The fine weather breaks on the day of Lillian’s funeral, the late Indian summer departing in a rush of grey storm clouds and cold drizzle. Maggie sits on a hard pew at the front of the village church, Lillian’s casket resting on a plinth before her. It’s hard to imagine her grandmother lying stiff and cold inside the wooden box. It’s hard to believe that the woman she has loved all these years – the woman who helped to raise her, the mother she never had – has gone. Maggie knows she hasn’t resolved in her head or her heart that she will never see her again. She is too numb.
Seated somewhere behind her are Will and Gus, Harry Granger, and a handful of stalwarts from the village. There is no sign of Albie, though she has turned to check several times throughout the service, hopeful he is just running late. She’s done all she can to try to track him down and pass on the news of Lillian’s death, leaving messages at various hostels and with odd friends he has collected over the years. But she’s had no word since Lillian’s passing, and sitting there at the front of the chapel, she has never felt so alone. What would Lillian tell her? What words of advice would she have for her in this moment? She can’t seem to conjure her – not even her voice.
After the service, Maggie stands outside under an umbrella and accepts handshakes and condolences from the few who have attended. Gus gives her a stiff hug. ‘I wanted to come, but I’m afraid I have to run straight back for a meeting.’
She nods. ‘She would have appreciated you being here. Thank you.’
Will studies Maggie. ‘How are you holding up?’
She nods. ‘OK.’ She clears her throat. ‘I’m sorry to ask, but could you come back to the house with me after this?’
Will looks a little uncomfortable, glancing at Gus, who turns away, his jaw clenched. ‘I’m not sure that’s—’
‘It’s Gran’s lawyer,’ she says, cutting through the awkward moment. ‘He’s going to read the will and he’s specifically asked that you be there.’
‘Oh,’ he says, looking surprised. ‘Yes, OK.’
‘Thank you.’ She glances across the graveyard at Gus retreating, hunch-shouldered, through the rain. ‘It was good of him to come.’
Back at the house, Jane makes a large pot of tea and unwraps the plates of sandwiches she made earlier that morning. Maggie, needing something stronger, opens a bottle of wine before they all gather in Charles’s study, sitting cramped around her grandfather’s desk.
Harry reads the will. The last few shares Lillian held in the business, which Maggie knows are all but worthless, are bequeathed to Albie, along with several of Charles’s most valuable pieces of Chinese porcelain. Maggie isn’t sure she knows the pieces. Perhaps Albie has taken them already, sold them off. Serves him right, she thinks.
Jane is given a large silver platter and a pearl choker that Maggie knows is worth a small fortune. There is a small bequest for Mr Blackmore, the former gardener of the estate, and a rather strange note for Will: ‘Look in the hay barn on the edge of the estate. You’ll find Charles’s last remaining sports car hidden under a tarpaulin – an Aston Martin he couldn’t bear to sell. If you can get it going again it’s yours to enjoy.’
Harry had looked up from the will with a raised eyebrow. ‘It’s a little unconventional, I know, but Lillian thought you might appreciate the gesture.’
Will is smiling. ‘God love her.’
Finally, Harry tells Maggie that she is to inherit the house and the estate with instructions to do whatever she thinks is best – and apologies for the mess she finds it in. Maggie glances across and sees Will nodding in approval. She feels numb. Cloudesley is hers – for now.
‘Oh, and there’s this one last thing.’ Harry reaches for a wooden box next to his papers. ‘In Lillian’s own words, Maggie, she says, “I can’t give you the house without also giving you the key.”’ He pushes the box towards her. ‘Your grandmother says,’ he looks back down at the papers in his hands, finding his place, ‘“I hope you’ll understand why I kept it to myself all this time.”’ He looks up from the paper again and gives her a look that shows he is as baffled as she is.
Maggie reaches for the box and lifts the lid. Inside is a large brass key tied to a piece of green silk. Maggie stares at it for a moment, confused. ‘The west wing,’ she says suddenly, understanding coming in a rush. She turns to look at Will again, a sense of trepidation rising.
He shrugs. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’
‘Come with me?’
Will holds the tapestry in the entrance hall to one side as Maggie tries the key in the locked door. It turns smoothly. Maggie shares a quick glance with Will before turning the handle and pushing open the door. A corridor looms ahead of her, cloaked in darkness, a musty scent of dust and ash drifting towards her on a draught.
They walk the corridor, heading for the faintest splinter of light falling from an open door at the far end, grit crunching underfoot. ‘In here?’ Maggie asks.
‘I guess so,’ says Will.
She pushes on the door and steps into the room.
The interior is cast almost in darkness, only a glimmer of daylight filtering through a grime-streaked glass dome high above their heads. Will tries the light switch but it doesn’t work, yet as Maggie looks up, tracing the source of daylight, she sees a faded map of something intriguing fanning out across the ceiling. Here and there, through the gloom, traces of gold and blue and green shimmer seductively.
‘Do you smell that?’ asks Will.
‘Yes. Fire.’
She puts a finger to the nearest wall and it comes away dirt-streaked and sooty, but where she has touched, a burst of emerald green appears.
‘Look,’ says Will, pointing to the blackened shell of a bay window. ‘This part’s been completely destroyed.’ His shoes crunch on broken glass and fragments of blackened timber.
He moves across to the furthest window and opens a bolted shutter. The glass here is still boarded up from the outside, but a little more light filters through the gaps in the wood.
Maggie turns and surveys the room, her eyes beginning to trace the outline of something quite extraordinary.
‘What is it?’ asks Will.
‘It’s incredible,’ murmurs Maggie, spinning around in a slow circle, unable to tear her eyes from the scene laid out before her.
After a long pause, she hears Will’s footsteps moving to the far side of the room. ‘Come and look at this,’ he says.
She joins him by the fireplace and they stand looking over a pile of familiar items: vases, paintings and ornaments, all taken from the main house. ‘More treasure.’ Maggie shakes her head.
‘What’s it all doing here?’
‘Lillian,’ she says. ‘She must have hidden it here.’
‘To keep them safe?’
Maggie thinks of Albie’s ad hoc removals from the house. She thinks of Lillian’s night-time wanderings. Her soot-stained feet. ‘Perhaps.’
The hoard holds their attention for a short time, but it is the room itself that really captivates. Maggie and Will spend a long time studying the walls around them, trying to identify elements of the extraordinary painting hidden behind the layers of soot and dust. ‘Look, there are trees . . . and feathers everywhere.’
‘Yes. And a bird up there, see it?’
‘Something happened in here,’ says Maggie, staring around at the devastated scene.
‘Here’s something else.’ Will is pointing to a cleaner section of paintwork, low to the skirting board to the right of the door.
‘It looks like a name,’ says Maggie, bending to peer more closely. ‘John . . . Jack . . . Jack . . . Fincher.’ She turns to Will and smiles. ‘The artist has signed his work.’
Maggie spends all of the next day researching Jack Fincher, though it proves to be a frustrating trail. She uncovers images of some of his earliest work, completed as a war artist during the Second World War, and a couple of newspaper clippings reviewing exhibitions in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There is a black-and-white photograph of the artist as a young man, seated on an army vehicle, smiling and holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. And another, more interestingly, from an online archive of a 1955 edition of the Cloud Green parish magazine, showing a man standing in front of wooden stocks being kissed on the cheek by a fair-haired girl. The photo is a little grainy, but she can see enough to know the man is very handsome.
With a little more digging she finds an old dissertation lodged online by a former Slade student, whose thesis had attempted to chart the rise and fall of Jack Fincher and the mystery of his disappearance. The student had gone so far as to trace the artist to a small town in the West Country, but when he had arrived at the given address hoping for an interview, the student had been sent packing by the wild-eyed drunk who had opened the door. The student had concluded that Jack Fincher was a man crushed by his early success and the weight of expectation. He was a man in ruins, but for the legacy of two paintings still housed at the Tate Britain gallery.
Maggie opens the home page for the Tate galleries website. She types the name ‘Jack Fincher’ into their search engine and is immediately redirected to a page showing two oil paintings. She stares at the images on her screen for a long while before reaching for her phone.
‘Hello. Is this the National Trust? Could I please speak to someone in your acquisitions department? I’ve found something that I think you might be interested to look at.’
After a long but promising conversation, Maggie hangs up and returns to her laptop. She focuses on the second clue in the student’s dissertation: a small town in the West Country. She types in various search threads and suddenly finds herself staring at the home page of a small gallery in Frome, Somerset: Fincher Fine Art. The website describes the gallery as a small, family-run business, founded in the late 1960s.
Maggie clicks through to the ‘contact us’ page. A young woman answers the phone on the third ring. ‘Hello, Fincher Fine Art; can I help you?’