His hands bounced and leaped as he talked. A dervish of excitement, twice he dropped what might charitably be called kisses onto Julia’s cheek, but which were better termed smacks. “I know I’m impossible, but it was such a knockout trip. You should have heard Meynell talking about his new Blake.”
“I’d love to see what they do with—” Julia began.
“And they’re doing a new Burton’s Anatomy with Kauffer illustrations. I saw proofs. It’s a howling blue beauty!”
His enthusiasm was infectious. Julia remembered his excitement about fine books a month ago in Duveen’s apartment, that night of their first conversation. She knew that particular thrill and shared it now, glad for his runaway happiness.
When he saw the plate of fresh shortbread and a bottle of champagne, he swung the bottle toward Julia—Should I open it? She wanted to gesture, Absolutely, but couldn’t rouse her hand. At last his eyes dimmed. “What? What’s happened?”
Julia had imagined this moment several times in the past few weeks, but when the chance arrived, her thoughts scattered like unstrung pearls. How to describe the strange and troubling turns of events? The last Austen knew, they’d just learned of Timson’s death and Eva’s disappearance. “I’m thrilled you had a good trip, I really am,” she said, “but I’ve been caught up in Eva Pruitt’s nightmare. Have you heard?”
“Only Billie’s snootful. When I stopped by the office this afternoon, she said Eva’s hiding and the police are going to arrest her. Is that true?”
Streamlining the details, Julia described Eva’s silence, Kessler’s suspicions, Wallace’s involvement, Jerome’s grief and confusion, Logan’s resentment, Goldsmith’s deceit, and now Duveen’s optimism about the pages that had arrived in his mail. But the police were no closer to finding another suspect, and soon attention would return full bore to Eva. Kessler’s patience expired tomorrow.
“Sounds bad. Anything we can do?”
Julia drove her fingers into her hair and gave her skull a rattle. Empty. Or rather it was bursting with thoughts, all of them useless.
Setting aside the champagne, Austen bit into one of Christophine’s shortbreads, spraying crumbs onto his jacket. “Pablo says those pages are from Eva’s manuscript? That she just sent them to him, without a note?”
Julia nodded. “But they were a short excerpt, and not even from the beginning of a chapter or section. They seemed to be about a young Negro man who goes dancing with his girlfriend. He can’t find a job, and they argue because he flirts with a glamorous older woman. He’s dazzled, the girlfriend’s jealous, and the jezebel’s satisfied—nothing very original.”
“So why send it?” He held the plate under his chin in lieu of a napkin as he ate three more pastries.
“That’s the question.”
Austen rubbed his jaw. “I wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
Julia had to repeat the question before he answered. “Sorry. I was thinking. I went through my office mail today to see if a contract I’d been waiting for had come in. It hadn’t, but there was something else I didn’t know what to make of. Just pages, no letter. It was odd.”
“From Eva’s book?”
“I don’t know. It was a plain envelope with no return address and four or five typescript pages inside. Came in yesterday’s mail. I only glanced at it, thinking an author had sent substitute pages and not bothered to explain. They sometimes think theirs is your only project and you’ll know what to do with them. But it was about some woman named Marie. Nothing I’m working on, which is strange.”
“Did this Marie live in Harlem? Did she have a boyfriend named Byron?”
“Not sure. I didn’t look at it that closely.”
“Did you by any chance bring those pages with you?”
“No. I figured I’d sort them out next week. Why? Is it important?”
Julia set his empty plate aside. “It might be. Can we run over for a look?”
“Right now?” He glanced out the French windows. The evening was lapsing into murky twilight. “I thought we might go get dinner.”
“Right now.”
Crosstown traffic was light. Twenty minutes later Austen dug out keys and let them into the reception vestibule of Liveright’s dark offices. “Horace doesn’t like us here after midafternoon on Saturdays,” he whispered, although the place seemed deserted. “We figure he holds private parties upstairs. More than once the first person here on Monday has met a chorus girl washing up in the lavatory. The poor thing goes screaming down the hall in her skivvies. It’s too funny.”
He knew his way well, guiding them up the wide front stairs by the glow of passing motorcar headlamps. On the second floor they entered a dark corridor and waited as their eyes adjusted. “No lights,” he said. “That’s the unwritten rule—people do sometimes spend the night here, when they’re too drunk to get home or just have to work on something all night, but we pretend we’re not here. Without lights Horace thinks we’re obeying him.” He listened, but they heard only street sounds. “Probably no one’s around, but just in case.”
He edged forward, one hand against the wall, Julia close behind. They turned a corner to the right and stopped at a door on the left. He unlocked it and switched on a small desk lamp. Julia closed the door behind them.
An untidy assortment of papers and books covered his desk, including what must be the heap of mail he’d rustled through earlier. He found a large envelope, identical to the one Duveen had fished from his wastebasket, and shook its contents out onto the desk.
Julia took the pages and lowered herself into an armchair beside the desk.
