I swung myself into the leather armchair facing him and crossed my legs. Unlike most of the editors at the Metropolitan, Tibby didn’t smoke, and I drew in a good clean breath of leather and ink before I began.
“It all starts with a suitcase, Mr. Tibbs. A suitcase sent to my apartment last Saturday from Zurich, Switzerland, containing the effects of my great-aunt, Violet Schuyler, who was last seen in Berlin in the summer of 1914.”
Pause, for effect.
“Go on,” said Tibby.
“It turns out that Aunt Violet left home in 1911 to study as an atomic physicist at Oxford. She married her professor, the head of a prestigious institute, and they moved to Berlin, where he was found in his apartment, murdered, just before the First World War broke out.”
“Who murdered him?”
I raised my finger. “That, you see, is the mystery. No one was ever found guilty. But Aunt Violet disappeared with her lover into that hot July night, and I, Mr. Tibbs”—I stabbed my finger into the wooden armrest—“I intend to find out what happened.”
Tibby knit his hands together over his professorial waistcoat. “And you plan to do this how?”
“First, I want access to the Metropolitan archives.”
“Continue.”
“Second, I happen to have the contents of Aunt Violet’s suitcase.”
“Which are?”
My brave finger crumpled against the armrest. “I haven’t opened it yet.”
“Why not?”
“The lock’s a little rusty.”
No one held a silence like Tibby. His pale eyes examined the pores of my forehead, the whites of my eyes, the tenor of my thoughts. “Fair enough. Continue.”
Damn it all, my palms were damp. I prided myself on my dry palms. I opened my hands a crack to let the healing air inside. “I will proceed with my research based on the information I discover in the suitcase.”
“Who was her lover?”
“Her lover?”
“Violet’s lover. Who was he?”
“I don’t know. You perceive they would have kept the affair secret.”
“May I humbly suggest, Miss Schuyler, that the name of the lover might prove a logical fact with which to anchor your research—”
The heart soared. “Absolutely, Mr. Tibbs. The highest priority.”
“—if I were to commission this story. Which I am not.”
The heart crashed. “You’re not? But you just said—”
“I would suggest, Miss Schuyler, if I were to commission. The conditional tense.”
“Why not, for God’s sake?”
Tibby picked up his pen and dipped it into an antique ink pot of purple-tinted glass. “Because, Miss Schuyler, you’re a fact-checker, not a writer.”
“I can write. I can write this story.”
“Nevertheless. I need you to check facts, not invent them.”
I bolted to my feet. “You’re making a mistake.”
“No, I’m not.”
“This is a good story, Mr. Tibbs. A great story, and I’m the only one who can write it. I’m the only one in this office who can find out what happened, the only person anywhere.”
“Except this Violet herself.”
“Dead, we can safely presume. Or she would have turned up by now.”
He turned to the paper before him and began scratching with his pen. “Go back to work, Miss Schuyler. I believe you’ll find a few new items in your box.”
I put my fingers back on the desk, right before his paper and his scribbling black enamel. My gold Hermès bracelet made a satisfying clink against the wood, trumping effortlessly the prestige of the Cross pen. “I’m going to do this story, whether you commission it or not. I’m going to find out what happened to Violet, I’m going to write the best damned article this magazine has ever seen. And you will be damned well begging me for it by the time I’m done.”
I didn’t wait for a reply. I turned back toward the door from whence I prowled and flung it open. Just before I slammed it shut in a skull-rattling crash, I heard Tibby’s voice growl out behind me.
“Now, that’s the proper spirit, Miss Schuyler.”
Violet
Even now, when Violet thinks of Dr. Winslow’s surgery in George Street—which she tries not to do, which she has striven valiantly to obliterate from her memory—she is seized with mortal terror.
It wasn’t that Dr. Winslow was cruel. On the contrary, he smiled at her warmly when she entered the surgery, shook her hand with cordial strength, settled her in a chair, and asked her the most intimate questions with such ease and matter-of-factness that all trace of Violet’s embarrassment dissolved within minutes.