The Wharton Plot, page 9
She assured him it was not.
“The other thing?”
“It is the murder of a writer. The one who was shot near Stanford White’s old house.”
He let her in, keeping a distrustful eye on Choumai. As she outlined her thoughts on the shooting of David Graham Phillips, he sat, sunk into the gold-and-pink chair by the window, a rack of toast and a pot of tea on the table beside him.
Finishing her account up to the point of her encounter with Algernon Okrent, Edith sat back and waited expectantly.
Eyes closed, hands clasped over his belly, HJ murmured, “Why?”
Baffled by his lack of excitement, she repeated, “Why?”
“Why would Okrent shoot Phillips?”
“Jealousy, Henry! Envy, resentment, rage, fear. What on earth do you mean—why?”
HJ opened his eyes. “All writers are jealous, Edith. We are weak, fanciful, arrogant, and insecure. Envious, hateful, miserable beings. And yet…” He spread his arms wide as if to say: We are still here. We have not shot each other. Why this is so, I am not always certain, but the fact remains.
“Who fears and detests a writer more than another writer, Henry? Especially a writer who has succeeded where they have struggled?”
She was sensitive enough not to remind him of his trouncing by Oscar Wilde on the stage, where Wilde’s An Ideal Husband had triumphed almost as spectacularly as James’s Guy Domville had failed. HJ had been unusually incensed, calling Wilde an “unclean beast” and a “fatuous cad.”
Instead, she said, “Algernon Okrent clearly felt that Mr. Phillips’s work posed a threat to his novel. ‘Publish now and it ruins me!’ His exact words.”
“How can one book threaten another?”
“They are both novels about women who fall into a life of degradation. If Susan Lenox comes out first, readers may be less eager to read No Shame but Ours. At the very least, they will see it as an imitation.”
Henry shook his head, bewildered.
Counting off points on her fingers, she said, “Carolyn Frevert thinks her brother was shot to stop the publication of Susan Lenox. I gather Mr. Okrent’s book was ready first, yet they’ve delayed publication in favor of Mr. Phillips’s novel. So Okrent either killed him in a moment of vengeful frenzy or because he thought without Mr. Phillips, No Shame but Ours could come out first and take all the acclaim. Phillips’s books sell well. Mr. Okrent’s do not. Mr. Phillips was a handsome man. Mr. Okrent certainly is not.”
“You cannot accuse a man of murder because he is unattractive. Both you and the family are dramatizing what was probably a simple robbery. A thief demanded his wallet. Mr. Phillips refused and got himself killed.” HJ waved a swollen hand. “Sad, random—and banal.”
“Ah, but not so random. The murderer sent David Graham Phillips death threats. Mr. Jewett showed me one.”
HJ shuffled upward. “Really? What did it say?”
“‘You are a vampire and must die.’” She leaned forward. “It’s an interesting choice of words, don’t you think? Vampire. Poetic. Literary. Strangely personal.”
“As if the murderer were the victim’s victim,” he mused.
“You wrote a novel about vampires,” she reminded him. “The Sacred Fount.” In the tale, an anonymous narrator attended a weekend gathering at a stately home. He wandered the rooms, attempting to discern which of his fellow guests were having relations with one another. Edith had read the book with trepidation, unsure if she were the inspiration for a woman who remained vital and blooming while her husband grew ever more feeble or another woman, once brilliant, now “voided and scraped of everything, her shell was merely crushable.”
HJ shifted irritably. “It was not about vampires. It was about passion. What we take in relations, what we give.”
“But what is a vampire, Henry? Think.”
“An individual who feeds off people, draining them…”
“Or is nourished by them,” she parried. “Is it so wrong to take sustenance from our fellow human beings?”
HJ said pointedly, “To the point where you deprive them of life?”
“Precisely.” She clapped her hands to emphasize the point. “Mr. Okrent must have felt that Susan Lenox would steal the place that rightfully belonged to No Shame but Ours. Deprive a writer of attention for his work and you kill the thing he loves best.”
She ended on a note of triumph. But Henry looked stricken. Edith realized: Her pronouncement that literary obscurity and death were one and the same had hit too close. Flailing to make amends, she thought, We all fail, Henry. Look at Fruit of the Tree. But that had been a single novel; the New York Edition had been his life’s work.
Choumai emerged from behind HJ’s armchair, waddling toward her with studied nonchalance. It occurred to her there was an odor in the room. From the tightening of HJ’s nostrils, she could see the same thought had occurred to him. A glance behind the chair confirmed her suspicions. There being no staff to hand, she cleared it away herself. When she returned from the bathroom, she answered HJ’s accusatory stare with, “You need another dog. It’s been too long since Max passed.”
“No more pets,” he said. “Too many graves already.” Like her, he had a small plot near his home where his beloved dogs were buried.
“That’s why we bring in new life, to balance it out,” she said. Then, wanting him to think of the future, she added, “You should have come with me to Appleton. You’d like Mr. Jewett.”
“I like Mr. Brownell and I like Mr. Scribner.”
She struggled not to say it, then found she couldn’t not say it. “How can you feel loyalty to Scribner’s after they botched the New York Edition?”
HJ’s shoulders rolled in a sort of shrug. Frowning, mouth puckered, he looked for the toast. As he strained to lean forward, he appeared to Edith as an assemblage of boiled eggs—head, belly, hands—each part soft, wobbling, and distended. The plate was beyond his reach; picking it up, she presented it to him, along with the reminder, “You said the royalties were shocking.”
“I did not say shocking. I said they left me ‘rather flat.’”
“It was your entire body of work.”
“I withheld some of the fiction,” he said, sighing. “And the permissions were costly. Macmillan was particularly usurious. It all took so much time. In the end, I had to leave it to poor old Brownell. I was spent.”
Spent, she thought, and with nothing to show for it. She knew that he felt the public’s rejection more keenly than the financial loss. On one of their jaunts, he had wondered aloud if she felt as he did, that they were among the few survivors of a past world few recalled and fewer still cared about. At the time, in love and enraptured by a self she had never imagined, she had believed in the possibility of endless rebirths. Boldly, she had proclaimed that people would care because their books would make them care.
Now she recalled David Graham Phillips’s scornful challenge—What could you possibly know about the American woman of today?—and felt old all over again. It was hard, she thought, simply to … keep up.
But necessary, she decided, mentally slapping away the glooms. “Scribner’s and the excellent Mr. Brownell aside, I shall return to Appleton tomorrow and make my case to Mr. Jewett.”
Henry intoned, “I hear the flap of eagle’s wings, the majestic bird of prey ready to take flight, her talons poised…”
Hearing his disapproval, she said, “Okrent said Susan Lenox would ruin him. Its author is now dead. Mr. Phillips received death threats which were literary in tone. The term vampire suggests someone who believes Mr. Phillips was sucking him dry, taking the life that rightfully belonged to him…”
“You don’t know that,” he objected. “And you do not need to know. Dispense with your schemes, forgo your passion for plots. Why not amuse yourself with Walter or”—the turtle eyes widened—“the elusive Mr. Fullerton?”
She plucked at a tassel hanging from the arm of the chair. She didn’t want to talk about Fullerton. She had no discipline on the subject; if they stayed on it, she would tell Henry about the disastrous phone call, and he had chided her enough for one evening. HJ was funny that way; he greatly enjoyed the melodrama of his friends, but then he would grumble about how it exhausted him, rather like a guest who devours the dessert, then scolds his hostess for serving it, it’s so bad for his health.
“He is, as you say, elusive.” Picking up Choumai, she stood. “I suspect it’s best if he stays that way. Good night, Henry.”
In the elevator, she found herself still restless and said to the operator, “Lobby, please.” Taking Choumai out on the street, she set him down on the curb and waited. Then remembered the dog had done his business in Henry’s room and no longer needed a walk. The dog made that very point by scurrying back to the hotel. She informed him he was impossible. But that she loved him, nonetheless.
Denied a stroll, Edith stopped at the front desk to ask for messages. As the desk clerk searched the mailbox—an array of cubbyholes in good stout walnut, richly varnished, the room numbers marked in cheerful brass—she made a list in her mind like a child of all the things she wanted: Mr. Jewett begging her to bring her new work the next time she came to the office. Or Brownell, calling her to Scribner’s to see the newly created advertisement for Men and Ghosts. Dr. Kinnicutt announcing he had recovered and would be with them in the morning.
“Just this.” The clerk laid a white envelope on the desk. Inside was a single sheet of paper, neatly folded in two. Raising the top half, she saw a single line. No signature. Big bold, swooping letters, all capitals.
DO NOT WRITE THIS
Her first thought was of the children gamboling in the park with their nurse. It had that feel, notes passed between playmates, secret messages, dire warnings. A code made up of matching numbers and letters; a for 1, z for 26, or the reverse if you were feeling clever. How extraordinary, she thought. I’ve been invited to play.
Then she realized. It was exactly like the note Mr. Jewett had shown her in his office. It was that note. Her mind still groggy from shock, she struggled to be clear: a note from that man. The man who had killed David Graham Phillips.
Rapidly, she made an inventory: everywhere she had been since the murder. Calvary Church. Phillips’s sister’s home. Appleton. The murderer had seen her in one of those places. He knew she had taken an interest. And now he was warning her: “Do not write this.” In his view, she was stealing his story. Oh, Mr. Okrent, she thought gleefully, how presumptuous you are.
“May I speak to the man who was on duty when this was delivered?”
“He has gone home. Is there something I might assist you with?”
She shook her head. She did not feel in need of assistance. In fact, she felt wonderfully clear on what she had to do, as well as the fact that she was the one to do it. Do not write this. What words could be more provocative to a writer? What clearer sign that there was a story here to write? This awful man wished to be the only author of the story of the murder of David Graham Phillips. Well, from what she had seen of his work thus far, he was a poor storyteller, trampling his subject with a brutal, overwrought approach. He had no style. No insight. No humanity.
He did not deserve the last word.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Teddy had not slept.
Edith was still in bed when she heard a knock at the door and a slight cough she knew to be Alfred White’s. White had been in Teddy’s employ for nearly twenty-five years. He knew she was not to be disturbed in the morning. Nerves on edge, she called, “Yes?”
The door opened, White slid through it, closing it behind him. “I apologize for the interruption.” His voice was miraculously pitched: audible, pleasantly baritone, yet never rising above a whisper. “But Mr. Wharton is sitting on the floor. Facing the wall. He has been in that position all night.”
“I see.” Teddy’s nerve fits were often followed by exhaustion and melancholy.
“Did something in particular agitate him?”
“He spoke of plans to visit the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”
A slash of guilt. Her promise to meet Teddy yesterday afternoon—she had forgotten. Teddy would have returned from the morning’s outing, no doubt pressing White to hurry, expecting to find her waiting and finding empty rooms instead. Because she had been at Appleton with Mr. Jewett and then with Henry.
The proper words came to her. Very well, I’ll go in to see him. Poor dear, let’s see if we can’t get him into bed.
“… Unfortunately, I have an appointment this morning.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“On the whole, best not to disturb him?”
“I think so, ma’am.”
She was intensely grateful. Had White simply echoed his earlier yes, ma’am, as was correct, she would have felt his disapproval. Instead, he had used informal language—the shocking I think—to pointedly agree with her. Whether he did or no.
She made a note: something for White.
When White had withdrawn, she flung herself out of bed. She would find something splendid to wear. Then, with her note as proof, she would go to Appleton and warn Mr. Jewett about Algernon Okrent.
Oh, and read Susan Lenox, of course.
* * *
Regrettably, the youth informed her, Mr. Jewett was unavailable.
“Unavailable?” Edith repeated the word as if it were a malapropism.
“Regrettably,” stressed the youth.
“When will he be available?”
“When he is no longer unavailable,” said the assistant.
“But I need to speak with him,” she insisted. “It’s extremely important.”
The youth gazed at her with thinly veiled pity. So young in publishing, she thought, but already he had learned: Nothing that concerned writers was extremely important.
“Mr. Jewett did leave instructions that you were to be given a spare office where you could read the manuscript.” His face bright, he held up a key, as if to say, What more could you possibly desire?
But this was not at all what she desired. She had not left poor Teddy to wade through a lengthy tome about the “authentic” American woman written by a shouty American man. She had come because lives were in danger. She had come, she fumed, following the youth down the hall, to protect him and the unavailable Mr. Jewett from further assault. Yet here he was dumping her in a spare office—a veritable garret only large enough for one desk and an old armchair someone was too lazy to throw out.
But she would not complain. She had shocking news to impart, and she didn’t want to prejudice the men at Appleton by seeming hysterical. Theatrically, she smiled and remained smiling until the assistant had closed the door.
Leaving her alone with the work of several years by a man not given to brevity. Taking up the first hundred pages, she settled herself into the battered leather chair and confronted the title page: Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, by David Graham Phillips.
For some reason, she felt reluctant to begin. Peeking at the introduction, she saw again, “There are three ways of dealing with the sex relations of men and women—two wrong and one right.” As Phillips went on to rail against wishy-washy literature and perverted palates, Edith felt irritated, as if the dead man were sitting opposite with his ridiculous chrysanthemum, hurling pronouncements at her.
Skipping the pompous introduction, she turned to the first page. But the anxiety was still with her.
This was preposterous, she scolded herself. She had read countless scandalous books; this one was no different.
Except, of course, that its author was dead.
And there was another cause for worry.
What if Susan Lenox was good? Not just adequate, but fine enough to justify the dead man’s arrogance? What if it was truly a masterpiece about the American woman—her subject? It was bad enough to read excellent work written by friends. But to be impressed by a book written by a man who had nothing but contempt for her work—that would be unbearable.
You are Edith Wharton, she reminded herself. He is not.
Whipping the page away, she confronted the first lines.
“The child is dead,” said Nora the nurse.
The young man did not rouse from his reverie.
“Dead? What’s that? Merely another name for ignorance.”
Oh, this was positively bad. She began to read eagerly, feeling the deep relief of all writers when reading a rival’s work: It was not good. The baby declared dead at the outset was, in fact, not dead. She was Susan Lenox, born illegitimate, raised in an obscure Midwestern town by small-minded relatives. Edith was captivated by the manic use of adverbs; all was gently or abruptly, wickedly or drearily. Brows were stormy. Eyes snapped. Passion was indicated by saying things three times.
Love—love love! She was a woman and she loved!
“Go—go!” she begged. “Please go.
I’m a bad girl—bad—bad! Go!”
This then was the authentic American woman, she thought scornfully. Young Susan fell into an unsuitable love affair, shocking her guardians, who promptly married her off to a crusty old farmer named Zeke or Jeb—Edith forgot which. The wedding night was entirely grisly, a wrestling match of shrieks and slobber that left poor Susan catatonic.
Disgusted, she slapped down the page. How could Mr. Jewett think this book dangerous? Or Mrs. Frevert imagine it a bold exposé of the dark forces of society? So far, the only things Edith had learned were: Don’t live on farms, and don’t marry men named Jeb or Zeke. Both of which she already knew, as did any sensible human being. So poor Susan was unaware of the facts of married life. That might be revelatory to Mr. Phillips, but it would come as no surprise to most women—including herself. Just before her own wedding, she had asked her mother what would happen after. Airily, her mother replied that, having seen statues of men and women, she should be able to put it together. Thinking of those cold, smooth marble forms, Edith had compared them with her own soft, ungainly body with its peculiar, changeable openings and thought, No, I cannot put it together. And if we cannot even speak of it, how horrible must it be?
