by Kate Morton
It was Penelope again, and Elodie suffered an immediate clutch of panic.
She left the bookstore, cutting quickly across Theobalds Road, and then High Holborn, through to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Elodie picked up her pace as she passed the Royal Courts of Justice, darted behind a red bus to cross the street, and was almost jogging as she made her way along the Strand.
Rather than go straight back to work where Mr Pendleton was in exactly the sort of mood to relish catching one of them making personal calls, she slipped down a cobbled laneway that dog-legged towards the river and found a bench on Victoria Embankment, right near the pier.
She fished out her notebook and flipped to where she’d written the phone number of the wedding reception venue in Gloucestershire; Elodie dialled and made an appointment to visit the following weekend. Leaving no time for her commitment to cool, she telephoned Penelope, apologised for having missed her calls, and launched into a report of the progress she’d made with respect to the venue, the veil, the dress and the videos.
After she hung up, Elodie sat for a few minutes. Penelope had been very pleased, particularly when Elodie reported the suitcase of her mother’s recordings she now had in her possession. She had suggested that, rather than featuring only one clip of Elodie’s mother playing the cello, they might feasibly include another at the end of the ceremony. Elodie had promised to make a shortlist of three tracks so that they could look at them together and decide. ‘Best make it five,’ Penelope had said. ‘Just in case.’
So, that was the weekend sorted.
The ferry carrying tourists to Greenwich pulled out from the pier and a man in a Stars and Stripes cap pointed a long-lens camera at Cleopatra’s Needle. A skein of ducks swooped in to take the boat’s place, landing expertly on the choppy surface.
The ferry left ripples that washed against the low-tide bank, filling the air with the scent of mud and brine, and Elodie thought of a description in James Stratton’s journal of the Great Stink of 1858. People didn’t realise how badly London had smelled back then. The streets had been covered with animal dung, human waste, rotting vegetables and the carcasses of slaughtered animals. All of it, and a lot more besides, had found its way into the river.
In the summer of 1858, the smell coming in off the Thames was reportedly so fetid that the Palace of Westminster had to be closed and those who could afford it were evacuated from London. The young James Stratton had been inspired to form the Committee to Clean Up London; he’d even published an article in 1862 in a journal called the Builder, agitating for progress. Amongst the archives were letters exchanged between Stratton and Sir Joseph Bazalgette, whose London sewer system was one of the great triumphs of Victorian England, funnelling excrement away from the built-up centre so that not only was the smell improved, but the incidence of waterborne disease was significantly reduced.
The thought of Stratton reminded Elodie that she had a workplace she was supposed to be at and a job she was meant to be doing. She went quickly, mindful of how long it had been since she’d left to meet Pippa, and was glad when she arrived to find that Mr Pendleton had been called away and would be out of the office for the rest of the day.
Eager to capitalise on her return to efficiency, Elodie spent the afternoon cataloguing the remaining items from the lost archive box. The sooner it was filed and finished, the better.
She started by running a database search for ‘Radcliffe’ and was surprised when the results delivered two items. One of the first jobs that Elodie had been assigned when she started at the firm was transferring the index card system onto the computer; she prided herself on having a near photographic memory for the people and places that James Stratton had known and couldn’t remember ever having come across the name Radcliffe before.
Curious, she fetched the corresponding documents from the file room and brought them back to her desk. The first was an 1861 letter from James Stratton to the art dealer John Haverstock, with whom he’d had plans to dine the following week. In the final paragraph of the letter, Stratton expressed a desire to ‘find out what you know about a painter whose name I came across recently – Edward Radcliffe. I am told he is a man of rare talent, although having had an opportunity to glimpse samples of his work I observe that his “talent”, at least in part, is an ability to charm his young female subjects into revealing more than they otherwise might – all in the name of art, naturally.’
As far as Elodie could remember, James Stratton did not own any of Radcliffe’s paintings (though she made a note to confirm that fact); so, despite his interest in the painter, he must ultimately have been disinclined to acquire Radcliffe’s work.
The second mention occurred some years later in Stratton’s 1867 journal. At the end of a day’s entry he had written:
The painter, Radcliffe, called to see me this evening. His arrival was unexpected and the hour was very late. I confess to having fallen asleep with my book in hand when the knocker startled me awake; poor Mabel was abed and I had to ring to summon her so that refreshments might be brought. I may as well not have bothered and let the weary girl sleep, for Radcliffe did not deign to touch one crumb of the supper provided. He fell, upon arrival, to treading this way and that across the carpet in a most harried state and could not be calmed. His manner was that of a crazed beast, his eyes wild and his long hair dishevelled by the constant raking to which it was subjected by his fine, pale fingers. He emanated a captured energy, like a man possessed. He muttered as he paced, something incomprehensible about curses and fate, a sorry state of affairs indeed and one that gave me cause for grave concern. I know the loss that he has suffered, better than most, but his grief is wretched to watch; he is a reminder of what heartbreak can do to the most sensitive of souls. I confess that I had heard tell of his ruinous state, but I would not have believed the description had I not seen it with my own eyes. I have determined to do what I can, for it will surely right the scales in some way if I can help him to regain his former self. I encouraged him to stay, assuring him that it was no hardship at all to have a room made up, but he refused. He asked instead that I keep a couple of his personal effects for him, and of course I agreed. He was nervous to make the request and I sensed that he had not come to see me with the intention of leaving the items; rather, that the idea had come to him on the spur of the moment. It is only a leather satchel, empty but for a single book of sketches. I would never have broken a confidence to look inside, but he insisted on showing me before he left. He made me swear to keep the bag and sketchbook safe, poor soul. I did not press him on the question of from whom it is to be kept, and he gave me no answer when I asked as to when he might return. He only looked at me sadly, before thanking me for the supper he did not eat, and leaving. His wretched presence stayed with me afterwards, and is with me even now, as I sit by the dying fire writing this record.
The journal extract painted a melancholy picture, and the ‘wretched presence’ described within its pages lingered with Elodie, too. The account answered her question as to how James Stratton came to possess Edward Radcliffe’s satchel, but there was still the intriguing question of how Radcliffe had come to know James Stratton well enough in the space of six years to turn up at his door in the middle of the night when beset by his private demons. Also, why he had chosen Stratton, of all people, to safeguard his bag and book. Elodie made a note to cross-reference some of the archives of Stratton’s friends and associates to see whether Radcliffe’s name appeared there.
Another wrinkle was Stratton’s reference to wanting to “right the scales”. It was an odd turn of phrase, almost suggesting that he had played some part in the man’s decline, which made no sense at all. Stratton couldn’t have known Edward Radcliffe well: he’d made no mention of the other man in any of the private or public documents within the archive at any time between 1861 and 1867. And it was established fact, according to Pippa and Wikipedia, that Radcliffe had slid into despair after the death of his fiancée, Frances Brown. The name was not familiar
to her within the context of Stratton’s archives, but Elodie made another note to cross-reference his associates’ papers.
She opened a new archive form on her computer and typed in a description of the satchel and sketchbook, adding a brief summary of the letter and journal entry and the corresponding file reference details.
Elodie leaned back in her chair and stretched.
Two down, one to go.
The identity of the woman in the photo, however, was going to be more difficult. There was just so little to work with. The frame was of a fine quality, but then, James Stratton had owned very few items that weren’t. Elodie attached her magnifying eyepiece and searched the frame for silver markings. She jotted them down on a piece of scrap paper, even as she knew they were unlikely to yield any clues as to the subject of the photo and her relationship to James Stratton.
She wondered how the photograph had found its way into Radcliffe’s satchel. Was the placement accidental or was there some meaning to it? It all depended, she supposed, on the identity of the woman. It was possible, of course, that she had not been special to Stratton and that the frame had, in fact, been placed within the satchel by the great-niece to whom the desk had belonged – a random act of storage at some point during the decades after Stratton’s death. But it was an outside chance. The way the woman was dressed, the styling and look of the photo itself, suggested that it – and she – had been contemporaneous with Stratton. Far more likely that he had stored, even concealed, the photograph inside his document holder and slipped it inside the satchel himself.
Elodie finished her inspection of the frame, making notes so that she could provide a description of its condition on the archive sheet – a dent at the top, as if it had been dropped; some fine, feathery scratches on the back – and then she returned her attention to the woman. Again the word that came to mind was ‘illuminated’. It was something in the quality of the woman’s expression, the flow of her hair, the light in her eyes …
Elodie realised that she was staring as if she expected the woman to explain herself. But no matter how hard she tried, she could find no identifying feature in the face, the clothing, even in the background of the image that suggested where to turn next. Although the photograph was well composed, there was no studio signature in any of the corners, and Elodie wasn’t familiar enough with Victorian photography to know whether anything else inherent to the image might give a clue as to its origin. Perhaps Pippa’s mentor, Caroline, would be able to help after all.
She set the frame down on her desk and rubbed her temples. The photo was going to be a challenge, but she refused to be cowed. The detective thrill of the chase was one of the best parts of her job, a counterbalance to the satisfying but repetitive work of creating neat records. ‘I’ll find you,’ she said softly. ‘Make no mistake about that.’
‘Talking to yourself again?’ Margot was beside Elodie’s desk, hunting through the handbag she had slung across her shoulder. ‘First sign of trouble, you know.’ She found a tin of peppermints and shook them, dropping a couple into Elodie’s waiting palm. ‘Staying late?’
Elodie glanced at the clock, surprised to find that it was already half past five. ‘Not tonight.’
‘Alastair picking you up?’
‘He’s in New York.’
‘Again? You must be missing him. Don’t know what I’d do without Gary to go home to.’
Elodie agreed that she was missing her fiancé, and Margot gave her a sympathetic smile which turned swiftly into a cheery farewell. Fishing her neon earbuds out of her bag, she swiped her iPhone and sashayed off into the weekend.
The office resettled into papery silence. The strip of sunlight had arrived on the far wall and was beginning its daily approach towards her desk. Elodie cracked one of the mints open with her back teeth and hit print on the archive label she’d made for the new box. She started to tidy her desk, a task she performed religiously on Friday afternoons so that she could begin the upcoming week with a clean slate.
Not that she’d admit it, and certainly not to Margot, but there was a small part of Elodie that looked forward to Alastair’s weeks in New York. She missed him, of course, but it was restful in some way knowing that for six whole nights she could stay at her own place, in her own bed, with her own books and her favourite teacup, without having to negotiate and explain herself.
It was true what he said: her flat was tiny and there was that old chip-grease smell in the stairwell, whereas his was large, with two bathrooms, and always enough hot water, and never any need to listen to the neighbour’s television through the whisper-thin floors. But Elodie was fond of her little flat. Yes, there was a trick to getting the kitchen sink to drain properly and the shower only ever managed a half-flow when the washing machine was running a cycle, but it felt like the sort of place where real human lives could be and had been led. There was history in its natty old cupboards and creaking floorboards, the loo that was reached only by climbing three carpeted stairs.
Alastair seemed to consider it endearing that she found comfort in such diminished surrounds. ‘You should be staying at my place when I’m away,’ he always said, his place being a sleek apartment in Canary Wharf. ‘You don’t need to go back to your lair.’
‘I’m happy here.’
‘Here? Really?’ They’d had a variation on the same conversation at least fifteen times and he always reserved his most sceptical glance for deployment at this point, its target invariably the corner in which Elodie had arranged her dad’s old velvet armchair beneath a fairy-lighted shelf of treasures: the painting Mrs Berry had presented to her when she turned thirty, the charm box Tip gave her after her mother died, a framed strip of funfair photos taken with Pippa when they were both thirteen.
Alastair favoured mid-century Danish design and believed that if an item couldn’t be purchased from the Conran Shop, it had no business being on display at all. Elodie’s flat was ‘homely’, he was willing to concede, but only before adding, ‘Of course you’ll have to give it up when we’re married – we can’t very well put the crib in the bathroom.’
Obviously, it was churlish to feel anything other than excited at the prospect of living in such a grand, glossy place, but Elodie just wasn’t a very grand, glossy person, and she was terrible with change. ‘Little wonder’ – this was the psychologist she’d seen for a time when she first went up to Oxford. ‘You lost your mother. It’s one of the most significant and frightening changes that a child can experience.’ Such loss, Elodie was reliably informed by Dr Judith Davies (‘Call me Jude’) after three months of weekly sessions in the warm front room of her Edwardian house, couldn’t help but embed itself within a person’s psyche.
‘You mean it’s going to affect my every life decision?’ Elodie had asked.
‘I do.’
‘Forever?’
‘Most likely.’
She had stopped seeing Dr Davies (‘It’s Jude’) soon after that. There hadn’t seemed much point, though she had missed the pot of citrus mint tea that appeared on the scuffed wooden table at the start of each session.
The doctor had been right: Elodie had got no better with change. Picturing other people in her flat, hanging their pictures on the hooks she’d hammered into the wall, arranging their teacups on the sill where she grew her herbs, enjoying the view from her window, gave Elodie the same dread feeling she’d experienced sometimes on holiday when she woke in an unfamiliar room utterly lost because none of her touchstones were there.
She hadn’t had the heart to break the news about the move to her landlady yet. Mrs Berry was eighty-four years old and had grown up in the house in Barnes, when it was still a family home and not three and a half flats above a fish-and-chip shop. She lived, now, in the garden flat behind the shop. ‘This used to be my mother’s morning room,’ she liked to reminisce after a glass or two of her favourite sherry. ‘Such a lady she was, such a fine lady. Oh, not in the aristocratic sense, I don’t mean that, it was just her nature.’ Mr
s Berry’s eyes took on a particular shine when she started to slip into the past and she became less careful with her cards. ‘What are trumps?’ she’d ask at the start of each round. ‘Spades? Or was it Curlies?’
Elodie was going to have to cancel the game they’d pencilled in for that evening. She’d promised Penelope a list of recordings and a selection of clips by Monday. Now she was on a roll, she couldn’t let anything get in the way of ticking items off her list.
She shut down the computer and capped her pen, lining it up against the top of the jotting pad. The desk was clear except for the satchel, the sketchbook and the framed photograph. The first two could be re-boxed and stored; the last faced another weekend amidst the jumble of office supplies within the lost box.
Before tucking the photograph away, Elodie took a picture with her phone, just as Pippa had done. She would need it if she were to give more thought to her dress. It wouldn’t hurt to look at it beside the veil, either.
After a moment’s hesitation, she took a photo of the house in the sketchbook, too. Not because she was allowing herself any longer to entertain the notion that it was somehow, magically, the house from her mother’s fairy tale. She took the photo simply because she liked the sketch. It was beautiful, and it made her feel things: a connection to her mother and a tethering to the unbroken part of her childhood.
And then Elodie slipped the satchel and sketchbook into a new archive box, affixed the label she’d printed off, and filed them in the storeroom on her way out of the door and into the busy London street.
III
Mrs Mack used to say that a needy man’s budget was full of schemes. She’d say that sort of thing whenever she wanted one of us to try a new scam, we kids that lived like rats in the runners within the set of small rooms above the bird shop on Little White Lion Street.
I’ve been thinking about Mrs Mack lately. And Martin and Lily and the Captain. And even Pale Joe, who was the first person I ever truly loved. (The second if you include my father, which I don’t always.)