by Julie Kenner
“Ten out of ten,” said Connor Sinclair.
Cinnamon yawned. “I never could stand Shakespeare.”
“No, Cinnamon,” he said. That was all.
But she must have the hide of a rhinoceros, Vivien thought with reluctant envy, not to have shriveled at his tone.
By half-past twelve, Vivien decided she would have to go back to the main room and ask when they would be leaving. As she had been sorting her painting things in the bedroom, she had thought she heard the front door open and shut, but then had made out again the distant noises of objects being packed up or moved.
When she walked in, only he was there, sitting on the dust-sheeted couch, turning a tiny white figurine round in his hands.
Vivien angrily noted they had made themselves coffee—and from the Colombian beans Vivien had bought herself yesterday as a treat. At least he, the monster, hadn’t drunk her milk. The dregs in his mug were black—just like his eyes.
He paid Vivien no attention. She might have been a small spider that had just crawled out on the carpet. Unless he didn’t like spiders, in which case he would, of course, step on her.
“Has your partner left?”
“My—Oh, Cinnamon. She isn’t my partner, in any sense of the word. But yes, she’s gone.”
“And are you planning to leave?” Vivien asked, as discourteous as Cinnamon had been. “I have things to do.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“You are stopping me, Mr. Sinclair. You’re in my way. I need to set up in here.”
At that he looked up. She found it very difficult to meet and hold his eyes. When she did so, he smiled fastidiously, and then himself looked away. She had obviously failed another test.
“Set up? You have plans to redecorate the room?” He wrapped the figurine in newspaper. “You don’t strike me as the painter-decorator type.”
“I’m not. I paint pictures. Your intrusion is holding up my work.”
“I see. All right. Another ten minutes and I’ll be out.” Deflated, Vivien turned to go. He said, “However, I’m afraid I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll be bringing someone in to look at the statue.”
“That garden isn’t open to the public, Mr. Sinclair,” she said frigidly.
He stood up. “While these debates with you are undoubtedly delightful, Ms.—?”
“Gray—”
“Ms. Gray. They seem to be wasting a lot of our mutual time. The statue is mine, and I’m moving it out. To do that successfully I need someone else to take a look at it first.”
“Yours? How can it be yours? It’s part of the flat garden and it’s from the late-nineteenth century—”
“I know that. Listen, Ms. Gray, I suggest you phone Adelaide Preece. Obviously she forgot to inform you of any of this.”
“I can’t phone her—”
He swore. It wasn’t the worst Vivien had heard, but coming from him, it was like a cold blow in the stomach.
He had produced a mobile phone. As he hit the buttons, Vivien grasped he was phoning Addie in France.
Feeling like a reprimanded child, and entirely mutinous, Vivien sat down on the nearest chair.
Connor Sinclair spoke to the mobile.
“Adelaide, good morning. Yes, Connor. Were you? Well, never mind, you’re awake now. There is a young woman living in your flat. She’s—let’s see—approximately a hundred and seven pounds, five foot four, has a few yards of brunette hair, and—” he stared in Vivien’s face, insulting, frankly terrifying “—eyes like Chaucer’s nun, gray as glass.”
Vivien’s mouth fell open. She shut it firmly.
He was saying, “You know about her? Oh, good. Would you have a word with her, then? She is quite tenacious about guarding what she considers to be your property, including the statue in the garden. She would make someone a lovely guard dog. A rottweiler, possibly.”
He strolled to Vivien and handed her the phone. He looked amused at her embarrassment and anger. How dare he—all those personal details. To make it worse, he had judged her height exactly, even if he had knocked two pounds off her weight. As for the Chaucer quote…only one other had ever applied that to Vivien. The reference had shaken her.
But Addie’s voice, gruff with disturbed post-travel sleep and irritation, pounced into Vivien’s ear.
“Didn’t you read my note, Viv?”
“Yes, it didn’t say—”
“The antique bits I’ve already sold him. The statue is Connor’s own property, like a couple of other things there. For heaven’s sake, I bought the flat from him in the first place.”
“Oh.” Vivien felt herself flush. She didn’t really know why. But she certainly had made a fool of herself, or been made a fool of.
“Just let him get on with it, okay? Please don’t call me again unless it’s urgent.”
The signal ceased as abruptly as a slap.
Vivien handed the mobile back to Connor Sinclair, her hand seemingly numbed by the feel of his personal electricity all over it.
“I’m sorry. She didn’t tell me, so I didn’t know.”
“Now you do.”
He pointed at the new boxes he and Cinnamon had packed. “I’ll take those out to the van.”
She propped the front door open to make the maneuver easier for him. He carried the boxes out two by two, making nothing of their weight, as he had verbally made nothing of hers. Or, of her.
Why should she apologize to him, anyway? He was a boor and a monster. He could have explained himself, and found the kitchen and keys on his own.
The van was light blue. There was no lettering on it.
He came back along the front path and stopped in front of her. The sun was high now, gilding the black of his hair. She saw for the first time, with sudden surprise, that his chiseled nose was slightly crooked—an imperfection!
“I’ll be here about 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, Ms. Gray, with one other person. Should he and I bring any ID? Perhaps family records…or would our passports do?”
Vivien looked him in the eyes. “Just bring better manners, Mr. Sinclair.”
He started to laugh. She hadn’t expected that. Oh, but it must amuse him so, when anyone was brave enough to answer back.
She left him to it, retreating inside and shutting the door with what she hoped was the right amount of controlled vehemence.
Her blood was boiling. But she couldn’t entirely deceive herself—it wasn’t only from fury.
Nor was her mood improved when, clearing up the mess of spilled coffee beans, spoiled milk and clogged grinder Cinnamon had left, Vivien found the other half of Addie’s note. It was squashed in with Addie’s warning about the use of coffee, and it picked up on the other note about CS and Scavengers, adding that a statue was due to be taken from the garden.
Grim though Addie’s handwriting was, there could now be absolutely no doubt.
Despite her best efforts, Vivien couldn’t come to grips with any work that day.
The octagonal room, to which she had brought her drawing and painting materials, was soon littered with torn-off pages marked in useless lines and curls. She was getting behind on the single commission she had been given this year, which was for a book-jacket. Addie had got her the commission. Another black mark.
Vivien’s plan had been to work all morning, take a short lunch break, then allow herself to sketch the garden, and the statue.
She hadn’t earned the right to attempt that yet, after her failure with the commissioned work. The heavens agreed with her, it seemed. As she stood in the kitchen eating a piece of brie and an apple, the skies blackened, and then emptied out a downpour of rain that crashed against the conservatory roof.
The storm didn’t clear until dusk was coming down.
She couldn’t sleep. Finally she must have dozed, but woke at 2:00 a.m., alert and startled, as if someone had shouted in her ear. She had an idea the phone had been ringing, but now it wasn’t.
She had been dreaming. What had the dream involved?
&n
bsp; Vivien could remember only that it had somehow been…uncomfortable.
She got up, and went along to the kitchen to make herbal tea.
As she waited there for the kettle to boil, her bare feet on the Italian-tiled floor, the close, still night around her, Vivien caught herself once more thinking about Connor Sinclair.
Every time she did so, sparks of anger filled her. But also just sparks, glittering through and through her body, making her even angrier. It was this, she knew, that had stopped her working. And probably this that she had dreamed about.
Vivien, don’t fancy a man who has the social skills of a pig crossed with a hunting leopard. The voice in her head was reasonable and sane. You’ll get hurt.
Oh—she thought back at it—and I’ve never been hurt before, have I.
Why had Connor Sinclair used that one phrase—the one he, back there in her past, had used? Eyes gray as glass…
I won’t think about him. About either of them.
She took her tea back to bed, downed it and dropped herself on the pillows, determined to lose consciousness, despite the ominous creakings of the unknown flat above and around her. She managed to sleep almost at once.
The rain was gone, just a light crystal sparkle here and there on bay leaves and rose petals. In the ghostly lambency of the streetlights the statue stood on his plinth, gazing down at her. His eyes were dark now. Alive now.
In awe, but not horror, Vivien watched as he stepped casually off the plinth. He walked towards her, and Vivien, half surprised at herself, backed away.
Surprised because it seemed really quite natural that a stone man had moved, and now approached her.
He walked in a slow, easy prowl. Yet he was, despite the living eyes, still a creature formed from marble.
Raindrops brushed off into Vivien’s hair; she felt them on her bare skin. She was naked, then, as the statue—more naked than he.
She continued to edge away. And suddenly the glass of the French windows met her back, cold in the warmth of the heavy summer night.
He did not pause. Why would he? She had no escape from him now.
She imagined, astonished, what it would be like, that icy caress of smooth stone hands, sliding over her naked body, gently teasing on her breasts, subtle and sure between her thighs….
But somehow, she was in through the closed doors, inside the glass and in the room—though still he came towards her and still she backed away.
His hands were not yet on her, but on the lock of the doors. Could he undo it? Had she even locked them—did she want this, desire it—or was she utterly afraid…?
Vivien woke. She threw herself upright in the bed, gasping—and heard again, in the waking world, the quiet scrape of stone against metal.
“Oh God—”
Vivien sprang from the bed, slamming at the light switch, blinding herself for a moment as the lamps came on.
Her impulse was to race for the French doors and secure them. Then something occurred to her. She couldn’t surely have heard such a soft scraping from here. No. It must come from much nearer, from down the hall—the conservatory off the kitchen.
Vivien wildly pulled on a T-shirt. She flew along the passage. She jumped into the kitchen, bashing on the overhead light as she passed. She had had to do it all like that. Her true inclination had been to hide under the bed.
Beyond the lighted kitchen, the black glass box of the empty conservatory showed only the faintest wisp of filtered lamplight.
Nothing was out there. Nothing wonderful and terrible scratched at the door.
Where light fell on the paved path between the trees, the rain had already dried. Only shadows lay there.
Vivien checked the door. It was locked, the padlock rusty, bolted, too, on the inside. The glass, Addie had informed her, like that of the French doors and all the windows, was bulletproof.
Vivien went to check every window, and the French doors in the octagonal room. Nothing was out of place, despite the apprehension she felt each time. Only the closeness of night, dully synchronized by far-off London sounds—none of which were like the noise of stone fingers moving on a lock.
She did not go to check if the statue was still on the plinth. Instead, she left on every light in the apartment.
At five-thirty, when it was full daylight, Vivien got up again and showered and dressed. She hadn’t got any more sleep, and she had that muzzy, cinder-eyed reaction to insomnia she always did. When she went back to the kitchen and looked through into the conservatory, however, her blurry vision showed her something that last night, in the brilliance of the kitchen spotlights, she hadn’t seen.
It lay there in the conservatory’s far corner. Now unmissable.
A rose. Perfect, she thought, until she touched it. Only the stem, fierce with thorns, stayed intact. The flower’s head had already fallen apart—or been shattered—every petal like a drop of blood.
Chapter 3
“Hi. I’m Lewis Blake. You must be Ms. Gray?”
Vivien stared at the tallish, heavily muscular man in her doorway. He wore a tattered black T-shirt, and jeans covered in dust or chalk—both garments seemed to have been expensive but he had cheerfully ruined them without a backward glance. He looked cheerful, too, despite his bristly shaven head and the gold ring through his eyebrow.
Not meaning to, like a child watching for Santa Claus—or the bogeyman—Vivien’s eyes slid around him.
“Don’t be apprehensive yet,” said Lewis Blake, grinning in a curiously kind manner. “I’m afraid he is coming—but he’ll be about five minutes. Monday morning traffic leaves nowhere to park the van.”
“You mean Mr. Sinclair?” Vivien thought she sounded arch and silly. “You’re here with him about the statue?”
Lewis nodded. “Sure am. But it’s fine if you want to wait till he gets here, to verify my status. I can appreciate you don’t just want to let any old stranger loose in the flat.”
“A shame Mr. Sinclair didn’t appreciate that.” It was out before she could contain it.
But Lewis Blake looked intently at her. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“You didn’t do it.”
“No, well…I don’t have much reason to.”
“Oh, look,” she said, “please come in.”
As they walked in through the first hall, Lewis said, “Do I gather he gave you a bit of a rough time? He can be…Well, there are reasons, I suppose.”
Vivien ignored this. The monster hadn’t even arrived yet, and already they were talking about him, conjuring him up.
Her head ached from lack of sleep. From puzzling over a broken rose that couldn’t have been where it was.
“Would you like some coffee?”
“Love it. Ta.”
They went along to the kitchen. Vivien poured them a mug each. Lewis enthusiastically spooned brown sugar into his.
“Nice garden out there. I like letting things relax in a garden. I’ve got a woman like a demon, though, daren’t leave her alone five minutes but she’s off hauling wildflowers out of the lawn. Butterflies like those. Will she listen? But I’m crazy about her anyway. Need to be. With her family, she’s probably nuttier than I am.”
Vivien felt an actual pang of envy. For Lewis Blake and his woman with a nutty family. How good that sounded. Some people did manage to have those, and also to meet each other and be happy in a relationship. What was the secret?
She liked him despite her envy. He was likable—if only by default.
“Tell me about the statue,” Vivien said. She wasn’t making conversation; by now she felt she needed to know.
“It’s a genuine Nevins. You’ve never heard of him, probably. A little-known but now somewhat collectible sculptor of the late 1800s. Someone wants this one for a film from the period. That’s what we do at Scavengers. We don’t pick up antiques to sell. We hire them out to film companies and the theaters. You may have seen bits of our stuff in movies. Ever see The Lion’s Answer?”
“Yes,”
said Vivien.
“We practically dressed every set. Statues, fountains, chairs, clocks—the National Theatre had a load of things off us for their last production of Venice Preserved.”
“I saw that, too.”
Vivien was mildly, pleasantly impressed. Or was that only because Lewis was a nice guy and actually bothering to speak to her like a human being?
“That statue of Connor’s, though, that’s got a funny history,” said Lewis.
“Funny how?”
“Well, more a rotten history. Er, I guess it’s all right to tell you, you’d find it in any book that listed Nevins. He took up with a married lady, an actress. In fact, she was the wife of the subject of the statue. And—” Lewis broke off.
Vivien saw he had said more than maybe he had meant to. Why such a dark secret about something over a century old?
She decided to tease him. “The usual tale, then. Infidelity, jealousy, crime and punishment.”
She saw he wasn’t teased, only on edge.
“While Nevins was sculpting the handsome image of the lady’s husband, and making love to the lady, the husband found out. As they do. He was an actor-manager—one of those fantastically successful ones, a bit like Tree, and Martin-Harvey—he had it all in front of him. But he went off his head and shot her—Emily, his wife. And then he shot himself. The quote on the base—Nevins put it there afterwards, before he went and drank himself to death. Nevins, you see, the angry husband never touched. Nevins is supposed to have said he wished Sinclair had done it—punished him, too.”
Vivien spoke softly. “You said Sinclair?”
“Yup. Forget I’m saying this. I mean, Connor is my boss, he started Scavengers…. But the jealous actor was Patrick Aspen Sinclair, and his wife was Emily Sinclair, famous in her day for her portrayals of Juliet and Ophelia. Some people say the Nevins statue looks like Conn. It does. Conn won’t ever see it. But there’s a reason for the resemblance. Patrick and Emily died young, he saw to that. But they left children. Patrick Aspen Sinclair was Connor’s great-great-grandfather.”