Julia quickly set Pookins aside and sat at his desk. She lifted his typewriter and pulled out the pages beneath it.
It was a section of something, pages eighty-seven through ninety-five. On page eighty-seven, the text began in the middle of a sentence. She began to read, eager to get a sense of the text before Duveen returned. She turned each sheet over with as much care as if it had been a da Vinci manuscript. The gist was soon clear. It was a story set in Harlem with Negro characters: A cabaret singer named Marie was devoted to a writer named Byron Love. They were at a dance, where Byron lavished attention on a seductive stranger. Marie was humiliated and Byron resentful. They quarreled violently.
Julia listened—Duveen’s hearty laugh rang out from well down the hall—and skimmed the pages again, perplexed. This was clearly fiction set in Harlem, which meant it could be pages from Harlem Angel or material for Duveen’s own new novel. Yet it had been typed on a different machine. Was that enough evidence this was Eva’s? Julia scanned again.
A phrase snagged her eye. One of the characters’ names. Byron Love. It sounded familiar. Where had she heard that name?
She remembered in a rush. The ladies’ lavatory in Liveright’s building. Byron Love was the name of Eva’s father, the white Louisville professor with the invalid wife in the big house and his mistress’s family in the caretaker’s cottage. Something something Byron Love.
Julia sat back. This must be part of Eva’s manuscript.
How had Duveen gotten it?
Where was the rest?
“What do you think?” Duveen stood in the doorway. He had changed into brown trousers and a yellow shirt, but over them he still wore the silver dressing gown. He’d shaved, and his white hair was smoothed back from his face in its usual soft poof. How long had he been there?
“Thank you for letting me consider Mr. Pookins,” Julia said, squaring his essay’s pages to steady her hands. “It’s charming, Pablo, but I’ll need more time to consider. I’ll have to see.”
Duveen folded his arms. “I’d be a lamb of a client. Delightfully docile. A mewling kitten!”
She couldn’t natter on about his damn cat a moment longer. She gave a theatrical sigh and blurted out, “The truth is I’m terribly distracted these days, thinking about poor Eva Pruitt. I thought a new printing project would help, but I can’t stop worrying.”
“You mean about the murder?”
“And her disappearance. Have you heard anything?”
Duveen shook his head, juddering his loose cheeks. “Nada.”
He showed little concern or even interest in Eva’s predicament. Nor did he repeat his claim of the other night at the Half-Shell. Not even a flicker of dissembling. Either he’d been so drunk he didn’t remember his joyful hints about Harlem Angel flying again, or he now wished to quash all references to it.
A blinding new thought occurred. Duveen had said he was writing a Harlem novel himself. Was he planning to appropriate Eva’s? No one else had read it entirely. With Eva out of the picture, dead or hiding or in prison, did he intend to claim the novel as his own? It was a powerful motive to kill Timson and to let Eva take the blame.
Before she could stop herself, Julia looked down. Eva’s pages were plainly visible beside the typewriting machine. Aghast, she pushed her gaze to his Pookins folder, attempting an appreciative expression, and then to Duveen.
He saw. He saw everything. For a moment they measured each other.
Duveen? Would he kill for that novel? Beneath his outré clownishness, was he capable of such ruthlessness? He studied her with an alarming sangfroid. Without shifting her gaze, she gauged how far she’d have to lunge to reach his letter opener, upright in a glass jar of colored pencils and pens.
Did anyone know she was here? Sweeney did, of course, but he’d hardly speak out. She’d told Christophine only that she had an errand to run and would be home before dinnertime. It would be two hours at least before she’d wonder if something was amiss. And even then she’d wait another few hours before considering raising an alarm.
Duveen narrowed his eyes. His gaze burned into hers. What a fool she’d been to insinuate herself so carelessly like this. Her nerves were not made for such subterfuge.
Duveen’s lips parted, and his teeth sprang out in a beefy laugh. “You’ve discovered my secret, you sneaky girl. I told you Eva’s manuscript was less missing than before.”
“How did you get it?”
The question hung in the air. Was it too blunt? A mistake, revealing her suspicions?
“The mailman brought it!”
He scrambled around the desk to paw gleefully through the mess for it. “Last week.”
“Who sent it?”
“Eva! Who else? I mean, who else cares so much about getting it published? It’s her ticket to literary Easy Street. More than ever now.” He did a lumbering jig with imaginary castanets.
“Where is she?”
“No idea.”
“Did she include a note?”
“Just those pages.” He stirred about in the wastepaper basket and extracted a large envelope, neatly slit across the sealed edge.
Julia examined it. No tucked-away note or even a return address. Duveen’s address had been typed across the front. The franking mark was smudged, making it impossible to identify the post office station where it had been mailed. She sat back to stare at the mysterious pages, sensing something ominous. “What does this mean?”
He blew air out of his cheeks. “It means the manuscript is safe, not moldering to pulp at the bottom of the East River.”
It meant more than that. The police believed—everyone believed, including Julia—that Timson
