Lethal Legacy

THIRTY-FOUR

“Have I tired you, Miss Eliot?” I asked. “I think you’ve triggered some information that can help us figure out why you were attacked.”

“I’m just getting warmed up for you. Do go on. I’d like to be helpful.”

“A girl was murdered this week. A conservator who used to work at the library but was involved with private collectors most recently.”

“I heard something about it on the radio this morning. Terribly sad.”

“Mercer and I have been all through the library. No one said anything about an actual apartment within it. Is that what you mean?”

“In 1908, even before the library opened, a man named John Fedeler was named chief engineer. There was a seven-room apartment built for him to live in with his family, and when it came time for him to retire eighteen years later, that’s when my father got the job and we moved in.”

“What was it like then?” I asked.

“Quite a spectacular space, really, especially coming from a tenement in Hell’s Kitchen, where my parents had lived. It was an enormous duplex, with an entrance on the mezzanine floor, facing the central courtyard of the building. All paneled in the finest walnut. Big fireplaces and leather armchairs that my mother used to sit in at night, reading to us.”

Jane Eliot seemed to delight in her reminiscences. “It’s where I was raised, Alex. We were the envy of all the children at school.”

“What’s become of that apartment, do you know?” I asked, as Mercer drew his chair in as close to her as mine.

“I get invited back every few years, a bit like a dog and pony show, to some of those luncheons. The president occasionally puts me on display as the only baby ever born inside the place,” Eliot said. “But the whole apartment is broken up now.”

“What’s it used for?”

“The top floor, where we children lived, that’s all become administrative offices. There was a wonderful spiral staircase, so we could go up and down without entering the library hallway. I suppose that’s still in place. Our kitchen is the reproduction center-Xeroxing and that kind of thing. And the family living chambers are where some of the special collections are sorted out.”

“You’re saying the apartment was self-contained, is that right?” Mercer asked. “But were you allowed into the library itself?”

“That was the great fun of it, of course. I mean, we always had to wait until all the offices were closed for the evening, but gradually, as time went by, Father let us have the run of the place. After dark, mostly, when it was quite spooky, full of great shadows that came from the streetlights outside, and an eerie quiet that settled over the enormous hallways.”

“The books, Miss Eliot,” I asked. “Did you have access to the books?”

“Mercy, yes. We thought the whole place was just a playground for the three of us. Roller-skating down those hallways in the evening, playing hide-and-seek in that great reading room.

“Christmas Day, once, George and our cousins decided to play stickball in the corridor on the third floor,” she went on, rubbing her hands together as she pulled up images from her youth. “He just went into one of the collections-things weren’t all locked up back then-and grabbed the biggest books he could find to be the bases. Turned out they were all important double folios. Rare volumes of prints and such, worth a fortune. George got the whipping of a lifetime for that.”

“George?” Mercer said, trying to keep up with her.

“My older brother was George Eliot,” she said. “Mind you, my mother didn’t even have a high school education. When my father got the job there, she decided to name all her children after writers. She didn’t know George Eliot was a woman until she began to educate herself with all the wonderful treasures under our roof.”

“For whom were you named?” I asked.

“Jane Austen. I’m Jane Austen Eliot. I had a big sister, too. Edith Wharton Eliot. Both my siblings are gone now, but my niece and nephews are very good to me.”

“I can appreciate that-mine are, too,” I said. “Tell us more about the books, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ve always loved books, of course, and that may be because I grew up surrounded by them. They were the center of the universe in our family.”

“Did you have books of your own?”

“Our father made it very clear to us that everything in the library was very special, that none of it belonged to us. But for every holiday the trustees would present us with books. I remember our birthdays in particular. After we returned from school, if it was a birthday, we’d get called to the president’s office, all dressed up in our best, and one of the board members would give us a gift, explaining the importance of the particular book and its author.”

“Sounds like a fine little ceremony.”

“Oh, it really was. I got my first Pride and Prejudice that way. They were always heavy on Austen for me, of course. I’ve had a lifetime of pleasure because of those gifts, Alex. It made the loss of my vision even more painful.”

“The books that were presented to you, Miss Eliot, were they ordinary things you could buy in a store?”

“There’s no such thing as an ordinary book, is there? But these were always particularly unusual. Beautifully bound in Moroccan leather, or fixed up in those-what do you call them?-clamshell boxes, I think. I can still remember how it felt to hold and smell them for the first time.”

“Did you know the trustees?”

“Most of them knew my father well, of course. He was responsible for making sure that their treasures were safe and protected, at least according to the methods available back then. He made sure their great institution ran like a smoothly sailing ship. And my mother catered some of their smaller meetings-everything homemade, right in our kitchen. She was really a saint.”

“These gifts you received,” Mercer asked, “were they new books?”

“Some were, some weren’t, as I recall it.” Jane Eliot put her elbow on the arm of the chair and closed her eyes to think. “Later, as I learned more about these things, I’d have to assume that we got some of the castoffs, either second or third editions of books that were of no value to the great collectors, or copies that had been damaged by tears or discolorations. Still, Alex, they opened the world to me. All the classics, all the great literature you could imagine. The three of us were grateful to have them.”

I could hardly contain my excitement. The perp must have staged this burglary to get at something Jane Eliot owned, something she didn’t even realize was of value.

“The books that you were presented with, Miss Eliot, are they still in your apartment?”

She stretched her right leg and groaned, bending to tug at her hose. “I gave them away ten years ago, maybe more. What’s the use, I thought? I’d read and reread them, when I had my sight. Time to let the next generation enjoy.”

“But you know where they are?” Mercer asked.

“Gone to my great-nieces and-nephews.”

“How lucky they are to have them,” I said. “Is your family here, in the city?”

“Gosh, no. Some of them are upstate in Buffalo, and others are out in Santa Fe. Must be several hundred books, all split up between the relatives.”

I sat back in my chair, as deflated as the burglar must have been to come up empty after ransacking Eliot’s apartment.

“Not a single one that you kept for yourself?” Mercer asked.

“Help me up, Pridgen, will you?” Jane Eliot said. “My joints get all locked tight if I sit too long.”

The sergeant helped her get to her feet.

“Walk with me, please,” she said, linking arms with Mercer and with me as we stood up. She moved toward the door of the room. “There was only one that I kept. Had to keep, actually. Edith’s daughter would have nothing to do with it.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

She winced as she put her weight on her left leg. “My sister, Edith, had a very special book presented to her on her twelfth birthday. I remember so well because I was terribly envious when she brought it back to the apartment.”

“What was it?”

“You may be able to make more sense of what happened than I ever did,” Eliot said. “Because of your job, I mean. Nobody talked about things like that back then. It was a copy of Alice in Wonderland. Quite a dazzling one.”

Mercer and I exchanged glances over Jane Eliot’s head.

“Dazzling?” he asked. “How so? Was it old?”

“Indeed it was-old and wonderfully illustrated with those drawings by John Tenniel that became so famous. The date in it was 1866.”

I thought of the call slip that had been found in Tina Barr’s clothing.

“Did it ever belong to the library?” I asked.

“Not this one, I don’t believe. Most of our gifts were donations from one trustee or another. From time to time, books were quietly deaccessioned from the collections of course, especially if some more desirable copy came along. But we could tell if that were the case. There were markings inside the jackets with the name of the library branch, and those were crossed through to show that the book had been discarded, so we knew we wouldn’t get in any trouble.”

“Edith’s gift sounds very special.”

“Oh, yes. That was obvious. It was bound in the most glorious red leather, with gold lettering on the spine and gilt designs all over the cover. And then there was its size-we’d never had books of our own quite that big.”

Jane Eliot let go of my arm and drew an outline in the air. “You know, sort of double folio, if you’re familiar with that.”

“I’ve seen other copies of the early editions, though, and I never knew any to be oversize,” I said.

“Well, you’re right. The manuscript was of average size, for an illustrated work of that period, I’m sure. But this particular edition had been mounted on larger parchment pages and bound into this folio because it also included a rare set of prints of the photographs that Charles Dodgson-Lewis Carroll, you know-took of young Alice.”

“The photographs were inside the book?” I asked.

“There was a pocket sewn into the back of the book. That’s where the photos were. We could take them out and look at them, spread them out on the living room floor,” she said. “In fact, that’s what got Edith in trouble with Mother.”

Jane Eliot shuffled down the hallway of the hospital, continuing to talk to us.

“Why?” I asked.

“The book wasn’t a problem. We’d all read the story dozens of times. But those photographs? My goodness. Must have been weeks after Edith’s birthday, Mother happened upon the picture of that child dressed as a beggar maid, with her bare shoulders-you know the one I mean?”

“Yes, Miss Eliot. It’s a very famous image.”

“Well, it convinced my mother that Dodgson was a pedophile. She wouldn’t have us looking at a little girl displaying herself that way.”

“Alex was just telling me that story about him,” Mercer said. “I’d never heard it before.”

“What did your mother do?” I asked.

“That was the last we saw of the book, until she lay on her deathbed. She forbade Edith to have it, which created its own stir at the time. Then Mother asked one of the curators in the children’s collection to do some research about Dodgson. What she learned was that Alice Liddell’s mother had a big falling out with him. Tore up all the correspondence that he’d had with Alice. That inflamed my mother even more.”

Mercer tried to frame a question. “Because she thought he’d been…?”

“Inappropriate, sir. That’s as explicit as we got in those days,” Eliot said. “It seems Mrs. Liddell found every letter the man sent to her daughter-mind you, she was only eleven or twelve at the time, and he was a grown man-and she ripped them to shreds. That’s a fact. And then, when Dodgson died, he left thirteen volumes of diaries. A record of his entire life. But someone in his family was worried enough about the contents to destroy the four years-every page of them-that detailed his friendship with Alice.”

“So your mother confiscated the book,” I said.

“First thing she did. Poor Edith-the girl had a tantrum over that. I can still hear her screams. The next thing was, my mother had it in her head to go after the trustee who’d given my sister the book. She found some letters he’d written to Edith after the day he met her, telling her how proud he was of her school grades.”

“How did he know about them?” Mercer asked.

“Some of the trustees-the nice ones-used to ask us questions like that when they came to see Father, or on the holidays. Harmless enough. What books did we like? What subjects were we studying? We were the library’s little family, you see. But Edith kept the notes this man had sent her, offering to take her out in his automobile-nobody had cars in those days-show her parts of the city she hadn’t seen. He didn’t have a daughter, he said. Just a boy. Said he wanted to be her friend.”

“I can understand why that upset your mother,” I said. “Edith was only twelve at the time, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. Just like Alice Liddell. So Mother went on a rampage. I was there the afternoon she came home and told Edith that she had walked all the way up Fifth Avenue to his mansion, the day after a terrible snowstorm. Knocked on the door and demanded to see the man. She wanted to give him back his book. Can you imagine her taking on such a rich and powerful person as a trustee of the New York Public Library?” Eliot asked, proud of her mother’s spirit. “She came back and told Edith there’d be no more presents from him, and no more visits.”

“Miss Eliot,” I said, trying not to get ahead of myself. “Do you know the man’s name? The trustee who gave Edith the book?”

Her slippers scuffed along the linoleum floor.

“Of course I do,” she said. “It was Jasper Hunt. Jasper Hunt. Edith said he called himself the Mad Hatter. Oh, she was very peeved at Mother for ruining her fun.”

Jasper Hunt Jr., the eccentric owner of the rarest map in the world.

“Did Edith ever tell you what she meant by her ‘fun’?” I asked.

“Not what you’re thinking, Alex. No, no. Mr. Hunt never did anything improper, Edith assured me of that. But Mother’s concern was with his intentions. And for Edith, it seemed like she’d been deprived of a great adventure, a chance to be treated like a grown-up. In hindsight, I’d say Mother nipped something in the bud.”

“And the book-how did you come to have the book?”

“Mr. Hunt was very patient with my mother. He brought her inside, had her served tea and pastries, and removed the photographs that had offended her. He told her that she must keep the book. That one day it would be worth a lot of money and she couldn’t deprive Edith of that.”

“So your mother returned home with the book?” Mercer asked.

“Yes, but she had made such a fuss about the whole thing that she never admitted it to us. Not till just before she died. She’d kept it on a shelf in her linen closet all those years. Finally told Edith to take it and have it appraised.”

“But you said Edith didn’t want it.”

“She was stubborn, my sister,” Jane Eliot said. “She felt it had spoiled her birthday. Didn’t want anything to do with it. The whole episode had embarrassed her with the staff and all that. You know how girls that age are.”

“I sure do,” I said. “Did you ever show the book to a dealer?”

“A couple of years ago, after Edith passed on, I called someone at the library. I wouldn’t know how to find a reputable dealer. The president’s assistant gave me the name of a man who worked closely with them, she said. I’ve forgotten it at this point. Anyway,” Jane Eliot said, “by the time I got around to contacting him, my letter was answered by the FBI. They told me the fellow was in jail. Now, that was quite a shock, since it was the library folks who had recommended him to me.”

“It must have been Eddy Forbes,” I said.

“Forbes. That could have been the name.”

“Did you describe the book to him in your letter?”

“Yes. That was the point of speaking with him, wasn’t it? I had left several phone messages, too. After that,” Jane Eliot said, “it just didn’t seem worth bothering, if even the dealers turned out to be thieves. I really wasn’t interested in its dollar value. I don’t want for anything, and my relatives have plenty of other rare books. It wasn’t mine, after all.”

“So you have it still?”

“I did, until just a few months ago,” Jane Eliot said, stopping in her tracks. “I gave it back.”

“Back?” I asked. “To the library?”

“No, no. I did my genealogy, dear. Easy to do with folks as well known as the Hunts. It turns out that old Mr. Hunt had one son, just as he had told my mother. Jasper Hunt the Third, who’s even older than I am. I wasn’t about to give anything to him.”

She squeezed my hand and smiled again.

“But I learned there’s also a granddaughter. A woman named Minerva. So I wrote her a note. I told her about the book, about our family’s connection to the library,” the old woman said, pointing toward the door of her room and directing us toward it. “I left out my mother’s suspicions about Minerva’s grandfather, of course.”

“Did she return your correspondence?”

“She didn’t seem the least bit interested at first. I didn’t get a reply for several weeks. Then I wrote again. My writing isn’t too neat, because of my vision. Of course, I can’t see the detail on the pages of that old book very well anymore, but I tried to describe how beautiful it was. I told her about the map that the Mad Hatter had tucked in that pocket in the back, with the photographs.”

Mercer jumped in before I could open my mouth. “There was a map?”

“When my mother was dying and she told Edith and me about the book, she said that Mr. Hunt had insisted she keep the map. The very first day we had opened the book, we saw the map, of course. George spread it out on the floor at once, but it wasn‘t nearly so interesting to us as the photographs.”

“But why was there a map?” he asked.

“Do you remember that Alice -the one in Wonderland-went to a tea party?”

“Sure, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare were there,” I said. “But what did the map have to do with the tea party?”

Jane Eliot slowly started to move again. “Let me think what Mother said. It was a big old map, folded up several times, as I recall. It was a picture of the island of Ceylon. Mr. Hunt said that’s where the tea came from. The tea for the party.”

Jasper Hunt certainly lived up to his reputation for eccentricity.

“He told Mother to leave the map right where it was. That it would increase the value of the book, in the end. He said he wanted to make up for alarming her, to do right by Edith,” Jane Eliot said. “So Mother saw no harm in keeping it. Like Jasper told her, he loved the library, too, and knew that we did. She had her piece of the Hunt legacy.”