This batch included only four pages, starting with page 114. She began to read and quickly recognized the characters. Byron and Marie were in her apartment. He fumed that Marie had no sympathy for his difficulty finding work he could tolerate. He stormed out to wander aimlessly through Harlem, frustrated and self-absorbed. The narrative ended in midsentence at the bottom of the third page, because the fourth page was numbered 192.
The transition was abrupt in more than syntax. Julia reread the first two lines twice before realizing that, for one thing, the new passage was written from Marie’s point of view. Halfway down she knew exactly what this was: a page from the scene that had so angered Timson. Her chest tightened as she read the brutal account of a man named Coburn raping Marie with his gun. “Oh, Austen,” Julia said faintly, laying the sheet on the desk.
He looked up from reading the earlier pages she’d passed to him. His mouth lifted at one corner. “Nice cheaters.”
She pulled off her eyeglasses. “This last page is from the rape scene Timson was so angry about.”
“Just one page?”
She nodded.
“Why? Why that scene? Why just one page?”
“I don’t know.” Julia watched as he held it under the lamp and began to read. There was something odd about the page itself, some pattern pressed into the paper. Not translucent like a watermark but something written or drawn on it without ink.
“Wait.” She rose and gripped the sheet as she bent over it. “Look.”
She angled it beneath the light. “There. Do you see?”
Austen gazed hard at the paper. “What am I looking for?”
Julia flipped the page over and angled its blank verso under the pool of light. This time Austen’s lips opened with a little pop of surprise. He saw it, a large zigzag pattern of dots and connecting lines scratched into the paper. On the verso it was more visible, but when Julia turned the sheet text-side up, it became legible too. With a squeak she recognized it: a large capital E, in Eva’s distinctive spiky handwriting. Her initial.
Austen let out a low whistle. “What is it?”
“An E, for Eva.”
One cheek puckered in skepticism. “Not necessarily. It could be anything, made by anyone.”
“I’ve seen her handwriting.” Julia sat back, spectacles in her hand, forgotten. Eva’s large script was jutting and linear as an architect’s, all angles. She’d signed her note to Jerome with a spiking E identical to this one. “I’m certain it’s Eva’s. She must have scratched it into the paper, maybe with a fingernail.”
Austen whistled again. “Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know.”
As Julia stared at the figure, she recognized it a second time. It was the same odd pattern of scarring on Eva’s hip—those dots formed the points of her own initial, like some crude homemade tattoo. Children liked to scratch their initials into wood or paint. Perhaps that was what Eva had done, in the same way children cut open their fingers to make a blood oath, declaring the power of will and courage over pain. She and her sister, Ella, shared the initial; maybe they had marked each other to seal a kind of private eternal bond. Such things were youthful rites of passage. No wonder Eva kept hers well hidden.
Julia tucked her eyeglasses into her handbag. “Maybe she wants to reassure friends she’s all right. That she and the manuscript are safe.”
It was exactly the kind of thing Eva would do. Julia checked the other pages for similar marks. Nothing. She hadn’t noticed any marking on the pages Duveen had received, though without a strong crosslight and careful examination, it might not be perceptible. She’d have to return tomorrow to check those pages again, even if the privilege cost her the printing of a small edition of Pookins.
She covered her mouth with her hand as another thought dawned. She’d been so eager to finally discover something new that she hadn’t registered the implications. Now she wished she hadn’t noticed the damn initial. “But if Eva is the sender, it means she has the manuscript. Kessler would see this as evidence that she was involved in Timson’s death.”
Julia remembered her relief when Wallace had said the safe had been empty and its contents gone when he’d found Eva with Timson’s body. But Eva could have already moved the manuscript to the bedroom, and she could have taken it with her when she’d fled down the hidden stairway. Dread sank in Julia’s stomach. But why, then, would she beg Jerome to return it? Had that been some kind of perverse ruse, or had she somehow come across the manuscript later, after sending those notes? These pages had been sent only a few days ago.
“If she was involved,” Austen said slowly, “why send anything? And why put her initial on it? Doesn’t this just point the finger at herself?”
Julia silently urged her brain to persevere, to find some other explanation. Every bone in her body believed Eva—gentle, beautiful Eva—was not the killer, despite this graphic suggestion she was. “Maybe it has to do with the particular pages. Maybe there’s a clue to what happened in this part of the story.”
“These are mostly about the Byron character. You said Pablo’s pages were too. That means she’s focusing on the boyfriend. Is she casting suspicion on Jerome?”
Julia considered miserably. “Maybe. But when I talked with him that night, I believed him. I honestly think he knows no more than we do, possibly much less. And I’m certain Eva loves him. Why would she point a finger at him?” She rubbed out the creases in her forehead.
Austen’s chair scraped as he pulled it closer. “You’re the one with the brain. If your bean is stumped, I’m no help.”
Julia again smoothed her forehead. But her bean, as he put it, remained stumped.
A full minute of silence elapsed. Austen began
