The portfolio box beckoned.
James unfastened his seatbelt and leaned forward to get it. As he lifted it up, he saw for the first time, an envelope underneath—with the same handwriting as the one he had received at the departure lounge in Sydney. Better read this first, he thought.
Yet again, it was short on detail: “The contents of this box are for your eyes only.”
“Well then,” James said aloud, amused, “I’ll need to keep it away from the hundred other people on the plane!” He glanced around the empty cabin. The Jennifer was up front with the uniformed young man, “Ronald, call me Ron”—presumably much more exciting than the crusty middle-aged James Lane, he thought.
On inspection, the wax seal seemed authentic enough, not that he had any expertise in antique document containment. But it had the appearance of having lost its shine, faded to a pale pink as opposed to the bright, glossy red James would have expected from a fresh seal, even a bit crumbled around the edges. So when might this box have been sealed? Fifty years ago? Seventy-five? Last week? And where had it been stored so as not to have perished during the intervening period? And why?
“Too many questions,” James concluded, talking to himself. “No time like the present. Get on with it.” And so, crumbling what remained of the seal onto his trousers, he unwound the string.
As he opened the box, any question of its just being a restoration evaporated with the strong odor of camphor immediately pervading his nostrils, a visceral reminder of his grandmother’s wardrobe.
On the inside cover, in an old-style medieval-looking script—a calligraphy pen, James assumed—was the word …
Morfius
Clipped together on the right-hand side were what seemed like several hundred pages of both handwritten and typed pages on different colored and differing calipers—or thicknesses—of paper. Some were handwritten on school paper, using a fountain pen and what James recalled from his youth as blue/black cartridge ink, and others typed on what could only be assumed was an old, manual typewriter in black pica type on office paper. And on the top, folded neatly on a sheet of heavy stationery was what appeared to be a letter addressed in the same fountain pen …
To James Lane
How is this possible? he thought. Intrigued, he unfolded the letter—carefully though, because as thick as it was, the paper was quite stiff and resisted being moved at all. If it were as old as it looked, it would surely tear.
It was indeed a letter as it had in the top, right-hand corner, the name and address of the writer:
Jon P Calder
32 Craven Terrace
Bayswater, London
It was the practice in the past, James recalled from his schooling, when handwriting a personal letter, to place the originating address on the right-hand side at the top of the first page, each line indented to the right from the one immediately above—a business letter would still have the sender’s address, but without the indentation—and the date would be written below the address, even with the name, as it was in the case of this one:
July, 15, 1948
As James started to realize the enormity of that date (the year at least), he flicked through the pages to the back of the letter to see the signature:
Yours Sincerely,
J. P. Calder (Jon)
James returned to the front page to see below the address on the left:
Dear James,
Not knowing whether to be perplexed, suspicious, or just accepting, he concluded he might as well just read on.
Barring tragedy, you will be reading these words several decades hence, and depending what you have been told, will understand at least in part how I can be addressing a letter to you by name several years (presumably) b before you are born.