Page 16 of The Librarians

Singapore

Seven months ago

Of the ten police officers who barged into Hazel’s penthouse apartment shortly before midnight, only three remain seven hours later, two men and a woman.

They sit around the coffee table, a large, mirror-smooth oval of polished steel shot through with veins of equally reflective brass.

The two junior cops stare at the floor-to-ceiling windows, an eight-meter-high wall of glass that overlooks Marina Bay, now bathed in the reddish-gold brilliance of sunrise.

A third, their superior, studies Hazel as he drinks his coffee, a scowl on his face.

Hazel, trying not to slump in her accent chair, isn’t so much unafraid as she is dead tired. She had yet to go to sleep when the raid began. And now, after an entire night watching her home being systematically torn apart, she just wants to be alone.

Does she owe Kit an apology? she wonders numbly. A bit pedestrian for her to suspect that he was having an affair, isn’t it, when instead his failed speculations on cryptocurrencies led him to—allegedly—embezzle twenty-five million dollars?

“Where is your husband, Ms. Lee?” asks Detective Chu, still drinking coffee and still scowling.

Briefly she considers the possibility that the coffee might be too bitter. Carmela and Marisol, her Filipina housekeepers, both make excellent coffee. But they too spent a sleepless night and are probably in no mood to show hospitality to the invaders.

“Detective,” she says, “I have not received any news from the outside world since you seized my devices. All I can tell you is what I’ve already told you. My husband, as far as I know, reached London ten days ago to attend a weeklong art fair.

“Now that the art fair is over, according to his original schedule, he should be in the Sussex countryside, at his father’s place.”

“?‘According to his original schedule’? You don’t know for certain that he’s in the Sussex countryside, at his father’s place?”

Hazel suppresses her desire to repeat But I’ve already told you . “That is correct, Detective.”

“Because of this ‘trial separation’ of yours.”

“Correct.”

“Which is known to no one except the two of you.”

Do you blast the news of your trial separation to your family and friends?

“Correct.”

“A bit convenient, don’t you think, just when the police come knocking?”

Hazel crosses her feet at the ankles. “In that case, it would have been far more convenient for me to have gone with him and be out of the country too.”

Detective Chu takes another sip of his coffee—and finally bends forward to add sugar and cream to the remaining brew in his cup.

He stirs it with an antique silver spoon, part of a set of twelve, a family heirloom from the Georgian era that Hazel’s mother-in-law received from her own mother-in-law upon her wedding to Kit’s father.

I don’t know about the luck attached to those spoons , Hazel’s mother had commented in private, as Kit’s parents are not only divorced but acrimoniously divorced.

Hazel shrugged. It’s their tradition. You have to let people keep their traditions.

Now she wonders whether her mother was right and the gift was tainted with the senior Asquiths’ marital failure.

Or maybe she is trying to deflect blame elsewhere, and even a set of spoons will do for a scapegoat.

“Ms. Lee, I hope you understand that these are extremely serious charges,” Detective Chu begins again, fortified by less bitter coffee.

She makes no reply, waiting for him to go on.

“Explain to me again what he does.”

“He is an art dealer. He has two art galleries, one on Lock Road, the other in Soho, in London.” Words dribble from her lips, a listless trickle of syllables—she sounds like a street vendor at the end of the day, too tired to hawk her wares anymore.

“He sells art that he acquires, or sometimes on commission, depending on the preference of the artist. He works with museums and corporations, connecting them to emerging artists or older works that have been overlooked. He also works for an art investment fund.”

The one he stole from, apparently.

“He is properly credentialed for this line of work?”

“He has a postgraduate degree in art history and experience working at both the Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York—if those are what you would consider proper credentials.”

Detective Chu’s lips slant—maybe he heard a rebuke in her sluggish reply. Who knows, maybe she intended one, too.

“Have you ever been to his galleries?”

“Yes, both.”

“Did you not notice the scarce foot traffic?”

“Art galleries are not grocery stores or movie theaters. Foot traffic is not how one judges their success or lack thereof. A large portion of sales can take place in the back rooms, or by catering to the tastes of art collectors who may never set foot inside a showroom.”

Now she sounds like the audio track for a self-guided tour, giving out a string of archaeological details.

“My husband has always appeared busy. He always has calls to take and travels to arrange. And he has always paid into our pool for household expenses promptly—and bought me gifts and holidays.”

“You are not acquainted with the actual financials of his enterprises?”

She shakes her head, too weary to be going over everything yet again. “I believe I’ve mentioned that our prenuptial agreement specifically precludes that.”

“And you and your family allowed it?”

She deliberately sat with her back to the sunrise, but even the light sweeping across the policeman’s face sears her vision. She blinks, which somehow only makes her eyes feel grittier.

“He and his family allowed much more, if that is your line of reasoning. My grandfather’s lawyers drafted the document, which bars my husband from not only touching my inheritance but also any involvement in any Kuang family holding or venture.

It did not seem terribly unreasonable, then, for him to ask that I and my family also stay out of his business.

I know my grandfather gladly agreed to it and even commended my then-fiancé’s attitude, which he gauged as cooperative without being obsequious. ”

“What did your husband think of the document?”

She desperately wants to rub her eyes but forces her hands to remain still on the armrests. “He thought it was par for the course—no man marries Bartholomew Kuang’s granddaughter without such a document, especially if he’s a foreigner.”

“He is considered some sort of a relation, though, is he not? And your union an example of intermarriage upon intermarriage?”

This is at least a new question. Perhaps as his subordinates searched fruitlessly, the detective read up on Hazel and her husband to greater depths.

“My grandfather’s mother was an Atwood. And some branch of the Asquith family and some branch of the Atwood family are related by marriage.

The precise details escape me but my grandfather was able to pinpoint my husband’s lineage.

He conceded that Kit comes from good stock, but the prenuptial agreement remained inescapable. ”

A prenuptial agreement, however, even an ironclad one, will not protect her reputation, once it becomes known that the police want him. And of course it could have never protected her heart from the chill that slowly crept in over the past year.

“So there you have it, Detective. I did not—and do not—have access to the financial records of his ventures. His conduct within our marriage gave me no reason to suspect that he might have been in money trouble.”

“You had no idea at all that anything might be wrong?”

“That is not what I said. I said that I never thought he might be having money trouble. What I suspected was that he no longer loved me—and was perhaps in love with someone else.”

“Because?”

She props up her elbow on the armrest and drops her cheek into her palm—it’s either that or let her head fall back against the padded top of the chair.

“Because he was distant and easily distracted. He stayed later and later at work. And sometimes when I went to his gallery in the evenings, he wasn’t there, even though that was where he’d said he would be.

You know, all the classic signs, at least according to movies and TV shows, that someone might be having an affair. ”

“Did you not ask him?”

“No.”

If I asked him, and he said yes, then that would have been the end of us, we who have no children and no financial entanglement to hold us together.

Every hour or so, it occurs to her that she might never see Kit again: Her grandfather will insist that the dissolution of their marriage be conducted via lawyers, and only via lawyers.

But she wants to hear everything from Kit’s lips. She wants him to tell her why.

It’s respectable enough, I guess, art dealing , he’d said wryly.

My parents don’t have to apologize for it, or explain what I do, especially if they label me as a gallery owner.

People understand then that I’m a shopkeeper.

Actually it might have been better if I became a bookseller, but I’ve always been slightly dyslexic and would not have done a very good job.

She’d laughed.

They’d met on her Singapore–Frankfurt flight and had hit it off right away. From Frankfurt she was headed to Brussels, to meet her board game publisher, he to Basel, to attend Art Basel, of course.

As they readied for disembarkation, he proposed that they meet in Bruges afterward, for a second date.

Oh, we already had a first date?

I don’t know about you, but I’m deeply relieved to have that behind us.

So there they were, in Bruges, ambling along canals lined with cake-colored town houses.

Why would it have been better if you’d been a bookseller?

Booksellers don’t have to travel as much.

Or it’s possible that everything I know about bookselling is wrong because everything I know about bookselling comes from Notting Hill and that rom-com in which Tom Hanks was basically Barnes & Noble in its heyday, right before Amazon came along and ate its lunch.