Стефани Баррон - The White Garden - A Novel of Virginia Woolf

“IT WOULD SEEM,” MARCUS SYMONDS-JONES REMARKED, “that Mr. Llewellyn is out of mobile range at the moment.”

“Why don’t you tell us about the guy?” Gray Westlake was sitting at his ease in the Bauhaus chair, one tailored leg crossed over the other. Why, then, did Marcus sense the coil of a venomous snake?

“Oh, Peter’s quite sound,” he murmured. “Or rather, he has been . Until lately. Excellent credentials. Knows his stuff. Magdalen man. Been working Rare Books for a decade at least. Twelve years, perhaps.”

“Does he usually go AWOL with clients?”

“Sorry?” Marcus glanced at the Cantwell woman, but Imogen seemed as bewildered by the term as he was.

“Absent without leave.”

“Right . Peter has never done a bunk like this in my knowledge of him. But to tell you the truth” — Marcus leaned over his desk with an air of confidentiality — “he hasn’t been the same since the wife left him. Very hot property, that — legs right up to her neck — ”

Imogen snorted.

“Trophy wife?” Gray suggested.

Marcus knew this phrase — trophy wives abounded in Sotheby’s world, spending their husbands’ wealth on furniture and jewelry and priceless works of art — but he shook his head emphatically. “Not at all. Margaux’s something of a sensation on the literary scene. Completely out of Peter’s class, of course. Highly regarded. She’s a Fellow at Magdalen.”

“Oxford or Cambridge?”

Point to you, Westlake , Marcus thought. Few Americans knew there were two colleges by the same name, one at each of the top universities. “Oxford. She and Llewellyn met there, as undergraduates.”

“But Jo called from Oxford yesterday,” Imogen objected. “She was there, with my notebook.”

“Maybe Llewellyn took her,” Gray added.

“You’re suggesting he consulted his ex-wife about this pseudo Woolf property?” Marcus managed to sound incredulous.

“Is that so unlikely?” Gray smiled disarmingly at the frumpy woman beside him. “I talk to my former wives. Usually about money. Does this guy dislike his so much that he’s cut her off?”

“Quite the reverse, I should have said,” Marcus conceded. “Positively pining. He’s done dick-all in the office, ever since the split — ”

“Mr. Jones,” Imogen broke in, “let us be clear with one another. I care dick-all for the details of Mr. Llewellyn’s private affairs. I care dick-all for Mr. Llewellyn. I simply want my notebook back. It went missing on your watch. I expect you to find it. If you haven’t located your bloody expert — and Jo Bellamy with him — by teatime today, I’m going to the police.”

She thrust herself upward from Marcus’s precious chair, as if determined to exit without another word, but Gray Westlake stopped her with a raised hand.

“Miss Cantwell. Going to the police will only get you fired from the National Trust.”

“I doubt it’ll come to that,” she retorted. “Consider the scandal. American Tourist Steals Priceless Manuscript from National Trust Property, Abetted by Auction House . I reckon Mr. Git-Jones here will go his length to keep that pile of dung from hitting the fan.”

“And who gave her the notebook in the first instance?” Marcus sputtered.

“There’s a simpler and better solution.” Gray was studying Marcus now, with a look he recognized — the look of a Bidder about to raise his paddle. “We calm down, go after Jo, and let Sotheby’s decide whether the notebook is genuine. If it’s crap, we hand it back with pleasure to Miss Cantwell. If it’s not, I pay market value for an undiscovered Woolf, donate the manuscript to Sissinghurst, and Miss Cantwell’s a hero. Nobody’s accused of theft, nobody loses her job, and Sissinghurst snags a great display for its summer tours. Agreed?”

“What’s in it for you?” Imogen demanded suspiciously.

Gray’s eyelids flickered. “Jo Bellamy can’t design my garden if you throw her into jail.”

“Yeah, well — the White Garden’s been designed for a good fifty years already,” she snapped. “All this talk! Where does it leave us? The notebook’s still bloody AWOL.”

“It leaves us with the ex-wife.” Gray looked expectantly at Marcus, who allowed himself an instant’s thought. Then he stabbed Cissy’s call button. Nobody in the office knew more about the private affairs of the Experts than Cissy; she would have Margaux Strand’s mobile memorized.

PETER HAD A PECULIAR SENSE OF HUMOR, JO MUSED AS SHE surveyed Hamish Caruthers, the Head of Wren Library, a half-hour later.

Trinity’s home for books was a massive block set over an open colonnade. To describe it thus was to demonstrate the failure of words: It was the most beautiful building Jo had ever seen.

Buff-colored stone, rectangular and classic; rank upon rank of soaring windows; and inside, a black-and-white checkerboard floor sweeping to vanishing point. At either side, sensibly perpendicular, were the stacks of books.

“Christopher Wren designed it,” Peter told her as they sauntered across the marble. “You’ll know him for — ”

“St. Paul’s.”

“Grinling Gibbons carved the limewood figures at the end of the stacks. Four hundred–odd years old, I expect.”

“And kids get to study here.” Jo craned her neck to stare at the ceiling, awed.

“They get to take it for granted, which is more of a luxury. Look.” He stopped by a glass case displaying rare books. “There’s Milne’s manuscript of Winnie-the-Pooh . And Newton’s first edition of Principia . And Byron, of course.”

A looming statue of the Romantic poet, complete with windswept hair and elaborately tied cravat, held down one end of the main floor. “It was intended for Westminster Abbey,” Peter said, “but was refused on account of Byron’s wretched morals. Trinity jumped at it. And there’s Hamish, God love him.”

Hamish Caruthers was almost as large as the statue. A massive individual in a heathered wool Fair Isle sweater, white dress shirt, and Trinity bow tie, his brown hair was the color of mud and fell in loose strings to his collar; his cheeks were full and red; and his shoulders — rounded by years of bending over the Reading Room tables — were like the sloping sides of a railway embankment. He wore a pince-nez. Jo had never seen a pince-nez, but the phrase formed itself in her mind as she stared at the fussy wire frame balanced precariously on Hamish’s fleshy nose. He glanced over the pince-nez with a forbidding expression as Peter murmured in her ear — presumably conversation was discouraged in the Wren — and Jo saw recognition dawn. Unbelievably, Hamish was staring at Peter Llewellyn with what could only be described as profound distaste.

“Hamish, mate,” Peter said easily as he swung across the marble floor. “How’re tricks? Moldering volumes moldering nicely? Trustees happy? Wife safely off wherever wives go, when they’re not wanted?”

The Head Librarian of Trinity College reached for his pince-nez, folded it deliberately, and tucked it in his cardigan pocket. “Peter.” His voice had the quality of unsulfured molasses. “What in bloody hell are you doing here?”

“I’ve brought a friend to see the college.” Peter was smiling, Jo noticed, at a joke he refused to share with anyone. He’d lost his quiet air of desperation — the melancholy that had shaped him from the moment they’d met in Sotheby’s café yesterday morning. She understood that his present glee was entirely at Hamish’s expense. Hamish also knew this, and suspected Peter’s companion was in on the joke.