The Wharton Plot, page 21
“Have you read my work?” he asked.
Did he mean the notes or the diaries? Was it safe to admit she had read the diaries?
Always, she thought, begin on a sincere note of admiration. “Riveting. An entirely fresh perspective.”
“You see how much better it is. It has some wit, some style, I think.”
She nodded.
“My writing doesn’t just … harangue you like a backwoods preacher.”
Harangue. She had used just that word when speaking of David Graham Phillips. Horrible to think she had tastes in common with this ill young man. But she also knew it might save her, his belief that they were allies. She must keep him thinking that. At least until help arrived. Surreptitiously, she took note of the people around them. There a man hurrying, there a lady walking her dog.
Of Morton Fullerton, she saw no sign.
To Goldsborough, she said, “I don’t think I realized how much you disliked him.”
“I didn’t dislike him.” He frowned, rebuking her poor choice of words. “He persecuted me.”
Persecuted. In the diaries, he had written of being followed by Phillips, his impertinent stare. She was sure it had been the other way round. She thought of what HJ had said: As if the murderer were the victim’s victim.
“Tell me how?”
He stared at her, astonished that she did not understand. “He was a terrible writer.”
It was almost funny, but she sensed the threat. His trust was a wobbly thing, liable to tip over at any moment. The gun. Did he have it with him? Her eyes darted over his coat. As she searched, she distracted him by saying, “But my dear Mr. Goldsborough, there are so many terrible writers. Some of them, regrettably”—deliberately, she used a word he liked—“sell well. The best thing to do is ignore them.”
“Ignore him? Do you think he would ever accept that? With that suit and the gaudy bloom in his lapel. His posturing and pronouncements…”
“Yes, I hated that suit as well. And I grant you, he was a man who insisted on being noticed. But the one recourse left to us as writers is to focus on our own work.”
Hoping to persuade him to confess to the police, she said, as gently as possible, “If we tell the stories that reflect our deepest selves…”
Voice rising, he said, “He made that impossible, Mrs. Wharton. He stole my story.”
Confused, she said, “You accuse him of plagiarism?”
“I accuse him of literary vampirism. He stole my life. That arrogant vulgarian stole my self and made a cheap ugly comedy out of it. And not just me, but my family.”
“He wrote about you in Susan Lenox?”
“No! The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig. That is why I brought you his books, so you would see. I left it right there on the top of the pile.”
Agitated, she tried to remember. Which one had that been? Oh, yes, the novel set in Washington with the ambitious girl Margaret and the sensitive eccentric hero. Goldsborough had complained about it in his diary.
Wanting to calm him—and reassure him she was on his side—she said, “But Mr. Goldsborough, how could Phillips, a vulgarian as you say, from … Indiana, was it? I can barely remember. How could a tawdry little muckraker who wore white in winter and a chrysanthemum in his lapel know anything of your family? Your people are in Washington, aren’t they?”
“Yes.” He drew himself up. “Perhaps we are not members of the Four Hundred. But my father is a prominent physician, my mother widely admired. A Goldsborough was a delegate to the Continental Congress, another a senator who distinguished himself in the War of 1812.”
She thought, Ah, yes, the pedigree. How we cling to it.
“And yet Phillips turned us into a farce for people to jeer at. A real writer, a genuine artist, would never use people like that. That is why I call him a vampire.”
She nodded deeply as if she now understood. “I admire your choice of words, Mr. Goldsborough. Vampire—very evocative. A creature that feeds on others, taking life that is not theirs.”
“Yes.”
“I myself have known such a creature. Interestingly he didn’t look like a monster. In fact, he was quite charming. Perhaps that is why they fascinate us. Unlike other monsters, vampires draw one in by promising a new sort of life. The destruction of the old one.”
As she spoke, she heard an echo of something Phillips had said. Before it could come clear, Goldsborough said coldly, “The person attacked by Mr. Phillips had no wish to be outraged and degraded.”
The diaries had mentioned two “shes.” Not wanting to provoke him with another error, she said in a low voice, “Who is that, Mr. Goldsborough?”
“My sister,” he said. “A gracious, lovely woman, and he held her up to the world as you would a joint of meat in a shop window. He took his sister and made her a thing of his own imagination when she is so much more…”
He had gone from my to his. She thought to correct him but sensed that his faculties were breaking down. He was having difficulty keeping the sisters straight: his own and Carolyn Frevert. Nor could he quite disentangle his own identity from David Graham Phillips, so desperately did he covet that man’s success and reputation.
She glanced about the park. Still no sign of Morton Fullerton.
“Who are you looking for?”
“… No one. I thought I saw a friend. But I was mistaken.”
“You know what it is like to be written about by people who sneer,” he said suddenly. “To have people whisper falsehoods about you. That is why I warned you about making yourself conspicuous. If you put yourself out in the world, people might make anything of you.”
A woman who leaves her home walks the streets. She is neither pure nor protected.
“How did you know I was … leaving my home, Mr. Goldsborough?”
“I read it in Town Topics.”
She nodded: Of course.
It had begun to snow. As the white flakes flew between them, gathering on his coat and hat, making him look young and, yes, rather pure, she wondered if there had ever been a point where he might have been saved.
He said, “There must be consequences, Mrs. Wharton. Punishment for people who put evil into the world with their stories.”
His echo of the Comstockians put steel into her spine. “We cannot be afraid of books, Mr. Goldsborough.”
“We cannot accept lies, Mrs. Wharton. That man’s books are not just books; they are weapons. Propaganda. He wrote about us with loathing and contempt, and people heralded it as the truth. It is a violation.”
He peered at her, suddenly plaintive. “Do you see now, why I had to do what I did?”
Depew Jr.’s words came to her: People don’t really care about books.
Oh, but they do, Mr. Depew. Once in print, words and ideas exist. They are discussed, repeated, debated—even by people who have never read the original work. That is why some people are so terrified of them.
She heard him say in a small voice, “They laugh at me, Mrs. Wharton.”
“I do not laugh, Mr. Goldsborough.”
“No, but she did. She laughed at me.”
He nodded toward Irving Place, the path to the Phillips home. She remembered the diary entry, how he had seen Phillips and Carolyn Frevert laugh over his note.
“My sister…”
His sister, she thought.
“He showed her my letter and … they laughed. As if my words were nothing and I was a trifle.”
He gathered himself, standing straighter, and she braced.
“That’s when I realized how little they understood. He refused to see how great was his offense. No matter how many times I warned him. That’s how I knew there was only one way to make him understand.”
“And do you think he understood?” Edith asked. “Is that what you believe happened?”
“He understood that he didn’t have the power he thought he did.” Now there was a smirk. “He understood that well enough, I saw it in his eyes.”
And that was enough for you, she thought. That grisly few seconds of power that was not even yours, but the gun’s. You rage that David Graham Phillips created a false version of you in the world. But you made him a fantasy nemesis, holding him responsible for your own failure. Then you stole his life with six bullets.
Something inside the park had caught his attention. She looked through the gates and saw a young woman happily wrapped in her coat, sketching. The artist seemed oblivious to the cold, rapt as she gazed up at a tree, then back down at her handiwork. The one thing on which she and Mr. Phillips had ever agreed, thought Edith. The consolations of creation.
Goldsborough was also looking at the young woman with the sketch pad, his eyes narrowed, as if she were a puzzle he could not solve. Edith thought sadly how small he was, for all his pretension to greatness. Murder was such a final act, one fantasized that the person who committed it had some purpose or vision. Goldsborough imagined he did. But really he was just a bundle of grievance, insisting that he be heard when he had nothing to say beyond Look at me! He was nothing so majestic as a serpent. Rather, he put her in mind of a bad apricot she had once bitten into. The sudden slimy give of overripe flesh under the teeth, the bitter burst of rot, the awareness of tiny worms squirming on the tongue.
He said, “I want you to speak to Jewett about my work. He didn’t like it before, but if you speak for it…”
Of course, she thought. He submitted his own novel, only to be rejected, while his enemy was celebrated. Who fears and detests a writer more than another writer, Henry?
“What would you like me to say?”
“That it is good, that they should publish it.” As if it were obvious. “We must answer that posturing jackass. We must put the truth before the public!”
Heart wild in her chest, she was at a loss for an answer. Ah, yes, she thought hysterically, the truth!
She had tested his trust by not answering right away. Leaning to whisper, he said, “You’re not going to speak for his book, are you? That would be a terrible betrayal.”
His hand went to his chest. She understood that was where the gun rested.
“No. No, I’m not. But enough about Mr. Phillips—I’m tired of talking about the tiresome man. No, what we must think about is your novel, Mr. Goldsborough. I should like to think about how we get them to see your value.”
Your value reassured him. The hand lowered.
She said, “I very much enjoy being helpful to writers. But as you know all too well, publishing has become a crass, commercial concern.”
An idea came to her.
“However, your notoriety might be an asset. A book written by a man with your keen insight and capacity for decisive action. Someone who dared to do something…”
“You mean I should tell them what I did.”
“Yes. The full story of how Mr. Phillips robbed you and how you made him pay for it. It is an important story, one people should hear. And it will increase interest in your work.”
“The work is interesting for its own sake. My words are beautiful…”
“Quality of writing is no longer the sole criteria, I’m afraid. Look at Mr. Phillips’s final work. It is tremendously long and twice as dull. And yet they are rushing to publish it. Why? Because you, Mr. Goldsborough, put him on the front page of every newspaper. But you could share in that fame…”
He gazed at her, uncertain. He wanted to believe her. For a moment, she fancied she had persuaded him to turn himself in to the police.
“Yes,” he said. “Death does help move a book along, doesn’t it?”
Clumsily, he thrust his hand under the lapel of his coat. When he drew out the gun, she had only a moment, but long enough to understand the weapon had appeared. Before she could scream or raise her arms or even remember the possibility of movement, he raised the gun to his own temple. A colossal shocking crack she thought would stop her heart. Then he was no longer standing before her. And the blood was everywhere, staining the snow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
What she mustn’t do, thought Edith, was laugh. The policemen—there were two: one very young and very pale who had been sick at the sight of Mr. Goldsborough’s ruined head, and an older man with a very impressive gray mustache. She kept thinking to compliment it, and then deciding, no, he would think that strange under the circumstances, but it really was tremendous.
The policemen—she refocused herself—were concerned. Even though she had assured them several times that she was fine. She had thought Mr. Goldsborough was going to shoot her, but he hadn’t. Well, they could see that, couldn’t they? But she was fine. Entirely unharmed.
She raised her arms to show them. Felt dizzy. The younger officer rushed in to prop her up; the older one steadied her by taking hold of her shoulder. Which she found rude and overfamiliar, but she supposed they meant well. In fact, the officer had probably stopped her from falling off the bench into the snow.
Someone had opened the gate. She didn’t know who and she wasn’t sure when it had happened. All she could remember was someone shouting that the lady needed to sit down, and a few minutes later, she found herself sitting on a wretched little bench in Gramercy Park. The younger officer had cleared the snow with his sleeve. Which was still wet, poor man. She was about to tell him he ought to change out of that coat—but perhaps they only had one, the New York City police wouldn’t be in the habit of handing out multiple uniforms, but she did worry he would catch cold …
The older officer had asked her something. Embarrassed, she asked him to repeat it.
“You said his name was Goldsborough.”
“Yes. Fitzhugh … I’m sorry, there was a middle name, but I don’t remember it. He lived nearby, I think. Just over there.”
She thought of pointing. But the prospect of raising her arm did not appeal.
“He lived opposite, you see. That’s how he knew when he came and went. And how he knew where to send the notes.” Suddenly, she worried. “I mentioned the notes, didn’t I?”
Yes, they assured her. She had.
“He lives across the street, I’m fairly sure. Oh!”
She had almost forgotten.
“In his desk drawer, there is a diary. His desk at the office, not in his home. But if you read that, you’ll see.”
The two men exchanged looks. She felt annoyed. Were they not listening?
“See what, ma’am?” asked the older officer.
No—clearly, they were not listening. What on earth was wrong with the New York police? Teddy Roosevelt had mandated intelligence and competency standards decades ago; obviously, those had lapsed. She might have been talking to two cabbages.
“The diary,” she repeated. “If you read it, you’ll understand.”
The younger man winced, as if struggling to hear. “Why he shot himself?”
“No!” Now she was really irritated. “Why he killed David Graham Phillips.”
The younger man’s eyes went wide. The older one got out some sort of little notebook.
“You say this is the man who killed David Graham Phillips?”
“Yes! Just over there.”
She pointed to the Princeton Club. Which had once been Stanford White’s old house. Which would probably be something else one day soon, knocked over, rebuilt, something bigger and uglier taking its place. Because this was New York, and everything would fall eventually.
Allowing the word fall into her mind had been a mistake. Too late, she gazed up the trees to center herself. Green, nature, freshness always did that. But all she saw were bare dark winter branches. They looked like bones, starved, old fingers clawing at the sky, wanting the sun, its warmth and brightness. But the sun wasn’t there. Just gray, just slush, old snow, trod on by so many feet and no longer new. Even in Gramercy Park, the gate left open, she and the policemen, they’d left all these tracks where once it had been rather pretty. That girl who had been sketching, someone should tend to her.
She thought of the blood. And then did not wish to think anymore.
* * *
They all came; they all fussed. Minnie begged her to come and stay. Edith refused. “You have one invalid, you don’t need another.” Henry was unable to come, although he sent his ardent wishes for her recovery. Walter came, more than once, mostly to demand what she had been thinking. How could she put herself at risk like that? Did she realize how foolish she had been? What might have happened? Did she understand, how he would have felt if…?
Taking his hand, she pressed it and said yes, she understood.
The accepted story was that a deranged young man had taken his life in front of her, entirely by chance, and she was suffering from shock. Teddy was told only that she had become dizzy near Gramercy Park and needed rest. It had happened enough in the past that he didn’t question it. In fact, she thought he rather enjoyed bossing the hotel staff on her behalf, instructing visitors that they weren’t to stay too long, and sending White on errands to “fetch that mushroom soup you like, the one they do at the Waldorf” or buy new socks at Lord & Taylor’s, “get something proper on your feet.” Choumai was also pleased, allowed to be on the bed as much as he liked, curled protectively at her hip, gimlet eyes fixed on guests who might drop crumbs.
So much care and attention was wearying; one could only say “I’m fine” so many times. Surely that was why her head felt foggy. One afternoon she was dozing when she became aware of a gentle knock. Her eyes opened, and she saw Morton Fullerton at the door. He leaned halfway in—or out—of the room.
He smiled at her confusion. “Henry told me.”
Yes, that made sense. What she didn’t know was whether or not to be angry. Not, she supposed. She was too tired to be angry.
When she didn’t order him out, he stepped into the room, closing the door. He took the liberty of sitting on the edge of her bed. Wary, Choumai resettled himself.
“Well,” he said, taking her hand and examining it as if what had happened might show itself in her palm. “You’ve been wandering. What did you find?”
He looked up, gaze warm and intent. She remembered his mouth.
