He’d found the key in a small, deep hollow behind a loose stone in the wall, just as the letter of acceptance said he would. There’d been no one else around that day, and Leonard had wondered briefly who had put the silver key in this most particular hiding place.
When he turned the handle of the gate, he stood, transfixed, as it opened onto a scene that seemed too perfect to be real. An effusive garden grew between the flagstone path and the house, foxgloves waving brightly in the breeze, daisies and violets chattering over the edges of the paving stones. The jasmine that covered the garden wall continued its spread across the front of the house, surrounding the multi-paned windows to tangle with the voracious red flowers of the honeysuckle creeper as it clambered over the roof of the entry alcove. The garden was alive with insects and birds, which made the house seem still and silent, like a Sleeping Beauty house. Leonard had felt, as he took his first step onto the path, as if he were walking back through time; he could almost see Radcliffe and his friends with their paints and easels set up on the lawn beyond the blackberry bramble …
This morning, though, Leonard did not have time to picture ghosts from the past. When he reached the gate, there was a very real person standing by the front door, leaning casually against one of the posts supporting the alcove roof. She was wearing his shirt, he noticed, and little else, smoking a cigarette as she gazed towards the Japanese maple tree against the far wall.
She must have heard him, for she turned and her features rearranged themselves. A slight smile straightened her bow lips and she raised a neat hand in greeting.
He returned the gesture. ‘I thought you were due in London by midday?’
‘Trying to get rid of me?’ She closed one eye as she drew on her cigarette. ‘Ah, that’s right. You’re expecting company. Your old lady friend. Want me out of the way before she comes? Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one of the house rules: no guests overnight.’
‘She’s not coming here. We’re meeting at her place.’
‘Should I be jealous?’ She laughed, but the sound made Leonard sad.
Kitty wasn’t jealous, she was kidding; she kidded a lot. Kitty didn’t love Leonard and he never let himself think that she did, not even on those nights when she clung to him so tightly that it hurt.
He gave her a kiss on the cheek as he reached the door and she returned it with a small unguarded smile. They’d known each other for a long time; since they were kids, she sixteen to his seventeen. The Easter Fair of 1913. She’d been wearing a pale blue dress, he remembered, and carrying a small satin purse. A ribbon had come loose from somewhere and fallen to the ground. She hadn’t realised and no one else had seen; after a moment’s hesitation Leonard had reached down to pick it up for her. They’d all been kids back then.
‘Stay for breakfast?’ he asked. ‘Dog has his heart set on eggs.’
She followed him into the kitchen, which was dark after the glaring morning light outside. ‘Too nervous to eat. I’ll have a cup of tea, though, just to see me through.’
Leonard fetched the matches from the tin on the shelf behind the cooker.
‘I don’t know how you can stay here by yourself.’
‘It’s peaceful.’ Leonard lit the tricky burner and scrambled some eggs while the kettle was boiling.
‘Tell me again where it happened, Lenny?’
Leonard sighed. He wished he’d never told her about Frances Brown. He wasn’t sure what had come over him, only that it was so unusual to be asked about his work, and being here at Birchwood Manor had made it all so much more real to him. Kitty had lit up when he mentioned the jewel thief who’d crept into the house one day and shot Radcliffe’s fiancée dead.
‘Murder?’ she’d gasped. ‘How awful!’ Now, she said: ‘I had a look in the drawing room, but I couldn’t see any sign.’
Leonard had no desire to speak of murder or its markers again; not now, not with Kitty. ‘Could you pass me the butter?’
Kitty handed it to him. ‘Was there a big police investigation? How did the thief disappear without a trace? Wouldn’t a diamond as rare as that have been recognised when it resurfaced?’
‘You know as much as I do, Kit.’
Truthfully, Leonard was curious about the Radcliffe Blue. It was right what Kitty had said: the gem within the pendant was so valuable and rare that it would have been recognised instantly by anyone in the jewellery trade; to keep its discovery and sale a secret would have taken an enormous amount of subterfuge. And gemstones didn’t simply disappear: even if it had been cut down into smaller diamonds, they were somewhere. Moreover, popular wisdom had it that it was the theft of the Blue that led to the shooting of Radcliffe’s fiancée, and the death of Fanny Brown that had in turn broken Radcliffe’s spirit and tipped him into a long, spiralling decline, all of which interested Leonard very much, not least because he was beginning to develop doubts about the theory.
As Leonard cooked, Kitty fell to fiddling with the other items on the wooden table in the centre of the room. After a time she disappeared, returning, bag in hand, as Leonard was loading everything onto the tray to take it outside.
They sat together at the iron table and chairs beneath the crabapple tree.
Kitty was dressed now in her own clothing. A smart suit that made her look older than she was. She had a job interview, a typist’s position at an insurance agency in Holborn. She was going to walk to Lechlade where she’d arranged for one of her father’s friends to collect her in his motorcar.
She would have to move to London if she got the job. Leonard hoped that she did. It was her fourth interview in as many weeks.
‘… not your old lady friend, perhaps, but there is someone else.’
Leonard glanced up; Kitty’s nerves had made her talkative and he hadn’t been listening.
‘I know you’ve met someone. You’ve been distracted – more so than usual. So … who is she, Lenny?’
‘What’s that?’
‘A woman. I heard you last night, talking in your sleep.’
Leonard felt his face grow hot.
‘You’re blushing.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You’re being evasive.’
‘I’m busy, that’s all.’
‘If you say so.’ Kitty took out her cigarette case and lit one. She exhaled smoke and then waved her right hand through it absently. Leonard noticed the fine gold ring she wore catching the light. ‘Do you ever wish you could see into the future?’
‘No.’
‘Never?’
Dog nudged Leonard’s knee and then dropped a ball at his feet. The last time he’d looked, Dog hadn’t owned a ball. One of those kids by the river was going to be disappointed later.
Leonard picked it up and lobbed it into the distance, watching as Dog bounded through the wildflowers and bracken towards the bank of the Hafodsted Brook.
There was no one else – not in the way Kitty meant it – and yet Leonard couldn’t deny that something strange was happening to him. In the month since he’d arrived at Birchwood he’d been having the most vivid dreams. They’d been intense from the outset, vibrant concoctions about painting and pigments, and nature and beauty, in which he’d woken with a split-second certainty that he’d glimpsed important answers to the deepest questions of life while he was gone. And then, at some point, the dreams had begun to change, and he’d started to see a woman in his sleep. Not just any woman but one of the models from Radcliffe’s paintings. In his dreams she spoke to him; she told him things as if he were a composite of Radcliffe and himself, things he couldn’t always remember when he woke.