Passing Fancies (A Julia Kydd Novel)

by Marlowe Benn

  He gave a soft chuckle. “No end of wagging tongues. Though with a bit of a Valentino swagger, my stock might go up, not down. At least with the ladies.”

  A frisson of interest sharpened Julia’s ears. Philip was intensely reticent about his private affairs. Apart from the enigmatic Mrs. Macready, she had no clue about his romantic interests. They were either exceptionally discreet or quite laissez faire, or possibly both. “Your stock there is blue chip already, I’d imagine,” she said.

  He quirked one cheek and said nothing. He’d seen the bait and spurned it. The subject was not one he wished to discuss.

  How easily he drew the curtain across his private life. Yet she was not allowed to do the same? The injustice of it stung afresh, reviving her original grievance. “It’s unfair, Philip. Why should I be denied the same freedom Lillian sought, to enjoy love and intimacy wherever I may find it?”

  He studied her, saying nothing. They both understood it was a rhetorical lament. He had never challenged her right to form liaisons, though for maddeningly opaque reasons he objected to Martin Wallace in particular. Even so, she chafed at society’s double standard. For him such liaisons burnished his social mystique; they threatened to tarnish hers.

  “It’s not unreasonable,” she said. “I simply want to find someone. Not a husband and not forever, but someone, for a while. That’s all.” She gave a despairing laugh at her twisted stocking and ruined frock. A fine speech for a woman in her state, her proud confidence of eight hours ago now a disheveled mess. She’d regroup tomorrow, but at the moment a good wallow was in order. “As if it were so simple. Look at me. Would you look twice at such a creature? A woman’s charms are precarious enough”—she lifted her shin to display its laddered silk—“without a hovering brother.”

  Philip smiled. “You’re tired and have had a vexing night. As have I. With a bath and a rest, you’ll be back to form. As you well know.” He played a delicate ascending scale.

  “And yes,” he added, “I would look twice, though it may not be quite brotherly to say so.”

  They gazed at each other through the predawn murk. Neither flinched from the frankness of it. Then a spot of color appeared on his unshaven cheek, and Julia felt an answering heat on her own. He was right. It was time they said good night.

  CHAPTER 26

  For three long days Julia sputtered, uncertain of what to do next. She wandered Philip’s apartment, checked on her crated household and studio in Brooklyn, and listened with half an ear to an interminable Wagner recital all Sunday afternoon, yet nothing could distract her from her own uselessness. Since her graceless exit early Friday morning from Wallace’s home (and arms), she’d had no word from him. Someone had telephoned on Saturday to say he’d been called away to Albany and was not expected home until late next weekend. She’d felt a chill at the news. On Sunday Kessler’s grace period would end.

  How could Wallace leave the city with just seven days remaining before a horde of police swept through Harlem for the fugitive Eva and Jerome? More troubling, why hadn’t he telephoned? She knew his affairs were many and widespread, some perhaps as pressing as Eva’s fate, but surely he understood the depth of Julia’s concern—not to mention the privileges of their new, if yet unconsummated, intimacy.

  On Monday Julia accepted that she had no choice but to trust Wallace’s word that Eva was safe somewhere. All she could do now for her friend was distract Kessler with a better suspect. That pitched her back to the vexing mystery of who had killed Timson, which led to the missing manuscript. Her best guess—Jerome—had fizzled. She’d seen his desperation. He’d never write across old newsprint if he had a stack of blank verso pages to hand. But neither Eva nor Wallace had it either. Goldsmith? She had no way of knowing.

  Julia’s best—her only—lead was to follow the thread of Duveen’s drunken boast that Harlem Angel had resurfaced. He’d denied it in the next breath—No, no, no, only a flutter of wings. Was it gibberish? Possibly, but beneath his antics Duveen was remarkably canny. She needed to poke around in his apartment for some clue to what he’d meant. Did he have the manuscript or know who did? Was he in touch with Eva? “A flutter of wings” was not much, but it did stir a faint breeze. In danger of screaming if she didn’t do something soon, Julia spent the afternoon walking to Central Park and back, formulating an idea.

  The buzzing doorbell raised muffled sounds from deep inside Duveen’s apartment. Several moments passed before the door opened a crack. Duveen peered through.

  “Jaunty Kippers,” he said. “Quelle surprise. But not a good time.” He began to close the door.

  Someone else was there. A wild thought occurred: Eva?

  Julia put out a hand to stop the door. “Wait.” A glissade of falsetto laughter—definitely not Eva’s—from at least two rooms away gave her a pretty good idea of what she’d interrupted, and her cheeks heated with embarrassment. Still, she had to get inside. In just six days Kessler would launch his angry search.

  “I think I left something important here last week.” She slid her foot forward.

  “Come back tomorrow,” Duveen said. “Toodle-oo!”

  “It’s a copy of my first Capriole book. I brought it to show Logan Lanier and think I left it behind in your study. I’ve been frantic to find it. I can’t rest until I know it’s safe.”

  “If I see it, I’ll give you a jingle.” He bobbed a fingertip at her as he eased the door shut.

  She gasped when it pinched her shoe against the jamb. Duveen released her foot with an apology, but through the same four-inch gap as before.

  “You’ll forget I’m even here. I’ll look quietly, and when I find it, I’ll let myself out. Please, Pablo.” She resorted to a face of hapless innocence, a look she carried off rather poorly but which could still wilt men over forty, even men like Duveen.

  He chewed his lower lip, not persuaded. In fact, he looked on the verge of genuine irritation, in which case she’d never get across his threshold.

  “I thought I might also take a look at that essay you asked me about,” she said. “The piece you thought might be right for Capriole?”

  His eyes brightened. “Really?” Then they clouded as a distant voice whined for him to come back. “Lunch tomorrow?” Duveen suggested.

  “I’m not free tomorrow,” she lied. “I’m meeting with another author, a poet I’m quite keen to publish. If she likes my work as much as I like hers, well, then I won’t need to see your essay. I just thought that since I was here anyway—” Her sentence had nowhere to go, but fortunately it was snatched up by Duveen’s vanity.

  “Right,” he said, opening the door. “One’s art must come first.”

  He swept the orange-lined skirt of his silver dressing gown to welcome her in with a matadorian flourish. Voluminous pyjama trousers flowed out from below his robe. “We have company, Sweet Pea,” he called out.

  It was a conversation from a few weeks back that normally she’d make a point to forget. When he’d asked about her Capriole Press, she’d replied with ruthless modesty, saying only that she hoped to commence with a fitting new project once her studio was ready. She spoke obliquely because she feared how he might react.

  As he did. Like most writers, his eyes bloomed with avarice. Would she consider something of his? A frightfully special piece. “It’s about my late cat, Leopold. A majestic fellow. Readers will adore him,” he cajoled. “A prince among pookins. That’s my title, you know.”

  At that Julia had latched onto a passing conversation, hoping the flow of gin would rinse the notion from Duveen’s memory. Now she was glad it hadn’t.

  “Someone else who remembers conversations,” Duveen marveled as she stepped into his grand apartment. “Clever Pookins. You’ll love him. I have drawings too.”

  Carl Sweeney padded on bare feet into the living room. He wished her a good morning. It was nearly four, yet he too wore a dressing gown. She hadn’t seen either man since their frenzied hijinks at the Half-Shell the other night.

 
; Duveen rolled his head toward Sweeney. “Would you mind, sweetums? This won’t take long.”

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” Julia said. “I’ll just look for my book, quiet as a church mouse.”

  “Nonsense.” Duveen led Julia back to his library just as Coral Goldsmith had, but without the imperious grip. The room seemed even more disheveled in the gray light of a wet May afternoon. Books lay everywhere, flat and upright, in the familiar jumble of a well-used collection. The cat—not Leopold but his lazy sister Artemis, Duveen said in a babyish coo—watched them from a needlepoint pillow. Julia’s heart soared to see all sorts of typed pages lying about too, covering the sofa, his desk, a chair seat, and the top of his typewriter. If a clandestine Harlem Angel had somehow surfaced in Duveen’s world, it would be here. Some of the stacked pages looked cleanly typed, and others were covered with corrections scrawled in bright-green ink.

  “Looks like you’re starting a new book,” she said.

  He dropped to his hands and knees to search for his essay manuscript along the bottom shelves of the bookcases. “I’m going to write a Harlem novel myself. If Eva’s kaput, someone has to do it.”

  With Duveen distracted, Julia lifted splayed magazines on the sofa, searching for anything—pages, a letter, a note—that might suggest a connection to Harlem Angel.

  “There’s material for a whole storm of novels,” Duveen continued, his silver rump swaying like a baby elephant, “but most colored writers don’t even notice the gold mine under their noses. I may be only an honorary Negro—the world’s first!—but I know better what to do with it than all those natural-borns sweating out sonnets while jazz drips away through their fingers.”

  As she scanned the papers on Pablo’s desk, Julia thought of gentle, earnest Logan, who aspired to sonnets above all else. So it was just as he’d complained: Pablo was keen to celebrate Negro poets, as long as they not stray from their own neighborhood. The only thing that had changed was his opinion of that neighborhood.

  His desk was covered with several piles of pages loosely stacked crossways. They could all be part of his new novel, layers at varying stages of completion. She saw a long letter to “Crispy Violets” and a half-finished review of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. “Is that why you don’t care much for Jerome Crockett’s work?” she asked to keep Pablo talking.

  “Perfect example. Crockett’s sitting smack in the middle of the most original material of our time, and all he wants to do is heave his soul onto the page like young Werther. In iambic pentameter, no less. God help us!” Duveen’s backside juddered, but his head stayed down. “No wonder he’s stewing in a funk. Well, Eva will have the last laugh there.”

  The only one laughing was Pablo. Eva had never said one unkind word about either Logan’s or Jerome’s work, however much it differed from her own. Julia left her indignation unsaid and sidled toward the chair to peek at the papers jumbled on its seat. It appeared to be the draft of an essay extolling the genius of Negro music.

  “It’s here somewhere. Here, Pookie Pookums,” Duveen cooed. “Come to Daddy. Have you read my latest book, Jaunty? It’s selling like hotcakes.”

  Julia admitted she hadn’t as she skimmed the papers beside his typewriter. They were notes, some sort of cryptic outline or musings.

  “It’s called The Tattooed Dachshund. Silly thing, really.”

  Julia was glad he could not see her reaction. “I’ll look for a copy next time I’m in Brentano’s.” She turned over a pile that appeared to be another, more detailed outline. Probably plans for his new novel.

  “Oh, I’ll give you one,” came the muffled reply. He moved farther along the base of the wall, his massive rump trailing. “Remind me when I’m upright.”

  Julia peeked and scanned as quickly as she could. Pile after pile appeared to be Duveen’s work, more letters and notes and drafts of various works in progress. She was carefully restoring their jumbled order when she noticed a few sheets peeking out from beneath the typewriter. She saw at once they had been produced on a different machine. She pressed her lips together to silence any sound of reaction and nudged the machine aside for a better look.

  “Gotcha!”

  Julia wheeled. From his knees Duveen waved a manila folder. Gripping a shelf, he groaned to one knee and then to his feet. “Here’s my naughty fellow.”

  Julia took it from him. “Oh, good,” she said faintly. “I’ll just sit quietly and read. You go on back to your friend. Forget I’m here.”

  “Take the beast home with you,” Duveen said with a shooing motion toward the door. “We’ll lunch next week, yes? I’ll bring your book if I find it.”

  Julia stiffened. She couldn’t leave. Not with those intriguing pages within arm’s reach. She needed a closer look. If they did appear to be from Eva’s novel, she’d have to find out what Duveen knew about them. She could ask him outright, but at the Half-Shell he’d balked into coy silence. Sober, he might resist the subject even more firmly. She’d be ushered straight to the door, and all hope of discovering something would vanish.

  No, she needed to examine them first on her own, without his knowledge. Mustering a daffy smile, she said, “It’s much better to read in situ, if you don’t mind. Absorb the ambience of the subject, you know.” It was perfect blather, and he fidgeted, unconvinced. “I’m more inclined to publish work I can commune with,” she added. “Privately.” She folded her fingers over the bundle and mimed transported bliss.

  She was spared any more of this charade when Sweeney appeared in the doorway, dressed and shaved, to say goodbye. Duveen’s clucking embrace nearly swallowed the younger man. “Don’t forget dinner at Reynaldo and Claire’s at eight,” Duveen reminded him, following Sweeney down the hall. “Excuse us, Julia.” His voice trailed off toward the kitchen. She heard their idle banter rise and fall. Sweeney was in no hurry to leave, nor Duveen to let him go.

  Julia quickly set Pookins aside and sat at his desk. She lifted his typewriter and pulled out the pages beneath it.

  It was a section of something, pages eighty-seven through ninety-five. On page eighty-seven, the text began in the middle of a sentence. She began to read, eager to get a sense of the text before Duveen returned. She turned each sheet over with as much care as if it had been a da Vinci manuscript. The gist was soon clear. It was a story set in Harlem with Negro characters: A cabaret singer named Marie was devoted to a writer named Byron Love. They were at a dance, where Byron lavished attention on a seductive stranger. Marie was humiliated and Byron resentful. They quarreled violently.

  Julia listened—Duveen’s hearty laugh rang out from well down the hall—and skimmed the pages again, perplexed. This was clearly fiction set in Harlem, which meant it could be pages from Harlem Angel or material for Duveen’s own new novel. Yet it had been typed on a different machine. Was that enough evidence this was Eva’s? Julia scanned again.

  A phrase snagged her eye. One of the characters’ names. Byron Love. It sounded familiar. Where had she heard that name?

  She remembered in a rush. The ladies’ lavatory in Liveright’s building. Byron Love was the name of Eva’s father, the white Louisville professor with the invalid wife in the big house and his mistress’s family in the caretaker’s cottage. Something something Byron Love.

  Julia sat back. This must be part of Eva’s manuscript.

  How had Duveen gotten it?

  Where was the rest?

  “What do you think?” Duveen stood in the doorway. He had changed into brown trousers and a yellow shirt, but over them he still wore the silver dressing gown. He’d shaved, and his white hair was smoothed back from his face in its usual soft poof. How long had he been there?

  “Thank you for letting me consider Mr. Pookins,” Julia said, squaring his essay’s pages to steady her hands. “It’s charming, Pablo, but I’ll need more time to consider. I’ll have to see.”

  Duveen folded his arms. “I’d be a lamb of a client. Delightfully docile. A mewling kitten!”

  She couldn
’t natter on about his damn cat a moment longer. She gave a theatrical sigh and blurted out, “The truth is I’m terribly distracted these days, thinking about poor Eva Pruitt. I thought a new printing project would help, but I can’t stop worrying.”

  “You mean about the murder?”

  “And her disappearance. Have you heard anything?”

  Duveen shook his head, juddering his loose cheeks. “Nada.”

  He showed little concern or even interest in Eva’s predicament. Nor did he repeat his claim of the other night at the Half-Shell. Not even a flicker of dissembling. Either he’d been so drunk he didn’t remember his joyful hints about Harlem Angel flying again, or he now wished to quash all references to it.

  A blinding new thought occurred. Duveen had said he was writing a Harlem novel himself. Was he planning to appropriate Eva’s? No one else had read it entirely. With Eva out of the picture, dead or hiding or in prison, did he intend to claim the novel as his own? It was a powerful motive to kill Timson and to let Eva take the blame.

  Before she could stop herself, Julia looked down. Eva’s pages were plainly visible beside the typewriting machine. Aghast, she pushed her gaze to his Pookins folder, attempting an appreciative expression, and then to Duveen.

  He saw. He saw everything. For a moment they measured each other.

  Duveen? Would he kill for that novel? Beneath his outré clownishness, was he capable of such ruthlessness? He studied her with an alarming sangfroid. Without shifting her gaze, she gauged how far she’d have to lunge to reach his letter opener, upright in a glass jar of colored pencils and pens.

  Did anyone know she was here? Sweeney did, of course, but he’d hardly speak out. She’d told Christophine only that she had an errand to run and would be home before dinnertime. It would be two hours at least before she’d wonder if something was amiss. And even then she’d wait another few hours before considering raising an alarm.