Jo pulled into the drive behind a large Fiennes & Sons work van. She’d slept in and let them get a good head start, but it was still surprising to see the scaffold nearly put together already. Largely freestanding, it reached all the way to the mystery room window, and two burly-looking fellows were busily attaching one more level to reach the roofline.
“They didn’t waste any time!” Ben was just climbing out of his Scout; he’d offered to help cart off the debris she’d bagged before. “And the fog is burning off. Should be decent weather for it.”
Jo saw no sign of fog burn off. She’d come prepared with a fuzzy brown sweater under her raincoat, and it hadn’t been overkill.
“I hope so.” Jo pulled a couple of paper sacks from the back seat—lunch provisions—but paused at the open front door. “I’m a little worried about going in, to be honest.”
“Maybe you should get them to send the uniform back up here, like they have at the cottage?” Ben suggested. He’d got the wrong end of the idea, though.
“No, not because of that,” she assured him. “It’s their presence that bothers me. A lot of people were tramping around in here yesterday. And now there are big-footed roofers, too. It just...it’s a lot.”
“Oh.” Ben balanced the sacks on top of another load of supplies while Jo opened the door. “They didn’t find anything, though, did they? The police?”
“No paintings. No money hidden in the walls.”
“No skeletons in closets,” Ben added. Jo shook her head.
“Nope.” That would at least have been interesting. The front hall smelled a lot less of rotting books and a lot more like sawdust: an improvement. The parlor table had been pressed into service as a way station for the roofers. She could see pale footprints tracking up and down the stairs in pine dust and felt the impractical urge to sweep what would just get dirty again.
“I worry I’ve let them get too heavy,” Jo said, giving the smaller bag a tug. She could drag that one. Ben lifted the biggest and steadied it against his shoulder.
“Shame about the books,” he said. Jo bit her lip. He had scarcely any idea how much of a shame. All those gorgeous gilt covers, the heavy paper so much sturdier than what was printed presently.
“It’s tragic,” she agreed. “But this place is tragic.”
“Haunted,” Ben said, but Jo shook her head.
“No, that’s not right. Haunted would be full of something. Ghosts and memories, at least. This is—worse. Hollow.” She’d been fighting off a growing sense of disappointed anger, mainly toward her mother. Don’t think ill of the dead, she cautioned herself, but the feeling remained, like a pulled thread threatening to snag wider. “I mean, the place gets abandoned twice—first by the Ardemores, and then by mine. The way Roberta talked about it, the staff cared more than any of the inhabitants, at least after Sir Richard.”
“Well, they were from here. I mean, you can’t abandon it if you’ve no place to go.” Ben had stepped out the front door; now he leaned back in. “There’s a skip out here—think we could use it?”
Skip meant dumpster and, Jo realized, would save them from hauling loads off property. It also meant interrupting men at work.
“We can but ask,” she muttered.
The hallway echoed with voices and banging, and Jo resisted the urge to cover her ears. Light flooded out from the narrow door; her mystery room had four full-grown men in it, throwing off all sense of proportion.
“Wow, that is a hole,” Ben said. Jo stifled a gasp; what had been a ragged foot-wide slash over the rear-facing window was now an open rectangle through which a grown man could climb. Had climbed, in fact. Because his arm had just reached through it for a hammer.
“It’s...much...bigger,” she said, blinking dust. An older man, shorter than the others and grizzled about the beard offered her a calloused hand.
“Ms. Jones ? I’m Fiennes Sr. ’Tis bigger—had to cut out a lot o’rot.”
“Oh.” She shaded her eyes and looked up. “New beams?”
“Aye. Sistered them” Fiennes began, and Jo jumped at the word, “to this big ’un.” He tapped the enormous beam that plugged into the brickwork of the chimney. Ah. Of course. With the addition of skylight, Jo could see the difference between wet and dry woodgrain.
She could see something else, too.
Words.
“There’s writing up there,” she said. A slant of letters, possibly carved. She walked just beneath it, forgetting the others crowding about her. “You see that?”
“I can probably reach it,” Ben offered. They’d taken the furniture out, but he just caught hold of the beam itself and pulled himself up like a gymnast.
“Capital letters,” he grunted, dropping down again. “E and I think a G.”
“Initials?” Jo asked, then, more excitedly, “Code?”
Ben’s reply was cut off by shouting from the roof. A moment later and a bearded face appeared in the hole above.
“The fog’s lifted, Da—and there’s something to see up here!”
The elder Fiennes moved the ladder from the joist to just beneath the hole. He disappeared in seconds, shimmying up like a squirrel. He was down again in a moment.
“Ms. Jones? Oi, you want to have a look, you do.”
“I don’t think—” Jo managed, but Ben was already up and through like some sort of British Olympian. He reached his hands back down, presumably to help Jo follow. Her stomach didn’t just churn, it heaved.
“Would you rather come out through the window and climb the scaffold?” asked Fiennes Sr., and probably he meant to be helpful, but that was the worst idea she’d ever heard. She opted to take hold of Ben’s hands, instead. One rung, two—and then a heave upward from darkness to bright light.
Ah shit. The horrible swooping feeling hit her immediately. Jo squeezed her eyes shut to stop the ground rushing up to meet her. Conflict between vision, vestibular, and somatosensory system, she assured herself. It didn’t help much. Ben meanwhile had just let out a long, low whistle.
“Damned impressive, isn’t it?” the roofer agreed, and with that kind of encouragement, Jo opened her eyes. Look up first, she told herself. Sky, which had started to turn blue. Then a little lower, she saw the broad sweep of North Pennine hills, and a patchwork hedge of yellow and green where fallow fields were coming up spring. And then, against her stomach’s protests, she looked down.
“Wow.”
Roberta had told her about Ardemore gardens. Jo had seen the plans. She had measured the length of the stone wall and done the math. Hell, she had even been in the garden, albeit at weed level. But nothing, not a damn thing, prepared her for such a view. Arrayed beneath her was the living embodiment of the drawing she’d found in the library: sweeping terraces, labyrinthine walls of stone, trees of every variety marking off separate plots of overgrown garden, copse, fountain—and a yew hedge and stone wall all round. She could see some color, too, just starting in the undergrowth: a gentle wave of blue. Violets. Jo leaned slightly further, gripping Ben’s arm hard enough to leave marks.
“How?” she gasped. “I mean—that’s like something from Gardens of the National Trust!”
“Messier, but yar,” Ben agreed. “You own the meadow and those trees behind the cottage, too, don’t you?”
“I think so.”
“Well, see that ribbon there, running through? That’s the trail you walked with Tula.”
“All that is Richard’s garden?” Jo shook her head. No wonder he impressed Roberta, with her love of horticulture. It meant something else, too, though. Jo might be house poor—but surely she was land rich? She could maybe sell some bits of it away and fix the sagging house...
“Watch it!” A loose slate suddenly rattled down the side and over the edge. It hit the drive below with a distant shattering sound, and Jo’s knees went weak. Solstice, solipsist, sssshit—
“BackInBackInBackIn!” she squealed—and in fact Ben nearly had to carry her through the opening. Her whole body had simply seized up.
“I, um. Don’t do heights well,” Jo said when they had returned to the car. Ben didn’t laugh at her. It was an excellent quality. He did pour her some cocoa from the thermos she’d brought. She sipped slow, till she could feel her heart settle. Then she sighed.
“I forgot to ask about the dumpster.”
“S’right, I’ll pop back up and ask,” Ben said cheerfully. “Maybe get a photo of those letters for you.”
“Oh! Yes. EG, you said?”
“Yeah, but not like that. It was E, a plus sign, G.”
Jo felt a thrill run down both arms and benumb her fingertips.
“Like—like lovers? Oh gosh. You know what this means, don’t you? Evelyn must be E. Oh my God.”
“What’s the matter?”
“She was really here. I mean, she must have lived here, with them.” Jo felt strangely dissociated and clutched one hand against the stonework for support. Not just a painting, not just a photo, and not a figment of Jo’s imagination. “Evelyn lived with her sister. Just like the ex-Sids.” She was doing it again—connecting dots that might not be connected. But she didn’t care. A sort of rush was coming over her synapse; it felt euphoric. Everything about the place was sistered, wasn’t it?
“Way out here? A lot less lively than the Davies’ home in Cardiff, for sure,” Ben said. Jo nodded appreciatively.
“Tula said something like that. Maybe she had a lover and no one approved, so she was sent off to the countryside.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Let’s get these bags hauled away. I want to get back to Roberta’s museum.”
Gwilym was, of course, already there. Jo climbed down the precarious mill stairs, still picking thistle burrs from her sweater hem. He waved a worn-looking library book in her direction (without taking his eyes off the screen).
“Guess what? Cysts!”
Jo blinked at him.
“As in sac-like pocket of membranous tissue?” Brain citation: Medical history, second series, volume one.
“Yes, ma’am. Doctor’s casebook, from a practice right here in Abington. Here.” He spun about and flipped the pages to case 36. “G. A. née D. is the patient. And I’d bet real money that refers to Gwen Ardemore, previously Davies.”
“A medical record!” Jo repeated, her eyes growing wider with interest.
“Yeah. The diagnosis is hard to parse, but the symptoms suggest something major. Ovarian cysts, I think.”
Jo sank into the chair and opened the careworn covers. Typeface, Garamond—or like it. Dark and light, they had a taste and a feel. She could feel her heart racing a little as the words slid through her brain—page, after page, after page. The words came together like a Rubik’s Cube; a piece from the text would float out, find its mate in her memory of other works, attach, reform, change color.
“Are you actually reading it that fast?” Gwilym asked, and Jo jumped out of her skin. She’d forgotten he was there.
“Yes—erm. I know, it’s a bit—”
“Amazing.” Gwilym turned his chair about to face her, hands on his knees. “I could just watch you doing it! Hell, I don’t know why you even need me here!”
“Partly because I can’t be in two places at once.” Jo frowned. That was the dream; she could get through whole libraries like that. But she thought to close the book and focus on Gwilym. “Sorry. It’s good to have an out-brain, that’s why I need you. Tell me your theories.”
Gwilym seemed extremely pleased by this.
“Sure thing. See, I think there was baby trouble. The Ardemores weren’t great breeders, right? I said it might be William and syphilis. But now I don’t think so. If G. A. is Gwen Ardemore, then she must have been having fertility issues because they try all kinds of odd remedies. Even the rest cure.”
“But that’s for hysteria?”
“Ehm. Well, her physician seemed to think her infertility was...you know. All in her head?”
Jo recoiled.
“That’s horrible.”
“I know. I feel dirty saying it. But it could explain why Evelyn turned up. If Gwen has ovarian cysts and is either ill or on bed rest or both, Evelyn might have come to help.” Gwilym swiveled back to the microfilm reader, scratching at new stubble. “This is pretty intimate business, and you wouldn’t necessarily want the servants to know.”
Evelyn as a nursemaid simply had not occurred to Jo. She rolled the idea around her head.
“Thing is, there are plenty of newspaper mentions of William, and several mentions of Gwen at garden parties. Nothing on Evelyn. I wonder why not?” Jo weighed this against her connected dot notions.
“Okay. What if there are two things going on at once?” she asked. “Her sister is ill, and she might have been sent away by her family. Perhaps she had a disreputable lover. We found some carved letters on a beam at the house.”
“An Arborglyph?” Gwilym asked. “Like lovers?”
“Think so. It’s E + G. It could be Evelyn plus Gwen, of course. A sisters’ pact. But that seems slightly strange when one of them is married, doesn’t it? G could be Gordon, or George. We just have to figure out who.”
Gwilym mussed his hair and gave her a grin.
“Do I feel another extensive search coming on?”
“You hunt the books,” Jo agreed. “And I’ll read them as fast as I can.”