The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (16 page)

I propped both doors open using my shoes. The last thing I needed was to go into this secret room and find myself trapped inside it. What if Silvio didn’t know about the secret passage either?

So there I was in the secret lair. It was an ordinary sort of room, insofar as a room in a Venetian palazzo can ever be ordinary. But what I mean to say is that there was nothing in the room that was immediately shocking, or even surprising. I could see no camera, either for stills or otherwise. That made me very relieved.

Had someone been here very recently? I wondered. A jacket hung over the back of the ergonomic chair as though its owner had just stepped outside for a cigarette and wanted to keep his place. I lifted one of the sleeves and put my nose to it. The grey woollen fabric was soft and expensive. The label proclaimed it to be Italian cashmere, of course. A faint scent clung to it. A smell of sandalwood and musk, fresh soap. It was a good smell, one that I wouldn’t have minded inhaling as I buried my face in the jacket owner’s neck. And surely the owner had to be Marco.

Next I picked up a wooden sculpture of Buddha, which was holding some papers in place. It was worn smooth by years of worrying by someone’s fingers. Marco’s fingers. Had to be. The thought of touching something he had held gave the cheap wooden knick-knack a quality of pricelessness. I wondered when he had picked it up. Was it a souvenir from his travels or a gift?

There was another Buddha on an occasional table by the window, but this one was made of marble and looked heavy and precious. It was almost certainly a genuine antique rather than a reproduction. I touched its face and wondered about the significance of these two symbols of tranquillity.

Apart from the two Buddhas, there were no other works of art that I could see. At least, there were no paintings and no photographs. I found the lack of photos in particular a little strange, but then perhaps people don’t bother so much with printing out photographs these days, preferring instead to keep everything digital.

The computer on the desk might hold the secret, I thought. It was a fairly new Mac. It was in rest mode, so I moved the mouse to see if I could bring it to life. The screen glowed, but asked for a password before it would show me anything more. I tried the password Marco had given me for the Palazzo Donato’s network. Nothing. I tried my own name. That didn’t work either. I tried ‘Chiara’. Still no joy. The screen remained blank and impassive. But it must be Marco’s computer, I decided. Why did he need to lock it when it lived in a secret room?

Thinking I heard the sound of footsteps somewhere behind me, I stepped back to the doorway for a moment and listened to see if there was anyone in the library. Nothing. It was safe to keep looking.

I turned my attention to the pile of papers beneath the wooden Buddha. Mostly bills. City rates. Maintenance. A place like the Palazzo Donato must require plenty of that. But there were also invoices from auction houses. And Marco had been on something of a spending spree with an online antique book dealer based in London. I read the titles in a list of recently acquired volumes with interest. There were several which I’d read myself when I was studying for my MA. They were books that I had mentioned to Marco, when explaining how I came to be interested in Luciana Giordano. I remembered that. I found it quite flattering that he had sought the books out. My heart swelled when I saw how recently he’d ordered them. He’d bought the books
since
the ball but before I emailed him about Sauvageon’s sketchbook. I allowed myself to believe he had been thinking of me, despite the fact that he hadn’t been in touch.

Buoyed by that thought, I continued to sift through the papers like a detective, taking great care to replace them exactly as I found them.

Then I found the first drawing.

It was at the very bottom of the pile of papers on Marco’s desk. A thick sheet of cartridge paper, ragged at the edges as though it had been torn from a sketchbook. I lifted it up to the light of the window to see it better. I wondered at first if this was a loose sheet from Remi Sauvageon’s sketchbook. I had noticed while I was studying his drawings that some sheets had been pulled out. The style of the drawing was familiar. The confident pencil strokes could have been by Remi’s hand. But the subject . . . well, it definitely wasn’t Augustine.

It was me. There was no doubt about it. I had found a sketch of
me
sitting at the desk in the library. It must have been made back in January, judging by the clothes I was wearing. I was dressed in my favourite jumper: the one that Bea said was just a little too much like the one the detective in
The Killing
wore for weeks on end. It was a good likeness. You couldn’t see my face, but the shape of my head and the way my hair fell down my back was definitely me. As was the hunch of my shoulders. I cringed a little at that. My secondary-school PE teacher had always nagged at me to work on my posture. She warned me that a life spent at a desk could land me with a dowager’s hump. I was certainly hunching over my books in this sketch.

But though I wasn’t entirely flattered by the artist’s accuracy, I could see that the sketch had been drawn with affection, just as Remi had drawn Augustine with a tenderness that made her domestic chores as beautiful as ballet. That the sketch had been drawn without my knowledge, however, was another thing.

This drawing must have been by Marco’s hand, which meant I had confirmation, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he had been in the house while I was there. At least once. He had watched me for long enough to make a sketch, for goodness’ sake!

I wondered if there were any more.

I went back to the door and listened for any hint of movement in the library beyond. When again I heard nothing, I returned to my fingertip search of the secret office. Not that I cared so much if I was found out now. I would just flourish the drawing in Marco’s face.

‘Try and deny you were here all the time!’

And indeed, I found another sketch. In this one, I was wearing a pair of trousers that Bea had picked out for me. I had kicked off my shoes beneath the desk. I was chewing on the end of a biro. My face was turned slightly towards the artist now and he had captured me very well. He’d got my good side, in fact. Whenever I had a chance to pose for a photograph, I would always try to turn slightly to the right and that was how he had me posed.

I looked at my feet in the sketch. He’d captured them beautifully too. I was rubbing them together, trying to keep them warm while my socks dried next to the fire.

I was desperate to see more. I flicked through a pile of papers on a shelf to the side of the desk, looking for the telltale thickness of the cartridge paper. I quickly found two more drawings. In one I was standing, with my head slightly to one side, looking at the portrait of Ernesta Donato that hung above the mantelpiece. Not only had Marco made a beautiful likeness of me, he had drawn the antique portrait too, finding the essence of Ernesta with just a few patches of shading.

Marco was a wonderful artist. I tried to recall if he’d ever mentioned a love of drawing. I didn’t think so, but this must be why he was drawn to Remi Sauvageon. He’d found a kindred spirit.

Then I found the drawing that took my breath away. It was me, at the desk, with the skirt of my dress hitched up to my thighs and my hands between my legs.

There was no way that he could have imagined this pose. I knew he had drawn it from life and I knew exactly when he had done it. I stared at the picture. My head was tipped back. My mouth was slightly open. My eyes were tight shut. I was in a state of utter abandon.

This was all I needed to see. I was tempted to fold it up and put it in my pocket. Instead, because I still did not know quite how I was going to play this latest development, I put the sketch back where I had found it. And because now I really could hear noise nearby, I decided it was high time I left. I picked up my shoes and closed the doors behind me. When I met Silvio in the courtyard minutes later, I was the picture of innocence. The very opposite of the last sketch I had found in Marco’s secret room.

‘How is your research coming along?’ Silvio asked.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I think something about the Venetian air must inspire me.’

‘Even in the summer, when everything smells of rotting fish?’

‘It’s not that bad,’ I said.

Silvio shrugged.

‘I will be leaving to visit my sister soon. I need to close the house up.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve done enough for the day.’

I’d certainly seen enough.

I left the house in a buoyant mood. I had uncovered some of the Palazzo Donato’s secrets and confirmed for myself what I’d always suspected. Marco Donato may once have been a globetrotting playboy but on several occasions earlier that year, when he claimed to be away on business, he must have been very much at home.

I held the secret of those drawings close to me as I wandered back through the twisting streets to my hotel. Apart from anything else, it was an enormous relief to discover I had not been entirely deluded to think that Marco had feelings for me. Those drawings – just like Remi Sauvageon’s drawings of Augustine – showed me as my best self. They showed me through the eyes of someone who liked, maybe even loved, the person he was looking at. They gave me the courage to keep trying to break through.

That night, I sent Marco another email.

‘I had a very productive day in the library,’ I wrote. ‘Very productive indeed. In fact I think I may have made a sort of breakthrough which has enabled me to see Remi Sauvageon’s sketches in a totally different light.’

I hoped that sentence would pique Marco’s interest. Tantalise him. Worry him, even.

‘I’d love to tell you all about it,’ I continued. ‘I’m still at the Bauer. You can call me here. Perhaps you’d like to meet for dinner. Short notice would be fine.’

I pressed send and felt the familiar flutter of anticipation and anxiety.

But of course, I heard nothing. There was no reply. I spent the rest of the evening writing up my notes about Remi and adding my own observations and thoughts on his relationship to his sitter. Remi had obviously been greatly in love with Augustine. His pictures were the evidence of that. They corroborated Augustine’s memoirs. Afterwards, I picked up Augustine’s book again, hoping to read that Remi had found a way to persuade his father to accept the prostitute’s housemaid as his daughter-in-law and that the young lovers were safely back together again. I was in a state of mind where I thought that love could conquer everything. I was to be disappointed. On Augustine’s behalf, at least.

Chapter 21

Paris, 1840

A couple of days after I received the news that Remi would not be coming back to Paris, I took the promissory note he had sent me – I noticed with disgust that it was drawn against his father’s account – and exchanged it for some money. It was enough to pay for our room for another two weeks. However, I was determined not to let that be the end of it. I used some of the money to send a letter back to him, writing on the unused side of his own letter because I could not waste a sou on a clean sheet of paper. I begged him to reconsider. I told him, which was true, that I had persuaded three people to let me mend their clothes in the space of an afternoon. With determined effort, I could build up a proper clientele. I might find some people who wanted me to make clothes as well as mend them. Start an atelier. He could paint there. We would easily have enough to live on once he got a few commissions. Things would turn around.

The winter would soon be over. Come the summer, our little garret on the Rue de Seine would be Heaven again. ‘Remember how happy we were last summer,’ I pleaded. ‘When we ended every day naked in one another’s arms? Remember what it felt like to make love as the daylight faded.’

Knowing that this might be my last chance to persuade Remi to come back, I decided I would not hold back. I described the first time we made love in our little room.

Do you recall how very happy we were that evening? You told me we were beginning our new life and that we should take a moment to savour the day in all its glory so that when we were old, and living in a château on the profits of your painting, we could tell our children how it all started, when we were young and had nothing but our love and this little room?

And then you said that we should try out the bed, to make sure that the landlord had not given us a lumpy mattress. You picked me up and threw me down onto it, so that I landed in a heap of skirts and giggles. You had me naked within a minute, underneath the scratchy blanket. You promised that the very next day you would sell ten sketches to buy me some silk sheets. I didn’t care. I would have slept on a sack so long as you were beside me. In any case, I soon forgot about the scratchy blankets when I felt your hands upon me, smoothing away any trepidation and cares. In your hands, I always felt most safe and alive.

We can have all this again, dear Remi. Next year will be easier, I know it.

But Remi was not to be persuaded. He did send me a response but he told me that it wasn’t just a matter of practicality. He told me he had been trying to spare my feelings by suggesting as much. Long conversation with his father had convinced him that he had taken a wrong turning in life. He loved me deeply but we were two people who should never have met in normal circumstances, let alone considered making a life together. He had responsibilities to the people who raised him. I would find the life of a middle-class wife stifling and dull.