Passing Fancies (A Julia Kydd Novel)

by Marlowe Benn

  “I take it you’re not married, that you are indeed a Miss Kydd?” Mrs. Goldsmith fit a fresh Lucky Strike into her black holder and lit it with a match from Duveen’s desk drawer. Seen close up, her hair had a reddish cast to it, like a rich Bordeaux.

  “And planning to remain so for the foreseeable future,” Julia admitted, curious what the woman was getting at. She wanted to talk, but not about herself.

  “Wise.” The older woman exhaled and continued briskly. “I have no particular interest in your acquaintance, Miss Kydd, and shan’t keep you long. I merely wish to warn you of a possible annoyance to us both. My husband is Arthur Goldsmith, as I’m sure you realize. I have reason to believe he is attracted to you and that he may even muster some effort to pursue your favors.”

  Julia trusted her composure to hide her surprise, but her face must have betrayed something, because before she could speak, Coral broke into a wide smile. “Yes,” she said. “The notion appalls you, naturally. Arthur’s prospects as a lover are quite ridiculous, despite his occasional glimmers of charm.”

  Her smile subsided, but the clipped edge to her speech did not return. “Oh, humor him if you like, Miss Kydd. A bit on the side is no threat to me. In fact, it would be rather a holiday.” Another smile spread across her meticulous features. “But while you’re welcome to a liaison of the more”—it widened—“strenuous variety, I will not allow it to interfere with our business. Do you understand me, Miss Kydd?” She paused, expectant.

  Julia’s first thought was to wonder whom she might regale with this extraordinary warning. Austen would relish it, but he was midway across the Atlantic. For the moment, Julia only nodded. Bizarre as the notion was, she understood it clearly enough.

  Coral continued, her words crisp. “As far as I know, you have no literary ambitions, beyond your hobby press. But I won’t risk not making myself clear. If you hope to parlay Arthur’s admiration into any favored consideration with our firm, for yourself or for someone else, you will find me a formidable opponent. Arthur may have few, mercifully few, weak moments of judgment, but I do not. I am not to be trifled with in this matter. I will crush any effort that might sully the Goldsmith imprint, Miss Kydd.”

  Terms laid out, she again waited for reassurances. It was a remarkable performance, though Julia bristled at Capriole’s demotion to a hobby, as if she were a bored countess arranging types and papers instead of flowers or decorative bijoux. She subdued a fitting retort, however. She had her own agenda yet to pursue.

  “You may be right, Mrs. Goldsmith,” Julia replied, “but I’ve seen nothing to cause you any worry.” Far from it. Her husband had barely deigned to notice her when they’d met at Liveright’s party, and had said nothing at all to her that terrible night at Carlotta’s. Julia couldn’t imagine what Coral Goldsmith referred to.

  As Coral’s eyes narrowed, measuring Julia’s meaning and her tone, Julia helped herself to one of Pablo’s cigarettes from a rather squashed packet of Raleighs. Coral made no effort to pass along the matches, so Julia rooted in the drawer for another box. She lit her cigarette and drew the smoke deep into her lungs before releasing it. She must ask Philip to teach her how to blow smoke rings. She wished desperately for the skill and resolved to start practicing tomorrow.

  Coral seemed about to speak when Julia inhaled sharply through her nose, turnabout being fair play. “But if he should develop an interest,” Julia added, with a stretch of syllables, “or I should sprout new literary aspirations, I’ll consider myself forewarned.”

  Coral Goldsmith recognized this as the treatment in kind it was. For a long moment she eyed Julia, scanning for signs of insurrection. Julia returned the assessment.

  Coral stiffened. Was she going to walk out? Julia feared she’d gone too far, alienating this arrogant woman before she’d asked about the situation with Eva. But before she could speak again in less chilly tones, Coral gave a bark of pleasure.

  “God, I rather like you,” she said. “Arthur may cast his seed upon the rocks, but Christ, I’d go straight for you.” She laughed, a rich and lingering sound that explained much about her power. “How did you ever find your way into this day nursery of sycophants, Miss Kydd?” She tapped off her ashes into a saucer from the desk.

  Julia did the same when she extended the saucer. “The usual way. I enjoy book people.”

  Coral nodded. She cleared space on the sofa, pitching the cat to the floor, and sat. She patted the space beside her for Julia.

  “I’ve only met your husband twice,” Julia said, easing the conversation around a bend. “On both occasions Eva Pruitt was the center of attention.”

  “Christ. That fiasco.”

  “I suppose you’ve lost money?”

  Another crisp blasphemy. “A sure thing. Pablo swore it. Arthur trusted him, agreeing to a tidy advance on royalties before we had the manuscript in hand, and the little minx played us for fools. Now we may wind up with nothing at all. I suppose you know she blew that fellow’s brains out and disappeared herself, with both the manuscript and our money.”

  Coral repeated Billie’s cavalier assumptions with a blasé resignation. As Julia had feared, in these people’s minds Eva was as good as arrested and convicted. Coral cared nothing for that, only her own business troubles. She leaned back into a needlepoint pillow and crossed her legs. One expensive blue shoe swayed above the other. “I was not consulted on the initial arrangements. But I certainly made it my business to be involved in the matter this week. We’ve been swindled, to put it succinctly. Against my better judgment I’ve allowed Pablo one more week to retrieve either a manuscript or our money. How he tracks her down isn’t my concern. But should he fail, our lawyers will see she’s charged with fraud and theft, quite regardless of that other business. She’s in one pretty pickle, I must say.” She paused thoughtfully. “If only I could have a chat with her.”

  Her cold resolve made Hannity’s threats seem like the spleen of a petulant altar boy. Julia forced herself to match her sangfroid, inspecting the glowing tip of her cigarette as she searched for the right indifferent words, hoping to earn the woman’s confidence. “I know her a bit. I doubt it was a scam. I saw the manuscript last weekend. You might yet get it when everything is sorted out.”

  “You sound like Pablo.” Coral sighed in disgust. “If it exists, if it’s found, if we can get hold of it—it may still be worthless nonsense. What the hell was Arthur thinking?”

  “I can’t imagine he was happy about that little scene after the show.” Julia smoothed her skirt, careful to keep their dance moving but not lead too forcefully.

  Coral surprised her with another low, melodic laugh. “He was furious. Stormed about like a guilty schoolboy—to beat me to the punch, of course. We’d been to a party at my sister’s that night, but Arthur just had to slip off to see the creature’s show with Pablo. I was getting ready to leave when he returned with the news that that madman wouldn’t give us the manuscript. There was a terrible scene, naturally, and Arthur skulked out of the house—sensible alternative to sharing a taxi home with me, I’ll grant you—and crept off to who knows where.”

  Julia mustered a laugh to disguise her spike of interest. This was not what the Goldsmiths had told the police. Kessler believed Goldsmith had been home by two thirty. This woman had confirmed it and assured police he’d stayed in for the remainder of the night.

  Why would he lie? Why would she? More importantly, where had Goldsmith gone—at the very hours in which Timson had been shot?

  “Poor man,” Julia said. “Was he out long, and in all that rain?”

  Coral released a tendril of smoke. “Oh, my dear, I have no idea. His bedroom and mine are miles apart. I didn’t see him until the next afternoon, when neither of us was in a mood to speak of it, especially with policemen demanding details. But he was perfectly dry and rested. Believe me, Arthur is not one for troubled breast-beating through deserted city streets. I expect he hopped straight into a taxi and sneaked up to sleep at the office. Yes,
that’s about right for Arthur.”

  She laughed again, the rumbling of a patient volcano, and covered Julia’s hand with her own. It was cool and strong. “But don’t pay much heed to my jaded opinions, Miss Kydd. I rather hope he does set his cap for you. A tangle with a clever beauty might do him some good, restore a bit of the old boy’s flair. Just don’t turn his business head.”

  Her crush of Julia’s hand was brief but sufficient. Their meeting was concluded.

  CHAPTER 17

  Two nights later Julia stepped into the magnificent Twilight Lounge of the Hotel Astor. Wallace brushed a bill into the maître d’s palm, and they followed a pair of slim white-jacketed shoulders into the plush room. The hour was late, but it was filled with other partiers in formal attire. The Twilight was a favorite meeting place for those who held regular boxes at the opera, and those regulars gathered now in convivial groups of six or eight at clustered tables and drawn-up armchairs. Most were men, but intermittent blooms of colors, glowing like candles in the lush decor, revealed women too.

  Despite the dozens of people in the room, nothing so vulgar as a commotion escaped it. Several large oriental rugs covered the floor, cushioning footsteps and sliding chairs. Burgundy velvet draperies softened the paneled walls, and white damask puddled from every table. The long mahogany bar was inset with padded leather, muffling the clink of glass and china. Even the small orchestra in the far corner of the room discreetly muted its labors.

  A fire flickered under a wide mahogany mantel in the center of one long wall. It faced the bar, from which white-jacketed men delivered endless rounds of beverages in delicately painted bone china teacups. The china disguise was a droll touch, since the Astor faced no danger of surveillance from Prohibition agents. The lieutenant governor himself sprawled in one of the fattest armchairs, a cigar in one hand and a brimming teacup in the other. No doubt half the men surrounding him were civic luminaries.

  “You’ve been a marvelous sport,” Wallace said into Julia’s ear. “Now we get better acquainted.” His hand rode her hip as he guided her forward.

  She longed for the intimate hour ahead. Despite her best efforts to subtly raise the subject of Timson’s murder, she and Wallace hadn’t spoken of it beyond a few guarded clichés of shock and horror. When she’d tried to spark a conversation, hoping he’d confide his role in protecting Eva, he’d merely said he hoped she was safe, wherever she was. In the next breath he’d waved over a friend he’d introduced as the city’s next mayor, and the subject of Eva had disappeared.

  It was frustrating. If he’d confided in her, she could have asked directly why she’d had such trouble reaching Eva. After four futile days, an unidentified woman had finally answered the mysterious telephone, on Julia’s third call yesterday morning. She’d promised to relay a message asking Eva to return the call. Thus far she hadn’t, despite two more pleas the woman had sullenly agreed to pass along. Did Eva receive the messages? If Wallace had overseen the arrangements, why was this intermediary so elusive and unhelpful?

  Oddly, his reluctance to speak of the situation also deepened Julia’s regard. He might have abandoned Eva to her great fall like so many others, but he’d chosen instead to catch and cushion her. Julia admired that his caution in preserving Eva’s safety was stronger than his desire to impress. He could be trusted. Eva was well sheltered. For the first time in days, Julia could relax, even enjoy the evening’s glittering pleasures.

  When Julia had learned they were going to a gala dinner to benefit the Saint Patrick’s Cathedral Roof Restoration Fund, she’d understood the agenda. As a rising political prospect, Wallace wanted to be seen widely and well, and female company was part of the desired tableau. It had been an evening of opulence, as events spawned by charity frequently were. Julia thoroughly enjoyed the clothes, the jewels, the effusive alcohol, the course after course of culinary objets d’art. She even relished the insipid chat, the vacuous pleasantries, the social fawning, the political pretenses. It would be a pleasure to recount everything over the next several days to a rapt—if blushing—Christophine.

  Julia wore the latest of Christophine’s reworked gowns. It was a cornflower-blue satin sheath with a fistful of fabric gathered bustle-like at her bum, a fluid satinfall that murmured as she moved. Christophine had cut a new deep V neckline to echo the wedge of bare spine in the back, then inserted a triangle of chartreuse organdy along one side so that it swept in an asymmetrical panel above her left breast, covering what might have been (on another woman) décolletage. It was a fine joke, to hide what was not there. On the organdy she’d stitched a single meandering line of tiny gold beads, as if a gilded ant had wandered by in search of a picnic. A dozen women had remarked on her frock, which alone testified to its success. Julia could hardly wait to relay the compliments to Christophine, to whom they were really directed.

  Wallace and Julia had dined at a large round table with three other couples in one of the hotel’s grand ballrooms upstairs. During the meal her unspoken job was to divert the husbands while Wallace enchanted the wives. The real work came afterward, when the women receded to a salon with music to oblige the men their cigars and brandies. Over thimbles of sherry Julia endured innumerable recommendations of clubs and societies to which she really must belong, as well as endless pecking at the edges of her mildly worrying pedigree. (“Milo Kydd’s daughter? Was your mother the foreign girl?”) The tedium was rewarded when Wallace bagged—Julia’s term—invitations to three country weekends, two debutante parties, and one new advisory board. A successful night’s work.

  Now the personal pleasures could begin. Or as soon as they could reach a private table. Every man rose to greet Wallace as they moved through the crowded lounge. At each stop Julia met another middle-aged, wealthy, and no doubt powerful businessman or lawyer or banker or industrialist, each alike in easy yet hungry confidence. She understood that every compliment paid her was deposited straight into Wallace’s treasury. She didn’t mind. His luster enabled her to shine. They could share the profits.

  Julia saw them before they noticed her. Sunk into a trio of armchairs in a distant bay between two columns, in a companionable haze of smoke, sat Philip, Jack, and Kessler. They’d chosen a spot farthest from the orchestra, where its efforts would not ruffle what looked to be an intense conversation. Julia had no doubt of the subject: Leonard Timson’s murder—still unresolved. As each day passed without an arrest, the newspapers’ clamor grew. Unfortunately, every day she asked Philip if there was any news, and every day he sighed and answered that Kessler remained as baffled as ever.

  She began to angle a path away from them, but a pressure at her waist objected.

  “I see the assistant commissioner is here,” Wallace said into her hair. “I’d like a word with him, if you don’t mind. Just to say hello—not long.”

  Did he have some information about Eva to pass along to the police? He’d dodged Julia’s efforts to learn of how she was faring in whatever shadows he’d created for her, but surely he’d speak more plainly to Kessler. Julia readily led the way to the sequestered men in the rear alcove. Kessler greeted Wallace with a distracted handshake, clearly troubled to see him with Julia. He began to introduce Philip and Jack when Wallace interrupted. “I had no idea you had a sister, Kydd, and such a charming one. Kessler’s bringing out his secret weapon?”

  Philip dismissed this with a skewed eyebrow. His occasional help on Kessler’s more baffling murder cases was not exactly common knowledge, but rumors—no doubt inflated—abounded in places like the Twilight Lounge.

  A waiter slid two more chairs into the alcove. Additional brandies arrived. With the usual banter they agreed to a foursome of golf at the Marylebone Club. Julia appreciated Philip’s acquiescence, as he enjoyed mocking the sport more than playing it, but he wouldn’t miss the likely discussion of the Timson case. The golf course was as bad as the smoking lounge or steam room (or Grolier reading rooms)—each a place for discussing vital business or legal matters shaping daily lives
. When men returned from their afternoon on the links, often all that remained was to announce their decisions. Those excluded from those places, including women, could only protest the done deals—even (especially) those directly governing themselves. Kessler wrote the agreed-upon date in his pocket calendar, and banal civilities petered out to silence.

  Surely everyone was ready to burst with the obvious questions. Julia looked to Wallace, who dropped his eyes. All right then. She would have to ask them herself. “Have you found Eva Pruitt’s novel manuscript yet, Mr. Kessler? Or Timson’s gun?”

  So much begged to be discussed, yet hesitation reigned. Kessler inhaled, his lips compressed. He merely shook his head, refusing to answer. Beside her, Wallace cleared his throat. For heaven’s sake!

  She looked to Philip. He alone returned her gaze. It took a moment before she could read his look: Leave it to me. Kessler would not speak of the Timson case in Julia’s hearing, but he and Wallace clearly had something to discuss. Beneath Philip’s atrocious posture, melted lazily into the cushions of his club chair, and his indolent air of supreme indifference, she now knew he was more alert than ever. I’ve got this, his manner telegraphed. He’d listen on her behalf and share everything at first opportunity. A mole! A partner in espionage. The small thrill of it eased the sting of the role she knew she must play.

  “Oh, gentlemen.” She sighed. “Does chivalry never rest? I may as well take my nose off for a long powder.” She excused herself and threaded a slow, circuitous route to the ladies’ lounge, bracing for the noisy and meddlesome crush she’d find there. For every cigar-congested lair where men congregated, there was an overmirrored, overscented, and plushly decorated lounge where women held court. Men might rebuff her questions, but women might gush with answers, most of them spontaneous and, if possible, titillating.