by Marlowe Benn
“Which named only Philip,” Rousch said.
Churchman frowned and repositioned his spectacles. “Your mother was gracious about it, Miss Kydd, remarkably so, I thought. She insisted it didn’t matter, claiming she could provide for herself and for you through her own family’s wealth.”
“Until her death, in fact,” Rousch interjected, “we all understood Milo Kydd’s final wishes to be just as his will stated, with Philip his sole surviving beneficiary.”
“The mystery of your father’s last-minute hesitation seemed immaterial, yes,” Churchman continued. “But when your mother died suddenly, not only intestate but abroad, it was of enormous significance. With war imminent we couldn’t ship you off to relatives in Sweden, the family to whom her fortune reverted, and you were just thirteen, I believe, far too young to be left on your own. The Kydd family was not very sympathetic to your plight, I’m sorry to say, so we were in a proverbial pickle. That’s when it was suggested, I forget by whom, that the somewhat ambiguous language of ‘future issue yet unborn’ might be construed to include you. Perhaps Milo felt it did, we reasoned. Perhaps that’s why he decided revisions were not necessary after all. At the time, it seemed the only humane conclusion. We named Philip as your guardian and then trustee, and everyone was relieved to have you off our consciences, if I may speak plainly.”
“Mr. Kydd’s recent suit, however, allowed us to revisit the matter,” Rousch said. The reminder of Philip’s unprovoked assault stung, and Julia returned her gaze to her lap. “We did our best, despite the significant problem of some key documents missing.”
“I don’t believe we need go into that, Arthur,” Churchman said.
Rousch ignored him. “I thought it prudent to send someone down to Saint Barthélemy to see if a proper marriage license could be found, but I was overruled.”
At this Julia did make a noise, despite herself, as did Miss Baxter, who had slipped into the room with her stenographer’s tablet. It was a pernicious old rumor, the insinuation that Julia’s parents had not been legally married, stemming from their rather impetuous decision to take their vows in such relatively obscure, if lushly tropical, circumstances.
“Yes, you were overruled,” Churchman said. “If I may continue? As I was saying, I knew Milo Kydd well and found him to be scrupulous to a fault. His will was much in his thoughts during his last months. He had both time and presence of mind to sign and return the revised document if he so wished. In the end, it’s now clear to me, to all of us, that if he had intended to include Miss Kydd as legal beneficiary to his estate, he would have made that intention explicit. That he did not, that he left the earlier will unaltered, seems now the best possible evidence in young Mr. Kydd’s favor. We are naturally sorry to disappoint you, Miss Kydd.” The voice swung toward her. “We will do everything in our power to ensure a smooth transition for you.” A low buzz circled the table, a despicable swarm of courtesy tinged with pity.
A smooth transition. That was rich. Julia lifted her chin. Did they expect gratitude for easing her plummet into poverty?
Philip tried to catch her eye. “Yes, thank you for your scrupulous work in this matter, which I’m sorry had to be addressed at all.” Julia turned away at this appalling hypocrisy. “We appreciate your discretion and disinterest.”
The buzz deepened into the usual commotion of men congratulating themselves. Julia rose and walked calmly from that stifling room, ignoring the outstretched hands, the consoling smiles. She reached the elevator before footsteps sounded behind her. She expected Jack, kind to the end, but it was Philip’s voice that said, “Hold on half a tick. May I join you?”
She ground her thumb against the button to summon the machine.
“Damned awkward, I know, but we have a great deal more to discuss.”
“Discuss? You have mocked, ignored, or challenged nearly every word I’ve uttered since the day I arrived.”
“Not true. You must—” he began as the elevator arrived. Julia stepped inside, nodded to the attendant, and the gate clanked shut.
“I must find some air before I suffocate,” she said. The door closed, all further solicitude stalled in Philip’s silent, rounded mouth.
An hour later Julia could not say how she’d arrived at the table where she sat, or even where in the city she was. All she knew was that through the street window the tea shop had looked commonplace enough, the sort of dim and listless place where she might sit in peace for however long it took to consider what had happened and what she should do next.
She pushed aside the untouched tomato aspic she’d ordered to justify her midday table and curled both hands around a teacup, turning the chipped rim away. The tea tasted like ditchwater, but that was the least of her concerns.
Everything, every single thing she’d believed about her life, had just evaporated like steam from an angry kettle. Without her half of the income from her father’s estate, how was she to live? She pummeled the question over and over in her mind. She must face this disaster with cold, practical sense. Sentiment was pointless now, a luxury she soon could not afford. (Luxury? Afford? The old cliché’s metaphor had never registered before, but now it stung.)
Her heart, however, outmuscled her will. To her surprise, she had fallen into a more devastating abyss: the certain knowledge, stark and utter, that her father had disowned her. There were no clerical errors, no oversights, no muddled semantics. She had been six years old, his only daughter, a child who dreamed of his lap, who memorized the smell of his smoking jacket that hung on a hook in the library, and he had chosen to erase her from his life. Julia’s teeth dug into her lip, but it was too late. She turned to the dingy green wall, a blur of veined plaster, and wept. A jilted shopgirl could not have seemed more forlorn.
Fresh hot tea appeared by her elbow, with two clean if threadbare napkins. She could not lift her head to thank the waitress, but no kindness had ever seemed greater. She was powerless until the anguish subsided.
No. She would not wallow. The faded green wall slowly emerged in dubious clarity, with its long-dried tea splats and tiny thumbprints of butter and jam. Enough of that. She had more pressing concerns.
By the time she set down the empty teacup, a vague outline of options had formed. Without her half of the Kydd estate, income from which she now received through Philip’s trusteeship—for precisely seven more days—her financial situation was dire. She could not support herself, much less Christophine, on the occasional monies she received from her uncles in Skåne—a decent but unpredictable and wholly discretionary sum. All right then, what could she do?
She could protest the verdict. She could hire independent counsel and take the matter to the real courts for a proper judge to decide. Possible vindication made this scenario alluring but only for a moment. With what funds would she hire this lawyer? The case would have to proceed in New York, and she could neither live under Philip’s roof nor bear the expense of a hotel for the months, possibly years, a lawsuit might involve. Worst of all, a judge’s decision might be no different. This was a poor option.
What about those Swedish farms? The land had belonged to Jordahls since 1753. Could she ask her three uncles to break up their holdings and sell some of it to provide her a sustaining income? Could she ask them to evict their tenants? The idea was repugnant. So was presenting herself on her relations’ doorsteps as a refugee hoping for a place at the table. She set both possibilities in the category of only if starving.
Irony stung at a third option. She could marry. Philip’s cynical suggestion the other morning in Jack’s office was the most obvious and probably the easiest course, though more abhorrent for that reason. Was it just a week ago that she’d puzzled over Naomi Rankin’s refusal to take a husband for financial expedience? Now she understood such reluctance acutely. That every day women everywhere faced this truth—that their best chance for a comfortable life depended on attracting a reliable husband—was no comfort. She tried to imagine herself emulating Glennis, affecting deligh
t at every insipid antic of some Archie Allthorp. Perhaps she could thump Helen Adair in the shins and demand she divorce David. To be reduced to either absurdity was an odious prospect. In Julia’s head a new small voice, the voice of a woman without money, scolded her for such arrogant niceties. Pride and a free spirit might be universally admired in a man, but they now joined the list of luxuries Julia soon could not afford.
Was independence a luxury reserved for the wealthy? With money of her own, freedom to live as she chose had been a privilege, she now saw, not the simple choice she’d so blithely pronounced it. Now she understood it was an either/or equation. She could be wealthy—by marrying well—or she could remain independent, so long as she could earn her own way. There was the true choice. Julia made pretty noises of being modern, but working to achieve what one valued was vastly more modern than exercising a privilege.
Could she, Julia wondered. Could she earn her own way? Naomi Rankin had managed well enough on her own. (Well enough?) Plenty of women chose to make their own course, to earn their own keep. Julia could seek employment. There must be something respectable she could do for wages.
The hours she loved best were those spent with her Albion and at the typecases, in the painstaking work that was her Capriole Press. But Capriole was unsuited for (and likely incapable of) producing reliable income. In fact, fine printing itself was another luxury, she realized with a sharp twist under her ribs, and one she could not afford to continue.
Her jaw stiffened at the prospect of conceding yet another cornerstone of happiness. It was usually a luxury, yes. But couldn’t there be an exception? Surely a few fine presses came close to paying their way. Francis Meynell’s Nonesuch showed promise in that direction (never minding the production compromises). The Gibbingses were determined to make a go of it with Golden Cockerel. What about those Californians Bruce Rogers spoke of? It would mean rethinking a great deal. She would need to work very hard, develop her skills (and get considerable help), take more courses at Camberwell, cultivate important authors and illustrators, lay in stock for sizable editions, find ways to catch and hold more collectors’ eyes.
The list came to an abrupt halt. All of that took money. Without it, she had no hope of attempting to earn a living with Capriole. The days of patrons and benefactors were over. Her best bet in that vein remained the next-closest thing, a husband.
All right, she lacked the resources to make Capriole profitable. What else? Her education had been indifferent, designed mainly to ensure she wouldn’t embarrass the family name—a name she’d now gladly forfeit in exchange for better schooling. She was passably knowledgeable about only two things, art and books. Perhaps she could get a job as a bookshop or gallery assistant. She pictured Elsa Mowrey and Martin Hepplewhite, David’s assistants, and registered a new despair.
How had she not thought of it before? Employment of any kind would scuttle her understanding with David. He needed a lover with fine things and fine manners, someone who moved in the same effortless circles as he did and whose flair and spirit would add luster to his own. Their affections were deep and sincere but also—mutually—opportune. The relationship would shift drastically if her wealth did not match his; it would founder by Christmas, she was certain, one of the many wreckages of her diminished state.
In truth any work she was fit for paid little more than a pittance and, to a woman, half a pittance. At best she might afford cheap tea, meat once a week, and a bedsit in Bethnal Green. The prospect was as bleak as marriage to a dullard like Archie.
All impulse to tears had passed. This was too important for self-pity. Marriage or employment? It came down to a choice between pragmatics and principles, between comfort and dignity. Had Naomi Rankin cowered in a dreary tea shop and grappled with this very choice? Could Julia also choose the harder course?
She recrossed her legs as a new thought occurred.
She tried to recall the exact terms of the wager Philip had proposed. It might have been a jest, but it had been offered and accepted, and she could hold him to it now. Jack’s howl of protest was ample witness should Philip try to renege. If she could prove Naomi Rankin’s suicide was in fact murder, Philip had promised to withdraw his claim to her half of their father’s estate. She hesitated. Was this crass even to consider? No, she decided, the wager didn’t alter her desire to discover the true story of Naomi’s death. What harm could there be if now some more tangible consequences depended on the outcome? Naomi, Julia dared to believe, would approve.
It wouldn’t be easy. Apart from Glennis’s blind determination to blame Chester, there was little hard evidence to suggest foul play. And yet several details—the stolen note, Alice Clintock’s schedule discrepancies, the anonymous threats, Naomi’s erratic health and sudden illness—begged for explanation. Whether they pointed to murder, Julia couldn’t yet tell, but she now had more reason than ever to find out. Winning the wager would not be an easy path to reversing her personal calamity, but it was relatively palatable and the only one to which she could devote immediate energies. It swelled into a great new incentive to learn the truth.
Julia turned to the wall to repair her face. She slipped a bill under the rim of her cold teacup. The waitress was helping two young mothers settle their children around a table. Julia gave her a small smile as she passed, pleased that she could thank her with a generous purse, as long as it was still hers to command.
Halfway down the street she found a hotel with a small but clean telephone lounge and asked to be connected to the Rankins’ number. Glennis let out a boisterous cheer when Julia asked if she was free tomorrow to continue looking into Naomi’s death. “You bet I am! What do you have in mind?”
In that instant Julia decided not to tell her friend her own disastrous news. Not yet. She needed all her strength for the task at hand; there was none to spare for weathering the hullabaloo with which Glennis greeted all news, good or bad.
Her idea was barely formed, but it might be enough to move them forward. At several points during the luncheon with the Rankins, Julia had wondered why Chester had called in old Dr. Perry that night. Why would he summon a doctor so clearly past his prime, if not to muddle the fellow’s mind and trick him into not calling the police, as any clear-thinking doctor would have done?
“I have a few questions for Dr. Perry,” she said.
CHAPTER 14
The next afternoon at two Glennis and Julia met on the doorstep of Dr. Perry’s brownstone on East Seventy-Eighth Street. The housekeeper, a mature woman with a formidable Slavic accent, asked them to wait in the parlor at the front of the house. It was furnished with a magnificent burled walnut desk, two leather reading chairs, and a Bechstein grand piano. The piano was covered in a red brocade shawl and a dozen or more silver-framed photographs beneath a gleaming baroque candelabra.
Glennis was drawn to the photographs. In the largest frame, a middle-aged Dr. Perry stood beside a beautifully dressed woman, flanked by what must be the young families of their children. From the remaining pictures Julia surmised the wife had died some time ago. In one a grandson, years older than in the family portrait, posed grave and proud in the military uniform of the Great War. Had he returned? The photographs held no answers.
Behind the piano hung a column of diplomas and certificates: Universitatis Princetoniensis, 1870; Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, 1875; State of New York Medallion of Distinction, 1891; Kennewick Prize for Esteemed Service, College of Physicians, 1904; President Emeritus, New York Metropolitan Medical Association, 1913. Other framed honors and tributes receded into the shadowed corner between two draperied windows.
Julia’s attention moved to the surrounding bookcases like metal to magnet. It was a scholar’s collection, not a bibliophile’s, although the distinction could be small. Scientific tomes predominated, but she also spotted ornate cloth spines in faded colors, sentimental novels of the previous century—Fanny Fern, Mrs. Southworth, Mrs. Stowe. Julia drifted sideways along the glass-fronted cases, admiring a run of
seventeenth-century Elzevir twelvemos and several shelves of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century continental editions, still the stuff of serious scholarship for those acute enough to read Latin, classical Greek, and German.
Julia was not among such readers. As yesterday’s turmoil had reminded her, her education had been expensive but haphazard and “female”—meant to breed appreciation more than inquiry, competence more than command. Apart from a gloss of ornamental French, languages were not thought necessary. Whenever she saw books she couldn’t read, like these, twinges of regret nipped at her like pinches from those smug Elzevirs. Now the pain was irrelevant. Better she had learned nursing or stenography.
Julia had literally grown up among books. Her father’s library had been her earliest playground. Her mother believed in childhood freedoms (and spent long hours behind mysteriously closed doors herself), so Julia roamed unsupervised throughout the big house. She loved to elude Christophine by tucking herself inside an ancient lectern, often as not tented over Doré illustrations that sent her breath sailing. Those books—too valuable to be anything but sternly forbidden—were her best toys, leather boxes with moiré satin linings and woven silk headbands, baubles of color, pattern, and pictures. The words were pictures to her too, the harsh weave of barbed blackletters guarded by demons and imps, the heavy tread of Kelmscott romans, the filigree of Fournier ornaments and italics. As she grew older, those books had remained treasures but still for hands and eyes more than mind. Apart from those in English, she knew no more of the books’ texts than had centuries of girls before her.