London Broil

by Linnet Moss

  “James, are you telling me that this pay for information was done with your knowledge?”

  “Yes. I’m aware that it was wrong, but this is a very competitive business. The boss let us know that it was expected. Now he wants someone on a lower rung to take the blame.”

  “Are you going to be charged with a crime?” she asked. Her heart was sinking.

  “Not according to our solicitors, though they can’t be certain. They’d like to have me out sooner than later, just in case. I’m negotiating a severance agreement.” Babur arrived with their food and set the plates down. As soon as he was gone, she said, “What will you do?”

  “I’ll land on me feet. The payout from the agreement will be substantial, and I’ve quite a few friends,” he said, but she heard a note of uncertainty in his voice.

  Laura took a bite of her food. “Have you ever paid the police for information yourself?”

  “Not as such. I’ve never paid anyone.” He gave a slight emphasis to the word ‘paid’ and she closed her eyes. The kadu tasted like flavorless putty in her mouth. With difficulty, she swallowed it.

  “It’s Magda, isn’t it. You’ve been sleeping with her, and she’s been giving you information. That’s how you know so much about the Porteous case.” Laura remembered their last evening together, the fireside picnic when James had told her he loved her. He must have slept with Magda only a few days later. A searing flame of hurt and anger ignited inside her.

  They looked at each other for a long, silent moment. His dark eyes were filled with pain. “You have a right to know,” he said. “There was a great deal of pressure brought to bear for us to get the story, but that doesn’t excuse it. I only did it once, Laura.”

  “Thank you for telling me,” she said slowly. She put out her hand mechanically to pick up her wine glass, but James caught it in his. “Laura, I want you to marry me. Will you?”

  She froze, looking down at their hands. His, with its long, sensitive fingers, gripped hers tightly. “No. I won’t marry you. But I’ll tell you something, James. You need a higher love.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “You think I ought to believe in God?”

  “No, not at all. I’m saying you need the kind of love that makes you want to be a better person.”

  “I already have that,” he said quietly, and then, “You spread your dreams under my feet and I trampled them. I’m sorry.”

  She dug in her handbag and pulled out some money. “This is for the dinner. I’m going now, and I don’t want you to follow me, and I don’t want you to call me.”

  “So that’s it? You’re leaving on Thursday. Are you going to go home and sleep with some other bloke?”

  “If the right one comes along, yes. Now that you’ve introduced me to good sex, it’s not something I want to give up.” She said this knowing it would hurt him. She didn’t add that it was hard to imagine anyone else exciting her as much as James did.

  “You said you loved me,” he reminded her.

  “I do. Goodbye, James.”

  Laura stood up, tightly clutching her handbag, and then turned and left the restaurant without looking at him. She wondered bitterly whether he would get up in a moment and start a conversation with some other woman who was sitting alone. She felt surprised that there were no tears. She would cry over him later, after she got home to Parnell. She couldn’t afford to fall apart right now. There was too much to be done.

  29.

  The Consolation of Philosophy

  The next day she called John Curtis, Esq. to find out whether Alexander Porteous was well enough to receive a visitor. He promised to check, and in an hour called back to say that Mr. Porteous was anxious to see her. She was to come to the house in Knightsbridge that afternoon. The familiar front door was opened by a new staff person, a middle aged man in a dark suit who introduced himself as Mr. Banks. Charlotte had apparently been dismissed. Banks led her up the stairs and along a hallway to a sizable suite with a masculine feel to the heavy, antique furnishings. Amidst the dark wood chests and Persian rugs was a hospital bed with an IV stand and other medical paraphernalia beside it. A young, dark-haired nurse was standing by the bed checking the pulse of an old man who must be Alexander Porteous. She smiled at Laura and said, “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  Mr. Porteous looked like a man in his eighties. His frame was large, but painfully thin. He had only a small amount of white hair around the sides of his head, with a few strands combed over the bald top, and age spots on his scalp. His skin had the thin, translucent look of extreme age, and an oxygen tube ran across the middle of his face and beneath his nose. His voice, however, was still deep and surprisingly rich.

  “We meet at last, Miss Livingston. It is a pleasure. I had not imagined that you were so young, and may I add, so lovely. Please sit down,” and he pointed to a chair beside the bed.

  “Mr. Porteous,” she said, sinking into the chair, “I am very sorry for your loss. I only knew Ellen for a short while, but I’ll never forget her.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Hamish and Ellen were the issue of my second marriage. They have Helen’s looks. She was the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.”

  “Where is she now?” asked Laura.

  Mr. Porteous was gazing at a point past her left shoulder, as though someone else was in the room. “Dead for many years now. She ran off with a Greek shipping magnate soon after Ellen was born.” He turned his attention back to Laura.

  “I owe you a great debt. I believe it is quite likely that had you not mailed that letter, Hamish would have done away with me in another week or so.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Ellen? Or ask to see me?” she asked.

  “Ellen would not have been able to keep a secret from Hamish. She trusted him more than her old father; she and I have had one too many battles over her conduct. I feared that if I tried to see you in person, Hamish would act against one of us. And forgive me, but I’d never met you. I preferred not to entrust my family business to a complete stranger.”

  “Wasn’t there anyone else? Anyone who would be suspicious if Hamish turned them away?”

  “I have a son from my first marriage, Galen. When I married Helen, he took it badly. Our relationship has been… strained, and in any case, he lives in New York. He inherited my interest in books, just as Hamish did.”

  “And Ellen too,” said Laura. “Did you know she loved the library?”

  “No,” he said. “I should have taken a greater interest in her education. I have many regrets, Miss Livingston.”

  She took a deep breath. “Mr. Porteous, I feel responsible in a way for what happened. Hamish came to me after the solicitors were here and asked if I’d spoken to you. I said no, and withheld the fact that I’d sent the letter. If he and Charlotte were working together, he must have assumed that it was Ellen who helped you.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yes. I changed my will so that he would receive nothing, and then I told him that unless he stopped blocking my calls and correspondence, the terms would stand. I was foolish enough to think I could control him. I never thought for a moment” —his voice broke as he said this— “that he would learn the money had been left to Ellen, or that he would turn on her. They have always been so close.” He took her hand. “But you mustn’t blame yourself, my dear. You saved my life, and then you did what had to be done, what I lacked the courage to do. I knew that it must have been Hamish, but I couldn’t bear to accuse my own son of murder. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Now, of course, I see that he might have gone on to do that to some other young woman.” He shuddered and let go of her hand. Her eyes dropped from his hand to the small book lying at his side. It was a beautiful object, only about five inches tall, with an intricate blind-tooled binding and silver clasps. He saw the direction of her gaze, smiled slightly, and handed her the book.

  The clasps were open, as though he’d been reading it before the nurse entered to check on him. She turned to the title page. It was a Giunta imprin
t from Florence, 1507. Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. She felt tears spring to her eyes. Boethius had written the book while in prison awaiting a cruel, painful death. It was a dialogue between the author and Lady Philosophy on how a human being might find happiness in a world filled with evil.

  “Is it helping?” she asked.

  “I don’t share Boethius’ faith in Divine Providence,” he said, “but I love a beautiful book with a history. This one once belonged to Coleridge.” He pointed proudly at the ownership signature, and she caught her breath and then let it out slowly as she examined the handwriting. “Now tell me about your work,” he said.

  Laura described how his note about the Patterson sale had led to further discoveries at Belmont Hall. “Your Pine’s Horace is definitely Pope’s copy,” she said. “The sliver missing from the top of the title page must have contained his signature. Autograph-seekers often cut it from the books he inscribed. This is his handwriting,” she said, showing him a photograph of the missing pages she’d found at Belmont Hall. “I would know it anywhere.”

  “Excellent!” His haggard face looked transformed for a moment. “Miss Livingston,” —“Please call me Laura,” she interjected— “Laura. Where do you live?”

  “In Parnell, Pennsylvania. North of Philadelphia. I teach at Parnell State University.”

  “Ah yes, I remember that from John’s letter of introduction.”

  Laura glanced up and saw the nurse standing at the door and giving her a look that said her time was up. She rose. “I’ll be going, then. I’m leaving for home in a few days. Thank you for sharing your treasures with me.” He nodded, and lay back against the pillows. “Good bye, Laura.”

  30.

  A Truth Universally Acknowledged

  “Time to come home, kid. You’ve been through a lot.” June’s face on Skype looked sympathetic. “We’ll go to Revels and get a bottle of something bubbly to celebrate your Pope discovery, and then you can sleep for a week.”

  “I’ll probably cry for a week,” said Laura. She’d said all her goodbyes, to George and Babur and Fahran and Simon and her neighbors Cassie and Leila. She still hadn’t allowed herself to fall apart, even when a young man appeared at her door with a large box of pink roses. She’d given him a generous tip and told him to let Mr. Whelan know that delivery was refused.

  “Men are assholes,” said June. “It’s a truth universally acknowledged among the superior half of the human race. You really should play for our side, kid. Jillian has some cute friends.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I think I’ll take a vow of celibacy for six months or so. Spend some time alone.”

  “Not completely alone,” said June. “Looky here.” The picture on the screen veered crazily. It looked like June was carrying the computer down a hallway, and then the camera pointed at a basket filled with five tiny, mewling kittens. Their eyes were open, but only just barely. They wobbled about, climbing over one another. There were two calicos, an orange one, and two tabbies.

  “The momma cat was a stray who got hit by a car,” said June. “It was right outside my house. The mess was frigging awful. I had to get a shovel and— “That’s okay,” said Laura hastily. “I don’t need to hear the details. How did they end up with you?”

  “After the momma died, Mr. Peterson came over and said the litter was under his porch and could I take them. I’m forcing them on all my friends, and the last two left are the smaller calico and the orange.”

  “I don’t know,” Laura said doubtfully. She liked cats, and Sake, her beloved oriental shorthair, had died two years before at the advanced age of twenty. Not having a pet had given her more freedom to travel. But she felt drawn to the tiny, fragile forms moving in the basket. “I’ll adopt them, but only if you promise to look after them when I’m away.”

  “Deal! They’ll be waiting for you when you get home. I’m bottle feeding them now —Christ, what a pain in the ass!— but you can take them as soon as they’re weaned.”

  **

  “Have a good holiday, Dr. Livingston.” As the last of her students left the classroom on the final day of the Fall semester, Laura breathed a sigh of relief. Now all she had to do was grade exams, and she’d have the winter break to herself. Except for the usual round of family visits. Though she enjoyed the rituals of Christmas, she cringed slightly at the thought of being confronted with her brother Donald’s three loud and boisterous children.

  On the way back to her office, she passed a tall, black-haired male student whose walk brought James to her mind. As it turned out, she had not cried over James for the full space of a week. Only for five days. But she had lost her appetite for physical pleasures, including food. Her work alone held interest now. And every morning there was an all too brief interval between sleeping and waking, before she remembered it all. The fact that it was over, and the way she had left him.

  Wrapped in her thoughts, she tripped as usual on the uneven pavement outside Chester Hall, and slid erratically for a moment on the ice left from an early December freeze. Regaining her balance, but with her heart still pounding from the near-fall, she entered the building and went to her desk to record the last day’s attendance grades on her spreadsheet. An email message from June appeared in her box with the subject line Holy Crap. You won’t believe this. The message was a link to a story from the New York Daily Messenger, a tabloid style paper that June followed religiously. The headline read: London’s James Whelan to be new Messenger Food Critic.

  James was moving to New York.

  Author’s Note

  If you enjoyed London Broil, check out the sequel New York Groove by Linnet Moss on Amazon.com. Feedback to linnetmoss@gmail.com is appreciated.