Passing Fancies (A Julia Kydd Novel)

by Marlowe Benn

  He sent a quivery smoke ring into the air. “All of which is why he’s most interested in Eva Pruitt. She argued with Timson. He’d confiscated her property, which then disappeared. No one saw her from about four a.m. Sunday, when she was seen arguing outside her dressing room, until she turned up at the local precinct early yesterday morning. And she refuses to answer questions.”

  “Arguing with whom?”

  “Top suspect number two, Jerome Crockett, who also had motive, opportunity, and no alibi after that argument. His flatmates claim they heard him come in sometime around dawn, but at ten when Sergeant Hannity went round to question him, he found evidence of hasty packing but no Crockett. No one’s seen him since.”

  Julia recalled the proud, arrogant man. “He’s Eva’s lover. He’s a poet, a rather fierce one, and an intellectual. She’d deny it, but I think Eva’s a little afraid of him. I am. When she and Timson were arguing over the manuscript, she gave Jerome several panicky glances. I think she was warning him not to lose his temper. He looked like he might explode. A few minutes later he had to stand by and do nothing when Timson held a gun to her head.”

  Julia considered this. Jerome Crockett must have seethed with fury and hatred. “Wouldn’t that drive any man into a rage? If he loves her as much as she believes, maybe he sneaked back later to get her manuscript. Or maybe he shot Timson simply as a jealous lover. This could be a simple crime of passion.”

  “If Crockett restrained himself during the actual abuses, why wait and lose control later?”

  Julia didn’t know. She ran her fingers through her hair. “At least we’re down to just four plausible suspects.”

  Philip quirked an eyebrow.

  She lifted one finger at a time. “Goldsmith, Duveen, Eva, Jerome. All had a strong motive to retrieve Eva’s manuscript, and all had at least theoretical opportunity to kill him. As soon as I’ve had a chat with Eva, I plan to cross her off the list too. My money’s on Jerome.”

  Philip made another face of astonishment. “Culprit by dinnertime?”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  He shooed her toward the telephone alcove with a flick of fingers. “By all means then, extract her story. Wrap up this pesky business.”

  She tried the number again, but with no better luck. From the hall she asked, “Do you know where she went? After the police released her?”

  “Wallace came to fetch her. He promised to set her up in a private place to stay, out of view. He’s the one who gave Kessler that number.”

  Julia considered who might know Wallace’s friends and associates. She could only think of Pablo Duveen, whose taste for gossip was nearly as avid as his appetite for all things Harlem. She returned to the telephone, consulted the directory in the drawer, and dialed his number.

  Duveen had much to say, but eventually Julia was able to thank him and end the call. “Bother.”

  “Thwarted again?” Philip asked when she flopped back down onto the sofa.

  “He knows less than we do.”

  “Pity. Though hardly a surprise.”

  The doorbell rang. “I’m not home, Fee,” Julia reminded Christophine as she passed by from the kitchen to answer it. “You saw how terrified Eva was yesterday. There must be something more I can do, other than keep dialing that number.”

  “You could try to find out what or whom she’s afraid of.” Philip paused. “Other than Timson.”

  “Jerome.” Each mention of his name deepened Julia’s suspicion. Like a gun, he was cold and hard, taut with suppressed inner violence. Besotted with his literary prowess, Eva saw only the poet beneath the pride. But if he’d cracked and killed Timson, she might suspect or even know as much and now be hiding from him as much as from the police.

  “Or Wallace,” Philip suggested.

  Julia threw up her hands. He was right. At this point all she had was speculation. “Or Goldsmith, or some complete stranger. At least I can start at Pablo’s salon on Thursday. I’m sure it’ll be humming with talk of Eva. Someone there might know something.”

  Philip sent another lazy smoke ring drifting into the air. “What do you know about this Wallace fellow?”

  Julia recalled the fair-haired man with the gleaming cuffs, French scent, and steady nerves. “Very little. He calmed the situation when Timson drew his gun. But if he’s a friend to Eva, I like him too.”

  Philip’s voice grew serious. “I realize you prefer to fling mud in the eye of prudence, my dear, but be careful there. He’s not what he seems. He courts half the city’s debutantes each year, and their mothers no less openly. He relishes nothing better than a fresh conquest. Watch out for that chap.”

  Christophine entered with a tall vase of apricot roses. Precisely the shade of the frock she’d worn to Carlotta’s, Julia thought as she glanced down to read the card.

  Her laugh startled the day’s grim mood. It was ten years too late for brotherly advice in that or any other department. “Oh, I shall, Philip. I’ll keep a very close eye on him.” She laughed again. “He’s invited me to dine on Saturday.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Billie Fischer’s voice sailed as Julia accepted a martini and moved into Duveen’s dining room. “They say Arthur’s blown a fuse—all that folderol, and all he got was a Harlem hangover.” Surrounded by rapt listeners, Billie sucked on her cigarette. “I’ll bet she never even had a manuscript. Not one pretty page.” She flung back her head and expelled the smoke through scarlet lips. “What a fraud.”

  “She wasn’t a splash for long,” someone agreed. “Pablo’s sure lost his gloat.”

  Julia stepped between two admirers to join the circle. Billie was the last person on earth Julia wished to see again, after the appalling scene she’d made at Liveright’s party. But now she’d gladly stomach the vitriol if it led to helpful news about Eva. Her quick prowl through the apartment had spotted any number of acquaintances, but no sign of either Wallace or Eva. The chances they’d be there were slim to vanishing. But still, she had hoped.

  “The Miss Kydd formidable.” Billie craned her jaw toward Julia’s cheek. “Taken a fancy to us lit’ry worker bees? Every now and then something tasty buzzes along.” She nipped at the trousers of a passing fellow carrying two empty glasses. He swerved and exhaled an affectionate vulgarity.

  “Have you heard anything about Eva Pruitt?” Julia asked, shamelessly inviting gossip.

  Billie exchanged her glass for a full one from a nearby tray. “Disappeared. Melted right back into the muck. Pablo’s moping, but he should have known better. I mean, who was she? Who’d ever heard of her a year ago? She just wiggled what she claimed to be her darky ass and mentioned a manuscript, and the boys went wild to buy it. It smelled funny from the start, you know. I don’t just mean her ass.”

  Julia submerged her revulsion in a prolonged consideration of gin. At least Wallace, it seemed, had been good to his word. He’d found her a deep hiding place, well out of harm’s way. Julia was glad Eva was safe, but also troubled. For the past two days she’d repeatedly dialed the telephone number that supposedly would reach her, and each time it rang unanswered. At Philip’s badgering, Kessler had confirmed its accuracy but claimed he didn’t know whose number it was, only that it reached someone who could relay a message to Eva. Except that it hadn’t, and no one had relayed a word. Julia knew little more than Billie and the others. If that route was closed to her, she’d have to find another.

  Today was Thursday. In a wild fancy Julia imagined Eva and Jerome were missing in the best possible sense—onboard a ship as planned, bound for Le Havre. Julia wished she had somehow found a way to honor those tickets, paid for at such a dear price. They’d be sipping champagne before dinner, celebrating their first day of freedom—in a sense of the word far beyond what Eva had meant that night in Liveright’s bathroom.

  “Nothing else?” Julia prodded Billie. “Any other suspects?”

  Billie watched a striking dark-haired woman cross the hall toward the piano. “Who cares? Timson was a s
hit. Pruitt’s finished too, and they can cuddle up in hell together if you ask me.” She waved when the woman turned. “Nice chatting, peach fuzz. We both have quarry yet to bag tonight. Just don’t cross my line of fire.” She winked.

  Billie made straight for the brunette now beckoning to her with a gesture as much command as welcome. She was older than Julia, thirtyish, and like Billie attractive in a predatory sort of way. Duveen materialized to light the cigarette she appended to a long ivory holder. Her very glance, or hint of one, seemed to telegraph her wishes. Hatless, her hair was sleek and smooth, cut in a longish bob. Not a strand strayed from its assigned position. She wore a deep-blue ensemble dress with a narrow pleated skirt and double-breasted jacket that reached her thighs, the garb of a woman not to be trifled with. A lady banker perhaps, Julia mused, or lady lawyer—if such creatures existed in America.

  “Good to see you, Miss Kydd,” a formally polite voice said over her shoulder. “I hoped you’d turn up again at one of Pablo’s Thursdays. No one else talks so prettily about the Cuala.”

  Julia met Logan Lanier’s greeting with genuine warmth. The earnest young poet touched something in her, and she hoped they could become friends. Part of her was thinking as a publisher, always alert for promising writers not yet able to command high prices for their work, but a greater part simply liked his boyish face. She handed him a small parcel from beside her handbag, stashed beneath one of the dining chairs. “It’s only a trifle, but I thought it belonged in your collection more than mine.”

  Folding back the protective glassine, Lanier gazed at the bright blues and reds of a pamphlet in a new wrapper of French curl marbled paper. He opened to the title page of Yeats’s In the Seven Woods, a slim thing produced in 1903 by the Yeats sisters at their Cuala Press studio in Dublin. His cheeks swelled into dark plums of embarrassed gratitude. “It’s beautiful, Miss Kydd.”

  She asked him to call her Julia. After the caustic vinegar of Billie Fischer, his company was clear, cool water. His regard was pure, his interests genuine, his manner attentive. With a pang Julia missed Eva, whose company in this very room two weeks ago had moved her in the same ways. Both Eva and Logan had a depth, a quiet glow of intelligence, that was easily lost—and doubly appealing—in the garish too much of Duveen’s parties.

  He nodded with courteous gravity. “Then Logan, please.”

  This pact of at least a desire for friendship pleased Julia. “It was languishing in a box of my father’s old ephemera,” she explained. “I’m glad to find it an appreciative home. I have drawers full of these Cockerell sheets, which make lovely new coats for such little orphans.”

  He seemed about to expire from a mixture of pleasure and excruciating shyness, so she went on. “It’s a token of congratulations as well.”

  They edged away from the jostling traffic. Ten minutes earlier, Duveen had crowed to announce Logan’s recent second-place poetry prize from Opportunity magazine. His poem would be published in the August issue.

  “Thank you.” Eyes downcast, their gaze as velvety as his voice, he added that the prize carried no monetary reward.

  Even so, national recognition was a triumph for any young poet, particularly a colored one. “Pablo’s certainly proud. He’s a great champion of your talent. I gather he’s urging Goldsmith to publish your first book. That must please you no end.”

  Logan held the pamphlet to his chest. He seemed to struggle over how to respond. “I’m grateful for Pablo’s help with the prize, but I’d actually prefer he not do anything for me with Goldsmith.”

  Julia cocked her head.

  “This may sound churlish, but I want to be published because my poems are worthy, not because Pablo fixes it with his friends. I’d like to catch Goldsmith’s eye on my own, Miss Kydd. Julia.” He looked up, almost defiantly. “I want to be a great poet. I want to be a professor like Longfellow or Lowell and write poems schoolchildren learn and then recite to their children. Poems of America. Poems of all men. For everyone.”

  “And this prize is a lovely way to begin,” Julia said stoutly. She felt honored by his confession, his cautious admission of what modesty insisted one deny. There was something fragile about Logan in his youthful yearning for greatness. She understood both the yearning and the pressure to subdue it. She knew about ambitions. She knew what it was to hunger for an excellence one had been taught was by definition beyond reach. Truly great poets were never colored. No woman could master fine typography. Appreciate the masters’ work, one was told. Never aspire to transcend it. Speak softly, or the jackals will devour your confidence, leaving you with only shame. It was a bitter thing to be made ashamed of your dreams. Julia felt an urge to throw wide her arms and protect Logan Lanier from the jackals, the sneering Billie Fischers of the world. She couldn’t, of course, but her heart swelled for him nonetheless.

  Reluctant or unable to say more, Logan slid the pamphlet into his coat pocket and took up his glass. Pearls of perspiration crowned his hairline. He couldn’t bear another moment of this conversation. Time to change the subject. Time for the more vital questions.

  She watched the ice cube circle his slowly revolving glass. “I’m worried about Eva Pruitt. Have you heard where she might be?”

  He blinked. “No. Nothing.”

  Julia waited, expecting at least some murmured lament for their friend’s dilemma. But Logan’s mouth had gone flat, his eyes murky. Puzzling. Billie’s schadenfreude she understood; Logan’s reticence baffled her. “I understand Jerome Crockett is missing too.” Her voice lifted, edging into her real work.

  With each passing day Julia’s conviction had grown that Jerome was a far better suspect than Eva. Unfortunately, Philip had quashed her reasoning with news that witnesses had seen Jerome early that morning, several blocks from Carlotta’s at the time Timson had been shot. Worse, this meant the police were no longer searching for him, figuring they already had their killer. With Eva sequestered firmly under Wallace’s watch, they were simply looking for evidence to convict her.

  Julia didn’t believe those witness reports for one minute. Witnesses could be bribed. They could lie for any number of reasons. In her mind, Jerome’s apparent alibi only made him more suspicious.

  Logan scowled. “I wouldn’t know.”

  His denial was too quick. “But he’s your friend,” she said. “You must know where he might be.” If she could tip off police, they could at least question him, find some cracks in his convenient alibi.

  “If he’s smart, he’s in Chicago, registering for fall classes,” Logan said in a rush, as if his friend might overhear and object. “There’s nothing he can do for Eva. I just hope he has the sense to save himself.”

  “Save himself from . . .” Julia’s thought trailed as she hoped Logan would explain. That prospect disappeared when a curt interruption severed their conversation.

  “I understand you’re to be congratulated, Mr. Lanier.” The lady banker stood beside them. The woman’s sharp features softened, but not so far as to yield a smile.

  Logan squared his shoulders and thanked her as if she’d offered extravagant good wishes. “It’s a great honor,” he said carefully. “I hope I can fulfill its expectations.”

  Julia wondered at the somber clichés, but the woman wasn’t listening. She had already turned her green-gray eyes to Julia.

  “Might I ask you to introduce your friend, Mr. Lanier?” she said.

  “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Goldsmith,” he replied with a hasty solicitude that pained Julia. “May I present Miss Julia Kydd?”

  “Coral Goldsmith.” The woman extended her hand. “Would you excuse us, please, Mr. Lanier? I’d like a private word with Miss Kydd.”

  Logan was no less astonished than Julia, but more accommodating. Julia bristled at his dismissal, but before she could think of a civil objection, Pablo Duveen quieted the party with ringing crystal.

  “Lanier!” he bellowed from the living room.

  Logan straightened. He took two quick breaths and fing
ered his cuff links.

  “Logan? Where are you, pet? Where’s my prize poet?” Duveen clapped as Logan stepped into view, and the guests joined in amiable applause. “Every pawty needs a pwize poet.” Duveen splashed a kiss on the younger man’s cheek. “Isn’t he luscious?”

  Low laughter skidded through the room.

  Duveen pulled Logan toward the piano, where people made room for them. “We must have a poem,” he announced. “No, three.”

  More applause, as well as rustling to retrieve drinks or take up fresh ones.

  Logan turned to the crowd. “First, I’m grateful to Pablo, who put in a good word for me with the judges.”

  “A thundering good paragraph.”

  Logan blushed. “Yes. A great help.”

  Several seconds of silence followed. Just as a current of resuming conversations began to hum, a sonorous “On Lazarus’s knee” rolled from Logan’s round face. With that single slow, six-jointed note, a poem had begun.

  Julia had often seen poets recite their work, but never in such an intimate setting. From her place at the edge of the dining room, she watched Logan’s gaze sweep the corners of the ceiling, then settle above the bookcase as his voice swelled. He spoke as if without breathing, each word melting into the next like notes from a pensive cello. It was beautiful.

  A warm grip closed around her right wrist. Coral Goldsmith’s voice slid into her ear. “Would you be so kind as to step with me into Pablo’s study?”

  Julia stiffened. Whatever power this woman commanded over the others, she had no right to compel Julia as she pleased. Then opportunity quelled indignation: this imperious stranger was Arthur Goldsmith’s wife. She might have a great deal to say about the recent debacle.

  No one seemed to notice the noiseless wake of two retreating women.

  Duveen’s library was chaotic. This was his working space, its jumbled shelves a stark contrast to the pristine collection of valuable books kept behind glass in the living room. Papers and books covered a large desk. More books, some laid open facedown, were strewed across the floor and cushions of an old-fashioned green velvet sofa. The ginger tortoiseshell cat lay curled on the center cushion in a nest of someone’s white cashmere shawl. The room was stale with odors of cigarettes and recent meals.