“Don’t we all,” Peter muttered. And Jo realized, with a small jolt of awareness, that she was unlike the rest of the world in this — she lived to work. She loved nothing so much as planning, digging, and establishing a garden — even if, in the end, it was handed over to clients.
She stood next to Peter in the office doorway. There was only one available chair, and both of them were too conscious of the other to take it. Glenna pulled open file cabinet drawers and flipped through manila folders, edging photographs into the light just long enough to determine they were not the one she sought. Then she slammed the drawer with a decisive click and handed an eight-by-eleven print to Peter.
“Here it is. Not in the best condition, unfortunately, but it gives you an idea.”
Together, they bent their heads over it.
A black-and-white image, slightly grainy as old photographs often are. The print was cracked and stained with age; one corner was dog-eared and another was missing entirely. A few words were scrawled in the white margin at the base; Jo could not make them out.
“What is the title?” Peter asked.
“Virgin and Apostle,” Glenna replied. “As I say — a religious subject, really quite unusual for Mrs. Bell, but then again it’s hardly an ordinary depiction, is it?”
Surreal would be a better word, Jo decided — complete with Magritte’s bowler hat. One was lying in the foreground, as though it had just rolled off the head of the dark-haired man who was crouched at the base of a statue. He was seen in profile: brown-eyed, middle-aged, with a mustache and a pleading expression reminiscent of a bloodhound’s. A rectangular briefcase stood at his left knee. Papers were scattered in the grass.
“Maynard Keynes?” Peter suggested.
“Possibly,” said the guide. “Or possibly not. The quality of the photograph makes it difficult to say.”
The man in the suit was venerating — or pleading with — a fluid feminine shape, all draperies and delicate ankles. Her arms were joined over the breast in what might have been prayer. Her head was unveiled, and suggested a Greek goddess; her hair was drawn back in a classical knot at the nape; her face was an ovoid blank.
“Virgin, Virginia.” Jo said it for Peter, but it was Glenna who answered her.
“I doubt very much this is a portrait of Mrs. Woolf, if that’s what you’re suggesting. One of the grandchildren would surely have identified her.”
“Although she hated sitting for her portrait,” Jo murmured. “When was this painted, I wonder?”
Peter turned the print over and glanced at the back side. “No date.”
“We’ve talked of doing a bit of research,” Glenna offered, “but with funds so short, and the mural not a priority — ”
“What did Vanessa mean by calling Keynes the Apostle?” Jo asked. “Was he particularly devout?”
Peter frowned. “There’s no mystery about that, surely. Keynes was an Apostle. A Cambridge Apostle. He practically reformed the Society in his own image, I believe, during his days there.”
“But we can’t be sure this is a portrait of Keynes,” Glenna interjected.
There were times, Jo thought, with a surge of irritation, when she understood too well the force of Winston Churchill’s adage — that the English and Americans were one people divided by a common language. What in hell were the Cambridge Apostles? Peter referred to them as though they were as familiar as Christ’s. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Maynard… But the repetition of that single word — Apostle — had reminded her of the Lady’s notebook, at least.
“Apostles Screed,” Jo exclaimed. “It was written in the back of the notebook, right where the pages were torn out. Does that have to do with Cambridge, too?”
Peter’s gaze was still fixed on the print of the mural, but he wasn’t really looking at it anymore. He was chasing a rapid succession of thoughts Jo could track in the expressions that crossed his face.
“Screed. Screed — that could mean one of several things. Conversazione. The Ark, perhaps, or the Memoir Club,” he muttered.
Jo snorted and rolled her eyes.
“No wonder Margaux’s not here,” he persisted. “We’ve gone in completely the wrong direction, haven’t we?”
“Are you saying we should be in Cambridge?”
But at that moment, Peter’s cell phone rang.
Chapter Nineteen
MARCUS SYMONDS-JONES HAD SPENT THE FEW hours between Gray Westlake’s unexpected call and the man’s appearance in Sotheby’s book department conducting what he called due diligence. This meant an all-out assault on available information: online searches of biographic and financial data, reviews of past auction purchases, quick interrogations of Marcus’s opposite numbers in Wine Sales and European Antiques. By the time Cissy tapped her fingernail against the paneled mahogany door and slid into the room, Marcus had a rough understanding of Gray Westlake’s tastes. He knew that the man was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. He knew Gray was fifty-four years old. He knew that he bought rare cars and speculated in oil futures. He knew that Gray’s first wife liked English antiques, his second American country, and his third, Mid-Century Modern. He knew that Gray drank Bordeaux and California Cabernets, that he was a member of golf clubs all over the world, and that his five homes were scattered, at the moment, on three continents.
About Imogen Cantwell, Marcus Symonds-Jones knew absolutely nothing.
At first, he thought the woman might be Westlake’s bag carrier, but that notion was dismissed as soon as he caught a good look at her. He was surprised and slightly unnerved as he bared his teeth and extended his hand to grasp Gray’s own; if the man had brought a manuscripts expert to his first meeting — and Imogen was just frumpy enough to pass for one — then the American was in deadly earnest.
“Do tell me how I can be of help,” Marcus boomed, as Gray stood before his desk. He would have liked to have sat down himself, but the other man wasn’t bending, and Marcus saw that he was waiting for Imogen Cantwell to take a seat first. She seemed oblivious of this, her gaze fixed malevolently on Marcus; he recoiled as she thrust out a work-hardened finger.
“Was it you that woman talked to? When she brought her stolen goods to market?”
“Sorry?”
“A book expert, she said. At Sotheby’s. Was it you?”
Marcus blinked, his eyes shifting to Gray Westlake’s.
The American smiled. “Let’s sit down, shall we? Miss Cantwell? Have a seat?”
Grudgingly, Imogen lowered her bulk into one of Marcus’s beloved Bauhaus chairs — white leather and steel, he’d saved for months to buy them before they’d even gone on preview. Everything in his office was deliberately chosen to offset the fusty image of Rare Books and Manuscripts, to scream in the broadest visual accent: HEDGE FUND OPERATORS TAKE NOTE: WORDS ARE HIP, TOO!
He wanted to ask what the fuck these two were talking about, but as they obviously assumed he knew, he sank instead into his chair and made a pretense of stabbing his keyboard. “Right. It’s a pleasure to have you at Sotheby’s again, Mr. Westlake — and to welcome you to Rare Books! I understand you’d like Miss…”
“Cantwell,” Imogen supplied.
“… to sit in on our meeting?”
“I thought her information could be helpful.” There was a hint of amusement in Gray’s eyes that Marcus immediately resented.
“You said something about a Woolf manuscript, is that right? You think you’ve found one, or that perhaps we have one — am I correct? What sort of manuscript, exactly?”
“A bloody great find, which that woman snatched right out from under our noses, that’s what you’ve got,” Imogen Cantwell snarled. She was leaning toward Marcus now, her breasts swaying in her wool jumper. “She brought it here under false pretenses. I’ve come to get it back. It’s as much as my job is worth if The Family finds out it’s gone.”