by Amy Myers
‘Yes, but she seems to have recovered now though,’ Georgia told her.
‘I’ll speak to the Bakers.’
Georgia seized the opportunity. ‘It’s not the first time that the Bakers have been linked to the Fernbourne Five, is it?’
Clemence’s face sagged. ‘Ah. I suspected from something Christopher said that that’s what you wanted to see me about.’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Don’t be afraid. You’ve every right to ask. I never thought you’d rootle the story out. It’s been long buried. I take it we are talking about Jenny Baker?’
‘You didn’t think to tell us?’
‘No,’ Clemence replied. ‘It might have been relevant to the reason that Alwyn committed suicide, but you were seeking reasons for murder.’
She wasn’t getting away with that. ‘This does provide a reason for murder,’ Georgia said.
‘How?’ Clemence asked sharply. ‘Jenny wasn’t in the village when the rough music took place.’
‘Her father was. Rough music might not have satisfied Joe Baker’s desire for revenge.’
Clemence fell silent, and it was clear she was shaken. Eventually she said, ‘It still seems to me like suicide. Poor Alwyn was so moody at that time. He was always the weak link of the group. Elfie was still with Gavin and after the plagiarism was revealed Alwyn hadn’t much career to look forward to. On the other hand, I grant you Joe was a nasty piece of work. What about the physical evidence of murder?’
‘Nothing to prove or disprove it. Were you in Fernbourne at the time?’
‘I was. Birdie was in London; she’d gone to stay with her parents for the weekend, but Alwyn had fallen out with them over the plagiarism – not unnaturally – so he stayed behind. Birdie said he was in a strange mood and asked if I could go over and cheer him up. I couldn’t. It was my mother’s birthday and I was in Sevenoaks with my parents. So when Birdie rang me up in a state the next afternoon with the news, I assumed as we all did that it was suicide. I agree that theoretically Baker could have had a motive for killing him. Alwyn always looked so delicate but he had a strong will, and from hindsight I wouldn’t have thought that went with suicide, but then I’m not a psychologist. Nor, again from hindsight, do I think those lines of verse he left for Birdie and Elfie would be his preferred farewell. He loved both of them, and it seems more likely he would have left letters.’
‘Unless he assumed they would know his reasons all too well. Anyway, he’d been drinking—’
‘Drinking?’ she interrupted. ‘Alwyn? Surely not. He almost never drank.’
‘Perhaps in secret?’
‘It’s possible.’ Clemence looked doubtful. ‘Birdie still firmly believes it was suicide?’
‘Yes.’
She thought for a moment. ‘I should tell you about Jenny.’
‘You knew her well?’
‘We all did. She had great beauty plus a strange kind of fascination. She had magnetic eyes that seemed to draw you in and yet keep you at a distance at the same time. The perfect Mona Lisa type. That’s why we used her as our model.’
So that was it. No wonder Clemence had been reticent on the subject. ‘You said our model – not just yours then?’
‘Very much not. We all used her – how terrible that word sounds in this context. I drew and painted her several times. Elfie used her a great deal and so did Roy. He was a poet first and foremost but he was a gifted book illustrator too. That was going out of fashion, but it still had a market.’
‘What about Alwyn?’
‘He did some illustration work too, and so did Birdie. In fact the only one of us whom she didn’t model for was Gavin, although even he wrote the sultry village maiden into a novel once or twice.’
‘Did she just visit you as a model or come to the meetings as well?’
‘Sometimes the latter, if there was a discussion going on that concerned her pose or her use in a particular style of illustration or painting. She had a natural talent for posing and like Lizzie Siddal for the Pre-Raphaelites she became part of the Five’s lives.’
‘And yet no one mentioned her to us,’ Georgia pointed out, ‘even though we were taken round the manor.’
‘There’s a simple reason for that,’ Clemence said immediately. ‘She left the village late in 1940, very suddenly. Obviously, looking back, I realize she was pregnant, but Joe said she’d joined the women’s forces and that was that. Life moved on fast and we were all moving in different directions because of the war, so we didn’t notice – in a professional sense – that she was no longer there, until the war was over and we began our serious work again. We asked for her, and found out she hadn’t returned to the village. We assumed she’d married and had no reason to connect her departure with the Fernbourne Five, until the whispers started going round. The better known we became for our post-war work, the less we thought back to those early days. The Jenny we knew belonged with those, so it was a shock when we heard about the rough music.’
‘Didn’t you think it strange that that took place so long after the event?’
‘Yes,’ Clemence replied. ‘I talked to Joe and he said he’d only just learned the truth of it.’
So that confirmed Birdie’s memory. ‘And Alwyn? Did you talk to him?’ Georgia asked.
‘No. That was Gavin’s business if anyone’s.’
‘Did he talk to Alwyn?’
‘I don’t know.’ She looked at them almost in appeal. ‘How could I? I was head over heels in love with Gavin and any meeting I sought with him alone would have Elfie hot on my trail.’
‘But she no longer loved him.’
Clemence laughed. ‘Georgia, Georgia … When did that ever stop jealousy? Come with me,’ she continued briskly. ‘I took a taxi to Medlars, but if you return me to my home after we’ve finished here, I’ll show you Jenny’s portrait. Now you know something about her, you need to understand more.’
Georgia didn’t dare look at Luke, but she could sense his reaction: There goes the afternoon.
‘And you, Luke, might spot a suitable jacket design for your reprints,’ Clemence added.
‘Thank you,’ he managed to say with every appearance of truth.
Luckily, Georgia could see, once they were in the studio at the coach house, that he was genuinely interested on his own behalf. The attic space of the coach house formed a first floor, to which a solid staircase led. Part of it was converted into a studio, as in Shaw Cottage, and here canvases were stacked in piles against the walls. Clemence walked over to one of them, and selected the canvas she wanted, which Luke rushed to help her lift out and place on an easel.
It was an oil, about four feet by three, with a stylized elongated figure of a woman in a black dress on the left side of the picture, and in the background on the right behind her shoulder, an unidentifiable man in shadow.. His whole body language seemed to be straining to focus on the woman, who was posed sideways to the viewers, but whose head was turned with a sly smile towards them as though she shared some secret with them. Striking though the subject of the painting was, Georgia realized that it was in fact the man to whom the eye was drawn; it was he and not the woman who was disturbing. Was it he or she from whom the power stemmed?
‘I called it “The Abdication”,’ Clemence remarked. ‘After Mrs Simpson of course, and the late Edward VIII cum Duke of Windsor, although it was intended to have universal application. Gavin didn’t like it, so I never sold it. Anyway, the moment had passed. George VI was on the throne and war was looming. Besides –’ Clemence frowned – ‘it never fully satisfied me.’
‘It’s hard to tell who the victim is and who the pursuer,’ Georgia said. ‘Did you mean that?’
Clemence looked at her. ‘No,’ she said, startled. ‘And …’ She looked at the painting again from a distance for a moment or two. ‘I think that’s it, Georgia. It’s not the abdication at all, or the woman. It’s a painting of a seducer.’ A further pause. ‘No, that’s not it either. Stronger, str
onger,’ she said to herself. ‘How odd. I didn’t see …’ Then she pulled herself together. ‘Damien Trent wanted to know about Jenny Baker too. He was coming to see me. But he was murdered before he could do so.’
‘Murdered, Clemence?’
The new voice took Georgia by surprise. Matthew Hunt had come up the stairs without their noticing, and Clemence, she could see, was not amused.
This seemed not to worry Matthew in the least. ‘I heard you talking up here,’ he said, his eyes on Georgia and Luke, ‘and assumed it was Janie with you. Now I see it is Miss Marsh again. And did I hear Jenny Baker’s name mentioned?’
‘Probably,’ Luke stepped in. ‘Why not?’
Matthew looked uncertain. ‘And you are?’
‘The trust’s prospective publisher, Luke Frost. I gather Jenny was the model for this painting?’ Luke turned, rather ostentatiously, back to Clemence.
‘Is that the painting my father so disliked?’ Matthew asked, peering at it.
‘It is,’ Clemence said shortly.
‘Then there’s no way the trust could authorize its use.’
‘Has that been put to the board?’ Clemence asked crossly. ‘Perhaps, Matthew, it’s high time it was shown.’ Her eyes were fixed on her stepson. ‘Whatever its message.’
‘Now, now, Clemence,’ Matthew said jovially. ‘You know you’re only teasing.’
‘I seldom tease where Gavin is concerned,’ was her rejoinder.
‘Nor I about the reputation of the Fernbourne Five.’ Matthew’s voice was becoming distinctly steely. ‘Is that why Jenny Baker’s name seems to have arisen again, courtesy of Miss Marsh?’
‘Yes,’ Georgia replied. There was a subtext here which she could not read – and that was obviously intentional. ‘She provides one motive for Alwyn’s murder.’
‘Does Birdie agree? I’m sure you’ve wasted no time in acquainting her with your theory?’
‘No. She believes Alwyn committed suicide.’
Matthew ignored her, concentrating on Clemence, who – reluctantly it seemed to Georgia – said, ‘You appear not to have solid evidence to the contrary.’
‘Nor ever will have,’ Matthew declared easily. ‘Just as well, as I’m sure Mr and Miss Marsh are certain that you, myself and Birdie are all in one vast conspiracy to keep them away from some ghastly secret that unfortunately has escaped us.’
‘I’m sure that’s right, Matthew,’ Clemence said gently.
Another look passed between them, and Matthew said no more.
‘I’m sure she was giving us a hint, Peter,’ Georgia said, when she reported back to her father later.
‘About what?’
‘That there’s more to this question of Jenny Baker and Alwyn than we thought.’
‘Then why didn’t she make it clearer?’
‘Because she’s loyal to the group.’
‘That portrait you mentioned,’ Peter said thoughtfully. ‘Has it occurred to you that Clemence might be loyal not to the group, but to her late husband?’
Eight
‘I don’t buy it.’ Georgia was adamant, even though Peter and she had argued on and off for most of the following day. ‘Clemence wouldn’t deliberately have dropped a hint that something was amiss if the clue led to Gavin. Your theory rests on the assumption that the anonymous man in the portrait of Jenny was Gavin. Clemence didn’t say that. Only that he didn’t like the picture. Ergo, it’s no evidence against Gavin.’
‘Not accepted,’ Peter replied for the umpteenth time. ‘Suspects Anonymous—’
‘Is a computer program. Not a substitute for the human brain.’
‘You’re not usually so pretentious,’ was the mild reply.
‘I’m not usually so certain.’
Peter sighed. ‘Don’t give me the you-don’t-understand-the-female-psyche line.’
‘I won’t, but I do think I understand the way Clemence works. If Gavin were involved in bringing about Alwyn’s suicide or murder then she would say nothing likely to make us suspect he was.’ Why on earth couldn’t Peter admit that?
‘Even if it meant someone else suffering?’
‘Too general a supposition,’ she retorted briskly.
‘Very well. How about this for circumstantial evidence? Even you can’t avoid acknowledging that Gavin was heavily involved in the events surrounding Alwyn’s death. It was he who instigated the plagiarism accusation. It was his wife who was the subject of a tug of war between Alwyn and himself. And you said yourself that Clemence looked shaken at the suggestion that Alwyn’s suicide really might have been murder.’
They were getting nowhere, Georgia thought in despair, and time was passing. Even though it was still warm enough for them to be sitting in the garden, the dying September sun announced the onset of autumn. Spiders’ webs shimmered in the shrubbery, with their owners balefully sizing up their chances of taking up residence in the house. The Michaelmas daisies were drawing bees in their hordes. No sign of a declining bee population here.
Decades ago the Fernbourne Five could have been sitting in the manor grounds or Shaw Cottage in much the same way as she and Peter today, and she wondered what stresses and tensions would have been present amongst them that she and Peter hadn’t yet grasped. Perhaps there had been none. Perhaps the hindsight of today’s angst-driven lifestyle was driving them to think there were. And yet poetry was born out of emotion, and the creation of the Fernbourne Five had led to tragedy one way or another for at least three of its members.
‘Suspects Anonymous,’ Peter tried again, ‘created by your cousin, Georgia, and therefore not lightly to be dismissed, puts Gavin in the next frame to Joe Baker’s.’
‘On what basis?’ This threw her slightly. Much as she might deride Suspects Anonymous, Peter was right. Anything that Charlie produced had at least to be considered.
‘Good old motive. We can’t go back and do a crime scene investigation, so we have to look at the most likely explanation first.’
‘And that’s still suicide,’ Georgia muttered defiantly, whether through mere rebellion or something more complicated. She couldn’t tell whether she might be drawing away from this case for sound reasons or through her reluctance to face what might be found. But if so, why?
She knew the answer was probably still Damien Trent. There were passions now being reawakened, of which his murder was likely to have been one manifestation. That made the path ahead not only more dangerous, but at the same time inevitable if she were ever to get rid of the guilt she felt for not having probed further during her conversation with him. His face seemed superimposed on every mental image she had about the Fernbourne Five, but stepping into these dark woods of the past now brought fear as well as challenge.
Peter disagreed. ‘Murder. Assuming – as Mike now seems to think – that Damien Trent was murdered possibly for his family connection, but more likely for his investigations into the Fernbourne Five, Alwyn Field’s suicide or murder is highly relevant.’
‘But Damien went to see Molly Sandford first. Which brings Roy into it.’
‘Nevertheless, Birdie and Clemence were on his list and we have to start somewhere. I vote for Alwyn still. Let’s assume his death was murder, with the proviso that the fingerprints on time could have been caused by the injustice of the allegations leading to suicide against him. I’d back murder all the way. There are too many oddities here. Dreamer poet turning rapist? Possible but unlikely. Idealist poet turning plagiarist? Same again. Romantic lover poet kills himself? Possible, but far more likely he would stay alive and write about how sad he felt. He wasn’t rejected by Elfie as a person, remember. She still loved him despite the plagiarism, so we’re told. We don’t know her reaction to the rough music, but nevertheless while he was alive there was still some hope for the future.’
‘I suppose so,’ Georgia said reluctantly.
‘So Gavin fits the frame for the murder. You said it was the man who dominated the painting, despite being in the background. If it was Gavin, he
was most certainly a controller. Clemence wouldn’t consciously have seen him that way, but that’s not unusual for an artist, even if she were in love with him. Gavin had most to lose if Alwyn remained alive. Game, set and match?’ Peter concluded complacently.
‘Only,’ she persisted, ‘if Gavin still loved Elfie. But he loved Clemence.’
‘Precisely,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Clemence said it was only later he loved her, but was it? Could I remind you that Elfie moved into Shaw Cottage after Alwyn’s death? To mourn his memory? Possible, but another reason could just be, dear Georgia—’
‘She’d discovered Gavin was in love with Clemence.’
Peter looked taken aback. ‘Possibly, but even more probably—’
Georgia saw immediately where this was justifiably leading and finished for him, ‘Elfie had discovered Gavin had murdered Alwyn.’
‘Any pleas for the defence?’
She was so shaken that for the moment she couldn’t think of any, but then she rallied. ‘Yes. What motive would he have for murdering Alwyn in 1949? Elfie was living at home and looking after darling baby Matthew.’
‘The affair could still have been going on,’ he said reasonably. ‘Anyway, do we know her reasons for staying with little Mattie?’
‘Of course.’
‘No. We only know the story as handed down and given in Matthew’s book. Bearing in mind that Matthew was born – from memory, since the dratted book is in the house – in 1936, he would, assuming he followed his father’s pattern of schooling, have been at boarding school by 1947, certainly by 1949.’
‘You mean,’ Georgia grappled with this theory, ‘Gavin could have faked this plagiarism charge, hoping it would put Elfie off Alwyn, and when it didn’t, and she then announced her intention of leaving him after all, he decided to spike her guns. Clemence’s claim that he didn’t care about Elfie was the party line.’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’ Georgia immediately contradicted herself, determined to defend Clemence. ‘There’s the matter of the rape too. That might have put Elfie off, don’t you think?’