‘Now, Mr Dresler.’
Jess nodded.
‘I’m sorry to ask you this, Dr Mayhew. I don’t mean to pry. But it will help with our investigation.’
‘Of course. Carry on.’
‘Have you known him long?’
Jess was slightly nonplussed. ‘No. Not that long.’
‘How long?’
‘Only a few weeks, actually.’
‘And during that time, did you get the impression he was friendly with Mr Thomas?’
‘Not particularly.’ Jess chose her words with care. There was nothing to hide, but she didn’t want to speak for Dresler. Not to a police officer, anyway.
Bonetti made a note in her book and, once more, flipped over to another page.
‘Right. According to your statement, it was Mr Dresler who discovered Blake’s body. Is that so?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were elsewhere at the time?’
‘I was outside, trying to get a signal. I was trying to get hold of Elinor.’
‘She’d left the tower by that time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you manage to contact her?’
‘No. I left her a message.’
‘So you came back in shortly afterwards?’ Jess nodded.
Bonetti consulted her notes.
‘You say you found Mr Dresler up on the parapet alone, with the body on the ground below?’
Jess nodded.
Bonetti checked the notes again. ‘According to Mr Thomas’s phone record, he spoke to his wife at 11.50. You called the police at 12.05. So Dresler must have discovered him a very short time after he’d jumped. A matter of minutes, in fact.’
Where was this going? Jess wondered.
‘How did Mr Dresler seem when you saw him? After he’d made the discovery?’
‘He was in shock. Not surprisingly, in the circumstances.’
Jess tried to keep her tone neutral. She was somewhat offended at the policewoman’s line of questioning, but she tried not to show it. Bonetti was just being diligent, she reasoned, exploring every avenue. In her position, she would have done exactly the same thing. And however intrusive Bonetti’s questions, she told herself, it was up to her to answer them, as fully as she could. After all, they were both professionals.
‘He hadn’t run down to check the body?’ Bonetti went on. ‘Called the emergency services?’
‘No. It was me who did that.’ Jess paused. ‘I’ve dealt with this kind of thing before, you see.’
Jess spoke the words with confidence, but as she did, Blake’s head floated into her mind. One side of it was crushed, and there was a mass of soft flesh spilling out of it. She sighed involuntarily. More mindfulness would be needed in the coming days.
‘Sorry to make you go through all this again,’ Bonetti said, as if reading her thoughts.
‘That’s OK.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Just one more thing. Did Mr Dresler make any phone calls while you were with him that weekend?’
‘I don’t remember him doing so.’
‘Might he have called Hefin Morris?’
‘Not that I’m aware.’
Bonetti made a note. Could it be that she suspected Morris of involvement in Blake’s death? That was another long shot, Jess thought. Dresler had suggested that there might be some conflict between Blake and Morris, but it certainly wasn’t anything of that order. Bonetti was probably just tying up loose ends, as she’d done vis-à-vis Dresler.
Jess finished her coffee, leaving only the dregs in the bottom.
‘Thanks, Dr Mayhew. You’ve been very helpful.’ Bonetti’s tone signalled that the interview was almost over. ‘But before you go, could I ask your professional opinion on something?’
‘Of course.’
‘When you spoke to Blake Thomas earlier that day, did he seem suicidal?’
Jess frowned. ‘I don’t think I’m in a position to judge that. I knew very little about him.’
‘You see,’ Bonetti went on, ‘before he died, I interviewed him several times. On each occasion, he seemed very tense. But I wouldn’t have had him down as a suicide risk.’
‘He was certainly very anxious when I saw him that morning.’
‘And could that anxiety have escalated to the point where he’d take his own life, would you say?’
Jess thought for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t rule it out. There’s sometimes a link between acute anxiety and suicide. But it’s more common with depression.’ She paused. ‘However, it’s been suggested that he’d committed a murder, and was in deep financial trouble. Both of those are risk factors.’
Bonetti made a final note and closed the pad. Then she leaned forward, broke the last biscuit in half, and offered one piece to Jess.
‘I’m on a diet,’ Jess said, taking it.
‘Sorry.’
As they shared the remaining biscuit, they made small talk. At length, Bonetti stood up to go.
‘Thanks again for your time.’
‘Not at all.’ Jess looked at her watch. ‘I’ve just got time to go upstairs and look at the Morris pictures. Have you seen them?’
Bonetti nodded. ‘Before you got here. Can’t say I liked them. Load of old bollocks, I thought.’
Jess chuckled. Evidently, Bonetti was not an aesthete.
‘OK then.’ Jess hesitated. ‘Give me a call if you need anything else.’
‘I will.’ Bonetti turned and walked quickly away. Jess watched as she disappeared into the revolving door of the museum entrance. There was a casual warmth about her that was very Cardiffian, Jess thought, as she watched her go.
Just then something flashed into her mind – an image of Jacob hanging out of the window in the Tŵr Tal, his phone to his ear. He had made a phone call after all, but only to an art magazine. She briefly considered following Bonetti to tell her about it, but decided against it. What use could it possibly be?
When she’d gone, Jess got up, left the cafe, and walked up the grand marble staircase with its polished copper balustrade, past the statue of the Greek god brandishing the Medusa head, and into the gallery where the Morris paintings were housed. It was a large room with other rooms leading off it, and when she walked in, there was nobody there, apart from a uniformed museum employee hovering in the background. In the empty space, the great black canvasses hanging on the walls seemed to reverberate silently, in a way that was almost religious, like a gathering of monolithic dark angels around a tomb. As she approached one of the paintings, it subtly transformed itself, so that it became a dirty pavement, smeared with globules of tar; but when she stood in front of it, she found herself looking at a slab of coal that glittered menacingly in the light, prosaic yet strangely beautiful. Leaning in to scrutinize it, the surface of the coal began to sparkle seductively, then became a deep shaft; she followed it until it seemed to disintegrate into a void, a vortex that threatened to suck her into nothingness . . .
She stepped back, frightened by its malicious intensity yet drawn to it. She knew about black holes. Rose had been studying them in school. They came into being when massive stars collapsed at the end of their life cycle, sucking everything in the vicinity down with them. There was a surface around them called an event horizon, from which there was no return.
Walking away from the painting, Jess became aware that she had been standing on that edge for some time, ever since Bob left, without realizing it. Morris wasn’t painting that, of course; he was painting the social collapse of the South Wales valleys, and the communities that had remained there, the gravitational pull of their lives torn away from them, forever balancing on the event horizon of the black hole that threatened, as it grew, to engulf them. But it was still emotional loss, wasn’t it, to a greater or lesser degree, and its aftermath of grief and despair . . .
Get a grip, Jessica told herself, as she walked round the rest of the room, merely glancing at the rest of the paintings. You’re just overtired. You need some space and time
to unwind. She knew it had all been a bit too much, what with finding Blake’s body, her new affair, and the split with Bob. Going over the weekend’s events just now with Lauren Bonetti hadn’t helped, either. You need to slow down.
As if obeying this inner dictum, Jess found herself walking through the other rooms of the gallery, looking for her favourite paintings. She didn’t have a client waiting, and although there was work to catch up on, she could afford to linger a while longer in the museum. And she owed it to herself. Looking at paintings, she knew, like observing nature, was therapy for free . . . the seeing cure, if you like.
She stopped in front of the Cézanne, his painting of the Mont Sainte-Victoire that caught exactly the light of Provence, where she’d spent an unforgettable year as a student in her youth – another time, another life. There was the Barbara Hepworth, the ‘conker’, as the children had called it, that she’d always had to stop them stroking, poking their fingers through the holes, when they were little. Yet another time, another life. Finally she came to the Johns, Gwen and Augustus.
Here they were, Gwen’s minute, detailed studies of quiet women sitting in shadowed rooms, their hands neatly folded on their laps. The pale young girl in the blue dress, the nun in her habit, the lifeless Japanese doll sitting by the wooden box. And Jess’s favourite, the empty wicker chair by the attic window, a shaft of sunlight falling on an open book beside it. There was a profound, sombre beauty to these paintings, but they were also suffocating. The same small items were painted and repainted over and over again – the chair, a table, a checked tablecloth. You could almost hear the clock ticking away the minutes on the mantelpiece as the artist’s life went by.
Jess moved on to Augustus, whose works took up an entire wall of the room. They were the polar opposite, in spirit, to those of his sister. He painted his wives and lovers and socialite friends on big canvasses in bright, bold colours. Never mind that these days, Gwen’s paintings were, in many circles, more prized than her brother’s, her work spoke of frustration, constraint, the claustrophobia of domesticity, while the record Augustus had left behind was that of a sensual, expansive life lived with vim and gusto.
As she moved between the paintings, Jess couldn’t help thinking of Elinor. She could well imagine how Elinor might have felt crushed by the influence of Gwen John’s style. She wondered whether the claustrophobia had abated, or whether it had intensified after the traumatic events of the weekend.
It was useless to speculate, she admonished herself. For the time being, Elinor had left therapy, and there was no knowing whether she’d be back. Jess had left her current slot open for her, as she’d promised. But if she didn’t come back to her session that week, she’d have to think about filling it. There was always a long queue of people waiting to be seen.
18
The consulting room needed a facelift, Jess was thinking. A change. Nothing too drastic, of course. She wouldn’t want to upset her patients. Perhaps a slightly brighter colour on the walls, to make the most of the light filtering through the window. At present, they were a pale, calming grey. Or patterned curtains, instead of the plain cream ones that hung either side of the bay window. She’d seen a fabric she liked at Mari’s house: a subtle, contemporary design of bare branches in muted tones that would echo the movement of the tree outside the window.
The white relief on the wall, behind the patient’s armchair, would have to stay, of course. That was her emotional compass. Today, as she looked up at it, the circle was throbbing slightly among the squares instead of sitting quietly, telling her to take care, warning her of some potential imbalance in her psyche.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. Elinor had arranged to come in for her session that day, but kept delaying her return. It had been two months now, and each time she’d phoned to postpone, Jess had felt hurt, disappointed. It was a familiar enough feeling – she nearly always became attached to her patients in this way, was sad when they left, however difficult and demanding they’d been. But what surprised her was how intense her relationship with Elinor had become, over such a short period of time. Perhaps, with Bob gone, and this new affair with Dresler on the go, her emotional life had become more intense altogether, and was affecting all her relationships, at work as well as at home.
There was a knock at the door. Jessica’s heart leapt. That was odd, too, she thought. This feeling of excitement whenever Elinor deigned to appear.
She walked over to the door, opened it, and Elinor walked in.
‘Hello.’ Elinor gave her a warm smile, which was unusual. She looked healthy, as if she’d been sleeping and eating properly: there was a tinge of pink to her cheeks, and the lines on her face seemed to have smoothed out a little. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in before. Things have been rather . . . well, you can imagine.’
She was wearing an immaculate linen jacket that didn’t accord with her usual style of dress. As she took it off and hung it on the hat stand, Jess realized that it was exactly the kind of thing Isobel would have worn. She’d probably borrowed it.
Elinor went over to the couch. Jess noticed that she didn’t even glance at the window, which was open just a crack, in readiness for her session.
‘It’s been crazy.’ Elinor settled herself on the couch. ‘We’ve had so much to do over the past couple of months. Dealing with the police, the post-mortem, the funeral. The gallery, the Morris artworks, Blake’s financial affairs . . . it’s all so complicated.’ She sighed. ‘But we’re getting through it.’
‘You say “we”?’
Elinor looked puzzled. ‘Me and Isobel, of course. She’s staying with me at the moment. We’re thinking of selling Ebenezer.’
‘Ebenezer?’
‘The converted chapel where they’ – she didn’t say Isobel and Blake, but that was what Jess took her to mean – ‘both lived. It’s about ten miles away, in the Vale.’
‘I see.’ So now Isobel and Blake had become ‘they’. Isobel and Elinor had become ‘we’. Clearly, thought Jess, Blake’s death had been something of a relief to Elinor. Besides offering closure on the mystery of Ursula’s death, it had enabled her to resume her relationship with her sister Isobel; they’d become twins again, living together under one roof, back in the family home. No wonder she seemed unusually cheerful. Isobel had told Jess that Elinor had never been able to come to terms with the fact that Isobel had married and moved away. The sisters had quarrelled; now, with Blake dead, the rift had healed, and Elinor had her sister back to herself again.
‘It’s been pretty difficult.’ A frown came over Elinor’s face. ‘Isobel’s been very up and down. She’s been living with a great deal of stress for a long time.’
Jessica didn’t respond.
‘You see, Blake had been very worried,’ Elinor continued. ‘People didn’t realize, because he was good at keeping up appearances.’
Not that good, thought Jess, recalling Blake’s panic-stricken behaviour, both at the private view and at the tower.
‘But the fact was, he was in a great deal of financial trouble. He’d overreached himself. He’d got so excited about discovering Morris, he’d been neglecting the business, running into debt.’ She paused. ‘He made it look like a coup, selling the Morris painting to the National Museum. Mounting the exhibition. But it was all just hype, really. He sold the painting for practically nothing. He was just hoping that by pulling the whole thing off, he’d create a stir in the art world up in London, get Morris noticed.’
‘And did it work?’ Jess let her curiosity get the better of her.
‘It might have. But it all took longer than he’d thought. He began to run out of money. He borrowed from the gallery, from the bank. He began to neglect his clients, his other artists. He stopped paying his bills. It was all getting very precarious. Isobel says it was around the time of Ursula’s murder that he started losing his mind. He’d wake up at night and wander round the house, complaining that the walls were closing in. He started coming up with all sorts of ludicr
ous, short-term plans to make money. She was very worried about him, but of course, at that time she and I . . . well, we weren’t on very good terms, so she didn’t tell me.’
Jess wondered whether to press her on that point, but decided not to.
‘Anyway, he finally decided to steal the Gwen John from my studio. He had a key. He went round while I was out, let himself in, and went down to the studio. It should have been easy.’ Elinor paused, frowning. ‘But evidently, my mother came in and caught him red-handed. So he panicked. Beat her to death. He was desperate, I think. Out of his mind.’ She shivered, clasping her arms around her body, as if trying to warm her limbs. ‘And then he ran off with the painting,’ Elinor continued. ‘He obviously intended to sell it later. It would have been easy enough for him to find buyers for a painting like that. He knew so many collectors.’
‘But wouldn’t it be difficult for him to sell a well-known painting like that?’
‘Not really. There are plenty of collectors in the art world who buy stolen work for private viewing. In fact, it gives them a kind of frisson to own paintings that nobody knows they have.’
‘But wouldn’t selling the painting immediately mark him out as the murder suspect?’
Elinor shrugged. ‘I don’t see why. Dodgy art collectors don’t go to the police, do they? Not when they’re busy buying a stolen painting.’
‘But why did Blake hang on to the painting for so long? If he was desperate for money?’
‘These things take time, I suppose. Or maybe it wasn’t as easy as he’d expected. The whole thing had to be done in secret. So, while he was looking for a buyer, he hid the painting in his wardrobe. And there it remained until Isobel found it.’ Elinor paused. ‘I suppose, after he’d done it, he must have been overcome with guilt. He couldn’t tell anyone. Isobel and I were distraught about Ursula, of course. And the pressure was still mounting up financially. Then there was the stress of the private view, pretending everything was hunky-dory. And after that, the police started closing in, asking questions. So I suppose it got too much for him, and he decided to end it all.’
Black Valley Page 17