Peter couldn’t remember every detail. So he turned to his computer, called up the item, and found that, yes, that letter had been sold to a collector in Litchfield, Connecticut.

“That’s too bad,” she said. “I was hoping I might get a look at it.”

“The text is available.” Peter pretended to be helpful as he tried to guess what she was really after. “It’s written in 1786. Knox was Washington’s artillery commander in the Revolution and later the Secretary of War. In the letter, he recommends a young man named William Pike to the employ Rufus King, who will become—”

“—a Massachusetts delegate to the Constitutional Convention.” The girl smiled for the first time. “I’m a PhD candidate in history at Dartmouth. The so-called Critical Period, between the end of the Revolution and the beginning of the Washington administration—that’s my area of expertise.”

“So, you’re not interested in the letter as a collector?”

“I’m a scholar. I’d like to know its provenance and whether the seller had any other material relating to Rufus King and William Pike.”

Peter looked at his computer. “It says we sold this for another broker who represented an anonymous seller.” Peter tapped in another code and the name of the broker appeared: Morris Bindle of Millbridge, Massachusetts.

The young woman waited quietly, as if expecting him to give up the name.

He didn’t. It was none of her business. Instead he asked, “Are you working for someone, Miss Segal?”

“I was … until a week ago.” And her façade seemed to crack. “I was the graduate student assistant to Professor Stuart Conrad.”

“Conrad of Dartmouth? The Magnificent Dreamers? I read about the accident.”

“That’s what they called it.”

“You think differently?”

“Rock slides are not that common in Queechee Gorge, or that accurate.”

“Accidents happen,” said Peter. “And Murphy’s Law rules. If you’re in a gorge when there’s a rock slide—”

“You sound like the Vermont State Police.” The girl stood.

“What was he working on?”

“The mindset of the men who wrote the Constitution, men like Rufus King … important work, considering what’s going on these days. I don’t want it to end with him.”

Peter sensed that she was telling him what she thought he needed to know but not the whole story. “Why come to me?”

“Professor Conrad enjoyed reading about your hunts for lost tea sets and Shakespeare manuscripts. He said you made the study of history an adventure.”

“He made it an art.”

“When he saw the King letter in your catalogue, he circled it and made a note to call you. Rufus King was present at the creation, so to speak. Professor Conrad was interested in everything he left behind.”

Peter glanced at the catalogue and noticed that the professor had marked the page with a clipping from the Blackstone Valley Weekly, a regional paper from Worcester. The clipping was the obituary of Buster McGillis, last floor manager of the defunct Pike-Perkins Mill. That much was interesting, but this sentence stopped Peter cold: “His body was discovered by Morris Bindle, friend and local antique dealer.”

Peter closed the catalogue and handed it back to Ms. Segal. “Let me look a little deeper. Maybe there’s more information out there on King and William Pike. If I find anything, it might help your dissertation.”

As soon as she left, Peter called his assistant into the office.

Antoine Scarborough was twenty-four, son of a laborer who worked for Peter’s brother. His friends in the hood called him Twan, the nickname of an NBA player who was also tall, black, and shaved his head.

He wanted to go to graduate school in history, while his father wanted him to go to law school. Peter had lived the same conflict with his own father, so he had given Antoine a job and the time to make a decision.

“You did the research on that Rufus King letter, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What about William Pike? Who was he?”

“William Pike. Born in 1770. Mother died in childbirth.