‘is the splendid and most illustrious Owl.’
The Spanish gentleman made no comment on this peculiar introduction. He gave a shallow bow, smoke winding from his nostrils. ‘May I simply say, Miss Franklin, that in your presence one feels most clearly the intense and singular charge of inspiration. The Muse’s aura hangs heavy in the air. You are part of an exceptional group, Miss – an eternal being akin to Rembrandt’s Hendrickje, or Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, or the Bourbon princesses of our great god Velázquez.’
Maud laughed, she couldn’t help it – a hard, sceptical snort. This Owl was definitely one of Jimmy’s people. Beyond that, though, he wasn’t easy to classify. His manner was too smooth for a poet or a painter; his looming, leonine person too neat, too well tended for the stage. He lacked the careless superiority of a man of leisure, and a couple of unconventional details in his dress – the spare cut of his dove-grey suit, that red ribbon pinned to his lapel like some kind of military decoration – seemed to disqualify him from the law or most branches of business. There was the foreign aspect as well, the hint of elsewhere – could he be a diplomat? A journalist? Maud honestly couldn’t tell.
Plainly thinking he’d slipped the hook, and enjoying himself immensely, Jimmy sauntered to the door and called downstairs for John. Maud’s hackles rose anew. This low little trick mustn’t be allowed to pass unchallenged.
‘Do you reside here in Chelsea, then, Mr Owl?’ Saying the name felt ridiculous, childish; she gave it a mocking emphasis. ‘Or did you just happen to be passing by?’
‘Putney,’ Owl replied pleasantly. He drew a card from his waistcoat pocket and presented it to her. ‘We often come this way when travelling to Miss Corder’s lodgings in the city. Rosie likes to walk beside the river.’
The card lay face down in Maud’s palm. She turned it over and read: Charles Augustus Howell, Esq., Chaldon House, Putney. There it was. ‘Owl’ would be a common pronunciation of this surname in London. It was a very English handle, though, for a rather unEnglish person. No profession was given, she noticed, and no house number or street either; the suggestion was of a squire in his manor. She considered what he’d told her. Their guests were a gentleman and his mistress, with her installed at his convenience in an apartment closer to town – an arrangement almost disappointing in its ordinariness.
John appeared in the doorway. He noted Owl’s presence with wary recognition. The servant obviously hadn’t let this couple in or shown them up, as might have been assumed. The Owl at least had been to Lindsey Row before and knew his way around. Maud’s brow furrowed – hadn’t the front door been locked? Did he have a key?
‘Sherry,’ said Jimmy, ‘and the last of the buckwheat cakes. In the studio, if you please.’
‘No sherry left.’
‘A bottle of the Muscadet, then.’
John shook his head.
‘The Scharzhofberger? Surely we still have some of that?’
The servant hesitated; he gave a quick nod and made to turn away. Remembering the onion-shaped vase, Maud bent down and gripped it by the lip. A muscle in her midriff contracted; the pain was so astonishing that she nearly cried out. For a second or two, through a lens of tears, she watched the remaining goldfish wriggle weakly in an inch of cloudy water. Then she straightened up, wiped her eyes on her sleeve and held the vase towards the doorway.
‘Put this poor thing in another bowl, would you?’ she said, keeping her voice steady. ‘Something glass. And fetch a broom. There’s a dead one under the divan.’
John took it readily enough. He didn’t always heed Maud, but wouldn’t risk a fuss in front of his master. Owl, meanwhile, was studying the floor, the boards and the soaked patch of matting, tracing the pattern of splashes with the tip of his cigarette. He went to the divan, dropped to a crouch and reached into the shadows beneath – standing again a moment later with the missing fish in his hand. The tiny body was quite motionless and furred with dust. Expertly, Owl placed a fingertip against it, where the orange flank met the silvery underbelly. He gave it the gentlest of prods; the frond-like tail beat about, and for a second a fin was raised upwards like a miniature sail.
‘Bon Dieu, it lives!’ cried Jimmy, with a short, piercing laugh. ‘A Lazarus, what! A Lazarus among goldfish!’
Maud blinked. How long had it been since she’d spilled the fish? Four minutes, five? How could it possibly still be alive? As she craned her neck to see, Owl tossed the fish across the room, towards the vase – a light-hearted lob somewhat at odds with the eerie tenderness of the revival. His aim was true, though; it landed in the water with a hard hollow plop.
‘There, John,’ he said. ‘Never say that I have no gold for you.’
*
A display had been arranged in the studio, a dozen or so of the finest paintings currently in Jim’s hands, fixed onto easels or propped against the walls. There were his night-time views of the river, the Nocturnes, rendered in bands of luminous, misty blue; the Cremorne Gardens or somewhere like it, where half-formed figures drifted in golden fog; a couple of unclaimed, unfinished portraits; and Maud herself, Maud time and again, in an assortment of costumes and attitudes. Over the years Jimmy had painted her in the flowing tea-gowns of the artistic rich, peasant skirts and bodices, and bold modern garments that had fitted around her body like a sleeve.
Maud stayed close to the studio door. The muscle in her side still throbbed something awful. She rubbed at it, and was briefly taken aback by the amount of flesh her corset contained. She glanced at the Owl and his consort. They’d surely be making the comparison now, if they hadn’t already up in the drawing room. How could they not, with these paintings arrayed in front of them? They’d be lamenting the speed of Maud’s decline, and doubting her ability to recover; and wondering, perhaps, what Jimmy planned to do about it. Humiliation began to enfold her, but she clenched her teeth and forced it away. She wouldn’t be shamed by what had happened. She just wouldn’t. Inwardly, she dared these guests to make a remark. To raise an eyebrow. Anything.
Miss Corder had gone to the pictures, however, lost in veneration. She’d approached a full-length figure – Maud in white and black, her hands set on her hips, as modishly elegant as a Paris fashion plate. Owl, meanwhile, had taken up a position over by the French windows. After declaring Jimmy’s paintings beyond approbation, the great art of the age, he’d produced a pencil and a notebook and begun to write. It was a conspicuously businesslike response; he appeared to be compiling an inventory. Maud had been hoping that he might actually be a customer – that Jimmy had got the canvases out so that he could make his selection and furnish them with a few dozen much-needed guineas. She saw now that this couldn’t be the case. Customers did not make lists; if Mr Howell had dealings in the art trade, it was plainly on the selling side. His attendance at Lindsey Row was no accident, as she’d realised upstairs, but there was more to it than simply providing a distraction. Some form of arrangement was being set in place.
‘Is this all of them?’
‘Well, you know …’ Jimmy was in the middle of the room, smoking his cigarette. ‘There are a couple elsewhere in the house. Things being finished off. And there’s the Grosvenor, of course. Eight more canvases.’
Maud surveyed the studio again, and this time noticed a couple of absences. Most conspicuous was the portrait of Jimmy’s mother. He was especially attached to this picture – and somewhat more attentive to its well-being, she’d heard others imply, than he was to that of its model. Maud hadn’t seen it in the drawing room
