Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths

Author:Elly Griffiths
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

Max couldn’t just sit around in Brighton doing nothing, especially after hearing about the empty flat with the cat meowing inside, so he set out to call on Emerald, the ex-snake-charmer who had, unbeknownst to him at the time, given birth to Ruby after a brief fling with a young magician called Max Mephisto. When Ruby was a year old Emerald had married a plasterer and they went on to have two more children. They lived in Hove and Ruby had been brought up in a close, loving home. Ruby called her stepfather Dad. Max had to admit that, if she were in trouble, Ruby would go to Emerald and—what was his name? Tom?—before she confided in him.

Emerald and Tom lived in one of the wide boulevards leading up from the seafront: Grand Avenue, First, Second and Third Avenues. The houses were handsome and well-proportioned but Max always found them rather depressing, perhaps because of their uniformity, endless white stucco frontages turned grey by the wind and the rain. There was none of the uneven charm of Brighton.

Ruby had told him that her parents now lived on the top floor of their Second Avenue house and rented the rest out to lodgers. What else had she told him? Tom was now retired and Emerald did a lot of charity work. Max couldn’t imagine it somehow. He had seen Emerald a few times after he found out about Ruby’s existence but to him she was still a dimly remembered presence from that summer season in Worthing, a golden shape accessorised by a poison-green python.

Anything less like a showgirl than the woman who answered the door would have been hard to imagine. Emerald was still an attractive woman, her dark hair well-styled and only lightly streaked with grey, but she now looked the epitome of respectability. Max thought of Betty, Bob’s wife, who had once been part of a tableaux act, even less respectable than being a snake-charmer. Betty was now a solid citizen in tweeds and twinsets. Emerald was slightly more stylish but she still looked like the sort of woman who proposed the guest speaker’s health at a WI meeting. She was even wearing a pony club brooch.

‘Max,’ she said, when she saw him at the door. ‘This is a surprise.’ She didn’t look as if it was an entirely welcome one.

‘Hallo, Emerald,’ said Max. ‘You look well. Could I have a word?’

‘Well I’m just out to a Distressed Gentlewoman’s meeting.’

‘It won’t take long.’

They ascended a handsome, but extremely steep, staircase. Max was breathing heavily by the time they reached the top. It was as bad as the Brighton Alps. Emerald opened the door to a sunny flat, decorated in comfortable good taste. The only unusual object was a painting, hanging in an obscure corner, showing a large green snake lying coiled on a beach.

Emerald saw Max looking at it. ‘Is that George?’ he said.

‘Yes.’ Emerald smiled properly for the first time and he saw a trace of the girl he had once known.

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