He felt sorry for her. Nothing was ever that simple, and it sounded to him as if she had tried to bluff a hand at poker, and lost. "Had he met Mrs. Lascelles before the funeral?"
"Not as far as I know I hadn't, so I can't imagine how he could have done."
"But he knew Mrs. Gillespie?"
She looked out across the garden, playing for time. "If he did, then it wasn't through me. He never mentioned meeting her."
DS Cooper's already lively interest in the absent Jack Blakeney was growing. "Why did he go to the funeral?"
"Because I asked him to." She straightened. "I hate funerals but I always feel I have to go to them. It seems so churlish to turn your back on a patient the minute they're dead. Jack was very good about lending support." Unexpectedly, she laughed. "To tell you the truth, I think he rather fancies himself in his black overcoat. He enjoys looking satanic."
Satanic. The Sergeant pondered over the word. Duncan Orloff had said Mathilda liked Blakeney. Mrs. Lascelles had described him as "a peculiar man who said very little and then demanded to be taken home." Ruth had found him "intimidating." The vicar, on the other hand, had had a great deal to say when Cooper had approached him about the various members of the funeral congregation. "Jack Blakeney? He's an artist though not a very successful one, poor chap. If it wasn't for Sarah, he'd be starving. Matter of fact, I like his work. I'd buy a canvas if only he'd lower his sights a little, but he knows his worth, or says he does, and refuses to sell himself cheap. Did he know Mathilda? Yes, he must have done. I saw him leaving her house one day with his sketchpad under his arm. She'd have been a wonderful subject for his type of work. He couldn't have resisted her."
He took the bull by the horns. "The Reverend Matthews tells me your husband was painting a portrait of Mrs. Gillespie. He must have known her quite well to do that." He lit another cigarette and watched Sarah through the smoke.
She sat for a long time in silence, contemplating a distant cow in a far field. "I feel inclined to say I won't answer any more questions until my solicitor's present," she murmured at last, "except that I have a nasty feeling you'd regard that as suspicious." He didn't say anything, so she glanced at him. There was no sympathy in the pleasant face, only a patient confidence that she would answer in the affirmative, with or without a solicitor. She sighed. "I could deny a portrait quite easily. They're all in the studio, and there isn't a chance in a million you'd recognize Mathilda's. Jack doesn't paint faces. He paints personalities. And you have to understand his colour-coding and the way he uses dynamics in shape, depth and perspective to interpret what he's done."
"But you're not going to deny it?" he suggested.
"Only because Jack won't, and I'm not particularly keen to perjure myself." She smiled and her eyes lit with enthusiasm. "Actually, it's brilliant. I think it's probably the best thing he's ever done. I found it yesterday just before you came." She pulled a wry face. "I knew it would be there because of something Ruth said. According to her, Jack mentioned that Mathilda called me her scold's bridle." She sighed again. "And he couldn't have known that unless Mathilda had told him, because I never did."
"May I see this painting?"
She ignored the question. "He wouldn't have murdered her, Sergeant, not for money, anyway. Jack despises materialism. The only use he has for money is as a guide to the value of his genius. Which is why he never sells anything. His own valuation of his art is rather higher than everybody else's." She smiled at his frown of disbelief. "Actually, it makes sense in a funny sort of way, but it's irritating because it's so conceited. The argument goes something like this: your average prole is incapable of recognizing genius so he won't be interested in buying your picture whatever price you put on it. While a Renaissance man, on the other hand, will recognize genius and will pay handsomely for it. Ergo, if you're a genius, you put a high price on yourself and wait for the right person to come and discover you."
"If you'll pardon the language, Dr. Blakeney, that is bullshit." He felt quite angry. "The man's conceit must be colossal. Has anyone else said he's a genius?"
"No one said Van Gogh was a genius either until after he was dead." Why, she wondered, did Jack's single-minded view of himself always put people's backs up? Was it because, in an uncertain world, his certainty was threatening? "It really doesn't matter," she said calmly, "what sort of an artist Jack is. Good, bad, indifferent. I happen to think he's good, but that's a personal opinion. The point is he would never have killed Mathilda for her money, assuming he knew she'd made the will in my favour, which I doubt. Why should she have told him when she never told me?"
"Except that he thought you were going to divorce him and push him into the cold."
"Hardly. That would leave me enjoying the loot all by myself, wouldn't it? How could he get his hands on the inheritance if he and I were divorced?" I'll be going for a fifty-fifty split ... She pushed that thought away. "And in any case, two weeks ago when Mathilda died, he didn't know I wanted to divorce him. How could he? I didn't know myself."
Cooper took that with a pinch of salt. "These things don't happen out of the blue, Dr. Blakeney. He must have had an inkling that the marriage was in difficulties."
"You're underestimating Jack's egotism," she answered with a somewhat bitter irony. "He's far too self-centred to notice anyone else's unhappiness unless he's painting them. Believe me, my decision did come out of the blue. For him, anyway."
He puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette. "Do you expect him to come back at all?"
"Oh, yes. He'll want to collect his paintings if nothing else."
"Good. Some of the fingerprints we lifted may well be his. It will help if we can eliminate them. Yours, too, of course. There'll be a team taking prints in Fontwell on Wednesday morning. I assume you've no objections to giving yours? They'll be destroyed afterwards." He took her silence for assent. "You say you don't know where your husband is, but can you think of anyone who might be in contact with him?"
"Only my solicitor. He's promised to let me know the minute he hears anything."
The Sergeant dropped his cigarette end on to the damp grass and stood up, drawing his mackintosh about him. "No friends he might have gone to?"
"I've tried everyone I can think of. He's not been in touch with any of them."
"Then perhaps you'll be so kind as to write out your solicitor's name and phone number while I take a look at this painting." He grinned. "In view of what you've said, I'm fascinated to see if I can make anything of it."
Sarah found his careful appraisal of the picture rather impressive. He stood for a long time without saying anything, then asked her if Jack had done a portrait of her. She fetched hers from the drawing-room and placed it alongside the one of Mathilda. He resumed his silent study.
"Well," he said at last, "you're quite right. I would never have guessed that this was a portrait of Mrs. Gillespie, any more than I would have guessed that that was a portrait of you. I can see why no one else considers him a genius."
Sarah's disappointment surprised her. But what had she expected? He was a country policeman, not a Renaissance man. She forced the polite smile to her lips that was her customary response to other people's often rude comments on Jack's paintings and wondered, not for the first time, why she was the only person who seemed able to appreciate them. It wasn't as if she were blinded by love-rather the reverse in fact-and yet, to her, the portrait of Mathilda was extraordinary and brilliant. Jack had worked layer on layer to bring a deep golden translucence into the heart of the painting-Mathilda's wit, she thought, shining through the complex blues and greys of cruelty and cynicism. And round it all the browns of despair and repression, and the rusted red of iron, shorthand in Jack's work for backbone and character, but moulded here into the shape of the scold's bridle.
She shrugged. After all, perhaps it was a mercy the Sergeant couldn't see it. "As I said, he paints personalities and not faces."
"When did he paint the one of you?"
"Six years ago."
"And has your personality changed in six years?"
"I shouldn't think so. Personalities change very little, Sergeant, which is why Jack likes to paint them. You are what you are. A generous person remains generous. A bully remains a bully. You can smooth the rough edges but you can't transform the core. Once painted, the personality should be recognizable for ever."
He rubbed his hands together in anticipation of a challenge. "Then let's see if I can work out his system. There's a lot of green in yours and your most obvious characteristics are sympathy-no-" he contradicted himself immediately, "empathy-you enter into other people's feelings, you don't make a judgement on them. So, empathy, honour-you're an honourable woman or you wouldn't feel so racked with guilt about this bequest-truthful-most people would have lied about this painting-nice." He turned to look at her. "Does niceness count as a personality trait or is it too flabby?"
She laughed. "Far too flabby, and you're ignoring the unpleasant aspects. Jack sees two sides to everybody."
"All right." He stared at her portrait. "You're a very opinionated woman who is confident enough to fly in the face of established fact, otherwise you wouldn't have liked Mrs. Gillespie. A corollary to that is that you are also naive or your views wouldn't be so divergent from everyone else's. You're inclined to be rash or you wouldn't be regretting your husband's departure, and that implies a depth of affection for hopeless causes which is probably why you became a doctor and probably, too, why you were so fond of the old bitch in this amazing painting next to you. How am I doing for a prole?"
She gave a surprised chuckle. "Well, I don't think you are a prole," she said. "Jack would adore you. Renaissance man in all his glory. They are good, aren't they?"
"How much does he charge for them?"
"He's only ever sold one. It was a portrait of one of his lovers. He got ten thousand pounds for it. The man who bought it was a Bond Street dealer, who said Jack was the most exciting artist he'd ever come across. We thought our ship had come in, then three months later the poor soul was dead, and no one's expressed an interest since."
"That's not true. The Reverend Matthews told me he'd buy a canvas like a shot if they were cheaper. Come to that, so would I. Has he ever done a man and wife? I'd go to two thousand for me and the old girl over the mantelpiece." He studied Mathilda closely. "I take it the gold is her one redeeming feature of humour. My old lady's a laugh a minute. She'd be gold through and through. I'd love to see it."
There was a sound behind them. "And what colour would you be?" asked Jack's amused voice.
Sarah's heart leapt, but Sergeant Cooper only eyed him thoughtfully for a moment or two. "Assuming I've interpreted these pictures correctly, sir, I'd say a blend of blues and purples, for hard-headed cynicism-cum-realism, common to your wife and Mrs. Gillespie, some greens which I think must represent the decency and honour of Dr. Blakeney because they are markedly absent from Mrs. Gillespie's portrait," he smiled, "and a great deal of black."
"Why black?"
"Because I'm in the dark," he said with ponderous humour, fishing his warrant card from his inside pocket. "Detective Sergeant Cooper, sir, Learmouth Police. I'm enquiring into the death of Mrs. Mathilda Gillespie of Cedar House, Fontwell. Perhaps you'd like to tell me why she sat for you with the scold's bridle on her head? In view of the way she died, I find that fascinating."
Arthritis is a brute. It makes one so vulnerable. If I were a less cynical woman, I would say Sarah has the gift of healing, though, frankfy, I'm inclined to think anyone would have been an improvement on that old fool, Hendry. He was lazy, of course, and didn't bother to keep up his reading. Sarah tells me there have been huge advances in the field which he obviously knew nothing about. I am rather inclined to sue, if not on my own behalf, then on Joanna's. Clearly, it was he who set her on the path to addiction.
Sarah asked me today how I was, and I answered with a line from
King Lear
: "I grow; I prosper. Now, gods, stand up for bastards." She quite naturally assumed I was referring to myself, laughed good-naturedfy and said: "A bitch, possibly, Mathilda, but never a bastard. There's only one bastard I know, and that's Jack." I asked her what he had done to deserve such an appellation. "He takes my love for granted," she said, "and offers his to anyone who's foolish enough to flatter him."
How very flawed are human relationships. This is not a Jack I recognize. He guards his love as jealously as he guards his art. The truth, I think, is that Sarah perceives both herself and him "through a glass darkly." She believes he strays, but only, I suspect, because she insists on using his effect on women as a criterion by which to judge him. His passions frighten her because they exist outside her control, and she is less adept than she thinks she is at seeing where he directs them.
I adore the man. He encourages me to "dare damnation," for what is life if it is not a rebellion against death .
*6*
Violet Orloff stood motionless in the kitchen of Wing Cottage, listening to the row that had broken out in the hall of Cedar House. She had the guilty look of an eavesdropper, torn between going and staying, but, unlike most eavesdroppers, she was free of the fear of discovery, and curiosity won out. She took a glass from the dishwasher, placed the rim against the wall, then pressed her ear to the base. The voices drew closer immediately. Perhaps it was a mercy she couldn't see herself. There was something indecent and furtive about the way she bent to listen, and her face wore the same expression that a Peeping Tom might wear as he peers through a window to see a woman in the nude. Excited. Leering. Expectant.
"...think I don't know what you do in London? You're a fucking whore, and Granny knew it, too. It's your bloody fault all this, and now you're planning to whore him, I suppose, to cut me out."
"Don't you dare speak to me like that. I've a damn good mind to wash my hands of you. Do you think I care tuppence whether you get to university or not?"
"That's you every time. Jealousy, jealousy, fucking jealousy! You can't stand me doing anything you didn't do."
"I'm warning you, Ruth, I won't listen to this."
"Why not? Because it's true, and the truth hurts?" The girl's voice was tearful. "Why can't you behave like a mother sometimes? Granny was more of a mother than you are. All you've ever done is hate me. I didn't ask to be born, did I?"
"That's childish."
"You hate me because my father loved me."
"Don't be absurd."
"It's true. Granny told me. She said Steven used to moon over me, calling me his angel, and you used to fly into a temper. She said if you and Steven had got a divorce, then Steven wouldn't be dead."
Joanna's voice was icy. "And you believed her, of course, because it's what you wanted to hear. You're your grandmother all over again, Ruth. I thought there'd be an end of it once she was dead but I couldn't have been more wrong, could I? You've inherited every drop of poison that was in her."
"Oh, that's great! Walk away, just like you always do. When are you going to face up to a problem, Mother, instead of pretending it doesn't exist? Granny always said that was your one true accomplishment, to brush every unpleasantness under the carpet, and then carry on as if nothing had happened. For Christ's sake"-her voice rose to a shout-"you heard the detective." She must have caught her mother's attention because her tone dropped again. "The police think Granny was murdered. So what am I supposed to tell them?"
"The truth."
Ruth gave a wild laugh. "Fine. So I tell them what you spend your money on, do I? I tell them Granny and Dr. Hendry thought you were so bloody mad they were thinking of having you committed? Jesus"-her voice broke-"I suppose I might just as well be really honest and tell them how you tried to kill me. Or do I keep quiet because if I don't we won't have a hope in hell's chance of putting in a counter-claim for the money?
"You're not allowed to benefit from the murder of your mother, you know."
The silence went on for so long that Violet Orloff began to wonder if they had mov
ed to another part of the house.
"It's entirely up to you, Ruth. I've no compunction at all about saying you were here the day your grandmother died. You shouldn't have stolen her earrings, you stupid little bitch. Or, for that matter, every other damn thing your sticky little fingers couldn't resist. You knew her as well as I did. Did you really think she wouldn't notice?" Joanna's voice grated with sarcasm. "She made a list and left it in her bedside drawer. If I hadn't destroyed it you'd be under arrest by now. You're making no secret of your panic over this idiotic will, so the police will have no trouble believing that if you were desperate enough to steal from your grandmother, you were probably desperate enough to murder her as well. So I suggest we both keep our mouths shut, don't you?"
A door was slammed so forcefully that Violet felt the vibrations in her kitchen.
Jack perched on his stool and rubbed his unshaven jaw, squinting at the policeman through half-closed lids. Satanic, thought DS Cooper, suited him well. He was very dark with glittering eyes in a hawklike face, but there were too many laughter-lines for a Dracula. If this man was a devil, he was a merry one. He reminded Cooper of an unrepentant Irish recidivist he had arrested on innumerable occasions over a period of twenty years. There was the same "take-me-as-I-am" expression, a look of such startling challenge that people who had it were impossible to ignore. He wondered with sudden curiosity if the same expression had looked out of Mathilda Gillespie's eyes. He hadn't noticed it on the video, but then the camera invariably lied. If it didn't, no one would tolerate having their picture taken. "I'll do it," said Jack abruptly.
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