Chương 7
Evelyn read it twice.
Her father watched her face. “What is it?”
“Gideon has been taken to the hospital.”
He reached for his jacket.
“No.”
“He may know where the book is.”
“That is why you want to go?”
“He is my friend.”
“You suspended him yesterday.”
“I served with him for forty-three years.”
“And how many of those years did you spend waiting for him to become a better man than you were willing to be?”
Her father’s hand remained on the jacket.
Evelyn left him standing there.
Gideon Bell had not suffered a stroke, as the first messages suggested. He was dehydrated, exhausted, and experiencing an irregular heartbeat his cardiologist had warned him about for years. He had spent most of the night aboard a thirty-eight-foot sailboat at Commercial Wharf after dismissing the marina attendant and turning off his phone.
Mara sat in the hospital corridor wearing the same midnight-blue dress beneath a camel coat. A paper cup of water rested untouched between her hands.
When Evelyn approached, Mara stood.
“You told them,” she said.
“Told whom what?”
“The board. About the book.”
“I learned about the book after you accused me.”
“My father says your department mishandled the title records.”
“Your father’s family has concealed the title records for nearly fifty years.”
Mara’s face changed.
Evelyn had expected denial. What she saw was recognition.
“You knew,” she said.
“Not all of it.”
“How much?”
Mara looked toward the closed hospital room. “He told me the club had no right to keep the book.”
“When?”
“Last month.”
“And you said nothing.”
“He said he was negotiating its return.”
“To whom?”
“The Lydian heirs.”
“That is not true.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The reversionary claim belongs to your family’s holding company.”
Mara looked away.
A nurse pushed a supply cart past them. One wheel clicked at every rotation. At the far end of the corridor, a television played a morning talk show with the sound off. The hosts laughed beneath captions about kitchen storage.
Evelyn sat in the chair opposite Mara.
“Where is the book?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you know he removed it?”
“I knew he had it examined.”
“Where?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Your father anticipated being removed, left you instructions about the Halcyon file, and disappeared to a boat after transferring a four-million-dollar artifact. You know more than you are saying.”
Mara’s fingers tightened around the paper cup. “Do you remember my mother’s funeral?”
The question was so unexpected that Evelyn did not answer.
“You came late,” Mara said. “You stood at the back with Admiral Rowan. You left before the reception.”
“I had just started at the National Maritime Archive. I had a flight.”
“You always have a respectable reason.”
“Mara.”
“My father spent two years paying for her care while the club pretended he was distracted by grief. He missed meetings. Crane and the others discussed replacing him. Your father defended him. After she died, the club was the only thing he had left that still behaved as though he mattered.”
“That does not explain the book.”
“No. It explains why he could not bear to be the man who lost it.”
Evelyn watched Mara crush the rim of the cup.
“He discovered the reversion clause during an insurance review,” Mara continued. “He thought he could negotiate with the Lydian family before anyone found out. Then he learned Halcyon still controlled the claim. His father had placed it in the family trust.”
“So he controlled both sides of the dispute.”
“He believed that gave him a way to fix it.”
“By removing the book?”
“By moving it before the insurer froze access.”
“Where?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
The hospital room door opened. A physician stepped out, spoke quietly to Mara, and said Gideon could have one visitor for five minutes.
Mara looked at Evelyn.
“My father asked for you.”
Gideon Bell looked diminished without a tailored jacket. He lay propped against white pillows in a hospital gown, his silver-gray hair uncombed, adhesive pads visible beneath the collar. His face remained handsome in the exhausted way of men who had spent decades being told that age improved them.
Evelyn stood near the foot of the bed.
“You should sit,” he said.
“I’m comfortable.”
“No one is comfortable standing like that.”
“You asked to see me.”
He breathed through his nose, slowly. “Mara shouldn’t have touched you.”
“That is not our urgent problem.”
“No. But it was ugly.”
The word sounded strangely tender in his voice.
“Where is the Lydian book?”
“Safe.”
“That is not a location.”
“It is more than the board deserves.”
“You did not remove it from the board. You removed it from the public, from scholars, from the Lydian family, and from my custody.”
“Your custody was convenient fiction.”
“My staff cared for it.”
“I don’t dispute that.”
“Then where is it?”
He looked toward the window. The view was mostly another wing of the hospital and a strip of winter sky.
“I wanted your father to tell you,” he said.
“He did.”
“All of it?”
“Enough.”
Gideon closed his eyes.
“Did you leave the envelope at the reception?” Evelyn asked.
“Yes.”
“With the fabricated deed?”
“With both versions.”
“My father says he burned it.”
“Then he burned copies.”
“Where are the originals?”
“He doesn’t know?”
“No.”
A faint smile moved across Gideon’s face and disappeared. “Thomas always believed I kept the worst things near me. He confused vanity with carelessness.”
“You allowed him to sign a false transfer order.”
“I gave him a chance to refuse.”
“That is how you describe blackmail?”
“He had given himself forty-seven years to refuse.”
Evelyn moved closer to the bed. “Did you intend to accuse me last night?”
His gaze returned to her.
“I intended to force the board to acknowledge the title defect.”
“By saying I helped conceal it?”
May you like
“I intended to say the current administration certified records it had not independently verified.”
“You knew I had no access to the original deed.”
