jolts a lawyer from his sleep and changes his life forever. The lawyer is presumably Tom Radney but renamed Larkin. Like Radney’s ancestors, Larkin is originally from Ireland.
After her father’s death, Price found the pages in a box crammed with what she calls “keepsakes.” Radney had shown them to her while he was still alive.
“That is one of the things that kept him going, kept him hanging on,” Price says. “That she was writing more and more and more.”
According to Price, there is no question about their authenticity.
Additional proof is right there on every page, she says: The letter B is missing.
Sure enough, in place of every B, lowercase and capital, there is a mark.
Casualties of a broken typewriter, which only a famous spendthrift like Harper Lee would use. Also a famous perfectionist, she wrote in every broken B by hand.
Another woman enters the dining room: Tom Radney’s charming widow, Madolyn. “Just amazing to see them, it’s just wonderful!” she says of the sacred pages. “First draft of maybe the Great American Novel!”
Of course, the book would have led to a movie, and there was discussion about who might best portray Big Tom.
“We used to throw that around and laugh about that,” says Madolyn Radney. “I think Harper Lee said something one time about maybe Gregory Peck. Pipe dreams.”
Then, after page four, the writing stops and the mystery begins. Tom Radney often said that Harper Lee had told him there were more pages. Maybe a lot more.
“A writer of her magnitude did not work on something for that length of time and visit and have a relationship and only write four pages,” says Price. Maybe there is more—maybe even a whole book—hidden away somewhere, in a drawer, an attic, a safety deposit box, yet to be discovered.
For now, there are just the four pages. A portal into a lost world.
• • •
August 1970, one morning at 3:00 a.m.
“Mr. Radney?” asks the voice at the other end of the line. “They’re down here at my house, accusing me of killing my wife. Would you come down here and help me?”
The voice on the other end of the phone is a slow, rumbling baritone. There is no panic, no rush, just the facts.
Police. Accusing me of killing my wife. Will you help me?
Music to the ears of any attorney, but especially to Tom Radney. Big Tom has never heard of Reverend Willie J. Maxwell, but predawn phone calls are not unusual for a man in his line of work. “Somebody’s in trouble, they call you,” the lawyer likes to say. He rubs his eyes and sits up in his king-size bed, in his 5,500-square-foot home, set on a full acre of land on a wooded ridge that looms over Alex City. Some call the neighborhood Millionaire Hill. Radney’s house sits beneath a canopy of trees beside a flowing creek. It has six bedrooms, stone floors, fine wood paneling, a bar, vast stretches of bookshelves, chandeliers, and a stone fireplace. An oasis of beauty straight out of Southern Living magazine, designed to look as if it has been on this ridge forever. A house bought through the mortal combat of scores of criminal and civil trials.
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