Back in London, nothing was the same. Edward departed almost at once, travelling to the Continent and leaving no forwarding address. Lucy never saw what became of his final painting of Lily Millington. After he had left she dug up the hidden key to his studio and went inside, but there was no sign of it there. In fact, all trace of Lily was gone: the hundreds of sketches and studies had all been pulled from the walls. It was as if Edward had known even then that he was never again going to paint inside the Hampstead garden studio.
Clare, for her part, did not stay long either. Having given up her pursuit of Thurston Holmes, she married the first wealthy gentleman who asked her and was soon happily enough ensconced within a large soulless country house of which Grandmother was predictably enamoured. She had two babies in quick succession, fat little wrigglers with wide cheeks and milky jowls, and on occasion over the years, when Lucy went to visit, spoke vaguely about having a third if only her husband would deign to spend more than a week each month at home.
By 1863, the year that Lucy turned fourteen, it was only Mother and her left at home. It seemed to have happened so quickly that each was left as stunned as the other. Finding themselves in a room together, they would both look up, surprised, before one of them – usually Lucy – made an excuse to leave, saving each the difficulty of having to invent a reason to explain the lack of conversation.
Lucy, as she grew into adulthood, eschewed love. She had seen what it could do. Lily Millington had left Edward and it had broken him. And so she avoided love. That is, she avoided the complication of locking hearts with another human being. For Lucy had fallen deeply in love with knowledge. She was greedy for its acquisition, impatient with her own inability to absorb new information quickly enough. The world was just so utterly abundant, and for each book that she read, each theory that she came to understand, ten more branched out before her. Some nights she lay awake wondering how she could best divide her lifetime: there simply wasn’t enough of it for a person to ensure that they learned everything they wished to know.
One day, when she was sixteen years old and sorting through the items in her bedroom in order that a new bookcase might be moved up from the study, she came across the small suitcase that she had taken with her to Birchwood Manor in the summer of 1862. She had pushed it to the back of the cupboard beneath the window seat when she returned, wanting to forget the entire episode, and hadn’t given it another thought in the intervening three years. But Lucy was a sensible girl, and so, despite not having expected to turn up the suitcase, now that she had, she decided that it made no sense at all to avoid dealing with the items inside.
She unlatched the case and was pleased to see her edition of The Chemical History of a Candle lying on top. Beneath it were two more books, one of which she remembered finding on the top shelf at Birchwood Manor. Lucy opened it now, gently because the spine was still hanging by only a few fine threads, and saw that the letters were still there; the designs for the priest holes precisely where she’d put them.
She set the books to one side and took up the item of clothing that had been packed beneath it all. Lucy remembered it at once. It was the dress that she’d been wearing that day, her costume for the photograph that Felix was going to take down by the river. Someone must have removed it after she fell, for when she woke in the yellow-striped room at the public house, she had been wearing her nightdress. Lucy remembered packing the costume away afterwards, balling it up and pushing it to the bottom of her case. It had given her an unpleasant feeling then, and now she held it in front of her, testing to see whether she was still spooked by it. She wasn’t. She was sure she wasn’t. Her skin did not heat; her heart did not race. Nonetheless, she had no wish to keep the item; she would put it out for Jenny to cut up for cleaning rags. First, though, because it was something that she’d been taught to do when she was young, she checked the pockets, expecting to find nothing but lint and the inside lining of the fabric.
But what was this? A hard, round item at the bottom of a pocket.
Even as she told herself that it was one of the river stones she’d collected at Birchwood Manor, Lucy knew better. Her stomach knotted and an instant wave of fear flooded her system. She didn’t need to look. It was as if by touching it a rope had been pulled and a curtain lifted, and now light shone onto the dusty stage of her memory.
The Radcliffe Blue.
She remembered now.
It was Lucy who had been wearing it. She had gone back to the house in a tantrum, no longer needed for the photograph, and whilst exploring in Edward’s room she had come across the diamond pendant. Ever since they had walked together to the village, Lucy had found herself thinking of Lily Millington, seeing her through Edward’s eyes, wishing to be more like her. And, holding the necklace, she had perceived a way to feel – just for a moment – what it must be like to be Lily Millington. To be stared at by Edward and adored.
Lucy had still been looking at herself in the mirror when Lily Millington appeared behind her. She’d slipped the necklace from her throat and been about to put it back inside the box when the man, Martin, arrived and tried to take Lily with him. Lucy had dropped the Blue into her pocket instead. And there it was still, exactly where she’d put it.
Lucy had come to believe the inspector’s story about Lily Millington, but once she found the Radcliffe Blue, the stitch at the centre of the tapestry was cut and the rest of the picture, so carefully embroidered, began to unravel. Quite simply: without the theft of the heirloom, there was no motive. And while officials in New York had verified that a couple travelling under the names of ‘Mr and Mrs Radcliffe’ had arrived and been registered at the port, anyone could have used those tickets. The last person Lucy had seen holding them was that awful man, Martin. Edward had seen him fleeing from the house. He might have used one of the tickets and sold the other; he might have sold them both.
There was also the matter of the secret chamber in the staircase. For Lily Millington to have gone with Martin, she would have had to let him know where she was hiding and he to figure out the trapdoor. Lucy had needed instructions and even then it had been tricky. It would have taken time for the man to find Lily and further time for him to solve the lock’s puzzle. But Fanny had arrived so quickly, and Edward soon after that. There simply hadn’t been long enough for Martin to liberate Lily Millington.
Besides, Lucy had seen the way that Lily Millington had looked at Martin in genuine fear; she had seen, too, the way Lily looked at Edward. And Edward had loved Lily Millington absolutely; there was no doubting that. He had been a ghost of himself after she disappeared.
That Lily Millington had disappeared was not in question. No one had glimpsed her since that day at Birchwood Manor. Lucy had been the last person to see her, when she was locking Lily Millington inside the hideaway.
Now, back at Birchwood Manor, twenty years later, Lucy stood up and plaited her fingers together, flexing her hands in an old gesture of anxiety. She let them fall gently to her sides.
There was nothing for it; no use stalling now. If she were going to start a school in this place, and she felt very strongly that she must, then she had to know the truth. It would not change her plans. There was no way to go back and no point wishing things had turned out differently.
Lucy lifted the chair to one side and knelt down, regarding the stair’s rise.
It really was an ingenious design. There was no way anyone would find it if they did not know that it was there. During the Reformation, when Catholic priests were hunted by the Queen’s men, such places must have provided great comfort and safety. She had researched since and found that six men’s lives were saved by this very priest hole.
Bracing herself, Lucy pressed the edges of the rise and opened the trapdoor.