“Hullo,” she said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Michael Bevan.”
She offered a puzzled smile.
“I’m sorry for barging in when you have guests,” I nodded toward the Nissan, “but it’s important that I see you.”
“How did you get past the gate?”
“It was partly open.”
She furrowed her brow skeptically, but, sizing me up again, decided to let it pass.
“You say your name is Bevan?”
“Yes, Mrs. Land.”
“I knew a Malachy Bevan once; a dear man who was police chief long ago. Any relation?”
“He was my grandfather.”
Her face brightened.
“Well, for goodness’ sake, you should have called first. Do come in. My other visitor is currently engaged.”
From the vestibule we entered a wide hallway with parquet flooring. Mahogany banisters led in long wavy curves to the second floor. It was a grand house, but the first floor was devoid of furniture or paintings.
“I’ve had to sell most everything,” she explained in a matter-of-fact tone. “There is still the Bentley and a few things upstairs. I should have enough to live on for a while and then I’ll sell the place.”
I followed her up the broad staircase to the second floor and down a hallway to a room at the west end of the house. A fireplace, big enough to park a Hummer in, anchored the eastern wall. A parade of windows offered a broad view of the wooded park to the north.
The auctioneer’s gavel had not intruded in this part of the home where a Shakazi rug covered most of the hardwood floor and a pair of Art Deco chairs bordered a Louis XV four-poster bed. The fireplace mantel held small tokens of foreign visits: a pair of brass bookends in the shape of Indian elephants, a tiny ceramic incense holder with Arabic markings, a Ming vase, and a silver tennis trophy etched with the words “1st Place St.-Tropez 1961.”
A handsomely framed poster from the late nineteenth century hung on the south wall. It portrayed a full-bosomed beauty on a swing, her shapely legs kicking high toward a beaming sun, a glass of champagne in one hand while the other clutched the rope. Beneath her, leaning expectantly against the trunk of the tree, leered a satyr, his attention captured either by the sparkling glass or the charms beneath the spread petticoats of the woman.
The viewer cannot be certain. I suppose that was the point.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“Yes, very much.”
“It’s by Jean de Paleologue, known by his signature ‘Pal.’ He produced some of the finest posters during the fin de siècle and his studio printed Toulouse-Lautrec’s work. Something like this would have been pasted to a kiosk in front of the Paris Opera House or on the side of a pissoir near the Folies Bergère. I like them because they weren’t meant for a salon or museum and yet they are extraordinarily beautiful.”
She sat in one of the chairs and motioned for me to do the same. Between us was a hot plate with tea brewing in a pot.
“Let’s see, Mr. Bevan,” she said as she pulled out a calendar book. “I believe I had you scheduled for eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“I’m afraid not. I didn’t make an appointment.”
She frowned ever so slightly. “You didn’t? Oh, dear. I’m afraid such discourtesies, no matter how small, can sometimes create rather large problems. I don’t mean to offend.”
“No, no. I’m sorry about this. I had to make sure that …”
“Yes, Mr. Bevan?”
“… that you would not avoid me.”
“Why on earth would I want to avoid meeting such a handsome young man?”
“Given the nature of my visit, you might. I have some rather difficult questions to ask.”
“Questions?” Her composure slipped a little. “Have you followed in the footsteps of your grandfather? Are you a policeman?”
“On the contrary, ma’am. The police are probably looking for me at this moment.”
“How interesting,” she remarked dryly. “You haven’t killed anyone, have you? I should be very upset if that were the case.”
“No, but circumstances have placed me in a most uncomfortable position.”
“I see. Well, actually I don’t see at all. What can I do for you? I thought you had other reasons for coming here.”
She smiled most becomingly, but there was such sadness in her voice that I couldn’t go immediately to my questions.
“If I may say so, Mrs. Land, you are a lovely woman.”
She touched my hand in tender gratitude.
“Thank you, young man, but it’s not really true anymore. What you see is an attractive illusion. I’m as fragile as a Wedgwood teacup now. There,” she said, pointing at a silver framed photograph of a fashion model stepping from an old twin-propeller airplane, a small handbag in one hand and a tennis racket in the other. The beauty wore a sleeveless khaki blouse strategically unbuttoned to display a string of pearls that hung from neck to sternum. “That is the woman I was before old age and poverty intruded.”
I nodded appreciatively. The model in that photo seemed vibrant and was stunningly beautiful, but her face was tinged with the arrogance of accustomed comfort and compliments too easily captured.
“A woman of my age cannot compete with the costume of youth,” she continued wistfully. “But I don’t envy these young girls of today. In my time, a man swooned at a glimpse of knee. You could play them for all it was worth and sex became an exciting game. Nowadays, what is there to be gained when all one’s cards are faceup on the table?”
She crossed her legs, showing a shapely calf and ankle.
Who was I to disagree? She was certainly making my temperature rise despite having twenty-five years on me. But that wasn’t what I was there for, as I reminded myself twice before starting the interrogation.
“I’m a book dealer and I’m looking for information about the books you had auctioned by Colonel Bender.”
“You were at the sale?”
“Yes. I was outbid for your books. Were you aware of their worth?”
“Oh, I had some idea what George paid for them fifteen years ago. It didn’t seem all that much at the time; certainly nothing like we paid for our paintings or pieces of Lalique. I suppose some had charming illustrations, but most of the words were in French or German and I never could fully appreciate the Japanese prints, brilliant as they were. Given their lewd subject matter, it’s not as if I could have framed them and put them over the downstairs mantel for George’s business associates to ogle.”
She hesitated, fixing her eyes on me as playfulness brightened her face like a child’s, only not so innocent. “Are you the grimacing Samurai type?”
I responded by picking a peacock feather off the table and studying it as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.
“No, I suppose not,” she said with a coquettish frown. “At any rate, the price paid at the auction was a pleasant surprise. After all those years, I just wanted them out of the house. My husband used them to enhance his libido in the days before Viagra.”
She looked at me slyly again, tilting her head then laughing.
“I shouldn’t think you need much prompting, Mr. Bevan.”
I coughed, laid down the feather, and studied the wall. But her eyes weren’t letting go without an answer.
“I suppose not, Mrs. Land.”
“Beatrice.”
“Who?”
“Call me Beatrice. Of the Inferno. Dante’s genius has always comforted me. In my declining years I find him even more relevant.” Her thoughts seemed to drift away and she spoke as if I wasn’t in the room. “There is no greater grief than to remember days of joy when misery is at hand.”
I shuffled my feet until her eyes focused on me again.
“Sorry, my dear, what was it you wanted?”
“Was there anything about your husband’s collection that was unusual?”
“Besides being erotic, you mean?”
&
nbsp; “Yes.”
“Not really,” she said, arranging a lacquered pin in her braided hair. “It bothered me that George didn’t take better care of some of them. He’d write notes in the margins with a pencil, scribbling things even on the illustrations. I complained that we’d never get a decent price because of the markings, but George didn’t care because he never intended for them to be sold. I suppose it never occurred to him that he might die before me either.”
“Did anyone contact you about the books shortly after his death?”
She nodded and was about to say more when she cocked her head again and stared past me in the direction of the opposite wall from where a soft scratching sound was coming.
I followed her gaze to the faint outline of a closed door that I had not noticed at first because it was covered in the same wallpaper as the rest of the room. Only a keyhole above a small doorknob betrayed its purpose. Suddenly, Beatrice Land stood, reached into a drawer next to the bed, and pulled out a key attached to a royal blue tassel.
Swinging the tassel slowly back and forth as if weighing a decision, she glanced again at the door and back to me, putting a finger to her lips. I had the uncomfortable feeling that the owner of the Nissan was lurking on the other side, spying on our conversation.
As she slowly crept toward the door, the scratching became louder until it culminated in a whimpering, high-pitched male voice that nearly sent me flying out the window.
Chapter Thirteen
I began to ask what the hell was going on when she turned to me and said, “It’s my noon appointment. He’ll hush if we don’t pay him attention.”
She returned to her chair as if nothing strange had occurred and, after putting the key in her lap, proceeded to answer my earlier question.
“A pair of vultures swooped in within hours after my husband’s funeral offering saccharine condolences and obsequious pleas to look at the books.”
“Who were they?” I asked, trying to ignore the bleating voice in the other room.
“The first to call was an odiferous fellow with course manners and an accent that could only have come from the slag heaps of south Wales.”
“Gareth Hughes.”
“That sounds right. Since I wasn’t aware at the time that my husband had left me practically destitute, I told him in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t interested in his money.”
“And the other dealer?” I shouted over the hysterics emerging from the adjacent room.
Beatrice hesitated, played with the tassel, and frowned vaguely. She stood up, walked to the closed door, and tapped on it until the noise softened to a whimper. Satisfied, she turned her attention back to me.
“Violet Trenche,” she answered with undisguised bitterness. “It was before her bookstore burned. For years she helped George build his collection.”
“Including the erotica?”
“Especially that! But don’t be naïve, dear boy. Books weren’t the only thing she helped him with.”
She lowered her chin. “I suppose you know her, being in the book trade?”
“Until now I thought I did. Violet works for me.”
She stared at me as if I had pissed on her Oriental rug. Just as quickly the coldness evaporated.
“You have my sympathies, Mr. Bevan. It goes without saying that I refused to sell that slattern my books at any price. After her store burned she couldn’t have paid for them anyway.”
The door behind her began to rattle.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to get back to work,” she said apologetically. “It’s the only means left for supplementing my income, you see.”
“I’ve just a few more questions, Mrs. Land. Please.”
“All right, but you’ll have to excuse me for a moment. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
She used the tasseled key to open the door and for an instant I glimpsed a pale-arsed elderly man skip across the room in full retreat, followed by the sound of several rapid swats against bare flesh. After a minute the moans ceased and in the ensuing silence Beatrice Land returned, softly closing the door behind her. She held in her left hand a supple leather cord, no more than twenty inches long, to which small black beads were attached on the end.
If the man had been a collie I would have congratulated my host on her training methods, but suggested that a dog biscuit might do just as well next time.
Instead, I just sat there with my jaw hanging against my chest like an unemployed marionette and prayed there wasn’t going to be a second act.
“Please try not to be judgmental, Mr. Bevan,” she said, settling into the chair. “The gentleman has lost his sexual capabilities for the most part so it takes a bit of playfulness to bring him around. Now, you wished to question me further?”
She looked at me, all innocent anticipation, and, after quelling the urge to ask the name of the lunatic asylum I happened to have wandered into, I got on with the matter at hand.
“What sort of things did your husband jot in the books?”
“Varying methods of sexual acts that George gleaned from our participation in a rather unique social group. He would try a position described in the book and rate it according to the satisfaction he—always he—” she sighed, “derived from performing it. If there were other people involved he might include their names and level of performance. Sometimes he wrote their telephone numbers.”
“Why did he bother?”
“For future reference, silly boy. There were quite a few people involved, after all.”
“Are you referring to a particular sex club in Kansas City?”
Beatrice Land’s face flushed and her tongue flicked out to play with her lips. She put her tongue back in to smile at me and brushed her foot against my ankle.
Her eyelids fluttered, but remained open. “How would I know about such things? I’m over seventy years old, for God’s sake.”
I just smiled. If it hadn’t been for “dog boy” in the next room I might have retracted the question.
She returned my smile, confirming my suspicion.
“Many years ago, George accompanied me when I had a modeling assignment in Paris. One night we were invited to a dinner party by the president of the Société des Anciens Livres at his home on the Place d’Augustin. George’s reputation as a bibliophile was well known. He was quite handsome as well, and every bit as charming as our host. The other guests were the crème de la crème of Parisian society and we spent hours after dinner in scintillating conversations. At some point the party, I’m not sure how to this day, evolved into a daring group experience.”
“You mean an orgy?”
Beatrice shot me a pained look.
“I’m not boring you with this, am I?” she asked.
I gazed at a photo on the mantel of a handsome couple in their early forties and tried to imagine them locked in an acrobatic embrace with the Baron du Plessis, Madame Jourdan, and a supporting cast.
“No,” I said. “Please continue.”
“So delighted were we by our sexual awakening that we shared our experiences with friends when we got home. Most were so shocked they cut us off their Christmas lists. But two or three couples didn’t, and that became the nucleus of the New Moon Society. It eventually grew to fifty participants, give or take a few of the voyeur variety.”
“Why New Moon?”
“The double entendre was unintended, I assure you. George came up with the name one moonlit night during our first bacchanal. Apparently, he’d never heard of the disgusting college boys’ habit of sticking their bare bottoms out of car windows.
“No matter, the name stuck. Not everyone in the group played our games, but most did at one time or another. We were forced to retreat a bit in the eighties—too many younger folks wanting in on the act. Despite their lovely bodies, they were considerably freer with drugs and that simply wasn’t our style. Nor was the ghastly music they insisted on playing.”
“Was Martin Quist a member?”
Beatrice’s smile evapo
rated.
“Yes, he came along much later but I prefer to forget him. Not our kind at all. He was very young when we knew him and very uncouth.”
She hesitated. “No, uncouth isn’t quite accurate. I should say ‘pathologically deviant’ better fits his ilk. My husband considered him dangerous, and whenever Quist appeared at a party George always encouraged me to slip away by a side door. Eventually, I quit going to the functions entirely.”
“And George?”
“Unfortunately, he stayed in somewhat longer. Two years longer.”
“Why so long?”
“Why? For the varied experiences, of course. Different men and women. Wilder games. Sex is as addictive as any drug. When the prescribed doses get heavier, one gets hooked for more.”
“Did your husband ever talk about a more detailed list or photographs he might have kept?”
She stopped brushing my ankle with her foot. The tongue came out again, but it was as dry as her lips and, after a moment, it returned to where it belonged.
“Please, Mr. Bevan, tell me again that you are not a policeman. You don’t seem the type at all; not with such sensitive brown eyes.”
I told her again.
“What is it exactly that has landed you in trouble?”
“I was in the wrong place, wrong time.”
“Aren’t we all at times?”
“What about the names?”
“George kept a very detailed list. Actually, two of them; one labeled ‘A,’ the other ‘B.’ I think there were compromising Polaroid photos as well. The A team were high-society types who had money and influence. George wasn’t much interested in the B list as it consisted of lesser types—runaways and other vulnerable kids.”
“Why did your husband think he needed to document everything?”
“For leverage, of course. George planned to use it only in self-defense should anyone threaten his business interests. He was a highway contractor, among other things, and highly leveraged men like him are always magnets for litigation. Believe me, having that list paid off when competitors threatened to sue George’s company for price-fixing.”
The Dirty Book Murder Page 9
