The Secret Life of Violet Grant (22 page)

“Miss Brown?”

“Our receptionist, Miss Schuyler. Miss Brown? Miss
Agatha
Brown?”

“Oh! Agatha! Forty years, is it?” I whistled. “Certainly, a party's in order. Knees up, I say.”

“Indeed.”

I leaned back in my chair and crossed the shapely legs. “And you haven't got better things to do than to come and fetch me personally?”

“I'm the only one with a key.”

“Now, now, Mr. Tibbs. I can tell when a man wants to have a private word with me.” I motioned to the other chair, which, in fairness to Tibby, might or might not remain intact under the weight of human hindquarters. “Do sit.”

His professorial vest squeezed out a sigh. He sat. “You've exceeded your three weeks. As I'm sure you're aware.”

“It's been a little rougher seas than I imagined at the outset.”

“Where are you now?”

“Well.” I looked down at the letters before me, the stack of biographies, the folder from the
Metropolitan
archives marked
B
ERLIN 1914
. “I have Violet's letters home. There aren't many, and they're all to her sister Christina, who evidently wasn't privy to her innermost thoughts, if you know what I mean. I know she met this Lionel Richardson in May of 1914, and he stayed with them at their summer villa in Wittenberg, along with Jane and her son. It seems the whole crowd from the institute joined them at the end. Einstein, even. Einstein!”

“All this, with war in the air? Wouldn't that be aiding and abetting the enemy?”

“Walter seems to have been the cosmopolitan sort. And anyway, the war took everyone by surprise. As you know. But I suspect Violet and Lionel began their affair there in Wittenberg, because here”—I pointed to the next-to-last letter—“Violet stops mentioning him at all. And then, poof, there's nothing, not a single letter, except for this.” I picked up the final missive, a postcard, and handed it to Tibby.

“‘Having a lovely excursion. All well. Will write more soon. Violet.'”
He looked up. “I see what you mean.”

“But look at the date on the postmark. July twenty-sixth. That's
before
Walter was supposedly murdered in their flat in Berlin. So obviously they, the two of them, the three of them, Lionel and Walter and Violet, they all left Wittenberg for some reason. The question is why. Possibly because the political situation was worsening, but from all I've read, the final declaration of war came as a shock. It wasn't until the mobilization order went out that people, the man on the street I mean, believed they were actually going to fight. I suppose the shrinks would call it denial. Everyone thought that civilization would prevail.”

Tibby took his reading glasses out of his pocket and squinted. “I can't read the name of the town on the postmark.”

“Neither can I. It's too smudged. But I'll tell you one thing: it's not Berlin.”

He removed his glasses. “Are the archives any help?”

“They might be, if there were any correspondence from Berlin after July twenty-fifth, when Austria declared war on Serbia and set the whole thing going. I suppose everyone was leaving the country by then.”

“Hmm.”

“Why
‘hmm'
?”

“Because it's odd. Because you'd think there would be a flood of chatter. Any good journalist would stay until the bitter end.” He looked back at the rows of wooden cabinets. “Have you looked in the confidential files?”

“The what?”

“The confidential files. The ones containing particularly sensitive information. The real dirt, as they say.”

I climbed to the tippy-tips of my four-inch heels. “WHAT DID YOU SAY? NOBODY TOLD ME THERE WERE CONFIDENTIAL DAMNED FILES!”

Oh, he smiled at me, old Tibby, with the patience of a governess instructing her charge. He fished around in his tweed jacket pocket, produced a set of keys, and dangled one in front of me. “Someone is telling you now.”

T
he villa in Wittenberg is seething with guests, the way Walter likes it. Jane and Henry have joined them, and Lionel Richardson, who goes out shooting with Walter every morning. Violet never realized Walter knew how to shoot, she presumed that sort of thing went against his principles, but off he goes, shotgun slung under his tweedy arm, like an English squire, while Henry and Violet retire to the makeshift laboratory in the carriage house and Jane lies in bed, writing letters. Lise and Albert Einstein and Otto Hahn and his wife are expected later tonight in Hahn's automobile; they telephoned from Treuenbrietzen at four o'clock to say that they had been delayed by a number of unlucky flats and would probably miss dinner.

In the meantime, a pair of German officials have come to dinner, and Jane is acting as hostess. If the arrangement seems odd, nobody appears to notice. Violet, sitting in nominal wifely state at the opposite end of the table, the quiet end, is happy to let Jane direct the conversation from Walter's left hand, flirting first with one German official and then the other, while Violet answers stilted questions from the officials' wives and passes the salt. Jane has ordered candles instead of the harsh electric lights, and the scent of burning wax reminds Violet of childhood, when
she would peer through the doorway and watch her parents host their long and ponderous dinner parties.

“But surely it won't come to war,” says Jane, sounding more amused than alarmed.

Herr von Karlow throws a nervous glance at Lionel. “Nobody wants war, of course, madame. It is simply a matter of obligations.”

“Obligations.” Jane laughs. “Surely, Herr von Karlow, you can't possibly suggest that Germany would allow herself to be dragged into defending Austria from the colossal threat of poor little Serbia?”

Lionel has finished his duck and now calmly plucks a plum from the display at the center of the table. He lifts his knife to slip out the pit. “But it isn't just poor little Serbia, is it? Russia will rush in to defend her fellow Slavs from Austria's outrage. That's the point. Serbia can defy Austria because she counts on Russia, and Austria can defy Russia because she counts on Germany. A neat little arrangement, which is supposed to keep everyone from fighting at all.” He cuts the plum into slices and pops one into his mouth.

“Russia should not interfere in Austria's affairs,” says Herr von Karlow, pale-faced. “Austria has every right to avenge the murder of her prince.”

“Well said.” Lionel eats another section of plum. “And I have every confidence that Austria will do all in her considerable power to ensure that other nations are not dragged into such a local dispute. Because if Russia goes to war, then France must mobilize in her defense, and then all Europe comes to Armageddon.”

His easy words bring the table to stillness. Someone's knife clinks musically against a Meissen plate. Violet looks out the window, where the air is still light and hazy, the sunset still hours away. The green lawn lies at peace beneath a pale blue sky; beyond the cluster of linden trees, Violet can just see the corner of the tennis court. A lugubrious hot summer: how could war possibly interrupt it?

The other German speaks up. “Naturally Germany should deplore a general war.”

“Naturally,” says Lionel.

•   •   •

DUSK SETTLES SWEETLY.
Violet has stolen away to the laboratory after dessert—something is nudging the edge of her mind, some beginning of an idea that will not let her rest—and when she steps at last through the French doors to the terrace, the air is flat and indigo-quiet, scented with cigarettes and with the jasmine that grows in a neat row along the side of the house.

A faint noise drifts into her right ear, a male noise, a chuckle perhaps. She knows it belongs to Lionel. She cannot resist turning her head, and she sees him at once: a midnight shadow tucked against the lindens, feet crossed at the ankles while he speaks to the solid height and heft of Herr von Karlow. The smoke from their cigarettes whorls ghostlike in the darkness.

She hears other sounds, too. She hears Jane's light laughter from the lounge chairs at the opposite end of the terrace, where she sits with Walter every evening.

“Mrs. Grant. I was growing alarmed.”

Violet spins and crashes into the shoulder of Herr Schulmann.

“I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to startle you,” he says, in his perfect English. Over tea that afternoon, Jane told her that Herr Schulmann attended school at Harrow and university at Cambridge, that he was once engaged to an Englishwoman, though it had ended unhappily. How Jane has discovered these facts, Violet can't imagine; it's as if she pulled them from some all-knowing ether, beyond the reach of Violet's senses.

“Not at all.” Violet's Schuyler upbringing takes over, as it's meant to do in such moments. She asks if he would like a drink, if he would like to sit down. The butler has already wheeled out the after-dinner trolley, an abundant arrangement of crystal decanters and cigarettes and coffee and petits fours. Can she offer him something?

He holds up his glass. “I am already sufficiently supplied, thank you. But you have nothing. May I fetch you a glass?”

They wander to the trolley. Herr Shulmann is drinking port, which he pronounces excellent; Violet, for want of imagination, allows him to pour her a glass. They come to rest on the low wall at the edge of the terrace, where the jasmine brushes Violet's bare arm.

“I've never met a more unusual hostess,” says Herr Shulmann. “You disappear and reappear as if borne by fairies.”

Violet laughs. Her head is still sparkling a little from the excitement of discovery on her page of equations, from the low chuckle of Lionel's nearby throat. “Not fairies at all, I'm afraid. I was in the laboratory.”

“Most wives would be visiting the nursery at this hour.”

“Dr. Grant and I have a different sort of progeny.”

“Indeed.” Herr Schulmann looks at his hands and rolls the sharp-edged bowl of his glass back and forth between his fingers, which are long and polished. He is a government official of some sort, Herr Schulmann, though Violet can't remember what he does. “I suppose it's much the same with me. My work is my child, or more properly Germany, and I love her with the same passion as I might love my own daughter, if I had one.”

“Yes, I understand.”

He looks up. He's not a handsome man—his face is narrow, his hair thin—but the light from the house is kind to him, erasing the tiny pits in his skin, giving his eyes a liquid warmth. He fastens those eyes on her earnestly. “You are American, Mrs. Grant, though your husband is English. Are you a patriot?”

“I am not, I'm afraid. I find myself frustrated by these rivalries between nations.”

“As do I. As do I.” Herr Schulmann rises from the wall, strides to the trolley, and pours himself another glass with a shaking hand. He returns to her, sweeping up his black tails as he replaces himself in his seat. “All this talk of war tonight. You must understand, Mrs. Grant, that
Germany does not want war. But we're encircled, encroached upon.” He makes a motion with his hands. “France on the one side, Russia and the Balkans on the other. Spain begins to align herself against us.” He drinks. “And there is Britain.”

“Britain hasn't committed herself, has she?” Violet peers through her memory, which traps equations and chemical formulae in perfect detail, but cannot always recall the current political map of Europe.

“Not publicly. But there is an understanding with France, that Britain will follow her into war if declared. And
if
war is declared, Mrs. Grant,
if
we teeter into this abyss, Germany will be beset on both sides. France to her west, Russia to her east. And she would fight with all her strength. She would fight to the end.”

“Pardon me, Herr Schulmann, but you appall me. All war appalls me. It is barbaric, the most brutal means of solving differences between nations. Men will be killed, men with wives and mothers and children. Hearts will break, and for what?”

Herr Schulmann's hand reaches out unexpectedly to enclose her own, over her glass of port. “I agree, Mrs. Grant. I am not belligerent. I despise the very thought of war.”

Violet's breath thins to a wisp in her chest. The giddiness of the laboratory has fled her; she is aware of Lionel's laconic figure among the lindens, of the strength of passion in Herr Schulmann's gaze. “Then why do you speak of it as inevitable?”

For an instant, Herr Schulmann glances at the moon-shadowed trees, where Lionel and Herr von Karlow are still speaking. “Because there are those in the government, those in the military especially, who welcome war. Who believe that a decisive battle is the only way for Germany to rid herself of this encirclement. Who are convinced that an early war, before our enemies gain any further strength, is to be brought forward on any pretext.” Herr Schulmann finishes his port, sets down the glass, and reaches into his pocket for a cigarette. “Do you mind, Mrs. Grant?”

“Not at all.” Despite the warm air, Violet's hands are cold. She
finishes her own port and watches Herr Schulmann's elegantly nervous fingers as he shakes a cigarette from its gold case and strikes a match against the stone. The flame sends a lurid shadow chasing across his face. Nearby, the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré's laugh pirouettes in the twilight air. Walter has pulled his chair closer to Jane's, and his elbows rest attentively on his thighs as he leans toward her. Violet takes in all these details, all these filaments of her life, woven together in some audacious new pattern that snatches her breath with its possibilities.

“I disagree with my colleagues, Mrs. Grant,” says Herr Schulmann, with another quick glance at the lindens, from which Herr von Karlow's voice rises with growing urgency. “I think a general war would be disastrous for Germany, for Europe, and for humanity. But mine is a lonely voice.”

“I am very sorry to hear that.”

“No man is more loyal to Germany than I am, Mrs. Grant. I only wish I might save her from herself.” He looks at her again, his gaze pressing into hers, as if he's trying to explain something vital.

“I wish you can, Herr Schulmann,” Violet says. She lays her palms against her dress. Von Karlow's voice rises angrily to her left, and a second later his feet strike hard on the terrace steps. He passes them both in a gust of startled air. “I wish you can.”

•   •   •

VIOLET FINDS LIONEL
in his usual spot, among the rose trellises. Night has enclosed the garden, and she feels her way along, scraping her fingers against the thorns, until she catches the scent of Lionel's cigarette and stops, waiting for his shadow to detach from the darkness.

His hand reaches her first, drawing her next to him. “There you are.”

“I'm sorry. The Germans left; I had to see them off.”

“My fault, I'm afraid.” He laughs softly, and she can see him now, the whites of his shirt and tie finding the moonlight at last. Something brushes her cheek. “I've plucked you a rose, if only to annoy you.”

She reaches up and takes it from his fingers. “The poor thing.”

“Either way, it will wither and die.”

“Like your everlasting regard?”

“Well, there it is, anyway.” He thrusts one hand in his pocket and leans against the trellis, mindless of thorns. “Yours to keep. You can always dry it and place it between the leaves of your diary.”

“I don't have a diary. Not for personal things, anyway. I have my scientific journals.”

“Yes, of course. What a pair we'll make for the historians of the future. Not a scrap of personal sentiment left behind to incriminate us.”

“We've done nothing criminal.” The air is cool among the roses, but Violet is flushed and warm. Her dress itches against her skin. She takes a step back, away from Lionel.

“No, we haven't. Not yet.” The faint orange end of his cigarette moves up to his lips, flares, and moves away. He waits, as always, for Violet to speak next, to say the words that will set everything into motion.

“What did you say to poor von Karlow?” asks Violet. “He was very angry.”

Lionel shrugs. “He wanted me to admit that the Allies were in the wrong, that poor old Germany was persecuted and encircled.
Einkreisung
, the old word. He's not entirely wrong, that's the devil of it.”

Violet tears a leaf from the stem of her rose.

“And you, Violet? What were you discussing so intently with our good Herr Schulmann?”

“The same thing, I suppose, except that he doesn't want war. He was almost pleading with me, as if I could do something about it.” She allows a bitter laugh. “I, an American scientist, married to an Englishman, with no interest whatsoever in politics.”

Lionel straightens. “What did he say, exactly?”

“I don't remember exactly. That he wished he could save Germany from herself, or something like that.”

“Did he?” Lionel exhales a slow stream of smoke and drops his spent
cigarette into the paving stone, soft with lichen. He moves his foot to crush out the last of the glow. “That's good of him.”

Lionel's body rests a very few inches away, electric with life, blood racing and cells dividing. Here and present before her, with a vital force that might grasp Violet by the shoulders and shake her awake.

“Will there really be a war, Lionel? It doesn't seem possible.”

“I don't know, Violet.”

“Can't you do something? Your father, somebody.”

He laughs drily. “I'm flattered. You must have an extraordinary faith in me.”

“I do. You can do anything. You . . . you're that sort of person. Nothing's impossible with you.” The rose is denuded of leaves. Violet wraps her fingers around the stem and stares at the hole in the darkness where Lionel leans against the trellis.