“Perhaps she meant nine,” Peter attempted, as half-past eight came and went.
“I think she’s blown us off.”
“Sorry?” Peter’s brow shot up, and his eyelids flickered; perhaps the phrase meant something nasty and sexual in England, Jo thought. But she was too furious to care at this point.
“Blown us off. Skipped her date. Gone elsewhere for breakfast,” she emphasized.
“Overslept, perhaps — ”
“Then it’s time we woke her.” Jo pushed back her chair from the table. “Know where she lives?”
“Of course. I’ll just ring first.”
He stabbed at his cell phone with nervous fingers. But Margaux, it appeared, wasn’t answering this morning.
“Peter,” Jo said with an effort at calm, “that woman has my notebook. Where is she?”
MARGAUX LIVED IN A VICTORIAN “TWO UP, TWO DOWN” terraced flat in a part of Oxford Peter referred to as Jericho, just outside the old city walls. The neighborhood was bohemian and chic, sought-after and expensive; a canal, lined with houseboats, bordered one side.
“This is Hardy’s bit of town,” he explained, as though he’d known Thomas Hardy in his student days. “There’s even a pub called Jude the Obscure. Sort of an homage.”
Jo knew little about Thomas Hardy, and cared less. As Peter tapped on the oak door, then walked gingerly around to Margaux’s front window, peering into the unlit room beyond, her anxiety mounted.
“She’s gone, hasn’t she?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” he replied with infuriating calm. “It’s a Tuesday. She’s got commitments. Obligations. Students.”
“She’s got our book.”
They stared at each other wordlessly. Then a window above their heads was thrust open.
“Looking for Margaux?”
The voice came from a curly black head now dangling over the sill. The face, Jo noticed, was unshaven, gorgeous, and about ten years younger than Professor Strand’s; what was visible of the body was unclothed.
“That would be the commitment,” Jo murmured. “Or maybe just the student.”
Something in Peter’s face changed. He stabbed at his glasses and called up belligerently, “Of course we’re bloody well looking for Margaux. She’s late for breakfast.”
“Must have slipped her mind,” the youth said, grinning. “She was off early, this morning. Barely had time for tea.”
“Do you know where she went?” Jo asked, fighting a desire to scream.
The Greek god shrugged. “Couldn’t say. You can step inside. Leave a note if you like. — Half a tick.”
He appeared at the door seconds later, his waist enshrined in a towel. “I’m Ian,” he told them cheerfully, offering his hand. “Classics. University College.”
Peter had apparently decided to ignore him; Jo introduced herself. A cursory glance around the sitting room and kitchen beyond did not reveal the notebook.
“I don’t suppose you noticed a small brown book anywhere upstairs?” she asked Ian. “Lying on a table, for instance?”
“The Woolf manuscript, you mean?” He smiled. “She took it with her, of course.”
“Where?” Peter’s word had the force of a bullet.
“Didn’t say.” Ian tightened his towel. “Very cagey this morning, our Margaux. And now, if you don’t mind — I’ve left the bathwater running.…”
Chapter Fifteen
“I’M SURE SHE’LL CALL,” PETER SAID FOR THE THIRD time, “once she realizes she missed us.”
“Missed us!” Jo stared at him incredulously. They were walking in the direction of Peter’s old Triumph, which he’d left near the canal. “Ditched us, you mean. Lied to us, too. Margaux knew that notebook was written by Woolf — and she stole it, Peter. Put us off with all this garbage about further analysis, then lit out alone for God knows where.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken.” Peter stopped dead and whipped out his cell phone. “I’ll just try her mobile, shall I?”
“Try away,” Jo muttered. She was suddenly aflame with impatience and frustration. She’d abandoned Gray — wasted time better spent on the White Garden — and embarked on a wild-goose chase across the Thames Valley. She’d wanted to make sense of Jock’s suicide. She’d been hopelessly stupid.
“No answer,” Peter said miserably. “Quite unlike her. Usually picks up on the first ring.”
“Right. But she can tell from her cell that you’re the one calling, so she’s letting you go straight into voice mail. And don’t say I’m sure you’re mistaken.” Jo strode on furiously toward the bottle-green Triumph. “I’m not mistaken. You’re willfully blind.”
“You’re angry.”
“Of course I’m angry!” She whirled and nearly stepped on his toes. “I’ve lost something priceless. Something important to me personally, as well as to the literary world. Never mind that it also belongs to Sissinghurst…”
“I understand. But you don’t know Margaux. She wouldn’t just…”
“ — Run off with somebody else’s property?”
“Not with a treasure of this magnitude. She has her scruples.”
Jo rolled her eyes in disbelief. “You’re telling me that woman’s never left you standing on a curb before, Peter, while she pursued something more interesting? I don’t believe you. I’ve met the Boy Toy.”
“There’s no call for personal attacks.”
He drew his keys from his pocket and shoved them viciously into the Triumph’s door.
Jo felt her face flush. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business how often your friend’s betrayed you. But that notebook is, Peter. We’ve got to get it back.”
He held open the left-hand passenger door silently.
“You’ve got to get it back,” she persisted. “You know Margaux. I don’t. Where do you think she’s gone?”
“Any one of a number of places. To verify a hunch, perhaps. Cross-check her sources…”
“Sell to the highest bidder?”
Peter’s eyes blazed. “Not that. Not yet. The fame of discovery is more Margaux’s line. She’d want the coup, you see. The headlines. The thirty-second spot on Sky News.”
“So is she talking to the London press right now?”
“I reckon that’s premature. She’s not hasty, Margaux. More of a calculating intelligence. She’d want to be absolutely certain before she went public with this. The cost to her career would be enormous if she got it wrong, do y’see? And if she talks to the press — she’ll have to tell them how the notebook was found. There are complications attendant upon that.”
Complications.
Sissinghurst. The Family. Jo.
“Is it possible,” she began, feeling her way, “that Margaux’s searching for… something to authenticate the notebook? Something that makes the authorship unequivocal?”
“ — Like the other half, you mean?”
They stared at each other. The missing pages, Jo thought, her heart beginning to pound.
“Somebody cut those pages from the binding for a reason,” Peter persisted. “Perhaps they bore a signature.”
“ — Or the facts of Woolf’s death?”
Almost involuntarily, he reached for his cell phone.
Jo erupted in fury. “She’s not going to pick up, Peter! She must be miles away by now. Are you planning to stand here in Jericho until she parades across your television screen? Or are you going to figure out where she’s gone?”
“All right,” he retorted, his palm slamming the Triumph’s window frame. “I understand the problem, thank you very much. Now would you get into the bloody car?”
Jo got in.
IMOGEN CANTWELL LISTENED TO JO’S MESSAGE TWICE, stabbing hard at the answering machine’s buttons to rewind and play, before heading out into the garden that Tuesday morning. Sotheby’s, she’d said, and Oxford. Imogen felt a sharp thrust of anxiety that bordered on panic: This was all spiraling out of control. Jo’s absence was beginning to look like theft — and she, Imogen, was responsible.