New England White (26 page)

CHAPTER 27

AGAIN THE COMYNS MIRROR

(I)

J
ULIA BEGAN HER TASK
methodically but also impulsively, the same combination that had carried her to so much success in life, and so much failure. Mary Mallard and Tony Tice both seemed to think that Kellen had turned something over to her. The surplus he intended to capture. The inventory he did not want to hold. Aside from his cryptic messages and the occasional unwanted gift of fudge, Julia could only think of one object Kellen had recently arranged to have delivered to her.

The mirror.

The silver-and-tortoiseshell hand mirror by William Comyns of London that Granny Vee had given her not long before she died, and that Kellen had evidently kept next to his desk for twenty years.

So, late Tuesday night, as the house slumbered, Julia took the mirror from its place atop her small desk in a corner of the bedroom and carried it down to the kitchen, a long, grand room with trendy and pricey black granite counters that looked gorgeous in the showroom but, when darkness fell, seemed to suck all the light out of the air. Kellen, at a party Lemaster gave for black faculty five years ago—one of his few visits to Hunter’s Heights—had remarked that the counters reminded him of the Clan, tough and dark and sturdy, proudly and determinedly preserving all that was useless in African America.

Julia had told him to leave her alone.

Now she laid the mirror under the reading lamp next to the computer that sat on the kitchen desk. She had cleaned and polished it, but not with the effort it needed. She should take it to a professional, she decided, turning it over and over. Come on, Kellen, she said in her mind. If I’m your Black Lady, then talk to me. Why did you give me the mirror? What does the mirror mean? The mirror, the surplus, the inventory risk. And Jamaica. Why did you go to the div school that night? She could find no pattern, make no sense. She ran her fingers over the delicate filigree on the back, the clusters of leaves along the edges, the emblem of the sun in the middle, the royal decorations surrounding it. She felt her annoyance rise hotly, not only because she could not fathom its significance, if any, but also because Kellen had taken such poor care of the mirror, allowing the tarnished surface to get so scratched up that she could hardly make out the famous
W
•
C
hallmark any more, because of all the—

The hallmark?

She put the mirror down again, focused the bright light. The Comyns hallmark was a “W” followed by a “C,” with a small circle between them, raised about three-quarters of the height of the letters. It was hidden in the design, but any expert would know where to look. But this hallmark was not just scratched. It was obliterated.

This was not wear and tear. It was purposeful.

She turned the mirror upside down, and saw it at once. The letters had been…altered. Altered in a way that only someone who knew the hallmark was there would even notice; and nobody but Julia was likely to know.

The “C” was turned around the wrong way, the long curve bisected neatly by a horizontal slash. As for the “W,” the left-hand slope was worn away, and the middle part of the letter, which pointed upward, had been turned on its side, to point to the right.

It made no sense.

Oh, yes, it did.

It was a
mirror.

Julia smiled. She already knew what Kellen had done, but carried the mirror into the powder room to be sure. She held it up to the mirror, and, sure enough, viewed closely, but only through a mirror, the hallmark had been changed. No longer did it read
W•C.
Now it read
E•K.

Her smile faded. What, or who, on earth was
E•K
? Eddie Krueger? No, his name was Freddy. Edward Kennedy? Ernst Kaltenbrunner? Elegant Kellen? Perhaps she had misunderstood. Maybe she had read the new hallmark wrong, or maybe she was working too hard, reading heavy symbols into normal wear and tear because she wanted them to be there. Nevertheless, because she was organized, she took several shots of the mirror with her digital camera, both in the mirror and lying on the counter, several of them close-ups of the hallmark, and downloaded them to her laptop, then sent them along the Internet to Kodak, where she stored digital images.

Patience was not natural to her, but if the mirror was a message, Julia knew she would, given time, figure it out.

(II)

E
ARLIER IN THE DAY
, she had asked Latisha call Joe Poynting, who hurried over, worried, no doubt, that the dean had discovered a rule making him ineligible for the grants he was seeking to support his research in Bologna. Instead, Julia turned facedown the memo pad on which she was still working out permutations of “Shari Larid,” then shut the door, a rarity, and swore the young man to secrecy. Then she asked her question.

“You work late in the library every night. You’re there till closing, sometimes later. What I need to know is if you ever saw Professor Zant.”

“In the Kepler Library?”

“Yes.”

Joe nodded. “Sure, I saw him. Sometimes at night, sometimes in the late afternoon.”

“What was he doing?”

“Research, I guess. I didn’t ask.”

“I meant, what did you see?”

The student sat with his knees together and his hands in his lap. Julia sensed he had not much liked Kellen. “He was usually going in or out of the archives.”

Confirming Vanessa’s tale. Except—

“How often did you see him in the archives?”

“I’d say at least once a week.”

Of course. Kellen came over to the div school after Julia left for the day, meaning that he was not dropping by just to annoy her. Nor was he just looking for Vanessa, who had visited the archives perhaps five times in the past year. No. Kellen Zant had been at Kepler because he was working on a project of his own.

In the archives.

(III)

L
EMASTER WOKE
when his wife crept back into the master suite and, when she slipped into bed beside him, reached for her. Julia was willing to be reached for. She was jangly, worried, confused, a little frightened, and ready for physical reassurance of the reality of their shared life. Lemmie made love the same way he did everything else: thoughtfully, dutifully, and fully master of himself and all around him. He was male enough to take pride in her pleasure, but far too self-aware to imagine there might be virtue in occasionally surrendering his control. Sometimes, at a tender moment, she would catch his gaze, the somber brown eyes watchful and patient, Lemaster thinking only of her needs, when a bit of male selfishness might have turned pleasant to thrilling. Now and then she caught herself wondering what if anything truly lit her husband up; for she had never, in all their years together, seen him truly lose control.

Julia had fallen for him within a week of starting divinity school, when she watched him take over a lecture hall where a visiting philosopher from Cambridge was hectoring the intimidated audience on why God was necessarily the author of all evil; Lemaster stood up to him when even most of the faculty seemed cowed. She loved his brilliance, the way he had set academic records as an undergraduate, and gone on to star in law school and in the legal profession, before quitting in mid-career to try to determine whether he had a vocation to the ministry. She loved his softly charming assurance, the preternatural calm he brought to every situation, even bed, providing the antidote for the exhausting excitement of Kellen Zant. And she loved the way that their engagement rocked the Clan, because Lemaster Carlyle, whatever his virtues, was not really one of
us,
dear. And then he turned out to be an Empyreal. An Empyreal—weren’t they all dead, or dying? Weren’t they practically bankrupt? How could Julia, whose grandmother had founded Ladybugs, marry a mere Empyreal? And, of course, he was a West Indian, and dark-skinned, for the hardy prejudices from the old Harlem days still lurked around certain unmentioned corners.

Now, sex finished, she clung to him, wondering what secrets he was truly carrying, what he had refused to disclose to either Astrid Venable or Cameron Knowland, what he knew about those old days in Hilliman Suite. Lemaster, a Catholic school boy, had bound himself in the tight strictures of principle and obligation, and Julia supposed she loved that in him, too, even though virtues like loyalty and discretion could get in the way of finding truth.

“You’re a good man,” said Julia, kissing his shoulder as he slept. She pressed closer. “A good man,” she said again, hoping it was true.

CHAPTER 28

DEFYING GRAVITAS

(I)

T
HE DIVINITY SCHOOL ARCHIVES WERE
entered through a kind of antechapel, complete with wrought-iron altar screen, at the southmost end of the high-ceilinged reading room of Kepler Library. Julia stepped inside the library as rarely as possible, but on Wednesday she strode briskly across creakily uneven wooden floors covered by an insufficiency of aged carpet. Scaffolding hid one wall. The rest were high with books and windows and portraits of the great preachers and theologians who had been graduated from Kepler. Most of them looked disappointed. Here, Bibles of all versions. There, the works of the great theologians; or summaries of the works of the great theologians; or computers to find summaries of the summaries. A couple of students glanced up incuriously. At the iron bars, a listless receptionist pretended to check Julia’s university identification. Then Julia descended a metal stair and was inside the holy of holies, where, at the moment, nobody else was burrowing. The div school’s collection of sermons and pamphlets and holograph letters, many possessing inestimable value, operated as a “closed” stack, meaning that you filled out a search request, then waited in a small workroom for the archivist or one of his assistants to bring the materials you needed. You did your reading on one of several tables scattered around the room. Nothing could be removed from the archives, but if you were a regular they provided you a rolling cart to hold your papers while you attended to such frivolities as classes, family, or sleep. To preserve the precious trove, the air conditioners and dehumidifiers kept everything bone-dry throughout the year, and Julia, standing there amid the long tables, study carrels, and movable gunmetal shelves on little tracks, knew her skin would itch the rest of the day.

Think.

Joe Poynting said he had seen Kellen in here several times the past few months, usually in the late afternoons or at night—that is, when Julia, with her early afternoon departure time, would be unlikely to spot him.

The archives.

So what was he doing?

Julia moved toward one of the trolleys, fingering a stack of blue folders, each bound with brown string. The labels told her somebody was researching homilies delivered in French churches in the days of the Paris Commune. Didn’t sound like Kellen’s taste. The next trolley held pre–World War II financial reports from what was originally known as the Federal Council of Churches. Maybe Kellen was doing economic history—

“May I be of assistance, Dean Carlyle?”

Julia dropped her hand to her side like a child caught at sin, spinning around with the old Hanover grin on her face, and found herself staring into the ghostly, glittery countenance of Rod Rutherford, Kepler’s librarian and chief archivist.

“I didn’t see you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“May I be of assistance?” he repeated, the formality in his greeting a symbol of respect less for Julia than for tradition.

“I’m very sorry to disturb you,” she said, mimicking, unintentionally, his sepulchral tone. “But I had a question.”

“I see.”

“An important question,” she continued, a bit stupidly.

“Important. Well.”

“May I speak to you privately?”

“By all means.” He led the way into his whitewashed cubicle, furnished with cheap metal furniture because Rod Rutherford did not hold with spending library money on anything but books. She sat across from him and spoke for several minutes, shivering in the artificial chill, editing and amplifying, but offering, Julia thought, a reasonable version of the truth.

“I really wish I could help you, Dean Carlyle,” said the librarian when he had heard her out. “But I’m afraid what you ask is quite impossible.”

“All I’m asking is what files Professor Zant might have looked at.”

“Alas, I am unable even to confirm that he was ever here.” Roderick Ryan Rutherford favored her with an unapologetic smile. He was a creepy, cadaverous man, pale as any cave dweller, fussy and disdainful, who had the unnerving habit of materializing behind you in a hallway or parking lot when you had been certain a moment earlier that you were alone. Julia did not know him well, for her work rarely brought her into contact with the library or the archives, both of which were run by the librarian, and both of which had fallen within the purview of the late Boris Gibbs. As a matter of fact, still sensitive about her uneven record as a student, she rarely ventured into the once-grand reading room, and had not entered the open stacks since the day she dropped out. She had toured the archives just after her arrival as a dean, and had come back a year and a half ago to introduce Vanessa, who would be doing research here. “Much less am I able to confirm what materials he may or may not have drawn from the collection,” Mr. Rutherford was saying.

“Would anybody else know?”

“Oh, dear me. I am not saying I lack the information you seek, Dean Carlyle. But it is impossible for me to turn it over to you. Quite impossible.” Raising a finger, making a circle, as if to remind her of a wider world. “Rules, you know.”

“Rules?”

“Surely you believe in rules, Dean Carlyle.” Ghostly hands washing each other like a greedy undertaker’s. “Without rules, man lives in anarchy. And a library cannot bear anarchy. Still less can an archive.”

“Yes, but—”

“Such records are entirely confidential. As deputy dean, you are surely aware of Rule 22-C, relating to privacy of library records, adopted by the faculty senate in 1973, following the congressional passage of the Buckley Amendment, and subsequently ratified by the trustees of the—”

“Try to understand, Mr. Rutherford”—he liked formality—“how important this is. I can’t tell you all the reasons, but—”

“No doubt it is a matter of life or death.” He sounded entirely unpersuaded. “But I serve, by necessity, a different muse. A library is the repository of knowledge, Dean Carlyle. A place of preservation. In an earlier era, the work of preserving knowledge was respected. No longer. Knowledge is today coincident with desire. Nothing unpleasant is permitted to be true. The Dark Ages are once more upon us. We therefore preserve our function by insisting upon the rules. Those who insist on playing by other rules play elsewhere.”

Sitting across the archivist’s desk as he glowered at her, Julia wondered whether she might be dreaming this unexpected impediment. She had not anticipated such opposition, but held her temper, pondering. It was not because of her color, she consoled herself, not entirely persuaded, for she often felt, even on so flagrantly liberal a campus as this, that certain doors—intellectual, social, reputational—swung wide only for the denizens of the paler nation. But Roderick Rutherford condescended to everyone. He always left her feeling less ignored than chilled: his whispery way of turning his head half away when speaking gave her the creeps.

She decided to begin again.

“I’m not asking for much. I know that Professor Zant was down here several times, late at night, the month before he died. All I’m asking—”

“Late at night? Dear me, that could have nothing to do with us. The archives close at half past five, you know, six days a week. On the seventh day we rest. That’s a joke.”

Neither laughed. On the wall behind his narrow head hung a dour portrait of a famous New England abolitionist. Two yellowy windows high up were at ground level, and barred. Feet passed in sepia shadow. Nothing else in the chilly room gave a hint that the sun was shining.

“Well, my understanding is that Professor Zant was down here later than that.”

“I don’t see how that would have been possible, Dean Carlyle. I lock the doors personally. Mrs. Bethe has a key, of course, but would hardly return to let someone in without authorization. I suppose the campus police could get in, although I daresay they’d make a great ruckus, not knowing the codes for the alarm.”

“Surely Claire Alvarez would be able to—”

“Dear me, no. Dean Alvarez possesses no key, and has no knowledge of the codes. I believe that only Mrs. Bethe and myself know the codes.”

“So—what do you do if somebody wants to work late? Suzanne de Broglie is here at night all the time.”

“Professor de Broglie tells us what files she wants, and we leave them for her in the main reading room. She signs them out at the desk, takes them into the faculty library, does her studying there. Of course we would not make such an arrangement for just anybody, but the good professor is unusually respectful of our collections.”

“Did you make an arrangement like that for Kellen Zant?”

Again the hands slid over and through each other like separate things doing unnatural battle. “My dear Dean Carlyle, I couldn’t possibly say.”

She thought furiously. In Rod Rutherford’s library, paper records existed and mattered. Computerized information was disdained. Everything was written down, for Roderick Ryan Rutherford might or might not have believed in God, but he believed in the old days with the fervor of the recent convert.

“All right. You can’t tell me what files he requested. But if he was here, you’d have his signature. He’d have to sign in or out.”

“No doubt.”

“May I see those records?” Controlling, barely, her exasperation.

“Oh, no, Dean Carlyle, I’m afraid there is no question of that. Again, Rule 22-C governs the matter entirely. It was adopted after five months of debate. I hardly think we are free to change it.”

“Mr. Rutherford, please.” Holding up both hands against this flooding bureaucratic tide. The archivist fell silent, but his expression of distress never softened. “I’m not some jealous div student trying to find out if my boyfriend was really in the archives that night or not.” Although in her day she had played that role, too. “This is related to…to, ah, to what happened to Professor Zant.”

“Yes. A most unfortunate business.”

“Then you understand why—”

“Do you have a subpoena? Any sort of court order?” Glancing down at her hands as if hoping to find one. “Some other form of authorization?”

She shook her head. “No, but I’m sure you see that—”

“In that case, I am so very sorry, Dean Carlyle. I cannot possibly be of assistance.”

A thought struck her. “Suppose I were to return with the director of campus security?”

“Safety, I suppose you mean. The director of campus safety.” A bony finger dimpled his chin, and the translucent brow furrowed still more deeply. “Yes. Well. Alas, Dean Carlyle, unless the director arrived carrying pertinent authorization, he, too, would leave empty-handed.” Shaking his long head to emphasize the point. “No court order. No authorization. Most irregular, Dean Carlyle. You really should pay more attention to the rules.”

One last chance. She swallowed her pride. “Mr. Rutherford, you know who I am. You know who my husband is.”

“Indeed. And may I say that I am quite unimpressed with the muttering against him from all corners.”

“Ah, well, thank you. I think.” Gathering herself. “Mr. Rutherford, if the president of the university were to give you a direct order, surely you—”

Lifting a powdery palm to stop her. “Dean Carlyle, allow me to disabuse you of a common error. I fear that I am not in the employ of your husband. Nor is any member of the faculty. The position of university president is more, ah, hortatory than supervisory, at least with respect to the academic mission. In any case, Rule 22-C binds me absolutely.”

About to say more, Julia saw the futility. It was like arguing with a poorly programmed machine. Lemaster loved libraries, books, traditions, but Julia would take the Internet any day. She turned and stalked toward the exit.

“Dean Carlyle.” Softly.

Over her shoulder, not wanting to look at him. “Yes, Mr. Rutherford.”

“I suggest that you study the rules. Perhaps you will discover a pertinent exception.”

Enough was enough. The line from pettiness to condescension had been crossed. But when she spun around to lash him with her tongue, she was alone in the hallway.

(II)

S
HE FED THE CHILDREN AND
L
EMASTER
, describing her day as uneventful, and then was back in the Escalade, storming into Elm Harbor once more, still edgy and frustrated from her confrontation with Rod Rutherford. She arrived just past seven-thirty at Kimmer Madison’s house, a lovely old Victorian on Hobby Hill, where the ad hoc committee to draft the neutral statement on abortion was holding another impromptu gabfest and wine-tasting, to consider the possibility of getting some work done. Julia contributed a nice Saint-Hilaire Blanquette de Limoux, a gift from Mona, the great Francophile. Kimmer and Regina Thackery gossiped about other women with their words, and about Julia with their eyes. She had guessed from little hints dropped over the past week that a version of her meeting with Bruce Vallely had spread among the local Sister Ladies, and it occurred to her, for the first time, that Lemaster might actually be lucky to belong to a dying men’s club that had only four hundred members, as opposed to Ladybugs, whose chapters fluttered all over the United States, and in sixteen foreign countries as well. Julia met their curious eyes, wondering what they had heard. Because nobody would say anything to her directly, she did not know how many erroneous assumptions were making the rounds. And, sitting comfortably on the sofa, talking Washington politics and recent films, while Kimmer’s six-year-old son scampered noisily around the first floor, Julia was too much a Veazie to just ask.

So she sat and suffered and in the back of her mind played with an idea that had been teasing her all day. Every now and then, she checked her watch surreptitiously, but it was close to ten before she could decently take her leave. Julia helped an unsteady Regina Thackery down the slippery front walk. Fresh sleet was falling. “Can you make it home?”

“You had as much as I did,” accused Regina, quite cross.

Julia hid a smile. Actually, she was a cautious drinker, and had managed to hold her consumption to one glass of the sparkling wine, enough to fortify without impairing the judgment.

“I seem to be walking reasonably straight,” she said.