The Crystal Cage Read online

  In a moment they had bid Fontenoy goodbye and turned to walk away in the opposite direction. Lucas’s colleague watched them go and gave a long, low whistle. Things might soon be getting very interesting at de Vere and Partners.

  The journey to Wisteria Lodge was accomplished in ten minutes and filled with quiet talk on the most general of topics: the inclement weather of late, the hope for an early spring, the state of the silk trade. The parlour maid that Lucas had seen on his previous visit opened the front door to them.

  ‘Thank you, Martha.’

  Alessia handed parasol, parcels and velvet cloak to the waiting girl and led him to the rear of the house, passing on the way the closed door of their earlier drab meeting place. The room they entered now was entirely different. It was largely uncluttered and the furniture it held was delicately constructed, the chairs covered in straw silk and the carpet a faded forest green. A large rococo framed mirror and an elegant round table engraved with delicate marquetry seemed to be the only overt ornamentation. Soft gauze curtains hung at the long windows, and beyond Lucas could see an attractive garden that in the summer would no doubt be ablaze with colour.

  His face must have registered surprise. ‘This room is my particular haven, Mr Royde. We keep the drawing room for strictly formal occasions, and I do not feel this is one such.’

  He was returning her smile, warmed by her warmth, when Martha came in and noisily laid out cups and saucers. Her disapproval was evident. She must, he thought, have been well trained by the elder Mrs Renville.

  ‘Would you care for tea?’ Alessia asked when the maid had once more disappeared.

  ‘Thank you. But your mother-in-law?’

  ‘She is no longer with us.’ She crossed the room to hand him a cup and saucer, bone china, he noted, and the latest of Wedgwood’s expensive designs.

  ‘The elder Mrs Renville does not live with you?’ he hazarded.

  ‘She visited us for Christmas. She lives in St Albans and returned there a few days ago. My daughters have travelled with her; they are to stay with their grandmother for several weeks.’

  He hoped that relief didn’t show too plainly on his face. To distract from any tell-tale expression, he began searching in his inner pocket for the plans and made ready to go through them, page by page. But before he could begin she had crossed the room again and taken a seat beside him on the couch. He could not take his eyes from her face; its beauty had the lustre of the finest crystal. He felt as gauche as a schoolboy and could only hope that his manner did not betray him.

  ‘Though much of the design remains the same,’ he began, ‘I have tried to think more boldly, Mrs Renville. I believe that I’ve already shown you a drawing of the roof. I would like to keep the same rolling shape and the same mirrored glass lining to reflect the potpourri of colours that will be crammed into what in fact is a small space.’

  She nodded happily. ‘I love the design of the roof—It flows wonderfully and it’s different. Using mirrors is perhaps even a little daring!’

  ‘Daring is what we need to be,’ he agreed, ‘to make people take notice. We want them to pause, not pass by. Hopefully we can entice them to enter.’

  ‘I imagine there will be many other exhibitors.’

  ‘Indeed, yes. I had not previously given much attention to the event, but since your husband placed his commission with de Vere’s, I have been doing a little research. The Exhibition Hall will be vast—some hundred thousand square feet—and will cover every kind of manufacture and technical innovation.’

  ‘I saw a sketch of the Exhibition Hall in The Daily News. It seemed for all the world like a very large greenhouse!’

  ‘I believe Joseph Paxton, the designer, was inspired by the plans he drew up some years ago for the Duke of Devonshire. And they were indeed for a greenhouse! But there I think the similarity ends. This will be a vast space, tall enough to encompass living trees, and large enough to accommodate over a hundred thousand exhibits from all over the world.’

  ‘Which is why we must do something a little different?’

  ‘Exactly.’ He shuffled the papers into a neat pile. ‘Having no defined entrance but instead spaces between pillars will mean that the pavilion is accessible from different directions. It will perhaps cause observers to pause in order to puzzle out the structure. And once they venture inside, they should feel cocooned, enclosed in a magical sphere, but without losing the sense of air and space.’

  ‘And the roof?’ she prompted.

  ‘The roof is key, I think. I would like to use swathes of fine tulle.’ He gestured to her window coverings. ‘Something like these curtains, which would drape from one side of the roof to the other, following its line.’

  ‘A canopy.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘But a canopy over a bench?’

  ‘I have ideas other than a bench, but I fear Mrs Renville senior would not approve.’

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, and his heart turned over at this small intimate gesture.

  ‘Mrs Florence Renville will not be here to judge and Edward has given me authority to decide. So tell me, please.’

  ‘I thought,’ he said slowly, ‘a love seat filled with cushions made from Renville silks.’

  He watched her closely, but she appeared unfazed. She was thinking hard.

  ‘But then only people coming from one direction would see the seat in its entirety. Could we have two? Or perhaps a circular seat?’

  Lucas tried to appear as though the suggestion was completely novel and he was giving it serious consideration before he said in agreement, ‘Why not?’

  ‘With strands of the finest gauze drifting from each of the four corners and meeting at a central point above,’ she went on eagerly. ‘Just like the Arabian Nights.’

  She had read his mind. His pulse raced at the realisation of how much they thought and felt alike.

  ‘More like the Italian Nights,’ he amended incautiously and saw her blush.

  Hurriedly he resumed his commentary. ‘I thought also that between the pillars we might have a scattering of decorative tiles, designed in shape and colour to chime with the gauzes and silks.’

  ‘Would that not mar the spacious effect when the pillars stand uninterrupted?’

  A whisper of dejection murmured through the air, and she seemed to sense immediately the disappointment her words had created. ‘But if you think they would enhance the display, Mr Royde, by all means include them.’

  He sat in silence for a moment. ‘No, you are quite right. They would add nothing; on the contrary, they would detract.’

  ‘Is it important to you?’ she queried. ‘To use the tiles, I mean.’

  ‘It is just a small personal endeavour.’

  ‘Yes?’ She invited him to go on.

  ‘I have been designing a collection of decorative tiles. A vanity project no more.’

  ‘Do you have your drawings with you? I would very much like to see them.’

  ‘My portfolio is at my lodgings.’

  ‘Then please bring it the next time we meet. I am sure the designs will be very new and very beautiful.’

  He could not really believe that she would be interested. It was an expression of politeness only. But when she persisted with her questions, he was happy to respond.

  ‘Did you derive your ideas from your stay in the Italian states?’

  ‘I did—at least in the way tints blend and contrast. I’ve moved on in the colour spectrum since then, but my earliest designs used a range of Tuscan reds.’

  ‘You were in Tuscany?’

  ‘Not so far away. Verona. Do you know the town?’

  She gave a little gasp and her hand flew to her mouth.

  ‘It was my birthplace. We lived in via Forti.’

  ‘And for two years I lived in via Cappello, a stone’s throw away!’

  Her face was suddenly alight. ‘How wonderful. Tell me, Mr Royde, have things changed very much?’

  ‘It’s di
fficult to say since I have known the place only recently.’

  ‘Naturally. But the bridges? The arena?’

  ‘All still there,’ he confirmed.

  ‘And the opera is still performed in the amphitheatre? On summer nights we could hear the singing over half the town. I wanted so much to see a performance, but I was too young, my grandmother said. When you are older, she promised…. But I never visited.’

  ‘Then you must return to Verona at the first possible opportunity and book the very best seats.’

  Her face shadowed. ‘It is unlikely that I shall ever return.’

  ‘Your parents are no longer there?’ He hardly knew her, yet it felt the most natural thing in the world to enquire of her family.

  ‘My mother died many years ago, in childbirth. My father is an Englishman, you know. He travelled constantly between England and Lombardy for his business and met my mother on one of his visits. When they married they settled in Verona, and when my mother died, my grandmother came to live with us.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear of your mother’s death.’

  ‘I was a young child, just seven years old. I hardly remember her.’

  ‘And your grandmother?’

  ‘She also has left this world. At the time of her death, my father had remarried and was living in Cambridgeshire, so I came to England to stay with him and his wife.’

  She wore an uncomfortably bleak expression, and he dared not ask more. It could not have been easy at such a young age to give up her home for a foreign country. Not easy to cope with a new stepmother.

  ‘And why did you return to England, Mr Royde?’ she asked him.

  He found himself telling her of his plans for the future, telling her how the move to London had signalled a new beginning, a chance to gain recognition for his work, a chance to shine in the first architectural circles.

  She listened carefully, hands lying quietly in her lap, and when she spoke, her voice was filled with admiration. ‘You deserve the greatest respect, for it is clear that you have a deep love for Italy and yet you tore yourself away in order to follow your dream.’

  She beamed at him and he had the grace to feel a fraud. His work at de Vere’s could hardly be classed as following his dream.

  ‘This design will be your very first step to success,’ she continued, ‘but only the first. There will be many others, I am quite sure.’

  ‘You are most kind. I hope to create a structure that will be truly worthy of the Renville silks. Mr Renville assures me that they are the very best in the world.’

  The mention of her husband seemed to dampen her spirits, but she regained her gentle smile to hold out her hand in farewell. He took it in a firm grasp. It was small and smooth. He felt the individual fingers lying in his palm and a deep tenderness washed over him. He longed to stroke those fingers one by one but instead shook her hand in a businesslike manner. Then somehow, unbidden, she raised her fingers to his lips, and he touched them lightly with his mouth. They stood silently for a moment, his blue eyes half-closed in pleasure.

  ‘Shall we meet in three weeks? Will that give you sufficient time?’

  He snapped out of his reverie. ‘Three weeks today,’ he confirmed, wishing only that it could be sooner. ‘By then I will have worked these drawings into a finished state, and you will be able to judge how well you like them.’

  She rang the bell, and Martha came quickly to escort him from the house. The look on the maid’s face as she watched him walk to the front gate clearly proclaimed him an unwelcome guest. He shrugged off the disapproval, shrugged off the small warning voices pinching at the borders of his mind. The simple pieties of his Dorset upbringing and the wreckage of a malign love affair were neither of them sufficient to restrain him. Three weeks and he would be at Wisteria Lodge again. Twenty-one days and he would be with Alessia once more. How could that possibly harm?

  Chapter Five

  The elderly receptionist at Bedford Square was courtesy itself. He took only the most cursory glance at my university reader’s card before leading us down to a basement lined from floor to ceiling with aluminium shelving. From these he abstracted three very substantial cardboard boxes, each marked 1850–1860 in bold, black ink. Then ceremoniously he handed us two pairs of clean white gloves.

  ‘You’ll be all right if I leave you here?’ His smooth, pink face shaped itself to a gentle enquiry. ‘You know what you’re after, so the search shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ll look in on you in about an hour,’ and in an instant he’d disappeared up the stairs.

  I removed one of the cardboard lids. ‘I think that was a warning that we shouldn’t take too long.’

  Over the next hour we toiled through box after box, file after file. Papers were stacked, fell into disarray and then were carefully stacked again. The Guild had kept vast numbers of documents: proposals for projects, lengthy correspondence, roughly sketched designs, detailed plans. It was a treasure chest of mid-Victorian architecture, but not, it seemed, our treasure chest. As each file was consulted and discarded, we grew in mutual depression. The discovery of one or two projects that had been instigated by de Vere and Partners temporarily heartened the search, but they turned out to be of no interest. It was Nick who first came across Royde’s name. We’d been labouring for what seemed an age when he jumped to his feet.

  ‘Royde, I’ve found him!’ I caught some of the excitement rippling around the room and moved quickly over to the section of the table he’d been working on. I picked up the file and my excitement died almost immediately. It contained copies of Royde’s plans for the Carlyon chapel carefully preserved between sheets of almost pristine tissue. Along with the chapel plans there were a number of other projects that the architect had worked on during the rest of the decade. But of the Great Exhibition, there was not a trace. Nick slumped in his chair, his enthusiasm vanquished by this new setback. I carried on mechanically sifting through the few papers that remained. I knew what the result would be.

  Promptly on the hour our guide arrived to escort us back to reception. ‘Any luck?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m afraid not. There are plans of Royde’s projects in the 1850s, but they’re not the ones we need.’

  ‘Then they probably don’t exist,’ he said presciently. ‘Royde was a major architect and we would have copies of all of his papers.’

  ‘De Vere was the other name we were looking for,’ Nick put in as though throwing his last dice. ‘But there’s nothing very useful on him either, not here and not on the net.’

  Our escort came to a halt. He looked a trifle puzzled, the furrows in his forehead at odds with the smooth pink cheeks. ‘That seems a little strange. We don’t worry too much about the internet but there should certainly be comprehensive paper records. Mr Daniel de Vere was a famous name at the Guild.’

  My ears pricked. ‘Really?’

  ‘Indeed, yes. If you have a minute, I’d like to show you something.’

  Nick and I looked at each other. We had the minute, more than a minute if it gave us another clue. We followed the pinstripe trousers up the basement steps and along a thickly carpeted corridor to the room at the very end. Its double doors were massive, and made of polished mahogany. Our escort flung them wide and ushered us in. It was perfectly quiet, perfectly still. Not even a distant hum of London traffic. The room was beautifully proportioned with large rectangular windows overlooking a garden filled with a riot of May colour. But what was riveting my attention was the roll of honour set in the middle of the farthest wall. A mahogany wood scroll engraved with a list of names in gold lettering, at whose head appeared Mr Daniel de Vere.

  ‘Our first President,’ our new friend declared proudly, ‘a founding member of the Guild.’ Nick’s mobile face was registering disappointment even as my pulse was quickening.

  ‘Mr de Vere must have been a very important figure over a number of years,’ I suggested.

  ‘Naturally. He helped to found the Guild, as I said, but he was also instrumental in m
entoring many excellent young Victorian architects. He set up an Academy at the lower end of Great Russell Street in order to do so. After about 1860 he left the running of the partnership to his cousin, Mr Joshua de Vere. He wanted to concentrate on teaching, as he considered that the most important work he could do.’

  I was thinking hard. ‘So he’s likely to be the subject of at least one biography.’ It was an avenue I hadn’t thought of travelling, but it could prove fruitful.

  Our guide smiled benignly. ‘Three, in fact. Two contemporary accounts and one that I think was written in the 1960s. They’re almost certainly out of print, but we have copies of all three in our library.’

  ‘Would it be possible to borrow them?’ I switched on my most fetching smile, hoping the green eyes would work their charm. They did—up to a point.

  ‘I’m afraid you wouldn’t be able to take them off the premises, but if you wish to read them here, then I’m sure that will be in order.’

  ‘That would be wonderful,’ I enthused. ‘May we use this room?’

  The green eyes were still doing their stuff and he smiled back. ‘I’m sure that won’t be a problem. I’ll fetch them for you.’

  He’d hardly closed the door behind him when Nick exploded. ‘You must be mad! Three biographies and read them here!’

  ‘Yes, and you’re reading two of them.’

  He seemed to be making strange spluttering sounds, but I took no notice. So far he’d drifted through the enquiry in the hope of gaining a sizeable fee without too much effort. But it was no longer a question of getting the Royde Society to pay up. Nick had been the one who’d tempted me into this search and now I was caught in its web. We both were. It was time that he did some hard work. I was determined that between us we’d skim those biographies until we’d exhausted their every last word. We’d drawn a blank at Great Russell Street and a blank in Red Lion Square, but I knew there had to be more. There was something missing beyond mere plans and therefore something to be found.

  ‘It’s Dorset!’ Nick was suddenly a dervish, whirling crazily around the room. ‘He came from Dorset!’