The Paper Mirror by Dorien Grey Read Free Book Online Page B

approached me at the opening to ask me to consider rehiring him. I was sorely tempted, given all the work to be done, and I do believe he learned his lesson, but considering the tensions between him and Taylor, putting the two of them back together just would have been too counterproductive. He left and I’ve heard nothing from him since—though I am giving strong consideration to rehiring him now that Taylor is…gone. And assuming he’s not already found another position.”
    “And Taylor had no little flaws—his perfectionism aside—of his own?”
    McGill paused a moment before saying, “Taylor’s only flaw, if it can be called that, was that he had the training and duties of a cataloger but the heart of a researcher. While he never would have admitted it, I noted that he had a tendency to become occasionally distracted from his cataloging by his desire to know more about the work being cataloged. He, of course, didn’t see the difference. He was constantly sending me notes on interesting bits of trivia he found in the works he was cataloging. It got to the point I simply didn’t have the time to read them all.”
    “Did you get the impression that he was being…distracted…at the time of his death?”
    “As a matter of fact, yes. He was cataloging the work of Jeremy Butler and his son, and seemed to have become fascinated by it.”
    The name rang a bell. “Jeremy Butler?” I interrupted. “The ‘Fires of Hell’ evangelist of the twenties and thirties? What would his works be doing here?”
    McGill allowed himself a small smile. “Well, of course his works would be here. Chester Burrows collected anything and everything, positive and negative, on the subject of homosexuality. And since for puritanical religious fundamentalists, the subject of homosexuality is high on the list of things to rail against…. If, to Oscar Wilde’s generation, homosexuality was ‘the love that dare not speak its name,’ to Jeremy Butler and his ilk, homosexuality was a sin so heinous the word itself was almost never directly used.
    “Interestingly, it was the Butler papers that Taylor had wanted to work on from the moment he learned we had them. But I’d already assigned them to Dave Witherspoon. After Dave left I turned the Butlers over to him.”
    “Any idea why his particular interest in Butler?”
    He shook his head. “Not really, other, perhaps, than that Butler was a well-known public figure. Taylor seemed particularly fascinated by the fact that in addition to Butler’s vitriolic public writings—books, sermons, and religious tracts in which the subject of homosexuality comes up frequently if obliquely—there are apparently a rather large number of more personal papers…particularly letters to his son, Morgan, his only child and the apple of his eye. There are also a sizeable number of Morgan’s own papers included with those of his father, and it was Morgan who donated the papers to Chester Burrows shortly before his own death.
    “In this case, Taylor’s distraction produced something of a coup which will have to be left to researchers to explore further…Morgan Butler married and had a son, but was apparently gay. He killed himself in 1953 at the age of 31.”
    I just shook my head. “Interesting,” I said, and meant it.
    McGill gave me another small smile. “I’m glad you think so. Contrary to popular belief, librarians do not lead lives of unremitting dullness.”
    “Wasn’t Butler from here, originally?” I asked, mentally rummaging through the stacks of trivia scattered around the shadowy alcoves of my mind.
    McGill nodded. “He was, yes. Morgan died here, and Morgan’s son still lives here, I understand. He has been threatening suit to have Butler’s papers removed from the Collection. He has a snowball’s chance in hell of doing so, of course, but he can try.”
    “Well, I can understand him not wanting it made general knowledge that his father was gay…”
    “If he even knew,”