Stephanie Barron

by The White Garden (v5)

  Margaux hesitated. “Money isn’t the point, Marcus. My work is the point. My reputation—”

  “—Will be rubbish, if the tale of this theft ever gets out.”

  The wheedling note had vanished. But Margaux’s mind was only half on Marcus’s threats. She was thinking more clearly now. No more sharing.

  “—As I’m afraid it will, if Peter isn’t found. That’s where you come in, Margaux. Find Peter, won’t you, darling? Before we’re obliged to call in the police?”

  “Poor Marcus,” she said, her heart suddenly lifting. “So thick, always. Peter is irrelevant. Why bother with him when I’ve got everything you could possibly need?”

  “SO WHAT DO WE DO NOW?” JO ASKED DISPIRITEDLY.

  In a few minutes Hamish would reappear to release them from the Ark. She had spent most of their allotted hour listening to Peter rant about the maddening cheek of his ex-wife, elaborated in a series of piquant episodes that filled all possible gaps in Jo’s knowledge of Margaux. She had said little during Peter’s diatribe, too sick with worry to stem the flow. But their time was up.

  “We’ll have to find her,” Peter said. “There’s nothing else for it. Roust out the police, if we must.”

  “I should just go back to Kent. Tell Imogen everything. Make a clean breast of it, and get the Trust to help.”

  “But if we found Margaux—”

  “We’d have to bind and gag her to get our stuff back! I’ve already lost twenty-four hours, Peter, on a wild-goose chase—and I’m supposed to be working here!”

  “Look—I know it’s been a difficult day—”

  “Make that two.”

  “But there is one more place in Cambridge we could look.”

  Jo stared at him with a mix of frustration and pity. “She’s long gone, Peter. Give it up.”

  “Not look for Margaux,” he persisted, “but for Keynes.”

  “What’ll that do?” she asked, bewildered. “We’ve lost the manuscript and the contents of the Ark.”

  “But you said it yourself, remember? We’ve got to beat Margaux at her own game. She’s amassing loads of stuff, all right, but I tell you—she hasn’t a clue what it means. Forget the Ark. Let’s outmaneuver her on her own ground.”

  He was standing now, and the oil lamp swept his shadow over the Gothic cabinets, wavering and wraithlike. Why did his intensity move her so much? Against her inner reason?

  “What are you talking about?” she asked wearily.

  “Economics,” he replied. “Margaux could never stomach the subject. Too… factual, I think.”

  “And?”

  “All Keynes’s papers are held in an archive at King’s College. She won’t have thought to look.”

  Beyond the heavy oak door, Jo caught the sound of massive feet tramping. Hamish.

  “All right,” she said, feeling cornered. “But if there’s nothing there, you’ll take me straight to London?”

  “Agreed,” Peter answered without hesitation.

  IVY GUPTA HELD OUT HER HAND FOR THE FOLDED PIECE OF torn paper that bore Hamish Caruthers’s scribbled introduction. It was usual for scholars to schedule access in advance; and as neither Jo nor Peter could present academic credentials, and the daylight was waning, Peter had imposed upon Hamish one last time. Ivy Gupta ran the King’s College Library Archive, which was housed in an annex. She scanned Hamish’s note of introduction, then said, “He urges me to lock and bar every door against you. Are you really an unscrupulous bugger who’ll stop at nothing to gain your ends, Mr. Llewellyn?”

  Peter smiled at her disarmingly. “Hamish and I have known each other for years. Familiarity gives him the right to sport with contempt.”

  “I see.” She set the note to one side. “We close in two hours. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to let you use what time remains—”

  “May we have the index to John Maynard Keynes’s papers, please?”

  IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT KEYNES HAD LIVED IN A VANISHED era of paper and ink, when the smallest thought of every day was recorded and dispatched to somebody. Accessing the collection, Jo thought, was like wandering through Keynes’s brain, a vast repository of individual moments cataloged under such headings as Visits; Articles; Speeches and Broadcasts; and her personal favorite—Miscellaneous. The word Screed was apt.

  “I don’t know the nature of your interest,” Ivy Gupta said austerely as she handed Peter a printed copy of the Keynes online catalog, “but you’ll see the total collection has been shifted about and reorganized over the years. You’ve only to note the files you wish to consult, submit the slips, and one of our people will fetch them. You’ve got an hour and forty-three minutes until closing. I’ll stop in just prior to six o’clock.”

  “Right,” Peter said briskly.

  Jo leaned over the catalog he held. It was itemized by year, single-spaced, and ran to five pages.

  Indian currency and finance, 1909–1913, 1 box.

  Post-war reconstruction, 1916–1920, 1 box.

  Economic consequences of the peace, 1919–1925, 4 boxes.

  Committee on National Debt and Taxation (Colwyn Committee), 1924–1925, 1 envelope, paper…

  “We’re going to accomplish squat,” she said. “We could sit here for a month and a half and never find anything.”

  “Don’t be so defeatist.” He reached for a pencil left helpfully in a bin on the table and began to check off items on the list. “We can ignore everything economic, I daresay, and concentrate on the personal. That rules out most of Keynes’s life, frankly, as we’re solely interested in the personal papers for the months surrounding Virginia’s death—say, the autumn of 1940 through the spring of ’41. Keynes died in ’46. That should narrow the field considerably.”

  “You mean, like: Letters, 1906–1946?” she retorted, unhelpfully.

  “There’s a subcatalog for those.” Peter seemed determined to forgive her acid tone. “Each letter is summarized, with the name of the correspondent and a few lines about the subject. You might usefully skim the entries for our time span. I’ll concentrate on the Tilton House papers—there’s only one box of those, and they’re bound to have references to the Charleston crowd, because they were neighbors. If we have any time after that, we can nose into the stuff found in the King’s storeroom in 2006—it’s possible nobody’s gone through that lot very thoroughly, as yet.”

  “Oh, goody. What’s my subcatalog?”

  “It’s an index card file. Coded JMK/PP/45.”

  “You’re kidding me. Index cards?”

  Peter glared at her over the rim of his glasses. “Don’t be so bloody American. Not everybody possesses digital scanners. The most they’ve achieved at this place is microfiche.”

  Jo sighed. The prospect of reaching London that night, much less her suitcase full of clothes and toiletries languishing in Kent, was growing more and more remote; and the stolen Woolf manuscript was just as gone. She was tired, she wanted a change of underwear by dawn, and the thought of Gray Westlake kept nipping at her mind like a small dog. She almost reached for her cell phone, but a large notice on the Annexe wall commanded that she KINDLY REFRAIN FROM MOBILE USE in the Reading Room.

  She turned instead to scan the heavy oaken bank of catalog drawers at one end of the reference area. Peter was already submitting his request for Keynes Collection item 58/TH: Tilton House, 1 box to the archive runners. And they had only an hour and thirty-four minutes, now, before closing.

  JO WAS HANDICAPPED, OF COURSE, BY HER INABILITY TO recognize almost all of the names of the people who’d animated Keynes’s England—that place that was not this place, but another country, one on the edge of nightmare, an England where bombs rained nightly on London’s streets and Cambridge itself was bathed in fire.

  So many of the letters written to Keynes in those months—personal letters from friends Jo had never heard of—were about the war. The summaries were clinical: Brief description of ration programme in Sussex, June 1940; Death notice of childhood friend in bombing r
aid, August 1940; Decision of neighbour to slaughter milch cows in fear of German invasion.… She could not afford to look at any of them, although they sang to her like a pack of Sirens. This was Jock’s world, too—the world her grandfather had lost, and Jo found it tantalizing, a portal to a parallel universe. She shook herself slightly and tried to concentrate.

  Peter was humming as he scanned the pages of the Tilton House papers—a box three feet long and one foot wide, propped on the table between them.

  “I’m useless,” Jo muttered. “None of these people means anything to me. I’m probably missing the whole point.”

  “Focus on content, then,” Peter ordered. “I’ll help with the names.”

  And so she read on.

  It was twenty minutes before closing when at last she found what they were looking for.

  “MARGAUX WILL MEET US TOMORROW AT THE Connaught,” Marcus Symonds-Jones said as he cradled his phone. “Nine-ish, I should think. Coffee and croissants, no doubt. The cow quite liked the notion of holding court; a spot of breakfast should lull her into a false sense of complacency.” “Why false?” Gray Westlake demanded. “She has the manuscript. She has the upper hand.”

  “So she believes. But is the notebook a genuine Woolf?” “Surely somebody here at Sotheby’s can tell us that.” Marcus smiled. He thought, but did not say, And set an excellent price for it, you poor bugger.

  “I’m coming to that meeting,” Imogen Cantwell announced belligerently. “Someone must represent The Family’s interest.”

  “Why not one of the Nicolsons themselves?” Gray suggested.

  The change in Imogen’s expression was comical to behold; she was at once appalled and flummoxed.

  “Too soon,” Marcus said smoothly. “And unnecessarily complicating. If we involve The Family, we involve the Trust, and our ability to contain the negative aspects of this unfortunate affair—for Imogen, and your friend Miss Bellamy—may be quite limited.”

  “Not to mention the nasty blowback for Sotheby’s,” Gray offered.

  Marcus merely inclined his head.

  “This woman—Margaux Strand—had no idea where her ex-husband might be?”

  “None, I’m afraid.”

  Gray steepled his fingers thoughtfully, his gaze on a spot somewhere above Marcus’s head.

  “It’s gone well beyond my ability to understand,” Imogen said forcefully. “Jo scarpers with the notebook, brings your bloody man on, and then hands over the goods to his ex-wife without so much as a murmur. It doesn’t seem likely to me. I smell something rotten. And it’s coming from that Margaux woman’s behind.”

  Gray Westlake rose abruptly, as though he could not endure another second in the department head’s room; and Marcus thought, He’s wondering the same thing. Why has this bird of his run off with Llewellyn, if she’s not authenticating the Woolf? And what, for that matter, is Peter up to? Margaux’s nasty bit of news has thrown us all for a tumble, and no mistake. Steady, Marcus old sod; you’ll have to manage things quite cannily at the Connaught tomorrow, or find yourself without a buyer.…

  He was grinning broadly as he ushered Gray and the Cantwell creature to the door. The American, he gathered, had handsomely offered to foot Imogen’s hotel bill. Poor fool. He must really care about Jo Bellamy. But didn’t Marcus recollect that there was a Mrs. Westlake somewhere?

  That was a piece of information, he decided, as he closed his office door behind them, he really must research more thoroughly before morning.

  IN THE END IT WAS A NAME, AFTER ALL, THAT GOT JO’S attention.

  Letter from H. Nicolson to JMK, 4 April 1941.

  “H. Nicolson,” she murmured. “Harold?—Vita’s Harold? Peter—”

  He looked at her as though surfacing from deep water, blond hair scattered over his eyes.

  “Harold Nicolson wrote to Keynes. A few days after Virginia may have shown up at Sissinghurst. Should I get the letter from the archive?”

  “Might as well.” He shrugged. “It’s probably about the war. Everything was, then.”

  “Have you found anything?”

  “Not much,” he admitted grudgingly. “Mostly domestic accounts, notes about renovation projects at Tilton House, Keynes’s plans for his garden—it looks like he borrowed Duncan Grant from Charleston to draft part of those, you’d find them interesting I daresay—”

  “But we don’t have time.” She copied the letter notation from the index card carefully; it might have nothing to do with Virginia, after all, but she’d failed to discover anything else. And she was curious about Harold Nicolson. Hadji. He was a vague outline in the Woolf notebook, a Sissinghurst ghost, most present in Vita’s loneliness.

  The letter was on microfiche. It took seven precious minutes to retrieve it.

  Sissinghurst

  4 April 1941

  My dear Maynard—

  You will find it intolerable cheek, my writing to you like this, without warning or the delicate veils of diplomacy we two usually cast, over such trivialities as where to dine and with whom, the details as codified and mutually agreed as we once demanded of our treaties at Versailles—but I am uneasy in my mind, and as the uneasiness involves my wife, I will make no further apology for demanding what I may of your time.

  Vita has had an unexpected visitor to stay at Sissinghurst. A visitor from the grave, one might almost say, and her appearance on the doorstep has tangled us in all the toils of broken marriage and fractured mind. Her history of nervous complaint and instability are strong marks against any tale she might tell—but I found myself compelled to listen when we spoke on Tuesday. I had gone down to Kent from London at my wife’s request, and her friend’s account of recent events in Sussex—as well as the part you and your Cambridge friends played there—can only be described as shocking. I do not pretend to know the workings of military intelligence; I am but a poor player on the Ministry of Information’s stage; but it would seem to me that higher authority ought to have been consulted. You will argue that you, yourself, represent that authority; I decline to be persuaded.

  Our friend has written an account of what she witnessed, and all she suspects. Some of it is quite fantastic—and I might regard it as another demonstration of her genius, a bit of dark fantasy brought on by this desperate war—had it not been for that unfortunate young Dutchman’s death reported in The Times only yesterday morning. There will be an inquest, no doubt, and the matter will be properly hushed up—but it is all, as I say, quite shocking.

  Our friend has placed the chief of her testimony in my hands for safekeeping. I might have dispatched it to her husband, along with the lady herself; but The Times has unsettled me, rather. I shall therefore place her pages where no one shall disturb them—set an angelic host about them, as it were—until such time as she may have need of them.

  Should you wish to consult me on this matter, I am only too willing to make myself available.

  Cordially,

  Harold Nicolson

  “It has to be Virginia,” Jo said.

  Peter was skimming the copy of the letter she’d printed from microfiche. “All very mysterious on Nicolson’s part. And rather menacing, don’t you think? I know what you’ve done, Maynard, me lad, and so does Virginia. Only, what’d he do? Who was the young Dutchman? And why should Harold or Keynes care that the fellow was dead?”

  “Because Keynes was involved,” Jo suggested. She was feeling her way through the density of Harold Nicolson’s language. “Remember Vanessa Bell’s mural—Virgin and Apostle. Keynes begging forgiveness, from a figure that could be Virginia. Keynes must have had a part in something that happened before she left her husband—something that haunted her, maybe even the thing that drove her away, in the end. A few days later, she confided in Harold Nicolson; and he sent off this letter.”

  “It’s a threat, isn’t it, from first to last? He might almost have said: Harm her, and we publish.”

  “Except that he was too well-mannered. Invoking his wife. Apologizing for
Virginia’s nuttiness. And then throwing down his glove—”

  “Only to fail.” Peter’s expression was uneasy. “Because if you’re right—and she didn’t go into that river of her own accord—”

  Dread curled in the pit of Jo’s stomach. “Why did she go to Harold Nicolson in the first place—Why couldn’t her husband protect her?”

  “Because Leonard Woolf was one of Keynes’s ‘Cambridge friends,’” Peter said patiently. “Leonard was an Apostle, remember?”

  Ivy Gupta’s slim brown form appeared in the doorway; she did not speak, but the very blandness of her expression was a summons. The Archive was closing.

  Peter ignored the librarian. “Did you notice this faint handwriting at the foot of the letter?” He held the copy of the letter under the desk lamp that anchored one end of the research table. “It’s not the same as Nicolson’s. Much more crabbed. Can you make it out?”

  Ms. Gupta cleared her throat warningly.

  “I think that word is burned,” Jo suggested.

  “Burned? Possibly… What about buried? Yes, I’m almost certain it’s buried. Buried Rodmell April. Now what does that mean? If it’s Keynes’s hand—”

  “Then he was closing the file, so to speak,” Jo said thoughtfully. “Keynes buried something at Rodmell in April. Where’s Rodmell? It sounds familiar.”

  “It should. Virginia lived there. I told you. A place called Monk’s House. It’s not far from Charleston.”

  Buried Rodmell April.

  Jo’s heart sank; of course there was a burial in April. At the close of that month in 1941, Virginia Woolf’s body was fished from the River Ouse.

  What if something else had been buried with her? Something that had worried Maynard Keynes far more than Virginia herself?

  “Aren’t you dying to know,” Peter muttered as they returned the microfiche and the contents of the Tilton file, “who that Dutchman was—and why he died?”