“You are the best, best friend in the whole world, Vivs,” she said, looking into my eyes with her watery own, believing in my innocence so profoundly that I almost believed in it myself.
All right. I hugged her. I dare anyone to resist hugging Gogo when she looked at you like that, like a koala bear lost and found again. “I want every detail. I want to know exactly how he asks. Bended knee, the works. And nobody sees the ring before I do, Gogo. Not even your father.”
She gurgled into my hair. “I promise. Oh! That reminds me!”
“What?” I asked innocently. Hopefully.
She pulled back and wagged her finger near my nose. “You have your own details to spill, Miss Femme Fatale. Tell me about Saturday!”
“I can’t now, Gogo. It’s a long story, and I have to—you know—W-O-R-K. Did you happen to speak to your little old father about my little old research?”
Guilty. “Not yet. I was thinking . . . well, it might be easier to ask him after lunch. You know, when I tell him the good news.”
As I said before, not the bravest fusilier in the firing line, our Gogo. Still. “Not a bad plan, I guess.”
“And then I can join you in there, and you can tell me all about Mr. Saturday while you’re doing your research! It’s perfect!”
“Gogo, dearest, that’s the thing about a job, you’re supposed to be actually doing it when you’re at work.” Actually, I wasn’t quite sure what Gogo was supposed to be doing at the Metropolitan, at least in an official capacity. I think she was some sort of secretary to her father, but in the natural course of things, the real secretary did all the work, and Gogo simply wandered about the office, wondering how to type, shedding sunshine like a golden tabby kitten, causing even Tibby’s eagle face to soften on occasion. Our mascot. Every magazine needs a mascot. It brings us together in times of trial. I stood up and tugged her with me. “And speaking of which, I have some facts to check. Go do whatever it is you do, and bring Mr. David Perfect by my desk before you leave.”
“On approval?”
“Absolutely. He has to pass the Vivian test before he’s allowed to ask my Gogo to marry him.”
“And if he doesn’t pass?” She actually looked worried. Heartbroken, even.
I patted her cheek. “Don’t worry. The test is rigged. You’ll be married in June, and I’ll be your maid of honor.”
The arms flung around me. “I love you, Vivs!”
“I love you, too, Gogo.”
Because, really, what else could you say to that?
? ? ?
SO I CHEATED. How was I supposed to wait until after lunch before resuming my search for Aunt Violet’s past? I cleared my fact-checking box by eleven o’clock, and rather than dance triumphantly into Tibby’s office to ask for more work, I headed back into the Metropolitan’s private library to see what I could see. Oh, the library wasn’t the archives, but I knew how to lift its stones to reveal the crawlies underneath.
I started where I’d left off on Saturday, with GRANT, Walter, Ph.D. Something about that encyclopedia entry tickled at the old nostrils, my truffle pig nose for rotten goods. You had the bare facts, clear and competent, but there was always the story behind them, the real story, contained in letters lost or burnt and official records moldering in official archives. So which one was the telling fact? The one that disguised the truth?
I ran my fingers over the unromantic type. “Physical chemist, an earlier colleague of Ernest Rutherford before a professional dispute caused a rift between the two, chair of the Devonshire Institute for Physical Chemistry (Oxford), and finally a fellow at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie in Berlin, Germany, in the years before his death . . .”
Chair of the Devonshire Institute. Fellow at the Kaiser Wilhelm.
My nose twitched. Ah. Yes. But.
Why would a man at the height of his career give up a chairmanship of an Oxford University institute—Oxford, mind you!—running the whole works, directing research, his own secretary, his own name on the door, subordinates up the kowtow, to become a mere fellow at an institute in a foreign country? An Englishman, for God’s sake. Everyone knew the English were allergic to foreigners, and Germans in particular.
And all this directly after his marriage to my aunt Violet.
Had she convinced him to do it? Did she have a lover already, and want to follow him to Berlin?
Or something else?
I laid my fingers on the page and closed my eyes. The trouble was, I didn’t know either of them. I didn’t know what they were like. I needed something else, some insight into their characters. Something personal. If only Grandfather or Grandmother were still alive. Or even Aunt Christina.
Now. I did have Aunt Violet’s suitcase. But I didn’t have the key to its lock, and, furthermore, said lock might possibly accidentally have proved rustily resistant to the prodding of a skillful hairpin. Should said skillful hairpin have been applied to said rusty lock, say, last night before bedkins.