I set the machine to loop the ten seconds of footage. I lean up to the screen.
Ashley wears a tweed jacket with voluminous pockets, a long scarf wound around his neck. He is clean-shaven and looks younger than the other men, still boyish though his skin seems weathered from the Tibetan sun. His hand cradles the briar pipe, but he does not smoke it. He smiles faintly and looks away. He coughs. When Price speaks, Ashley’s cough turns to laughter. For a half-second Ashley’s eyes look into the camera and meet my own. The film loops again.
I eat dinner at an Indian restaurant on Drummond Street, thinking about Ashley the whole time. There was something in the film I didn’t expect, something that seemed slightly off. I pay the bill and start back for the hotel, stopping in Euston Station to buy sleeping pills from a drugstore. As I walk out of the station I realize what had bothered me. For days I’ve been reading grueling accounts of the expedition — the altitude sickness, the weeks of terrifying blizzards, the climbers practically broken by the time they set up the higher camps. But in the film Ashley didn’t look crazy or desperate. He looked happy. He stood in front of a camera with his friends and had no idea he’d be dead in a month.
— Or maybe he did know, I whisper.
The next morning I start with Imogen, running Web searches at an Internet café on Oxford Street. For hours I try her name in digital catalogs and genealogy websites. I find nothing. At the website of the Swedish National Archives I learn that most of their vital records haven’t been digitized yet. For hundreds of years these records were the responsibility of the local parish clergyman, who recorded not only births and deaths but christenings, communion attendance and migrations into and out of the parish. They even kept a kind of census recording the inhabitants of a household, their ages and occupations. The Leksand church archive is held in Uppsala, an ecclesiastical and university town about fifty miles north of Stockholm. But even if I went to Sweden, there’s no guarantee I’d find anything.
In the afternoon I visit the Tower of London, hoping that a break will help me think. The Tower is rainy and crowded with foreign tourists. I visit the armory and study the glimmering crown jewels: scepters and orbs and crowns on beds of blue French velvet, safeguarded behind thick glass, shimmering under the cross-rays of countless halogen bulbs. Standing beside a tour group, I hear an elderly American ask his guide what they are worth.
— They’re priceless, of course, the guide answers.
— Someone, the American protests, must have some idea of the value.
The guide shakes his head. — They’ll never be sold. They aren’t insured, because no one will underwrite them. They can’t be stolen.
The American ponders this.
— In that case, he concludes, they’re worth nothing at all.
Night falls as I exit onto the riverbank beside Tower Bridge. Shapes swirl in the midnight water running between the stone piers of the bridge.
— A glimpse into a world, I whisper, that knows him not.
I think about Imogen on the walk home. If it’s too hard to research her directly, the only way to find her is the way the lawyers did — through her sister. Because Eleanor was a painter, there’s a better chance that her letters and documents survive, some of which could mention Imogen. I make a list of art libraries and archives in London. The National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum seems to have the most extensive collection.
By 9:40 the next morning I’m standing on the museum’s steps on Exhibition Road. I snap photos of the cratered facade, pockmarked by shrapnel during the Blitz. A security guard opens the door and directs me to the library on the third floor, where I get a reader’s ticket and order my first round of books, mostly surveys of British modern art. Eleanor is mentioned only a few times in passing, but I follow the footnotes to painter’s biographies and monographs on more specialized subjects: the Camden Town Group, the Omega Workshops. I call up all these books, but again Eleanor is mentioned only as an acquaintance of the painters Charles Ginner or Mark Gertler, a participant in group exhibitions at the Adelphi Gallery or Devereux Brothers. Twice she is referenced as the daughter of the sculptor and medallist Vivian Soames. There is no mention of Eleanor after the late 1920s, which makes me wonder if she stopped painting entirely.
I return to the reference computers to see if the library holds any of the catalogs from Eleanor’s exhibitions. Several from the Adelphi Gallery are listed, but they all date from before 1925 and Eleanor’s exhibition there was in 1927. “Devereux Brothers” gives no results at all, but in the appendix of one of my books it says that the 1929 “Sunday Club Exhibition” took place at their gallery with two of Eleanor’s paintings: Four March Hares and Odessa. I show the entry to a librarian.
— Have you ever heard of the Devereux Brothers Gallery?
She squints at the name and frowns.
— Sounds familiar. I can look it up.
The librarian types into her computer.
— We haven’t got anything on them here. But let’s see. The Tate Archive has some material. Devereux Brothers Gallery, 158 New Bond Street. Two boxes, 1919 to 1936. Exhibition catalogs, personal letters, balance sheet, profit-and-loss accounts—
— What time do they close?
— At five, but normally you’d need an appointment. Let me try calling them.
The librarian persuades the archive to give me a three o’clock appointment. I ride the Underground to Pimlico and sprint along the river on Millbank to the museum, sweating in the sunlight. The clerk at the archive has the first box waiting for me: thick black ledgers of sales and accounting records, an assortment of thin exhibition catalogs bound in colored paper, shipping bills and lists. Although the gallery is called Devereux Brothers, the correspondence is all addressed to one man named Roger Devereux. Most of the papers date from the 1920s. The inventory lists have occasional entries for Eleanor’s paintings: Night Scene (Black Dominion), Four March Hares, Kronborg Slot.
I bring the box back to the enquiry desk and am given the second one. The label on the side says Devereux, Roger: Correspondence 1911–1927. Inside are dozens of letters still in their envelopes, all slit neatly at the top. Most of the letters are in the same small, tight longhand, addressed to Devereux by a man named Coutts who seems to have managed the daily business of the gallery. The frequency of his letters to Devereux’s address in Surrey suggests Devereux stayed away from London for weeks at a time.
I skim the pages, keeping an eye on the clock behind me. Eleanor’s paintings are mentioned briefly in a letter about potential exhibitions in July 1919, and again in March 1921 among a list of sold works. Then I find a more puzzling note.
23 Mar 19
Dear Mr. Devereux,
I received your letter of the 19th inst. and have disposed of the study as directed. M. Broginart was terribly disappointed and offered to double his price for the canvas, until at last he was made to understand the situation. He enquired about the larger picture and is keen enough to buy the painting sight unseen, though he would not tender a figure and I expressed my grave doubts. Has Mrs. Grafton advised whether that painting shall ever be put out?
The other works in the shipment were the two portraits (The Housemistress, Dr. Lindberg) and Kronborg Slot. I received the inventory slips and prices for these works, so please confirm they are suitable for display and sale.