by Karen Odden
The fire in the stove had gone out entirely by the time I laid aside the brush and stepped back to look.
It was the first picture in which I’d ever included myself—though I envisioned only part of myself, in profile, silhouetted against the light coming in at the window. But it felt fitting, for my presence completed the central triangle: as I looked at Celia, she gazed upon her husband’s picture, and the top of the silver picture frame became a line that pointed straight back to my face. I’d dropped in her diaries on the couch beside her, tidy little leather-bound books, suggestive in the way the pages were thicker at the outer edges than their bindings, as if stories could burst out of them. And I’d captured the similarity in our positions to my satisfaction, at least for now.
I took two steps to the right and looked again. This new angle revealed another possible triangle, in the way the folds of our skirts—her black ones and my dark gray ones—fell together below our knees, under the table. I would have to move the figure of myself closer to the center of the canvas for it to look the way I wanted, but there was something wonderfully evocative about the fabric of our skirts blurring together. It hinted not just at our similarity but at the dark possibility we both faced, of finding out an unexpected truth about someone we loved.
As I removed my apron and hung it on its nail, the thought struck me: Had Matthew sent me to Celia because we had this in common, and he saw she might be an ally for me as well? Thinking about how much he seemed to notice, it didn’t seem out of the question. I felt a welling of warmth and gratitude toward him, and the weight that lurked in my chest these days seemed to lighten.
I resolved that tomorrow morning, after I went to the Yard, I would go to Edwin’s and look at his sketchbooks. I knew Edwin’s habit of drawing whatever was in front of him on a given day. Those sketchbooks would reveal the truth about who Edwin was when he was away from me, all those years. If Celia could bear to face unpleasant secrets, so could I.
Chapter 12
I headed for the Yard early enough the next morning that the street sweepers were out and the costermongers were just setting up their carts.
When I reached the cobbled yard, it was deserted. I opened the door to find the division nearly empty as well, and quiet. The desk sergeant was one of only three men in the open room. The other two were looking over papers at their desks. When I asked for Mr. Hallam, the desk sergeant glanced around and responded by pointing over his shoulder. “He should be ’ere in a while. You can sit there, if’n you like.”
I sat on the bench I’d occupied before. As I settled myself to wait, I saw Inspector Martin cross the room. His eyes drifted over me, seemingly without recognition, but abruptly he halted and came toward me with swift steps. A few feet away, he stared down from his height. In his eyes was an expression of amazement and displeasure.
“Miss Rowe.”
“Hello, Inspector.”
His voice was accusing. “What on earth are you doing here?”
A note of warning sounded in the back of my mind. “I’m waiting to speak with M—Mr. Hallam.”
His eyes narrowed. “What is this regarding?”
The warning bell was chiming loud and clear, and in that moment I understood Matthew had kept my involvement, and all the small ways I had been helping with the investigation, a secret from the chief inspector. I glanced over and saw a young man at his desk, staring with frank curiosity. His face dropped instantly over the papers on his desk.
Let the chief think what he would of me; I only wanted to depart without giving anything away. But I could think of nothing to say, and I felt the blood rising to my cheeks.
Apparently my silence flummoxed him, but after a moment, he recovered his aplomb. He drew himself up, pursed his lips, and shook his head firmly. “Miss Rowe, I must ask you to leave. Mr. Hallam is not here in any event; but even if he were, we don’t encourage the loitering of civilians. I’m very sorry about your brother, but we are still investigating. When we have any news, we will impart it to you. Until then, please return to your usual daily routines.” He reached a hand down to pry me up off the bench, then steered me toward the door. “And if Mr. Hallam wishes to speak with you regarding your brother’s case, he will find you.”
He closed the door firmly behind me, and as I crossed the courtyard, I felt both a profound relief at my escape and a growing sense of bewilderment. If it was so improper for me to help Matthew, why hadn’t he told me so?
I’d ask him when I saw him next. Surely someone would mention that I’d been in, and he’d send a message or come to find me at my rooms. Meanwhile, I could go to Edwin’s earlier than I’d planned.
AS I APPROACHED the flat, I opened my reticule to take out Edwin’s key.
It had been a week since his death, and with no one opening the doors and windows, the odor of linseed oil and turpentine had suffused the room, as if to compensate for his absence. Although the flat had been entered illicitly, I saw no obvious signs of disturbance. Then again, last week I hadn’t been in a state to take particular notice of where we’d left items after looking at them.
I approached Edwin’s worktable and ran my hands over the wooden edge, feeling several nicks that time had worn smooth. There were two tin cups, one for his bristle brushes, the other for his sables, with perhaps a dozen in each, all stored properly with the bristles up. I brushed my fingertips across the sables to feel their silky softness.
Through the closed window, I heard church bells strike three-quarters of an hour and fade, and in the silence that followed, I moved slowly toward the shelf with his sketchbooks. I shifted them about so I could read the dates, written in his sharp, angular script in the upper left-hand corner of the cover. The books were all out of order. I took them down—there were at least two dozen, some with covers warped by rain or stained by food or drink—and laid them in sequence on his worktable.
The first began a month prior to him leaving home for school and ran through November of that year, and I chose it together with the subsequent one to examine first. I dragged Edwin’s one comfortable chair toward the window, so I wouldn’t require a lamp. The sky was a clear azure blue, and the September sun dropped a butter-yellow oblong onto the wood floor.
I began to page through. Even if there had been no date on the cover, I knew enough of Edwin’s life that I could have guessed at the time period, just by his skill level and the subject matter. The early sketches in this book included the front of our London house, a hansom cab, a tree from our yard, my mother in her tiny garden—
And—to my surprise—myself at an easel.
In the drawing, the back of my canvas was merely suggested by a few lines on the left side of the page. He’d drawn me in a position closer to portrait than profile, with my hair pulled back, so my features were clearly visible. My cheeks were round, and my nose and chin were still unformed in the way of children’s, but my eyes were fixed purposefully on my canvas, my mouth was pouted in concentration, and though my hand looked small, it held the paintbrush properly. Edwin had taken care over the drawing, and despite my youth and apparent earnestness, the entire tone suggested warm approval rather than condescension.
My chest tightened, and I laid the sketchbook in my lap.
All at once I remembered a row I’d had with Edwin not long after he’d been released from prison, when he was staying with me. I didn’t recall how our quarrel began, but at one point he’d burst out, “Of course you were important to me!”
“Important?” I echoed in amazement. “I hardly heard from you after you left! Two letters the entire time you were at school, and—”
“I didn’t leave,” he snapped back, his green eyes—mirrors of mine—flashing. “Father sent me away, remember?”
“Yes, but I don’t just mean when you left for school,” I retorted. “What about afterward, when you came back to London? You were gone. Always gone!”
“Because being home was bloody hellish! You know that!”
“Yes, I know
it,” I snapped. “Because I was there. You could get away!”
He looked incredulous. “You got away, too! You’re at the Slade!”
I thought I heard a note of envy. “You can’t begrudge me—”
“I don’t!” With a groan he spun away and then turned back, his arms outstretched as if his frustration were too large to contain. “I don’t begrudge you the Slade. Not at all! You belong there! I’ve always hoped for your success—always!”
“How would I know?” My voice didn’t even sound like my own. “You’ve certainly never said so to me!”
His chin jerked to the left and back again, as if he had to take a swift second look at something that surprised him. Slowly he put a hand to the wall, as if needing the support to take in what I’d said. There was a bruised, bewildered look about his eyes. “I’ve always cared more about you than anyone, Annabel.” His voice broke. “For God’s sake, I thought you knew.”
I hadn’t replied, but I let him see my skepticism.
He blew out a breath. “Well,” he said finally. His shoulders rounded and his gaze fell to the floor. “Well,” he said again. Then he gathered his coat and left.
I had half expected him not to return, but he did, though it wasn’t until hours later. I was in bed, but awake. When I heard the key in the lock, I stiffened, listening for the sounds of drunken fumbling or quiet curses over having to prepare for bed in the dark. There was neither, only the squeak of the sofa as he lay down and eventually the faint sound of his whistling snore. The next morning, his manner was tentative. He said he was sorry we’d quarreled, and he’d found rooms to let that would be available the following afternoon.
I stared at Edwin’s sketch of me.
Yes, I had reasons for my distrust of him. But it had been ugly spite that caused me to show Edwin my disbelief that day.
Dear God, what I’d give to take those few seconds back.
There was a long silence in which I felt an uneven beat in my chest, as if the irregular rumble of cab wheels over the cobbles below had by some sorcery been transmitted up through the walls and floors to my susceptible heart.
Tears filled my eyes, and it was a long time before I could turn to the next page.
IN THE SECOND half of this sketchbook, Tennersley emerged in bits and pieces. Edwin never sketched the entire building, but as I paged through, I began to assemble the school in my mind: two stone wings flanking a central hall with a bell tower on top; a chapel with an altar attended by acolytes; a waterfall and a river nearby; a hill where sheep grazed on gorse; a spinney where a solitary young man sat under one of the trees; an empty classroom with a blackboard, half covered in writing; a bowl of stew with bread on a plate beside; and dozens of boys in profiles and portraits.
I paused at one page in particular because the sketched face brought someone to mind. After a moment, I realized it might be the boyish version of the man from the funeral—the one who had given me a peculiarly resentful look and slipped away without a word. After that, I examined the faces more closely, wondering if I might come across the other man at the funeral, the one who said he was a school friend of Edwin’s. What was his name? I closed my eyes and strained to remember him speaking it.
Will Giffen. That was it.
And near the end of the book, I found him. He and a dark-haired boy were bundled into warm coats and standing together on the far bank of a river. Edwin depicted them at the moment of a shared laugh—but something about the scene felt unpleasant, even sinister. The dark slashes in the water, the rocks, the bare branches on the trees—indeed, the entire landscape felt bleak, brutal, and unyielding.
I flipped back to an earlier page to see the river as Edwin had drawn it first, lilting with light and shadows.
With a growing unease, I picked up the next sketchbook.
A few pages in, I found the boy who had become the young, silent man from the funeral again—looking a bit older and warier. This time, the word Witty was scrawled underneath. Will Giffen appeared as well, and numerous other boys, including the one whose dark hair flopped over his forehead. There were some excellent sketches of a bearded man, smiling or laughing, who was presumably Edwin’s art teacher. My favorite was one in which he stood beside a student, before an easel, his hand pointing as if to instruct. There was nothing sweet or sentimental about the teacher and student; the drawing was oddly austere, but Edwin had captured something of the intensity of the moment.
I went to the table to gather a stack of the sketchbooks and returned to my chair. Edwin was sketching more prolifically now, filling a sketchbook every six weeks or so, and expanding his subjects beyond the school grounds: a street in a market town, carriages, storefronts, a uniformed railway servant, door knockers, teacups, women in hats and dresses, locomotives, brickwork, barns, furniture, flowers, fences. To someone else it might have looked mindlessly indiscriminate, but as I paged through, I understood Edwin’s method. He was honing his skills, more interested in shapes and textures and shadows than the objects themselves.
By the time I finished examining these books, the sunny oblong had vanished. The late-afternoon light was dim, and my eyes were fatigued, but I lit two lamps, hung them from hooks in the ceiling, and gathered the next few sketchbooks. It wasn’t until I studied the dates that I realized two months were unaccounted for. I knew Edwin wouldn’t simply stop drawing for that long. I rose and sifted through the remaining sketchbooks, then went to the shelf to be sure I hadn’t missed one. But there was no sign of it.
Why would the sketchbook be gone? Had Edwin hidden it? Surely he wouldn’t discard it. And if someone had searched the flat looking for Edwin’s impressions of the school, why not take all the Tennersley books?
Had this been what the thief had been after the second time?
I began to search: the desk, a trunk, some boxes. I looked between the stacked paintings and even underneath the carpet. Finally I paused at the torn curtain that partitioned off Edwin’s bedroom and hesitantly drew it aside.
To my relief the room had been stripped bare, aside from a metal bed with a mattress covered in a plain white sheet. There was no sign of blood on the floor. Nothing hung on the walls, and the shelves were empty. With a feeling of gratitude for whoever had erased the physical signs of Edwin’s death, I let the curtain fall, gathered up a wool blanket I’d found in the trunk, wrapped it around my shoulders, and sank down on the floor, taking up the next book.
These sketches were of London. His drawings were now more mature, deft and sharp in their lines, as if his experiences demanded a different degree of pressure from his pencil upon the page. The images of the Thames in particular conveyed a fierce energy, with the boat masts piercing the sky and the water roiling below ships, their sides stained with the marks of their labor. There were street scenes as well as portraits—a child on a bicycle, a woman carrying a caged bird, a man shifting a sack of grain. Nowhere did I find even the most cursory sketch of my father, but halfway through the book I found an excellent drawing of my mother. I’ve no idea where she was; it wasn’t anywhere I recognized. She sat on a wooden bench, underneath a tree, a book in her lap. She smiled up at Edwin, squinting against the sun because her hat lay on the bench beside her. I could see the wind in the folds of her skirt. Edwin had taken his time over this; there was a delicacy that suggested his affection and ease with her, feelings utterly absent from the Tennersley drawings.
Suddenly there was a creak of a door opening.
I looked up, my heart in my throat, my hands instinctively clutching the book flat against my chest.
Matthew stood at the threshold, his expression relieved. “I’m very glad it’s you up here and not someone else.”
I let go of a jagged exhale. “You scared me half to death!”
“Sorry.” He tipped his head toward the window. “I saw the light from the street.”
I twisted around to look at the dark panes, rendered mirrorlike by the glow of the two lamps. They would have appeared like beacons from b
elow.
I drew a deep breath to slow my racing heart.
He set his truncheon on the table and went to the window, checking the hasps to be sure they were completely closed. “Quite a chill in here. Aren’t you cold?”
Now that he mentioned it I noticed. “It was warmer earlier, with the sun.”
“May I?” He gestured toward the stove.
I nodded. “Of course.”
He removed his coat and laid it over a table, crouched down to shift some wood from the pile into the stove, crumpled some paper, and lit it. Standing before the opening, he rubbed his hands as if they were numb, although he didn’t look cold and the fire was already toasting the air. Matthew remained silent, and I sensed he had some news he was reluctant to impart.
“Where were you this morning?” I asked, thinking it might help him begin. “I went to the Yard to find you. Your chief inspector all but pushed me out the door. I gathered he didn’t know I’ve been helping.”
He flexed his hands gently once or twice as if the knuckles were sore; then he closed the stove door and dropped his hands to his sides. “I’ve something I need to tell you.”
“All right.” I picked myself up off the floor and settled myself in the chair, one of Edwin’s sketchbooks in my lap.
He drew a wooden chair opposite and sat facing me. “You remember coming in and finding us here.”
“Of course.”
The snap and tiny fizzes of the fire, muted by the iron door of the stove, filled the silence.
“Matthew?”
His manner was that of someone feeling his way forward over precarious ground. “Both the chief inspector and I felt rather puzzled by you at first, for there were a few pieces of circumstantial evidence that, if viewed in a certain light, suggested you might have something to do with Edwin’s death.”