Passing Fancies (A Julia Kydd Novel)

by Marlowe Benn

  “Book him, murder charges,” Kessler said.

  It felt like another blow. Impossible! Before Julia could subdue her treacherous stomach and exclaim again, he said, “No, you listen to me, Miss Kydd. Wallace gave us several addresses to search this morning. One of them was a club on Seventh Avenue. My men just found what looks like Crockett’s hiding place. They also found Pruitt’s jewelry at the bottom of an old bluing tub.”

  Kessler held up his index finger to silence her. “For the past three weeks we’ve been looking everywhere for that,” he said, unwrapping Jerome’s gun and lifting it to reveal a small insignia of silver and turquoise inlaid into the base of the handgrip. “It matches exactly the description of Leonard Timson’s missing weapon.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Julia slid deeper into her bath, driving the sting of heat over her chin and jaw. She’d drained and refilled the tub twice, sponging away blood, grime, bile. Her clothes had already disappeared, the unspeakably torn and filthy garments she’d begun sloughing off as soon as she’d come through the front door. Christophine had helped peel away every last stitch, and then she’d sunk down beside Julia on the bathroom floor until the shaking had stopped.

  Still she felt filmed with filth. Still she smelled blood. She curled a shoulder and rolled into the scalding pool. Slowly her body righted itself, and her thoughts began to knit straight.

  At eight that evening Julia pushed open the doors to the library. Austen jumped to his feet. He was well scrubbed and shaved, dressed in freshly laundered and pressed clothes. He squeezed her shoulders. “That’s more like it, bean,” he said.

  She’d dressed with care to bolster her spirits: her best lingerie, a new Nicole Groult frock of blush-pink crepe, tinted stockings to mask the plasters and bruises on her left leg. Her lower lip bulged where she’d bitten it, but a deeper shade than usual of lipstick disguised it well enough.

  Philip stood. “The world’s back on its axis,” he agreed.

  She smiled faintly. She needed all possible reinforcements tonight.

  A commotion in the hallway meant the other guests had arrived. Julia shot a grateful glance at Philip, who did not see it as he went to greet the men. In the chaotic taxi ride home from Wallace’s apartment, she’d been distraught. For over an hour she’d repeated her account of events to various policemen. By the time they let her leave, she was quaking, teeth chattering and vision blurred by the sights and smells and sounds she couldn’t force from her brain. Philip wrapped her in his coat and held her so tightly only her head could move, swaying and jerking. As they sped home, she begged him, over and over, to do one thing. Make them listen, she insisted. Give me time to think, and I can explain everything. He had shushed her, but he’d exerted his mysterious powers, and now both Kessler and Hannity had come to hear her account of the past month’s events.

  Christophine poured several brandies and set the glasses on a tray. Without speaking, she led Julia to the sofa and sat in the chair pulled up beside her. There was no need for discussion. They had traveled every inch of this terrible business together and would now see it through to its end. Julia was certain Christophine cared no more than she did that their guests might wonder at her presence. A moment later Pestilence was circling Fee’s lap as Julia flexed her fingers. The men found both women waiting, somber and composed, when Philip led them into the room.

  He did not blink. He introduced Christophine and Austen to Kessler, waited as the men chose seats, and circled with the brandies. He followed with his cigarette case. For Sergeant Hannity he produced a cigar from his breast pocket.

  Philip settled into his fireside chair. “Ready and fortified, ma petit soeur. We await your tale.”

  Julia set her glass aside. She wasn’t fully ready, and nothing more could fortify her, but she had to do this one last thing. She had failed spectacularly in her effort to save her friend from a violent end. This at least she must see through as best she could.

  She plunged in. “You’ve arrested an innocent man, Mr. Kessler. Jerome Crockett hasn’t killed anyone.”

  Kessler sighed. “I appreciate your flair for the dramatic, Miss Kydd—it’s apparently a family trait—but that’s wildly premature.”

  “Your own man told you. Jerome never fired that gun.”

  “Yes, yes. We’ve accepted your account of this morning. But a great deal of evidence implicates him in the murder of Leonard Timson.”

  “The evidence points to Jerome because it was meant to,” Julia said. “You were meant to arrest him.”

  A spark crossed Philip’s face. Austen clicked his tongue in surprise. Both Hannity and Kessler glowered with doubt. None of it came close to the horror and shame she felt at what she now believed to be the truth.

  She paused for a swallow of brandy. “As we all suspected, Timson was murdered for the manuscript of Eva Pruitt’s novel. But only nine people knew it was locked in his safe. Five of us had no reason to steal it. Austen Hurd and I certainly didn’t, and neither did the couple visiting from California. Martin Wallace didn’t even know it existed before that night. Plus we were all elsewhere when Timson was shot.

  “Two of the remaining four, Paul Duveen and Arthur Goldsmith, had strong interests in the manuscript but had alibis. And the last two possibilities, Eva Pruitt and Jerome Crockett, made such obvious suspects that the police were content to focus on them.” She nursed her wounded lip. “After all, no prosecutor would allow close scrutiny of wealthy white people, not with two suspicious Negroes involved.”

  For a long moment the room was silent. A few muscles jumped in Christophine’s face, but she did not drop her chin or squirm beneath the intense attention suddenly focused on her. She kept her eyes squarely on Julia, refusing to cower under the others’ awkward gazes. Julia envied her composure, so swiftly mustered. She silently cheered that others might see the Christophine she knew and loved.

  “Hey, now,” Hannity objected in a strident burst. “We did everything on the square.”

  “You focused on finding evidence of Eva’s guilt.” Julia raised her voice over Hannity’s. “But even that was a sham. You knew a Negro woman would be easy to convict for the murder of her white boss. That gave you time to let Wallace calm jittery nerves among Timson’s friends. Meanwhile, Eva was doomed unless something pointed to a better suspect. I couldn’t let her suffer that unjust fate. I wanted to talk to her but didn’t know where she was. My only breakthrough was to find Jerome. He told me Wallace was hiding Eva.”

  Kessler frowned. “Wallace? He told me she gave him the slip.”

  Julia nodded. “He deceived us both. He planned to hide her until you gave up looking or found another suspect. It would have worked, had circumstances not changed.”

  “Circumstances?” Kessler repeated. “Nothing changed in this case until this morning, when one death turned into three, thanks to your interference.”

  Christophine stirred with indignation at his tone, and Julia retorted, “A great deal changed, but there wasn’t time to inform you.”

  Before Kessler could heap more blame on her, Philip stood. “More brandy?” He was treading lightly too. He hadn’t been entirely forthcoming either.

  Kessler covered his glass, scowling away the offer. He still viewed her involvement as marginally culpable, and his patience was thinning. She’d have to move quickly, streamlining the narrative. All that mattered was getting to the truth as she now understood it.

  “I realized I’d been looking at this from the wrong angle,” she said. “We all assumed Timson was killed so Eva’s book could be published. What if he was killed to keep it unpublished? Suddenly Eva and Jerome had least motive, not most.”

  “Who’d want to prevent its publication?” Kessler asked sourly.

  “Timson, obviously. That’s why he locked the novel in his safe. But what provoked him was a particularly gruesome scene in which a Harlem club owner rapes the heroine. Timson feared readers would think it was true and about him.”

  “Maybe it wa
s.”

  “Eva denied it. She said only that it was a story from before her time at Carlotta’s. Then I remembered Wallace knew Eva in her earliest days in New York. As an owner of the first club she worked in, he helped launch her career.” Julia paused. What came next was both the most critical sentence and the most painful. She had wrestled with it all afternoon, forcing herself to confront the worst wound of all. “I believe that years ago a much younger and rougher Wallace raped a much younger and more vulnerable Eva. I imagine that afterward he was contrite, making it up to her with years of help.”

  Wallace and Eva. The two people she’d come to care about so deeply in the past weeks, in completely separate ways, were bound by that act of unspeakable cruelty and its shame.

  Philip’s gaze sharpened. Kessler sat back warily. “You’d better have compelling grounds for an accusation like that, Miss Kydd.”

  She chose her next words carefully. “I do, though you may resist, as I did at first. But it fits. Eva had a strange pattern of scars on her hip, which she said she received from an abusive lover long ago. It was a pattern of dots that, if connected, form the points of a W. Wallace was proud of his monogram. And he was adamant that a man should not force attentions upon a woman.” Julia studied the carpet, avoiding Philip’s eye as she added, “He made a point of insisting any intimacies he enjoyed were freely given.”

  “That’s hardly—” Hannity began.

  “Imagine his horror,” she said, cutting him off, “on hearing that Eva has not only written of that long-ago rape but is about to publish her account in a widely touted book. No wonder she was so distraught about her quarrel with Timson. Afterward she fretted that he’d witnessed the scene, that he’d feel betrayed after all he’d done for her. At first I guessed she meant Timson. Then I assumed he meant Jerome, since she looked at him fearfully when Timson objected to the rape scene. Now I think that anxious look was for Wallace, who was standing in front of Jerome. He referred to Wallace.”

  The room fell quiet except for Pestilence’s steady purr.

  “Wallace had a powerful motive to steal the manuscript. Everything—his business empire, his political ambitions—would be in jeopardy if that rape came to light.”

  Hannity snorted. “Now you’re just shooting steam, miss. You said it yourself. Mr. Wallace is as fine a gentleman as they come.”

  “My sergeant’s right, Miss Kydd,” Kessler said, sitting forward. “And before you go haring off down that slanderous path, remember Wallace couldn’t have shot Timson. Senator James swore they were together in Wallace’s club until the next morning, after Timson was found.”

  Julia was prepared for this. “Wallace kept an empty flat for the senator to use for discreet entertaining, if you understand. Whether Wallace pressured him for an alibi or a grateful James offered, I don’t know. You could ask him, Mr. Kessler. He might squawk.”

  Before Kessler or Hannity could take umbrage at the term, she spooled out the narrative she’d painfully constructed that afternoon. “I believe Wallace returned for the manuscript and, whether in an argument or because there was no other way, shot Timson. He was back at his own club before Hobart telephoned. Taking charge like the responsible man he’d worked hard to become, he rushed over and went up to Timson’s office a second time. Only this time he found Eva there, kneeling beside the body.”

  Kessler slapped the arm of his chair. “So she was there—”

  “No, let me finish. He told her to run and hide.”

  “Nonsense. It was Crockett who had Timson’s gun and the missing jewelry,” Kessler said. “Fact, not speculation. Everything points to the pair of them, not Wallace.”

  “Wallace urged you to abandon the investigation,” Julia said. “When you didn’t, he had to have a better suspect than Eva for you to find. That was to be Jerome. He told Eva that Jerome had the manuscript because he’d murdered Timson. No wonder she was shocked and wary to see us this morning. While I can’t—”

  “Enough,” Kessler said, uncrossing his legs. “This whole account is nothing but fanciful theory, Miss Kydd. If that’s all you have to offer, I’m afraid you’re wasting our time.”

  “Manners, old man,” warned Philip. “Let her finish.”

  Kessler hesitated, but Julia could see Philip’s admonishments wouldn’t hold him in the room much longer. He wanted tangible proof. She had no choice but to plunge directly into her last huge gambit.

  “You accept that Timson was likely murdered for the manuscript,” Julia said. “Would finding it convince you of the killer’s identity?”

  “It would be real evidence, which is more useful than the tale you’ve spun so far.”

  Julia turned to Hannity. “Is someone stationed at Wallace’s apartment, Sergeant?”

  “We got a man at the entrance. Why?”

  “If you’ll ask him to go upstairs, I can direct him to where I believe Wallace hid the stolen manuscript.”

  Hannity looked for permission to Kessler, who raised both palms in surrender.

  “Have him ask Mrs. Hoskins to unlock the doors to the library. Along the bottom bookshelves are leather-bound boxes of papers and records. Tell him to look in the boxes where the dust on the shelf has been disturbed.” It was a guess, a calculated hunch. If she was wrong, nothing would persuade Kessler to drop the murder charge against Jerome. Julia gulped another swallow of brandy to brace herself against yet another great failure.

  Hannity wrapped his mouth around the cigar and disappeared into the hallway.

  “If you’ll bear with me in the meantime,” Julia continued over Hannity’s too-loud conversation, “that brings us to the fateful encounter this morning. When Jerome swore to Eva that he never had the manuscript, I could see she believed him. She began to see Wallace’s treachery.

  “The gun convinced her. She probably recognized it right away as Timson’s special gun, which is why she was so alarmed. At first it suggested Wallace was right, that Jerome was the killer. But when Jerome said Wallace gave the gun to him, she understood two things in one awful moment. Wallace was the real killer. And he’d set up Jerome to take the blame. I saw her face, Mr. Kessler. I’ve never seen such despair and grief.

  “That’s when your men came storming in. The black man holding a gun was the only criminal they would ever see in that room. It was hopeless. Eva did the one thing she could to save him.”

  Julia realized there were no eyes she cared to meet. She swallowed more brandy. For a few moments no one spoke, as each listener fit the last fatal piece into the puzzle.

  “Why take such drastic measures?” Kessler asked. “Why not just divert Wallace’s shot?”

  “He was going to kill Jerome. He’d already reminded us that Austen and I were witnesses who could testify Jerome threatened him and he responded in self-defense.”

  The telephone bell rang. In the hall, Hannity’s voice boomed.

  “But why kill him?” Kessler persisted. “Especially at the cost of her own life?”

  “Wallace could truthfully say he’d found her with Timson’s body. Her life and her future depended on his good graces. At any moment he could turn on her as he had on Jerome, exposing her to certain conviction. I think she wanted to save the man she loved from the same fate.” Her husband, Julia thought. It was too painful to breathe aloud.

  In that moment an elusive piece of the puzzle slid into place for Julia too. This explained why Eva had slipped her marked page into the envelope. It was her only way to hint at the truth, if things went badly and Wallace turned against her. Julia could only imagine Eva’s confusion when she’d discovered he had the manuscript; no doubt he’d told her Jerome had returned it, as she’d begged him to.

  Kessler released a lungful of smoke and pinched his forehead. “Let me add this up. You’re telling us Wallace shot Timson. Then Pruitt killed Wallace and herself.” He sighed. “Your story’s thorough, I’ll say that much.”

  “Two murders, one suicide. All villains dispatched. Not much left for you to do,
old man,” Philip said. “Dashed considerate of her.”

  Hannity reentered the room, scratching the bristly ridge of his head. “You must be clairvoyant or something, Miss Kydd. Our boy did like you said, and quick as a flash he pulls out a box full of typed pages. Something called Harlem Angel. That what we’re looking for?”

  A knot ballooned in Julia’s throat. Just a month ago she’d heard that title for the first time, amid joyous celebration. Kessler coughed in surprise, and Philip shot him a triumphant smirk.

  “All right. I’ve heard enough.” Kessler ground out his cigarette and stood. “If that is the missing manuscript, you’ve given me a great deal to consider, Miss Kydd. I’ll have to run over all of this again tomorrow more carefully. Don’t go anywhere. I may need to talk with you.” To Hannity he added, “In the meantime, Crockett stays in custody.”

  Julia remained seated as Kessler and Hannity exchanged brisk new instructions. Philip joined the discussion as the men moved absently toward the door. Kessler thanked her—grudgingly, she thought—but she didn’t reply. She felt only exhaustion, relief washed away by yet more horror at the day’s tally of betrayals and loss.

  Austen crouched in front of her and sandwiched her limp hand between his. In a husky voice he asked if she wanted him to stay. He was so young and so charming, his face so kind and fresh. He was good to the world and it to him.

  His smile was warm, but she shook her head. No. Thank you, but just no.

  CHAPTER 34

  “Care for a sibling powwow?” Philip asked Julia as he closed the door on the departing guests.

  She had already insisted Christophine retire for the evening and not even consider clearing the dirty glasses. The two women embraced, saying nothing and communicating everything, and Christophine disappeared down the shadowed hall to her quarters. Though she’d known beforehand of Eva Pruitt’s misfortune, she looked shaken to hear again its relentless course toward grief.