by Marlowe Benn
Duveen narrowed his eyes. His gaze burned into hers. What a fool she’d been to insinuate herself so carelessly like this. Her nerves were not made for such subterfuge.
Duveen’s lips parted, and his teeth sprang out in a beefy laugh. “You’ve discovered my secret, you sneaky girl. I told you Eva’s manuscript was less missing than before.”
“How did you get it?”
The question hung in the air. Was it too blunt? A mistake, revealing her suspicions?
“The mailman brought it!”
He scrambled around the desk to paw gleefully through the mess for it. “Last week.”
“Who sent it?”
“Eva! Who else? I mean, who else cares so much about getting it published? It’s her ticket to literary Easy Street. More than ever now.” He did a lumbering jig with imaginary castanets.
“Where is she?”
“No idea.”
“Did she include a note?”
“Just those pages.” He stirred about in the wastepaper basket and extracted a large envelope, neatly slit across the sealed edge.
Julia examined it. No tucked-away note or even a return address. Duveen’s address had been typed across the front. The franking mark was smudged, making it impossible to identify the post office station where it had been mailed. She sat back to stare at the mysterious pages, sensing something ominous. “What does this mean?”
He blew air out of his cheeks. “It means the manuscript is safe, not moldering to pulp at the bottom of the East River.”
It meant more than that. The police believed—everyone believed, including Julia—that Timson had been killed for this manuscript. If Eva had it, the conclusion was obvious.
Duveen barreled on, right into Julia’s unspoken fear. “It doesn’t necessarily mean she killed him. He could have given it back to her later that night. And then by sheer rotten luck someone else came in and shot him. He was a crook. His friends are crooks. They kill each other all the time. It’s possible, and that’s good enough for me.”
Such a contrived scenario would never dissuade Kessler. If he knew these pages had surfaced, he’d send in his troops tomorrow. Jerome would be run to ground, and quite possibly Eva too. Not even Wallace could hide her forever from a freshly galvanized police force.
“The way I see it,” Duveen persisted, “the gangster stuff will settle down pretty soon, and the cops will hie off after some new heinous criminal. Before you know it, Eva will be back in business, turning cartwheels of happiness—in time to sign copies of her first edition.”
Foreboding gripped Julia. “Don’t say anything to anyone about this, Pablo.”
He comically turned a key to lock his protruding lips. “Look at the bright side,” he said. “If she can keep the manuscript coming, it will sell like mad. A runaway hit!”
How easily he dismissed Eva’s dilemma, finding specious ways to keep it from spoiling his vision of brisk sales and reflected glory. Julia recrossed her legs to disguise her anger. It wasn’t simply that she cared more about Eva. Too much about the whole situation was unsettling. Unlike Duveen, she couldn’t breeze away the echo of Jerome’s desolate tears or the haunting, hope-numb challenge she’d seen in Eva’s eyes in Kessler’s office.
“Why send only a few pages at a time?” she asked.
“Don’t know, don’t care. Just so long as it keeps coming.”
“Why not send pages in order? The first dozen, then the next, and so on?”
He shrugged, not bothering to repeat his ambivalence. The conversation and her visit were over. He crossed the room to the door, forcing Julia to follow. As she tugged on her gloves to face the cool, drizzly afternoon, his humor returned.
“Even if nothing comes of this whole maggoty mess, at least those pages won’t go to waste. Eva’s novel may fizzle, but they’re a gold mine for me.” He grinned. “It’s the best research I could dream of. So good news either way.”
Julia dipped her chin. Her hat brim would shadow her eyes as her mouth assumed a polite smile. She could not bear to witness his selfish happiness. More likely the day’s only good news was her escape from the apartment without a tattooed dachshund.
CHAPTER 27
It wouldn’t do. Julia shook her head at Philip and let him explain to the estate agent. It was the third apartment they’d looked at since noon, and each was impossible. She might explode with frustration if she opened her mouth to speak, and the poor man deserved better courtesy.
Another day had passed since her discovery in Duveen’s library, a day that had brought no inkling of fresh information about Eva or her manuscript. Philip could report only that Kessler was firming up plans for his major crackdown on Sunday. Unless something turned up before then, Eva’s disappearance had sealed her guilty fate.
Philip’s only genuine news made Julia’s anxiety worse. A letter had arrived from his housekeeper, Mrs. Cheadle. Her train would arrive from Florida late next week. Julia and Christophine were welcome to stay on with him, he said, but Mrs. Cheadle’s return meant a difficult arrangement, crowded and awkward. Christophine was as restless as Julia to unpack her things, their things, the familiars of their own household. It was imperative that Julia find them a new home—but thus far she’d seen nothing suitable for, and that would tolerate the peculiar needs of, a printing studio.
She needed a space for her Albion, the beautiful little handpress on which she’d printed each of her Capriole productions. Along with a large oak type cabinet, holding her growing collection of fonts; a proofing table and composing stone (a slab of marble set into a sturdy oak table); paper cabinets; and assorted other supplies and furnishings of a printing studio, it required a spacious room, sturdily built and with ample natural light. That and the usual needs of a reasonably comfortable residence meant her requirements were particular, and her options were—none. This ugly, dark, and serpentine flat on East Twenty-Sixth Street was their last appointment of the day.
She dreaded even forming the thought. On top of her growing despair about Eva, she felt an inchoate new fear: Would she have to abandon Capriole?
Philip wisely suggested they recover over tea. She was in a foul mood. Just a month ago she’d felt so hopeful and exultant that her move to New York would launch her into an exciting new life, with new friends, a new lover, and especially new horizons for her Capriole Press. Nothing had turned out as she’d envisioned it. At the moment it all seemed perilously close to crumbling to dust. Had she made a terrible, terrible mistake? Would she have been better off remaining in London? Should she have married David after all?
Julia shuddered, not because it was a loathsome thought but because it wasn’t. Maybe she had blithely overestimated her ability to make her own way in life, independent of any man’s help or approval. Everything she had thought would unfold gloriously before her had not. Was she a colossal fool? No more self-reliant than the naive and helpless females she scorned?
Philip turned the handle of the teapot toward himself (arranged, as always, toward the woman) and poured out two steaming cups. “You might as well tell me,” he said. His gaze was open but not avid. He was inviting, not insisting.
As usual, he was right. He’d been true to his word, yielding up every morsel he knew about Kessler’s investigation. She’d listened more than she’d shared in return, and now that discrepancy seemed not only arrogant but foolish. Philip had been a shrewd listener last fall when Julia had struggled to understand Naomi Rankin’s apparent suicide. Even though he’d stood (ostensibly) to gain should one theory prevail over another, he hadn’t manipulated her reasoning. To the contrary, he’d opened her eyes to new possibilities. He might be as helpful now. And she’d promised to share what she knew.
She told him about the pages she’d discovered in Duveen’s library, wondering what to make of them.
“It rather dashes any theory that the missing manuscript was only incidental to the murder,” Philip said. “If Timson were shot for some other reason, why keep the manuscript?”
“You mean if he was killed for the jewelry or something else in the safe? A smart thief would assume anything locked away like that was valuable. It wouldn’t take much to learn about Goldsmith’s big stake in it. Maybe he’s testing the market, seeing if they’ll pay to get it back.”
“It’s conceivable,” Philip said, “but why in dribbled batches?”
“To whet the publisher’s appetite? Tease him with what he’s lost but could recover—for a price?”
“Without any mention of said price? No, a blackmailer would get straight to business. And remember, the fellow’s also a murderer. Unless that book’s worth a minor fortune, blackmail isn’t worth the risk.” He lifted his cup. “Regardless, whoever has that manuscript is still likely to be Timson’s killer. Kessler will certainly think so.”
As Julia feared. “Pablo assumes it’s Eva. He doesn’t care much, so long as there’s a book to publish, no doubt with more fanfare than ever.”
“I’m afraid Miss Pruitt is the odds-on favorite. It doesn’t look good for your friend.”
“What if Timson simply gave Eva her manuscript? That was her plan, to sweet-talk him into returning it. What if she succeeded, and someone else came along later and shot him, by sheer, awful coincidence?”
It was a stretch, but wasn’t it possible?
“Why hide then?” he said. “Her disappearance is the strongest strike against her.”
Bernice. The betrayed nanny. Julia nearly said it aloud: Innocence was a white person’s luxury. No Negro in Eva’s circumstances could dare trust such a claim to protect her.
Philip reconsidered in the wake of Julia’s silence. “Perhaps she knows who killed him. Perhaps she witnessed the murder.”
“And is hiding from the murderer.” Julia’s voice rose. “But who?”
She’d exhausted every possibility, over and over. She’d even wondered if Austen could have crept away early that morning. Her current favorite candidate was Bobby Hobart, Carlotta’s manager, perhaps because she’d never met the man. He’d surely known of the secret passage connecting his office with Timson’s apartment. Maybe he’d wanted more power or chafed under Timson’s authority. But Kessler had scrutinized Hobart’s alibi and found it solid. He and all of the armed staff at Carlotta’s were accounted for that night and morning. Kessler insisted none of them had had the opportunity to murder their boss.
She reconsidered Wallace. Much as she was attracted to the man, he carried a gun. He was ambitious. For a bookkeeper’s son, he’d acquired remarkable wealth and power. Was there a ruthlessness beneath the steady nerve and clear head? Not that she’d seen, but he too had had no opportunity to kill Timson. Kessler believed his account of that night—and so did Julia. She could imagine him killing a man, but not in stealth or without extreme, just cause.
She ticked off her reasoning to Philip. Not Austen, not Hobart, not Wallace.
“Duveen?” Philip mused. “He could have typed and mailed those pages himself to throw further suspicion onto Eva.”
Duveen and the Clarks had been drinking heavily when they’d left Carlotta’s. In the blur of more cocktails, crowds, and eye-popping distractions, he might have slipped away from them. “Yes,” she said, warming to the idea. “He’s eccentric but also much sharper than he seems.”
“Would he know about that secret stair? Unless he could levitate or otherwise slip unnoticed by the guards, it seems the only way in and out of that room.”
“Maybe. He frequents the place regularly. He’d been in Timson’s rooms before. Or Eva might have mentioned the passage. Or Jerome Crockett. Anyone who worked backstage might know about it and have told him. Pablo chats up everyone—and he’s gathering material for a Harlem novel of his own.”
Philip met this with a skeptical scowl. “He’s also rather bulky. Most secret stairs are tight squeezes. Kessler said his man could barely fit. Duveen’s hardly built for skulking.”
“He could have telephoned to Goldsmith, who’s quite slim and lied about his alibi. He’s a proud, calculating man, Philip, and he told police he was at home when his wife told me he stormed out of the house again at three.” Separately or together, both men had motive to reclaim property they considered stolen. Julia tried to picture Goldsmith demanding the manuscript’s return. His righteous anger had been real enough. But would either he or Duveen be able to wrestle Timson’s gun from him and pull the trigger? It was hard to imagine, physically or psychologically.
That left Jerome Crockett, who, like Eva, was a fugitive without an alibi. Julia pictured him in his sweltering cave in the bowels of the Half-Shell, writing poems across discarded newspapers. Her heart balked, but she had to face it: Jerome was the likeliest suspect, after Eva.
Julia and Philip finished their tea in that dreary stalemate. Neither spoke until the taxicab pulled to the curb in front of Philip’s home. Lucky man, Julia thought. His flat suited him perfectly, and he seemed prepared to live out his days there. As they mounted the steps, she said as much.
“I was fortunate. It belongs to my friend Mrs. Macready. She owns most of the block.” He stopped, halfway up the broad stone steps. “And I’m a dolt. A mile thick today. I forgot until this moment that she mentioned a vacancy last week.”
“Nearby?” Julia scanned the block but saw no sign of anyone moving in or out.
“Around the corner. It fronts onto Lexington. Should we inquire?”
Ten minutes later they were waiting on the steps of a beautiful redbrick building adorned with the prosperous flourishes of the previous century. Boxes of red geraniums lined every window. Someone from the manager’s office had promised to arrive shortly and show them the apartment.
So Mrs. Macready was Philip’s landlady. Extraordinary. Julia recalled the woman’s warm greeting last week in Chez Mareille, as well as her cool one to Wallace. Who was she, other than a wealthy widow? Julia was in no mood for yet another mystery. It might be rude to ask, but surely a nominal half sister merited some allowances. “She’s more than your landlady, Philip. How do you know her?”
It was rude. Philip coughed.
“I ask because I met her the other evening, when I was out with Wallace. She snubbed him something royal, after he’d greeted her with perfect cordiality. He said it stemmed from some minor slight years ago, something he couldn’t even recall but that she held against him as a grudge. I’m frightfully curious. She seemed quite pleasant to me, and obviously you like her . . .” Julia dipped her head to leave the rest unspoken.
“If she was cool to him, she must have a good reason,” Philip said.
“What kind of reason?”
“It’s not for me to say.” He dropped his cigarette to the pavement and crushed it beneath his shoe. His jaw tightened with the exertion.
This was as close to angry she’d ever seen Philip. Why? “I gather you’ve known her a long time.”
Julia waited, watching squirrels circling the trunk of an elm tree across the street. “We’re friends,” he finally said. “We met years ago, when I was, oh, not more than twenty.”
Julia hoped her eyes reflected the same open patience—not greedy curiosity—that Philip’s had shown an hour ago. If he chose to confide in her, she’d welcome it as the honor it was.
“We were quite close once.” He looked away. “It was torrid, of course, and utterly mad, without any chance of anything. We’re like an old couple now, long since gone separate ways but still good friends. Young love, though.” He shook his head wistfully. “It can eat a man alive.”
It wasn’t so hard, this siblingesque candor, Julia thought. In fact it was quite wonderful. They should confide in each other more often. She imagined someday pushing his wheelchair out into the sunshine, tucking a blanket over his knees, as any fond and devoted younger sister might. It was an oddly cheering picture.
Julia realized he was watching for her reaction. Her thoughts had gone to Gerald, her own impossible early love. Yet while Philip’s affair with Leah Macready had run its course and
settled into an intimate friendship, hers with Gerald had been doomed from the start. He’d been just back from the war, alive yet broken, each hour of the carnage ringing unstoppably in his ears. Julia could only watch as the man he might have become had suffered and sickened, until he’d ended his agony with a rope slung over a beam in his parents’ country house. Now she understood they had shared more urgent tenderness than lovers’ passion. That kind of love ought to open into joy and delight, but with Gerald all joy had been smothered beneath the pain.
As Julia spoke of this, in low and fitful starts of sentences, she wondered at her recklessness. Not even Christophine had heard as much. She looked up when Philip touched his finger to her cheek. He dabbed away a spot of moistness and signaled the agent’s approach.
Julia regrouped and swiped both cheeks, embarrassed but grateful, as the agent arrived with a fistful of keys. The empty flat was at the top, he reported between chugs of breath as they climbed. “Best,” murmured Philip. He too lived in the top flat. As they viewed one room after another—a large living room with French doors onto a narrow balcony overlooking the same courtyard treetops as Philip’s library, a formal dining room, a bright modernized kitchen and adjacent maid’s quarters, two small guest rooms, and a larger master bedroom—Julia fought a growing excitement. Christophine could turn one of the small bedrooms into an atelier. The apartment might work, depending on the final room at the back, a semiattic space that the agent called the nursery. It proved to be a large square space four steps up, with a basin and cupboards in one corner. Best of all, a huge skylight flooded the room with light from a north-facing wall.
Philip strode toward the far wall and rapped the plaster. “I believe my flat’s on the other side. If you take it, we can devise a code of sibling thumps.”
Julia’s mind was buzzing too loudly to answer. She asked about the weighty burden of her equipment and any objections to the work she would do there. The agent said the building was solidly constructed and could bear a great deal of weight, but he’d have to ask the owner about concerns regarding her activities.