Emery Lane, of Rupert Selkirk and Associates, made tea. Jo had met him the day before; pencil thin mustache, pencil thin man; there was something distinctly No. 2 Ticonderoga about him. Watching him bustle about the domestic space of a small back kitchen (with a waist apron) was both incongruous and weirdly placating. She found him easier to talk to, as a result.
“Then, he just left the mower running!”
Emery placed a warmed brown pot on the table in front of Jo.
“Rude of him,” he said, agreeably. Jo shook her head.
“Not rude. Planned. He was just distracting me so he could take my painting.”
Emery made no remark to this at all, even though it was the second time she’d said it (the first had been in a rush of unpracticed words upon arrival). He did, however, pour tea and offer sugar and little cookies.
“I don’t mean to be insensitive, but you didn’t really see him take it, did you?” Emery snapped a biscuit in two and nibbled one corner. “Were you going to make a police report?” Jo took a deep breath (and a chocolate biscuit).
“I—I don’t know. I want him fired, though. How long has Sid worked for Rupert, anyway?”
“Oh, he doesn’t work for Mr. Selkirk at all! We are on retainer to the estate, so anything done for the property resides under the jurisdiction of the owners. Sid Randles works for you.”
Jo set the teacup down a little harder than she meant to.
“I’m paying for this?” she demanded. “I thought there wasn’t any money in the estate!”
“No, no—not paying! Well. It’s complicated.” Emery puckered his lips a moment, and Jo worried she’d been rude, even if she couldn’t think how. The door buzzer had just gone off, however, and a few seconds later, Rupert entered the kitchenette fully animated.
“Emery, I thought we should—” The words halted and Jo watched him chew back an entire sentence. “Hello, Josephine, I wasn’t expecting you.”
“We were just talking about Sid,” Emery said.
“He stole something from me,” Jo cut in. “Sorry—I meant to start at the beginning. He tripped over my tool bag and then left the mower on, and then he stole from me.”
Rupert had not changed position or expression, except to raise his eyebrows at Emery. Jo suppressed a sigh; overdirect, inability to mask impatience...salutations, Jo!
“Sorry. Hello, Rupert—Mr. Selkirk. I, um, have had some trouble with Sid Randles. He took a painting from the estate.”
“Of Lord Ardemore?” Rupert asked.
“No—”
“Lady Gwen.”
“No, actually. It’s the portrait upstairs.”
“I don’t know of any portrait upstairs,” Rupert said, a little flatly.
“It’s a woman, dark hair rolled at the neck in a sort of Grecian wave. And she has odd, dark eyes, a blue gown—or blouse, it’s just from the bust up.” Jo had closed her eyes to repeat this but opened them to share the most salient point: “The nameplate said Netherleigh.”
“Which room?” Rupert interrupted.
Jo stood up and made a small circuit of her chair. Why were people always hard? She was better at crowds; that’s why introverts could live well in Brooklyn: collective anonymity, the protection of bounded otherness. But if you had to keep explaining yourself, it at least helped if people didn’t come at you with prior inquiries.
“The room in the back. With the hole,” she said tersely. “Now it’s missing because Sid took it. He stole it. I want it back—and I want him fired. Like today. Now.”
Rupert’s unruly eyebrows met in the middle.
“He came to the estate and stole a painting? Why would he do that? Are you sure?”
Jo heard Emery hem-hem behind her; he’d asked the same question.
“It was there. He showed up. Now it’s not.”
“Ye-es. He may have moved it for some reason. Didn’t you say it’s the room with the most damage?” Rupert asked, as if that explained it.
“Look, he intentionally distracted me, got me out of the house,” she said. Except now this sounded weird even to her own ears. What if that was just a prank? What if the two things weren’t related after all? In front of her, Rupert folded his hands. He was probably on the verge of asking, like Emery, if they needed to call a constabulary, or whatever. Jo felt her heart grip against her sternum and attempted to beat him to it.
“I might make a report,” she said slowly. “But not yet. Right now, I want you to fire him and take his keys. And tell him that, if he brings back the painting, I won’t call the police. How’s that?”
Rupert smoothed his lapels, tugged up each pant leg, and sat down in his leather chair.
“You are within your rights to end his employment, of course. It was a contract of convenience, no more.” Rupert opened his desk drawer and took out an accounts book bound in green baize. “Sid took no salary; he managed the cottage and grounds and was permitted to keep any funds from renting the cottage. When you move into the cottage, that terminates anyway. You could wait until—”
“I’m moving in tomorrow,” Jo said on impulse, but once she did, it seemed a marvelous idea. “I’ll be bringing my things from the Red Lion tomorrow morning. Early.” The more she spoke, the more real everything sounded. “It’s mine, and I’m staying.”
Rupert said nothing. Emery said nothing—in fact he hadn’t spoken since Rupert came in, Jo realized, though his gaze remained fixed on Rupert’s serenely professional face. She glanced between them both.
“Please?”
“All right,” Rupert said, laying one hand on the nearby telephone receiver. He picked it up, and on that queue, Emery offered to see her out. An alarm was ringing somewhere in Jo’s head, but she couldn’t grasp what it signaled. It felt awkward enough, but then again, that might be her fault.
“I just want to find out who she is. I mean, it has to be a family portrait, doesn’t it?” she asked when they reached the door. Emery was holding her coat, but paused before offering it up.
“It makes a certain sense,” he agreed. “The Ardemores were mainly from Yorkshire. Sir Richard and his wife, his son William, all born and bred here. Not William’s wife Gwen, though. Welsh. Daughter of industrialists. Davies, I think, was the name.”
“Davies. Not Netherleigh?” Jo asked. Emery gave a little shrug.
“The only Netherleigh I know is in Belfast. Government building of some kind, I think.” He closed the door behind her with a flutter of fingers. Jo could see Rupert Selkirk’s back through the window. He was still on the phone.
It was nearly dark when Jo got back to the Red Lion. She’d taken three trips between the town shops and the cottage, stocking in garbage bags and cleaning supplies. It was a mess, too, of course, but Jo itched to get her hands on the bookcase first. Her brain was buzzing with more than anticipation; Rupert had texted to say that Sid would turn in his keys the following day. No mention of the painting—or of Sid’s response. It left her with creeping doubts she tried to subdue. Not everyone is out to get you.
She’d been right about Tony, though.
Jo pushed open the door to the public house and into a barricade of noise. Standing room only, a blur of faces and colored coats.
“There she is!”
A dozen heads swiveled in Jo’s direction, glasses plonking the bar top like punctuation marks. She recognized Ricky, his tie flung over one shoulder. “Hey, Sid,” he shouted, “your ex boss just turned up.”
“Oh no,” Jo muttered under her breath. She tried to back through the doors and into the hall, but Ben was just coming through carrying a laden tray. Jo spun back around to see Sid leering at her from Ricky’s high-top.
“Well, well. Here she is, the tit that fired me,” he said. Pet. Tit. Jo’s mind whirred, but Sid wasn’t finished. “I wanna have a word with you, lady.”
“I have to go,” Jo said. Sid had crossed half the room already, and she winced. “Don’t touch me!”
“Jesus,” Sid sneered. “I didn’t touch you—what’s the matter with you? I just want you to own up. Go on, tell these people what you told Rupert.” He spun around to face the room; mostly men, Jo noted. Also a woman with a cane, scowling deeply. She didn’t look like safe harbor. All of them were listening expectantly to Sid.
“I been working at that run-down pile for years. What do I gotta show fer it? Pitched out for nothin. Not even advance notice.”
“Makes her a real Ardemore,” Ricky sniggered into his beer. Sid clapped his shoulder.
“Don’t it, just? But that’s not the worst of it, lads. She accuses me of stealing. And she didn’t have the balls to tell me to my face.”
People were staring. Some began to laugh. It was noisy. Hot blood crept up Jo’s neck and flushed her cheeks. She’d disappeared her thumbs again and a tremor was working its way through her legs. She still managed to get the words out.
“You did steal something. And I want it back.”
“I never took no sodding painting!” Sid shouted back. “Why would I?”
Jo couldn’t answer. Her throat had seized up, and no words would come out. They fizzled as they left her brain, got stranded somewhere. The light, the noise, and the people—it was too damn much, and she was shutting down. She could sense Sid getting nearer, a looming presence, but she couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t move.
“You can’t say nothing? Not a damn thing?” he asked. “Jest like your uncle, are ya?”
“Oy! Sid! You stop it right there!” a voice shouted. Jo didn’t know who it was, but the sound unlocked her legs. She spun around, shoving aside those behind her, and dashed into the hall and up the stairs. When she got to her room, she shut and locked her door behind her, then sank onto the bed, gasping little hiccups. Why didn’t you handle that better for crissakes? she scolded herself. Jo slumped backward and stared at the ceiling, plucking at brain splinters. Her guts churned with embarrassment; people would be talking. She looked weak to them, but she wasn’t. She’d just got—a bit—
“’Allo in there?” a woman’s voice asked at the door. “Can I come in?”
The accent was thick, round, and warm. Jo couldn’t quite place it.
“I’ve something for you to eat, love,” the voice added, so Jo took a breath and got to her feet. It took a moment to undo the latch; standing in the hall was a woman with dark hair, swept back from the temples and streaked on the sides with iron gray. She carried a tray.
“Partridge and rice! Good, too, as I made it. And a little brandy. Drink it up, now, you cannae do better.”
It might have been her tone, or maybe Jo just didn’t have any arguing left, but she did as she was told.
“Mhm.” Jo took a sip and swallowed fire. “You are—?”
“Tula Byrne. Short for Tailelaith. Innkeeper, chef, baker, and the one as chucks out drunken idiots.” Tula pushed a fork at her. “I kicked Sid out m’self.”
“I’m—sorry.” Jo was not sorry. Tula gave her a wide, white smile.
“Sid ain’t so good a customer that I’m afraid to lose him. Ben, you might know, he ain’t the forceful one.”
“I’m not helpless, I swear. I just—it’s embarrassing.”
Tula leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. “Tut, now. S’alright. You’re an outsider and I know what that’s like.”
“How?” Jo asked and was rewarded with a musical laugh. Tula curled a strand of hair around her fingers.
“Ben—the barman? He’s mine. I’m an older woman with a young lover, who refused marriage to keep her own name, and I’m Irish. It’s Satan’s trifecta. I been here fifteen years, and I’m still an outsider, love.”
“Oh,” was what Jo managed to say, but that didn’t seem to bother Tula.
“Ben told me you inherited that mess on the hill. Yes, I know it’s a mess—been that way ages. Fellow who owned it came round some, but not to stay. The young ones used to go up there spoonin’ in the hedges. Anyway—I called Selkirk. And you need a roofer.” She handed Jo a folded slip of paper with a number written in pencil. “Cheaper than most,” she assured her. “Just leave the tray in the hall.”
“Tula,” Jo said, finally. “Thank you. I mean it.”
“No worries, love. We outcasts do for each other.”
That night, Jo dreamed of the painting. The eyes were still wrong—more wrong. In her dream they appeared as dark smudges with no eyes at all, and instead of Netherleigh the nameplate was blank. She woke up sweating down her ass crack with the radiator hissing; it wasn’t a nightmare, but she was haunted. Nettled was a better word for it, maybe. Rupert and Emery didn’t seem to think the painting was even real, much less missing, and Netherleigh didn’t shed any light at all. Jo tossed the covers aside, took a quick lukewarm shower and dressed, scrolling her phone on her way downstairs to the dining room. Emery proved correct; there was an economics building in Ireland called Netherleigh House. A bed-and-breakfast in Devon had the name, too, but no one explained what it stood for. Over breakfast, she even tried splitting the word in two:
N-E-T-H-E-R. She knew that one; below, behind, bottom.
L-E-I-G-H turned out to be an English surname that also meant “delicate” or “meadow.” Bottom meadow? Delicate rear? Field of Butts?
“Here you are,” Ben said, delivering a plate of eggs, toast, “bacon,” (it was not bacon, Jo decided) and beans, which didn’t make any sense. Jo peeped up from her by-now-claimed corner booth; there weren’t many people in—and (she hoped) none from the previous night.
“Headed to the cottage?” Ben asked brightly. “Good for a walk if you’re feeling brisk. About five miles.”
Jo nodded thanks, left half the breakfast, and took a coffee to go. The fog had retreated and clouds pulled like taffy across a blue sky. She wanted, desperately wanted, to start on the house’s library. But as she planned to make good on her threat to move in today, the cottage needed her attention first. Jo hummed to herself as she unpacked the trunk of her rental: extra-large bin bags, industrial gloves, mold killer. Balancing the load against her hip, she unlocked the door with two reassuring clicks.
The faintest puff of something unpleasant assaulted her nose upon entering. She didn’t remember it from the previous day; distinctive, slightly familiar, as yet unplaceable. Jo shrugged and banged the door closed with her hip. A good clean would fix it, she told herself, stepping round the sofa.
Then she saw the whisky bottle and two used glasses. They didn’t belong there. But neither did the boots.
They were workman-like and camel colored, with their rubber soles tread-up. More importantly, they had feet in them. There was a body on the carpet.
Jo reacted on autopilot, muscle memory dictating her next several moves as she relived eleven months of nursing her mother. Kneel, check for a pulse. Nothing. The skin was cold, pasty, the pores closed. Now her brain registered the familiar odor: a metallic tinge of blood and fluids. She couldn’t see his face under the mess of red hair, but there was no mistaking Sid Randles.
Jo fumbled with her phone but didn’t know any emergency numbers. She tried Rupert, got voice mail. Caught somewhere between numbness and panic she remembered Tula’s note. The Red Lion number had been printed on the stationary.
“Tula?” she begged into the receiver.
“Ben, I’m afraid. Who’s calling?”
“It’s Jo. I—I’m at the cottage—”
“Tula’s out in town, but I can give her a message—”
Jo felt like a scream might be bubbling up.
“POLICE,” she gasped. “It’s Sid!”
“Oh no, what’s he done now?” Ben asked. Jo swallowed what was probably bile. That was going to come back (a lot) in a minute.
“He’s dead,” she said, and just managed to make it to the sink in time.