Thursday, 10:00
Jo’s hands felt clammy and her heart kept hopping into her throat. She rested one hand on the cloth-draped and carefully wrapped portrait of Evelyn Davies, and used the other to steady herself against the elevator walls.
“Ready?” Gwilym asked when they arrived on the right floor. Fortuitous, Fortinbras, for fuck’s sake.
“Nope, but here goes,” she said and they lifted the painting and carried it to Arthur’s door. Gwilym rang the bell, but scarcely needed to—the door swung open to reveal an impeccably suited Arthur, Chen in vermillio, and two excitable dogs.
“Welcome, welcome! Come in.” Arthur helped them deposit the painting against the far wall. Jo noted that Hiding had already been taken down and was sitting next to the breakfast table. There were also four glasses of champagne set out and sparkling in the sunlight. Introductions were made and hands shaken, then Gwilym gave Jo a nudge.
“Ready when you are, Hercule,” he said with a wink.
Jo nodded, and the two of them removed the cover and lifted Evelyn into place. She heard Arthur gasp behind her; he’d never seen Evelyn before. The look on Chen’s face was more subtle, like welcoming an old friend. Jo wasn’t planning to give Evelyn up, though; this was official business.
“Thank you, everyone, for coming,” she said, feeling weirdly like she was about to give the garden opening address again. “We’re here today to solve a missing persons mystery.”
Solve /sälv/ verb: to find an answer to, explanation for, or means of effectively dealing with a problem. Jo took a breath, and carried on.
“Evelyn Davies fell in love with her brother-in-law in 1906 or early 1907. They started as confidants. They wrote letters. In 1908, Evelyn is pregnant, dies and is buried in the Ardemore House basement, her painting is partly ruined in an acid attack and her lover and her sister leave the house forever. We don’t know what happened to the baby.”
Missing /ˈmısıŋ/ adjective, verb, noun: unable to be found, to feel the lack of, someone who is absent—lost.
Jo clasped her hands.
“My mother kept secrets. Aiden kept secrets, too. But I think Aiden meant his to be solved.” She nodded at Chen. “What did he tell you about the eyes?”
“He asked me to paint them looking a different direction—just slightly—from where they should’ve been looking,” Chen said. “It gives her an uncanny appearance.”
“Is that what it is?” Arthur asked. “Something is so strange and haunting about her.”
“You’re not wrong,” Gwilym said. He had managed to befriend Hans, who was resting in his arms. Jo bounced slightly on her heels. It was coming down to it, and the anticipation was sending little sparks of electricity all through her.
“Aiden meant to give Hiding back to Chen. He planned to take Evelyn here, and I believe he meant her to be hung on this wall, just as she is right now. He requested Chen paint the eyes like this for a specific reason. So . . .” Jo walked to where the small party stood, then turned to face the portrait with them. “What is Evelyn supposed to be looking at?”
“The mantelpiece,” Gwilym said.
“No,” Chen corrected gently. “What’s on the mantelpiece.”
All eyes turned to look at the Russian doll.
“You told me that was a gift from Aiden,” Jo said.
Arthur nodded, approaching it. “For Christmas—our last Christmas. He’d only just been diagnosed, but I’ve opened it before.” He picked up the doll with careful hands. Layer by layer, he dismantled the dolls until all were standing in a line upon the mantel. Gwilym put Hans on the sofa and picked up the last doll.
“This one isn’t original,” he said, pulling a jewelry magnifier out of his vest pocket. “Antiques are my line of work—eh—when I’m working. It’s got the wrong color of red. Also . . .” He gave it a slight shake. “The last nesting doll in a series is supposed to be solid.”
Jo took the doll from Gwilym.
“If it’s hollow, then it opens,” she said, turning it in the light. When angled just so against the windows, a faint line appeared. “There’s a seam! Look.”
Now it was Arthur’s turn, but Jo noticed his hands were trembling.
“Sorry, I—You think there’s something inside? He didn’t say. Why wouldn’t he say?” Arthur tried twisting the doll to no avail.
“He wasn’t ready to say,” Chen said quietly. “Give it here, pet. Welshman, you say it’s a reproduction?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Good.” Chen dropped the doll on the floor and crushed it with her heel. Arthur gave a little cry—Jo may have squeaked—and both dogs lost their tiny little minds. But Chen merely leaned down, long fingers scooping up something among the fragments.
“For you,” she said to Arthur with a flourish. A tiny piece of paper, no bigger than a cookie fortune. It said “Arthur and Ægle”.
“That’s Aiden’s handwriting,” Arthur said, his face suddenly ashy. “The Laing—it’s an art gallery. It’s the first place we went together after meeting at Chen’s art exhibit.”
“Who is Ægle?” Gwilym asked.
Jo’s brain spit up a volley of factoids; Ægle as one of the Greek nymphs of evening, Ægle and her sisters as daughters of Zeus, or of Hesperus, or—
“An Etruscan queen—in a long-form poem by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, about King Arthur,” Arthur explained. “I took Aiden to see the painting King Arthur and Queen Aegle in the Happy Valley.”
Jo’s eyes strayed back to Evelyn’s portrait. Aiden had used a painting—to point to another painting—and to remind Arthur of their first date. This wasn’t an end. It was the beginning.
“Can we go see it now?” Jo asked.
Arthur looked uncertain, but Chen picked up her umbrella cane and pointed to the door.
“Oh yes, child. Right now,” she said.
* * *
The Laing looked like a warehouse married to a church. Their little party stood in a room with arched ceilings and deep blue walls, lost in the faraway snow of distant Alps. “John Martin, oil on canvas, 1849.” It had been painted only five years before the artist’s death, an alien landscape of crag and tower and cliff under a thumbnail moon and endless expanse of night. In the foreground stood two tiny figures, King Arthur and Queen Ægle. The museum label included a part of the poem, and Arthur read it aloud:
“Still, hand in hand, they range the lulled isle,
Air knows no breeze, scarce sighing to their sighs.”
“It’s my favorite painting,” Arthur explained, a gentle blush forming at his cheeks. “And not just because it’s also my name. This is the Happy Valley, a mythic place in the Alps where everyone is safe from the changes of the ancient world. But Arthur doesn’t stay there; he chooses change—and everything that comes with it.”
“Including death,” Chen added.
“Yes. But life first.” Arthur clasped his hands behind his back, his clear eyes wandering over the painting. “Traditions don’t make us safe, and staying the same doesn’t keep us from dying.” Beside him, Chen lay her jeweled hand against her heart.
“Speaking truth,” she whispered—and Jo felt an internal contraction, as though her heart were turning inside out. Arthur and Chen were the brave ones; Aiden knew that, was trying to tell them so. He wanted to change, but didn’t know how, and started the journey too late.
“Arthur?” Jo asked. “That day. Standing here. Do you remember what happened next?”
“It was a very long time ago,” he said. Because everyone said that—but memory existed outside of time. Memory superseded time, squashed it, lengthened it, chunked it, pulled it like taffy. Jo grasped both of Arthur’s hands and squeezed hard.
“Close your eyes. Quick, just do it. In your brain is a map; you just need to follow it. Aiden bought Chen’s painting. You invited him to see your favorite painting, the one that mattered most to you. Now—” she turned him toward the painting again “—look at Arthur and Ægle and tell us about the day.”
Arthur let out a long breath. He was close now, almost close enough to set off alarms—his vision enveloped in layers of oil and varnish.
“It was August,” he murmured.
“Good,” said Chen—in a far more soothing manner than Jo could muster at the moment. “August 23, and it was raining the night of the gallery opening,” she added.
Arthur kept his eyes on the painting, but a half smile worked across his features.
“It was—I didn’t have an umbrella. Adien offered to share so we walked together. I didn’t want to go back to my car; I didn’t want the evening to end. The Laing wasn’t far; I asked him if he’d like to see a painting.”
Jo could picture them: two men in summer suits, not holding hands but permitted the closeness of a shared umbrella in the rain.
“He didn’t know the poem. I think I might have gone on about it for some time.” Arthur’s voice had grown quieter, husky. “He talked about Greek epic and compared the painted sky to a wine-dark sea. And I . . . asked him if he’d like to join me for a glass. God; I’d forgotten that! We went to the Velmont Hotel for dinner.”
“Gorgeous,” Chen said, patting his arm gently. “Absolute luxury, the Velmont.”
Arthur nodded, but seemed slightly unsteady on his feet.
“They had a 1999 red burgundy; the best year, I think,” he said with the ghost of a smile. “It was perfect.”
Jo hadn’t meant to lead a scavenger hunt through Arthur’s memories. She wouldn’t want anyone doing the same to hers. But Arthur had changed, somehow. Gone was the winsome businessman with his sleek hair and impeccable manner. His eyes shone as though misted—and he hadn’t released Jo’s hand, almost as though he feared to walk on his own.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m not all right,” Arthur said. “It feels like dreaming. There are things I’d not thought about. Afraid to think about. I’m not sure. I’ve not even been back to the Velmont since Aiden passed.”
“Then it’s time you go again,” Chen said, giving him a sideways squeeze.
Gwilym gave himself a once-over.
“Luxury, you said. I’m not exactly dressed for this.” He plucked at his blue jeans. Chen merely offered up her arm, as though for him to escort her.
“Tut, the restaurant does lunch—and my art hangs on all the walls. They won’t toss you on your ear, pet.”
Gwilym and Chen headed toward the far door, as though the matter was settled.
Jo bit her lip. “We don’t have to do this,” she said to Arthur.
He just pointed to the Happy Valley and its tiny, fragile inhabitants.
“We do, though. I do. And I don’t think I can on my own.”