Mortified by this realization, Effy fell silent.
Preston folded his arms across his chest. “Anyway. Before I came here, Gosse and I compiled a list of vocabulary used across all of Myrddin’s work and cross-referenced that with his letters.”
Immediately forgetting her previous promise, Effy blurted out, “Saints, how bloody long did that take you?”
“It’s my thesis,” Preston said, but the tips of his ears turned pink. “It turns out there’s very little overlap between the vocabulary he uses in his letters and in his novels—specific phraseology that appears over and over again in his books but never occurs in his letters. If it didn’t all bear the name Emrys Myrddin, you would never imagine they were written by the same man. And then there’s the problem of Angharad.”
Effy was instantly defensive. “What’s the matter with Angharad?”
“It’s an odd book. Genre-wise, it’s hard to classify. Myrddin generally belongs to a school of writers credited with reviving the romantic epic.”
“Angharad is a romance,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “A tragic one, but still a romance.”
Preston hesitated. Effy could almost see him turning over their agreement in his mind, calculating how to moderate his tone by around fifteen percent. “Romantic epics are typically written in the third person, and always narrated by men. Heroes and knights whose goals are to rescue damsels and slay monsters. But the Fairy King is both lover and monster, and Angharad is both heroine and damsel.”
“And of course you can’t simply credit that to Myrddin being a creative visionary,” Effy said, scowling.
“There are just too many inconsistencies,” Preston said, “too much that doesn’t sit quite right. And Ianto is so cagey about it. It only makes me more suspicious.”
Effy looked down at the scattered papers again. “Don’t tell me this is all you’ve managed to find out.”
“I said I needed your help,” he said, and he didn’t manage to not sound miserable about it. “Ianto is keeping me in the dark. Wetherell was the one who gave me these letters. He asked around for them from some of Myrddin’s correspondents, his publisher and friends. But there have to be more.”
“More letters?”
“Letters. Diary entries. Rough drafts of bad poems. Half-finished novels. Shopping lists, for Saints’ sakes. Something. It’s like the man has been erased from his own home.”
“He has been dead for six months,” Effy pointed out. She thought again of what Ianto had said: My father was always his own greatest admirer. She’d heard a hint of resentment there.
“Still,” Preston said, “I’m convinced Ianto is hiding something. This is an old, confusing house. There has to be—I don’t know, a secret room somewhere. An attic, a storage area. Something he’s not showing me. Ianto swears there’s not, but I don’t believe him.”
Effy thought of the door with the pulse of the tide behind it. “What about the basement?”
Preston turned pale. “I don’t see any use in asking about that,” he said quickly. “It’s flooded. And besides, Ianto guards that key with his life. I wouldn’t even bother.”
She detected a note of fear in his voice. She had never heard him sound even remotely afraid before, and she decided not to press him on it. For now. Besides, something else had occurred to her.
“The widow,” she said. “You told me she invited you here.”
“I’ve never seen her,” Preston replied, looking slightly less pale and relieved to have changed topics. “Ianto told me she’s ailing and prefers to keep to herself.”
Effy couldn’t help but wonder about her. Myrddin had been eighty-four when he died; surely the widow was not much younger. Perhaps ailing was a euphemism for mad. Men liked to keep mad women locked up where everyone could comfortably forget they ever existed. But Ianto hadn’t seemed to harbor any malice toward his mother. Effy shook her head, as if to banish the thought.
“All right,” she said. “But what do you want from me?”
Preston hesitated, and didn’t meet her gaze. “Blueprints for the house,” he said after a beat. “I’m sure they exist somewhere. Maybe Ianto showed them to you already.”
“He didn’t.” And Effy hadn’t even thought to ask, which was a bit embarrassing. “It would be a very reasonable thing for me to request, though. I can ask.”