Shakespeare Is Missing: An Ovid Kent Novel

By Saul Isler

Shakespeare Is Missing is a pair of tales with crossing arcs.
The first begins in 1605. A man and woman carry on an illicit tryst in the
Crown Inn, Oxford, England. The lovers are married; not, of course, to each other.
A child is born of their clandestine affair. The man, whose reputation as a playwright
and poet is growing throughout his country, is William Shakespeare. The woman
is Jane Davenant, the wife of the inns proprietor, who sleeps peacefully one fl oor
below. Jane will later be known as The Dark Lady of Shakespearean legend.
The second tale, set in 2010, moves eastward across America then on to
England. Its antagonist seeks vengeance against the Bard, foreshadowed by poems,
which pathetically mimic Shakespeares style. The vengeance begins with thefts
and vandalism of the Bards works in San Francisco and Las Vegas, then escalates
from an assault in Milwaukee to explosive mayhem and murder at Washington
DCs venerated Folger Shakespeare Library.
To solve these crimes, Ovid Kent, a former DEA operative, now a rare book
dealer, is hired by a billionaire English fi nancier and owner of the worlds largest
private collection of Shakespeareana, an expected target of the mayhem. Ovid is
aided throughout by the frequently evanescing Will Shakespeare himself.
The storylines have their dramatic nexus in Oxford, in the very room of the
very inn where the fi rst tale began. There, the stunning climax plays itself out in a
breath-holding scene between Ovid, Will Shakespeare and the antagonist

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483682655

Saul Isler

Saul Isler is the author of Babe Ruth Is Missing and this, Killing Shakespeare, the second of his Ovid Kent literary mysteries. He has authored, as well, a young adult novel, The Cave at Devils Elbow, Ennead (nine unrelated short stories) and The Majestic Acrostic, a primer for solving acrostic puzzles. Mr. Isler has been a radio broadcaster, restaurant reviewer, journalist, newspaper and online columnist, ad executive and perhaps the last pen-and-ink patent drafter in America. He is working on a third Ovid Kent novel in Santa Monica, California, aided by his live-in critic, a cat name of Andy.

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Contents

Prologue

Oxford

One

San Francisco

Two

Three

Four

Oxford

Five

San Francisco

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Las Vegas

Ten

San Francisco

Eleven

Oxford

Twelve

San Francisco

Thirteen

Milwaukee

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Oxford

Eighteen

San Francisco

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Oxford

Twenty-Two

Washington, DC

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Oxford

Twenty-Eight

Washington

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

San Francisco

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-one

Oxford

Forty-Two

London

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Stratford

Fifty-One

Oxford

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Fifty-Seven

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

for

Amy, Seth, Josh and Anna

Prologue

The first of these intertwined tales begins on May 23, 1605, the second on May 24, 2010.

The country of the first is England, the scene, a small, low-ceilinged loft bedroom tucked under the thatched roof of an old inn in Oxford. This is an imperfect and dangerous trysting place for the man and the woman who occupy the room, for both are married, she to the inn’s proprietor who lies asleep but one floor below.

The aftermath of the liaison just taken place brings tears to the woman. She knows it will be her last with her endeared playwright/poet for he has just told her that his growing guilt over broken vows of fidelity to his wife can no longer allow him to lie with her as he has for these past many months. Though he has revealed his decision on this darkling night, he has not revealed his heart, for he cannot bear to speak his love without being able to openly pursue its course. As for her, she has told him he shall be her only true love forever.

To the sound of her soft weeping, he leaves her. But not before uttering a line from a somewhat obscure play he wrote nearly ten years earlier in London: "Parting . . . is such sweet sorrow."

His gentle, whispered regrets are, however, not the only cause for her tears. Sweet sorrow, indeed. Within her, and known only to her, grows a seed, a male child.

The playwright will return to his wife, then go on to become the greatest dramatist the world has ever known. His lover, and their son who will bear the surname of her husband, will both gain renown, but their descendents will not fare so well, some living on in shame, some in infamy. She shall come to be known as the mysterious, unnamed Dark Lady of the deathless sonnets the playwright/poet will continue to write for her.

The second tale begins exactly four hundred and five years later. It is the day before the Shakespeare exhibit at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor is to wrap up its month-long run, attenuated because few have attended the museum’s smallest gallery, the Logan, where it is displayed. The time is exactly 5:12 P.M., just minutes before closing. The gallery’s lone guard is not at his post. No one watches over the treasures on display: the first edition outpourings of the man recognized as the greatest writer, not just of his generation, but of all generations before or after.

Suddenly, an explosion of tempered glass shatters the stillness of the gallery, followed by a crackling spatter of shards dancing on the gallery’s travertine floor. The negligent guard, across the hall chatting with the manager of the museum store, hears the jarring noise. The guard and the manager rush to the gallery to find its only remaining visitor, an elderly woman, lying on the floor, propped up on one elbow, moaning and bleeding in front of the violated showcase that, moments before, had housed but a single volume, an extremely rare first edition of William Shakespeare’s poems, collected and printed by John Benson. The guard is shattered to discover that the priceless volume he has been entrusted to protect, is gone.

Shakespeare . . . is missing!

The tragedy of the first tale can have an end only after the second has played itself out because the two, as will be made clear, run parallel.

Until they do not, and their vectors meet.

Oxford

One

May 23, 1605, 7 p.m.

The busy dirt road south by southeast from Stratford-upon-Avon to London, though laid upon a nearly straight line, represented a jostling, sixteen-hour, eighty-mile-long carriage journey, particularly arduous if attempted in a single day, an obviously more comfortable one if taken in two. At just less than the halfway point sat Oxford, beckoning as an ideal layover point because of its many inns and taverns brimming over with the literate discourse of its sophisticated London travelers and its famous university’s erudite dons and their enthralled disciples.

An ideal layover too for William Shakespeare, born in 1564 and now fully possessed of his inestimable literary powers. Will, as he preferred to be called, maintained his principal residence in his birth town of Stratford with his devoted wife, Anne Hathaway, and three children, Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. But as early as 1585 he began to establish himself in London as not just a playwright and poet, but an actor as well, even founding an acting company he called The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later known as The King’s Men.

Having passed his fortieth year, entering what was then considered middle age, Will had become less willing to make this difficult Stratford-to-London commute in a single day. Since the turn of the century he’d come to stop over in Oxford, his preferred inn being the Crown Inn and Tavern on Cornmarket Street in the center of the city, just south of the university.

Why the Crown? For the intellectual propensities of its habitués, the generosity of its pour, the goodness of its bed and board? For these qualities, yes, at first, but much more, beginning with her arrival in 1604, for the quality—the many qualities—of its new proprietress. Jane Shepherd Davenant, four years Shakespeare’s junior, was and remained the stunningly beautiful wife of John Davenant, tavern-keeper and vintner, a long-faced, dour and grave citizen of his city. If not a loved man, he was so respected that he was to become mayor of Oxford.

Partly because of his burgeoning reputation as a playwright, but also because of the frequency of his visits, Will was able to secure his favorite loft room at the inn when needed, a quiet room in which he could write and compose and otherwise ponder undisturbed. The only drawback to this arrangement? The congenital lameness in his left leg, which left him with a slight limp, made it somewhat difficult to negotiate the three flights of stairs leading to the loft.

Not unexpectedly, a flirtation arose between the man who had become known as the Bard of Avon—more affectionately, the Bard—and the wife of the Crown’s proprietor. This wasn’t to remain a mere flirtation for long however. Jane Davenant had high cheekbones, clear skin, a wide and full mouth and eyes of the blackest ebony. She was slim, yet with a fullness to her breasts, and possessed the straight legs and well-limned calves for which English women were known. But Jane was more than just a comely woman. She was of high intelligence, high humor and high spirit. An unconventional woman in an age of convention. An independent woman far ahead of her own or any time. John Davenant was an amply envied man.

Though much has been conjectured, little is actually known of William Shakespeare’s amorous propensities. Nor of Jane Davenant’s. But it seemed inevitable that the two would convene for a very different kind of intercourse than the scholarly kind which attracted most men to Oxford and the Crown.

Will had discovered the place long before Jane became its proprietress. When in a pensive mood, or during the middle of writing a play or sonnet, he would often keep to himself in his loft room. But when not drawn there for this purpose, he would enjoy the easy camaraderie he found in the tavern below. He, in turn, was well-liked by those with whom he chose to raise a pint of stout or port or mulled wine. Later, when John Davenant’s lively and beguiling young wife Jane came to oversee the Crown’s raucous dining hall, he enjoyed bantering with her. More so, even, than with his drinking companions. Much more so, as it were.

It was thought, and sometimes openly spoken, that it was Jane, far more than her staid and businesslike husband, who was responsible for the astounding success of the Crown. It was not enough for her to excel as a hostess at the front of the house; she also managed the inn’s notable kitchen with great skill. Its joints of beef and pork and lamb were considered—if somewhat stinting due to John Davenant’s penny-pinching propensities—the very finest and tastiest in the Stratford-London road.

Jane always knew well how to quench the amorous fires of the inn’s male patrons. A word here, a soup ladle brought down, not always gently, upon a wandering hand there, a flagon of wine poured accidentally upon a heated brow… all of these maneuvers served their guided purpose. Most men just laughed at the outcome. Few would risk ridicule—or, worse, banishment—for complaining. It was Jane Davenant who brought decorum to the Crown and maintained it. There, an intellectual argument was more likely to break out than fisticuffs.

But our Will—ever the clever one—managed to discover a chink in the alluring Madame Davenant’s seemingly impenetrable armure d’amour. The spoken word she could and did fend off easily, but she was, on the rarest of occasions, susceptible to what was penned in literate fashion and dedicated to her. A poem—a well-composed one, to be certain, for she was a discerning woman—could move her to at least lock eyes for a moment with he who possessed the skill to compose it, the instinct not simply to blurt it out but to lay it to parchment, and the hubris to pass it along to her, sub rosa.

And thus, on an evening of relentless rain in May of 1605, Will composed his first written couplet to Jane, one that was to dissolve her mighty reserve. It was a bold flirtation. Though, with its proper scanning and clever internal—even double internal—rhyme scheme, it reflected his innate skills as a poet, it was hardly his best work. Here then, translated into modern English, is the love-smitten couplet our beloved Bard slipped, unsigned (he was no fool) into the waiting hand of his intended inamorata, Jane Davenant:

Tender lady, lovely Jane, for you I pen my love’s refrain.

For you I always shall remain, your thrall, your all, your captive thane.

San Francisco

Two

May 24, 2010, 8 a.m.

The weathered black and gold sign hanging five degrees off horizontal from the Torii arch above my gangplank—I’m going to straighten the damned thing someday—reads Ovid Kent Rare Books & Autographs. Finding and selling rare books and sigs is how I feed my martini habit; reviewing eateries for the local weekly is how I feed myself. I live and work here on Bernie, the coziest little dock-hugger on Sausalito’s Houseboat Row. Named it after my late dad, Bernard Kent, née Kornfeld. Dad changed his name to Kent when I was a young kid to please my mother, Clotilde, who then rewarded him by walking out on us when she met another man. Clotilde; now there’s a piece of work. But that’s a long, sad story I’ve told too often before.

Anyhow, I snagged the houseboat as a bonus during my final DEA days after busting the Columbian coke dealer who’d been using it as a party boat, the most popular on the Bay of San Francisco. That too is a tale for another day. The one I’m telling you now will take me, in stages, over five thousand miles east of the slip where Bernie floats: specifically, to London and environs.

You’re welcome to come aboard for the telling. But you may change your mind because I’m going to sound a little crazy.

About a year ago I had what at first seemed like a vision that Babe Ruth—yeah, that Babe Ruth—appeared to me on a regular basis and helped me solve a very complicated and, uh, lucrative case of a missing Babe Ruth autograph. It could have been a vision but it was real, I swear it. How he helped me is a long sort of fishing tale—but I’m going to make it very short. Don’t worry, I’ll get to the main menu soon.

You see, I was fishing off the stern of my houseboat for a lunker sturgeon so big it had become a local legend. After I actually hooked the damn thing it mysteriously leaped out of the Bay almost into my arms, slamming me into my bulwark so hard that I wound up in the hospital with a concussion. It was right after that concussion that the vision of the Babe came to me. And kept coming to me. Only it wasn’t a vision. Turned out, it was the real—if ethereal—George Herman Babe Ruth.

Or, again, I swear it was. Because I had a strong hunch that that nasty bump on the head gave me the power not only to be chummy with the greatest baseball player who ever lived, but, as it turned out, with just about anybody who ever lived. And Ovid Kent has always lived—sometimes even handsomely—by his hunches.

That’s it. That’s the nub of the Babe Ruth story. So let’s get back to this one.

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OK. So I wake up on this ordinary day feeling that something extraordinary is about to happen. Like I said, I’m good with hunches. And damned if something doesn’t happen. Something huge, something real.

I’m sitting abaft in my beat-up, bolted-down La-Z-Boy of a fishing chair, wearing the threadbare green hoodie I’ve used these past twelve years as a bathrobe. I’m daydreaming as I sometimes glance at my idle fishing rod lying in its mount not moving. My morning coffee is getting cold as I gaze over the top of my Chronicle funny pages. I’m mesmerized by the fog as it races down through the stately red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, then lifts its skirts over the city’s precipitous hills.

Can’t seem to get going today. Not much of a morning person.

Suddenly, I sense something materializing in the deck chair next to me; the same chair with the faded awning stripes where an ethereal Babe Ruth first materialized to help me cop that fat fee for chasing down… Oh, I told you about that.

The apparition freezes me, breaking my thousand-yard stare. It speaks. I gather you are Ovid Kent, it says, laconically, its eyes closed as if it’s not much of a morning apparition. Then, before I can answer, and without extending its hand, it adds, I’m Will.

Here we go again.

Will? Will who? The sight of him out of the side of my own half-shut eyes gives me a vague idea. I say nothing for what feels like a full minute. I’m thinking, absorbing. Then, turning to this Will, I say: Will? I should call you Will? You’re…

I stop. Am I about to make conversation with history’s greatest playwright, the man who, for four centuries, has been known to and quoted by just about every literate person in the world? I can hardly finish my sentence.

 . . . you’re… William… Shakespeare. That’s all the greeting I can muster.

I tell myself I’m sitting here with William Shakespeare. No, at his direction, Will Shakespeare. Me and Will together lolling about in my li’l ol’ houseboat, bobbin’ like a bobber on the big blue bay.

Un-be-lievable.

Then again, ever since that bump on the head that introduced me to the Babe, I do believe it. I am talking to William Shakespeare. "Who next, You?" I say to myself, peeking upward as if God Himself will appear to confirm my newest celebrity sighting.

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This is not the man I expect. Of course, I wasn’t expecting anyone. But what I mean is, of all the characters I deal with in my esoteric literary world who could show up, I don’t expect him; why, I’m not sure. Someone more contemporary maybe, like William Faulkner or, possibly, William Shakespeare, Jr., the founder of the fishing tackle company whose spinning rod sits in my holder. If I sound confused, you’ll understand; I am confused. What I really mean is that I didn’t expect a visit from Will Shakespeare. The Bard. The Bard—the Bard of Avon! Or anyone else this quiet, peaceful morning.

Is this what Shakespeare looks like? There were no validated paintings in his day. This apparition, though still on the handsome side at, I’d guess, late 40s, is nowhere near as perfect of feature as that newly discovered Cobb portrait limns him. Or even the famed Chandos. Quite the opposite. With more than a high forehead, he’s balding quickly. Sporting a small gut that sort of matches mine, he comes off as something of an everyman, someone you’d pass on the street and hardly notice. Except for the dude’s getup.

This Will is wearing leather breeches, slightly muddy, sueded boots and a homespun shirt with wooden buttons and an extremely wide, open collar. A long, woven sleeveless vest—I think they call it a jerkin—completes his casual outfit. Nothing about it resembles the foppish, lacy garb he wears in his portraits. His van dyke beard, if less than neatly trimmed, suits his likeable face, giving him more of a chin than he appears to actually have. Maybe he’s wearing it to hide a second chin. But, altogether, he’s pretty well put together.

Sitting there, slumped, his short legs splayed, eyes shut and hands resting lazily in his lap, palms up like a Buddhist novitiate, he’s obviously at home. Just a guy taking in a few rays. He looks, in a word, comfortable. A lot more so than I am at the moment.

He reads my thoughts. Call me Will if it’ll set you more at ease, he says. If you know me through my work, you know I’m rather an informal sort.

He hardly sounds Elizabethan. Where are his wouldsts and thous and haths? Look, Mr… . Will, if you will, well, yes, I’ll be eased, uh, pleased to call you Will. Anyhow, what was I saying? I come to a full stop. I guess I’m not making any sense, sir. May I start again?

Will: "You haven’t started yet, Ovid." With this, his wide-set, liquid brown eyes slowly open. He turns and looks at me for the first time, the corners of his mouth rising to form an infectious, if somewhat yellow-toothed smile.

He knows my name. I wonder what else he knows about me? Has he been diddling some kind of Seventeenth Century Google? Look, Will, I repeat, "I have read you. I’m not exactly a Shakespearean scholar, but I can name just about all of your plays. And I’ve read most of them… well, maybe half, maybe less, and some of your sonnets too. And I’ve bought and sold a lot of books that listed you as the playwright. You sell well and I thank you for that."

Will laughs. Freud, Dickens, even that actor chap Orson Welles, none of them believed I wrote my plays. You think Ben Jonson wrote them? Or Francis Bacon? Who? Christopher Marlowe? Hah!

"No, Will, having heard all that, I never thought it was anyone but you. I’m just saying I’m a little surprised to hear you sounding like, well, like me, like an ordinary guy."

He remains staring at me with a bemused expression, apparently not ready to hold up his end of this already sagging conversation. A drawing-in rotation of both his hand bids me to continue my end of it nevertheless.

Well then, sir, I say, uprighting my recliner, now that you’re here may I offer an official thank you? What I’m getting at is that, over the years, I’ve made a nice piece of change off of your matched sets and leather-bound all-in-ones. It’s a distinct pleasure to meet you in, uh, in person.

Yes, I know my Shakespeare reasonably well. But I haven’t brushed up lately. I can appraise the market value of the man’s oeuvre better than I can the real value of what he’s written. Except for constantly scanning my cheap, worn-out faux-leather-covered bedside copy of his plays and sonnets to search for quotes that fit as acrostic clue answers, I’ve read, start to finish—in truth?—maybe Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, two or three others. Great writer, no argument, but, often as I find him profound, I find him, well, verbose. Nothing like a five-hundred word soliloquy to put a person to sleep, even when intoned—especially when intoned—live in the theater. Hey, I’m sorry, that’s me. A Shakespeare festival is not exactly my default festival. Mine come with food. Last fest I hit was the Garlic down in Gilroy. I like my Shakespeare on a movie complex screen, not so much between book covers or on the boards. Not to say that I don’t have a reverent respect for books. I mean, c’mon, pushing ’em is how I make my living.

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While I’m studying myself, William Shakespeare—the William Shakespeare—is studying me. His stare is making me self-conscious. I think of an excellent question.

Will… ?

Ask.

Why are you here?

He smiles before speaking. "My friend—and I do desire that we become such—What I am not here for is to judge your interest in my work. Nor, indeed, to judge you at all. That’s for He who sent me. Ultimately. I’m here only to help you recover an important volume of my poems. And to help prevent any further mischief to my earliest printed works. I believe the stolen volume was my first collection of them, both sonnets and poems, published by John Benson in 1640… some time after I was no longer around.

I don’t know why He’s assigned me this task because accomplishing it won’t exactly save the universe. But that is not mine to question, that is my duty—you might call it my sacred duty—to perform. To answer your question, it’s why I’m here. His true purpose will eventually be made known. Or not. But I do surmise this. If He has a purpose for me, He has one for you. And I believe it may involve more than the theft of a single rare volume of mine.

What’s in it for you, Will? I say, then realize how gauche my question is.

I don’t know, Ovid. Perhaps I’ll know when you learn what’s in it for you. Now, as to how I sound, he goes on, I tend to reflect the language—the argot, jargon, patois, cant, colloquialism, whatever you wish to call it—of the world around me, a world of kings and peasants. Always have done so, if in a different way in a different age. Since this is your age, your world, and I suppose it will be mine too for a while, I intend to speak our language as you do. But in what, you may observe, is a Warwickshire accent tinged with a bit of Londonese.

I lift my shoulders. I know something of the British vernacular but I wouldn’t know a Warwickshire accent from a Kikuyu war chant.

Besides, you might find my ‘thous’ and ‘haths’ somewhat tedious, he adds, penetrating my thoughts again. He already reads me with more understanding than I’ve ever had of him. Sharp fellow, this Will Shakespeare. In this adapted speech, refreshingly un-Shakespearean.

Back to those capitals I was hearing in his He’s and Him’s, I know God more by the Babe’s references than by any personal visits to any houses of worship. But, though I haven’t been to one in decades, I’m no longer the devout atheist I always thought I was. Hey, I can use all the help I can get. And if the help comes from the Bard and came from the Babe and the Guy the Babe called the Boss, I’m all for it. To Thee I give thanks.

But wait a minute. My new Brit friend was saying something about helping him recover a missing 1640 Benson? A Shakespeare has been stolen? Will, what’s that about a Shakespeare being stolen?

I thought you might have heard. A thin volume of my poems and sonnets were stolen from a museum in your city. I believe it was on loan from one Nigel Deming-Smith, Knight of the British Empire. A financier and philanthropist he calls himself; everyone else calls him a billionaire. Excellent taste in literature, as he specializes in collecting… me. He has the largest private compilation of my works in the world. You’ve heard of him?

I realize, after a five-second silence, that my mouth has been wide open since Will’s mention of Deming-Smith. Heard of him? Of course. Every rare book man knows of him. He recently bid five million for ‘the most expensive book in the world,’ one of your rarest First Folios. He’s been a sometime client of mine, a damn good one too. I’ve sold him several singles of your works. Not the 1640 Benson Poems; that he must have acquired at the recent PBA Galleries auction. The buyer was unknown but I’m not surprised to learn that it went to Sir Nigel.

"Correction, Ovid, it went from Sir Nigel. It has been—as you might say—snatched."

"Rare tomes are my business, Will. That’s how I happen to know about the 1640. But why haven’t I heard about the theft? Why hasn’t the whole world heard about it?"

Because it took place just yesterday. And also because Sir Nigel tends to quash publicity. Might encourage more theft. Also, he’s a very private man in all of his affairs.

So where do I fit in? And I’d very much like to. How did you happen upon me?

"First off, Ovid, you are—by way, I’m told, of that rather fortunate clout on your head—the only one to whom I or any of us can appear. But, pardon me, I thought you’d already been informed." With that, he snaps his fingers and my cell starts tootling its Für Elise. As I answer, my new Elizabethan friend evanesces to become one with the returning fog, this time—unpredictable as ever—roaring down the Marin Headlands and quilting itself over the bay.

Three

Seconds later

Ovid Kent here.

This may be your lucky day, Ovid Kent here.

Leo Cavanaugh has never been one for starting a phone conversation with a simple hello. Or using an original statement. Leo, one of San Francisco’s finest, is a cop’s cop, a lieutenant of detectives and my best pal since my DEA stint when I dug his perps out from under rocks he wasn’t allowed to lift, and he lifted background from confidential police files not open to the unwashed likes of a fed like me. Wasn’t kosher but it was damned effective. And, by the way, if I’d ever found a woman as great and as gorgeous as the likes of his Mary Ann, I’d have been married twenty years ago. Not that I haven’t found one in Karen, but marriage? I don’t know.

What’s tarnishing your badge these days, Leo? Let me guess. You’re about to whitewash an illegal arrest?

No time to banter, buddy boy. I’m sitting here one room removed from a gentleman who says he knows you. Can’t imagine how; this guy’s a classy dude. A Limey. Says his boss’s book’s been snatched. Wants to talk to you.

Where’s here? And who’s the Brit? And why am I all the sudden so lucky? Is Leo talking about Deming-Smith himself? I doubt it. Billionaire philanthropic financiers