Well, I was late! I hadn’t counted on Five-O wanting to tell me all about the fifth-grade Thanksgiving feast at Nightingale-Bamford (for the record, she had been an Indian), or on Nick Junior turning up at a quarter to seven and scolding me for my performance at the Schuyler drinkies a month ago: They’re still wiping the lipstick off my cheek, Vivs. Six of them asked for your number! I’m never living it down.
So by the time Lily had shooed everyone off and called down for the doorman to find me a taxi, I had only five minutes to travel fifty city blocks on a Thursday evening. So: Step on it, I told the driver, and the next instant I found myself pinned to the seat by the gravitational force of the resulting acceleration, clutching my pocketbook to my stomach like a life belt on the Titanic. By the time we reached Thirty-fourth Street, we’d driven up on the sidewalk twice and possibly taken out a parking meter.
It wasn’t until a red light forced us to a growling stop near Grand Central Terminal that I could unclench my hand from the door handle and open up Violet’s letter. (What? Me, wait until I got home? You know better.) By now I was accustomed to her handwriting; I knew it like my own. I held the paper next to the window, where the glow of a streetlamp illuminated the words just enough, and read:
My dear Christina, I am leaving Walter . . .
Lurch went the taxi, and thump went Vivian against the seat. I righted myself and strained to hold the letter back up against the window, but the flashes of passing light weren’t quite enough to reveal the page.
. . . leaving Walter . . .
What was the date? What was the date? I hadn’t even checked. The date might make all the difference. If she’d left him first, and he’d come after her and threatened her—I knew Walter by now, I knew he had his pride, I knew he wasn’t just going to let his wife depart his control without a fight—and then the murder had taken place. Or if she’d murdered him and left him, all in the same bold stroke.
And where was Lionel Richardson in all this? Who was Lionel Richardson?
On we raced, up Park Avenue, into a ribbon of green lights. The engine was cranking now, grinding out speed in a triumphant roar. We hit a bump, and the wheels left the pavement for a weightless instant. My stomach remained suspended for considerably longer. I was going to die, and Violet’s letter with me.
I peeked over the top of the seat and saw the light turn red. The engine screamed, the taxi leapt ahead, and before I could ask God for mercy on my sin-scorched soul, we whipped around the corner of Seventieth Street and banged to a stop in front of the cool limestone face of the Lightfoot mansion.
I climbed out the door and onto the sidewalk. I maybe might have been a teensy bit shaky. Violet’s letter was clenched in my hand, my pocketbook tucked under my arm. I opened it and found a few crisp dollar bills somewhere inside. I looked at my watch, and saw it was seven-oh-three. If I’d climbed into a helicopter at Gramercy Park, we couldn’t have made it any faster.
I shoved the dollar bills through the window. “Thanks for the thrill, buddy. You might want to check those tires.”
I rang the Lightfoot doorbell. Just as the butler arrived—yes, the Lightfoots had goddamned Jeeves answering the door—I remembered Violet’s letter.
“Good evening, Miss Schuyler,” said Jeeves. (No, I didn’t know his real name.)
“Just a moment, please.” I straightened out the paper in my hands. There was no date at the top. I hunted back in my pocketbook and found the envelope.
Jeeves cleared his tactful throat. “They’re expecting you in the drawing room, Miss Schuyler.”
“One moment.” I found the postmark and stepped into the radiant entry hall. Berlin, it said. 25 JULI 1914. So had Violet written the letter on July 25, or had she written it earlier and only posted it on the twenty-fifth?
Jeeves was handing me skillfully out of my coat. “The drawing room, Miss Schuyler,” he said, with a little more vim. “Up the stairs and to the left.”
“Yes, I know. Thank you.” I folded the paper back into the envelope and stuffed it into my pocketbook. The hall smelled of orchids. As I raced up the curving stairs to the drawing room, a new and entirely different thought reared its curious head among my snapping synapses.
That hat on the hat stand. Where had I seen it before?
I reached the top of the stairs and turned left, and just as I passed through the open doorway into the monumental Lightfoot drawing room, my snapping synapses shot back an answer.
But by that time the owner of the hat was already standing white-faced before me, with his hand surrounding that of the gleaming Gogo. And lo! S. Barnard Lightfoot himself, fully recovered from the afternoon’s festivities in the Metropolitan conference room, was rising from his armchair and holding out his triumphant hand to me while his polished face smiled and smiled.
“Why, there you are, Miss Schuyler,” he said. “You’re just in time to raise a glass to the happy couple.”
Violet