The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (11 page)

—What time do they close?

—At five, but normally you’d need an appointment. Let me try calling them.

The librarian persuades the archive to give me a three o’clock appointment. I ride the Underground to Pimlico and sprint along the river on Millbank to the museum, sweating in the sunlight. The clerk at the archive has the first box waiting for me: thick black ledgers of sales and accounting records, an assortment of thin exhibition catalogs bound in colored paper, shipping bills and lists. Although the gallery is called Devereux Brothers, the correspondence is all addressed to one man named
Roger Devereux. Most of the papers date from the 1920s. The inventory lists have occasional entries for Eleanor’s paintings:
Night Scene (Black Dominion)
,
Four March Hares
,
Kronborg Slot
.

I bring the box back to the enquiry desk and am given the second one. The label on the side says
Devereux, Roger: Correspondence 1911–1927
. Inside are dozens of letters still in their envelopes, all slit neatly at the top. Most of the letters are in the same small, tight longhand, addressed to Devereux by a man named Coutts who seems to have managed the daily business of the gallery. The frequency of his letters to Devereux’s address in Surrey suggests Devereux stayed away from London for weeks at a time.

I skim the pages, keeping an eye on the clock behind me. Eleanor’s paintings are mentioned briefly in a letter about potential exhibitions in July 1919, and again in March 1921 among a list of sold works. Then I find a more puzzling note.

23 Mar 19

Dear Mr. Devereux,

I received your letter of the 19th inst. and have disposed of the study as directed. M. Broginart was terribly disappointed and offered to double his price for the canvas, until at last he was made to understand the situation. He enquired about the larger picture and is keen enough to buy the painting sight unseen, though he would not tender a figure and I expressed my grave doubts. Has Mrs. Grafton advised whether that painting shall ever be put out?

The other works in the shipment were the two portraits (
The Housemistress, Dr. Lindberg
) and
Kronborg Slot
. I received the inventory slips and prices for these works, so please confirm they are suitable for display and sale.

Yrs Faithfully,

Wm. Coutts

I read the letter three times. Then I take it to the desk and ask the archivist to make a photocopy. I hand him the box of letters.

—Could I have the first box again?

I go back to my table and take out the inventory ledger, flipping to the pages for 1919. It lists receipt of three “Grafton” paintings on March 14:
Kronborg Slot
,
Dr. Lindberg
, and
Nude Study
. The last one is crossed out. I turn the page and there are two more of Eleanor’s paintings entered in July 1919:
Four March Hares
and
The Unvanquished
.

I lean back into my chair, looking up at the ceiling and trying to keep myself from smiling. I know I should stop, because I can’t be sure about anything. But I keep smiling anyway. I look through the rest of the box, but it’s hard to concentrate now and soon the archive begins to switch off its lights.

A warm rain is falling outside. I start off toward Victoria, stopping to call Prichard from a pay phone. His secretary tells me he’s in a meeting, but when I get back to my hotel room the red light on my phone is blinking. I pick it up.

—Good evening, I’m calling from Twyning and Hooper. Is this Mr. Tristan Campbell?

—Yes.

—Please hold for James Prichard.

Sitting on the bed, I take my notebook and the photocopies from my bag. The red digits of the alarm clock read 6:17. Prichard must be working late.

—The prodigious Mr. Campbell. Don’t tell me you’ve another theory.

I read Prichard the letter from Coutts and describe the ledger entries. It is a moment before he speaks.

—Is this all you’ve found so far?

—Yeah, but it’s important. Don’t you see—

—Yes, yes. Prichard sighs. You believe the picture was of Imogen.

—Exactly.

—Which is why it was destroyed.

—Right.

—And why would that be necessary?

—Because it showed her nude. Because she was pregnant. Or because it showed her in Sweden at all, right before Charlotte was born—

—Pure conjecture, Prichard counters. Very likely Eleanor wished it destroyed because it was only a preliminary study. It sounds as though it was shipped to London by accident. Perhaps she simply didn’t like the picture.

—But someone wanted it. Why destroy a painting that already has a buyer?

—I can imagine any number of reasons. You don’t know the subject of the destroyed painting. You’re connecting it to this
Nude Study
by circumstantial evidence. What you really have is a theory, the two sisters in Sweden. You’re looking for proof of that theory and so you find it, but the theory may be skewing your research, not to mention your conclusions. For instance, you say the letter is from 1919. But when was Charlotte born?

—In 1917, but I doubt there was much of an art market then. It makes sense that Eleanor wouldn’t have tried to ship the paintings or sell them until after the war. Especially since they were up in Sweden.

—Possibly. But again, it’s far too much conjecture. What you need are facts.

—I have plenty of facts—

I flip through my notebook, speaking quickly.

—I know they refitted the Swedish house in the winter of 1916, so that Eleanor could winter in a house that’d never been used in winter. I know Charlotte was born there. I know Eleanor painted something there that was shipped to London in February 1919, a few months after the war ended, and whatever was in the picture bothered her so much that it had to be destroyed at the gallery instead of being stored or sent back. I know there’s a picture in the gallery ledger called
Nude Study
received in February 1919—

—It’s all quite fascinating. But it’s hardly evidence.

—It could lead me to evidence.

—To what?

—Birth records, for one thing. In Sweden they were all kept by the local parish, I’ve been reading about them. There ought to be an entry for Charlotte listing the names of her parents. It might say something different from the English records. The parish also kept annual registers of each household, and if the Leksand house is there, it’d say who was living there at the time. Imogen could be there. Has anyone looked at the Swedish records?

—There’ve been vital records searches at least three times, Prichard says. They were done internally by our staff. I don’t know where they looked, but I’m told it was exhaustive. Of course, I know nothing of these parish registers. Do you intend to go to Sweden?

—It’s a short flight over there. And it’s the best lead I have.

Prichard sighs. —I won’t dispute that. If you must go, I’d suggest sooner rather than later. You’ll want to know as soon as you can if you’re on track. And Mr. Campbell?

—Yeah.

—You’re not looking for a painting. You’re looking for evidence.

I hang up and walk downstairs. The concierge is still on duty and I ask if he can find me a cheap flight to Stockholm. He types into his computer.

—Tomorrow seems fairly booked, but the next day there’s a Ryanair flight that’s seventy pounds.

He grimaces. —But it leaves at six a.m. And Stansted’s so far, you’d practically have to sleep in the airport—

—Can you do that?

The concierge looks up at me, hesitating.

—Some do. But I certainly wouldn’t recommend it.

I show the concierge my credit card and walk away with a printout of my itinerary. Then I go into the business center and send an e-mail to the regional archive in Uppsala. I tell them I’m coming to their reading room on Thursday and I’d like to request materials in advance:
Leksand’s birth records from 1906 to 1920 and two parish registers, 1910–1916 and 1917–1931.

I spend my last morning in London buying research books on Charing Cross Road: a fraying cloth-bound mountaineering history of Everest, a small paperback from the seventies titled
Daily Life in the Trenches, 1914–1918
and an enormous copy of
The Reckoning of Fortune: War on the Western Front.
Then I send e-mails to my father and stepbrother. I can’t tell them about my research and I don’t want to lie, so the messages end up short and vague. I send them anyway.

In the evening I go to the hotel to collect my bag. On my way out I try to give the doorman a five-pound note, but he won’t accept the tip. We shake hands.

—Where are you off to?

—Sweden.

The doorman winks at me.

—Be careful, he says. Europe isn’t like here. They’ve their own way of doing things.

It is past ten when I arrive at Stansted Airport. The last planes have departed and the next ones don’t leave until morning. Sleeping travelers are strewn across the benches, their coats spread over them. On the terminal floor young backpackers doze on sheets of newspaper.

I brush my teeth in the public bathroom and fill my water bottle under the tap. On a sheltered spot beneath a check-in counter I spread my sleeping bag. I lie in the bag chewing squares of chocolate from the hotel. All night they continue security announcements every half hour.

19 August 1916

The Regent’s Park

Marylebone, Central London

They walk out of the park onto Marylebone Road in the darkness. Most of the streetlamps are off for fear of air raids, a few with blue glass shades projecting murky light below. Beams of searchlights swarm across the sky, hunting zeppelins among the clouds and stars.

Ashley hails a motorcab and Imogen talks excitedly in the shadowed backseat, her mind arcing from one subject to another with giddy pleasure. She tells Ashley about a village in Brittany she wishes to live in; she describes an Autographic Kodak camera that her father gave her last month. She reads mainly in French and she likes the Symbolist poets best, Verlaine and De Gourmont and Corbière, but she has never seen anything so lovely in her life as Nijinsky onstage in
Le Sacre du Printemps.

—They’ve interned him in Hungary now, can you believe it? A dancer in prison—

Imogen looks at Ashley. She smiles.

—You think I’m mad, don’t you? But I don’t mind.

The motorcab rounds the fountain at Piccadilly Circus, strange and gloomy with the lights darkened and the curtains drawn in all the windows, the rooftop billboards like huge blank slates. Ashley watches
the silhouette of the Anteros statue at the center of the fountain, the nude archer loosing his arrow into the blackness. The taxi halts beside a maroon awning. Ashley pays the driver and holds the door open for Imogen, offering his hand. The girl regards him skeptically, then smiles and steps out, as if granting him this moment as an indulgence.

They are seated at a table in the café beside the mirrored wall, their bodies perching and sinking into gaudy stuffed chairs of scarlet velour. The fog of tobacco smoke is tremendous. A female waiter emerges from the haze to take their order, her paper collar soiled and yellowing, a starched napkin hung over the sleeve of her black jacket. She eyes them with weary indifference. Imogen orders a pair of brandies, winking at Ashley. He cranes his neck to look around the room.

—Rather jolly in its own way. Isn’t it queer to see women waiters—

The waitress returns bearing two short-stemmed snifters on her tray. The brandy twirls in the glasses as she sets them on the tablecloth. Imogen leans across the table.

—I want you to tell me about your climbing. Once and for all.

—What do you want to know?

—Anything and everything. I’ve always been curious. We used to go to Switzerland when I was little, when we lived in Paris. I remember being terrified of the mountain guides. In the early morning they’d be waiting in front of the hotel for the guests. They’d never come in, they’d only stand outside smoking their pipes and talking in frightful dialect. I knew they lived high up, so I thought the mountains were a whole other country where ordinary people couldn’t go, not without guides. And the places had such mysterious names. The Mer de Glace—it’s near Mont Blanc, isn’t it?