Maybe the perfection of his furnishings was trying to compensate for something. A well-ordered house for a decaying mind.
“Cheers,” Blackmar said, settling himself into an armchair with great effort. “Here’s to a fruitful academic inquiry for you, and some good company for me.”
He chortled again at his own joke, and they clinked glasses. Preston swallowed his brandy without flinching; Effy puckered her lips and mimed taking a sip. She didn’t think Blackmar would notice. He sucked down half his glass in one gulp.
“Thank you,” Preston said, not at all convincingly. “And thank you again for your hospitality.”
Blackmar waved him off. “I’m an entertainer, you know. All great writers are. I entertain readers; I entertain guests. Once upon a time I entertained women, but those days are unfortunately behind me.”
Out of grim obligation, Effy laughed. Preston just stared uncomfortably down at his glass.
“Well, I’d love if you could entertain a few questions,” she said. “When did you first meet Emrys Myrddin?”
“Oh my. It was so long ago; I don’t think I could give you a year. It must have been in the late one-eighties. My father hired him, actually, as an archivist for some of our family records. He was my employee, you know.”
Effy glanced at Preston. That felt, somehow, significant. Preston’s eyes had taken on a gleam of interest as well—even Effy had to admit this fact bolstered his theory that Blackmar was the real author.
“So he lived in an apartment in Syfaddon, just like our other domestics, but during the day he was here at Penrhos, sorting files and doing other drearily menial things. But I’m a curious man, and I’ve always been interested in the lives of my domestics. Their backstories. So, with little better to do, I began spending time with Emrys in the record room. It turned out we got along like a house on fire.
“I could tell he was a Southerner, of course, from his name and accent, but he was different from the other Southern transplants that we hired. Sharper. More ambitious. I was working on a very early draft of ‘Dreams’ at that time, and Emrys showed great interest in my writing. He eventually told me that he was a writer, too, and we exchanged some of our works in progress.”
Effy’s heartbeat picked up as she leaned forward, but Preston spoke before she got the chance.
“Myrddin must have been working on The Youthful Knight then,” he said. “Was it bits of that you saw?”
Blackmar tilted his head contemplatively, eyes clouding. “I believe so. Saints, that was a long time ago. Another lifetime. Emrys was despairing—he thought no one would want to buy a book by a backwater peasant from the Bottom Hundred. But my family has connections with Greenebough Publishing, so I offered to make an introduction.”
Effy nodded slowly. That all lined up with what they’d read in the diary. “But The Youthful Knight didn’t do very well, did it? Myrddin wasn’t a household name until—”
“Yes.” Blackmar’s voice suddenly became curt. He set down his near empty glass on an austere side table. “That’s the part of the story everyone knows. Angharad made Myrddin famous.”
Blackmar had gotten cagey, and Effy could tell Preston sensed it, too. Preston set down his glass, and in a challenging sort of way, asked, “Was Myrddin still your employee then?”
“No, no,” Blackmar replied. “He’d made enough from royalties to rent an apartment in Syfaddon. And then he bought that dreadful house in the Bay of Nine Bells. I could never understand why he wanted to return to Saltney, of all places. But he said there was something about the bay that beckoned him. Like a lighthouse to a ship, calling him home.”
“There’s nothing quite like the place you were born,” Preston said. There was a solemn but inscrutable look on his face. “So did the two of you correspond while Myrddin was writing Angharad?”
“You know,” Blackmar said, his voice sharp, “my memory does not serve me as well as it once did. I think it would be better for you to speak to someone from Greenebough on these matters. As it happens, Greenebough’s editor in chief, Marlowe, will be coming tomorrow evening.”
Definitely cagey. But Effy was undeterred.
“That’s wonderful,” she said. “Thank you so much for letting us spend the night. I’m sure we’ll be able to find everything we came for.”
Preston shot her a look, and she gave him a silent, almost imperceptible nod in return.