by Peter Helton
‘That’s not possible at the moment.’
‘You are keeping secrets, sensei?’
‘No, the police have it. All my drawing gear.’
‘What can the police want with your drawing things?’
‘Nothing. It was just that I had dumped it at the scene of Rachel’s murder and it got bagged up along with the rest.’
‘And will the police study your sketchbook, do you think?’
‘Why should they be interested in my sketchbook?’
‘They have been looking at a lot of sketchbooks. All morning.’
‘Have they? I wonder why.’ If the police had been looking at students’ sketchbooks then I had to hand it to Needham. Even while he had me arrested he was already working on the hypothesis that the drawing in my book wasn’t by my hand, despite appearances to the contrary, and he had been looking for a candidate. My esteem of the man’s brains was on the rise.
Back in Studio One all was quiet business – Dawn was sitting with her nose six inches away from the canvas like a short-sighted Monet, watching wispy skeins of pink paint dry. Pink? What had happened to the darkly stormy canvas, all greys and dirty purples, that Rachel’s arrival had spawned? This, by comparison, looked like a celebration. Hufnagel – somehow he never became Kurt in my mind – was scrutinizing his composition while absentmindedly wiping a brush on his jacket. The only one who appeared to be working hard was the half-naked Petronela, standing in the middle of Hufnagel’s arrangement, surrounded by humming blow heaters. ‘Take a break, Petronela,’ I said.
‘Oh, good, I am for a desperate fag,’ she said.
A flash of annoyance crossed Hufnagel’s face as he looked up at me.
‘This one’s real, remember?’ I tapped my watch. ‘Breaks every thirty minutes, all right?’ I picked up my second-edition sketch bag and filled a plastic bottle with water. ‘If anyone wants me I am in the woods, drawing.’
‘I can’t believe you get paid for that,’ Hufnagel said, throwing his brush on to his painting table in a gesture of mock disgust. ‘You jammy bastard.’
I was beginning to think of him as Huffniggle too. But perhaps I was quite jammy, I thought, as I dodged the tobacco cloud around Petronela who was – fully covered up now – smoking just outside. As I passed the first big hulking sculpture, I found Ben Creeling behind it, trying to hide from me.
‘Ben?’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re really into drawing, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. It’s important. Fundamental.’
‘I agree. But I wonder if you have had enough opportunity to draw the male form. Do you think we should let Petronela go and instead hire a male model for the rest of the year?’
There was panic in his eyes. ‘No.’
‘Then stop creeping around her and get on with your assignment.’
By now I knew my way around the woods a little better and found my spot without first having to get lost. I unpacked my virginal sketchbook, pencils and paints and began the process of recording the place all over again. Now the carved I>
SIXTEEN
With only a few short days (or so it seemed) to go until the anniversary exhibition was to be hung, I was keen to get some painting done. There had been enough interruptions to throw the most dedicated painter. For starters there was the nagging feeling that I should be watching Martin Byers, to either nail him or exonerate him for his suspicious wife. Then there was the very real possibility that a killer was walking free up here in Batcombe House, not to mention the confiscation of my drawings. At least any doubts I’d had over Annis’s commitment to the wobbly status quo of our relationship had been energetically dispelled by her last night, and my worries about failing my students had been diminished by seeing them all stagger around with canvases and paints and by Kroog growling ‘You’re doing fine, Honeysett’ as she wheezed past me this morning (whilst helping to carry an 18-foot-long piece of inch-thick iron towards the sculpture sheds with her pipe in her mouth). I had now got into the habit of entering straight through the French windows of Studio One since they were always unlocked – I doubted there still existed keys for them – and thereby avoiding the front entrance all together. As I approached I could see that in fact one leaf of the door stood open; perhaps I was not alone in wanting an early start? Just as I was about to step through it, something in my peripheral vision caught my eye.
On the sandstone wall to the left of the French window, directly at my eye level, was the butterfly symbol. But this time it had not been carved, scratched, drawn or painted. The stone had darkened considerably over the many years since the house was first built and a bloom of grey-green algae was spreading up the side of the building. This time the I>
I stepped a little more warily across the threshold after this. The studio was empty. There was no sign of Dawn or Hufnagel. I dumped my bag, got out the kettle from where I hid it at night and filled it. I had brought my own coffee and a tiny cafetière to bring some much needed beverage culture to the proceedings. Coffee made, I sat in my chair, patted my pockets for cigarettes, remembered that I didn’t smoke any more, and settled back to study the excruciatingly slow development of my canvas. It didn’t look too bad this morning. I had made a bit more progress in fact than I remembered, and despite the pressure I was under, the quality of the brushwork had not suffered at all – in fact some of the last passages were very pleasing; it seemed to me that I was fast finding my feet in the world of figurative painting.
Dawn cluttered into the room, already talking. ‘I can smell real coffee, please tell me there’s a pot of the stuff somewhere.’ I handed her the empty cafetière and my tin of Guatemalan coffee. She read the tin. ‘You posh git.’
‘I’m not posh, just a glutton.’
‘Yeah, right.’
Coffee brewed, she stopped beside me to look at my canvas. ‘I do like what you’ve done since last night. You must have started early this morning.’
‘No, haven’t done anything yet, just got here.’
‘Really?’ She stepped up to the canvas and peered at it from eight inches away as painters do. ‘What about this passage here?’ She pointed down the length of one tree trunk. ‘You definitely hadn’t painted that when you left yesterday, because I remember thinking that I’d be interested to watch how you’d render the lichen and moss on that.’
I nearly spilled my coffee leaping from my chair. I sniffed around the canvas, stared at my palette, scrutinized my brushes. And I came to an unusual conclusion: ‘I didn’t paint that.’
Dawn nearly drowned on a mouthful of hot coffee. ‘You what?’ she spluttered.
‘You’re right, I hadn’t painted that bit when I left yesterday. I didn’t paint it at all. Someone else did.’
Dawn stared at me, then the canvas, then me again. ‘You’re serious. How bizarre is that?’
‘They did a bloody good job of it. There I was, admiring my own brushwork, and it was someone else’s. Not that I’m incapable of admiring other people’s work, but you don’t expect to find it in your own painting.’
‘But who could have done it?’
‘Plenty of painters around, aren’t there?’
‘True, I don’t mean would have but not all of them could have done it. That’s good painting, it’s a great passage and fits in completely with your style. I couldn’t tell it was by someone else.’
‘Yes. That’s what worries me.’
‘What do you mean? Ha! Perhaps they’ll finish the whole painting for you.’
Until that moment Dawn had been high on my suspect list for Rachel’s murder and for the drawing of her body in my
sketchbook. But looking at her now and listening to her, I did what any unprofessional idiot would do. I changed my mind. She couldn’t possibly be the one. Could she? So I sat down and told her all about the drawing in the sketchbook, the drawing I had, until five minutes ago, still suspected her of doing.
She hunched her shoulders and made herself small on her chair. ‘That is so creepy, Chris. That would really have freaked me out. So not only do we have a murderer up here, they are also trying to frame you. I’d be careful if I were you.’
‘I am being careful. But who? At least we know it’s someone who can draw.’
‘True. That knocks a few people off the suspect list, like Anne and Claire. And Mrs Washbrook. Unless they have suddenly developed artistic talent.’
‘Even quite a few with talent are not good enough to have done the drawing in my sketchbook. As for this painting – there are even fewer.’ I decided to tell Dawn the rest of it. I took her outside and showed her the I>
‘Oh, wait, I’ve seen that before somewhere. Somewhere around here, can’t remember exactly where now.’
‘I saw it on a tree near where I’ve been drawing and I saw it on Landacker’s front gate, the gate to his property. He also had his place broken into.’
‘I know, you said. This is beginning to get scary, you know. Of course, we don’t know for sure that it’s connected: Rachel’s death and that x-motif everywhere.’
‘If it was just around here I’d think nothing of it, just some idiot tag. But on Landacker’s gate? Unless the idiot who does it lives in his village, of course. But my painting … I can’t get over that.’
We went back inside and stared some more at my canvas. Dawn rolled herself a cigarette and when she wordlessly handed me her tobacco pouch I absentmindedly rolled myself one and lit it. Her black tobacco made me cough a bit at first but I soon got used to it.
All it takes to get back into a twenty-a-day habit is one cigarette.
Dawn scrutinized her own canvas but pronounced it untouched: ‘One hundred per cent Dawn Fowling. No little helpers here.’
Outside a police officer walked past, carrying a box file – heartwarming to see they still had those; harder to lose than a USB stick, I supposed – while a student on a bicycle was practising her wheelies on the lawn and the sound of metal grinding and banging drifted across from the sculpture sheds. Another day at the Bath Arts Academy was under way. I had a go at cleaning my palette, which you have to do from time to time or your colours turn to mud. (Unless of course you are planning to paint mud, in which case you’re already there.)
Half an hour later Hufnagel slouched through the door. Outside of his own shambolic house, he moved almost hesitantly and opened doors only just far enough to squeeze through the gap sideways. He acknowledged us with a friendly grunt and let himself fall into his painting chair. I was just about to tell him about my painting mystery when he shot out of his chair again and started swearing as though he had sat on a nail.
‘What happened?’ I asked when he ran out of breath.
‘What ha— Are you blind? Is this some kind of joke? Is this a wind-up? Did you do this?’
‘Do what?’
‘That, that!’ He pointed furiously at his canvas.
I looked. He was making good progress; the figure and imaginary landscape were taking shape. ‘I can’t see it.’
‘Precisely! It’s gone! The arrow is gone. Some bastard painted over it. If I find who has done this …’ His hands were convulsing in a strangling motion.
In his painting, the bare-breasted Petronela was holding the bow in one hand, and her other hand was drawn back close to her cheek. But no arrow. ‘Painted over it? Are you sure you put it in?’
‘Are you taking the piss now? I know what I painted and what I didn’t.’ I quickly told him what had happened to my own painting. Hufnagel continued to fume. ‘This is outrageous. Vandalism! Hooliganism! And at an art school! I don’t care if they set fire to the principal’s car, but at an art school paintings ought to be sacred.’
‘Did they torch her car?’
‘No, it’s just a suggestion.’
I examined the surface of his canvas. ‘It’s amazingly well done though. There’s not a hint that there has ever been an arrow.’
‘I painted the arrow last thing. The paint was fresh.’ He came closer and stared wide-eyed at what wasn’t there. ‘But you’re right. If I had the merest doubt about the state of my memory I wouldn’t now be sure if I had painted it at all. It’s miraculously seamless. Couldn’t have done it better myself. Had I bloody wanted to!’ His anger exploded once more.
‘You can paint it again,’ Dawn said soothingly. ‘It’s not like they destroyed your painting.’
‘Yes, shouldn’t take you long,’ I agreed.
‘Shouldn’t take me long? That’s not the point! And you can talk; they added to your painting. It looks terrific. So you’re all right. As ever.’
But was I really? I wondered about that as I walked to the little post office in the village where they kept a limited selection of cigarettes for idiots like me. Mmm, also shortbread, I noticed.
The mystery painter had added to my painting, and done it well, but could I simply let it stand? It was so much like what I imagined would have flown from my own brush (eventually) that it seemed idiotic to scrape it off and start over again.
When I made it back to the studio the place seemed crowded and noisy. Hiroshi was there, scrutinizing my painting; Ben was there pretending to look at it while stealing glances at Petronela; Dawn was having an animated conversation with Phoebe; Petronela in her paint-stained dressing gown looked bored as she watched Hufnagel and Anne argue. He was complaining to her about his disappeared arrow and she was giving him a piece of her mind about electricity use. She was hugging one of the blow heaters to herself.
‘Don’t talk to me about security,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to introduce some measures, like the picture ID I see you are not wearing, and everyone poo-poos my ideas. Someone has welded the front gates solid so now we are permanently open to all comers and I have had lectures from the police about it all. As if somehow I could have prevented Rachel from being killed.’
‘Just lockable doors and windows would be a start,’ Hufnagel bravely ventured.
‘There don’t seem to be keys to half the doors here, which would mean replacing the locks, and have you any idea what that would cost? Just putting window locks on the ground floor would cost an absolute fortune; I’ve never seen so many bloody windows and some of them don’t even have a latch.’
‘What I did at my place …’
But Anne didn’t give him a chance to tell her how he had solved his own security problems with a mouthful of nails and a hammer. ‘And may I remind you that you don’t actually work here and are just allowed to splash paint around for a bit until that ridiculous anniversary exhibition is over. I should cancel it after what’s happened out there, but the invitations have gone out, apparently. As for these blow heaters, one ought to be perfectly sufficient. The college can’t subsidise nude painting at the rate of three kilowatts per hour, that’s utterly ridiculous, you will have to admit. I’m taking this one away.’ She marched past me out of the French windows and called over her shoulder: ‘And now I’ll go and confiscate whatever those sculptors used to ruin the front gate. It’s sheer vandalism, that’s what it is! Misuse of college property!’
I closed the door behind her. ‘I’d like to see her try and take away Kroog’s welding gear.’ There was now a distinct chill in the air in every sense of the word. The sun had gone in, Hufnagel was fuming, Petronela was hugging herself and Dawn and Phoebe had fallen silent. Ben looked love-struck and Hiroshi stood by my painting, smiling serenely. Everyone was looking at me. Everyone thought they were there because of me. I remembered that at least three of these were my students. ‘Let’s all get on with some work, shall we? Hiroshi, Ben, Phoebe? You have assignments to finish. Kurt, stop whining about
your arrow and paint another one. Petronela, wait until I’ve found you another heater. Dawn, could you make us all some tea?’
‘Not coffee?’
‘Tea. Warming, calming tea. No sugar for me, ta.’ (Exit left via the French window.) I knew there used to be a cupboard full of heaters in the drawing studio; I hoped they were still sleeping there and hadn’t been confiscated yet. A few yards further along, outside the conservatory, stood Dan the ceramics tutor, arms folded in front of his chest, staring straight ahead across the lawn at the fringe of Summerlee Wood. He looked stiff and furious.
‘You all right, Dan?’ I called.
He took a moment before he turned towards me. ‘I don’t know any more.’
That sounded serious, so I went over. ‘Something the matter?’
He lifted his shoulders high, then let them fall and exhaled. ‘It’s this place. It used to be brilliant. Relaxed. Fun. And now … The police are still here. And even worse, I just had a visit from John’s daughter.’
‘Same here. Hang on a mo. Wait until I fetch a blow heater for the model, then come and join us for some tea and shortbread in Studio One.’
In the drawing studio I found the cupboard and opened it. There they all were, stacked willy-nilly, battered, clapped out, lovely paint-spattered blow heaters, six of them. They looked awfully familiar. I plugged one in – it rattled but it worked.
Back in our studio I furnished Dan with tea and shortbread. ‘Welcome back to civilization. Now, let me guess: ceramics is too expensive?’
Dan practically exploded. ‘The main kiln is using too much electricity. We are only allowed two firings now.’
‘What’s that, a week? A month?’
‘A year! That’s insane, you can’t teach ceramics without using the kiln! Now I’m supposed to use the test kiln for demonstration purposes and allow the students to fire a couple of pieces at the end of each term. That’s ridiculous; students won’t come here for that. I couldn’t teach an evening class of amateurs like that!’
‘Did you tell her that?’