Nevermore by William Hjortsberg Page A

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    Grand Army Plaza remained a pleasant exception. Here, the constricted canyon of Fifth Avenue opened onto a three-sided square in a splendid preamble to the liberating expansiveness of the park itself. Sir Arthur turned to the east-facing windows and took it all in. He always made a point of learning the local geography, seeking to inform his fiction with an exact sense of place. Last year, on a previous trip to America, Scully, the doorman, had pointed out the surrounding landmarks.
    The circular fountain, surmounted by a graceful bronze statue of “Abundance,” delighted him. Pulitzer, the newspaper chap, paid for the whole thing, a gift to the city. Sir Arthur preferred it to the “Eros” fountain, stranded like a damsel in distress amid the congestion of Piccadilly Circus.
    The crown jewel of the square was the extravagant building to the south. Cornelius Vanderbilt’s turreted mansion rivaled the royal palaces of Europe. A spiked, ornamented iron fence surrounded the carriage entrance facing onto the plaza. It took thirty servants to run the place, Scully told him, with a certain note of vicarious pride.
    Sir Arthur marveled at the vulgar ostentation of America’s merchant princes. All along Fifth Avenue, facing the park north of the plaza, a mile-long row of chateaux and palazzi, each deserving a country estate, crowded together cheek by jowl like an overdressed chorus line rudely competing for the limelight. How ironic that a nation priding itself on creating a classless society tolerated this obscene nouveau-riche overindulgence.
    A brisk knock interrupted his musing. Sir Arthur consulted his pocket watch. Right on time. He opened the door to admit a waiter wheeling a serving table with a proper hot English breakfast housed under covered platters. He praised the young man for the hotel’s excellent service and ushered him out with a tip. Breakfast in bed was a luxury he and his wife enjoyed when traveling. At home, such utterly sybaritic behavior remained a rare holiday treat, but in foreign hotels it seemed just the ticket.
    Sir Arthur rearranged the crystal bud vase, fanning fringed ferns around a single red rose. Satisfied with the arrangement, he pushed the breakfast table into the darkened bedroom.
    The knight pulled back the heavy drapes, flooding the pale yellow room with sunlight. Smiling, he bent to awaken his lady with a kiss. She roused, her smile drowsy, her heavy golden hair unpinned and tumbling across her breasts. “Lovely morning,” he said. “No less lovely than you.”
    Jean drew him down beside her on the bed. “You’re lovely,” she purred, her voice thick with sleep.
    “Am I, indeed?” He kissed her slender neck and the strap of her nightgown slipped from her shoulder. A soft, chaste kiss, yet her flesh blushed pink at his touch.
    “Indeed, indeed, indeed …” Her nimble fingers unfastened the buttons on his waistcoat.
    “I say,” he protested, “there’s breakfast waiting.”
    “You’re all the breakfast I need.”
    Her probing kiss silenced any further discourse. By the time they got around to the porridge, coddled eggs, broiled tomatoes, kippered herring, bacon, and buttered toast, everything was soggy and cold.
    The knightly couple had separate schedules that day. Sir Arthur arrived back from interminable meetings in a thoroughly disagreeable mood. He had barely enough time to bathe, shave, and dress before their dinner engagement. Winding uptown through Central Park in a cab restored his robust good humor. The invitation to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Houdini had been a long-anticipated pleasure.
    Before the start of Houdini’s much-publicized war on psychics, the two men corresponded frequently on the subject of spiritualism, and when the magician toured England in 1920, Sir Arthur provided introductions to a number of well-known mediums. Thanks to these letters, Houdini obtained over a hundred psychic sittings in Britain, insisting he was an