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an artist who used to live near here,” he pressed on. In the mirror behind the bar, he saw the elderly couple by the fire pause when they heard this, a gradual slowing of movement, then a halt. They stopped fiddling with the food on their plates, stopped chewing. Exchanged a look between them that Zach couldn’t read but that made the back of his neck prickle. The barman had cast a glance in their direction, too, but he quickly looked back at Zach and smiled.
    “Charles Aubrey, I’ll bet.”
    “Yes—you’ve heard of him,” Zach said. The barman shrugged amiably.
    “Of course. Bit of a claim to fame, he is. Local celeb. He used to come in here all the time, back before the war. Not that I was here then, but I’ve been told; and there’s a photo of him over there—sitting outside this very establishment with drink in hand.”
    Zach put down his drink and crossed to the far wall, where the framed photograph was hanging in a foxed mount speckled with dead thrips. The picture had been enlarged and was grainy as a result. It was a photo Zach had seen before, reprinted in an old biography of the man. He felt a peculiar frisson, thinking that he was standing in the same pub that Charles Aubrey had visited. Zach studied the picture closely. The light of an evening sun lit Aubrey’s face from the side. He was a tall man, lean and angular. He was sitting on a wooden bench with his long legs crossed, one hand cupped over the upper knee, the other holding a glass of beer. He was squinting against the light, his face turned partly away from it, which threw his bony nose into relief; his high cheekbones and broad brow. His jaw was hard and square. Thick, dark hair, the light gathering in its kinks and waves. It wasn’t a classically handsome face, but it was striking. His eyes, staring right into the camera, were steady and intense; his mood impossible to read. It was a face you had to look twice at—compelling, perhaps unsettling; as if it might be terrifying in rage but infectious in mirth. Zach couldn’t see what it was that women had seen in him, that apparently all women had seen in him, but even he could sense the power of the man, the strange magnetism. The picture was dated 1939—the summer his grandparents had met the man. Later that year, war would break out. Later that year, torn apart by grief and loss, Charles Aubrey would join the Royal Hampshire Regiment, which would form part of the British Expeditionary Force that set out into mainland Europe to meet Hitler. The year after, he would be caught up in the chaos of Dunkirk and killed; his body buried hastily in an Allied cemetery, his tags brought home by comrades.
    When Zach turned away, the old man was watching him with a grave expression, eyes of such a pale blue they were almost colorless. Zach smiled and gave him a nod, but the old man looked back down at his empty plate without acknowledging him, so Zach returned to the bar.
    “I wonder, do you know of anybody still living in the village who might remember those days? Who might have met Charles Aubrey?” Zach said to the barman. He kept his voice low, but in the quiet of the pub it was plainly audible. The barman smiled wryly and paused. He didn’t glance over at the elderly couple. He didn’t need to.
    “There might be some. Let me have a think.” Behind him, the couple got up. With the slightest of salutes to the publican—a raised, gnarled index finger—the man cupped one hand around his wife’s elbow and steered her towards the door. The whippet followed at their heels, tail curled tightly between its legs, toenails tapping delicately. As the door swung shut, the publican cleared his throat. “The thing is, those that do might not be that keen to talk about it. You have to understand, lots of people have come asking questions about Aubrey over the years. He caused a bit of
a scandal around here, back in the day, and since he wasn’t actually from Blacknowle, most feel no need to play up the