INVESTIGATIONS: The Secret Life of Clifford Irving

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Irving's own character became one of the larger bewilderments of the Hughes affair. On the evidence, he had used his wife as a pivotal figure—to open the Swiss bank accounts under a false name and forge signatures, leaving her vulnerable to jail. Yet before his story began disintegrating, Irving had told TIME'S Roger Beardwood on Ibiza: "Do you seriously think I would have involved my wife in something —my wife, whom I love, the mother of my children, whom I love?"

Others in the tight Ibiza circle—a raffish collection reminiscent of Humphrey Bogart's Beat the Devil—added color to the story. There was Elmyr de Hory, the slightly flamboyant art forger who is the principal figure in Irvine's book Fake! Another good friend is Gerry Albertini, an idle millionaire with dual British-American citizenship who, apparently as a favor, once kept Irving's Hughes manuscript in his safe on the island.

Then there was Richard Suskind. a corpulent writer and researcher who lives on the nearby island of Majorca. Irving hired Suskind—for $50,000 —to do some of the research for the Hughes book, and he is the only person besides Irving who supposedly met Howard Hughes during the project. It was allegedly a brief encounter in a Palm Springs, Calif., motel room where. Suskind has sworn. Hughes offered him an organic prune. Suskind will testify this week in Manhattan. Others who drifted in and out of the Ibiza circle included Robert Kirsch, a longtime friend of Irving's and the book editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Just weeks ago, Clifford Irving was looking forward to the publishing coup of the decade. He had control of well over half-a-million dollars in publishers' advances and prospects for immense royalties. Last week, with his story in a shambles, he sat in a Manhattan hotel waiting for the law to close in. The Irvings had been caught in forgery; his version of how he had acquired the book in personal meetings with Hughes was seriously shadowed. He tried to bargain with federal authorities for immunity—for himself or for Edith—in exchange for the full story, but the Government, apparently convinced that it has a solid case against the Irvings, was not interested.

Gullible. Yet for all that, Irving seemed almost eerily unconcerned. He bounced out of the courthouse with a smile and handshakes for newsmen friends. He even left the two children with a sitter and took Edith out for a night on the town. One can only guess at the conversation between them. But perhaps, being a modestly talented novelist with the look of a sardonic Danny Kaye. Irving was actually enjoying the knowledge that the story he was living was far more interesting than anything he ever put on paper.

Interviewed on Ibiza for a 1969 television documentary about De Hory, Irving spoke with prescient irony: "All the world loves to see the experts and the Establishment made a fool of, and everyone likes to feel that those who set themselves up as experts are really just as gullible as anyone else. And so Elmyr, as the great art faker of the 20th century, becomes a modern folk hero for the rest of us."