by Marlowe Benn
“I’ll speak with her,” Philip offered. “I may have some influence there.”
Julia could barely contain her thoughts. It would work. It would work well, spectacularly well. Despite the oddness—and potential pitfalls—of living so close to Philip, the apartment was better suited for her purposes than the one she’d originally leased.
A flurry of business talk followed. Yes, the agent could stay another half an hour. Julia nearly ran to go fetch Christophine. She couldn’t remember when she’d last felt so buoyant. Unless Christophine had serious objections—which seemed unlikely—Julia had at last taken her first step toward establishing their new life in New York.
CHAPTER 28
“Have I missed anything? Any excitement while I was gone?”
It would be wrong to say Austen bounded into Philip’s library, but only by degree. He swept into the room in a flurry of chatter and hugs. It was early Saturday evening. Nearly three weeks had passed since he’d scrambled out of this very room to pack for his trip abroad.
Unable to sit still, he paced the room as the excited recap poured out of him: a mixed-up cabin assignment that had found him sharing a suite with a Brooklyn obstetrician; gin-fueled pranks among the sons and daughters of English aristocrats even sillier (the offspring) than their American counterparts; a dawn splash in the Thames with friends made some hours earlier at the Slug and Lettuce in Chelsea; a whole afternoon dogging the footsteps of Francis Meynell at his Nonesuch Press; a spree along the Charing Cross market stalls snatching up early editions of Trollope and Hardy.
His hands bounced and leaped as he talked. A dervish of excitement, twice he dropped what might charitably be called kisses onto Julia’s cheek, but which were better termed smacks. “I know I’m impossible, but it was such a knockout trip. You should have heard Meynell talking about his new Blake.”
“I’d love to see what they do with—” Julia began.
“And they’re doing a new Burton’s Anatomy with Kauffer illustrations. I saw proofs. It’s a howling blue beauty!”
His enthusiasm was infectious. Julia remembered his excitement about fine books a month ago in Duveen’s apartment, that night of their first conversation. She knew that particular thrill and shared it now, glad for his runaway happiness.
When he saw the plate of fresh shortbread and a bottle of champagne, he swung the bottle toward Julia—Should I open it? She wanted to gesture, Absolutely, but couldn’t rouse her hand. At last his eyes dimmed. “What? What’s happened?”
Julia had imagined this moment several times in the past few weeks, but when the chance arrived, her thoughts scattered like unstrung pearls. How to describe the strange and troubling turns of events? The last Austen knew, they’d just learned of Timson’s death and Eva’s disappearance. “I’m thrilled you had a good trip, I really am,” she said, “but I’ve been caught up in Eva Pruitt’s nightmare. Have you heard?”
“Only Billie’s snootful. When I stopped by the office this afternoon, she said Eva’s hiding and the police are going to arrest her. Is that true?”
Streamlining the details, Julia described Eva’s silence, Kessler’s suspicions, Wallace’s involvement, Jerome’s grief and confusion, Logan’s resentment, Goldsmith’s deceit, and now Duveen’s optimism about the pages that had arrived in his mail. But the police were no closer to finding another suspect, and soon attention would return full bore to Eva. Kessler’s patience expired tomorrow.
“Sounds bad. Anything we can do?”
Julia drove her fingers into her hair and gave her skull a rattle. Empty. Or rather it was bursting with thoughts, all of them useless.
Setting aside the champagne, Austen bit into one of Christophine’s shortbreads, spraying crumbs onto his jacket. “Pablo says those pages are from Eva’s manuscript? That she just sent them to him, without a note?”
Julia nodded. “But they were a short excerpt, and not even from the beginning of a chapter or section. They seemed to be about a young Negro man who goes dancing with his girlfriend. He can’t find a job, and they argue because he flirts with a glamorous older woman. He’s dazzled, the girlfriend’s jealous, and the jezebel’s satisfied—nothing very original.”
“So why send it?” He held the plate under his chin in lieu of a napkin as he ate three more pastries.
“That’s the question.”
Austen rubbed his jaw. “I wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
Julia had to repeat the question before he answered. “Sorry. I was thinking. I went through my office mail today to see if a contract I’d been waiting for had come in. It hadn’t, but there was something else I didn’t know what to make of. Just pages, no letter. It was odd.”
“From Eva’s book?”
“I don’t know. It was a plain envelope with no return address and four or five typescript pages inside. Came in yesterday’s mail. I only glanced at it, thinking an author had sent substitute pages and not bothered to explain. They sometimes think theirs is your only project and you’ll know what to do with them. But it was about some woman named Marie. Nothing I’m working on, which is strange.”
“Did this Marie live in Harlem? Did she have a boyfriend named Byron?”
“Not sure. I didn’t look at it that closely.”
“Did you by any chance bring those pages with you?”
“No. I figured I’d sort them out next week. Why? Is it important?”
Julia set his empty plate aside. “It might be. Can we run over for a look?”
“Right now?” He glanced out the French windows. The evening was lapsing into murky twilight. “I thought we might go get dinner.”
“Right now.”
Crosstown traffic was light. Twenty minutes later Austen dug out keys and let them into the reception vestibule of Liveright’s dark offices. “Horace doesn’t like us here after midafternoon on Saturdays,” he whispered, although the place seemed deserted. “We figure he holds private parties upstairs. More than once the first person here on Monday has met a chorus girl washing up in the lavatory. The poor thing goes screaming down the hall in her skivvies. It’s too funny.”
He knew his way well, guiding them up the wide front stairs by the glow of passing motorcar headlamps. On the second floor they entered a dark corridor and waited as their eyes adjusted. “No lights,” he said. “That’s the unwritten rule—people do sometimes spend the night here, when they’re too drunk to get home or just have to work on something all night, but we pretend we’re not here. Without lights Horace thinks we’re obeying him.” He listened, but they heard only street sounds. “Probably no one’s around, but just in case.”
He edged forward, one hand against the wall, Julia close behind. They turned a corner to the right and stopped at a door on the left. He unlocked it and switched on a small desk lamp. Julia closed the door behind them.
An untidy assortment of papers and books covered his desk, including what must be the heap of mail he’d rustled through earlier. He found a large envelope, identical to the one Duveen had fished from his wastebasket, and shook its contents out onto the desk.
Julia took the pages and lowered herself into an armchair beside the desk. She twisted away and slipped on the eyeglasses she’d furtively tucked into her handbag. At first glance the pages matched what she’d found under Duveen’s typewriter.
This batch included only four pages, starting with page 114. She began to read and quickly recognized the characters. Byron and Marie were in her apartment. He fumed that Marie had no sympathy for his difficulty finding work he could tolerate. He stormed out to wander aimlessly through Harlem, frustrated and self-absorbed. The narrative ended in midsentence at the bottom of the third page, because the fourth page was numbered 192.
The transition was abrupt in more than syntax. Julia reread the first two lines twice before realizing that, for one thing, the new passage was written from Marie’s point of view. Halfway down she knew exactly what this was: a page from the scene that had so angered Timso
n. Her chest tightened as she read the brutal account of a man named Coburn raping Marie with his gun. “Oh, Austen,” Julia said faintly, laying the sheet on the desk.
He looked up from reading the earlier pages she’d passed to him. His mouth lifted at one corner. “Nice cheaters.”
She pulled off her eyeglasses. “This last page is from the rape scene Timson was so angry about.”
“Just one page?”
She nodded.
“Why? Why that scene? Why just one page?”
“I don’t know.” Julia watched as he held it under the lamp and began to read. There was something odd about the page itself, some pattern pressed into the paper. Not translucent like a watermark but something written or drawn on it without ink.
“Wait.” She rose and gripped the sheet as she bent over it. “Look.”
She angled it beneath the light. “There. Do you see?”
Austen gazed hard at the paper. “What am I looking for?”
Julia flipped the page over and angled its blank verso under the pool of light. This time Austen’s lips opened with a little pop of surprise. He saw it, a large zigzag pattern of dots and connecting lines scratched into the paper. On the verso it was more visible, but when Julia turned the sheet text-side up, it became legible too. With a squeak she recognized it: a large capital E, in Eva’s distinctive spiky handwriting. Her initial.
Austen let out a low whistle. “What is it?”
“An E, for Eva.”
One cheek puckered in skepticism. “Not necessarily. It could be anything, made by anyone.”
“I’ve seen her handwriting.” Julia sat back, spectacles in her hand, forgotten. Eva’s large script was jutting and linear as an architect’s, all angles. She’d signed her note to Jerome with a spiking E identical to this one. “I’m certain it’s Eva’s. She must have scratched it into the paper, maybe with a fingernail.”
Austen whistled again. “Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know.”
As Julia stared at the figure, she recognized it a second time. It was the same odd pattern of scarring on Eva’s hip—those dots formed the points of her own initial, like some crude homemade tattoo. Children liked to scratch their initials into wood or paint. Perhaps that was what Eva had done, in the same way children cut open their fingers to make a blood oath, declaring the power of will and courage over pain. She and her sister, Ella, shared the initial; maybe they had marked each other to seal a kind of private eternal bond. Such things were youthful rites of passage. No wonder Eva kept hers well hidden.
Julia tucked her eyeglasses into her handbag. “Maybe she wants to reassure friends she’s all right. That she and the manuscript are safe.”
It was exactly the kind of thing Eva would do. Julia checked the other pages for similar marks. Nothing. She hadn’t noticed any marking on the pages Duveen had received, though without a strong crosslight and careful examination, it might not be perceptible. She’d have to return tomorrow to check those pages again, even if the privilege cost her the printing of a small edition of Pookins.
She covered her mouth with her hand as another thought dawned. She’d been so eager to finally discover something new that she hadn’t registered the implications. Now she wished she hadn’t noticed the damn initial. “But if Eva is the sender, it means she has the manuscript. Kessler would see this as evidence that she was involved in Timson’s death.”
Julia remembered her relief when Wallace had said the safe had been empty and its contents gone when he’d found Eva with Timson’s body. But Eva could have already moved the manuscript to the bedroom, and she could have taken it with her when she’d fled down the hidden stairway. Dread sank in Julia’s stomach. But why, then, would she beg Jerome to return it? Had that been some kind of perverse ruse, or had she somehow come across the manuscript later, after sending those notes? These pages had been sent only a few days ago.
“If she was involved,” Austen said slowly, “why send anything? And why put her initial on it? Doesn’t this just point the finger at herself?”
Julia silently urged her brain to persevere, to find some other explanation. Every bone in her body believed Eva—gentle, beautiful Eva—was not the killer, despite this graphic suggestion she was. “Maybe it has to do with the particular pages. Maybe there’s a clue to what happened in this part of the story.”
“These are mostly about the Byron character. You said Pablo’s pages were too. That means she’s focusing on the boyfriend. Is she casting suspicion on Jerome?”
Julia considered miserably. “Maybe. But when I talked with him that night, I believed him. I honestly think he knows no more than we do, possibly much less. And I’m certain Eva loves him. Why would she point a finger at him?” She rubbed out the creases in her forehead.
Austen’s chair scraped as he pulled it closer. “You’re the one with the brain. If your bean is stumped, I’m no help.”
Julia again smoothed her forehead. But her bean, as he put it, remained stumped.
A full minute of silence elapsed. Austen began to tap a thumbnail against his front teeth. He took a breath and hesitated. After several more seconds he said, “There’s something else odd here. I can’t shake the feeling I’ve read this before. Are you sure it’s from Eva’s manuscript?”
Her elbows scooted closer. “Pablo said it was.”
“Well, maybe it’s just some big coincidence. But I know I’ve read something very like it, if not this exactly.”
“Where?”
“Here. It must have come in over the transom. For the first six months that’s all I did—read unsolicited manuscripts. I’m sure we never published it.” He drummed a loose fist on his desk. “I wish I could remember more.”
“Is it still here?” Her glance flew around the cluttered room. “Do you keep manuscripts you don’t want to publish?”
“Most publishers don’t, but this place is so careless we can’t even manage the stuff we reject. It’s probably around here somewhere, waiting for someone to write a letter to the author. It could be on anybody’s desk, or—”
His eyebrows rose. “There’s a big pile of them on a table in Horace’s office. He tries to spin through everything so he can at least recognize it if some nervous author buttonholes him at a party. He can do that—ten minutes, and he can size it up. We do the grunt work, actually read a good chunk to be sure, but Horace wants them to think he did too. Anyway, odds are good it’s there.”
“Let’s go look.”
“Right now?”
Julia jumped to her feet. “Right now.”
CHAPTER 29
They retraced their steps along the dark corridor and up to the top floor of the silent building. Straight ahead, Julia saw through the murk the large room that a few weeks ago had been full of partying editors and authors. To the left yawned another black hallway and the lavatory where she and Eva had retreated for repairs. Austen turned to the right. “He’s forever losing his keys,” he whispered, “so there’s a spare over here.” He felt along the molding above the door to the party room and returned with a key. He unlocked the door to Liveright’s office and swung it open. Reaching across Julia, Austen switched on the light.
A loud wail nearly buckled her knees. A woman’s tousled platinum head dangled upside down over the side of a divan, her arms waving uselessly in the air above her. Her dress was twisted into disarray beneath her chin. The woman squealed again in a shrill expletive, wriggling her knees in an effort to pull herself upright.
With a crude curse Liveright’s contorted face rose into view. “What the hell—!” he roared, squinting in the sudden light.
Austen punched off the light switch, shoved Julia back into the hall, and leaped out after her. The slamming door sliced Liveright’s furious epithet in half.
“God almighty!” Austen gasped. “I’m cooked!”
Julia pulled him recklessly down the dark corridor and onto the stairs. In a miracle of gravity, their feet stayed beneath them in
the freefall descent. They spun around the corner one flight below and plunged into the black hallway, Julia hanging on to the waist of Austen’s trousers by the wrenched length of her arm as he groped for a doorknob that was not locked. He found one, Julia careened into his back, and a storm of blasphemies came thundering down the stairs behind them.
They dived into the room and pushed the door shut with agonizing care, registering only a soft click. The corridor flooded with light. They leaned against the door, Austen gripping the knob for want of a lock. The curses came toward them, a cyclone of rattling doorknobs and pounding on wood.
“I’ll find you, you little shit,” Liveright yelled, his voice nearing.
Julia could hear his hoarse pants and garbled curses as he reached their door. The knob tensed beneath Austen’s hands. Liveright caught his breath. In the abrupt silence Austen clutched the knob in both hands, bracing himself for a wrenching twist. Liveright gave it a hard but unwitting jiggle.
“Damn!” The knob went slack. Liveright pounded the wall as he moved on. “Damn damn damn.”
Liveright’s progress along the rest of the corridor was less distinct, drowned by the roar of blood in Julia’s ears. The commotion turned and approached again. Still grumbling, curses and expletives somewhat less loud, Liveright returned as he had come. After he had passed, Austen cracked open the door. They heard his furious climb back to the top floor and the distant slam of his office door, and Julia imagined the emphatic click of its lock.
Some moments elapsed, the darkness filled with their thudding breaths. Julia pressed her palm against Austen’s ribs to calm his rocketing heartbeat.
“What a smash of things I almost made up there,” he said when he was able. “Christ almighty. My job flashed before my eyes.”
“He may not remember this on Monday,” she whispered. “I don’t think he actually saw us, not enough to recognize. He wasn’t focusing. On us, I mean.”
Austen began to laugh. “Some sheik I turn out to be,” he sputtered. “Are you all right?”
