The Montague Portrait Read online

  THE

  MONTAGUE PORTRAIT

  Matt Drabble

  Copyright © 2014 Matt Drabble

  All rights reserved.

  BOOKS BY MATT DRABBLE

  See end of this book for details

  GATED

  GATED II: Ravenhill Academy

  ASYLUM – 13 Tales of Terror

  AFTER DARKNESS FALLS: Volume One

  AFTER DARKNESS FALLS: Volume Two

  THE TRAVELLING MAN

  THE MONTAGUE PORTRAIT

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  More Books & Information about the author

  CHAPTER ONE

  BEGINNINGS - 1923

  Hugo Montague’s rage was boundless. His blood boiled with the sheer impudence of the woman before him. Her face radiated her betrayal, and despite her endless lies he knew that such a woman could never be trusted; her dark and thorny nether regions had surely snarled better men than he during his travels.

  His leg ached furiously as the pain spread from his back and down his side. In his three year trek across the globe in his quest for knowledge, he had taken a fall from a horse somewhere in the lost jungles of the African continent. The injury had never healed fully and his pain was constant and nagging.

  The fire raged in the hearth and matched his rising temper. The crystal glass of whisky shattered in his hand as he tightened his grip in anger, yet he barely felt the shards pierce his soft flesh as the blood dripped onto the floor. Most of his fortune had been sunk into his quest and now after all these long years of travelling and long months of sitting for the painting, it was all for nought. At every turn in his life he was mocked by failure. Even the portrait that hung above the mantle mocked him with failure.

  A plate clattered on the table in the kitchen and his head thumped monstrously at the noise. Eleanor was no more than a girl when he married her and he had assumed that she would be a docile companion. How wrong he was. He had little time or inclination for romance, and once she had provided him with a son he showed little further interest in the girl. She had told him that their boy was at her sister’s so that they could talk. What a joke! While she persisted in lying they had nothing to discuss.

  As the flames licked higher he placed his hands against the mantelpiece and gazed up at the portrait of himself and Eleanor. He was a mountain of virtue and propriety. A pillar of the community and a captain of industry. During the sitting for the painting he had assumed that Eleanor would sit demurely and obediently. Upon viewing the final work, he could now see the crinkled corners of her eyes that ridiculed him with their laughter. Her face was a carefully concealed mask of scorn that he had never noticed before. A throb of pain shot through his leg and his forearms bulged with the effort of gripping the mantle as streams of sweat burned across his forehead.

  ‘Darling?’ Her voice was laden with false sweetness that was almost convincing.

  ‘Who is he?’ he said, his voice trembling with anger.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ she sobbed. ‘There is no-one. There never has been. You have to believe me, Hugo. I’ve never been unfaithful to you. Why would you insist on saying such hurtful things?’

  ‘Liar,’ he whispered, closing his eyes to try to quieten the pounding drums in his head. ‘You’re a whore, nothing but a whore.’

  ‘Please,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Whore,’ he whispered, even quieter.

  He turned to face her. Despite her wet eyes and slumped shoulders, he could see through her act. He could see her real face laughing at him below the surface. He closed his eyes again and he could picture her lying on her back and spreading her legs for the whole countryside to take turns. He could see her rutting like the filthy pig that she was.

  His hands shook as his head roared with the images. His back screamed in pain and then he felt his hands around her throat. She was trying to talk, trying to protest her innocence, but he had no use for her lies. As her voice grew weak under his iron grip, the pounding in his head began slowly to subside. He spun her around in a deathly dance so that he was facing the portrait. Her legs kicked desperately against his but he was empowered by retribution. He was dispensing justice and there was not a court in the land that would disagree. Her feet struck against the logs in the fire and several blazing pieces of wood rolled out onto the floor. The flames licked at his ankles and he felt nothing except his vengeance.

  The drums faded in his head and his back injury stopped screaming. He opened his eyes and found his wife dead in his hands. His grip loosened and she slipped to the floor. The flames were now spreading out and across the floor and his clothes were burning. His nostrils were assaulted by the stench of roasting flesh.

  Eventually he and the whole house were consumed by the fire

  CHAPTER two

  Charlotte - 1991

  Charlotte Goode sat on the grass patiently waiting for her father to return home. Her mother waved to her from the window, motioning her to come inside, but she had made a decision to wait, and wait she would.

  It was a hot day with summer making an early appearance with all her splendour. The trees lining the property fluttered with birdlife emerging after the winter hiatus, and the air was full of the rich aroma of freshly cut grass that always marked the beginning of the blue sky season.

  Charlotte was only eight years old, well, eight and three quarters if she was telling you. Precocious and bright, with a thirsty mind and eager legs fit for action, she was slight and slender with blonde hair and an ever smiling face – an only child, but a happy one with loving and attentive parents.

  Her home was large and luxurious, with lush green gardens and at the rear thick woodland to explore. She had everything she could desire and was perfectly content in her own company.

  She whipped her head up as the long gravel driveway suddenly crunched in the distance. She watched her father’s bright red car as he crawled slowly and carefully towards the house. He had once run over an unseen squirrel that dashed out in front of him, and Charlotte had loved him fiercely when she saw how upset he was. Ever since his mishap, he would crawl slowly up the long winding gravel avenue, usually much to the chagrin of her mother. The squirrel had been their little secret; they had sombrely buried the delicate corpse in the woodland and left a small marker on the grave.

  Charlotte loved her mother; she was a strong, confident woman who was always ready with practical advice. But at heart, Charlotte was a daddy’s girl. It was her father who always had time for her, no matter how busy he was. He was the one with a million different activities for rainy days. He was the one who told her tall tales from his imagination to sing her to sleep at night.

  The car pulled up slowly and ground to a halt. Her father stepped out, grinning broadly at the sight of her. He was a tall man who seemed a giant to her, broad and strong with arms that swept her into the sky with effortless ease.

  ‘Ch
arlie!’ he boomed, as he flung his briefcase to one side.

  She ran to him. ‘Eagle!’ she screamed as she leapt into his arms.

  Without breaking her stride, he hoisted her high into the sky. Round and round he twirled her, both of them laughing riotously. Vaguely Charlotte could hear her mother’s attempted scolding from the kitchen window, though from the edge of her vision she could see her covering her giggles beneath a stern hand. She felt that she was flying, soaring above the world on her father’s wind.

  Eventually he placed her down onto the ground and she staggered around dizzily, laughing until she landed with a thump.

  ‘You’re getting too big for that,’ her father said, panting breathlessly.

  ‘You’re getting too old,’ she said.

  Still laughing, her father reached into the back of the car and pulled out a large rectangle shaped parcel covered in brown wrapping paper.

  ‘What’s that?’ Charlotte asked.

  He smiled. ‘A present for your mother.’

  He held the painting carefully and tore the paper from the frame. ‘I picked it up at that bric-a-brac shop in town,’ he said to her mother as she wandered out to investigate. ‘What do you think, ladies?’

  Charlotte recoiled at the sight of the painting. It looked old and smelled fusty, and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. There were two figures, a man and a woman both standing, but her eyes were drawn to the man. She could feel the man’s burning hatred flowing over her in waves, his rage boiling her blood. She took an involuntary step away from the painting and suddenly the world was spinning out of control.

  A little over three weeks after she fainted, Charlotte crept from her bed clutching her stuffed tiger. She tiptoed down the stairs to watch her mother sobbing gently in the kitchen as she prepared another evening meal that would no doubt go to waste. Her father was sitting in the lounge, slumped in an armchair before a roaring fireplace despite the season and the hot night. His breathing was heavy and clogged as he snored and stirred restlessly in his troubled sleep. In his left hand he clasped a tumbler of dark liquid and in his right he gripped a bottle of expensive brandy.

  Charlotte loved her father with reverent awe, but now she was afraid of him; his stares were hard and his eyes flint, and his face, which had been so affectionate and gentle, was now set like granite, devoid of his usual compassionate warmth.

  She scooted around the house corners to watch him as he slumbered. He looked so much older than even a few weeks ago. Creases and lines marked his previously youthful complexion. He seemed to have completely forgone his day to day routine, no longer going to work after he appeared to somehow have injured himself.

  One morning she witnessed him limping heavily, and asked him what was wrong. For the briefest of moments he looked desperately lost and unhappy and her heart had broken at the sight. Before he could speak he clutched at the bottom of his back, his expression wracked with pain, and when he opened his eyes again they were to her once more those of a stranger. She had tried to ask her mother, but her face seemed to be permanently wet with tears and sorrow.

  The only thing that seemed to hold his attention now was the painting. The Montague Portrait hung in prominence in their home at the expense seemingly of their sanity. At her mother’s frugal insistence in order to make sure that it was properly insured, they had the painting valued. When the appraisers almost had a heart attack at recognising the piece as a lost Worthington and worth a fortune, they had all nearly fainted. Her parents had celebrated with cheap fizzy wine and a bucketful of teary laughs. They had only started to discuss how best to sell the portrait, when her father’s interest took a possessive and decidedly dark turn and ended all further discussion on the matter of selling. He discarded all the previously hanging art which now lay strewn about the hallway. He commandeered the large plush lounge for himself, and Charlotte and her mother were silently banned from the room. All he did now was swill brandy, stoke the fire, and stare at the Montague Portrait.

  The faces of Hugo and Eleanor now loomed large over their family in more ways than one. Charlotte tried to share in her father’s passion for the painting, but she found the piece increasingly disturbing. Having at first been struck with such a feeling of impending doom when her father brought the portrait home that she had fainted clean away, now that the painting was hung, it seemed in some way different. Hugo appeared stronger, clearer, somehow more there than before. Conversely Eleanor now appeared diminished, her kind face fading further away under a cloud of despair. Hugo scared her badly; he had perpetually hungry eyes that followed her around the room. His arm that was wrapped around his wife now seemed a mocking gesture of a claw-fisted ownership.

  Their home was large, but the corridors carried the echoes of her father’s roaring accusations of her mother. Night after night she heard his drunken screaming bellows as he directed his ire towards his faithful wife. Charlotte could hear her mother’s sobs and protests of innocence. She could barely remember her mother holding general conversations with other men. She was a shy woman by nature and more often than not pottered around almost exclusively with the elder women of the village. She spent her days locked in the pursuit of help and improvements to those around her. She was on more committees than Charlotte could count and their kitchen was often full of lavender ladies drinking tea beneath baking aromas. She had never before witnessed her parents having any kind of cross words, but now as her father raged she cried herself to sleep. Their happy home and lives had been destroyed ever since the Montague Portrait darkened their door.

  Charlotte hid beside the large grandfather clock that ticked with a metronomic beat, its pendulum swinging ominously as if in some private countdown. She ducked low as her father’s voice rang out slurring from his slumber as her mother crept past the lounge on the way to bed.

  ‘Where is he tonight?’ her father said in garbled tones.

  ‘Please, Mitchell,’ her mother whispered wearily. ‘Not again, not tonight.’

  ‘Is he finally tired of you, Emma? Have you finally shown him the face that I get to look upon?’ he growled angrily.

  ‘How many times, Mitchell? How many times do we have to go through this?’

  ‘Until you tell the truth, godammit.’ He stood drunkenly and hurled his glass into the fireplace, the crystal shattering into the flames.

  ‘There is no-one else,’ Emma said, sobbing miserably. ‘There never was.’

  ‘Liar!’ her father roared as Charlotte shivered in the hallway. ‘You are an adulterous whore.’

  ‘Mitchell, please …’

  ‘I know that you sneak off to be with him every damn time my back is turned, mocking me, laughing at me as you rut together like the filthy beasts that you are. My father warned me about marrying you. He told me it would be the biggest mistake of my life to tether myself to a woman of lesser breeding.’

  Charlotte puzzled at this remark; she knew that her grandfather on her father’s side had died when her father was still a child.

  ‘You’re nothing but a dirty betrayer, Eleanor. You always were –’ His face contorted in agony as he swayed with one hand pressed to his lower back.

  ‘Please sit, Mitchell. I can see that you’re in such pain and you still won’t see a doctor.’ Despite everything her mother’s voice was still laced with concern.

  ‘Bah!’ her father said, his voice filled with scorn.

  ‘You have to listen to me, Mitchell, you’re not well and you need help –’

  ‘Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Have me locked away in some asylum so that you and your lover can ransack my lands and my bed. You’d love that, wouldn’t you?’

  Charlotte heard her mother’s gasp of pain and peeked around the corner of the room to see her father gripping her mother’s arm, digging his fingers into her soft flesh.

  ‘Please, Mitchell,’ her mother cried, ‘You’re hurting me.’

  Charlotte was desperate to help, but her eight-year-old legs felt rooted to the spot and she
could only look on helplessly.

  ‘Good,’ her father whispered in a voice that was no longer his own. ‘I’m going to hurt you the way that you’ve hurt me, Eleanor.’

  Her mother wept in pain and fear. ‘Who’s Eleanor? Why do you keep calling me that, Mitchell?’

  For one brief flash, and for the last time, she saw her father’s face again – a lonely man who had lost everything, including himself. It was a haunted look of pitiful sorrow wrenched from the pit of his soul, a fleeting pass of the man she had loved and worshipped, a moment frozen in time that would last for the rest of her life.

  ‘Mitchell?’ He laughed cruelly. ‘Is that his name? Is that who you have been lying with, disrespecting me, mocking me, laughing at me?’ Charlotte heard the roar of his voice as he threw the half full brandy bottle into the fire. The dark flammable liquid was instantly set alight and in no time the flames rolled out and across the floor, eagerly devouring the carpeting.

  She felt a stab of horror as she watched her father’s hands clamp around her mother’s throat. Her mother’s eyes rolled back in terror and shock, her mouth flopped open and her tongue spilled out. She clawed frantically at the death grip of her husband who was now standing a stranger before her.

  The fire began to spread. The flames licked at the heavily waxed wooden furniture that accepted the fire with relish. Soon the low hanging curtains were carrying the flames high to the ceiling. For Charlotte the heat was becoming unbearable and the smoke was thick and choking.

  ‘Betrayer, adulteress,’ he said in a low growl as he squeezed harder and harder.

  Charlotte could only clutch her stuffed tiger closer; her mind froze at the scene that would be seared into her brain for evermore, along with her inability to act. Her self-perceived cowardice was born before the sight of murder and fire, emotions that would haunt her dreams in the darkest before-dawn moments.