The Reckoning of Noah Shaw Read online

  “The loo?” she asks impatiently.

  “What? No.” Her bland smile vanishes as she gets scrunched up.

  “Sylvia Shaw,” I say. That’s who I came to find. “My grandmother.”

  I expect the same sort of reaction as the gentleman outside, at first, so the flicker of recognition is a welcome sight.

  “You’re the son.”

  “Grandson,” I correct her.

  “David’s son.”

  “Yes,” I say, trying not to sound contemptuous. “Did you know him?”

  “Formally,” is all she says. “Your grandmother isn’t here, at the moment.”

  “I see.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you . . . ?”

  “Noah,” I say, extending my hand.

  She smiles, waiting.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” I say. “I haven’t spent much time here, and I don’t know everyone’s role and title—”

  “I’m the curator,” she says.

  Eyebrows raised. “Really? Splendid.”

  “Was that you, playing the harpsichord?”

  “It was, I’m afraid.” I beam apologetically, doing my best impression of the grandson Lady Sylvia tells people I am.

  “It was a gift from Lord Robert Arden to your great-great-great-grandfather. Did you notice the decorative roses on the soundboard?” She walks back into the room to point them out. “I think your fingers are the first to touch these keys in at least a hundred years.”

  “Right,” I drawl. “I am sorry about that.”

  “How did you find it?” she asks, curious. “Was it tuned? I’ve wondered about these old instruments—we have them cared for, you see, but there’s no way to tell whether they still perform as they ought to without playing them, and it isn’t worth the risk, of course.”

  “Of course,” I agree, a bit curious myself. Not about the harpsichord—about her. Is she the Argus Filch of the Shaw manor? Summoned by magic whenever a wayward guest violates the “No Touching” rule? “What did you think, of the sound?”

  “There’s no audio with the visual,” she says, pointing to a corner of the room.

  Cameras, then. Less interesting.

  “It’s rather fortuitous, our meeting,” she says. “Your grandmother had hoped to introduce us at the service.”

  I remember that, now. I’d gone looking for her whilst Mara met with that volunteer, Bernard, hoping for more information about Sam Milnes. I try to recall her words, race to catch up with the shadow of her that haunts my mind, but she slips away, taking the memory with her.

  Mrs. Balfour might know something, though. A different idea takes shape.

  “I’d hoped to find you then as well,” I say. “It was a surprisingly busy day.”

  “My condolences.”

  I can’t quite tell if there’s sarcasm lurking beneath her odd affect.

  “Are they here, by the way? My grandparents?”

  “I’m afraid not,” she says. “Visiting friends, in Bath.”

  They have friends? “Oh,” I say, feigning disappointment. “I was hoping to spend time with them. They were quite eager for me to learn about the manor,” I add, hoping Mrs. Balfour will step in and offer. She doesn’t.

  “There was someone I met at the service, who seemed to know quite a lot? Bernard, something or other? I believe he’s a volunteer?”

  Mrs. Balfour’s expression remains carefully blank.

  “With the National Trust, perhaps?”

  “You’ll have to check with them.”

  “I see,” I say, and sigh. “You know, since we’re here, would you be kind enough to show me round a bit?”

  “I have quite a busy afternoon, I’m afraid, but we can make an appointment to go over the plans.”

  “Plans?”

  “For the renovation? It’s all rather straightforward.”

  “I’m sure it is, but we needn’t be as formal as all that.” I try and gauge whether to ask about Sam straight out . . . and decide against it. Don’t want her clamming up. “I was mostly hoping you could tell me about . . .” My eyes dart, landing on—

  “The portraits?”

  “Of course, which ones?”

  “. . . All of them?”

  Her eyes crinkle at the corners, and I think she’s about to call me on my shit, but then she walks to the far wall. “You noticed the inconsistencies, I gather? You have a keen eye, Mr. Shaw.”

  “Noah, please. My . . .” God, I almost said girlfriend. Fuck it. “My girlfriend’s an artist. She instilled a bit of an appreciation for . . . painting.” Should do.

  “I see,” she says, then crosses the room toward the opposite wall, deftly avoiding the harp and carefully staged chairs upholstered in gold silk to match the gold leaf entablature. “After the fire, the paintings in this room were all restored by a different artist from the one who did some of the others you might’ve have seen upstairs. That’s why some of them appear a bit smudged in places—it was a stylistic choice, supposedly.” She backs up to the centre of the room, standing beneath the crystal chandelier as she appraises them. “The effect isn’t so dramatic here,” she says, pointing to a portrait of a grey-haired woman in a low-necked dress, who does look a bit blurry, actually. Then she turns around, eyes searching the room before exclaiming, “Ah, but there’s an excellent example! Come.” She walks hurriedly toward one of the two black marble mantels in the room, positioned opposite each other, and points at a picture hanging to its left.

  “That portrait of Lord Simon up there, you see?” She gestures to it; the portrait lighting above it is a bit dimmer, giving it a gloomier effect. “There are several others in the house of him as well, but they’re remarkably different, though they were painted the same year. The originals, that is.”

  Lord Simon grimaces over us, obviously tall despite hunching in his wingback chair, and gaunt beneath his formidable sideburns. He holds a cane at an odd angle, making it seem nearly indistinguishable from his limbs.

  “Who was he?” I ask absently.

  “Your great-great-grandfather, I believe.”

  Oh.

  “How interesting!” I exclaim. “I never knew any of this.”

  “Happy to help,” she says. “But I’m afraid I really must be going now.”

  “I understand, of course. Before you go, would you mind telling me where I can see the others?”

  “Others?”

  I indicate the painting.

  “Ah yes, of course. There’s one in the second-floor library, and another in one of the more popular rooms in the manor. In fact, it’s on my way, if you’d like me to show you?”

  “Oh, would you? That would be lovely.”

  She smiles genuinely. I’m in.

  Not one for idle chitchat, she makes it a working walk, informing me of the detailed plans for the renovation of parts of the main house as well as the mausoleum. “Old homes, they get tired, like we do. Need a bit of freshening up, now and again. Otherwise they’ll collapse!”

  “We can’t have that.”

  “No, we certainly can’t. Right, then,” she says, once we’re in the library. This part of the house is tourist-accessible, and we’re not alone in the room; a couple is reading the small plaque beneath some artefact, and a few uniformed kids are pulling faces at each other in the leaded-glass windows overlooking the gardens. She walks me over to a painting.

  In this one, my great-great-grandfather is square-jawed, muscular, and staring off into the middle distance, standing without a cane and looking every part the British Colonial Occupier. The image is immediately and intimately familiar, like I’ve seen this picture before.

  “The portraits of him were both upstairs, at one point. Most visitors never guessed that it’s the same man.”

  A ridiculous claim; most visitors would be unlikely to single out any of the portrait subjects from the others, and if they did, why would they care? I don’t correct her. We must allow people their pleasures, however small.

&n
bsp; “Forgive me, I know almost nothing about art. But if the original you showed me before was lost in the fire, how could the artist have restored it, exactly?”

  “An excellent question. Typically art restoration is done on damaged paintings, not destroyed ones, but in this case, the artist had a painting of the painting to go off. So it’s more of a reproduction than a restoration, really.”

  “A painting of a painting?”

  “Yes, the first Lord Simon was rather vain. Had dozens of portraits done of himself, so many that they’re primarily kept in different locations instead of on display.”

  “How odd.”

  “And expensive. The artist who did the reproduction was going off a painting of Lord Simon and the rest of his family; the painting was hanging in the room where they sat for it.”

  “But why reproduce that painting?”

  “I’ve asked that myself, actually. I think the artist had some sort of a dispute with him, to be honest, which would explain why it’s such an . . . unforgiving portrayal.”

  “Is it possible they were painted in different years?” I ask, head tilted.

  “Not according to the valet’s records, no.”

  “Is it possible the valet made a mistake?”

  “Well, I suppose anything’s possible, but it would be the first. His diaries were meticulous.”

  “Diaries?”

  “Yes. This is an historic property, Mr.—Noah—and even centuries ago there was a certain reverence for the manor, even amongst the servants.”

  “Fascinating,” I say. “Perhaps he grew ill.”

  “That’s likely, Lord Simon did die that same year.”

  “How?”

  “Cholera, on a trip to India. Never made the voyage back.”

  18

  EACH ONE OF YOU CAN LOVE HER

  I CAN’T GET OUT OF THE manor fast enough. When I finally manage it, I find Goose alone, loitering in one of the estate’s many gardens.

  “Sight for sore eyes,” I say.

  He cracks a half smile. “Glad you made it out alive.”

  “Only just,” I say. “You?”

  “Thought I’d take a moment of reflection in the gardens.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Bloody useless. There’s a pop-up café, though, where we can get coffee, at least.”

  “That’s where I was heading to find you.”

  We start off in that direction. I ought to be reflecting on my meeting with Lord Simon, via Mrs. Balfour (WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN and all that), but it’s the encounter with my sister that weighs on me.

  “Goose?” I ask.

  “Mmm?”

  “What was it like, for you? Growing up?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “How did your family treat you? Your brothers?”

  The breeze ruffles his hair before he smoothes it back, loping alongside. “Well, I’m the beloved baby, of course. By the time I was coming up in school, they’d all gone off. Did all right for themselves in the end, though. Oxbridge, and all that.”

  “And left you to fend.”

  “A bit. But that’s all we can do, isn’t it?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The best we can.” He smiles.

  It’s a sad expression. Wounded. They grew up and went, leaving him the only one around to listen to the alcoholic ramblings of his mother, the screaming matches between her and his father. It was less dramatic in my broken family, in a way—when my mother died, my father became a ghost as well. Ruth tried, but she couldn’t fix the thing at the heart of it. Without my mother, our family didn’t make sense.

  I left Kate in that. I’ve got excuses, good ones, but that’s all they are.

  I don’t want to leave things like this with her. I’ve fucked up too much as it is.

  “Maybe I ought to stay around a bit longer, even after our things get here?” I ask as we approach the café. Idle chatter and the hissing of espresso machines fill the pause in our conversation. “Try to sort things with Kate?” Things can hardly get worse.

  “Speak of the devil,” Goose says, tipping his head. I follow his gaze.

  My sister is sitting at a table by a hedge, and Mara’s grandmother is sitting opposite her, wearing tight jeans and an oversized sweater, hands cupping her mug.

  Let this be a lesson for you: Things can always get worse.

  I approach them because I have to, obviously. Mara’s grandmother pretends not to notice me come up, and my sister’s facing the opposite way.

  “Hello,” I say warily.

  Kate turns to us, eyebrows raised. “Goose,” she says to him, as if our earlier meeting hadn’t happened, as if I’m not there. “You’re looking well.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “Goose?” Mara’s grandmother says, brandishing a northern accent, now. “What sort of a name is that?”

  “The sort you earn at an all-boys boarding school for behaviour I could never recount in polite company,” he says.

  Kate looks at M. “This is—Em, did I get it right?”

  “Close enough.” She smiles. “Lovely to meet you, Goose,” she says to him. Then, extending her hand to me, “And you as well . . .”

  “Noah,” I say. “Shaw.”

  Mara’s grandmother looks back and forth between me and Kate. “I’d guessed, but didn’t want to be rude. I was a mate of your dad’s, at Trinity. The resemblance is uncanny.”

  Would it be so terrible, to be able to kill someone with a thought? I wonder. “And how do you two know each other?” I ask Kate.

  “Your sister had some questions about the house,” M says brightly.

  “Em’s a volunteer,” Kate says.

  “Is that right?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” M corrects.

  “What did you read for?” Goose asks her.

  “Classics,” she says, with an expert touch of humblebrag. “It’s not directly relevant, I know, but I’ve been thinking of writing a book on follies.”

  “Follies,” I repeat.

  “The classical statues and structures you might’ve seen on the grounds. So called because they serve no actual purpose except as a display of wealth.”

  “I know what they are,” I say, the last of my tolerance rapidly waning.

  “Oh, sorry! I wasn’t sure.” Mara’s grandmother grins, pushing her seat back. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get back to it, though. Glad I could help—lovely meeting you,” she says, extending her hand to Goose first, then me.

  “Em,” I say. “Is that short for Emily? Emma?”

  She smiles, with teeth. “Oh, no, my name’s not quite so common, but it keeps life interesting to leave some things a bit of a mystery, don’t you find?” She winks at Goose. “Not unlike your friend, here.”

  “Indeed,” I say.

  She bites her lower lip, still smiling, and then brushes past me, knocking into a chair as she does. “God, I’m hopeless,” she mumbles. “Cheers!” she says, waving.

  It’s almost convincing.

  “Lovely,” Goose says after her.

  “She offered to take me out someday, tell me about Dad,” Kate says, eyes meeting mine as she sips from her coffee. “Said she knew our mother, too.”

  “I see,” I say slowly, considering whether to take the seat that M just vacated. “You think that’s wise? Going along with someone you hardly know?”

  Kate rolls her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not as if she’s some middle-aged pervert trying to lure me into the back of his van.”

  Middle-aged, she isn’t. “Maybe you ought to at least check with Grandmother first.”

  “What, now you’ve decided you’re going to act like a big brother?” She gets up from the unsteady little iron table. “You might not be interested in hearing about what our parents were like back then, but I am. Goose,” she says, pushing her chair in. “Lovely to see you.”

  “And you,” he says, as she stalks off.

  “Kate—”

/>   “I’ll text if I’m kidnapped or something, all right?” she says loudly, over her shoulder.

  “I don’t have my mobile!”

  She keeps walking.

  “You’re really in it, mate,” Goose says, just as I feel something vibrating in my pocket.

  A phone I don’t recognise? How novel. “Hello?”

  “Go to the White Horse pub down the road,” Mara’s grandmother says.

  “New phone, who’s this?” I ask politely.

  “Act smarter than you look,” she says, and hangs up.

  I let Goose lead us to the car park. “Where’d you get the mobile?”

  “Mara’s grandmother,” I say.

  He taps the side of his nose, once. “You neglected to mention that. When?”

  “Five minutes ago,” I say. “M is for Mara. You just met her.”

  19

  IN HER MYSTERY

  SHE’S WAITING FOR US IN the nearly empty pub, sitting at the far end of the bar. M looks out of place, but only because she isn’t a seventy-year-old man.

  She’s twice that, I force myself to remember. More than. The three other occupants of the establishment are wrinkled and ruddy and grey; Mara’s grandmother’s face is unlined, her hair full and loose and shining black. She’d have been in her eighties when they were born.

  Goose is staring as well. Out of the corner of his mouth, he says, “You’re saying that’s—”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my wow,” he murmurs.

  M stands from her stool without a word, not even so much as a nod of acknowledgement, and walks past a few empty booths to a back door, her trainers squeaking a bit on the stone floor. She pushes it open, disappears behind it.

  Goose seems puzzled. “Do we . . . follow?”

  “Think so.”

  There’s a small garden dotted with a few shabby tables, the white paint peeling and a bit rusted. M’s standing against one of them, one ankle crossed in front of the other, wearing an expression of exasperation and disdain.

  “How old did you say she was?” Goose whispers.

  “It’s rude to inquire about a woman’s age,” M says at full volume.