A Fatal Likeness (7 page)

“Charles,” he says with a smile, completely disarmed and ripe to be wrong-footed, “Charles Ma—”

He stops, his cheeks blazing—how
could
he have been so stupid?

“Mab,” he finishes lamely, knowing even as he says it that he’s merely compounded his mistake. “Charles Mab.”

“Really?” She eyes him quizzically. “How very unusual. I’m not sure I have ever encountered a Mab before. At least not in everyday life.” She smiles again and motions him to a chair. “And you are a painter, Mr Mab?”

Charles is by now so red about the face that there is little to do but flounder on and hope to retrieve himself. He nods.

“And what sort of painter would you say you are?”

He swallows; his throat is suddenly very dry. He can see the Bay of Naples behind her left shoulder.

“Seascapes,” he says, in desperation. “Storms. Shipwrecks. That sort of thing.”

Her face darkens. “I’m afraid I have no great love for the sea. And especially not in that character.”

Another blunder, he thinks, cursing. Shipwrecks—for God’s sake! When anything even vaguely reminiscent of Shelley is the very last thing he should be broaching, and certainly not now, barely half an hour into the house.

“But are you not now in a most difficult position?”

He stares at her; has she really found him out so soon?

“Well—” he begins.

“I mean,” Claire Clairmont says gaily, “London is hardly the best place to pursue such subject-matter, surely? I cannot recall much in the way of shipwrecks on the Thames. Though admittedly, I have not lived here for many years.”

“You have spent time in Italy, Miss Clairmont?”

He has to be careful now, having snared himself into choosing somewhere for his fictitious foreign escapade that he’s never actually visited, but with luck and some sleight of hand he will have read enough over the years to weave a credible yarn. And a choice born of pure instinct may serve him well in one useful respect: From what he’s gathered so far, it’s a more-than-reasonable bet that this woman came across the Shelleys in Italy, probably in one of those loose-living bohemian communities of English exiles that gather like summer swarms about Florence and Venice. Without being at all religious in any conventional sense, Charles has rather stern views—sterner, indeed, than you might have expected of him—and finds that sort of behaviour both idle and self-indulgent, and feasible only for the feckless few who have plenty of money they have never needed to earn. Though it seems the latter charge, at least, cannot be laid at this woman’s door.

“The best part of my life was lived in Italy,” she answers, settling back a little in her chair. “But by that I mean the most precious, not the greater, portion. There was a time when I believed I had buried there everything I loved.”

There is a silence, and she pulls the shawl she is wearing a little closer about her. It seems worn, the shawl, and much older than the rest of her
ensemble,
which shows a fine disregard for the corseted constraints of London fashion.

“I feel the cold,” she explains, observing his observation. “Even after so long in the ruinous wastes of Russia, I still feel the cold.”

So the Russian books are evidence not only of an unusual flair for languages, but also of an even more unusual strength of character: Few men Charles knows would contemplate travelling to so wild and far-distant a place, and this woman seems to have done so all alone.

“You cannot imagine the contrast,” she continues, suppressing a shiver. “From the golden heat and scented airs of Italy, to find yourself in such an icy trackless desert. Mile after mile and not a single tree. I once travelled from St Petersburg to Moscow in the very depth of winter. Four hundred desolate unchanging miles by sled. Even with three layers of furs, the cold was unbearable. My eyelashes froze with my own tears.”

Charles is uncomfortably aware that their conversation has shifted—metaphorically as literally—a good long way in the wrong direction. “I have heard St Petersburg is a magnificent city.”

“That is certainly the effect its builder intended,” she remarks dryly. “And yes, there are palaces, and domes, and towers aplenty, all bright and new with paint and gilt, but it had to me the feel of fairyland. As if a malicious witch might snap her fingers at any moment and the whole town would fly away. But that is perhaps more a reflection of my own melancholy temper at the time. Though it did bring me one connection I will always cherish.”

She smiles; clearly she has a rather different view of the value of ‘connections’ than Lady Shelley.

“My first Russian pupil was in St Petersburg. She is now the Princess Czernicheff”—this with a flicker of pride—“but she will always be merely ‘Betsy’ to me. As I’m sure your Betsy will be to you.”

Thankfully Charles has now regained some presence of mind. He manages what he hopes is an appropriately avuncular smile.

“Your niece is an adorable child,” Miss Clairmont continues, a note of wistfulness stealing into her voice. “Such beautiful eyes and such a stubborn little chin. And your sister seems to be in good health. She is fortunate indeed if she has avoided the sickness so often suffered in the first months of pregnancy.” She wraps her arms once more about her, and looks away. Charles has rarely met anyone whose moods seem to vary so swiftly, and he’s not sure how best to proceed, but he is saved, in the end, by the appearance of the maid.

“Excuse me, madam, but the room is ready now. If the gentleman would like to see it.”

They both get to their feet, and Miss Clairmont gestures to the maid to take him up.

“I hope you will find the room is to your liking, Mr Mab. And that it proves suitable for a painter such as yourself.”

And if he had indeed been a painter, Charles is sure he would have found it eminently so. It’s clean and empty, with a small single bed and light streaming in from the window. The view, when he goes to look at it, is over the little back garden—a garden, he notices, that’s thick with dead black leaves and overrun with brambles.

When he goes back down to the sitting-room he finds Miss Clairmont standing at the fire, warming her hands. He contemplates her profile, struck again by the loveliness of her face and the voluptuousness of her figure. She’s beautiful now; how exquisite she must once have been. He already suspected the Shelleys of deceiving him, and now he is sure: This woman before him is transparently incapable of persecuting anyone, and certainly not in the persistent and vicious manner Sir Percy was alleging. But if that much is obvious, much else remains obscure. How did Claire Clairmont come by the Shelley papers she is said to own? And is it really possible—as Sam suggested—that she once went to Maddox with an allegation of murder, even though surely she couldn’t have been much more than a girl at the time?

“Ah, Mr Mab,” she says then, smiling up into his thoughts. “And what is your verdict?”

“It’s a charming room, Miss Clairmont. If it is convenient to you, I would be happy to move in at once. I believe you told my sister the rent would be three shillings a week?”

It’s at the top end of the market for such a room, in such a street, but Charles won’t be paying.

Miss Clairmont once again offers her hand. “We will expect you tomorrow. You will no doubt have all the trappings of your calling to bring along with you.”

Yet another thing Charles has overlooked, and he curses Nancy silently—if rather ungratefully: Why couldn’t she have said he was a writer, or a doctor, or something equally free from obvious professional baggage?

“I thought also—” he says, faux-tentative.

“Yes?”

“It seemed to me that your garden might benefit from a little attention. I would be delighted to spend a little of my leisure time putting things to rights.”

She smiles. “I do not own the house, and feel a similar degree of detachment from the garden. But if it would amuse you to dig about in the undergrowth, I for one will not prevent you.”

Back at Buckingham Street, Charles pens a hasty note to the Shelleys, indicating that he has found a way of coming by the information they require, and requesting an advance to cover his rent and incidentals. Talent may not have descended down the Godwin line, but it seems meanness may well have done, and Charles has no intention of incurring expenses that may never be recouped. He sends Billy with the note to Chester Square, and indulges in a dry smile as he imagines Lady Shelley’s outrage should she see such an unprepossessing youth polluting her exclusive enclave. He then looks in quickly on Maddox before turning back round again and going out in search of some basic supplies. He remembers seeing a sign for a
Manufacturer of Materials for Artists
in High Holborn, and sets off in that direction, though the weather has taken a turn for the worse and it’ll be no surprise to see snow by nightfall. By the time he gets to the shop he’s starting to lose the feeling in his feet, and just wants to get this over with. After all, he only needs an easel, a few sheets of paper, and some cheap paint. But when he pushes open the door and looks around the shelves crowded with stock from ceiling to floor, it’s clear it’s not going to be anything like as simple as that. There are sketchbooks of every size and shape stacked alongside blocks of tracing paper, transfer paper, black lead paper, vellum paper, and drawing boards; there are watercolours in shells, watercolours in boxes, tube and bladder oils, camel-hair and sable brushes, white Italian chalk, black French chalk, Swiss crayons, porte-crayons, Indian rubber pens, and last but not least a fine selection of stumps (use—to Charles at least—unknown).

There is also, though, to Charles’ relief, a solid and rather balding young man standing behind the counter, copying entries into a ledger. The sight of a paying customer so late in the day brings a happy flush to his sturdy cheeks, but it doesn’t last very long. Charles rapidly proves to be one of that irritating class of clients who insist that they want one thing, when it is patently obvious that what they really need is something altogether different. After five minutes attempting to explain the relative merits of colours in cakes as against colours in powders, the shine on the young man’s courtesy has worn off, and he’s starting to look a little fatigued.

“Would sir not be better advised to consider something more adapted to, shall we say, his current level of experience? We have a number of very nice watercolour sets ideally suited to—ahem—a beginner.”

Charles glares at him. “How many more times—I don’t want the sort of stuff a beginner would use.”

“Well if sir is intent on wasting his money—”

“
Sir
is quite happy to waste
other people’s
money, in this instance. So just put together whatever it is I need, and have it sent round to Buckingham Street before the day is out. Do I make myself clear?”

“Admirably, sir,” says the young man, who is now rather pink about the ears. “One more thing sir may wish to consider,” he adds quietly, as Charles reaches the door. “If—
theoretically speaking
—I was advising a client who wished, for reasons of his own, to
pass himself off
as a painter, I would probably recommend he obtained samples of his supposed work. It being natural that someone might wish to see it.”

Charles turns. “And where,
theoretically speaking,
might you recommend he should obtain them?”

The young man drops his eyes once more to his ledger. “I would suggest he tried Ackerman’s. Of the Strand.”

Charles knows it, of course, it being so close to home, and something of a London institution, even if it’s now long past its Regency heyday. By the time he gets there the gas has been lit in the windows and he can see a number of people browsing the racks of prints, and several well-chaperoned young ladies taking tea at the counter as they leaf through books of plates. Charles is interested in neither prints nor plates, of course, but it seems original works are just as easy to come by, and when he leaves the shop into heavy snow half an hour later he has a roll of paper under his arm and a small but suitable collection of maritime scenes ready for display.

The snow is falling, too, in Chester Square, whirling into eddies about the doorstep of number 24, and collecting on the area steps, where the pigeons know better than to dare to venture. Two floors above, Lady Shelley is sitting by the fire in her private drawing-room, Charles’ letter in her hand. There are two spots of colour on her cheeks, and a thinly triumphant smile on her lips.

“You see,“ she says to her husband, who seems from his stance to have entered the room only a few moments ago, “it is all as I told you it would be. We had only to wait, and an opportunity would present itself. And so it has. So it has.”

• • •

It’s not yet eight when Charles returns to St John’s Wood the following morning, an easel under his arm and a knapsack over one shoulder. As well as yesterday’s purchases, the latter includes a few changes of clothes and another volume from his collection of Shelley. The maid seems surprised to see him so early, but Charles wants to give himself plenty of time to arrange his new belongings before Miss Clairmont is likely to be up and about: He’s already developed an extremely healthy respect for his new landlady’s powers of discernment, and cannot afford any more
faux pas.
There are a few false starts, but within an hour or so the portfolio of drawings is lying as if nonchalantly against the chest of drawers, two or three shirts are hanging on the picture rail, and an unfinished (and therefore extremely cheap) scene of the cobb at Lyme Regis is mounted carefully on his new easel. He stands back with his hands on his hips, assessing the effect. It’s getting there, there’s no doubt of that, but something still doesn’t quite ring true. It’s all just a bit too—
new.
But that’s a problem easily remedied. It’s the work of a few minutes to sacrifice one of the shirts to a smeared and spattered authenticity, scuff the easel with a couple of well-aimed kicks, and dig out some of the cakes of watercolours into pools of rather muddy paint. So, what now? The morning may have been an amusing distraction, but Charles has not lost sight of the real reason for his presence in this house. He closes the door carefully behind him and makes his way downstairs. There’s a smell of cooking wafting up from the kitchen in the basement, and through the half-closed door he can see a small table laid in the dining-room. But it is set only for one. Charles is clearly neither expected, nor welcome. He has no right to feel it as a snub, but after the warmth of his welcome yesterday it feels like one. He loiters for a few minutes in the hall, but when no-one appears there is nothing to be done but retire to his room and resume his steady if rather ponderous progress through his volume of Shelley. The maid brings him dinner on a tray, and eventually, past midnight, he gets up to undress. And it’s then that he hears it. Music coming from downstairs. Just a few bars—nothing more, and he wonders at first if he’s imagined it. He opens his door and goes out onto the landing, his ears straining against the silence. And there it is again. It is a woman’s voice, and it is quite beautiful. Haunting, lingering, rising and falling like a pure swell of unendurable grief. And when the sound sinks and dies for the last time, he can hear the sound of weeping. Weeping in the darkness, alone.