Page 14 of The Dead Come to Stay

I could have wept when I received your letter.

You have excellent penmanship, by the way.

A wonderful, grown-up way of expressing yourself, too.

I imagine that you look like your mother did, at your age, full of life and adventure.

I had thought the past was behind us, that your letter was an olive branch. I wanted—

But those two words had been crossed out. On a new line, he’d begun again:

I think about you, waiting to get my letter. It hurts me to know you never will. I wonder what possessed her to allow you

to write at all—to set up your hopes only that I may disappoint them. Then I realize this was no doubt the intent all along—for

I am “not to be trusted.”

I will keep your letter in fondness.

With love, Uncle Aiden

Jo felt pain—sharp edged but hard to articulate. It was the tragedy of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations , the rotting wedding feast of joyous anticipation. It was the party that never happened, the gift never given. Jo spent her

life trying to meet expectations of others, but always seemed to see the need too late or met it the wrong way. This time,

she had been Aiden’s joyous anticipation. She thought of his excitement at her letter, making little plans, hoping for a reunion

that would never come—and it hurt her. God , did it hurt. For once in her life, she had been the gift, the promise. And she could never, ever fulfill it.

Jo’s mother once accused her of having no feelings. The truth was much harder to live with. She had too many, had learned

to turn them off to keep from drowning. She was certainly trying to now, folding away the feelings with the envelopes and

training her mind on practical questions and tidy lists.

“He said he wasn’t to be trusted. That my mother may have been trying to...” She struggled to get the words right, and ended up with the baldest honesty. “To disappoint me on purpose so I would never try to reach out again. It’s awful. That’s awful . Why would she do that?”

“I did not know your mother,” he said after a long breath. He hesitated, lips pressed tight together, as if he feared something

not very nice might come out. He was sparing her. But at the moment, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be spared.

“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 called Hiding . 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.

“ That wasn’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 full of 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 a note .”

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. She was and she did , 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 might still be 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.”

“Right,” Jo agreed. “There would be brush strokes, and some paints and varnishes can be aged. The person I took the painting

to used microscopes, types of X-ray.”

“Layers, yes. A mere copy lacks depth. Optical and stereo microscopy... spectrometry to identify pigments... infrared.

But there’s more.” Arthur handed her a teaspoon. “Take a look at this spoon.”

Ornate, silver, it had a flower design worked into the handle. She gave it back to him, and he held it up between them.

“A jewelry artist designed and forged this for me. With the right equipment, you could copy the design and have it mass-produced.

The end result might look a lot like the original. But it won’t have a soul . The particular sheen and ripples of metal. All art works this way.”

He set the spoon once more upon his saucer. “I’m not a collector of Augustus John paintings, but I know plenty about him.

He was known for darker, moodier portrayals, revealing these piercing, even unkind, psychological insights in his portraits.

He did Yeats, you know? Dylan Thomas.”

“I’ve seen it online,” Jo said, but Arthur shook his head.

“Then you have only seen a copy of it. The real thing, the real work—if it’s his work—makes you feel the suffering.

The point of all this,” Arthur said, standing up and finally rousing the Boston terrier, “isn’t the art lesson.

It’s that I know—and more importantly, Aiden knew—an artist who considered Augustus John the greatest master of the form. ”

“Oh my God, you’re serious?” Jo gulped air, nearly swallowed spit wrong. She was going to have the worst emotion hangover

in the morning.

“I know her personally. And if you’ll consent to stay the night—I’ve an extra bedroom—I can introduce you tomorrow.”

“I can get a hotel—I don’t want to impose,” she said, silently appending and I might need to have a good cry somewhere private because what the fuck is this day? Arthur, however, shook his head.

“Pepper,” Arthur said, pointing to the Boston terrier panting beneath the coffee table, “loves guests. And the little prince

here, Hans—he loves an early-morning walk. If you would be so kind, I would consider it full repayment for room and board.”

Jo conceded the point; it would save the night’s stay, too... and the flat was nicer than any penthouse.

“The artist, though—who?”

“Ah! Didn’t I say? You’ve already seen her work,” he said. “She painted Hiding. Chen Benton-Li.”