As Marcus stared at her, understanding broke like dawn over his reeling brain. The Family. A stolen book. A notion it was worth something. Imogen was a servant, obviously. But what in the bloody hell was Gray Westlake doing with her? And why had he forced her on Marcus?
“Mr. Jones,” Gray said — and Marcus felt the familiar fury in his gut at the careless curtailing of his name, he was no mere Jones, no sodding shopkeeper from Wales with a single syllable indistinguishable from all the rest, he had worked hard to come up with Symonds, the perfect hyphenated expression of his aspiration — “it might be easier if I explained. My landscape architect, Jo Bellamy, was at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent this week, where Miss Cantwell is the National Trust Head Gardener.”
“Ah,” Marcus said.
“Jo was observing operations in the garden, at Miss Cantwell’s invitation, with a view to replicating certain aspects of Sissinghurst at my Long Island estate.”
“Jesus,” Imogen interjected. “You’re the one who wants the White Garden? I’d have thought you’d more sense than to buy a fake.”
Gray Westlake ignored her. “Jo tells me she found a notebook in some sort of shed — ”
“And I led her right to it!” Imogen cried.
“She thinks it might have been written by Virginia Woolf. She brought it to London yesterday, to be assessed by your department.”
“ — Which she had no authority to do!” Imogen was working herself into a rage. “I never gave her permission! Wanted to read the book overnight, she said. Because of her precious grandfather. And now she’s gone, and the notebook with her — ”
Marcus stabbed at his speakerphone. “Cissy — did a Miss Jo… Bellamy… an American woman…” — he mouthed at Gray Westlake: Young? Old? — “in her mid-thirties, perhaps… approach the department yesterday?”
“He doesn’t even know his job,” Imogen muttered to Gray. “But you — if Jo’s your architect, you must know where she is, surely?”
“Marcus?” Cissy purred through the speakerphone. “I sent her to Peter. The rest of the department were in conference.”
“Peter,” Marcus spat. “Of course. Still taking coffee in some bloody café, is he?”
“We’ve had a call this morning. Peter’s on sick leave.”
“Sick my arse!” Marcus shouted at the speakerphone. “Give me his mobile!”
“I think,” Gray Westlake said as Cissy disconnected to search her database, “you’ll find that Peter is in Oxford.…”
“IS IT MARGAUX?” JO ASKED.
“No.” Peter thrust his cell phone in his coat pocket. “Work number. Marcus bloody Jones. I won’t answer.”
“Seen all you need to, then?” Glenna held out her hand for the mural photograph. “There’s so much in these files. And so little order! The whole collection should be placed somewhere. University of Sussex, perhaps. With the Woolf papers.”
“But how nice that it’s here. In the house,” Jo said politely. She turned to follow Peter through the doorway when a thought struck her. “Glenna — do you have any photographs of Vanessa Bell? Or anyone else who lived here?”
“Loads.” The guide pulled open another file cabinet and spilled a sheaf of prints over the oak desk.
Her beauty, Jo saw, was bone-deep: as much to do with the deeply modeled sockets of the widespread eyes and the subtle squaring of the chin, that in her sister, Virginia, was elongated to the point of caricature. Vanessa had a luminous glory that must have haunted the men who loved her. In the aging photographs beneath Jo’s hands, her liquid gaze held fated depths, her full lips invited touch. There was power, too, in her air of stillness: She might have been an Archangel, something winged and terrible come to rest. Yet her children huddled gladly within her arms.
“That’s quite an early one of Vanessa with her boys — Julian by her shoulder and Quentin in her lap,” Glenna said. “He passed on just a few years ago.”
“And Julian?”
“Killed driving an ambulance in the Spanish Civil War.”
There had been something, Jo remembered with a faint ribbon of unease in her stomach, about Julian in the notebook. The envy the writer felt when she saw even Vanessa’s grief. Vanessa had lost her son — and Virginia, if Virginia indeed was the writer, had envied her for it. As though anguish were as valuable as love.
Jo sifted through the photographs. Most had stickers on the reverse, with a date and subject noted. Duncan Grant was in many of them. A few showed Clive Bell, with his high forehead and balding pate, his expression of wounded dignity. Quentin grew older under Jo’s fingers. Pictures at Charleston, Jock had said. Tell her pictures at Charleston. The final one was a group photograph: Virginia Woolf the most obvious face among them, a collection of men about her. She was sitting indolently, her long delicate feet extended, in a basket chair on the lawn. Her thin face with its hooked nose and pronounced underbite was suggestive of a horse, where her sister’s had conjured an angel.
Jo glanced at the back of the picture. Virginia and Apostles, 1933. “Glenna — would it be possible to get a copy of this? And the one of the mural?”
“What — right off the machine?”
Jo shrugged. “I know it’s asking a lot.”
“It’s criminal! One doesn’t do that to old photographs. The light’s bad for them.”
“One doesn’t store old photographs in file cabinets, either.”
“Well — ” Glenna looked at the scattered images on the surface of the desk. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt. Just this once. Are you two scholars or something?”
“Yes,” Jo said. Something just about covered the two of them. Gardener and Expert, 2008. Peter was moving restlessly near Charleston’s front door, too polite to remind her he was waiting.
She took the photocopies Glenna gave her. “Here,” she said, handing the woman a twenty-pound note in return. “A donation. For the Charleston Trust. I wish it were more.”
The guide placed it carefully in a strongbox as Jo walked away.
Chapter Twenty
“YOU’LL NEED TO FIND THE M11.” PETER TOSSED HER the map as the Triumph hurtled up the road. “Although it might be wiser to just take the A1 north out of London. The traffic shouldn’t be too bad at this hour — everyone’s at luncheon.”
“Except us,” Jo observed. “Surely you’ve noticed the lack of food? Isn’t there a Michelin three-star in your back pocket?”
“With time so short — oughtn’t we to wait until Cambridge?”
“At which point, we’re talking dinner.”
“Tea,” he corrected.
“Tea, then. Drop me in London as you fly by.”
The Triumph swerved inadvertently as he turned to stare his outrage. “You’re not serious!”
“I’m tired. I’m hungry. And I’m feeling really guilty. I ditched somebody yesterday who flew thousands of miles for the privilege. I promised I’d be back by tonight.”
“This being the bloke who tried to get you drunk before lunchtime.”
“Gray Westlake. Yes. My client.” Jo felt herself flush. “He gave me a glass of wine, okay? That hardly qualifies as — ”
“Sorry. None of my business. I simply can’t — I won’t accept that you’re pulling out of the chase.”
“The chase? Is that what this is? — A hunt for the Missing Margaux?”
“Not Margaux,” he retorted. “Never Margaux. I wouldn’t risk the loss of lunch — much less my job — to hare after her. But this… Jo, this thing you’ve stumbled on is worth any amount of senseless driving and future unemployment. Don’t tell me you don’t agree. You want to know the truth more than I do. It’s personal for you.”