Chapter Text
The old brick mansion stood steadily in the middle of some nice, sunny gardens, the way it clearly had for decades. Large windows lined the front, and ivy crept up the sides. It was a perfect, idyllic portrait of a household in the English countryside, almost stereotypically so—far removed from the smog and the rain that choked the city of London.
Difficult to imagine that Charles Cholmondeley’s coworker had once lived here.
“Why did you bring me along again, Monty?” he asked uncertainly, avoiding the gaze of the man beside him. Ewen Montagu, for reasons unknown, had casually invited Charles to his childhood home about a week ago, in that smug manner in which he did and said everything that made it impossible to refuse.
Though he wasn't looking, Charles could hear the grin in Monty's voice. “Well, God forbid I bring a colleague along to a little family gathering.”
Charles frowned and raised his eyes to the enormous house. This level of status was so entirely foreign to him that he felt like an intruder just standing in the gardens. He half-expected the police to show up out of nowhere and drag his peasant self off the Montagu property.
“I'm…I'm fairly certain that I'm not family.”
“Oh, don't look so nervous.” Monty clapped a hand on his shoulder, startling him so badly that he nearly jumped clear out of his shoes. “They'll be happy to finally meet you.”
They know I exist?! Charles thought frantically but couldn't quite find the courage to say aloud.
“Besides,” Monty continued, seemingly unaware of Charles’ miniature crisis, “it isn't as though you'll be meeting either of my parents. Mother planned to come today but found herself busy, and Father…well, he's the reason we're here. He died a couple of weeks ago.”
Charles’ heart stopped. “You're saying that you've invited me to your father's funeral?”
“What? No, good God, no! Absolutely not!” Monty laughed as though Charles had told a particularly funny joke instead of asking about a parent's passing. “No, that was a while ago now. Today we're just…looking through his old things. Figuring out what exactly will go to who.”
“How can you be so…so nonchalant about this?”
“Oh, years of practice,” he remarked. “Weather's nice today, isn't it? Lots of sun.”
“Monty—”
“Though the weatherman said we might be in for some rain later. Skies are clear, though, so…who knows, am I right?”
“Did he not have a will?”
“Huh? Oh.” Monty kicked at a small rock that had had the misfortune of being in his way. “Father's will was…let's say, somewhat unclear. About certain things regarding his children.”
These final words seemed to be imbued with ice, and despite the sun's heat Charles found himself with the distinct feeling that he had been picked up and dropped in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in mid-January with no life preserver.
He fell silent. Best not to disturb whatever wasps’ nest this family affair was.
“But don't worry, Charlie!” Monty said, with an inordinate amount of cheer that could not possibly have been entirely genuine. “You'll just be meeting my siblings. And you've met Ivor already, haven't you? You're already a third of the way there!”
Charles swallowed. “Ivor is here? The…Communist spy?” The one with whom consorting nearly cost you your position?
“That's the one,” Monty confirmed, “though I prefer to think of him not as ‘my brother, the Communist spy’, but rather as ‘my brother, the filmmaker’ or ‘my brother, the table tennis aficionado’. I'm sure he thinks of me as ‘my brother, the brilliant lawyer’ and not ‘my brother, the British intelligence agent’. Easier that way for both of us, given our positions, don't you agree?”
Though Charlie was entirely unsure whether or not he agreed, he nodded.
They made their way through a pair of fine oak doors and into an impressive foyer that made even gangly Charles feel like a housefly. Five portraits were lined up along one of the walls—young men and women, none of whom Charles recognised at a glance but all of whom looked vaguely like Monty beside him.
“Is one of these you?” he whispered cautiously into Monty's ear.
“My family's house isn't a bloody library, Charlie. No need to whisper.”
“Right, of course.” Their voices seemed unreasonably loud in the open space. “Sorry.”
“No harm done.” Monty adjusted his pace to come in front of Charles and turned to face him, making a sweeping gesture. “Anyhow, welcome to the Montagu estate! Make yourself at home.”
“It's…big,” Charles managed stupidly.
“I suppose it might seem that way if you're not accustomed,” Monty mused, raising his eyes to the ceiling as if appraising the room for the first time. “Now, Ivor should be around here somewhere…told me he was getting here early. You remember Ivor, don't you? We ran into him on our bar crawl all those nights ago?”
Charles did remember, if only very vaguely. He'd been drunk out of his mind that night—one of only two times that had ever happened—but he could hazily recall Monty slipping away to talk to someone, could still feel the floor swaying as he stumbled over himself to follow him and found him chatting with a man, the type of man who practically radiated secrecy, dressed all in fur. That was Ivor, he supposed. Friendly enough fellow, if memory served.
Never mind that, according to MI5’s profile of him, he would have spilled their entire operation to the highest bidder if given the chance.
After several interminable seconds of thinking, the only response Charles could come up with to convey all this memory and apprehension was a small “Sort of.”
“Ah, we were all drinking. He may not remember you very clearly either.”
Almost as if on cue, a door burst open across the foyer somewhere behind Charles, who made an embarrassing little noise of surprise and whirled around. A distantly familiar voice rang out loud and clear through the hall.
“My memory is perfectly fine, thank you.”
“Ivor!” Suddenly Monty was running past him and making a beeline for his brother—younger brother? Charles couldn't quite remember, but Monty had mentioned something once upon a time about him being the “baby of the family”. The epithet didn't really seem to suit him, though, now that Charles was seeing him with sober eyes.
“Well, if it isn't the fellow family disappointment!” Monty embraced Ivor loosely, easily, and they clapped each other on the back. “Nice to see you outside of the film business, hey?”
“Good to see you in a well-lit area for once!” He stepped back to study Monty. “Looking sharp, as always, brother. And I see you brought your friend once again for emotional support?”
Based upon their previous interactions, Charles expected Monty to laugh this off as a joke once again, playful ribbing between siblings. And it certainly seemed that way at first. Yet to his shock, even as he laughed heartily, Monty distinctly went a bit paler than usual, and he glanced discreetly back at Charles. “No, no,” he assured Ivor, almost too quickly, with a smile that didn't quite feel natural. “He's simply my guest here, I assure you, a…a good friend of mine. Colleague. Wanted him to see the house, and all that, you know?”
Ivor's eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them with the kind of glare that made Charlie want to curl into a ball in the corner of a closet and never leave. The Montagu Glare, he wanted to call it. Monty was rarely visibly angry, but the few times Charles had seen him truly irate—usually at Bevan—had been terrifying. The storm behind his eyes was carefully concealed under an exterior of unusual calm, all the more unsettling for how starkly it contrasted with the Monty he knew. And always the glare—that piercing glare that seemed to precede either arson or murder.
Ivor was cooler under normal circumstances than Monty had ever been, yet Charles had that same distinct feeling of dread as Monty's brother studied him now.
“Hm.” Ivor finally let up on The Glare, perhaps sensing Charlie's discomfort, and reached into one of the many pockets in his fur coat for a silver pocket watch. “I don't think Joyce has arrived quite yet. I've just been looking around the various rooms of the house for now, seeing what we're working wi—”
“What about Stuart?”
The question came low and quiet from Monty, a shadow over his eyes. Charles felt the rocks in his uneasy stomach grow heavier.
Sighing, Ivor glanced at his watch and then dropped it back in his pocket. “He called this morning saying he'd be a bit later than the rest of us. You have maybe…half an hour until he arrives.”
Not we have half an hour until he arrives. You have half an hour. Charles found this wording odd, but he neglected to comment.
“Ah.” Monty cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together. “Well, if you've got down here handled, Charlie and I can take a tour of the attic. Lots of fascinating things Father kept up there, I’d wager!”
He flashed Charles another one of those unfair smiles that he couldn't possibly refuse, and suddenly he found himself following Monty up three flights of well-kept stairs, straining his ears to hear as Ivor called after them with an ominous “have fun up there, you two!” that reminded him uncomfortably of things he'd heard that coroner Spilsbury say.
Charlie didn't care for disorder. Yes, he liked to have a lot of the same types of things—pencils, stamps, pins, seal sets—but at least those things were kept neatly organised by chronology or size or color or something along those lines.
This was the type of collection Charlie very much did not prefer, but that didn't quell the small flash of joy that darted through him at the sight of so many objects with so many histories.
He'd always felt such a connection with objects, particularly old ones. More than with people, sometimes.
“So, what…what are we looking for, again, Monty?”
“Nothing in particular.”
He hazarded a glance at Monty. “What are your family all here to accomplish, anyhow?”
“Well.” Monty walked over to a candleholder that glittered a bit in the light through the attic windows, despite spots of tarnishing. He picked it up, tested its weight, then set it back down with a clatter. “Nothing until all four of us are here, that's for certain.”
“Then why are we looking through all these objects?”
“For the hell of it.” Monty pushed himself up to sit on the edge of a set of drawers and crossed his legs. “Ideally this is all to get some idea of what's left after what was left to Mother—she inherits the house but doesn't particularly want much of this bric-a-brac of Father's. Quite honestly, though, I'd much rather—”
“And what am I doing here?”
“Like I said,” Monty answered, in a light tone that somehow still brooked no further questions. “I just wanted you to meet my family.”
“Monty—”
“Look around, will you? Tell me if you find anything of interest.” He had directed his attention to a thick tome from a stack of them in the middle of the floor. “My God, is this a first edition?”
Charles opened his mouth, still utterly lost concerning what was going on, but Monty had become so engrossed in that old book that he resolved himself to following his colleague’s orders.
Furniture and items of various types adorned the dusty floor in no discernible pattern, leaving only small sections of bare hardwood here and there to step on. Charles made his way awkwardly through the clutter, occasionally stopping to trace his fingers over the edge of a chair or embroidered patterns on a tablecloth.
But it was when he was running a hand along a tarp of some sort that he noticed the painting.
Mostly concealed by the tarp draped over it, what little he could see of the frame was gilded in a similar fashion to the portraits in the foyer downstairs. Suddenly curious what such a painting was doing undisplayed in an attic, Charles pulled the cover aside, sending up a cloud of dust.
It was a portrait of a young lady, painted with no small amount of care and skill. Brushstrokes nearly invisible, pale aristocratic skin catching the light with all the beauty of alabaster, striking blue eyes that seemed to bore straight through the painting and into the room beyond…
And most importantly—based upon her features, the hair, even the overall feel of the piece—she was clearly of the Montagu family.
“Monty?” He cleared his throat of the dust that had come up. “You, well…I've found what appears to be a portrait of, of…a member of your family?” It was thrown on the floor haphazardly and covered with a tarp, he did not say.
“Splendid, Charlie!” Monty's voice drifted back to him in reply. “Though are you certain it's a family portrait? The Montagus always hang those stiff bloody paintings in the main foyer. Some rubbish about ‘honoring the family legacy’...”
He peeked his head out from behind the attic wall, and immediately, without warning, something crucial shifted in Monty’s expression. The warm twinkling in his eyes faded as he laid eyes on the portrait.
“Oh.” Monty’s breath seemed to catch, and then he forced himself steady. “That's…well, uh, you'd be correct, Charles, that is…that's Aoife.”
“Surname…Montagu?”
“Correct.”
“Ee-fah…” Charles tried the name out in his mouth, feeling the way the syllables escaped in two breaths of air. “That's a name of Irish origin, isn't it? A-I-F-E? I've always been fascinated by Celtic names, you know.”
He glanced over at Monty, who had tensed now beyond anything Charles had seen from him before as he surveyed the painting. Monty usually flowed from one room to another with a casual grace, his presence filling any space he inhabited with overwhelming passion and charisma. He was not this coiled creature, this startled deer, ready to spring into instinctive flight at the slightest noise.
“It's A-O-I-F-E,” was all he said in reply, so quietly Charles could barely hear him. “With an extra O.”
“Ah. Forgive me. These Celtic spellings can have so many variations….” He trailed off at the sight of how pale his friend suddenly seemed. “Is everything…all right? You seem dis—”
“Charles.” He let out a little laugh, something Charles immediately clocked as a desperate attempt to calm himself. “I'm fine. It's just…startling to see her again, you know? Terrifying, in an odd way, like…like a ghost.”
He patted Charles’ shoulder and sighed in what was probably a significant amount of forced nonchalance. While abysmal at reading people under normal circumstances, Charles nearly always found himself attuned to the way Monty felt. Perhaps he was that much of an open book. Or perhaps Charles had simply spent years of his life learning how to mask the very behaviours that Monty was demonstrating now.
Behaviours that betrayed high anxiety. Terror.
“Who is she to you?”
Monty froze. “Pardon?”
“If you know her…oh, well, of course you know her…what…what manner of family member is she?”
“Oh. Um, she was…well, she was my sister.”
Was. So Aoife Montagu had died, most likely. No wonder Monty was so uncomfortable discussing her. Charles felt a pang of guilt surge through his chest.
“I'm…I'm sorry. That must have been difficult, losing her.”
He risked a glance at Monty, but the man had stopped paying attention entirely. His gaze was still fixed on the painting, jaw tight, expression unreadable.
“It's quite all right, Charlie,” he finally managed after what seemed an eternity, running a hand down his face as if to rouse himself from whatever trance the ethereal portrait had placed him in. “I hated her anyhow.”
At this, Charles bristled in shock. He had no sisters or brothers, but he had always presumed that despite any disagreement, siblings were meant to care for each other. At the very least, he would have assumed some sadness at a sibling's death. “You can't mean that, Monty,” he said, treading carefully. “Not really.”
“Ha.” He smirked unconvincingly and averted his eyes. “You'd be shocked how much you can hate a family member if they hurt you the way Aoife did me. God, it—heh—it, it hurts just to say her name.”
The silence after that statement hung low and heavy, and Charles felt it again—that overwhelming desire to escape, the feeling that nothing else should be said when one was in a difficult situation. He enjoyed Monty's company, so he couldn't have explained why this happened so commonly around him. Nine times out of ten, he had given into the feeling immediately; he had bolted after their pitch to Bevan, had fled at Monty's mistreatment of Jean.
No more. Charles Cholmondeley was finished being a coward.
“Monty, I—”
“What are you going to do? Apologise again?” He flinched at his own tone and lowered his voice, taking a heavy breath. “Sorry. I didn't mean to…no, it's…all over and done now, Charlie. She's not around anymore to torment me.”
He let out another little nervous laugh and pulled the cover back over the portrait with enough force to send dust flying in an impressive cloud. “Out of sight, out of mind, right?”
Charles couldn't quite school the worry out of his gaze, and he could tell that Monty had noticed. “Right,” was all he could think to say in response, though it seemed to fall flat.
Monty clicked his tongue and made a show of looking around the rest of the attic again. “Soooo…neat stuff here, don't you think? All very old. And dusty. Father did always like allowing his things to collect dust, hm? Expensive Japanese vases. Books on legal precedent four inches thick.” His eyes flicked back to the covered painting so quickly Charlie almost missed it. “Children.”
“Monty—”
“I mean, really! You'd think he'd own a feather duster or something,” he continued, seemingly unaware that Charles had spoken. “But no, he liked things to show their age. Liked to leave them just as they were without touching them. Left them to rust and warp and…”
He was facing away from Charles now, both hands on an antique table in front of him. It was beautifully polished and painstakingly carved with an intricate design Charles couldn't begin to make sense of. It groaned and creaked as Monty, trembling in a way that made Charlie want to rush over and steady him, suddenly felt the need to brace himself against it.
“And then he…hah, he, um...got upset when things changed.”
Charles found himself moving, his steps soft and uncertain on the creaking attic floor. “What…what changed?”
Monty didn't answer. He was shaking now, and the old table rattled back and forth against the floor.
“Monty? Do you, do you need to—”
“I think…I need to sit down.” He put a hand to his temple. “I'm suddenly quite ill.”
That killed Charles’ hesitation. He hurried the rest of the way to Monty and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, just close enough to his neck that he could feel his pulse racing fast as a stallion.
“Come on,” he encouraged. “Let's find somewhere to sit.”
Slowly, Monty released his hand from the table and swayed just a bit on his feet. Charles instinctively tightened his grip on Monty's shoulder, then realized just how forward he was being and loosened it again with a flush to his cheeks.
“Yes, that would…be wise,” Monty mused. “Christ, what is wrong with…”
“You just need a moment to breathe.” Charles glanced around for a chair that looked like it wouldn't splinter apart with age and settled on a green upholstered one. “Here, why don't you…sit down right there.”
Monty had barely made it to the chair before his legs gave out beneath him and he collapsed backwards into the seat. He put both hands to his face and let out a heavy sigh.
Charles had never been any good at comfort, but psychosomatic reactions to strong emotion he could handle. He'd had enough of them himself, had made himself sick and lightheaded with anxiety more times than he could count. There was a procedure to follow for situations like this. Address the immediate symptoms, then the root issue.
Find somewhere to sit, get him off his feet—check. Focus on restoring proper oxygen intake—in progress. Monty had closed his eyes and was clearly making some attempt at controlling his breathing rate, but each inhale was still so shallow that it wasn't any wonder he was feeling peaky. Charles kept one hand on his shoulder, hoping against hope that his presence might do some good instead of causing further anxiety over…
Over what? A painting? One of a family member, certainly, and one he clearly wanted nothing to do with, but still. It…did seem rather odd. Especially for someone as unflappable, as fiery as Monty.
He glanced back over at the painting, covered haphazardly with the tarp where Monty had pulled it back over the girl's face in desperation. Her flowing golden hair was still visible on one of the sides, almost angelic the way the artist had captured it. He could still see her face in his memory—in fact, she bore such a family resemblance to Monty that were the two siblings not different genders, he might have assumed they were identical twins.
“You're looking at the portrait again,” Monty muttered beside him. “Please stop. I covered it for a reason.”
His voice carried such uncharacteristic seriousness that Charlie found himself obeying the request immediately. Instead, he turned his focus back to Monty, who had stopped shaking quite as badly but still looked thoroughly ashen.
How else to help? He suddenly felt completely useless in the face of whatever this was.
They could theoretically talk it through, discuss what Aoife had done to Monty to shake him so badly that her very portrait made him ill with anxiety, but given Monty's furious determination to pretend she didn't exist, that option was probably off the table. What else helped? Distraction? Monty had tried to distract himself earlier and ended up significantly more upset. Water? Something to eat?
“Monty,” Charles began tentatively, “would you like…something to drink? From downstairs?”
He chuckled breathlessly. “How about some champagne?”
“Monty.”
“Water,” he conceded with a sigh. “I should drink water. That sounds…heavenly right now, actually. Joyce knows where the glasses are better than Ivor would, she can…she can help you with that. I assume she's arrived by now.”
Grateful for something to do that wasn't standing there and simmering in the unbearable tension between Monty and that painting of Aoife, Charles nodded and turned toward the staircase.
He only allowed himself a brief look back at Monty, who had threaded one hand into his golden hair and was staring listlessly into the middle distance.