'"First, you will sign over to me all of your property: every farthing not already assigned to me by your father; every jewel, every trinket, everything but the clothes you stand up in.
'"Second, you will sign a paper confessing to your adultery with St Clair.
"'Third, you will sign an undertaking never to see or communicate with St Clair again.
'"Fourth, you will undertake never to communicate with any of our mutual acquaintance. You will leave London and never return. I wish it to appear that you and your son have vanished from the face of the earth.
'"Defy me in any particular, and you will lose your son. I fear you have spoiled him, but it is not too late to remedy that. You will also be branded in court as an adulteress, and I will bring an action against St Clair for alienation of affection which will bankrupt him.'
"'Why should I trust you?' she asked. 'Since you intend to be merciless in every other respect, why not keep Arthur, and make my punishment even more cruel?'
'"Because as long as you have your son, you will live in fear of losing him. As you surely will, if you do not keep to the letter of our agreement. As for trust, you must rely upon my word as a gentleman-and hope that I will be more scrupulous than you have been about your marriage vows.'
"He had already prepared the papers. One by one he set them before her. She signed mechanically, fatalistically, scarcely bothering to read what he had written, and then declared that she would leave the house at once. But he insisted she remain that night, alone in her bedroom, to give her 'time for reflection. The bell, he said, had been disconnected, but she would find a cold supper waiting for her.
"Dizzy with fatigue and hunger, she dragged herself up to her room and bolted the door. There was also a connecting door between her bedroom and her husband's, opening into her room. It was locked already, but the key was missing.
"Despite her exhaustion, she had no intention of sleeping, but within minutes of eating her supper she felt overcome by an irresistible drowsiness. The food had been drugged. Fear lent her enough strength to drag a heavy chest across the connecting door. She collapsed onto her bed and sank into an abyss of darkness, from which she emerged the following morning with the sensation that her head was on fire. In the mirror she saw that her face and neck had turned a livid shade of purple.
"Her first thought was that her husband had exacted a terrible revenge. But the door into the corridor was still bolted on the inside; the chest stood where she had dragged it, blocking the connecting door; the window remained fastened on the inside, and from the sill to the area below was a sheer drop of thirty feet. The room was undisturbed, her pillow unmarked. Even if a corrosive spirit had somehow been introduced into the room, it could not have injured her so terribly without damaging the bedclothes.
"Then it occurred to her that she might have been poisoned as well as drugged. Apart from the burning sensation, she felt well enough, but how long would this last? Sick with horror, she dressed, put on a veil to hide her face, and despite her husband's threats, gathered up a few pieces of jewellery left to her by her mother, as well as all the money she had in her room.
"Thus far, she had not heard a sound from her husbands room, Listening at the other door, mustering the courage to open it and confront him-for surely he would be lurking outside-she became aware that the usual morning bustle was absent. Very quietly she undid the bolt and peeped out. The corridor was empty, the house completely still. All the way down to the front door she expected him to pounce, but no one appeared; for all the signs of life, the house might have been deserted, She let herself out into the street and secured a cab."
Theodore fell silent. He had become so absorbed in his own narrative that he continued to stare at, or rather through the portrait until Cordelia took his arm; then he turned slowly towards her like a man waking from a dream.
"I am very sorry, my dear. I fear I have said far more than I intended. The fact is, I was back in the drawing-room downstairs, thirty years ago, listening to Imogen. Even her voice was altered-by the illness, I mean-I had remembered it as a vibrant contralto; now she spoke in a hoarse, whispery monotone, all expression lost…"
"Uncle, why do you call it an illness? He must have poisoned her."
"I know, I know; and so your father always believed. But I asked a specialist privately, and he assured me there was nothing in nature that could produce such an effect. One man thought it might be Saint Anthony's Fire; another said it resembled a severe case of scalding, but her condition grew worse, not better, for weeks afterwards; we had a nurse here, all the time. Drugged or not, she would have woken instantly if she had been burnt… besides, there was no possibility of physical attack. No one could have got into that room."
"Uncle, why did you say physical attack' like that? Do you mean she might have been attacked in some other way?"
"Not unless you believe… but no, no… I think we must put it down to a rare and horribly malignant infection, brought on by the strain of events."
Cordelia wanted to ask what he had been going to say, but the recollection was plainly so distressing that she did not like to press him.
"And Henry St Clair?" she asked. "Did she see him again? I suppose she must have, when he brought the picture here."
"No, my dear, she did not. And it was not St Clair who brought it here. Which brings me to the part that concerns you."
Cordelia's feet were numb with cold; her breath was clouding the chill air, but she did not want to break the thread. Serene, untouched, untroubled, Imogen de Vere gazed back at her while Uncle Theodore collected his thoughts.
"Of course she was desperate to let him know what had happened. Against my advice, she wrote to him the day after she arrived here, but at my insistence she did not give him this address. De Vere knew nothing of me, and I feared that even this minor breach might bring him down upon us. I tried to get word of Henry St Clair by indirect means, but without result, and soon she was too ill for us to think of anything else.
"For at least two months-it seemed a lifetime-she was delirious with pain, for all the doctors could do for her. But as she began to convalesce, I could tell that anxiety about St Clair was preying upon her mind, and so I agreed to go up to London and seek him out.
"It was midwinter by then, bleak and dismal. I took a cab from Victoria and sat wishing I had never heard of Henry St Clair as we jolted and slithered through the frozen slush, and the streets grew darker and narrower. At the restaurant-which was dim and narrow, and smelt strongly of garlic-I was told that Mr St Clair had gone away, weeks ago, nobody knew where. I thought perhaps they were protecting him until, with the proprietors daughter acting as interpreter, I learned that all of St Clair's belongings, including the entire contents of his studio, had been carried off by the bailiffs. I spent the rest of the afternoon confirming what I feared. St Clair had been in debt to various moneylenders; the legacy he claimed to have received had evidently been only the latest in a series of loans. De Vere had bought up all of his debts and called them in, bankrupting St Clair and seizing everything he possessed, including the portrait."
"Then how did it come here?" asked Cordelia. "Did you buy it from him?"
"No, my dear, I did not. I attempted to trace St Clair, without success. Nothing more was ever heard of him; he simply vanished from sight. All I ever told Imogen-I should have said, by the way, that all she wanted was to know that he was alive and well; quite apart from the risk to Arthur, she knew by then that the disfigurement would be permanent… I told her that the restaurant people had lost his forwarding address. She never learned what de Vere had done.