The second half of chapter seven was dedicated to the possibility that such a painting, finished or in process, was extant somewhere. Gilbert posited several possible theories, based on his research into Edward Radcliffe’s artistic oeuvre, but in conclusion acknowledged that without proof it was all speculation. For although there were vague references to an abandoned artwork in correspondence between the other members of the Magenta Brotherhood, nothing belonging to Radcliffe himself had yet been unearthed.
Elodie glanced at the sketchbook she’d found in the archives. Was this the proof that Leonard Gilbert had craved? Had the verification for which the art world had longed been sitting all the while in a leather satchel in the house of the great Victorian reformer James Stratton? The thought brought Elodie back to Stratton, for she knew now that Lily Millington was the missing link between the two men. Stratton knew the woman well enough to keep her photograph; Radcliffe had been in love with her. The two men themselves did not appear to have been closely acquainted, and yet it was to Stratton that Radcliffe had turned in the middle of the night when his desperate heartache threatened to overwhelm him. It appeared that it was Stratton, too, to whom Radcliffe had entrusted the plans for his great work. But why? Learning the true identity of Lily Millington was key. The name was not familiar, but Elodie made a note to check the Stratton correspondence database for any mention.
In the final chapter of his book, Gilbert returned his attention to Edward Radcliffe’s interest in houses, especially his love for the country dwelling he referred to in correspondence as his ‘charming house … within its own bend of the river’, this time allowing his own story to intersect with that of his subject. For it turned out that Gilbert, too, had spent a summer living within Radcliffe’s ‘charming house’, walking in Radcliffe’s footsteps as he worked to complete his doctoral thesis.
Leonard Gilbert, the returned soldier, who had suffered his own losses on the French battlefields of the Great War, wrote elegiacally about the effects of displacement, but ended his book on a note of hope, with a meditation on the longing for ‘home’ and what it meant to find oneself at last in a place of comfort after so long in the wilderness. He relied on one of Radcliffe’s contemporaries, the greatest Victorian of them all, Charles Dickens, to convey the simple, enormous power of ‘home’: ‘home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to …’ For Edward Radcliffe, Gilbert wrote, this place was Birchwood Manor.
Elodie read the line again. The house had a name. She typed it into the search engine on her phone, held her breath, and then there it was. A photograph, a description, an address. The house was on the border of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in the Vale of White Horse. She chose a link and learned that it had been given to the Art Historians’ Association in 1928 by Lucy Radcliffe for use as a Residential Scholarship for students. When the costs of upkeep became too high there’d been talk of setting it up as a museum to celebrate the art of Edward Radcliffe and the tremendous flowering of creativity that occurred under the umbrella of the Magenta Brotherhood, but the money required was not immediately available. It had taken years of fundraising, and finally, in 1980, a generous bequest from an unnamed donor, to allow the AHA to make good on its plans. The museum was still there; open to the public on Saturdays.
Elodie’s hand was shaking as she scrolled to the bottom of the webpage and noted the directions to Birchwood Manor. There was another photo of the house, this one taken from a different angle, and Elodie enlarged it to fill the screen. Her gaze roamed across the garden, the brick face, the dormer windows in the steep roof, and then she drew breath—
At that moment the image left her screen, replaced by an incoming call. It was international – Alastair – but before she knew what she was doing, Elodie had stabbed the screen to cancel, swiping the call aside to return to the photo of the house. She zoomed closer and there it was, just as she’d known it would be: the astrological weathervane.
Radcliffe’s sketch was of his own house, on its own bend of the river, which was in turn the house from the story her mother had told her, the house to which Tip had been evacuated during the Second World War. Elodie’s own family was somehow connected to Radcliffe and a mystery that had fallen into her lap at work. It made no sense at all, and yet there was more to the connection than that, for Tip, although he hadn’t been willing to admit it, had recognised the photograph of Lily Millington, the woman in white.
Elodie picked up the framed photograph. Who was she? What was her real name and what had become of her? For reasons that she couldn’t explain, Elodie was overcome with a passionate, almost desperate need to find out.
She ran her finger lightly around the edge of the frame, over the fine scratches. As she did so, Elodie noticed that the back of the frame, from which the stand protruded, was not completely flat. She held it up at eye level so that the horizontal plane was directly in front of her; yes, there was a very slim convex bend. Elodie pressed it lightly with her fingertips. Was she imagining that the backing felt ever so slightly padded?
Heart beginning to beat faster, with the finely tuned instinct of a treasure hunter, and even as she knew it was absolutely against regulation to tamper with the archives, Elodie looked for a way to jimmy it loose without causing damage. She pulled at the old tape that had been used to seal the backing and it lifted, held not by adhesive any more but from habit. There, pressed flat and tucked beneath the frame, was a piece of paper that had been folded into quarters. Elodie opened it out and could tell at once that it was old – very old.
It was a letter, written in a lively cursive hand, and it began, My dearest, one and only, J, what I have to tell you now is my deepest secret … Elodie’s breath caught, for here, at last, was the voice of her woman in white. Her attention skittered to the bottom of the page where the letter was signed with a pair of looped initials: Your most grateful and ever-loving, BB.
PART TWO
THE SPECIAL ONES
V
There was a long stretch, before this new visitor came, and before the Art Historians’ Association opened their museum, when there was no one living in this house. I had to content myself with occasional children on weekday afternoons, clambering through the ground-floor windows in order to impress their friends. Sometimes, when the mood was upon me, I obliged by slamming a door or shaking a window, making them squeal and trip over themselves trying to get free.
But I have missed the companionship of a proper visitor. There have been some over the century, a precious few, whom I have loved. In their stead, I am forced now to endure the ignominy of a weekly deluge of busybodies and officials merrily dissecting my past. The tourists, for their part, talk a lot about Edward, although they call him ‘Radcliffe’ or ‘Edward Julius Radcliffe’, which makes him sound old and stuffy. People forget how young he was when he lived in this house. He had only just marked his twenty-second birthday when we decided to leave London. They talk in serious, respectful tones about Art, and they look through the windows and gesture towards the river and say things like, ‘This is the view that inspired the Upper Thames paintings.’