta's editor, so his famous recognition is worth nothing at all.

And look at what he did next. He called the signatures false, and then bought the books cheap. Like a darts player who distracts you just before your throw, he made the noise so that he could take the points.

Two ways, one answer. The lemon says the old woman is Augusta Heron. The printed page says the man who denied her is not who he claims to be. The false face at the bookstall tonight was his.

Ninth: The signing goes on until the last book

Hubert Eldon is really Fergus Cade, a dealer in signed books with a shop in another part of town and a habit of turning up wherever a rare signature is about to become common. He gives back the six copies and gets back his coins, and a constable walks him to the gate.

Augusta picks up her pen. She signs until ten o'clock, slowly, a few words in every book, and in the very last one, Cecily's own, she writes: “For Cecily's stall, wherever it stands, where my first book was sold.”

Before she leaves, she holds Mrs. Fenn's hand for a long moment at the corner table and says that the tea tastes exactly as it did. Mrs. Fenn takes the little glass saucers down from the cupboard for good, and from that evening every pot of tea in the café comes with its lemon on the side.

When the crowd has gone, Pim stacks the trestles and Cecily sweeps the floor around the brown dog, which is still curled up beneath the last table. Nobody in the emptying hall seems to be waiting for it. And whose was the brown dog that had slept all evening under the bookstall?