[F_minor] Hercule Poirot & GG: NYTimes snapshot of GG memorabiliatrial

["Robert Merkin" <bobmerk@earthlink.net>]

The New York Times
Tuesday 24 October 2006
Gloved Jury Gets Close Look at Paperwork From Pianist
by ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
In a demonstration worthy of Hercule Poirot, a Manhattan prosecutor yesterday handed out sterile white cotton gloves and invited a jury to examine two pieces of Glenn Gould memorabilia purloined from Canada?s national library about 20 years ago.
Although she did not say so, it was clear from courtroom testimony that the prosecutor, Jennifer Martin, wanted the jury to pay attention to the telltale details: how, for instance, a brown coffee smudge stained the notebook page on which Mr. Gould had scribbled his slashing signature 18 times and had penetrated to the next page, while a forged version was clean and unstained.
Mr. Gould, who died in October 1982, was a Canadian child prodigy in classical piano who gave up live performances in 1964 and dedicated himself to recording. He is known for his performances of Bach and for his eccentricities -- like humming while he played, and an aversion to cold weather.
The trial, in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, is the latest case to highlight the ease with which unscrupulous researchers and dealers in rare archival materials have been able to flout library security and abscond with valuable documents.
The defendant, Barbara Moore, 62, whose white hair and baggy sweaters give her a sympathetic, grandmotherly air, is accused of stealing two pieces of Gould memorabilia -- the scribbled page of signatures and a page of a musical composition with the sounds of gulls and wind, with a combined estimated value of $14,500 -- from the library.
Prosecutors say Ms. Moore stole the documents while she was one of about a dozen researchers authorized to examine the Gould archives as they were cataloged in the 1980?s.
They say she hastily forged a replacement copy for the page of signatures, but was not able to forge the music because it was much more complicated.
Prosecutors accuse Ms. Moore, now an adjunct professor of art at Austin Community College in Texas, of essentially fencing the documents in New York, by selling them to an autograph dealer, Roger Gross. Mr. Gross got so excited that he put the page of autographs on his Web site last year and advertised it as a potential Christmas present.
"Both were unique, one-of-a-kind writing by Mr. Gould," Ms. Martin, the prosecutor, told the jury in her closing argument yesterday. Curators valued the notebooks, she said, for their insight into Mr. Gould?s day-to-day creative process.
The defense lawyer, Shane Brooks, contended that the documents were given to Ms. Moore by a friend, Stephen Willis, who was in charge of cataloging the collection, and who rented her a basement room in his home in Canada.
"My client hung on to these items for 20 years," Mr. Brooks said. She finally sold them, he said, only because she needed money to pay bills.
Mr. Willis has since died.
"It?s very convenient, too convenient, that the defendant pins this all on a dead curator," Ms. Martin said.
The 18 signatures were written in black pen at a slashing, nearly 45-degree rightward angle, one after the other like soldiers in formation, across the bottom half of a page of white, blue-ruled notebook paper. The same page also featured jagged abstract doodles.
At least one biographer has suggested that Mr. Gould may have had Asperger?s syndrome, which is related to autism and is characterized by obsessive behavior.
In his closing argument, the defense lawyer, Mr. Brooks, who is from Texas, invoked Mark Twain, Sophocles and Mickey Mantle, and said he was flabbergasted that the trial was taking place in a courtroom on the unlucky 13th floor.
But he told the jury that he had learned since coming to New York for the first time for this case that New Yorkers are basically friendly.
So, he said: "I feel O.K. I feel all right that you?ll go into that jury room and find my client not guilty."
The jury reached no verdict after about three hours of deliberations and will return today.
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