Back Bay (42 page)

For a time after his mother’s death, Philip Cawley lived in the servants’ quarters at Colonnade Row, but he was hostile and incorrigible. When he was eight, Abigail shipped him to Worcester, where his toughness and independence helped him to survive among boys much older than himself.

Whenever he visited the Pratts, he remembered how much he hated them. At trade school, he had earned respect; no one dared
mock him for his strange features and uncertain color. In the Pratt household, he felt like a stray dog, tolerated for a few days until his owner came to claim him.

Abigail opened her arms and spoke with a gaiety as transparent as glass. “Come here and give Mrs. Bentley a nice kiss.”

Philip pecked her on the cheek and gave her a package wrapped crudely in green paper. “Merry Christmas, Miz Bentley.”

“Why, thank you, Philip. You’ll find something special beneath the tree in the parlor.”

The boy didn’t move. He wanted to see her face when she opened her gift.

She fumbled with the ribbon and wrapping and unveiled a copy of Charles Dickens’s newest novel,
Great Expectations
. She embraced him and kissed him on the forehead. “Oh, Philip, it’s beautiful. I shall treasure it. But it must have cost you a great deal of money.”

“I wanted to give you something nice,” he said.

“I hope you inscribed it.” She opened the book and saw an ornate bookplate on the inside flap. “It’s exquisite.”

“I did it in engravin’ class,” he said proudly.

Against a border of laurel and ivy, the boy had etched the words
Ex Libris
and Abigail’s name. Below that, in flowing script, he had inscribed the lines from a poem. Abigail read to herself the quotation she had given to Philip Pratt in 1845, the quotation recalled by Samantha Cawley the day she appeared at Colonnade Row. Her expression froze.

Philip smiled. “I learned that poem from my father. I thought you would like it.”

Abigail glared at the child. He knew what he had done. She could see the mischievous glint in his eye. She was infuriated.

“Have you printed more of these?” she demanded.

“I made them for all my books. And I lend my books to my friends.” He tried to look innocent. He had upset her more than he had hoped.

“Do you know what these words mean?”

“That Satan is all around us. He can swim, he can crawl. He can even fly. And he’s always ready to steal our gold and our soul.”

“What else?”

“They tell of a treasure. That’s what my father told my mother, and my mother told me.”

“Yes. The treasure of everlasting life. If you live well and keep your vigilance against Satan. That’s what these lines tell you, and that’s all. It’s a good lesson, one you should learn to live by.”

“I live by what my mama taught me—don’t ever ’spect people to do nothin’ good if they don’t have to. Always do for yourself. Merry Christmas, Miz Bentley.” Without being dismissed, the boy turned and left the room.

Merry Christmas, indeed, thought Abigail. She had done more for the little mulatto than anyone should. She had buried his mother, housed him, sent him to school, and set up a small trust fund which would be his on his twenty-first birthday. Yet he chose to torment her. She tore the bookplate off the flap and tossed it into the fire.

She could burn it, but she could never erase his knowledge or his hatred.

T
he beer always did it. About six in the morning, Fallon had to piss. He staggered to the bathroom door and bumped into Evangeline on her way back to bed.

“Good morning,” he croaked.

“Hi.” She brushed past him. She was wearing a man’s flannel pajama top and nothing else.

Maybe it was the clothes, he thought, but she seemed loveliest in the morning. The ivory skin above the tan line peeked out enticingly as she moved away from him, and he followed her into her room.

She climbed into bed and pulled the covers over her head. “Go away.”

“I’m cold,” he said.

“Then don’t stand in the middle of the room in your jockey shorts.”

“Can I come in and talk?”

She lowered the covers just enough to look over them. “Are you kidding?”

He laughed.

She pulled the covers over her head again. “I’ll be out in the spring.”

“I’d stay around to watch, but I have to piss.”

When he came out of the bathroom, Evangeline was dressed and pouring coffee. “Long piss,” she said. “Noisy, too.”

“That was the shower.”

She handed him a cup of coffee and toasted with her own.

“To the end of this foolishness.”

“To the beginning.”

Route 95 led them back into humidity near the New Hampshire border. As they entered Massachusetts, rain began to fall. Evangeline became tense. Her hands wrapped tight around the wheel and she concentrated hard on the road in front of her. She was driving in and out of heavy rain, but something more than the weather was bothering her. She didn’t want the foolishness to end just yet. Last night, she had told Fallon things she had not spoken of in years. The fight at Searidge, the afternoon analyzing Abigail Pratt Bentley, and the walk on the beach had drawn them together. She was afraid that if Fallon went back to his work, the excitement she was beginning to feel in his presence would evaporate. She wanted to give him more time. She wanted more time to get to know him.

Evangeline parked at the Quincy Market, and her mood began to improve.

“You want to help me open the place up?” she asked.

“No thanks. I’ll wait here.”

“It’s a good show. I sing a lot and I talk to the plants.”

“Do they talk back?”

“They haven’t yet.”

“Then I’ll stay here.”

Evangeline hurried into the North Market and up the circular
staircase to the second floor. As she passed the Building Block, a children’s store specializing in wooden toys, she did not notice the man with the receding hairline and pockmarked face. He was studying a display of wooden trains in the store window, but he was watching for her.

Evangeline walked to the end of the arcade, where Kathy Kelly, her nineteen-year-old assistant, was waiting for her. Kathy worked part time to help pay for her college education.

Evangeline opened the store and helped Kathy put it in order. A brief chat, a few instructions on the care of the African violets, which had lately begun to droop, a check on the dampness of the Boston ferns, which needed careful watering, and she was on her way.

She walked straight into the tweed sportcoat. She began to apologize, then she saw the face. The pockmarked skin was drawn tight over cheekbone and skull, like a mask through which the eyes studied her.

For a moment, she started, then stammered, “Excuse me.”

He said nothing, and she hurried past.

The man watched her mix into the crowd of morning shoppers, but he didn’t let her out of his sight. He followed her down the stairs to the plaza, and she led him, as he expected, to Peter Fallon. He instinctively reached for his pistol. But not yet. He had no order to use it yet.

The Porsche pulled away, and the man walked back to the pay phones in the plaza. He placed a call. “The student is with the girl.”

Evangeline parked in front of her uncle’s Back Bay townhouse on the corner of Commonwealth and Clarendon.

Butler John Holt, a relic from the days of Artemus IV, greeted them at the front door. “Good morning, Miss Carrington.”

Fallon and Evangeline stepped into the vestibule, and Fallon was struck immediately by the richness, the quiet, the confident elegance. Since the end of World War II, many of the finest Back Bay homes had been converted to apartments, professional offices, condominiums, and fraternity houses. But the Pratt home, like a handful of others, had endured. Mahogany woodwork,
Italian marble, parquet floors, rich carpeting, stained-glass windows, and carved balustrades on the monumental staircase, and all of it existing with a sense of reserve that was uniquely Bostonian. The dining room was to the left of the reception hall. To the right, behind glass doors, the music room ran the length of the house. An office-study was tucked neatly into a corner. The receiving room, a downstairs living room furnished in exquisite taste, overlooked Commonwealth Avenue.

Fallon felt a hundred years of life lived as it should be—serenity, order, and grace on every side, an abiding sense of the past, a confident face toward the future, and all in the middle of the city. As he climbed the staircase and passed the library, the billiard room, and the parlor, Fallon wondered how his knowledge of an ancient tea set could upset the equanimity of this world. Perhaps the full story that Philip Pratt had promised would disappoint him. Perhaps there was no treasure at all.

On the third and fourth floors, the furniture and ambience became more modern, almost as if the house had been decorated from the bottom up over a hundred years. Fallon realized that Philip Pratt spent most of his time on the top two floors. Past and present did not coexist so harmoniously after all.

Pratt’s study, which looked across the roofs of Marlborough Street toward M.I.T., was dominated by blond mahogany desk and bookshelves, glass and chrome tables, Eames leather furnishings, and track lighting. Calvin Pratt, looking stolid and unhappy, stood near the windows. Soames sat in the corner with a notepad on his knee. An unfamiliar man reclined on the sofa, and Philip Pratt sat behind his desk.

“Hello, Vange. How are you?” Philip Pratt stood and offered his hand.

Evangeline hated Philip’s nickname for her, probably because he only used it when he was trying to charm her. She shook his hand, and he kissed her lightly on the cheek. Then she introduced Peter Fallon.

“I only wish we’d met under less strained circumstances,” said Pratt.

Fallon was surprised by Pratt’s friendly handshake.

Pratt gestured to the man on the sofa, who stood. “I’d like to present Lawrence Hannaford. Cousin, friend, and trusted associate.”

Hannaford smiled. He was dressed impeccably in a gray Cardin suit and blue tie. He had hair the color of Pratt’s desk, a tan, and features that were almost perfect. His attitude proclaimed youth and success. “I heard that you were trying to see me last week when I was out of town, so I thought I’d bring the mountain to Mohammed.”

Philip Pratt invited Fallon and Evangeline to sit, then he began. “You two have stumbled onto something very bizarre, and we’ve decided to explain the details to you, primarily because you know enough already to be in danger, but you don’t know enough to stay out of the way.”

“Where’s my grandmother?” asked Evangeline abruptly.

“She’s very upset, dear—”

“Skip the endearment, Uncle. Just tell me where I can find her.”

Pratt’s smile never wavered. “Show your elders their respect, Evangeline, or somebody may cut off one of your trust funds and you’ll end up by selling dandelions on a pushcart instead of greening America from the Quincy Market.”

Before Evangeline could respond, Calvin began to speak. “The first thing that you two should know is that we’re dealing with a dangerous group of art forgers.”

“And the tea set in the museum is one of their products?” asked Fallon.

“The tea set in the museum,” said Hannaford firmly, “is the original. The forgery had been completed about the time I was first contacted by the real owner, the anonymous English owner, in September of 1972. We began negotiations soon thereafter.”

“Is this the family that supposedly got the tea set after it was stolen from Sir Henry Carrol?”

“You’ve done your homework well,” said Soames.

“While we were talking in England,” continued Hannaford, “I was approached by a gentleman who said that he represented a syndicate devoted to the recovery of missing art treasures. He said he had reason to believe that the tea set I was about to buy was a
forgery. First he told me politely, then more forcefully. I said that I was convinced of the authenticity of the set I had seen, and he responded by threatening to reveal me if I tried to present the tea set to the world.

“I informed the proper authorities, both in Europe and the United States, about this gentleman, and went ahead with my negotiations. The FBI told me that, in recent years, several important works in silver and gold, works which had disappeared during the last two centuries, had been recovered. Art authorities had not been able to disprove the authenticity of any of the works, but there remained—there remains—a nagging suspicion that all these works have come from the same forge.”

“How does the Pratt family fit into all of this?” asked Fallon.

“As you know,” said Philip Pratt, “certain elements of fact and legend connect our family to the Golden Eagle Tea Set. This syndicate is aware of the legend and is trying to use it. About the time that Lawrence first showed the tea set to the public, we were approached by the syndicate. We were told that Lawrence Hannaford had produced a forgery, and we were asked if we would help the syndicate locate the real tea set. Being friends and relatives of Lawrence Hannaford, we informed him.”

“You see,” said Calvin, as if on cue, “part of the legend has to do with a set of clues, supposedly held by members of the Pratt family, that tell the location of the Golden Eagle. By producing the clues and presenting the forgery to Hannaford, the syndicate hopes to blackmail him.”

“But if you have the real tea set, you have nothing to worry about,” said Fallon.

“Perhaps, but I never have revealed the name of the tea set’s English owner. It was one of the stipulations when I first entered into a relationship with him. He still prefers his anonymity, but it has left me in a rather vulnerable position.”

“And what about the FBI?” asked Fallon.

“The gentleman whom you very nearly threw off the Searidge roof yesterday is an agent,” said Soames.

“I don’t believe it,” said Evangeline.

“Do you recall when Harrison entered our employment?” asked Pratt.

“Two years ago.”

“And two years ago,” offered Soames, “all this began in earnest. After the Pratts refused to cooperate in 1973, the syndicate let the matter drop for a while. But a first-rate forgery may cost a hundred thousand dollars to produce. They weren’t going to charge that to profit and loss. So they waited a few years, then began to move on Hannaford.”