Her gaze shot downwards. She cursorily examined the page and then looked back at me expectantly. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a photocopy of a page from an old log, a ledger.’ It was handwritten, like the coroner’s report, but the writing was larger and clearer. ‘Women’s names, as you can see, run in alphabetical order down the left-hand column. Marjorie Ashton, Mary Audley, Irene Bailey, Sarah Burnham, Eva Dooler, so on and so forth down to Katherine Irvine. The middle rows document shoe sizes, colours and styles, including a summary of the shoes’ main features. The final three columns running down the right-hand side detail the not inconsiderable sums paid for the items, the addresses and dispatch dates. These, as you can see, are all in 1898.’
Ophelia looked up at me and shrugged. ‘So?’
‘When Tara and I first went into the underground room, she was particularly interested in the green shoes that were down there. She was sure that they were handmade and that we could identify who they belonged to if she could just find the records. She was certain that there would be a log somewhere in the files littering the place detailing orders and who had placed them.’
‘And this is the log?’
I nodded, tapping my finger on the page. ‘This is a list of women who ordered handmade shoes from the factory in the first two quarters of 1898.’
This time Ophelia looked properly down the list, her gaze moving over the descriptions of the shoes until she found them. Dark green leather, tapering heel, ankle strap, embroidered uppers, pale green thread. Then, reaching the name alongside it, she said it aloud. ‘Amelia Holmes.’
I closed my eyes as the words seemed to rise off the page and take shape, moulding themselves into the contours of a woman. I nodded and pulled the final piece of paper from the file. ‘When Tara discovered that the shoes belonged to an Amelia Holmes, she obviously wanted to know more about her. I have to hand it to the girl, she’s a genius at uncovering information. She found an old newspaper article which you can read in a moment. First, just take a look at the photograph at the bottom of the page.’
Ophelia scanned the picture and gave a quiet whistle. Even in a poorly reproduced photograph from an old newspaper there was no question about it. The woman, Amelia Holmes, was staggeringly beautiful. She was smiling conservatively, her mouth closed but raised at the corners and the striking nature of her eyes, even in black and white, was evident.
‘Wow, she’s a looker,’ said Ophelia, tilting her head to get a better look at the image.
A moment passed in silence as I too looked at the photograph. I took in the eyes, imagined their irises of green and yellow and orange. Then I said it. ‘She’s the woman I told you about before. The woman from my dream.’
26
‘HOW IS IT possible?’ Ophelia was staring at me, wide-eyed. I imagined her mind in free fall, trying once more to make sense of something nonsensical.
I reached over to the newspaper article and ran my finger over the name. ‘She existed, too.’ She had been as real, as substantial as Ophelia and me.
‘Incredible.’ Ophelia shook her head. ‘And like James you saw her in a dream before you knew she existed.’
I thought once more about my dream of Amelia Holmes, when I had spoken to her in what I presumed was the underground room.
Ophelia pointed to the name in the log once more. ‘And James’s factory made the shoes for her. So there was a connection between them.’
I nodded. ‘More than you know.’ I reached over the table and tapped the newspaper article. ‘Why don’t you read this now?’
‘Okay,’ she said, although the look in her eyes was unsure.
The Chronicle, 15 October 1898
Local Girl – MISSING
Amelia Holmes, of Bethnal Green, has now been missing for over three weeks. She was last seen by fellow workers of Brimley’s shoe factory in Clerkenwell at approximately six o’clock in the evening on 23 September, in Percival Square. However, she has neither been seen nor heard from since.
Amelia (b. 3 April 1879) is the eldest of five children born to Grace and Branwell Holmes, Grace Holmes having died of consumption in May 1897. Since that time Amelia has worked in the assembling department of Brimley’s. It was while leaving the premises of the factory that she was last seen.
No trace of Miss Holmes has been found since her disappearance. Her father commented that: ‘She is a very loving daughter and sister. When her mother died she selflessly stepped into her shoes and took care of us all. A warm, generous-hearted and considerate girl, she would not have gone anywhere of her own free will without telling us. I appeal to anyone with any information about her. She is much missed.’
For a few moments Ophelia simply stared in silence at the piece of paper on the table. ‘So she actually worked with James,’ she said eventually. ‘The connections between them just keep growing.’ Then silence resumed. No doubt, as I had done myself when I read the article, she was trying to piece things together.
‘So I’ve been thinking about this for a while,’ I ventured. ‘Want to know what I’ve come up with?’
Ophelia nodded, rubbing her temples. ‘My head’s in a scramble. I can’t get any of it straight.’
‘Okay. Let me try.’ I took a slow breath and began. ‘So these are the facts we know. Amelia Holmes was born in the East End of London and lost her mother in 1897 at the age of eighteen. This clearly marked a change in the fortunes of the family and not just emotionally. With five children and with one less parent working, without question the family would have needed more money. She had to get a job. So in May Amelia went to Brimley’s factory to make shoes.’
I could see Ophelia looking at James’s log, at Amelia’s name written there. Picking up my thread, she continued. ‘And there she would have met James. The rather dour but dashing new boss.’
‘Hmm.’
We looked at each other but neither of us said what the other was no doubt thinking.
‘And, if nothing else, there is at least one sign, I think, which points to a certain . . . closeness, shall we say, between them.’
‘The shoes.’
I nodded. ‘Exactly.’
‘Yes. She’s poor, working in a factory to help sustain her family.’ Ophelia tapped the article about her disappearance. ‘So what was she doing with a pair of expensive hand-crafted and stitched shoes? It doesn’t add up that she’d have bought them. She’d have had to save for them for an eternity. And her money would have been going home to the family, surely.’ Ophelia flicked back through the log, scrolling down the column indicating the amounts paid for the handmade shoes. ‘Johnny, there’s no amount written down in Amelia Holmes’s column for the green shoes.’
I nodded again. I had noticed it when I first looked through the log. ‘There’s no delivery address listed, either.’
‘So it makes sense that they were a gift from him to her. A gift from one lover to another?’ Ophelia tilted her head and looked quizzically at me.
‘Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t know that.’ But even as I said it I doubted myself. The image from my nightmare of a woman’s body on the bed in the underground room flashed through my mind: the slip, crumpled and sweat-stained, the pale uncovered thighs.
‘That’s true,’ Ophelia said, wrinkling her nose. ‘But something about an affair feels right, wouldn’t you say?’
I nodded.
‘And besides, you found the shoes in the basement, which puts one or other or both of them down there. And it just happens to contain a bed.’
Her words made me think of something Tara had said about that. ‘I mean, what’s with the bed. It’s got to be sex, right?’ Yes, it probably was sex. Another image of the sated, spent body in the underground room flashed through my mind.
‘Let’s put that aside for the moment,’ I said. ‘What we know is that Amelia began work at the factory in May 1897 and disappeared a little less than a year and a half later, in September 1898. She literally vanished on her way home
from work one night.’
‘Right,’ said Ophelia.
‘I did an internet search on her disappearance after reading the news article that Tara found. But it didn’t bring up anything at all about it. And I’m guessing, because there’s nothing else in the file, that Tara didn’t find anything, either. So I think it’s unlikely that Amelia ever reappeared or was found.’
We were both silent for a few moments. Finally Ophelia spoke. ‘So, maybe the affair, if there was one, ended badly. She could have left, unable to bear the thought of seeing him day after day.’
I thought about it, but something about this version of events didn’t ring true. ‘The whole point of her taking this job was that she wouldn’t be far from her family. They were important to her. So I don’t buy the idea that she would just leave if an affair went wrong. That can’t be it. She’d just change her job, surely.’
‘Hmm. Right. But might she have fled if she got pregnant? Rather than face the shame.’
That made more sense, I had to admit. After all, pregnancy outside marriage was a big deal back then. Still, something didn’t resonate for me. ‘But she loved her family. So even if she’d taken off, why wouldn’t she at least tell them that she was alive? It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’ Ophelia studied the missing-person article once more. ‘Her father clearly thought that something untoward had happened to her. “She would not have gone anywhere of her own free will without telling us.” So maybe she was abducted or killed on her way home.’
I nodded. There had been a number of notorious murders in this period of Victorian history and it was one of the explanations that made the most sense to me. I paused, as my mind flooded with the darkest possibility. ‘And, of course, there’s the other thing.’
Ophelia nodded but didn’t say anything.
‘James killed her. And masked a murder with a disappearance.’
‘Right.’
For a moment we sat in silence while Ophelia flicked through the pages of the file. ‘Only a short time after Amelia’s disappearance James is discovered dead at the factory.’
I nodded. ‘He was found on the Sunday morning. Two days after she disappeared.’
‘And the coroner concluded that he’d died of natural causes.’
‘Right.’
‘But let’s assume for a second that the coroner’s wrong.’
‘Okay.’
‘Maybe James killed her and then, driven mad by what he had done, he killed himself.’
‘I thought about that, too. But then, how did he commit suicide? He didn’t strangle himself, even if he tried, and there’s no evidence to point to anything else. He had a heart attack.’
Ophelia nodded and was quiet for a second. ‘What if Amelia killed James, left the body at the factory and then disappeared?’
I had considered that as well. ‘But he was so much bigger, so much taller and stronger than her. I just can’t see how that could happen. Or, if she managed to kill him somehow, how it could leave no trace.’
‘Hmm. And if he’d been in the underground room, as seems likely from the coroner’s report, then she’d have had a real struggle on her hands to get a body weighing 280 pounds up the stairs and into the dispatch room.’
We fell silent again for a moment before Ophelia raised her next question.
‘But the timing is weird, don’t you think?’
I nodded as I pulled another piece of wax from the candle and rolled it into a ball. It was weird as far as the eye could see.
‘I think it’s most likely that Amelia was killed by James. And that scenario explains why the green shoes stayed in the basement. Surely if she was planning to escape to a different life she’d take the most beautiful things she possessed.’
I bowed my head in agreement.
‘But instead the shoes remained in the underground room.’
For an instant I was descending the cellar stairs, moving into the darkness, seeing the green shoes hanging from the velvet ribbon on the corner of the mirror. What exactly had happened to Amelia and James? I couldn’t shake the feeling that, whatever it was, it was connected to the mirror. Lost in this thought, I only gradually became aware of Ophelia repeating my name.
I coughed. ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’
‘What were you thinking about?’
I wondered for a second if I should tell her or not. But it was only fair. She too had stared into its darkness. And might do so again. ‘I was thinking about the mirror.’
‘What about it?’
I paused, then decided to bite the bullet. ‘It was in my nightmare too.’
‘Oh. You didn’t tell me that before.’
‘Didn’t really see the point.’ It was a light, white lie.
Ophelia looked at me. ‘What do you think it means?’
‘I don’t know.’ But I was sure it meant something. And that thought was plaguing me.
‘Well, whatever it means, it’s bizarre. You dream about two people before you know who they are. Then it turns out that they were connected to one another, possibly, perhaps even probably, in the most intimate of ways. Then there are the shoes, also in the dream, at first seemingly unconnected, that turn out to tie them together even further. So the mirror must be connected too. And the underground room. All the things in the dream are there for a reason.’
I nodded. I was sure she was right. I was just struggling to make the connections.
‘I’m sure there’s more information at the factory that could help clarify things. It’s just a question of finding it. But now I have no way of getting in.’ I had told Ophelia of the ignominy of having to hand my keys back to Richard.
As I smiled at her sadly, she reached across the table, took my hand in hers and for a few moments simply stared at me. ‘Well, I guess every cloud has a silver lining,’ she said finally.
I looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well . . .’ and then she stopped. ‘Johnny, if I tell you this, you have to promise not to get angry.’
‘Why would I get angry with you?’ At the moment, the only person I could imagine directing my anger towards was Richard.
Ophelia smiled. ‘Just promise me, okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said and kissed her hand.
‘Well, a little while ago, one weekend when you had left your keys at my flat . . . I can’t remember where you’d gone off to . . . anyway . . .’ Ophelia stopped and took a deep breath. ‘I had another set of your factory keys cut.’ She rushed out the sentence and then fell silent.
For a moment I simply stared at her. I was having trouble understanding what she’d said. ‘Why?’ I said eventually.
‘I don’t know. I really don’t. I suppose I thought I might need them.’
‘Why?’ I said again.
‘I don’t know,’ Ophelia repeated.
‘Have you ever used them?’
‘No.’
I stared at her, into her deep green eyes, but I didn’t know if she was telling me the truth or not.
‘You have to believe me, Johnny. I’ve only been there once without you. You know about that. Since then, since the keys were cut, I’ve only been back with you.’
I nodded, trying to make sense of it. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t understand why she would do such a thing. Unless it had always been her plan to use the keys without my knowledge.
‘Are you angry with me?’ Ophelia’s eyes were pleading.
‘No,’ I said, my voice surprisingly calm. ‘I’m not angry.’
‘And, as it turns out, it’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ She smiled. ‘Now you can still get into the factory. We can still get into it.’
‘Yes, I suppose.’ I paused, trying to think. ‘Thank you,’ I added, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile.
‘You’ll need to be careful, of course.’
I nodded. The last thing I wanted was to be found trespassing on the premises. If Richard caught me there I had no idea what he might do.
Strangely enough, the thought made me smile.
‘What is it?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
Ophelia looked at me for a long moment. Then she stood up, taking the uneaten sandwich and heading towards the kitchen. ‘You haven’t forgotten that I’m leaving for that shoot in Yorkshire next week?’
I turned to look at her. ‘No, I haven’t forgotten.’
‘Will you be okay while I’m gone?’
The look of concern in her eyes made my coldness evaporate. ‘Yes, I’ll be okay,’ I said, smiling.
‘And no more strange dreams, okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said.
But instead of moving she simply stood there looking at me. Then she gave voice to a thought that had been bothering me for some time. ‘Johnny, do you even think they were dreams?’
I shrugged. I really wasn’t sure of anything any more. But if they weren’t dreams, then what were they? I thought of Amelia and James again, of the underground room, the darkened mirror hanging on the wall, its cipher on the bottom right-hand corner. I thought of a Black Queen, her witchcraft, her visions and premonitions. Then I thought of the past and the paths of history that lead to the present.
27
Chateau de Fontainebleau
June 1556
CATHERINE LAY IN her bed, completely still, settled upon a mound of silk pillows. They felt soft and smooth against her skin, more sensitive today than usual. Her body was sore and weak, exhausted from the birth of twins and the slightest ill-considered movement brought her pain.
Dark damask fabrics hung at the open windows and when caught by the warm wind they bloomed inwards into the chamber, scattering patterns of sunlight across the ceiling. She knew it must be a bright, beautiful day outside, but she did not turn her head to look. Instead, she continued to stare upwards, her gaze following the dancing pools of light over the panels of gold leaf and cobalt blue. It should have been a happy day, she thought. But it was not. The doctors had said it would be unlikely that Victoire, the firstborn child, would last beyond a few weeks. And Jeanne, the second, was already dead, her mangled, broken body, pulled from Catherine’s womb, already in the ground. Tears slid silently down Catherine’s cheek. She heard the voices echoing over and over, telling her that she had nearly died, that her life was something to be grateful for, that God was to be praised. But in this moment, remembering, she was not grateful and she could not praise.
The Medici Mirror Page 17