She opened her backpack and pulled out an old book with yellowing pages.
‘Edward Radcliffe: His Life and Loves.’ Jack read the cover aloud. ‘I’ve seen his name in the churchyard.’
‘This used to be his house and the Radcliffe Blue, as the name suggests, belonged to his family.’
‘I’ve never heard it called that. My client said the diamond belonged to her grandmother, a woman called Ada Lovegrove.’
Elodie shook her head, the name evidently unfamiliar. ‘Edward Radcliffe took the Blue from his family’s safe in 1862 so his model, Lily Millington, could wear it in a painting. The story goes that she stole it and ran away to America, breaking Radcliffe’s heart in the process.’ Elodie turned carefully through the pages until she reached a colour plate near the centre. She pointed to a painting called La Belle and said, ‘That’s her – that’s Lily Millington. Edward Radcliffe’s model and the woman he loved.’
Looking at the painting, Jack felt an enormous pull of familiarity, and then he realised that, of course, he’d seen the painting many times before, for it was printed on at least half of the bags that he’d seen tourists carrying with them when they left the museum gift shop on Saturdays.
Elodie handed him another photograph, taken reverently from her bag. This was the same subject as in the painting, but here, perhaps because it was a photograph, she looked like a woman instead of a goddess. She was beautiful, but beyond that there was something attractive in the directness with which she stared at the photographer. Jack felt a strange stirring, almost as if he were looking at a picture of someone he knew. Someone he cared for deeply. ‘Where did you get this?’
The urgency of his tone had clearly surprised her and a slight frown of interest tugged at her eyebrows. ‘At work. It was in a picture frame that belonged to James Stratton, the man whose archives I keep.’
James Stratton was no one to Jack, and yet the question had formed and was out of his mouth before he even knew that he was going to ask it. ‘Tell me about him. What did he do? How did he come to have archives worth keeping?’
She considered a moment. ‘No one ever asks me about James Stratton.’
‘I’m interested.’ And he was, although he couldn’t have said quite why, keenly interested.
She remained quizzical, but pleased. ‘He was a businessman, very successful – he came from a family of huge wealth and importance – but he was also a social reformer.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He fronted a number of those Victorian committees aimed at improving the lives of the poor and he actually managed to make a difference. He was well connected, articulate, patient and determined. He was kind and giving. He was instrumental in getting the Poor Laws repealed, providing housing and protecting abandoned children. He worked at every level – lobbying members of Parliament, rallying wealthy businessmen to make donations, even working on the streets, handing out food to those who couldn’t afford it. He dedicated his life to helping others.’
‘He sounds heroic.’
‘He was.’
Jack felt the pinch of another question. ‘What would make someone from a life of privilege take up the cause in such a dedicated way?’
‘He formed an unlikely friendship in his childhood with a little girl who lived in unsavoury circumstances.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘For a long time, no one knew. He doesn’t mention any of the details in his diaries. We only knew there was a friendship at all because of a couple of speeches he gave in later life where he alluded to the relationship.’
‘And now?’
Elodie was clearly excited by whatever she was going to tell him next and Jack couldn’t help notice how her eyes brightened when she smiled. ‘I found something the other day. You’re the first person I’ve told. I didn’t know what it was initially, but as I read it, I realised.’ She reached again into her backpack and slid a clear plastic file out of a folder. Inside was a letter written on fine paper, clearly old, creases revealing that it had spent much of its lifetime folded and pressed.
Jack began to read:
My dearest, one and only, J,
What I have to tell you now is my deepest secret. I am going away for a time to America and I do not know how long I will be gone. I have told no one else, for reasons that will be evident to you. But I approach the journey with great excitement and hope.
I cannot say more now, but you are not to worry – I will write again when it is safe to do so.
Oh, but I will miss you, my dearest friend! How grateful I am for the day that I climbed through your window, the policeman on my tail, and you gave me the thaumatrope. Which of us could have imagined then what lay ahead?
My dearest Joe, I have enclosed a photograph – something for you to remember me by. I will miss you more than anything I can imagine missing, and, as you know, I would not say such a thing lightly.
Until we meet again, then, I remain,
Your most grateful and ever-loving, BB
He looked up. ‘She calls him Joe. Not James.’
‘A lot of people did. He never used his real name, except for official purposes.’
‘And what about the BB? What does that stand for?’
Elodie shook her head. ‘That I don’t know. But whatever it stands for, I think the woman who wrote that letter, James Stratton’s childhood friend, grew up to be the woman in the photograph, Edward Radcliffe’s model.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘For one thing, I found the letter sealed within the back of the frame that held the photo. For another, Leonard Gilbert revealed that Lily Millington wasn’t the model’s real name. And for a third—’
‘I like this theory. It’s tight.’
‘I had this other problem. I’d discovered recently that Edward Radcliffe came to see James Stratton in 1867. Not only that, he left his precious satchel and sketchbook in Stratton’s care for safekeeping. The two men weren’t connected in any way that I knew of, and at the time I had no idea what the tie between them could be.’
‘But now you think it’s her.’
‘I know it’s her. I’ve never been so certain of anything. I feel it. Do you know?’
Jack nodded. He did know.
‘Whoever she is. She’s the key.’
Jack was looking at the photograph. ‘I don’t reckon she did it. Steal the diamond, I mean. In fact, I’m sure of it.’
‘Based on what? A photo?’
Jack wondered how to explain the sudden certainty that had overcome him as he stared at the photograph, the woman meeting his gaze. He was almost sick with it. Thankfully, he was spared having to answer as Elodie continued, ‘I don’t think she did, either. And neither did Leonard Gilbert, as it turns out. I had a feeling when I was reading his book that his heart wasn’t in it, and then I found a second article that he published in 1938 where he said that he’d asked his source outright whether she believed that Lily Millington had participated in the robbery and she told him she knew for a fact that she hadn’t.’
‘So it’s possible that the diamond really is still here, like my client’s grandmother told her?’
‘Well, anything’s possible, I guess, although it’s been a very long time. What exactly did she tell you?’
‘She said that her grandmother had lost something precious and there was good reason to believe that it was on an estate in England.’
‘Her grandmother told her this?’
‘In a manner of speaking. She suffered a stroke, and when she started to recover, her words came back to her all in a rush and she started talking about her life, her childhood, her past, with a great sense of urgency. She spoke about a diamond that was precious to her, that she’d left at the house where she went to school. It was all a bit piecemeal, I gather, but after her grandmother died, my client came across a number of items in her effects that she’s convinced were her grandmother’s way of telling her where to look for it.’