The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf (22 page)

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
.

“HERE.” PETER SHIFTED HIS CHAIR AROUND SO THAT Jo could view the computer screen. “That’s our boy. Jan Willem Ter Braak. Found shot to death in an air raid shelter here in Cambridge, of all places, on the first of April, 1941.”

Peter had accessed the online archives of
The Times
while they waited for Indian curry at an Internet café. He was drinking beer, while Jo opted for white Burgundy; the smell of roast chicken and yams was making her mouth water.

She focused on the death notice; it was extremely brief.
Dutchman Apparent Suicide
, ran the headline. The body had been discovered on the morning of April 1, 1941, with a gun beside it. Jan Willem Ter Braak was described as a Dutch refugee resident in England since the British evacuation of Dunkirk. No other details of the death were mentioned. Anyone with
information regarding Ter Braak, the paper suggested, should inquire at the Cambridge police station.

“Not very useful, is it?” Peter observed.

“An air raid shelter! Weird place to commit suicide. How’d he know it’d be empty?—We have to assume it was empty, right? The article doesn’t mention any witnesses.”

“It doesn’t mention much at all.”

A waiter set down a plate of flatbreads, topped up Jo’s water glass, and left a trail of wet spots over the plastic table. She tore into a pappadam; steam burst from the center.

Peter was at his keyboard again. “Here’s a Wikipedia entry on the same fellow.”

“He’s that famous?”

“He wasn’t Dutch at all. He was a German agent named Engelbertus Fukken.”

“No wonder he preferred
Jan
. So you’re saying he was a Nazi spy?”

“Rather. The article says Ter Braak parachuted into England six months or so before he killed himself. He took rooms in Cambridge, claiming to be a Dutch national evacuated with British forces from Dunkirk.”

“But why kill himself if he was supposed to spy? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Apparently he ran out of money at the end of March ’41 and couldn’t stick it.”

“Because he was broke?” Jo frowned. “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t seem very James Bondish to me. Couldn’t he have robbed a bank?”

“Maybe he was afraid he’d be caught. And forced to betray the Reich. So he took the gentleman’s way out.”

“In an air raid shelter. That was unusually empty.”

Peter seemed determined to ignore her contempt. “Here’s
something odd. Ter Braak went missing from his boarding-house on the twenty-ninth of March.”

“The same day our journal begins.”

Peter looked at her. “But the body wasn’t found for three days.”

“It can’t have been lying in the shelter all that time,” Jo said decisively. “So Jan was somewhere else. And he definitely didn’t shoot himself. He was kidnapped, killed, and finally dumped in that shelter April first.”

Peter gazed at her pityingly. “Is it American, this need for drama? You never accept the obvious solution, do you? It’s all conspiracy, in your mind. The national disease, where you come from.”

“That’s unfair.” Jo took a bite of warm bread. There was a photograph in the Wikipedia file, grainy and indistinct. Ter Braak was curled like a question mark on what looked like a tiled floor, clumps of dirt or perhaps concrete lying around him. His hair was dark. His face was visible in profile, left cheek uppermost; blood trailed over his mouth, to pool on the tile beneath him. He wore a trench coat and what Jo guessed might be a fedora hat, still perched near his head. Gloves. Black leather shoes. Pin-striped wool trousers. It seemed incongruous, all this bundled clothing, this need to protect against a cold that was now eternal. The gun lay on the tile almost too correctly, at a right angle to the limp hand.

Her mouthful of bread was suddenly difficult to swallow; she could not look at the body of this dead stranger without remembering Jock. She coughed, turned away, and felt Peter’s hand rest lightly on her hair.

“Are you all right?”

“No,” she managed. “But don’t let that stop you. Why would the Nazis send this guy to Cambridge, anyway?”

“No idea.” Peter was studying her frankly, a question in his eyes. “I suppose the university was of interest to the Reich—there’s the Cavendish Laboratory, where some of the early atomic-bomb research went on.”

“It all sounds fishy,” Jo declared. She was determined to focus on Ter Braak, not the memory of Jock’s dead face. “We’re not getting the whole story.”

“Agreed. This entry says that the details of the suicide, and the fact that Ter Braak was a German agent, were suppressed until after the war—the government didn’t want to admit they’d let a spy run loose for so long. I imagine what few facts we’re reading are the ones they chose to publish.”

“Exactly. It’s an official version. And I’m not saying that
just because
I’m American. We know from Harold Nicolson’s letter that this…
suicide
was somehow linked to Virginia. And to J. M. Keynes. And to his
Cambridge friends.”

“Has it occurred to you,” Peter broke in, “that you have a major problem with suicide? You shove it straight out of your mind, like a child who can’t bear to look under her bed.”

She glared at him, open-mouthed. “Damn straight I do!”

“But that’s just foolish. Look—” He leaned toward her, elbows draped anyhow on the restaurant table. “You seem to find your grandfather’s death a personal challenge, a glove thrown smack in your face. When it’s nothing like that. Sometimes ending one’s life is just a
decision
. A final moment of chosen closure. It’s about self-control,
autonomy
. I’ve always regarded Woolf’s drowning in that vein—she was a middle-aged woman who fancied she could see the future, and it wasn’t the one she wanted. Sure, the act leaves unspeakable pain in its wake. But that doesn’t mean
you
caused it. Why are you clutching so tightly to this notion you failed Jock Bellamy?”

“Because…” She swallowed, shrugged hopelessly. “I should have stopped him. I should have seen how unhappy he was.”

“Was he unhappy for a long time?”

“Not that I could tell. I was clueless enough to think he was fine. But then I told him—” She glanced away, her eyes filling with tears. “I told him, back in August, that I’d been hired to copy the White Garden. I was incredibly pumped about the job, you know? I mean, this was probably the biggest coup of my career. I’ve only been in business for myself for three years, and Gray’s a
huge
client, huge. So I called up Jock and said I was flying to England to visit Sissinghurst in a couple months’ time. He’d always been the guy who celebrated most for me, when things went well. He said all the right things. He was pleased and excited for me.”