The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf

Chapter Twenty-Four

“MARGAUX WILL MEET US TOMORROW AT THE Connaught,” Marcus Symonds-Jones said as he cradled his phone. “Nine-ish, I should think. Coffee and croissants, no doubt. The cow quite liked the notion of holding court; a spot of breakfast should lull her into a false sense of complacency.” “Why false?” Gray Westlake demanded. “She has the manuscript. She has the upper hand.”

“So she believes. But is the notebook a genuine Woolf?” “Surely somebody here at Sotheby’s can tell us that.” Marcus smiled. He thought, but did not say, And set an excellent price for it, you poor bugger.

“I’m coming to that meeting,” Imogen Cantwell announced belligerently. “Someone must represent The Family’s interest.”

“Why not one of the Nicolsons themselves?” Gray suggested.

The change in Imogen’s expression was comical to behold; she was at once appalled and flummoxed.

“Too soon,” Marcus said smoothly. “And unnecessarily complicating. If we involve The Family, we involve the Trust, and our ability to contain the negative aspects of this unfortunate affair — for Imogen, and your friend Miss Bellamy — may be quite limited.”

“Not to mention the nasty blowback for Sotheby’s,” Gray offered.

Marcus merely inclined his head.

“This woman — Margaux Strand — had no idea where her ex-husband might be?”

“None, I’m afraid.”

Gray steepled his fingers thoughtfully, his gaze on a spot somewhere above Marcus’s head.

“It’s gone well beyond my ability to understand,” Imogen said forcefully. “Jo scarpers with the notebook, brings your bloody man on, and then hands over the goods to his ex-wife without so much as a murmur. It doesn’t seem likely to me. I smell something rotten. And it’s coming from that Margaux woman’s behind.”

Gray Westlake rose abruptly, as though he could not endure another second in the department head’s room; and Marcus thought, He’s wondering the same thing. Why has this bird of his run off with Llewellyn, if she’s not authenticating the Woolf? And what, for that matter, is Peter up to? Margaux’s nasty bit of news has thrown us all for a tumble, and no mistake. Steady, Marcus old sod; you’ll have to manage things quite cannily at the Connaught tomorrow, or find yourself without a buyer.…

He was grinning broadly as he ushered Gray and the Cantwell creature to the door. The American, he gathered, had handsomely offered to foot Imogen’s hotel bill. Poor fool. He must really care about Jo Bellamy. But didn’t Marcus recollect that there was a Mrs. Westlake somewhere?

That was a piece of information, he decided, as he closed his office door behind them, he really must research more thoroughly before morning.

IN THE END IT WAS A NAME, AFTER ALL, THAT GOT JO’S attention.

Letter from H. Nicolson to JMK, 4 April 1941.

“H. Nicolson,” she murmured. “Harold? — Vita’s Harold? Peter — ”

He looked at her as though surfacing from deep water, blond hair scattered over his eyes.

“Harold Nicolson wrote to Keynes. A few days after Virginia may have shown up at Sissinghurst. Should I get the letter from the archive?”

“Might as well.” He shrugged. “It’s probably about the war. Everything was, then.”

“Have you found anything?”

“Not much,” he admitted grudgingly. “Mostly domestic accounts, notes about renovation projects at Tilton House, Keynes’s plans for his garden — it looks like he borrowed Duncan Grant from Charleston to draft part of those, you’d find them interesting I daresay — ”

“But we don’t have time.” She copied the letter notation from the index card carefully; it might have nothing to do with Virginia, after all, but she’d failed to discover anything else. And she was curious about Harold Nicolson. Hadji. He was a vague outline in the Woolf notebook, a Sissinghurst ghost, most present in Vita’s loneliness.

The letter was on microfiche. It took seven precious minutes to retrieve it.

Sissinghurst

4 April 1941

My dear Maynard —

You will find it intolerable cheek, my writing to you like this, without warning or the delicate veils of diplomacy we two usually cast, over such trivialities as where to dine and with whom, the details as codified and mutually agreed as we once demanded of our treaties at Versailles — but I am uneasy in my mind, and as the uneasiness involves my wife, I will make no further apology for demanding what I may of your time.

Vita has had an unexpected visitor to stay at Sissinghurst. A visitor from the grave, one might almost say, and her appearance on the doorstep has tangled us in all the toils of broken marriage and fractured mind. Her history of nervous complaint and instability are strong marks against any tale she might tell — but I found myself compelled to listen when we spoke on Tuesday. I had gone down to Kent from London at my wife’s request, and her friend’s account of recent events in Sussex — as well as the part you and your Cambridge friends played there — can only be described as shocking. I do not pretend to know the workings of military intelligence; I am but a poor player on the Ministry of Information’s stage; but it would seem to me that higher authority ought to have been consulted. You will argue that you, yourself, represent that authority; I decline to be persuaded.

Our friend has written an account of what she witnessed, and all she suspects. Some of it is quite fantastic — and I might regard it as another demonstration of her genius, a bit of dark fantasy brought on by this desperate war — had it not been for that unfortunate young Dutchman’s death reported in The Times only yesterday morning. There will be an inquest, no doubt, and the matter will be properly hushed up — but it is all, as I say, quite shocking.

Our friend has placed the chief of her testimony in my hands for safekeeping. I might have dispatched it to her husband, along with the lady herself; but The Times has unsettled me, rather. I shall therefore place her pages where no one shall disturb them — set an angelic host about them, as it were — until such time as she may have need of them.

Should you wish to consult me on this matter, I am only too willing to make myself available.

Cordially,

Harold Nicolson

“It has to be Virginia,” Jo said.

Peter was skimming the copy of the letter she’d printed from microfiche. “All very mysterious on Nicolson’s part. And rather menacing, don’t you think? I know what you’ve done, Maynard, me lad, and so does Virginia. Only, what’d he do? Who was the young Dutchman? And why should Harold or Keynes care that the fellow was dead?”

“Because Keynes was involved,” Jo suggested. She was feeling her way through the density of Harold Nicolson’s language. “Remember Vanessa Bell’s mural — Virgin and Apostle. Keynes begging forgiveness, from a figure that could be Virginia. Keynes must have had a part in something that happened before she left her husband — something that haunted her, maybe even the thing that drove her away, in the end. A few days later, she confided in Harold Nicolson; and he sent off this letter.”

“It’s a threat, isn’t it, from first to last? He might almost have said: Harm her, and we publish.”

“Except that he was too well-mannered. Invoking his wife. Apologizing for Virginia’s nuttiness. And then throwing down his glove — ”

“Only to fail.” Peter’s expression was uneasy. “Because if you’re right — and she didn’t go into that river of her own accord — ”

Dread curled in the pit of Jo’s stomach. “Why did she go to Harold Nicolson in the first place — Why couldn’t her husband protect her?”

“Because Leonard Woolf was one of Keynes’s ‘Cambridge friends,’” Peter said patiently. “Leonard was an Apostle, remember?”

Ivy Gupta’s slim brown form appeared in the doorway; she did not speak, but the very blandness of her expression was a summons. The Archive was closing.

Peter ignored the librarian. “Did you notice this faint handwriting at the foot of the letter?” He held the copy of the letter under the desk lamp that anchored one end of the research table. “It’s not the same as Nicolson’s. Much more crabbed. Can you make it out?”

Ms. Gupta cleared her throat warningly.

“I think that word is burned,” Jo suggested.

“Burned? Possibly… What about buried? Yes, I’m almost certain it’s buried. Buried Rodmell April. Now what does that mean? If it’s Keynes’s hand — ”

“Then he was closing the file, so to speak,” Jo said thoughtfully. “Keynes buried something at Rodmell in April. Where’s Rodmell? It sounds familiar.”

“It should. Virginia lived there. I told you. A place called Monk’s House. It’s not far from Charleston.”

Buried Rodmell April.

Jo’s heart sank; of course there was a burial in April. At the close of that month in 1941, Virginia Woolf’s body was fished from the River Ouse.

What if something else had been buried with her? Something that had worried Maynard Keynes far more than Virginia herself?

“Aren’t you dying to know,” Peter muttered as they returned the microfiche and the contents of the Tilton file, “who that Dutchman was — and why he died?”

GRAY WESTLAKE DIDN’T EVEN ATTEMPT TO CALL JO THAT evening. The knowledge that she’d lost the notebook she was supposed to be tracing — and was still running around England with this guy from Sotheby’s, when she knew that he, Gray, had flown all the way to London simply to be with her — had changed his attitude in a matter of seconds. It was clear that Jo didn’t give a shit about him. She’d turned her back when he’d opened his heart and mind in a way he’d no longer thought possible — when he’d shown her his trust, and vulnerability. Gray thought of some of the things he’d said before she ran out of his hotel suite, and felt searingly embarrassed. Jo hadn’t even done him the courtesy of telling him the truth, to his face.

I can’t buy her, goddamn it.

And with that thought, he missed her acutely. It was possible she was the only person who’d ever been out of his reach.

Gray had called the Connaught and reserved a room for Imogen Cantwell, packed her off in a taxi, and walked away down New Bond Street.

He’d toyed with the idea of heading for Gatwick, where his jet was idling. Maybe it was time to give up and go home. There would be a certain satisfaction in pulling out of this mess right now — Jo might even be arrested! — when he, Gray, could so easily save her. He had a sudden vision of the Woolf manuscript, retrieved from that Oxford professor tomorrow morning, and a tongue-tied Jo attempting to thank him for keeping her out of prison. He’d tell her then, with the ruthlessness he was known for, that she was no longer in charge of designing Westwind’s gardens. That her expenses for this bizarre week in England were her own. But the impulse died a swift death. The notebook was no longer the point — she’d given it away. It didn’t matter whether Gray bought it or not. There was no guarantee he’d ever see Jo again.

He walked on, heading south down the Strand toward the river. The absolute dark of a north European night was falling swiftly over the city; London was all black cabs, shining headlights, the sudden stab of neon. It was rare for Gray to be entirely alone — he hired people, he married them, in order to avoid solitude — but tonight the loneliness was welcome. It clarified his thoughts.

What was Peter Llewellyn like? What spell had he cast over Jo?

What does he have that I don’t?

There was a restaurant just opposite — a simple sign, a sheltered doorway: RULES. Gray thought vaguely that he’d heard of it before. A steak, perhaps. A double scotch on the rocks. The table tucked into a fold of drapery, no one but the waiter coming near.

He would eat a good meal. Think things over. Then go back to the Connaught and ask them to hold all calls. He would fire up his laptop and compose an email — a private one, to the head of his investment firm’s research department.

Find out all there is to know about Margaux Strand, Oxford professor, and Peter Llewellyn, Sotheby’s employee, before nine A.M. Greenwich Mean Time.