Passing Fancies (A Julia Kydd Novel)

by Marlowe Benn

  Fear jumped in Jerome’s eyes. “His killer?”

  Julia could only nod. She was back to her one certainty: the killer had to be someone desperate to get that manuscript. Who? Her thoughts spun yet again to consider Duveen and Goldsmith, arriving as always at the strong though not absolute likelihood of their innocence. Wallace? For the hundredth time she reviewed his account of that night and morning. She had only his word for any of it—which was not the reassurance she’d once considered it. But she did (more or less) trust him now, and besides, Kessler had confirmed he’d been elsewhere when Timson had been killed.

  Then who? Billie Fischer? It was a refreshing new thought. Billie was a jealous writer who labored to produce a single short story. She was poisonous toward both Eva and Timson. Julia even glanced at Austen. Could he have slipped away while she’d been sleeping? Absurd. Billie, though . . .

  Julia’s brief hopes collapsed. “But there’s Eva’s initial.” She pulled out the bottom sheet to show Jerome. “Scratched on this page. You can see it if you hold it up to the light.”

  He angled it over his head. Even in the weak light from the alley, the sharply pointed E was clear. “That’s her writing,” he said.

  A queasy pressure tingled under Julia’s jaw. “It’s also the pattern on her hip,” she said. “Those five dots.”

  Jerome nodded glumly. “I never thought of that as her initial.”

  “Did she ever talk about it?”

  “Not really. I think some drunk bastard did it. She only said he never bothered her again, so I figured he was long out of the picture. Monster.”

  Julia recoiled. No wonder Eva would cover it up. Monster was right. She laid down her handbag, grasped the table edge, and breathed through her mouth, afraid she might gag. Confirmation of her scratched initial meant Eva did have the manuscript. Julia couldn’t bear to say it aloud or to repeat the implication.

  “Eva did not kill that bastard Timson.” Jerome rejected the unspoken fear through gritted teeth. “I’d swear my life on it. She would not. She could not. No.”

  “Then someone gave her the manuscript.” It was the only remaining possibility.

  “Who? And how? Wallace is the only person who knows where she is.”

  A conspiracy? The killer had taken the manuscript and then persuaded Wallace to pass it along to Eva. That led into thickets so absurd and mind tangling that Julia couldn’t begin to consider it.

  The roll of her thoughts and the room’s terrible smell were almost too much for her. She couldn’t be sick. She had to think.

  Beneath Jerome’s questions was a plea. She saw in his eyes the same look she’d seen so briefly in Eva’s eyes. Hopeless yet hopeful. Damned and innocent.

  She locked her knees and gulped small breaths. Think, Julia.

  A tiny light began to blink in her mind’s murk.

  She waved away Austen’s effort to steer her toward the cot. If she kept her head down, breathed through her mouth . . .

  The blink steadied to a light, a pinprick but a light. What if she was looking at things backward? Maybe a premise or two needed to be reversed. Would that make a difference, shed enough light to navigate by?

  She began with the question of why Eva—or whoever—was sending the pages. “This can’t be about getting the manuscript out to be published,” she said, between pants of steadying air. “If it were, she’d send the whole thing, and straight to Goldsmith. Or at least sections, in order and from the beginning.”

  Both men merely nodded, as if any sound might frighten away the fragile speculation.

  “So there must be significance in the selections.” She gestured for Austen to repeat for Jerome her description of the excerpt Duveen had received.

  “That’s from my first novel too,” Jerome said. “Byron’s more or less based on me.”

  Clarity dawned like a puff of cool air on Julia’s throat. “But this last page is different,” she said. “The one where she scratched her initial. It’s from the rape scene that made Timson so angry. So we need to ask. Did that really happen? Did Timson actually rape her?”

  Jerome’s bony chest swelled, and his shoulders arched back. For a moment Julia feared he was angry, but it was merely a great sigh. “God,” he breathed. “I wish I knew.”

  “If it’s true, it might justify his murder,” Austen said.

  Jerome’s expression flickered. “No such thing as self-defense, not when they think a Negro’s killed a white man.”

  “But it must be significant if she marked this page,” Julia said, cautiously raising her head. The worst of the nausea had subsided.

  “She’d only say the story was from long ago,” Jerome said. “I don’t even know if it’s true, much less if it happened to Eva. It could easily be some backstage legend. She didn’t like to talk about it—who would?—but Pablo begged her to include it, so we did.”

  He lifted the page. “Maybe she marked this sheet to say it did happen, and to her. Maybe this was her way of signing it, of signing this whole nightmare.” His voice cracked at the bleak thought. “Dear God. Like a confession.”

  Holding it high, toward the light, he turned it front to back, side to side, as if coaxing the shadowy initial to speak.

  It did.

  Its message surged through Julia. It sparked from her heels to her scalp, spooking every hair along the way. She nearly lunged for the page. Her hands trembled as she positioned it for the men—sideways.

  “This is Eva’s writing, but it’s not her initial. Look.” Julia traced her finger along the now-horizontal figure. “It could just as easily be a W.”

  “Good God.” “Christ almighty.” Both men registered the significance.

  “Wallace,” Julia said. A second realization dawned as she stared at the pattern. “The scars on her hip could form a W, not an E.” She remembered Wallace’s penchant for monograms on his beautiful possessions: his cuff links, his crystal, his ranks of leather document cases. One knee buckled as her mind caught up with the implications. Wallace. His voice in her ear, his warm hand confidently riding her hip, his droll amusement beneath half-lowered eyes: in so many ways he had stirred her heart, her desires. She felt sick again, as if the charming, considerate Wallace she knew had morphed before her eyes into something malign.

  “Wallace,” Jerome repeated, outpacing her horrified deductions. “If he gave her that scar, maybe he’s the rapist she wrote about. A club owner, years ago—”

  “And he’s the only one who knows where she is.” Julia forced herself to put aside the flailing of her heart. She spun toward the door so quickly she swayed and had to grab the edge of the table. “We need to find her.”

  “I’m coming with you. I know where to look.”

  Her mind was already scrambling back through the Half-Shell to the street. But then where to? Her thumbnail traced the groove between her front teeth, a habit both her mother and Christophine had tried to scold away. He was right. She couldn’t do this without him. More importantly, this was his fight more than hers. Eva was his wife. “Do you have clothes? Shoes?”

  Jerome groped in the shadows by his cot, emerging with a limp shirt over his vest. He crouched to tie his shoelaces and swayed when he stood. He had no socks. Into his sagging waistband he tucked the chamois bag with the revolver from under his mattress. Julia recoiled. Then she remembered Wallace’s reminder that guns made people stop, forced them to consider the consequences of whatever came next. A gun could hold someone at bay, long enough to make them listen.

  They moved quickly through the club’s empty cavern. They heard only a distant clatter of dishes until they reached the lobby, where the old janitor sat on a chair by the door, a litter of cigarette stubs no longer than his fingertips sprinkling the floor around him. His sly smile turned to alarm when he saw Jerome.

  Julia quieted him with a generous palm. “Thank you, sir. Jervis’s sister will be so grateful to see him again. Don’t worry.”

  Jerome stumbled as they hurried up the steps to
the street. He blinked and shaded his eyes but kept moving, following their heels as Austen and Julia headed to the corner. They’d have better luck finding a taxi on Seventh Avenue. Julia got out another bill to persuade the driver to accept a colored passenger.

  Within five minutes, miraculously, they were on their way to an address on West 137th Street. But as soon as the taxi turned into the block, they realized they could not stop. Two police motorcars were parked in front of the building Jerome had named.

  Damn. Damn. Of course. It was Sunday morning. The police crackdown had begun. Three cops stood talking to a crowd of neighbors. Jerome melted to the floor when two of the cops eyed the slow-passing taxi. Julia returned their stare with the idle ambivalence of impervious wealth, and they stepped back to let them pass unchallenged.

  No sign of Eva.

  They continued to a second address Jerome supplied. Julia recognized it as the building on 141st where Wallace had said he’d sent Eva after his housekeeper had complained. This time they saw the police cars a full two blocks away. Julia signaled for Austen to cover Jerome with his jacket. She asked the driver to slow as they approached. Lowering the window halfway, she called out to one of the policemen in a girlish drawl, “What’s happened here, Officer?”

  He motioned her to turn around and head south. “Go home, miss. This ain’t no neighborhood for you.”

  He turned to the driver. “Get her out of here,” he shouted, slapping the fender like a horse’s flank.

  “Wait.” Julia tried to recall the name of the building where Wallace kept an apartment for his friends’ dalliances. “Take us to the—Lester. On 146th, I believe.”

  It was only a few blocks away, but two police motorcars idled there as well. “Hey, what’s goin’ on here?” the taxi driver growled uneasily.

  “Drive past please, slowly.” After another exchange of curious, wary stares with the policemen at the curb, Julia sat back. She had to think.

  “Where do you live, lady?” the driver asked, resolutely turning south.

  He repeated the question, more loudly.

  “East Side,” she said. “Just head down Fifth.”

  She motioned Jerome to get up and leaned closer. “I have an idea. Here’s my plan.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Julia stood on the tree-lined street. No one passed, on foot or by motor. In this neighborhood it was a serene Sunday morning. She counted to one hundred, wishing she could slow her heartbeat so easily. At eighty she leaned on the taxicab’s front fender and bent to remove one shoe, remembering the London day last summer she had bought the pair. Not bearing to watch, she gripped the instep and rapped it sharply against the curb. Again, harder. The heel fell to the pavement with a clatter. She refastened the broken shoe onto her foot.

  The driver watched her with open amazement, his motor idling as instructed. His eyes bulged when she gave her right sleeve a tug and the seam tore. Even Christophine could not have revived the poor frock after the misfortunes of the previous evening, Julia consoled herself. She glared at the driver, reminding him of his well-paid pledge of silence, and caught a fold of her lower lip between her teeth. Eyes shut, fingers squeezing her bag for courage, she bit down hard. Her mouth yawned wide in pain, but she tasted the satisfying metallic tang of blood.

  Ninety-six. Ninety-seven. She took a deep breath, raised her left arm, and eyed the driver. Ready?

  One hundred. She dropped her arm, and the taxi roared off in a scream of rubber. Julia threw herself onto the pavement, just past the corner of the building, into view of the rear entrance. She cried out in genuine pain, eased somewhat by the sight of blood trickling down her ruined stocking from a gash below her knee, and the sweet sound of Wallace’s door guard shouting in alarm.

  She spit blood onto her chin and smeared it with a gritty hand before rolling clumsily to face him. She cried for help, rising up on one hip, legs twisted beneath her.

  The doorman rushed down the walk. Whimpering, she saw Austen and Jerome round the corner from the other direction and slip into the unwatched entrance. She sniffled helpless gratitude as the guard crouched beside her. “Ernie, is it?” She grasped his wrist.

  “Miss Kydd?” He supported her shoulders as she tried to sit up. “What on earth?”

  “It was all so—” She made little crying noises, too nervous to produce real tears. “A man—into my taxi.” She turned away in distress. “He, oh!”

  Ernie’s fists clenched nicely. “Did he hurt you, miss?”

  She shook her head, leaning heavily against him. “I tried to fight. He grabbed my—” More wailing as she peered into her violated handbag. “We flew around a corner, and he—he threw me out.”

  She held on to his sleeve and gazed into his face with every forlorn guile she could summon. “Thank God for you. You’re my guardian angel.”

  “Mr. Wallace isn’t at home, miss,” Ernie said. “If he were, I’m sure he’d insist you come up, but I can’t allow it without his permission.”

  Julia knew Wallace was out of town—it was key to her plan—but Ernie’s loyal refusal to let her in was an unforeseen problem. She clutched the gash on her leg and came away with a bloody palm, exclaiming at it.

  Ernie bit his lower lip. “Can you walk, miss?”

  “Maybe. If you help.” Ernie lifted her to her feet with solicitous care. She sagged against him, staggering with each effort to bear her own weight. Austen’s face appeared briefly from the entry: Get a move on!

  The pathos in her voice grew to a groan. “I think I may be sick.” She glanced about fearfully, as if for twitching curtains or curious passersby. She tucked her forehead into his sleeve. “This is awful.”

  “Right,” Ernie said, succumbing to his good heart. “You come with me, miss.” He held her waist and half dragged, half carried her toward the apartment’s private entrance. “We’ll get you patched up inside. Mr. Wallace will understand.”

  He guided her into the small lobby, his concern growing with each moan. He didn’t notice the ungated elevator or Jerome and Austen creeping out from its shadows.

  Julia stumbled and gasped, bringing Ernie’s worried face close to hers. It crumpled under the sickening thwack of Jerome’s revolver handle on his skull. His sudden weight knocked her down, twisting her knee in fresh pain.

  “Not so hard,” Julia hissed.

  Jerome stared at the gun in his hand, surprised by his own force. “Sorry,” he whispered. Julia echoed the sentiment, apologizing into the poor man’s senseless ear. They dragged Ernie into the elevator and climbed in around him. Julia crouched to cradle his head.

  “How do we operate this thing?” Austen wondered. Jerome closed the gate and assessed the controls. He eased the machine up.

  The men bound Ernie’s wrists with his necktie, and Jerome loosely knotted Ernie’s shoelaces together. Austen rolled his handkerchief into a makeshift gag. Julia watched their progress in some surprise, as if both men were characters in a boy’s adventure story. They decided to leave the woozy Ernie in the elevator, his head cushioned by Austen’s rolled-up jacket. With luck they could find Eva and get her away before the poor man regained his wits. Julia couldn’t bear to see the betrayal on his face.

  Mozart. Figaro. The first thing they heard when they stepped into the marble foyer was a tenor proclaiming his love. Someone was listening to opera in Wallace’s grand living room.

  The second thing was the hearty voice of a woman ordering vegetables. Julia’s heart sank, capsized by the immense folly of her plan. Mrs. Hoskins was at home, likely bustling about in her kitchen. From there she might easily see them creeping by to check the vacant servants’ bedrooms—Julia’s guess for where Eva might be hiding. Hopes of a devout churchgoing housekeeper had blinded her to this possibility.

  Worse, the music suggested Wallace himself might be at home. She’d been told he was called away to Albany, not returning until this evening. She cursed Ernie for loyally repeating this ruse, perfectly aware that the man’s offense was nothing co
mpared to her own.

  Austen and Jerome stared anxiously, waiting for her lead. Julia’s knee throbbed. She stood stupidly, as if she’d had a good head coshing herself. Could they storm the service wing and escape with Eva (please, God) before Mrs. Hoskins and her rolling pin, or worse, could intervene?

  Ha ha ha ha! A third sound coursed through the apartment.

  Eva’s marvelous deep, rich laugh.

  Before Julia could stop him, Jerome dashed toward the electrifying sound. Julia and Austen leaped after him.

  They froze at the portal to the living room. Across the room, in two green damask chairs by the windows overlooking the park, sat Eva and Wallace. Eva’s bruises had healed. She looked healthy, well fed, well tended. Newspapers lay about the floor and across her knees. A white Belleek china teapot and two cups and saucers rested beside a vase of pink roses on the table between them. Relief swept through Julia at this surreal tableau. Eva was not only safe but secure. At least Wallace had not lied about that.

  Until that moment Eva had probably looked content as well. But now her face swam with shock. Shock and horror. She stared at Jerome, at his cracked lips and veined eyes, his bony neck and rolled waistband. The assault upon their rose-tinged air was no less vivid.

  But mostly she stared at the gun quaking in his hands, pointed vaguely in their direction.

  “Jerome.” Her breath wobbled on the long vowel, freighted with fear, regret, reproof, shame, sorrow. She stood, and the newsprint fluttered to her feet.

  Slowly Wallace stood as well. He edged toward Eva and moved in front of her. “Put your weapon down, son.”

  Julia felt as if time had folded and returned them to that moment in Timson’s office when all attention had converged on the barrel of a pointed gun. Now too her vision shrank to Eva’s stricken face. And once again it was Wallace’s voice, calm and measured, that rose to ease the crisis.

  The gun jerked in Jerome’s hands. “Get away from her, you bastard.”

  Wallace curved one arm back to shield Eva. He held out his other palm, open and empty. “Look at her. She’s safe. I’ve kept my promise. If you calm down and do as we planned, I can still get you both out of this mess.”