HJ? Normally, she would never think him capable of cruelty. But he had not been himself of late. His brother’s death had been an enormous blow. And there had always been resentment on his part over the fact that her books sold better than his. He knew the details of the murder because she had kept him informed. In the darkness of depression, brooding in his room that he could not afford, would it have amused him to frighten her through words on the page, a thing so dear to both their hearts?

  No. HJ was a gentle man, in every sense. A kind man. Also, the (she flung the word at David Graham Phillips’s ghost) greatest American writer. He would be incapable of such clumsy prose. And … he was a good friend.

  Walter, she dismissed. Sending anonymous threats was too tawdry a pastime for her fastidious friend. And it would distract him from the vapid charms of Mrs. Goelet.

  Fearfully, she approached the possibility of Teddy. He had followed her; she must consider that he had written the notes as well. It was not unlike him to grovel one moment, lash out the next. And he was not a felicitous writer. But, she realized with great relief, the desk clerk would have recognized him.

  The Vanderbilts, she thought, would not bother sending notes; their preferred punishment was to withdraw communication, not increase it. Young Depew thought writing a waste of time. Deplorable, but in this case exonerating. The first note had come before Henry Frevert knew of her involvement; also he would have no way of knowing she was staying at the Belmont. Anna Walling, altogether too forthright and ferocious for such sneaky dealings. Her husband, on the other hand …

  But why threaten her if he hadn’t shot David Graham Phillips?

  She reminded herself that she had only his wife’s assurance on that point. But however absurd Anna Walling’s worldview might be, she had a stubborn integrity. Also William Walling was not a frustrated writer. In their poor attempts at epigrams, the notes begged for attention and applause. Walling might desire that from his wife—but not from Edith Wharton.

  Thoughts of writers turned to thoughts of publishers. Editors.

  Rutger Bleecker Jewett.

  He knew she had taken an interest in David Graham Phillips’s murder. He knew she was staying at the Belmont because she had told him so, saying it would be no trouble to read the book in-house. She had received the first note on the same day as their first meeting. She recalled her impulse to joke that he would never have murdered so successful an author.

  And she still believed that.

  But perhaps he had been careless about sharing her interest. Maybe, inadvertently, he had told the sender of the notes that Edith Wharton was eager to discover who had killed David Graham Phillips. Another writer, perhaps.

  She should, she decided, ask him directly.

  Almost unthinking, she left the suite and let the elevator lower her to the lobby. On her way, she stopped at the front desk to inform them that she was going to the Appleton offices. Should anyone inquire. If she did not return …

  Well—should anyone inquire.

  It was a very simple question, she told herself, one that Mr. Jewett should be more than happy to answer, given his stated concern as to her welfare. He had told her, hadn’t he, that she must stop reading Susan Lenox, that it was too dangerous …

  Those words sounded very different to her now.

  But why should he not want her to read Susan Lenox? It was his author’s book. It would create a sensation. That was precisely why they were rushing to publish now, after having delayed for so long. He had every reason to hope for its success. And what better way to improve its chances than to have the support of a celebrated author such as herself?

  She remembered his remark about Algernon Okrent: He is worldly enough to know that the surest way to make Susan Lenox a success is to kill its author. No writer would willingly give another such a boost of publicity.

  Also his remark about Crane’s notepaper. It is excellent paper. I use it myself.

  No, she thought as she went through the lobby doors, no. It was altogether ridiculous. She was a keen judge of people. Rutger Bleecker Jewett was a good man who cared about his authors. He had become emotional when speaking about David Graham Phillips. He had assured her that Susan Lenox would be published whole and unmucked with.

  But had he meant it?

  When had the decision been made that Susan Lenox was ready to be released to the world? She had always assumed the publicity surrounding the author’s death had made them eager to publish. But she remembered now, the pages had been typeset before David Graham Phillips had died. And according to his sister, the text was as he wished it to be.

  Mr. Jewett had promised her that he would resist any attempt to censor Susan Lenox. That he was ready to battle Anthony Comstock and his ilk. But he had also said Comstock’s cause attracted people who were unstable. Violent. Comstock’s own lieutenant had boasted that they had driven people to suicide with their threats and harassment.

  Had they threatened Rutger Bleecker Jewett? How would they do such a thing?

  The answer came almost immediately: money.

  Appleton had been in financial difficulties in the past. Another round of bankruptcy might well be catastrophic. It was not beyond imagining that the Puritanical Postman could organize a boycott of all of Appleton’s authors. A reasonable man might conclude that the fortunes of one writer were not worth the sacrifice of every other writer in the house. Not to mention its editors.

  Taken me ten years to write, and almost as long to get the cowards at Appleton to publish. The public will not soon forgive me for this one.

  Was that why Appleton had waited so long to publish? Because they were afraid of financial ruin? Still, it seemed braver spirits had prevailed.

  But perhaps Mr. Jewett was not as brave as he seemed.

  This she knew: David Graham Phillips would never have censored his own work, no matter what the consequences to himself or anyone else.

  In the elevator at the Appleton building, she strove to recall her first, congenial impression of Mr. Jewett. His warm smile and penguin form, his affability and grave concern for writers. No, she was wrong; she must be. The difficulties of the past week were muddling her. Rutger Bleecker Jewett was a man of letters. The brute violent act of pointing a pistol at another human being and firing a bullet into them was simply not in him. And judging from the overheard argument with Algernon Okrent, he was as eager as anyone at Appleton that Susan Lenox get into bookstores.

  But that was not to say he was incapable of passing on the information that she was reading Susan Lenox with an intent to support its author. She imagined him calling down the hall, Mrs. Wharton is staying at the Belmont. Some wag responding, Of course she is …

  Yes, she thought, leaving the elevator. That was entirely possible. Such a decent, trusting man would not see the threat even when it was right in front of him.

  “Mrs. Wharton.”

  The youth looked at her, puzzled. She had been so lost in thought, she had not presented herself properly as she came through the doors. Even now, she was not certain what she meant to say.

  Guessing as much, he said, “Can I assist you?”

  “No,” she said, thinking she did not want to be any bother. Then changed it to, “Yes, I’m so sorry, yes. Mr. Jewett, is he in?”

  “Regrettably, he’s away at the moment.”

  “Oh, dear. When will he be back?”

  “He didn’t say. So I couldn’t say. But if you wish to read Susan Lenox…”

  He reached for the drawer that held the key to the spare room.

  “No, no. I don’t think I do want that.”

  He sat back down, a smile on his face. “No.”

  She answered his smile, taking small relief in their shared loathing. Then noticed that his overcoat lay on the desk.

  “Were you about to go out?” He inclined his head to indicate as much. “Oh, then you must go. I’ll just … sit…”

  Sideways, she made her way to one of the chairs.

  “… and wait for Mr. Jewett. Hopefully, my mind will return before he does!”

  The youth stood, gathered up his coat. “I’m sure your mind is as fine as ever, Mrs. Wharton.”

  She smiled her gratitude, watching as he slid into his coat. It was a very nice coat, actually. Good strong wool, charcoal gray. One wouldn’t have thought an assistant could afford such a coat.

  “It’s cold out,” she warned him. “It may snow.”

  “I am prepared,” he assured her.

  To prove it, he wound a long striped scarf around his neck.

  “What a lovely pattern,” she said after a moment. “Chevron?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Are you off to lunch?”

  “I don’t take lunch,” he said. “At this time of day I like to have a walk around my favorite park.”

  “Lovely,” she enthused. She did not have to ask which park was his favorite.

  Turning in her seat to wave goodbye as he left, she saw that yes, he had left the scarf long and flowing down his back. Just as a young man of artistic sensibility would.

  Just as the man who had murdered David Graham Phillips had.

  * * *

  She sat until she was certain he had reached the ground floor and left the building. She had no doubt that he was going to Gramercy Park, a little more than a mile away. She had no doubt that it was his lunchtime habit. David Graham Phillips had been shot on a Monday, between one and two o’clock.

  Quietly, she went to the desk and opened the drawer where he kept the key. She was not surprised to see a stack of Crane’s paper and a tidy batch of envelopes.

  On instinct, she opened the lowest drawer. As a writer, she knew the impulse to tuck one’s work away before it was ready to be shown. And there it was, a battered notebook, a single word on the cardboard cover: “Life.” The handwriting was similar to the notes.

  Under “Life,” he had written his name: “Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough.”

  But this was crossed out. Underneath he had written “David Graham Phillips.”

  This was also crossed out and replaced by “Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough.” Then something illegible as if he had written one name over the other, again and again.

  Edith shuddered. She was familiar with the nervous condition, but this was a different sort of madness.

  Gingerly with one finger, she lifted the cover of the diary. Mr. Goldsborough’s obsession with David Graham Phillips dated back at least several months.

  July 11, 1910. Certain happenings recently lead me to think it advisable to jot down data. I believe David Graham Phillips is trying to fake a case against me, or to do me serious bodily harm, or both.

  This surprised her. Had the men known each other beyond this office? Had they quarreled?

  But the “harm” done to Mr. Goldsborough was made clear in the next entry.

  September 3, 1910. There is no doubt in my mind but that he has slandered me with his novel of a Washington family. The sensitive, “eccentric” hero is clearly me. The degrading caricature of its heroine, Margaret, a fashionable “noddle-head,” an insult to my own dear sister. He is an enemy to society. He is my enemy.

  Another entry showed that Mr. Phillips was not the only person to attract Goldsborough’s attention. Chilled, Edith read:

  October 5, 1910. Yesterday I was sitting at the window when I noticed a pretty looking woman seated on the second-story window of the arts society building. She smiled at me in a pointed manner, lifted her hand and waved it. I could not decide if this was an involuntary motion or encouragement for me to start flirting with her. I got rather the latter impression.

  Edith remembered the Frevert apartment had been on the second floor. The parlor had two windows. A later entry confirmed Goldsborough made the connection between the woman in the window and his “enemy.”

  January 5, 1911. Again, the woman appeared at the window and continued to take evident notice of me. I concluded it was Mrs. Frevert, D.G.P.’s sister …

  January 19, 1911. I saw them leave the house. They were laughing. In his hand was my latest letter. I concluded they were amusing themselves at my expense.

  After this, there were no more dated entries. The rest was notes for stories or aphorisms such as the ones he had sent her. An entire page was devoted to one observation, written in capital letters—DATA FOR VAMPIRE—as Mr. Goldsborough raved about writers who stole the flesh and blood of real people for their own use. Remembering that first note Mr. Jewett had shown her, “You are a vampire,” her stomach churned. Goldsborough had been sitting just outside as she talked with Mr. Jewett. He would have heard she was staying at the Belmont. Would have heard them discussing his … work.

  That very day, he had written to her for the first time. Most likely, he had dropped off the note on his way home from work.

  She smelled something. It was sweet, pleasantly herbaceous. Turning the page she saw a faded yellow flower, pressed flat, and a dark green leaf. Bay laurel, a keepsake or memento of some kind. Without thinking, she breathed it in, thought of sun, the sharp fresh air of spring.

  She closed the diary.

  She could, she told herself, return to the Belmont Hotel. She would write. Tend to Teddy. Walk Choumai. Play out the old comedy of care when Dr. Kinnicutt finally made his appearance. It was only a matter of a day or two. Then she would return to Europe. If she was feeling civic-minded, she might call the police. Or simply tell Mr. Jewett to look in the lower left drawer of the secretary’s desk.

  But she could not dismiss the feeling that she had been invited to something. The way Goldsborough looked at her when he announced his intention to walk around his favorite park. The way he had not named that park because he knew she understood which one he meant.

  He could have locked this drawer, she thought. But he didn’t. Like the notes, the diary was his work and he wished her to read it.

  Did he intend to harm her? That was chief in her mind. Was he asking her to the place where he had murdered David Graham Phillips to reveal something? Or did he want to murder another writer? She saw no evidence in his diary that he was obsessed with her in the way he had been with Phillips. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t appease his wounded vanity by killing her.

  But—the thought came stubbornly to her—they had agreed that Susan Lenox was bad. All he knew of her was that she shared his dislike of the murdered man.

  Was that enough to keep her safe?

  Quickly, she picked up the telephone. It could not be Walter, she told herself; he was simply too old. And it could not be poor Henry; he was simply too ill. Teddy she did not even consider, although it did occur to her that White might be summoned.

  But then she heard a hello. She asked if she might speak to Mr. Fullerton. Told he was not available, she asked the lady if she might tell Mr. Fullerton that she needed to see him immediately. Now. He should meet her at Gramercy Park.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  As she approached Gramercy Park, Edith asked herself: Why did they call it a park? Why not a garden? Really, it was too ugly to be a garden. But also too small for a park. She sometimes thought the gardens she designed were superior works of art to her novels, nature giving her so much more to work with than the ether of her thoughts. Here was seed and soil, infinite variety of color, shape, and height. She loved the rhythm of it, the glorious return year after year of dahlia and delphinium, cleome and hydrangea. Wandering slowly through the separate parts of her garden—she thought of them as rooms in a house—she was happily humbled by the knowledge that she could never write a line as pure as a lily. A garden required care and imagination. Respect for the fragile blooms that gave it life. One cultivated a garden. One stomped through a park. Gardens were private. Parks for the public.

  And yet because so few people walked its paths, it was easy to think of Gramercy Park as a garden, albeit an inadequate one. She remembered a summer afternoon she had been standing in her garden at The Mount when she heard an agitated thrum. At first she took it for a hummingbird until one of the gardeners had pointed to a heavy tan snake with black diamonds down its length of five feet, sunning itself on the stone wall. Edith, who had thought rattlesnakes lived only in deserts, had been mesmerized with terror. Yet rather giddy that such a creature existed in her garden.

  He stood at the northeast corner. As people hurried by him, cold, tired, wanting to be home, he was still, gazing down Irving Place, certain she would come.

  She took a last moment, then stepped into his line of sight. “Mr. Goldsborough.”

  “You finally learned my name.”

  “Yes.”

  “You should have known it before.”

  Foolishly she wondered if it might have made a difference if she had bothered to learn his name, rather than thinking of him as “the youth,” “the smirky youth,” “the infant.” But no, he had killed David Graham Phillips before they ever met.

  “It is a fine name,” he said. “Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough. Far more elegant and distinguished, don’t you think? Phillips—that’s a name for a fishmonger.”

  She could not find the breath to speak. Her heart was pounding fast and hard; to ease it, she analyzed the accent: genteel, soft. A touch of the South, a light, graceful overlay, the vowels only slightly prolonged. Not the Carolinas. Virginia perhaps. Oh, yes—an old Washington family. He had said in the diary. She could imagine it. A place so genteel, one did not dream of illness. Of rage. And certainly not violence. Even when it bloomed right in front of you.

  For the first time, she looked at him properly. He was not as young as she had thought. He was willowy, with flowing, light brown hair, and almost frail—that made him seem younger. She could see the quality of his care in his strong teeth and the sheen of his hair. And yet, away from the office, his brokenness was clear. She saw it in his wandering gaze, the way he stood, stoop-shouldered, head swaying as he gazed at the ground, the twitchy hand, fingers spasming open and closed. This was a cracked brain.

  She felt for the jagged pulse of violence in the space between them. For the moment, it was calm.

 

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