Page 30 of The Dead Come to Stay
“What happened between them? I know my mother left England in her twenties, alone and pregnant with me. It was as if she was banished from their family. She never spoke of Aiden, and she didn’t go to his funeral. You know more, though, don’t you? I need to know.” Jo’s tone had wandered into desperate demanding and she wrestled it back. He just gave her a faint smile.
“Your grandfather was a vicious, hateful man. At some point, he discovered that Aiden was gay—I’m not sure when; after that, Aiden was as good as dead to him. Then there was your mother.”
“Pregnant and unwed,” Jo added.
Arthur nodded. “Aiden was very cagey about it. But I suspect she met a similar fate. Both of them cast off by their only living parent.”
“Wouldn’t that make them allies?” Jo asked.
“In a perfect world, I’m sure. Of course, in a perfect world they wouldn’t be cast out at all.” He set his cup down and scooped up the Pomeranian again. “Aiden lived a great deal in his own head, but he kept things locked up there.”
“In his mental attic,” Jo said, slipping into Sherlock parlance. Arthur gave a slight chuckle, possibly in response to an ear lick rather than the turn of phrase.
“I suppose. He could be private to the point of secrecy. Your letter came when we were first dating, and he was surprised into giving me the details I just gave you. There was a falling-out over trust. That’s all I know. But I feel somehow the family patriarch must surely be to blame.”
Jo rolled this around her head, looking for a good shelf to keep it on. She was upset. She understood the mental attic problem. She felt anger at her mother, confusion, and disappointment, but she couldn’t deal with that now; instead, she clung to a sliver of maybe good news. Aiden kept secrets. He had a painting he calledHiding. Maybe he also believed in seeking.
“Did Aiden like puzzles?” she asked. “Problem solving, clues?”
“How do you mean?”
“I have a painting, too,” Jo said slowly. “I discovered it last year in the Ardemore estate. It’s by Augustus John, we think.”
“Really?” Arthur sat a little straighter, and Jo felt an odd sort of pride that he knew what she was talking about.
“Yes, but it had been damaged. Badly. Aiden had it restored. I never found out the artist he hired to do it. Thing is, the woman in the painting is a mystery, a family member of mine—and Aiden’s—that no one talks about. I can scarcely find any historical records. Did Aiden tell you about the Ardemores? About the love triangle between our ancestors—Gwen and William and Evelyn Davies? The baby?”
It was fortuitous that Arthur was not, at that moment, drinking tea. He would have choked.
“Baby? Whose baby, now?”
“Oh boy.” Jo bit her lip. Was there a way to be concise here?Just the facts, ma’am... “So, Evelyn was the sister of our ancestor Gwen Ardemore. And she had a baby with Gwen’s husband, William. And then Evelyn died, we think from childbirth. And got buried under the house.”
Jo heard Arthur’s sharp intake of breath.
“Thatwasn’t in the paper.”
“No,” Jo agreed. She had left that bit out for the interview, partly at MacAdams’s suggestion. It had been an ongoing investigation at the time. “I found a hope chest in the garden fullof baby clothes and love letters between Evelyn and William Ardemore.” Jo tried not to squirm. It sounded incredibly bald when you said it in shorthand. She rushed through the rest, forgetting to pause between sentences.
“We didn’t find the baby—so maybe it lived or was buried somewhere else—I’ve been looking everywhere—and I think was Aiden looking, too, when he was alive, because I’ve heard that he spent time in Abington and was looking in archives and maybe even found something—because—because—” She gulped a breath. “Because he left anote.”
Arthur said nothing for a long moment. Then he nodded and pressed his fingers together, prayer-hands style.
“You’re looking for Evelyn’s child, and you think Aiden might have been, too?”
Jo swallowed. She felt deeply embarrassed all of a sudden. Shewasand shedid, but her only evidence was an archive box, the torn photo and half a sentence.
“I’m so sorry,” she sputtered, but Arthur raised a hand.
“Tut, now. If anyone should apologize, it’s me. I realize you’ve come to me for answers, and that so far I’ve been something of a bust. Let’s just get some facts together. You said Aiden was in Abington. When, exactly?”
Jo didn’t have an exactly. But she gave him the approximate date.
“Yes. Okay. He would have been diagnosed by then,” he said. “Pancreatic cancer. Treatment for a year. We had hope at first, but in the end, there wasn’t a lot they could do. He was away a lot, settling his affairs. I know his solicitor was in Abington, but he never asked me to go with him. And he never said anything about Evelyn or the painting. I mightstillbe of some help, though, if you’re looking for the artist Aiden hired. I have some some artist connections. And after all, not everyone could convincingly match the style of an Augustus John.”
Jo had done everything to try to find out more about the painting, including taking it to an art restoration organization in York. But she only came up empty again and again, with no clearer understanding of who repaired it or why it was even ruined in the first place.
Arthur went on. “It’s not as simple as copying someone’s work; that’s what all this business about artificial intelligence gets wrong. Yes, of course, you can copy the content itself; we see two-dimensional prints all the time, posters and greeting cards. But even a copy machine is only capturing the color and lines.”
