Bristol House (53 page)

He stopped speaking and looked at the three others for a few moments. No one said anything. The Dominican nodded.

He knows we’re not going to tell him anything more, Annie realized, but he suspects. About the mezuzah certainly. Maybe even the existence of the ancient Agnus Dei. She was aware of an almost palpable current between herself, Geoff, and Rabbi Cohen. They had become the secret-keepers. A good deal more benign than the True Obedience, however.

O’Hare stepped into the awkward silence and diffused the tension. “So in order for Philip Weinraub to maybe someday find the special mezuzah, and fulfill what he and his parents had decided was his destiny, he needed to be able to move freely in the Jewish world.”

“For which reason,” Annie said, “he put himself forward as a Jew and became involved in all kinds of Jewish fringe groups. That’s why he set up the Shalom Foundation. It was useful as a front and allowed him to conduct a search for the Jew of Holborn. And since he knew about Étienne Renard’s mural in Mrs. Walton’s flat, he looked for a way to get close to that and found Sheila MacPherson, Mrs. Walton’s niece, in Scotland. The MI6 guy told me Weinraub went to Edinburgh to invite her to come and work with him in New York.”

“No stone left unturned,” Rabbi Cohen said. “Have some cream, Timothy.”

The priest’s scone was already spread with strawberry jam. He waved away the additional indulgence. “Installing Annie in the flat where Renard spent the last years of his life must have seemed a stroke of brilliance. She had what Weinraub saw as perfect credentials.”

“He knew I was motivated by a rather large need to establish professional bona fides,” Annie said. “And that I have what the MI6 guy called the right skill set. And he needed the mezuzah for validation. That night in the tunnels, I heard the Franklins say their main objection to what Weinraub was planning was that he hadn’t located it. I guess the archivist in Jennifer wanted all the
t
’s crossed and
i
’s dotted before she sanctioned mass murder. Weinraub had decided it didn’t matter.”

Geoff shrugged. “My guess is he figured this conclave was his last best shot. Popes seem to have longer and longer reigns these days. Benefits of modern medicine.”

“And,” Annie said, “he had the perfect setup, since he had a couple of people in place in Vatican City. What do you spy types call them, Rabbi?”

“Moles,” Cohen said with a smile. “And now you must allow me a change of subject.” He reached beside his chair and picked a book off the top of one stack. “This is for you, Annie. I have a quite wonderful used-book dealer, and I asked him to locate it for me.” He handed her a copy of
Schismatics in the Late Middle Ages
by John Kendall.

Annie was speechless for a few seconds. Then, after she’d hugged him and put the book safely in her bag: “I’ve been wondering about something.” She looked at the pair of clerics. “Do you think it was Étienne Renard who pushed me the day I dropped my phone and who followed me down to the coal cellar the other night? Or perhaps my father? Just how haunted is number eight Bristol House? One ghost or two, or even three?”

Cohen and O’Hare spoke at the same time: “One.”

“Religious unity at last,” Geoff said. “Annie and I have been talking about this all day. How come you two are so certain?”

“I expect,” O’Hare said, “we’re both thinking of some variation of the philosophical principle known as Occam’s razor. ‘Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.’ The simplest answer, in other words, is most likely to be the one that’s true. Why posit two or three ghosts when one will do?”

“I like it,” Annie said after they left, while they were holding hands and walking for a bit, because it was a beautiful and balmy summer evening and they were in no particular hurry. “We don’t need a second or a third ghost, so why try and fit my dad or Étienne Renard into the picture?”

“Renard fit himself in,” Geoff said. “He lived in the flat and painted the mural.”

“But he probably never knew about little Maggie Silber arriving with the Kindertransport. So he didn’t know the mezuzah was already in England.”

“Probably not,” Geoff agreed.

The sound of children playing floated over their heads from somewhere in the grassy expanse of Hampstead Heath to their left. “What I think,” she said when they’d walked a bit farther and the kids’ voices had faded, “is that Étienne provided a glide path. Part of one at any rate. Along with the straight line of sight from the old Charterhouse to the back bedroom. Those things plus being related to you—that’s what gave my monk, your zillion-times-great-whatever, a way in.”

“You’re still sure he was somehow my ancestor?”

“Geoff, you look just like him. There is no other explanation.”

He was silent for a few moments, then: “Presumably that glide path existed when your Mrs. Walton was in residence as well. When you said you were reconciled to not knowing why the ghost chose you, did you mean it?”

“I meant . . .” She hesitated. “I’m reconciled to not being able to prove my theory.”

“Which is?”

“I think he picked me because . . . I had space for him. I’m more hollowed out than most people. AA does that. I’ve had to learn to discard a lot of things that don’t matter. And a lot more that matter enormously but that I can’t do anything about.”

“You mean the bit about the serenity to accept what you cannot change,” he said.

She heard that flicker of derision again. Geoffrey Harris, important man of affairs, celebrated pundit. No time for feel-good nonsense like twelve-step programs. No time—at least no more time—for a charming but very damaged piece of goods.
I’m truly sorry, Annie, but it’s a lot of baggage, a lot of risk . . .
Let it lie, part of her said. She couldn’t do it. “That is what I meant. I think it’s because of AA that I was psychically available.”

“Fair enough.”

She could read nothing in his tone of voice.

“Tell me something,” he asked. “Do you think your ghost will come back? Pay regular visits, that sort of thing.”

“Somehow,” Annie said, “I do not. I think he’s done with me.”

Dom Justin

From the Waiting Place

Judgment comes not in thunderous tones but in a whisper spoken by the Word in the quiet of my soul: “And so, Geoffrey who became Justin, have you now forgiven yourself?”

“I, Lord? But it is for You to forgive me.”

“And still you do not understand? I forgave you long since. Hanging on the Tree. What else did I mean when I said it was finished?”

“
Consummatum est.
I remember, Lord.”

The light invites, and I start forward. Then I think of one last thing to do with this world of time and no time, which I now understand to inhabit the same space, a place I am about to leave. “The woman, Lord. Will she—”

“
Consummatum est,
Justin. Fear nothing.”

I go where I am beckoned.

•

“Hampstead’s great,” Geoff said after they’d been walking for nearly fifteen minutes, “until you want to get somewhere else. The tube’s a mile away, and none of these buses are going where we want them to.” About then he spotted a cab and flagged it.

Annie held on to his hand in the back of the cab and kept looking out the window. She wanted to absorb London through her pores, memorize every scene so she would never forget. Earlier that morning she’d said something about coming back at Christmas. Geoff had seemed . . . noncommittal. No doubt women all over London were lining up to take her place. Make that all over Britain. He might be getting the schedule in place right now. For the last ten minutes of the cab ride, he’d been using the hand she wasn’t holding to work his iPhone. “Can I ask what you’re doing?”

“Checking my mail. I’ve got something important coming.”

“On a Sunday afternoon?”

“Yes.”

They didn’t say a lot more. Talked out, Annie thought. Both of us. We’ll go back to his place and we’ll make love, and I will not cry. Not once for the next seven days. At least not until I get on the plane.

He was still checking the phone when he unlocked his front door. “Blimey!” he said as the door swung open. “At last. Deal with the alarm, will you? I want to print this.”

Annie punched in the code while he went straight to the desktop computer. Curious as she was, she really couldn’t go and stand over his shoulder. She went into the kitchen and got a soda. “Coffee?”

“Not just now, thanks.”

She wandered over to the couch.

At the opposite end of the room, the state-of-the-art printer whirred into life.

“You will not believe,” Geoff said, “how many favors I had to call in to get this damned thing released on a Sunday. And that’s leaving out the bit about them not wanting to issue the grant of representation for another week.” He was collecting the pages the printer spat out while he spoke. There seemed to be quite a few of them.

“What,” Annie asked, “is a grant of representation?”

“Tell you in a second.” He gathered the last paper from the printer tray and came to sit beside her. “Maggie’s estate,” he said. “The executor’s a Portsmouth solicitor. Not very convenient, but very Maggie. I’m guessing he might be an ex-lover. Anyway, here’s what I wanted to show you.” He’d been thumbing through the sheaf of documents until he found the page he wanted. He handed it to Annie, saying, “Third paragraph from the top.”

. . . my flat at number one Sharpleshall Street in Primrose Hill . . . to Dr. Annie Kendall, fully furnished with the exception of the piano which . . .

She couldn’t speak for a few seconds. Finally she managed, “Geoff, I had no idea. I’ll make it over to you right away. Before I go ho—”

He chuckled. “Do you for one minute think I didn’t know about this? Maggie and I discussed it while she was in hospital, the same day she gave me the mezuzah. I told her it was maybe the best idea she’d ever had. And over the years”—he was stroking Annie’s cheek with one finger—“she’d had some great ones.”

“But . . . it’s worth a fortune, Geoff. At least to me it seems like a fortune.”

He waved that away. “Not important. But you’ve got to realize—it’s not an obligation.”

The blush came with such a whoosh of intensity, it made her feel weak. “I would never . . . Geoff, I’m not going to pursue you. I don’t—”

“Not even if I say please?” he said.

It took her a couple of seconds to process that. Even then she wasn’t sure.
I heart you, Annie Kendall.
“Please what?”

“Please pursue me. At least a little.”

She wanted to respond in kind but couldn’t. She had dreamed it, but the reality was overwhelming. She gestured instead to the paper with the announcement of Maggie’s incredible generosity. “I can’t accept—”

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course you can. Maggie wanted you to, and so do I. I just don’t want you to think of it as an obligation to me. But that shouldn’t mean you have to move back to New York or Boston or wherever—and I understand it’s not because of O’Toole—”

“It’s nothing to do with him. I need to be where I can see Ari. When he’s ready. The job at MIT means I can earn enough to live and visit Chicago once in a while.”

“How about a variation on that plan?” he said. “I’m trying to get the probate done in time so you can let the flat for the summer. That’s where the grant of representation comes in. I think we’ll have it tomorrow, Tuesday at the latest. Then you’ll be able to proceed. Even though it’s the last minute, you can probably find some takers. So you’ll have a bit of working capital. And I took the liberty of talking to my agent about getting you a book deal based on the Jew of Holborn and your research. She thinks it might be possible.”

Annie sat very still, staring at him, allowing the flood of information to wash over her, shaking a bit.

“Jesus, Annie, I wish you’d say something. No? Fair enough, I’ve got more arguments. A book deal is bound to be more lucrative and get you more attention than a couple of articles in professional journals. If you give Elizabeth—she’s my agent, I know you’ll like her, American but been in London for years—if you give her a good proposal, she can get you a decent advance. Maybe enough to live on for a year or so. The working capital I mentioned will tide you over until the advance is paid. The two together can certainly be stretched to include a few flights to Chicago. Eventually I’m presuming Ari can come and visit you here. What teenager wouldn’t jump at a trip to London? Annie, talk to me. What do you think?”

Someone strong enough to need him, Maggie had said. Was she really that strong? Ready to cede so much of herself? “I would love to do a book. I think I could. But—”

“But what?” And when she didn’t immediately answer: “I want a life with you, Annie. A future, maybe a family.”

I heart you, Annie Kendall.
Apparently not just because of the red stilettos. She stood up. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure how to . . . I need some air.”

She headed for the door.

“Annie, wait.”

She could not wait. She was afraid to wait. She pulled the door open and ran into the street.

A car came around the corner from Great Ormond Street on two wheels and raced down the road. A woman was crossing, pushing a baby carriage. There was the screech of brakes and the smell of burning rubber as the car—a bright red Maserati—squealed to a stop inches from the woman and the child.

“Jesus! No! Annie!” Geoff ran out of the house screaming her name.

Annie stood where she was, watching the man clamber out of his car and pull a wallet from a breast pocket and push a wad of bills at the woman.

Geoff was behind her—his hands were on her shoulders. “Annie . . .” This time he whispered her name, and she felt the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m all right.”

“Yes, you are.”

In the street the man and the woman were shaking hands. The woman shoved the wad of bills into her pocket and walked on, smiling. The man turned to them, shrugged, then swung himself back behind the wheel of the Maserati and drove away.