KDBookOnline
Share Us
I said we could not yet answer that either. The main thing was that, in the Witt Library, there was concrete evidence that the painting had been at Longhurst in 1961. It might still be there.
“I suppose there is really only one way of testing that theory,” said Alice thoughtfully.
I told her that Caroline and I would actually be at Longhurst for a party over the weekend, that Harry Willoughby, her uncle’s grandson, was at university with us, and turning twenty-one.
“And there’s something else,” Caroline said, clearing her throat. “I think I know why she painted herself as a Sphinx. Look here, at this photocopy of the photograph we found at the Witt.”
Caroline took it out of her bag and passed it to Alice, who then brought the paper back and forth toward her eyes, adjusting her glasses and blinking. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Well, well, well.”
It was frustrating that the grainy black-and-white picture was not of high enough quality to allow the viewer to piece together what was happening in the inset scenes surrounding the central figure. The photocopy made it all even less decipherable. I pointed out to Alice where it was just about possible to make out what was being depicted. In the bottom left corner, a pale figure, female, young-looking, with hair floating upward. There was a boat of some kind down in the bottom right, with a hooded figure standing in it, crossing a dark river. Above all this, over a tangled treescape, hung the moon.
There was one detail, though, that Caroline had fixated on. “See there?” she said. “Wings, folded against her back. Juliette painted a self-portrait of herself as a winged Sphinx.”
“Aha.” Alice turned to me. “Meaning, Mr. Lambert?”
“A winged Sphinx is a Greek—as opposed to an Egyptian—Sphinx.”
“The difference being?” Alice asked.
“An Egyptian Sphinx guards a tomb,” said Caroline. “A Greek Sphinx is a Sphinx with a riddle. That’s why she painted herself as one. That’s what the wings are telling us. She’s telling us this is a painting with a secret in it. A mystery for us to solve.”
CAROLINE, CAMBRIDGE, 1991
I was looking through one of Patrick’s drawers for a paracetamol, the morning we were due to drive up together to Longhurst for Harry’s party, when I found his Osiris ring.
“Patrick,” I said, “can I ask about this?”
He did seem a bit embarrassed. “Look, I have been meaning to mention it. It probably does seem weird, my wanting to join something like that. The thing is, it means a lot to my father...”
“You’re a member of Osiris. The drinking society founded by Juliette’s father. And despite everything, you never mentioned it?”
“I’ve been to one dinner. I’ve literally been inside their building once.”
I asked him to describe it for me. He did so.
“You have to get me in,” I told him.
“I can’t,” said Patrick. “It’s not allowed. No guests. Definitely no female guests. No exceptions.”
“Oh come on,” I said. “If there’s stuff in there that belonged to Cyril, that ended up in the possession of the Osiris Society rather than going into the Willoughby Bequest, there might be something which will shed light on how the journal and the painting ended up where they did...”
He breathed a deep sigh. He ran his hands over his face. He checked the time. “Okay, given that everyone should be heading up to Harry’s party, this might be our only opportunity.”
Half an hour later we were pulling up outside the building.
“Let me go first, okay?” he said. “Just to make sure the coast is clear. If anyone is around, I’ll tell them I’m looking for a dinner jacket for tonight.”
“Got it,” I said with a nod. He did actually need a dinner jacket, as it happened. When he’d brought the one he had been planning to wear out of its garment bag the previous evening, it turned out to have had its satin lapels shredded by a cat.
“A cat?” I’d asked.
“Long story,” Patrick told me.
I watched him walk up the street, take the stairs, tap on the door, and—when no one answered—bring a key out from his pocket and unlock it. He stepped through swiftly and left it slightly ajar. I counted to ten and climbed out of the car and followed him.
It was a little like stepping back in time, stepping into that house. Pulling the door closed behind me, I turned to confront an interior that it was easy to imagine had not changed much in a hundred years. The dim light falling through the stained glass over the front door. The brass umbrella stand. The checkerboard tiled floors.
There was a bowl of cat food and a water dish at the foot of the stairs. From the gloom at the end of the corridor, I heard a distant meow and glimpsed something dark darting across the hallway.