Delicious! (31 page)

“Whatever the reason”—I couldn’t keep myself from saying this—“I don’t understand why he didn’t just take the letters home. If you ask me, he went to a lot of unnecessary trouble.”

“I could not agree more.” Anne said this with asperity. “That is exactly what I suggested. But Bertie would have none of it. He was not, he said, a thief.”

“But Pickwick didn’t want the letters!”

“Precisely.” Her annoyance was still palpable after all these years. “He refused to ‘steal’ the letters, and he would not destroy them, so he spent several ridiculous weeks wringing his hands. He lived in constant fear that someone would discover that the letters were still there.”

“Poor fellow.” Sammy was apparently feeling much more sympathetic than either Anne or I. “How long did this go on?”

“After a few weeks of dithering pointlessly about, Bertie stumbled upon the solution. Literally: He found the hidden room that was, by his lights, the perfect place for the fugitive letters.”

“How did he find it?” asked Sammy.

“In much the same manner that you did. But there was a difference: Bertie was absolutely unsurprised. He had always suspected that the Timbers Mansion might once have been a station on the Underground Railroad, and now he had his evidence.”

“The Underground Railroad!” Sammy sounded as surprised as I felt. “It fits. The Timbers Mansion must have been built sometime during the 1830s.”

“He was so happy when he found it,” Anne continued, as if Sammy had not spoken. “He had found the ideal solution to his problem. He had confirmed an old suspicion about the Timbers Mansion. And he had enhanced his reputation at the magazine. ‘They think I am a magician,’ he told me with great glee. ‘They think I can disappear at will.’ ”

“Do you mean to say,” I asked as the implication of this sank in, “that he never told anyone else about the secret room?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“But what about the rest of the letters? There are thousands of them. I can understand why Bertie wanted to protect Beard’s letters, but what was the point of putting the others in there too?”

“Oh,” she tossed this off casually, as if this was of no importance, “that happened much later.” She began to calculate. “Nearly twenty years, I’d guess.”

“The plot thickens.” Sammy stood up and pushed back his chair. “But before you commence the conclusion of your tale, allow me to fetch the denouement of dinner.”

He went into the kitchen, reappearing with an antique Chinese bowl laden with strawberries and a crystal cruet filled with thick, ancient balsamic vinegar. He put a plate of dainty, paper-thin langues de chat in front of Anne, who picked one up and took a delicate bite before continuing.

“We now jump to 1970. Picture the time. Mrs. Van Allen was the editor then, a dragon of a woman who never referred to her employees by anything other than their surnames. She required all females to
wear hats, nylons, and white gloves when they appeared in her office. She was appalled by what was happening in America: She considered the antiwar movement an abomination, decried the loss of civility, shuddered at the mere thought of a hippie, and thought that everyone with long hair ought to be locked up.”

As she drew a picture of the time—sixties’ slogans and protest songs—Anne conjured up an entire era, and I saw what a fine lecturer she must have been. I imagined Mrs. Van Allen looking out the windows, wincing as protesters marched past the Timbers Mansion with their signs. “Bertie thought she was a horrid old biddy, but he was a master at concealing his feelings, and she never had the faintest notion. Had she known that he was what she called ‘a fairy,’ she would have been appalled. When the elder Mr. Pickwick passed on, she came running to Bertie, lips trembling, afraid it was the end of an era. He consoled her, but he was privately elated; his hope was that the young Mr. Pickwick would bring in new blood. But when Mr. Pickwick hired an appraiser to take stock of the library, Bertie became anxious himself. The books, he knew, were safe, but he fretted about the letters.”

In the candlelight, Sammy caught my eye; we had been fearing much the same thing. Anne intercepted the look but misconstrued it. “You have to understand”—she leaned forward—“at the time, few people were interested in food or food history, and I’m sure he was correct in thinking that the letters would have been considered worthless. Bertie was convinced the day would come when Americans would take an interest in their food heritage. ‘It would be criminal to lose them,’ he kept saying. He’d already hidden the Beard letters, and now he thought how easy it would be to move the other letters into the secret room as well.”

“Was this in the early seventies?” I’d noticed that the letters seemed to stop there.

“Yes! It was the year he died. I could look up the exact date in my diary, if that would be helpful, because I helped him.”

I pictured them sneaking around in the dark of night, but when I described this vision, Anne laughed. “Very romantic!” Her eyes twinkled. “But very far from the truth. You see, by then Bertie had been at
Delicious!
for twenty-five years, and the library was his private domain. We simply came in over the weekend. It was great fun. I remember the moment when we put the last folder on the shelf and I left the hidden room for the last time. As we pushed the bookcase back into place, Bertie began speculating about who would find the letters and when that would be. A cloud crossed his face, and when I asked what was wrong, he was so upset that for a minute he could not speak.”

I knew exactly what was bothering him. “He was afraid that nobody would ever find the letters!”

Anne nodded. “He’d gone to all that trouble, and he suddenly saw what an enormous chance he was taking.” She looked across the table and gave me a radiant smile. “What a great pity that he can’t be here. You are, quite literally, his dream come true.”

I punched “Send” and watched the words vanish. Then I defiantly surveyed my new wardrobe; there wasn’t one thing here Genie would approve of. Today, I thought, was the day for the red suede jacket. I kept everything else simple: black pants, a black T-shirt, plain black flats. I stared at myself in the mirror, realizing I needed something else, just a tiny punctuation. I pulled on a pair of thin red socks, gave myself one last look, and headed to the mansion.

All morning I listened for Mitch, but when the doorbell finally rang it was Joan-Mary, with two young, handsome, skinny men in tow. Their voices were squeaky with admiration for the Timbers Mansion. “I know exactly what to do here,” said the blond one, who seemed to be in charge. “By the time we’re done, people will kill to get this place. You’ll have ten offers the first day.”

“You promise?” Joan-Mary looked pleased. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” She turned her attention to me. “Eric and Alex will just reconnoiter today, but I’m sorry to say that tomorrow will be different. They’ll be bumping furniture up and down the stairs. I’m afraid it’s going to be rather disruptive, and, if I were you, I’d stay out of their way.”

“But shouldn’t somebody be here?”

“You’ll have to let them in. And lock up when they leave. But there’s absolutely no reason for you to stay while they’re working. You won’t get a single thing done.”

“So I can tell HR you’re giving me tomorrow off?”

“Do.” I’d been joking, but she didn’t catch the humor. She took her leave, and I immediately called Sammy.

“I’m alone here with a couple of decorators. They’re going to stage the mansion. But now that Mitch has unlocked the library, I guess I can walk right in. Where do you think I should look? I was wondering if ‘pumpkins’ might be the next clue.”

He considered that in silence while I climbed the stairs. “Insufficiently subtle,” he finally decided.

“What about ‘Liberation Cake’?”

“Not impossible. But we are nearing the end of the game, and Bertram seems to have increased the complexity. I am persuaded that the temptation to meddle with ‘bread’ would have proved overwhelming. Such a tempting anagram for ‘Beard.’ ”

“Maybe French bread?” I suggested. “Since he was in France? Should I try
‘pain’
?”

“Far too simplistic. ‘Baguette,’ perhaps?”

“I’ll try,” I said skeptically, going to the card catalog and opening the “B” drawer. “Oh, my God, are you channeling Bertie now?” I asked. “Here it is! This is what he wrote: ‘During World War Two, American soldiers in the European Theater of Operations had their first taste of true French bread. There are some interesting letters on the subject in the “Boulangerie” file of 1945.’ ”

I imagined Sammy’s pleased expression. “Elementary, my dear. I suggest that you hastily locate the letters and repair to your office with the file. It would be foolish to attract untoward attention to the library.”

“Right.” I ended the call, found the file, and took it down to my office, waving cheerily at Eric and Alex as I passed them on the stairs.

I was staring at the letter, thinking how sad it was that Roosevelt died before the war ended; three weeks later, it was over in Europe. When I looked up, I saw that Eric was standing in my door.