I was meeting a woman named Clelia Nguyen—another friend of Valerie’s from the international boarding school and ivy league set who was now one of the many vice presidents at an investment bank in London. She had worked for Greenbriar years ago when it was smaller so might have some interesting anecdotes. I had found her photo on the bank’s website so I would have some notion of what she looked like. Scanning the bar, I saw someone who might be her hunched over a thick book. A mostly full glass of beer, fogged with condensation and showing little river-like trails where beads of water had gathered and gained enough mass to slide down the surface, was abandoned on the counter in front of her. The stool next to hers was empty.
“Clelia?” I asked.
She looked up, squinting through reading glasses. “Yes. Justin?” She pushed the glasses up, resting them on top of her head. Her hair was cut very short in a butch, military style which emphasized her round face and broad shoulders. She wore a clearly bespoke three piece suit in a gray barleycorn tweed. Her shoes were deer hide wingtips. I nodded and took the seat next to her.
“Sorry to interrupt your reading.”
“Just passing time. I got here early. I had a meeting with a client nearby.” I must have had some kind of look on my face because she made a quick, dismissive gesture, glancing around the bar. “Sorry, I don’t usually come to places like this but it was nearby and you’re a tourist so I thought you might like it.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Nice to see the city from this vantage. Although I won’t have much time for tourism while I’m here.” The bartender approached and I ordered a beer too then turned back to Clelia. “Thanks for giving me some of your time. I’m doing a job for a friend of Valerie’s and she offered to get me in touch with people who might be able to provide assistance. She has a wide net of acquaintances.”
“Indeed she does. I was surprised to hear from her. It’s been several years. Sounds like she’s doing well with her new gallery in LA. But I’m interested in your job. What is it you do? How can I help?”
I thought about how to explain it for a moment. “I guess you could say I’m a sort of private investigator. I help people find things that are missing when there’s not much hope of finding them through regular, official channels.”
“Fascinating. A Philip Marlowe type?”
“I guess so, yes. Without the misogyny.”
“Yes, the women were not treated kindly in Chandler’s books were they? A brilliant writer though. Well, speaking of misogynists, I gather you’re interested in Greenbriar and Mr. Jutting?” She said Jutting’s name with an obvious distaste.
“Yes. Jutting. He has some role in this mystery I’m unraveling so anything you can tell me about him would be helpful. Specifically the kind of thing I won’t find out by reading newspapers, magazines, or Wikipedia.”
Clelia nodded, wrinkling her eyes. “First off, he’s a recluse but you probably already know that.”
“Yes, that’s obvious from the press coverage.”
“Well, he wasn’t always that bad. When I worked at Greenbriar he still showed his face sometimes at meetings. He’s a smart guy. He has a way of boiling things down to their essence really quickly. It’s impossible to bullshit him. He doesn’t like women, especially women of my sort. If you are willing to play the traditional gender role, he’s more likely to at least leave you alone. All his top people are men. He’s never promoted a woman to senior leadership to my knowledge.”
“I noticed that when I looked at the Greenbriar website.”
“Yes. It’s why I left the company in the end. Anyway, gossip I’ve heard from friends who still work there says he’s gone a little funny. He was always weird but he’s become obsessed with the occult now, magic and alchemy and Gnosticism and all that. His reclusiveness and his interest in the occult seem to have grown together and reinforced each other. Like a feedback loop. He doesn’t trust anyone. He does this thing with his eyes like he’s trying to bore right through you. It freaks people out. He has meetings with strange people. He’s been neglecting the business—letting his lieutenants run the show. He almost never goes to the offices anymore. He works from home almost exclusively and takes all of his meetings there.”
“Interesting. People interested in the occult seems to be a theme in my life lately. Do you know about the Enigma Variations?”
“Elgar? I’ve heard of them but I don’t know how it relates?”
“There’s supposedly a secret message encrypted in the score. Elgar was into cryptography. Jutting offered a reward to anyone who can decode it.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know about that but it sounds like it fits in with the other things I’ve heard. He has always been interested in cryptography. You know he was a mason right?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, he was a member of the freemasons. Maybe high up in the hierarchy. But he had a rather public falling out with them. There were a lot of conspiracy theories about the masons going around. Some well-known books about their history, the Rosicrucians, and all that. They decided to open up and be more transparent. PR campaign in a way. Jutting
