The Art of Inheriting Secrets(65)

“You see, more drama for the show. That’s all.”

I smiled. “It is exciting, actually. To see what we might be able to do here, how to restore it.”

“Has Hortense seen the plans?”

“The first round, but nothing else yet.”

He grinned.

“I know. She’s kind of scary too.”

“You’re frightened a lot.”

“No, I’m not!”

“Yes, you are. Hortense, being in the house alone, my mother. You were afraid to go see the earl.”

“It’s just that everything is so . . . unreliable lately.”

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water,” he said.

“Is that a quote?”

He nodded. “Rabindranath Tagore. He’s a great writer. You should read him.”

“You’ll have to tell me where to start.”

“I will.” He cocked his head. “He’s one of India’s best writers, an amazing character writer.”

I nodded. Took a breath as I looked toward the second story.

“Let’s go up the main stairs, as your mother would have.”

Things had not changed on the stairway, though it was cleaner. “I wonder where the cats are now that the construction has started.”

“They’re clever. Likely hiding when people are here.”

“Probably.”

At the top of the stairs, we turned toward Violet’s room. “Wait,” I said. “I want to see how the damage looks from the inside.”

He followed me down the hall to the gallery, and we peered over the edge into the ballroom. It had been so bad before that it was honestly hard to tell any difference, but debris was piled up on the floor.

“Where are the construction crews today?” Samir asked.

“They can’t work until the autopsy is released.”

“Ah. Should we be mucking about in here, then?”

“I’m just looking for my grandmother’s stuff,” I said, knowing I probably shouldn’t be. “Lost heirlooms, hatpins to sell on eBay.”

He chuckled. “If you’re sure.”

We made our way down the hall. It seemed lighter, somehow. “How was your dad last night over the skeleton news?”

“Stoic, but I can tell he’s bothered. He’s always felt he should have protected her, his little sister.”

“That’s sad.”

I pushed open the door to Violet’s room, and a puff of cool air washed over us. “Is there a window open?”

Samir crossed to the wall and pulled back the heavy drapes. It wasn’t open—it was shattered. Shards of glass were scattered over the floor. “Must have been someone with a pretty good arm,” he said, picking up the hefty rock. “Probably kids.”

I thought of the teenagers hanging out by the grocery store, smoking. “It’s not like there’s much for them to do around here.”

“True enough.” With his foot, he scraped the glass toward the wall. “You’ll need to have someone come in and get all of this catalogued, get the paintings to a safer location. I’m pretty sure a couple of these are worth a fair bit.”

“Jocasta said that one is an Ingres.”

“So how do you want to start?”

I pressed my lips together and turned in a circle. “When my mother set up these treasure hunts, she was mostly visual, and she liked puns, jokes, riddles.” I looked around slowly at the paintings, the drawings, the bed.

Wandering to the dressing table, I picked up the empty perfume bottles and smelled them, set them back down. “I want to take the Lalique bottles back with me,” I said. “We should have brought something to carry things in.”

“I would imagine there is some sort of bag or something in here.” He opened a closet, and there, mostly in shreds, were the remains of Violet’s wardrobe, the bright India silks Helen had told me about, the embroidery. The remnants stung me, hanging there for so long unnoticed.

“She died at least a few years before my mother left, and this room is just as it was when Violet was here. Why?” I frowned, moved back into the room, looked at the paintings, one by one. “Mom, what did you want me to see?”

Nothing leapt out at me—if any of these paintings had influenced my mother’s work, I couldn’t trace it. The exotic landscapes and portraits, some tiny, some enormous, were nothing like her work. In one, a white Persian cat sat in the lap of a fat sultan wearing shoes with turned-up toes. I lingered on the harem painting and the one of a tiger that I’d seen before, and I stepped close to what I thought might be the plantation where my grandmother had been born, the place she had been forced to leave. “I wonder why she didn’t just let Rosemere go if she loved India so much,” I said aloud. The painting made it appealing, blue-green hills rising in mysterious distance behind the house, the scroll-like shapes of tea plants etched across them.

“Duty?” Samir answered. “Or maybe she saw the writing on the wall with Indian independence. When did she leave?”

“I can’t remember exactly. The forties, but it must have been after the war—it would have been difficult to travel anywhere while the war was raging.”