Love Dies Twice, page 17
“Why are you so interested in Vonn?” Vida had assumed a calmer tone as well, but she didn’t answer my question. “I didn’t think you knew her.”
“Well, I didn’t, really. But for various reasons that I don’t need to go into, I have gotten interested. And one thing I’m interested in is why you’re protecting Gayle.”
Vida drove without saying anything for a few minutes, then seemed to make a decision. Without turning her head from the road, she said, “I knew Vonn in a different way. Before Gayle met her. I knew her as a cruel person, who liked to be smarter than other people, and who used her tiny quotient of power to insult and hurt. I was not aware until Gayle and I got together that she had been with Vonn for a short while as a lover, though it was a long time ago. She said that Vonn had also hurt her feelings when they broke up, but that Vonn had later apologized. She said she’d forgiven Vonn. But then, Vonn died, and I saw Gayle was very shocked and disturbed. I made her tell me why, and she said they had become friends again in the last two years, after Vonn got sick. She tried to tell me Vonn had become a different person and didn’t want to be Gayle’s lover, just her friend. Since Gayle knew I didn’t like Vonn, during the last year she had only had coffee with Vonn a few times and had not told me. But she couldn’t hide her feelings about Vonn’s death. When the lady who was Vonn’s neighbor called her, Gayle felt it was her duty to help out. I was angry.”
We were passing the Tufnell Park station now and heading south through Hilldrop Estate; the traffic was light on this cloudy Sunday afternoon. What Vida was saying was plausible. But it still didn’t answer the question of why, if the two of them had broken up, Vida knew that Gayle and I were supposed to have met today, nor the question of why Vida had come instead. Was she here to threaten me to stop calling Gayle and trying to talk with her? Again, I found myself staring at Vida’s fingers on the steering wheel.
I said, “I understand why you didn’t like Vonn. She was abrasive and mean. I’ll never forget a rejection letter I got from her one time. I’d contributed a short essay for an anthology that Brize was doing, about lesbian biography. I wanted to write something about the American actor, Charlotte Cushman, and her many lovers,” I added (making it up from an article I’d read recently in one of the many magazines Nicky subscribed to). “Charlotte lived in Rome in the nineteenth century, in a sort of lesbian artists colony. There was so much about it—passion, jealousy, triangles, break-ups—that echoed life in London in our time, that I felt sure the Brize collective would say yes. But instead I got a very stiff letter back, claiming that I couldn’t write worth beans.”
If I was expecting Vida to say, “Oh, they rejected me too, those putas!” I was disappointed. Instead she asked what street I lived on in Islington, and when I told her, she adjusted her route and turned left off York Way. We passed through the neighborhoods around Caledonian Road, and I thought of how, earlier in the day, I’d imagined I’d take a swim with Gayle, ask her about the sublet and key, and find out what she knew about the laptop, and then head to the Caledonian flat block to confirm that Kristi had taken Vonn’s bike and was willing to sell it.
Not much chance of that now.
“Gayle and I are not living together now,” Vida said, after a long pause. “I know she was staying with you and Nicky, and then she went to friends in Clapham. But now she has gone to Torquay, to visit with her sister for a while. It was a quick decision. She took the train this morning. We spoke on the phone before she left. I’ll drive down there in a week or two and then we’ll see. She asked me to call you and explain, but I decided to come to the Ladies’ Pond instead. I admit, I wanted to meet you in person. Then I saw you struggling in the water. Maybe I wanted to see you because people are always saying to me, Oh you must know Cassandra Reilly. Because of the Spanish translation.”
“Yes, people always say the same to me about you.”
“It seems strange that we don’t know each other.”
Personally, I didn’t think it was that strange, considering how she’d acted the first and only time we’d met. I wondered if she was going to apologize, belatedly, for lumping me with all the bad norteamericanos. But no, Vida had her pride. That was probably the reason she didn’t want to admit that Vonn had rejected not just her essay about the Lieutenant Nun, but also her book of poems.
Our last five minutes in the car were mainly quiet. She asked me what I was translating these days, and I said I’d just finished a new mystery by Rosa Cardenes, and that I was hoping to find a publisher for another thriller set in the bullfighting world of Seville. Vida said that she didn’t care for crime novels. They were too unrealistic. The detective always solved the crime, and you were supposed to believe the most ridiculous things about long-lost cousins and mysterious poisonings. “I thought you translated literature,” she added, reprovingly.
By the time she dropped me off in front of Nicky’s building, it was clear that we didn’t have a lot in common. Aside from the fact that Vida had either tried to drown me or to save me.
In retrospect I now thought that probably my bare foot had caught on a branch, and I’d panicked. Really, why would Vida want me dead and even if she did, why would she try to push me below the surface of the Pond with the lifeguard nearby?
Still, I didn’t trust her, and while I offered a grudging thanks for the ride as I opened the car door to leave, I didn’t suggest that we now were at the beginning of a beautiful new friendship.
“Get into the hot shower immediately,” she advised. “You look like a soaked rat. And by the way,” she added as I got out of the car. “You swear very convincingly in Spanish. I haven’t heard some of those words in years.”
* * *
19.
I spent Sunday evening quietly, glad that Nicky was gone for a long weekend in Scotland, visiting some of her relatives. I didn’t want to have to explain my damp appearance as I came in the door, or how I ended up being publicly rescued by Vida and the lifeguard, ignominiously hauled into a rowboat, and then bundled into the bathhouse. The more I thought about it, the more appalling the whole incident seemed. I really hoped that no bystanders or byswimmers had recognized me or had taken videos of me with my goose-bumpy blue skin that would appear on someone’s Facebook page.
After some chicken soup heated up from a tin, I lay on the sofa under a blanket and started the fourth mystery Stella had published, The Funeral Specialist. The premise was that the beguines were paid by the wealthier citizens of Flemish cities and towns to sit with the dying and to help guide them into death, and then to prepare their bodies for the grave. Sometimes they worked singly and sometimes in companionship with other women of the house in which the death took place. Other times, two or more beguines assisted as nurses and so-called funeral specialists.
I laid it aside after the first few chapters, too tired from the day’s activities to go on, and drifted off to sleep on the sofa under my soft merino blanket. But my dreams weren’t at all cozy. Long fingers like twigs grasped at my ankles and pulled me down into the world of water ghosts. Then I was in an open coffin, still damp from my recent drowning, and a kerosene lamp burned next to me on a small table. Someone was sitting in a chair, reading a book. It was a wake. I wasn’t dead, though they thought I was. I tried to peer over for a better glimpse of who the funeral specialist was. But she was wearing a wimple with wings, and I couldn’t see her face. Only her long fingers, slowing turning the pages.
*
When I woke up in the morning in my own bed, I savored the fact that I was alive. I took another hot shower, drank some coffee, and sat down at my desk in a business-like, non-dallying way to finish a short translation job that I could invoice and be paid for like a proper adult.
I resolved to give up on this ridiculous investigation, at least on the part of it that involved Gayle. Yes, she’d probably been fonder of Vonn than she’d let on. The poor wee thing hadn’t wanted her overbearing girlfriend Vida to know that she still saw Vonn from time to time. Okay, maybe Gayle had kept a key. Was that a crime? Nothing I’d seen when we’d been at the flat doing the organizing should lead me to believe anything, but that Gayle cared about Vonn, wanted to make sure her archives were saved and her life remembered. She probably also picked up a bit of cash from the landlord for cleaning out the flat.
But if Gayle were hiding something more sinister, why would she have asked me and Amina to come over and help? I was definitely not going to pursue Gayle down to Torquay. Nor did I hope to see Vida ever again.
Then, around ten o’clock, I got a phone call that made me think again about my wee friend.
It was from the Guardian journalist, Alice, who said that she wasn’t sure what I’d been talking about in the message I’d left on her office voicemail. She didn’t know anything about Vonn Henley’s death, didn’t know anyone at the coroner’s office, and had never been to the Ladies’ Pond. She was not a swimmer. She sounded more bemused than annoyed, and I apologized. “My friend must have remembered the name wrongly. So sorry.”
But when I hung up, I thought that, once again, Gayle had fibbed. She had definitely said, on two occasions, that a Guardian journalist was the source of some of the things known about Vonn’s death. She had mentioned an Alice or an Alex.
Like the lie about only running into Vonn at the Ladies’ Pond two years ago, it may have been a harmless mistake.
But if it wasn’t? If Gayle had deliberately been trying to sow some confusion? Or bolster the so-called claim that there were traces of drugs in Vonn’s system but no signs of foul play.
The other thing that disturbed my concentration Monday morning was an email from Avery. It was good news. SNP had expressed a strong interest in the translation of Verónica. They wanted to meet me and suggested lunch this coming Friday. But they also wanted to see more of the translation if possible. The second twenty pages I’d done still wasn’t quite enough for them. Could I do one more chapter, with more action in the bullring, so they could see how the writer dealt with the handling of the bulls?
I know this is loads more work, Cassandra, but I think we have a chance here. SNP are willing to overlook some animal cruelty if it’s not “gratuitous.” Strange that they publish so many grisly novels where women are murdered and dismembered by serial killers, and then they’re bothered about a bull getting stabbed “gratuitously.” But here we are. Do you think you could do the chapter this week? Again, I’d pay you for this. Let me know. I’m a bit swamped because the temp left Friday and a new one came this morning and is hopeless.
I emailed back, “Yes. I’ll try to do it today. And Friday is fine for lunch.” Naturally, I was pleased, but I was less happy to hear that the temp I’d spoken with, Julia, seemed to have departed without finding any documents or correspondence between Avery and Vonn. And now Avery had hired another temp. Why wasn’t she replacing her past assistant Samantha properly?
Thinking about Sam, I wondered where exactly she’d moved. South Yorkshire, Avery had said. Rather abruptly, Avery had also said. Was it worth tracking Sam down in the hopes she’d know something about Vonn?
For the moment, I pushed the thought out of my mind. If I were wrong and Sam knew nothing or there was nothing to know, I would expose myself needlessly. For Sam might have remained in touch with Avery and might tell her I’d called.
I finished my short academic translation and sent it off with an invoice, then turned to Verónica to find a suitable chapter or two with some actual bullfighting. Compared to the first two mysteries by Lola Fuentes, Verónica was a bit shy on bull gore. Aside from all the financial shenanigans, Lola was spending more time on Rita’s love life. In this book, the hunk was Pedro, a waiter at an upscale restaurant who had overheard a whispered conversation among two men at lunch, concerning a woman named Gloria and the lesson she would receive. For some reason Pedro, who had himself been involved in bullfighting, was suspicious. That led him to save the cloth napkins used by the two men during their meal. When a woman named Gloria, the wife of a famous bullfighter, was killed, Pedro wanted to go to the police, but was afraid of the consequences.
So he came to Rita instead, with the two soiled cloth napkins, and asked for her help. The cloth napkins would eventually act as evidence when the same DNA as was on the napkins was found on a pillow used to murder Gloria, to send her husband a message that he wouldn’t get out of paying his debts.
I finally found a scene in the bullring in a late chapter, where Gloria’s husband the matador was prancing around in the ring, executing some of his most famous moves, including a sweeping verónica, where he gracefully irritated the bull with his cape. Rita, who was attending the corrida in the shady part of the audience, had a revelation of sorts. The veil of Veronica! An imprint of Jesus’s features on the cloth made when St. Veronica wiped his face of sweat on the road to Golgotha. Rita made the connection to the cloth napkins in the restaurant and the pillowcase in the bedroom.
I became so absorbed that I worked through lunch, and then took a walk. When I returned, I found, among all the advertising dreck and bills in the postbox, a thin envelope from Avery’s office, not from her, but from the temp, Julia, who’d posted it on her last day, last Friday. Inside was a brief typed note explaining that she’d looked through all the correspondence files in the last year and hadn’t found any emails with Yvonne Henley, though her name did appear in a logbook of queries and manuscripts received.
Enclosed were several sheets of paper. One of them was a page copied from the agency’s logbook. As Avery had indicated, Vonn had contacted her early this year, in January, with a query letter and a partial manuscript of “Gadfly: My Years in Women’s Publishing.” Under the rubric in the table “Action Taken,” there was only a date, Feb 14, and the word “no.” Unlike some of the entries, there was nothing written in the “Comments.”
February 14 was a few days after Fiona Craig’s lecture. So far, that squared with what I knew. Avery let down Vonn gently that evening, and soon followed up with the rejection. But it seemed odd that Julia had found no correspondence. I would have thought Avery would keep Vonn’s cover letter as evidence if she were so concerned that Vonn was in some way a threat to Fiona’s well-being.
I looked at the other enclosure, copies of two typed sheets stapled together, a contract. Julia had written in her note: “I came across this contract with Vonn from the nineties when I was refiling some material in the Stella Terwicker folders.”
The contract was the first real proof I had that Vonn and Avery had known each other, professionally at least, for many years. The contract was dated March 23, 1995, and it spelled out an agreement between the Avery Armstrong Agency and Yvonne Henley for editorial services related to an untitled Work-in-Progress, a mystery by Stella Terwicker.
I imagined from the date that it was Stella’s fourth mystery, The Funeral Specialist, which she’d been working on before she went off to Portugal that winter of 1994-5 and returned so ill that she couldn’t get out of bed, much less write. The way Fiona had told it in the biography was that the book’s publication had been postponed from the spring to the autumn of 1996. With the help of rest and medical care, Stella had gradually recovered her strength and begun writing again. While Fiona had suggested that she and Stan played a role in caretaking Stella that year, and that Fiona herself had continued to do research for Stella on medieval women and the beguinages, there had never been a suggestion anyone else was involved.
The agreement with Vonn didn’t spell out what Vonn was doing on the manuscript or how many words Stella had completed before her health became compromised. Vonn’s task was described mainly to deliver a fully edited manuscript by January 1, 1996, acceptable for publication. She wasn’t considered to be a creator or co-creator, that is, someone who shared in the copyright and thus the royalties. Her work was “for hire” and the fee was spelled out. Interestingly the fee wasn’t paid by the publisher, but by the Avery Armstrong Agency, and it was rather high. Higher than I would have thought, even in 1995, for a simple freelance editing job. The other interesting aspect of the contract was the sentence “Editor agrees to consult with a historian on details of the Work and to allow the historian to vet the manuscript and to make appropriate changes before the Work is submitted to the publisher.”
This historian must certainly be Fiona.
So now I had some written evidence that not only had Vonn and Avery known each other professionally many years ago, but that Vonn may very well have worked with Fiona, who vetted her editorial work on the mystery.
If both Fiona and Vonn had collaborated with Stella on all the mysteries, from The Funeral Specialist onward, why hadn’t Avery mentioned that? It wasn’t a crime for an author to have assistance on her books. Even as a translator, I had done all sorts of small things to make a book better. Writing sometimes involved major interventions from editors and agents, and publishing was generally a team effort. But when it came to Stella’s books, according to the biography it was only Fiona who played a role.
I flipped through my copy of the galley proof of Stella Terwicker: A Medieval Life. To my surprise, in this early, uncorrected proof Lucy was mentioned several times, and Vonn once, in connection with Stella’s first two mysteries with Aphra. “Stella was introduced to Lucy Aspin at Aphra Press by an acquaintance, Yvonne Henley.” I was positive that sentence hadn’t appeared in the published print version. I would have noticed. Therefore Fiona had deliberately removed any mention of Vonn, even such an innocuous reference, during the proofing.
I thought back to Fiona’s lecture in early February. I’d not seen any overt sign of recognition between Vonn and Fiona, even though Fiona’s eyes flicked often to the door. But there definitely had been in Vonn and Avery’s body language, now that I thought about it, many indications that they knew each other well. It wasn’t the posture of two professionals, one of whom (Avery) was more powerful than the other. It was the tense posture of two people negotiating on equal terms.
