Chapter 2
I ended the exhibition early.
No shouting.
No spectacle.
Buyers were told the remaining viewing had been postponed.
The paintings stayed.
So did Camellia.
So did Mavis.
I wanted answers before either disappeared behind another story.
We moved into the smaller salon.
Mavis sat near the window.
Camellia remained standing.
I placed the torn charcoal pieces on the table.
“Start at the beginning.”
Mavis looked down.
“My mother painted.”
“Name?”
“Eleanor Fairbourne.”
I knew it.
Barely.
Not as an artist.
As one of my mother’s former companions.
She attended dinners when I was a child.
Quiet woman.
Always wore gray.
Then vanished from Ashcroft circles.
“Your mother painted my father?”
Mavis nodded.
“Many times.”
“Why have I never seen them?”
Camellia laughed softly.
“Because they were studies.”
Mavis looked at her sharply.
There.
Camellia knew more.
I turned.
“How do you know?”
She realized too late.
“My mother collected some.”
“Some?”
Silence.
Mavis answered instead.
“Camellia’s family bought the Fairbourne archive after my mother died.”
My eyes narrowed.
“How?”
“Debt.”
One word.
Enough.
Eleanor died when Mavis was seventeen.
Her husband had died earlier.
The family house was mortgaged.
Paintings, notebooks, unfinished canvases—everything passed through a private sale.
Camellia’s mother bought the lot.
Then Mavis was hired into the household.
Not as artist.
As domestic help.
Convenient.
Her mother’s work in one wing.
Her daughter serving tea in another.
“When did you start painting for Camellia?”
“Three years ago.”
“Voluntarily?”
Mavis hesitated.
“First time.”
Important.
She painted one small landscape for herself.
Camellia saw it.
Recognized her mother’s style.
Asked for another.
Then another.
Then introduced them publicly as her own.
“When did you object?”
Mavis’s fingers tightened.
“After the first sale.”
“What happened?”
Camellia finally spoke.
“She was paid.”
Not the question.
I looked at Mavis.
“What happened?”
“She said if I embarrassed her, she would destroy my mother’s archive.”
The room went cold.
There.
Not only stolen credit.
Leverage.
May you like
Camellia had not merely exploited a talented maid.
She had held a dead woman’s life hostage.
