“Until one day she encountered an odd French-American-English painter in the run-down house where one of her childhood friends was dying of syphilis. He saw a tiny little thing dressed in a tartan skirt, a Chinese silk blouse, a moulting rabbit-fur jacket, and a French beret, with cropped hair and painted eyes. She saw a tall, thin foreigner reeking of turpentine and blinking as if he'd just come from a cave.
“‘You need to eat,’ she said. ‘Take me to lunch.’
“What could I do? I took her to lunch, took her for a walk along the riverfront, and before I knew it, she was in my life. It was Yolanda who loaded up a rickshaw with my paintings and took them to the gallery. And Yolanda who haggled over the prices of the next batch. Yolanda who suggested that I become known, professionally, as ‘The Addler’-a sort of trademark. And as I said, Yolanda who kept me on something resembling the straight and narrow.
“In the end, it was Yolanda who suggested it was time to move closer to the centre of the art world, she who besieged the British Embassy until they told her how I might register as a citizen whose papers had been lost. I did not want to leave Shanghai, not really, but it was hard on her-there are many places where the Chinese are not welcome. I thought of Paris, which is as colour-blind as one can hope for, but she was afraid the pull of the old life would prove too strong for me. Plus, she had no wish to learn another language. In the end, we agreed on London, with my mother's adopted nationality to build on.
“Your brother helped me, as I understand he had helped Mother when I was born. And, as I later found that she had, I asked him not to inform you until I could do so myself.”
He laid the cigarette case down and looked straight at Holmes, for the first time in several minutes. “Once we decided to leave Shanghai, I married Yolanda. Neither of us believes in the concept, but I doubt the government would have permitted her to come otherwise.” He waited for a reaction from Holmes, disapproval perhaps, but when no response came, he continued; there were clearly more revelations to come.
“As it happened, we arrived in London less than a week after you'd left for India -we probably passed you somewhere off the coast of France. It didn't take long before we were wishing we'd stayed in Shanghai-winter is a terrible time to come here from the tropics, everything is bitter cold and grey and lifeless. Yolanda had never had chilblains before, and the cost of coal to heat the rooms was more than the rent itself. I hired a studio and rediscovered the challenge of painting with shivering hands. Every day we thought of leaving, but we didn't, quite.
“Then April came, and the sun appeared. Everything was brilliant, seductive, cheering-the poets are right, to make much of this country in the spring. Yolanda began to look for more permanent housing, and I sent my first London paintings to a gallery she'd located off Regent Street.
“As spring wore on, that was our life: We scraped together enough to buy a little house with a garden in Chelsea, two streets away from my studio. Yolanda began to explore the nearby parks and religious centres, and made some friends. And one day I was in town and I heard my name called-a fellow I'd met in Shanghai. An artist. He was surprised to see me, of course, but took me for a drink and introduced me to his friends, and life began to settle into a pleasant pace…”
“Until?” Holmes prompted.
“Until the latter half of June.” Damian ran fingers through his long hair, revealing a glimpse of the scars, and went through the business of lighting another cigarette. He pinched out the match. “You have to understand: I promised Yolanda before we married that I would support her in all ways. That I would never force myself or my opinions on her. That I would always recognise her complete right to make her own choices. Yolanda and I have a marriage of freedom. We love each other, and are honest with each other, but we have our own lives and our own interests. I may do things for her churches from time to time, and she may come to dinner with my artist friends, but neither of us expects the other to pretend to interests that aren't compatible.” He looked from Holmes' face to mine, searching for sympathy, I expect. “Ours is a modern marriage,” he insisted.
“Very well,” Holmes said. “What happened in the latter half of June? And, the date?”
“The date? I don't know, it was a weekend-a Sunday. I'd been to the park and came home to find Yolanda… troubled. She was in the sitting room with the curtains drawn and the windows shut, although it was stifling. When I turned up the lights, she cried out as if she'd seen a snake in the room. She wouldn't tell me what was wrong, but the maid said she'd started the morning completely normally, then after breakfast suddenly retreated into the room, and stayed there all day.
“I coaxed her to eat and put her to bed. The next morning she seemed better. She laughed when I asked her what had happened, and said something odd about being unaccustomed to happiness.
“She wouldn't let me stay home, insisted she was fine, tried to pretend she was herself again. But she wasn't. I could see that something was eating at her, but I thought perhaps it was simply as she had said, that when one has spent one's life tensed against life's next blow, security and comfort can themselves seem untrustworthy. I vowed to myself that I would sustain her comfort, until she became convinced that it was real, and permanent.
“Since then, I've done my best to convince her of her worth. I took her to Brighton for a few days, to amuse her, bought her books, even went to her favourite church with her. And I thought I was succeeding. Her friends started to drop by again, she's been out a few times-generally with a mundane purpose, to shop or visit the lending library, but the haunted look seemed to leave her, and she spent less time behind closed curtains.
“Until she disappeared.” Holmes sat back, one finger resting across his lips; I sat forward. “This was Friday. Three days ago. I'd been up late Thursday, working, and I fell asleep in the studio-I keep a bed there, so I don't disturb the household with my comings and goings. I slept until noon, then went home. The maid, Sally, told me that Yolanda had gone out first thing that morning with a packed valise, saying she wasn't sure when she would return.”
“Had she received a letter? A telegram?”
“Not that Sally knew, and the only time she'd been away from the house was when she went to the greengrocer's Thursday afternoon. I was more puzzled than alarmed-Yolanda does this sometimes, goes off for a day or two. She calls them her ‘religious adventures.’ Still, she always tells me when she's going to be away, and with her recent uneasiness in mind, I found myself distracted. Twice I left my painting to walk home and see if she had come back. She hadn't.
“So on Saturday I woke up early, and when there was still no sign of her, I sent Sally out to do the round of Yolanda's friends, to see if any of them knew where she was. While she was doing that, I went around Yolanda's favourite churches and temples and the like, but no-one had seen her in days. I didn't know what else to do, so I went back to the studio, but I couldn't settle to work.”
“You didn't wish to notify the police?”
“No. Not until, well, considerably longer. And then when I returned to the house around tea-time, Sally gave me an envelope she'd found under my pillow, where Yolanda had put it before she left. It could have sat there for days, if I'd continued to sleep at the studio, but when Sally'd come in, she couldn't decide what to do with herself, not knowing if we were in for dinner and all, so she'd decided to strip the beds.”
Holmes made a small gesture of impatience with his finger, and Damian abandoned the question of out-of-sorts maidservants.
“Anyway, this is what she found.”
Damian reached around for his jacket and fished out not one, but two envelopes. He half-rose to hand the light blue one to Holmes. For a moment, the slip of blue linked two near-identical hands, then Holmes' long fingers were pulling at the contents, tipping the page so that I, too, could read the words. They were written in a precise, bold hand: