Duveen barreled on, right into Julia’s unspoken fear. “It doesn’t necessarily mean she killed him. He could have given it back to her later that night. And then by sheer rotten luck someone else came in and shot him. He was a crook. His friends are crooks. They kill each other all the time. It’s possible, and that’s good enough for me.”
Such a contrived scenario would never dissuade Kessler. If he knew these pages had surfaced, he’d send in his troops tomorrow. Jerome would be run to ground, and quite possibly Eva too. Not even Wallace could hide her forever from a freshly galvanized police force.
“The way I see it,” Duveen persisted, “the gangster stuff will settle down pretty soon, and the cops will hie off after some new heinous criminal. Before you know it, Eva will be back in business, turning cartwheels of happiness—in time to sign copies of her first edition.”
Foreboding gripped Julia. “Don’t say anything to anyone about this, Pablo.”
He comically turned a key to lock his protruding lips. “Look at the bright side,” he said. “If she can keep the manuscript coming, it will sell like mad. A runaway hit!”
How easily he dismissed Eva’s dilemma, finding specious ways to keep it from spoiling his vision of brisk sales and reflected glory. Julia recrossed her legs to disguise her anger. It wasn’t simply that she cared more about Eva. Too much about the whole situation was unsettling. Unlike Duveen, she couldn’t breeze away the echo of Jerome’s desolate tears or the haunting, hope-numb challenge she’d seen in Eva’s eyes in Kessler’s office.
“Why send only a few pages at a time?” she asked.
“Don’t know, don’t care. Just so long as it keeps coming.”
“Why not send pages in order? The first dozen, then the next, and so on?”
He shrugged, not bothering to repeat his ambivalence. The conversation and her visit were over. He crossed the room to the door, forcing Julia to follow. As she tugged on her gloves to face the cool, drizzly afternoon, his humor returned.
“Even if nothing comes of this whole maggoty mess, at least those pages won’t go to waste. Eva’s novel may fizzle, but they’re a gold mine for me.” He grinned. “It’s the best research I could dream of. So good news either way.”
Julia dipped her chin. Her hat brim would shadow her eyes as her mouth assumed a polite smile. She could not bear to witness his selfish happiness. More likely the day’s only good news was her escape from the apartment without a tattooed dachshund.
CHAPTER 27
It wouldn’t do. Julia shook her head at Philip and let him explain to the estate agent. It was the third apartment they’d looked at since noon, and each was impossible. She might explode with frustration if she opened her mouth to speak, and the poor man deserved better courtesy.
Another day had passed since her discovery in Duveen’s library, a day that had brought no inkling of fresh information about Eva or her manuscript. Philip could report only that Kessler was firming up plans for his major crackdown on Sunday. Unless something turned up before then, Eva’s disappearance had sealed her guilty fate.
Philip’s only genuine news made Julia’s anxiety worse. A letter had arrived from his housekeeper, Mrs. Cheadle. Her train would arrive from Florida late next week. Julia and Christophine were welcome to stay on with him, he said, but Mrs. Cheadle’s return meant a difficult arrangement, crowded and awkward. Christophine was as restless as Julia to unpack her things, their things, the familiars of their own household. It was imperative that Julia find them a new home—but thus far she’d seen nothing suitable for, and that would tolerate the peculiar needs of, a printing studio.
She needed a space for her Albion, the beautiful little handpress on which she’d printed each of her Capriole productions. Along with a large oak type cabinet, holding her growing collection of fonts; a proofing table and composing stone (a slab of marble set into a sturdy oak table); paper cabinets; and assorted other supplies and furnishings of a printing studio, it required a spacious room, sturdily built and with ample natural light. That and the usual needs of a reasonably comfortable residence meant her requirements were particular, and her options were—none. This ugly, dark, and serpentine flat on East Twenty-Sixth Street was their last appointment of the day.
She dreaded even forming the thought. On top of her growing despair about Eva, she felt an inchoate new fear: Would she have to abandon Capriole?
Philip wisely suggested they recover over tea. She was in a foul mood. Just a month ago she’d felt so hopeful and exultant that her move to New York would launch her into an exciting new life, with new friends, a new lover, and especially new horizons for her Capriole Press. Nothing had turned out as she’d envisioned it. At the moment it all seemed perilously close to crumbling to dust. Had she made a terrible, terrible mistake? Would she have been better off remaining in London? Should she have married David after all?
Julia shuddered, not because it was a loathsome thought but because it wasn’t. Maybe she had blithely overestimated her ability to make her own way in life, independent of any man’s help or approval. Everything she had thought would unfold gloriously before her had not. Was she a colossal fool? No more self-reliant than the naive and helpless females she scorned?
Philip turned the handle of the teapot toward himself (arranged, as always, toward the woman) and poured out two steaming cups. “You might as well tell me,” he said. His gaze was open but not avid. He was inviting, not insisting.
As usual, he was right. He’d been true to his word, yielding up every morsel he knew about Kessler’s investigation. She’d listened more than she’d shared in return, and now that discrepancy seemed not only arrogant but
