Nocturne with Bonus Material by Deborah Crombie Page B

give to feel so close to her again. Raising his cup to his lips he drank what remained of his cocoa even though it was cold. Searching for a change of subject, he put down his cup and asked, “What about the leg, then?”
    â€œOne of our neighbors was a carpenter. He mended it for me, in honor of VE Day, the following May. If you look closely, you can see the join.”
    Following her glance, Kit studied the piano’s right front leg. There was a very slight difference in the color of the wood about halfway down. He knelt and ran his fingers over the join. It was seamless. “He did a good job, your friend.”
    â€œSaul. I remember he said there were some odd carvings underneath the piano, but he couldn’t make anything of them.”
    â€œCarvings?” Curious, Kit pushed the bench out of the way and slid on his back under the piano. He lay looking up, the way Toby and Charlotte liked to do when Gemma played the piano at home. But instead of feeling the vibration of the notes, he saw only a few cobwebs in the dark recesses of the baby grand. “I don’t—Wait. There is something. On the right of the panel behind the back leg. And—” He scooted to the left. “And on this side, in the same spot. They look like clusters of leaves with loops in the center. Are they the maker’s marks?”
    â€œSaul knew pianos, and he said he’d never seen anything like them. Here,” said Erika, getting up, “let me fetch a torch.”
    The room was growing dark, and even though Erika had switched on another lamp, it was still shadowy in the recesses beneath the piano. Kit reached up and touched the carving inset on the left. It was smooth to the touch, the detailing intricate.
    When Erika returned with the torch she kept in the hall, he switched it on and illuminated first one carving, then the other. “Identical, as far as I can tell,” he said, frowning as he peered at the impressions. “But those aren’t loops in the center, they’re initials. A double C, I think. And the leaves— they’re ivy, I’m certain.” Kit was interested in botany, and had become quite accomplished at botanical sketching. “Where have I seen—Oh.”
    Kit scooted out from beneath the piano so fast he bumped his head on the bench. “Erika, you said Aubrey Road?”
    â€œYes, but—”
    â€œThat’s not far from Lansdowne House. The old studios.”
    â€œNo, but I don’t see—”
    â€œI just did a paper on Lansdowne House for school.” Since he’d moved from Grantchester to Notting Hill to live with his dad and Gemma, he’d been fascinated by the old artists’ studios a few streets from their house. Unlike most of the Victorian terraced houses in their part of Notting Hill, Lansdowne House, built in 1901, stood alone, a square block of a building with round portholes tucked among the many-paned studio windows and with an oddly crenellated roof. “One of the artists who had a studio there was named Charles Cayley.”
    â€œI’ve heard of Cayley.” Erika stood and went to one of the bookcases on the far side of the sitting room. “He did beautiful decorative work, didn’t he? Very influenced by William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, although he was a generation younger.”
    â€œHe used the same motif somewhere in all his works, apparently. A double C with twining ivy. Those aren’t the piano maker’s marks on the piano,” Kit added with conviction. “They’re Charles Cayley’s signature.”
    â€œBut why would Cayley’s signature be on my piano? He wasn’t a musician. And didn’t he die during the war?”
    â€œHe was presumed missing.” Kit frowned, trying to remember the details he’d read while researching his paper. “Cayley’s studio was left intact for several years. His family believed he’d