The Angel's Cut

by Elizabeth Knox

  Sober for five weeks, lucid, dull, Flora found her focal length had altered. Before her now was a long vista, with a vanishing point. She found herself in her life, in time that had an end to it. Time to get serious.

  Cahuenga Building, Hollywood Boulevard

  October, 1930

  The new, sober Flora found the time to dig out the address of the appraiser to whom she’d sent Xas. She drove to a building on Hollywood Boulevard, and took the elevators to the fourth floor.

  The appraiser was a manufacturing jeweller, the best on the coast. Flora spoke to a receptionist behind a steel grille. The receptionist pressed a button and let Flora into the showroom, a room with thick carpet, and very modern, recessed downlighting. There were more lights in glass cases, illuminating diamond necklaces, bracelets, and rings. Among the diamonds were plump and oily pearls.

  Flora took a seat in a gilded chair and waited. She picked up a Photoplay and flicked through it. She found a portrait of Cole’s new star, and stills from Flights of Angels. She remembered the scenes of the stills as stopped frames in her editing machine. She had spent so long on the film, and it had receded so quickly. Flora stared and tried to imagine it all as history, instead of merely last month’s news. She found that mattered to her. She felt her life with its new long perspectives might one day feel finished, and thought through like Cole’s film, rather than just made of moments like the sweepings from the floor beneath her editing bench.

  ‘Miss McLeod?’

  The jeweller was a neat person in a double-breasted suit that made his shoulders too wide for his height. He introduced himself—‘I’m Mr Green’—and took Flora’s hand, retaining it as he sat beside her. She could see he was worried because he didn’t know who she was. Whose wife, whose girlfriend—though she was unescorted, and not pretty enough.

  Flora said, ‘I sent a friend to you several months ago. He wanted to get a valuation on some pearls, and possibly to sell them. Black pearls.’

  Flora actually saw the man’s hair bristle as his scalp tightened. It was one of those expressions that looked as much like disgust as surprise. She went on, ‘What I want to know is, if my friend did sell the pearls, whether he ever collected his money?’

  ‘Miss McLeod—this friend of yours, was he a good friend?’

  ‘Were the pearls stolen?’

  ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘He didn’t own anything.’

  The man scratched his ear. ‘I still have them,’ he said. ‘Your friend, Mr Jodeau, struck me as very confident, very candid in his manner. He didn’t act like someone selling stolen goods. He wasn’t in any great hurry either. I did say to him that a pearl rope like that must have some provenance. Each one of those pearls would have been a remarkable find, a once-in-a-lifetime find.’ The jeweller waited, watching Flora while this sank in. He said, ‘They’re not cultured. I used an X-ray to check the material at their cores. They are wild South Sea Island pearls, perfectly matched, and an extremely rare true black.’

  Flora understood that she was being made to appreciate some enormity, some professional miracle.

  ‘Pieces like that have names,’ he said.

  ‘Did it?’

  Green shook his head. ‘No. After some research I found that the only pearl rope answering its description was the subject of a disputatious insurance claim, and an old family quarrel. The families involved were French—so I suppose the pearls were originally Tahitian. The family Lettelier made the insurance claim on the death in 1876 of one Baron Lettelier. The Baron’s wife, Aurora de Valday, had died the year before. The pearls had belonged to her. The Baron had insured them with Lloyd’s of London in 1845, which is actually too early for Tahitian pearls, though they must be Tahitian. The insurance claim was made because the pearl rope wasn’t found among the Baron’s effects. The Baroness Lettelier never wore them, though her daughter-in-law the Comtesse du Vully wore them at court in 1857, where the Empress Eugénie admired them. Vully is a château on the banks of the Saône river, in Burgundy. It makes one of the world’s most famous wines. Lettelier was Aurora de Valday’s second husband, the Comte du Vully was her son by her first marriage.’ Green paused and shrugged. ‘Anyway, the Comte’s and Baron’s families fell out over the pearl rope. The Comtesse du Vully insisted that she had returned the rope to her mother-in-law. The Baron’s heirs said she hadn’t. All I can establish for sure is that the rope hasn’t been seen since 1857.’

  Flora was a little disgusted by this tale of cupidity—these families squabbling about treasure none of them had seen for twenty years (unless of course the pearls, never worn, were only gloated over in private). She remembered how the rope had looked against her friend’s skin, and how he had crossed his arms to close his shirt. She remembered the beauty of the pearls, and his beauty, and the shame in his posture. Thinking of this, Flora wasn’t surprised to hear what the jeweller said next.

  He said, ‘The pearls were supposed to carry a curse.’ He blushed. They had a little laugh together. Then he said, ‘Your friend did offer a vague account of how they came into his possession. He said that a relative of his gave them to a friend of his, who later returned them to him.’

  Flora nodded. ‘That’s more or less what he said to me, too. So it’s his relative who is the thief.’

  ‘I don’t know. The way he said “relative” I felt I was listening to someone refer to London as “a city in England”. Possibly the Jodeaus are related to the Letteliers or de Valdays?’ Green touched Flora’s gloved hand again and asked. ‘Where is Mr Jodeau now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He didn’t come back to see what I’d offer. Possibly he realised that questions would be asked.’

  That was it, of course. Xas had disappeared because he tried to sell something he, or someone he knew, had stolen, then realised later that he couldn’t just cash in something so unique and not have to prove ownership. His naivety was staggering.

  ‘I can’t sell the rope,’ the jeweller said. ‘If Lloyd’s had paid on the claim, Lloyd’s would own it. But Lloyd’s didn’t pay. And I have no idea who owns it.’

  ‘Dead people,’ Flora said, ‘and their dead children and grandchildren.’

  ‘I’m trying to obtain an address for the present Comte du Vully—if there is such a person.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’

  ‘Your friend gave the rope to me wrapped in a rotting shirt.’

  ‘Did he?’ Flora said, darkly amused. Xas hadn’t even bothered to conceal the fact the pearls and their packaging had been freshly dug up.

  Green blushed from throat to hairline. His mouth worked. He seemed to want to say something more, but was having trouble with it. Flora caught his eye and saw dread there. She waited.

  ‘I cleaned them,’ the jeweller said. ‘Then I thought I should restring them. They were strung without knots between each pearl. Very bad practice. But—’ He stopped and silence seemed to arc above them like an unstable stone roof. He finally said, ‘I found I couldn’t cut the string.’

  Flora was silent.

  He went on, his voice shaking. ‘It wouldn’t cut, though it was only the thickness of a fine hair—a single strand of black hair. I tried with a sharp knife, and scissors, and using real force. I scratched one of the pearls.’ He was pale now, and sweat had started on his forehead. Flora was beginning to worry about the state of his mind, with all this talk of curses and strings that wouldn’t cut. But he collected himself with a deep breath and a series of little shudders. ‘That isn’t something I can expect you to believe unless you try it yourself. And I suggest you don’t.’ He was quiet for a moment, then, before Flora had thought what to say, he went on. ‘You’d think that all that was required of a fact was that it be demonstrable. That, if a fact was demonstrable, it would be an honourable fact.’

  Flora didn’t say anything. She felt lost.

  ‘It’s not true,’ the jeweller said, earnest.

  ‘No,’ said Flora. She decided that it
was better to agree with him. She glanced away from his moist, unhappy face at all the rich stock glimmering in the glass cases. There was no sign of disorder anywhere, or of any dishonourable facts.

  ‘What kind of man was your friend?’

  Flora thought: hard-working, able, poetic, practical, sad, unworldly, complicated, flighty, speedy, stopped, restless, remote… She shook her head. ‘He was a mass of contradictions. He was a stunt flyer. He talked about Heaven as if he’d been there. Sometimes he liked to quote Huidobro, a Chilean poet. I only remember the line: “A shady bed in the whirlwind of mysteries.”’ Flora wanted to add, ‘I felt safe with him. Safe, and stimulated at the same time.’ But strangers didn’t say things like that to one another even in the world where one of them supposes he’s discovered that some strings can’t be cut. Flora got up. ‘Thank you, anyway,’ she said.

  ‘Let me know if he comes back.’

  Flora shook her head, meaning that she thought Xas wouldn’t, not refusing to pass on any news that he had.

  Green said, ‘I won’t contact the police, I promise. I’m sure this is all just an old family matter.’

  Santa Monica

  November, 1930

  A letter came for Xas. It was from Madill Brothers funeral home.

  ‘Dear Mr Jodeau,’ it began. ‘Here is our annual report. You will see that after the initial outlay of fitting the new premises in Pasadena, and the purchase of another hearse, our earnings now have a healthy margin.’

  Flora went to visit these Madill Brothers, taking the letter with her. She found Doug Madill behind the premises, wearing a rubber apron and washing his new hearse. Flora stood clear of a froth-edged puddle and held up the letter. ‘I’m sorry I opened it,’ she said. ‘He’s gone with no forwarding address.’

  Doug Madill shut off the hose.

  ‘I’m his landlady,’ Flora said.

  Doug Madill looked worried, perhaps thinking he might be liable for rent owing.

  ‘I only want to know what’s happened to him,’ Flora said. ‘All I’m able to do is follow any clues I have about what he was doing before he vanished.’

  The sun came out. It slowly warmed and dried the man’s rubber apron so that, as they stood there and Douglas Madill explained what ‘Mr Jodeau’ was to him, the air filled with some sweet chemical scent.

  The Madill family had been in the funeral business for seventy years, forty on the coast. Doug and his brother had wanted to open a branch in Pasadena. Mr Jodeau turned up one day at Madill Brothers in Santa Monica, and said he had some money to invest. ‘He said his employer and he had been talking about the Crash and investments and his employer had given him a certain sum of money to invest—and not to lose. Mr Jodeau was very clear about that. He didn’t have to have astonishing returns, he said, only a safe investment.’

  ‘He decided a funeral home was a safe investment?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the funeral director. ‘He said to me, “Business is never slow.”’

  Flora laughed, then apologised for laughing.

  ‘That’s quite all right, Miss. That isn’t the whole story, of course. There are always times of retrenchment, and plenty of people learn not to pay more for a funeral than they can afford. And there’s competition. I told your friend all this.’

  ‘But the population is growing.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘He did have a practical streak.’

  ‘He has nine thousand five hundred dollars invested. I’m instructed to keep reinvesting his dividends.’

  Flora thanked Mr Madill. He asked her whether he should keep sending those reports to her address.

  ‘Yes. And let me know if you hear from him.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  Flora left him polishing the hearse’s black flanks.

  Venice

  December, 1930–February, 1931

  Flora got herself a telephone. But every morning, for weeks after, she would still check the notepad that hung in her porch. She’d given out her number to all her friends and acquaintances, but still imagined there might be some who’d forget and, stopping by, would leave a message out of habit. ‘Called by at 8 p.m., Pete.’ or ‘Darling, where are you? Avril.’ There were sometimes notes—but not from Pete, who hadn’t bothered to pursue Flora’s company once her drinking and hand jobs dried up together. And not from Avril, who had her own phones, a black one in her hall that her maid answered, and a white one in her white satin bedroom.

  One morning Flora stepped out in her robe to look among the orange tree leaves for any fruit remaining and not too wizened to juice. All the oranges were shrunken and leathery. Flora went back to the house snipping the air in front of her with her scissors as though she were a dignitary invited to open a succession of bridges. She saw that there was a note on the pad hanging from her door jamb.

  Dear Occupant

  What has become of the person who was living in your house with you?

  The writing was an even and attractive copperplate, but there was something foreign and unpractised about the wording of the note.

  Flora took the pencil off its string, carried it inside, sharpened it, reattached it to its string and wrote an answer.

  Do you mean Millie? Or Xas? Please leave a name and address or phone number so that I can let you know. Or call me.

  And she left her number.

  The following morning there was another note. It had arrived after Flora came home at ten and retired at midnight, but before seven-thirty when she got up. She hadn’t heard any footsteps on the tarred tin of the porch flooring.

  I don’t mean any Millie. I mean the other. Where is he?

  It annoyed Flora that this correspondent hadn’t complied with her instructions and left a name and address, or dropped a dime and made a call. Xas had vanished and she was mourning him and this person wanted something for nothing, it seemed to her.

  Flora spitefully removed the pencil and pad from her porch. If this person was so keen to ask her questions they could turn up at a reasonable hour and knock on her door.

  The following morning Flora stepped out, dressed, on her way to Culver City and the studio. She put her foot on a large sheet of canvas that had been spread before her door. The canvas was striped, a sun-faded pink and cream, and still had zinc poles at either end of it. It looked like an awning from one of the cafés on Venice Beach. There was writing on the awning, in charcoal.

  Surely we can come to some agreement. You tell me what I want to know in exchange for what you might like to know. Tit for tat.

  Once she had recovered enough to move, Flora bundled up the canvas, which smelled of apples, so might once have belonged to a fruit shop. She put it in her car. A mile from her house she pulled up to throw it into a canal.

  Flora was rattled. She didn’t want to go home. She spent the hours of darkness—too long, because it was winter—in a movie house, then one of Millie’s clubs on Central Avenue. She drank a little and came home very tired, her ears buzzing, to find that her unknown correspondent had, this time, come equipped with paper. There was one sheet, apparently the endpaper of a book, because it was marbled on one side, made of linen, and crumpled at the edges as though it had been carried pressed not quite flat. As Flora picked it up she noticed that it, too, smelled of apples—and the scent washing has when it’s been dried in the wind and sun. That smell reminded Flora of something, something other than clean air and laundry, but she couldn’t exactly remember what.

  The note read:

  I should warn you that I have no sense of the ridiculous. Don’t go on to do the next things—keep watch, or post armed friends. I have no notion what resources you might have, little notion of who you are, or what to expect of you—but I do know that I’ll pursue you, my only lead, with as much patience as I can muster, which is more than almost anyone else. Please take me up on my kind offer while it’s still on the table.

  Flora took the page inside and called Cole. She was told he wasn’t taking calls. She left a message,
said that someone was asking questions about Xas’s whereabouts. ‘Tell Cole I’m frightened for myself,’ Flora said to the flunky, then, as soon as she hung up, regretted having added ‘for myself’ since Cole would surely be more motivated by fright he could feel as his own. All day she waited for the phone to ring, then, exhausted by anticipation, she finally wrote a note, left it and the pad on her porch, and went out.

  Her note read:

  If you call in person at a reasonable hour I will tell you the little I know. But I believe that Conrad Cole may have been the last one to see Xas.

  Again Flora went out and stayed out—in a hotel room with Pete. She came home the following afternoon, hung over, with two bloody fissures in the thick scarred skin on her hips. She limped up onto her porch and looked blearily at another note, which said:

  Who is Conrad Cole?

  Flora was astonished. Who the hell would ask ‘Who is Conrad Cole’? Con was famous nationwide, almost worldwide—millionaire, playboy, inventor, and the producer and director of Hollywood’s most expensive film to date. Flora stood for a long time staring at the note, then went indoors, climbed into bed fully clothed and fell asleep.

  When she woke, O’Brien was smooching her chin and purring his anxious purr, the one that had a kind of soft whistle in it. Flora’s head was sore, but clear. She’d woken with a very vivid memory of Xas. Of just one of the inexplicable habits he’d had. He used to leave the house when it was raining heavily, and she’d once seen him standing in the waste ground, maybe a quarter-mile away, his naked body a streak of almost phosphorescent brightness in the rain-smudged, grass-greened dunes. He was washing himself. He’d taken a bar of soap out with him. He never used her bath, her shower with its rust-dimpled rose—no—he went where no one could get a good look at him and let the rain clean him.