A Study in Drowning(46)

Effy gave him a withering look. “No one keeps their recipe book locked away in a secret box, in a secret room.”

“With Myrddin, I wouldn’t be too shocked,” Preston said dryly.

He picked up the diary and something slipped out from between its pages. Several things, in fact. Nearly a dozen photographs, washed out and worn thin with time.

Her fingers trembling, Effy took one. Through the pearlescent sheen of age, she could see it was a photo of a girl, no older than she was, with long, pale hair. She was curled on the chaise longue in Myrddin’s study wearing a satin robe, which had slipped up to reveal a white calf.

Preston frowned. “Who is this?”

Effy found she couldn’t speak. The air in the room suddenly felt very heavy, very thick.

She picked up the next photograph, which featured the same girl, on the same chaise, only she had changed position: her legs were straight now, bare feet dangling over the edge of the chaise, and her robe had rucked up farther, exposing the curve of her thigh.

Though Effy already knew what she would see, she needed to pick up the next photo. For so long the girl had been secreted away, gathering dust. That was why something might become a ghost—its life had meant so little, no one had even mourned it.

In the next photo the girl was on her back, robe cleaved open to bare her tight, round breasts. The buds of her nipples were small and pinched, as if it had been cold in the study that day. She was not looking at the camera. Her gaze was elsewhere and empty. Her arms were arced over her head but in a stiff and unnatural way, as if they had been positioned there by someone else’s hand or whim.

Her body was as flat and bare as a butcher’s drawing, all parts accounted for. Two legs and two arms, her head and her golden hair, her flat belly and perfectly symmetrical breasts. If you slit her down the middle like a fish, both sides would be identical.

Effy’s grip tightened on the photo, crumpling its edges. A hard knot rose in her throat.

Preston had taken up another photo. His face was very red, gaze darting around hurriedly, trying to look anywhere else but at the naked girl. “Who do you think she is?” he asked again.

“I don’t know.” Effy’s voice sounded slurred, like a reverberation from below water. “These could be Ianto’s . . .”

“Ianto doesn’t need to keep his, ah, adult materials under lock and key.” Even the back of Preston’s neck was pink now. “You saw his bookshelves.”

Adult materials was the sort of euphemism only an academic would come up with. If the circumstances had been different, Effy might have laughed.

But the girl wasn’t an adult, not really. She couldn’t be. She looked Effy’s age, and Effy certainly didn’t feel like an adult.

The photographs made her dizzy, her vision blurring at the corners.

“They have to be Myrddin’s, then.” The certainty of it was like a fist against her windpipe. Her breath came now only in rough, hot spurts.

Preston looked at her, frowning. “Effy, are you all right?”

“Yes,” she managed. But she couldn’t bear to look at the girl anymore. She turned the photograph over.

There was something scrawled on the other side, in hasty but delicate script.

Preston read it aloud, his voice wavering slightly. “‘I will love you to ruination.’”

It was what the Fairy King had said to Angharad, the first night they had lain together in their marriage bed. His long black hair had spilled out over the pillow, tangling with her pale gold.

The handwriting was not Ianto’s.

There was a thump from downstairs, followed by the scrape of a door opening, and they both jumped. Effy felt her stupor lift. She put the box down on the floor and closed it, dented as it was, while Preston tucked the diary into his jacket pocket. They hurried out of the small room and shoved the bookcase back into place.

They left the photographs inside the box. Effy never wanted to see them again. She had no way of knowing, but she felt very certain that the girl in the pictures was dead.



By the time they made it back to the study, Effy was breathless. Her nose was itching with dust, her blood pulsing and hot, and when Preston removed the diary from his pocket, his hands were shaking.

He unwrapped the twine, long fingers working dexterously, and Effy watched, oddly hypnotized. They were both huddled over the desk, close enough that their shoulders were nearly touching. She could feel the heat of his body next to hers and the frenetic hum of energy that radiated from him.

Behind his glasses, his brow was furrowed with consummate focus. The twine drifted to the ground.

Effy couldn’t help herself; she reached forward and opened the notebook to the first page. In doing so, she brushed against Preston’s hand, the nub of her missing ring finger grazing his thumb. He looked down for a moment, his attention briefly diverted, and then turned his gaze back to the diary.

The first page was dense with Myrddin’s vexing, spidery scrawl. Both Effy and Preston bowed their heads, squinted, and read.

10 March 188

Visited Blackmar at Penrhos. He gave me some notes on The Youthful Knight, which were good. He also offered to introduce me to his publisher, some Mister Marlowe, in Caer-Isel. Blackmar seemed to think the head of Greenebough Books would be charmed by my impoverished upbringing—what he called, a bit too self-importantly, my “rough edges.” Three of his daughters were there as well. The wife, I assume, banished.