‘No. But she had a lot of friends. People who’d known him – theatre people. And she was a fierce correspondent, always writing and receiving letters. That’s how I think of her now: sitting at her writing desk, scribbling away.’
Elodie had invited him upstairs for a cup of tea; she had a list of questions that had formed since she’d been to see him at his studio at the weekend, particularly after Pippa had given her Caroline’s photograph. She showed it to him, explained when and where it had been taken, and watched closely, trying to read his expression.
‘Do you recognise the place that they’re sitting?’
He shook his head. ‘There’s not a lot of detail. Could be anywhere.’
Elodie had been sure that he was obfuscating. She’d said, ‘I think she went to Birchwood Manor with him on the way home to London. The house was special to her and it seems that he was, too.’
Tip had avoided her eyes, handing the photograph back. ‘You should ask your dad about it.’
‘And break his heart in the process? You know he can’t say her name without weeping.’
‘He loved her. And she loved him. They were best friends, the two of them.’
‘But she betrayed him.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I’m not a child, Tip.’
‘Then you’ve seen enough to understand that life is complicated. Things aren’t always what they seem.’
His words had echoed eerily the comment her father had made on the subject all those years ago when he said that life was long, that being human wasn’t easy.
They’d changed the subject, but Tip reprised it when he was leaving, saying again that she should speak to her father. He’d said it firmly, almost like an instruction. ‘He might surprise you.’
Elodie wasn’t so sure about that, but she certainly intended to pay Tip another visit when she got back to London. She had refrained on Thursday from asking him again about the woman in white, feeling that she’d pushed the friendship far enough for one day; but this morning, over breakfast, when she was reading Juliet’s articles, something had struck her as odd.
She riffled through the folder now to find the particular article. Most of the ‘Letters from the Laneway’ pieces were stories about people in the local community, others about her own family. Some were touching, others very sad; a few were laughably funny. Juliet was the sort of writer who did not ever completely disappear from the page; each turn of phrase was distinctly her own.
At one point, in an article about the family’s decision to adopt a homeless dog, she had written, ‘There are five of us living in our house. Me, my three children, and a flame-haired figment in a white dress, created by my son’s imagination and so vivid to him that we must consult her on every family decision. Her name is Birdie and thankfully she shares my son’s affection for dogs, although she has specified that she would prefer an older dog with a settled temperament. It is a sentiment, happily, with which I fully concur, and so both she and Mr Rufus, our newly arrived arthritic nine-year-old hound, are welcome to remain part of the family for as long as they so choose.’
Elodie read the lines again now. Juliet was writing about her son’s imaginary friend, but the description was uncannily similar to the woman in the photograph, Edward Radcliffe’s model; Juliet also wrote that her son had called the ‘figment’ Birdie. The letter that Elodie had found behind the mount of the framed photograph of Radcliffe’s model was addressed to James Stratton and signed from ‘BB’.
While Elodie didn’t think for a second that Tip’s childhood imaginary friend was going to prove a profitable avenue of enquiry, having now read Leonard Gilbert’s book twice since Pippa gave it to her, she had started to wonder whether there might not be another explanation. Whether perhaps her great-uncle had seen a picture of the woman when he was a child, maybe even the lost painting itself. Edward’s book contained preliminary sketches that suggested he was about to start on a new work featuring his model, ‘Lily Millington’. What if the lost painting had been at Birchwood Manor all this time, and Tip had discovered it there as a boy?
There was no point ringing him to ask – he didn’t like the telephone and besides, the last number she had for him was so outdated it was a digit short – but she would be going to see him again at his studio as soon as possible.
Elodie yawned and climbed down from the window seat, taking Leonard’s book with her and hopping into bed. In lieu of the house itself, the book was a close second. Leonard’s own love for Birchwood Manor was tangible, even as he wrote about Edward Radcliffe’s consuming passion for the place.
There was a photograph of the house inside the book, taken in 1928 during the summer that Leonard Gilbert had been in residence. The property had been neater back then; the trees smaller, the exposure of the photograph blown out so that the sky looked smaller, too. There were earlier photographs as well: images from the summer of 1862, when Edward Radcliffe and his artist friends had been in residence. They didn’t look like the usual Victorian portraits. The people in them gazed at Elodie across time and made her feel strange, as if they were watching her. She had felt like that at the house, too – had turned around a couple of times expecting to see Jack behind her.
She read for a while, dipping into the chapter that outlined Lily Millington’s supposed role in the theft of the Radcliffe Blue diamond. Elodie had found a later article, published by Leonard Gilbert in 1938, in which he walked his theory back, based on further interviews with his ‘anonymous source’. But it wasn’t often cited, probably because it didn’t offer much new to scholarship beyond further uncertainty.
Elodie didn’t know a lot about jewellery; she would be hard pressed to spot the difference between a priceless diamond and a glass pretender. Her attention went now to her own hand lying across the page of Leonard’s book. After Alastair had slipped the diamond solitaire on her finger, he’d told her she could never take it off. Elodie had thought he was being romantic until he said, ‘A diamond that size? Far too expensive to insure!’
It worried her daily, the value of the engagement ring. Sometimes, despite what Alastair had said, she took it off before work and left it at home; the claws snagged on her cotton archival gloves and she was terrified that if she removed it at her desk it might drop into one of the boxes and never be seen again. She’d agonised over where to hide it before deciding on her childhood charm box, where it could nestle in amongst the cheerful little-girl treasures. There was an irony to the choice, and it seemed like the perfect dissemblance to hide the diamond in plain sight.
Elodie switched off the bedside lamp and, as she watched the minutes on the digital clock change with interminable slowness, her mind went to the reception venue in Southrop. She didn’t think she could face another round tomorrow of inane chatter about ‘the happiest day’ of her life. She had a train to catch at four in the afternoon: what if she were held up again, looking through pictures of different place settings, and missed her chance to see inside the house? No, it was impossible. Elodie decided that she would risk Penelope’s displeasure and cancel the appointment first thing.
She fell asleep, at last, to the noise of the nearby river, and dreamed of Leonard and Juliet, Edward and Lily Millington, and at one stage even the mysterious Jack, whose purpose at the house was still in question; who had intuited her need to see inside; who had been kind about her mother’s death. And to whom, though she would never admit it when awake, she found herself inexplicably drawn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE