The Devil`s Feather

by Minette Walters

“Are you busy?” I asked when he opened the door. “Can you give me ten minutes?”

  “Is it a medical visit or a social one?”

  “Social.”

  He stepped back. “Come in, but you’ll have to watch while I eat my lunch. There’s only enough for one, I’m afraid, but I can rustle up a glass of wine or a cup of coffee.”

  I followed him across the hall. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “When did you last eat?”

  The question caught me off-balance. “This morning?” I suggested.

  He eyed me thoughtfully before pulling out a chair. As always in my company, he was careful to give me space, stepping away before inviting me to sit down. “Take a pew.”

  “Thank you.”

  He resumed his place at the other side of the table. Lunch was a microwaved pasta meal, still in its plastic container. “I use a plate when I know people are coming,” he said, picking up his fork. “Anyone who rings the bell on spec doesn’t count. Has Jess been bringing you food from the farm?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you eat it?”

  I nodded again.

  He didn’t believe me, but he didn’t make an issue of it. “So what can I tell you about Jess? Which particular part of that extraordinarily irritating personality do you want me to explain?”

  I smiled. “How do you know it’s Jess I’m interested in?”

  He filled his fork. “I was two hundred yards behind you when you turned in through her gate. Did you find her at home?”

  “I watched her grease her baler, then she took me inside and showed me around. Presumably you’ve been in the house?”

  “Too often to count.”

  “So you’ve seen the corridor of family photos?”

  “Yes.”

  “The big room with the screens?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think?”

  He didn’t answer until he’d dealt with the last of his food and pushed the container aside. “I change my mind from time to time but, on the whole, I think it’s a good thing Jess never finished art school. She was at the end of her first year when the accident happened, and she had to jack it in to take on the farm. She still regrets it…but she’d have wasted three years if she’d stayed.”

  I was unreasonably disappointed. If anyone could see she had talent it was surely Peter, because he seemed to have more empathy with her than anyone else. “You don’t think she’s any good?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he corrected mildly. “I said if she’d stayed at art school she’d have been wasting her time. Either she’d have conformed and lost all her individuality…or she’d have been at permanent war with her tutors and done her own thing anyway. If you’re lucky, she might show you her paintings one day. As far as I know she hasn’t touched a brush since the accident, but the work she did before was exceptional.”

  “Did she sell any of it?”

  He shook his head. “Never tried. It’s sitting in a studio at the back of the house. I doubt she’d accept money for it, anyway. She’s of the painting-for-profit-is-bad school…thinks any artist who panders to what the buyer wants is a mediocre hack.”

  “What sort of subjects did she paint?”

  “Landscapes. Seascapes. She has a very individual style—more impressionist than representational—creates movement in the sky and the water with minimal paint and sweeping brushstrokes. It didn’t go down too well with her teachers, which is why she’s so intolerant of other people’s opinions. They told her she was looking back towards Turner instead of embracing the idea of conceptual art, where a piece is created in the mind before it becomes concrete. The sort of artist they liked was Madeleine’s husband.”

  My disbelief must have been obvious, because Peter laughed.

  “He used to be a lot more interesting than those canvases on Lily’s walls. He conceptualized irrationality in physical form…quite different from the abstracts he’s doing now.”

  I tried to look intelligent. “Jess said you have one of his early paintings. Can I see it?”

  There was a small hestitation. “Why not? It’s hanging in my office…second door on the right. You shouldn’t have any trouble identifying it. It’s the only painting in there.”

  This picture was detailed and busy, like Hieronymus Bosch, with the same nightmarish visions of a world gone mad. Living houses thrust out massive roots with gnarled lianas burrowing through the brickwork. The painting had a high sheen, as if layer upon painstaking layer of paint had been applied to produce it, and the style bore no resemblance to the looser work at Barton House. There was a whirling madness at its heart. None of the houses stood true, but leaned drunkenly in all directions as if gripped by a hurricane. Hundreds of tiny people, quite out of scale with the buildings, populated the rooms behind the windows, and each face was a meticulous replica of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Outside, similarly tiny animals foraged among leaf matter, with no distinction in size made between species, all with the pale, tapered, human faces of the Munch.

  I was prepared to accept that it was conceptualized irrationality (whatever that meant—it sounded like an oxymoron to me) but, without a title, I hadn’t a clue if a particular piece of unreason was being expressed or if it was unreason in general. Why living houses? Why so many people trapped inside them? Why animals with human faces? Was it man’s fear of nature? Or was it closer to Hieronymus Bosch—a vision of hell? I had an uncomfortable feeling that if Jess were there she’d say my opinion was subjective, and therefore irrelevant. It didn’t matter how disturbed and powerful I found the vision, the meaning belonged to the artist.

  Peter was standing in front of the kettle when I returned to the kitchen. “I hope you like your coffee black,” he said, pouring water into two mugs. “I’m afraid I’ve run out of milk.”

  “I do, thank you.” I took the one he offered me, successfully manoeuvring my fingers to avoid his. “Does the painting have a title?”

  “It won’t help you. Ochre. What did you make of it?”

  “Honestly? Or will you bite my head off like Jess? I felt her breathing down my neck in there, telling me not to be so pretentious.”

  Peter looked amused. “Except she hates the thought police more than you do. She calls it the emperor’s-clothes syndrome. If someone like Saatchi’s prepared to pay a fortune for an unmade bed, then it must be good…and it’s only idiots who don’t get it. Try honesty,” he encouraged.

  “OK, well, it’s a damn sight better than anything at Barton House, although I haven’t a clue what it’s supposed to represent. It has a surrealist feel to it. What I really can’t get my head around is how Madeleine lives with the artist who painted it. I mean, she’s so middle-class and conformist…and Nathaniel appears to be hovering off the planet somewhere. How does that work exactly?”

  He gave a snort of laughter. “Nathaniel painted it before he married her. The stuff he does now is very tame. Jess describes it as marshmallow buildings with window-boxes. Which is about right. He hardly sells at all these days.”

  “How much did you pay for yours?”

  Peter pulled a face. “Five thousand quid eleven years ago, and it’s worth hardly anything now. I had it valued for the divorce. In terms of investment, it was a disaster…but, as a canvas, it still fascinates me. When I bought it, Nathaniel told me that the clue to what it represents is the repetitive Edvard Munch face—the angst-filled scream.”

  I waited. “OK,” I said after a moment. “I recognized it in the faces…but it doesn’t help me much. Is it hell?”

  “In a way.” He paused. “I thought you might recognize the emotions. It depicts a panic attack. Munch suffered anxiety most of his life and The Scream is usually described as an expression of intense anguish or fear.”

  I lifted a wry eyebrow.

  “You didn’t see that?”

  “Not really. Why are the houses alive? Why make them unstable? I thought agoraphobics saw them as places of safety. And why put human faces on the
animals? Animals don’t suffer anxiety…or not to the extent that humans do.”

  “I don’t think you can apply logic to it, Marianne. Panic’s an irrational response.”

  The “Marianne” caught me off-guard as usual. I still thought of it as my mother’s name and did a mouth-dropping double-take whenever it was used. I think it was on the tip of Peter’s tongue to admit he knew who I really was but I spoke before he could. “He can’t have painted it during an attack…it’s too detailed and meticulous. At the very least, his hands would have been shaking.”

  Peter shrugged. “Who says it was his panic attack? Perhaps he witnessed someone else’s.”

  “Whose?”

  Another shrug.

  “Not Madeleine’s,” I said in disbelief. “She doesn’t have the imagination to worry herself into a box. In any case, if she was his inspiration, wouldn’t he still be painting like that?”

  “I don’t know what his themes are now. Madeleine talks about abstract reflections on the human condition…but I don’t know if that’s her or Nathaniel speaking. Whichever, it’s a fairly desperate spin to make up for a spectacular loss of talent. He makes a living from teaching at the moment.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Mid-thirties. He was twenty-four when he painted the picture I have.”

  “And Madeleine’s what? Thirty-nine…forty? When did they marry?”

  “Ninety-four.”

  Ten years ago. I did a few sums in my head. “Which makes him a bit of a toy-boy. Perhaps she’s not as conventional as I thought. Jess said she has an eleven-year-old son. Is Nathaniel his father?”

  “As far as I know. They married a few months after he was born.”

  “What did Lily think about that?”

  “Exactly what you’d expect,” Peter said with a smile.

  “She’d have preferred a wedding and grandchildren in the correct order?”

  He nodded.

  “Most mothers would.” I gave a rueful shake of my head. “It just shows how wrong you can be about people. I’d have put money on Madeleine marrying a rich older man and popping her baby out after a respectable nine months. So where did she and Nathaniel meet? I don’t get the feeling she’s been hanging around art exhibitions all her life.”

  “Here,” said Peter dryly, tapping the floor with his foot. “About where you’re standing. I was having a chat with Nathaniel when Madeleine turned up. He didn’t stand a chance once she found out who he was, although I don’t know what he saw in her…unless it was undiluted admiration. She couldn’t tell one end of a paintbrush from the other, but she certainly knew how to flatter him.”

  Once she found out who he was…? “Did he live in Winterbourne Barton?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Peter stared into his coffee. “Work it out for yourself—it’s hardly quantum mechanics.”

  I must have been extraordinarily dense, because I couldn’t see what he was getting at. “Why can’t you tell me?”

  “Hippocratic oath,” he said with a good-humoured grin. “I’d lose patients if I couldn’t keep a still tongue in my head…particularly in a place like this where gossip spreads like wildfire. In any case, life’s too short to fight other people’s wars.”

  Wars…? “I’ve only met two people who seem to be at each other’s throats—” I broke off as the penny dropped. “Oh, I see! Art school…panic attacks…Did Madeleine take Nathaniel from Jess? Is that why they loathe each other?” I saw from his expression that I was right. “No wonder Jess doesn’t like flattery. It must be a hell of a sore point if Madeleine laid it on with a trowel.”

  “It was her own fault,” Peter said unsympathetically. “She was far too free with her criticism of Nathaniel’s work, and that’s not an easy thing to live with. Madeleine’s tea and sympathy was much more attractive.”

  “If he’s lost his edge, then maybe he needed the criticism.”

  “Without a doubt…but he’s a weaker character than Jess. He sulks when his ego’s not being massaged.”

  “He sounds a pain in the arse,” I said bluntly, remembering one or two men in my past who were similar. “How long were they together?”

  He didn’t answer immediately, apparently weighing up how much he could tell me with a good conscience. “It’s hardly a secret. Two years. She met him in her first term. It might have lasted if she’d stayed in London, but there wasn’t much hope for it after the accident. She set up a studio for him at the farm but he stopped using it by the summer of ninety-three.” He took a thoughtful sip of his coffee. “The only reason she took his departure badly was because he left her for Madeleine. She wouldn’t have turned a hair if it had been anyone else.”

  “What did Lily say?”

  His eyes creased with amusement again. “Why are you so interested in Lily’s reactions?”

  I shrugged. “I’m wondering why Jess remained so close to her. If Madeleine had stolen a man of mine, I wouldn’t have gone on mowing her mother’s lawn. Supposing Madeleine and Nathaniel had turned up while I was doing it? Imagine the embarrassment. I’d be afraid they were laughing at me behind my back.”

  “I’m not sure Jess would care. She’s completely impervious to what people say about her.”

  “Now, maybe, but not then. If she was never fazed by anything, she wouldn’t have had panic attacks,” I pointed out.

  Peter ran a thoughtful hand around his jaw, as if I’d reminded him of something he’d forgotten. “Lily never spoke about it,” he said, “but she did say once that Madeleine judged worth by how highly something was valued by someone else.”

  It sounded like a good description. “So does Nathaniel still get undiluted admiration,” I asked curiously, “or did he lose his shine when his sales dropped off?”

  “Pass.”

  I laughed. “I’ll take that for a yes. I’ll bet he’s regretting his decision now. Did Lily like him?”

  “She never really knew him. Madeleine always visited on her own.”

  “You must have some idea.”

  “Not really. Lily was a very discreet woman where her family was concerned, which is probably why she got on so well with Jess. I don’t think Jess blamed her for Madeleine’s behaviour, but I doubt they ever talked about it.”

  “Except Jess slit her wrists in Barton House,” I pointed out, “which, at the very least, suggests she wanted Lily to know she was hurting.”

  The good humour vanished immediately from Peter’s face. “Who told you that?”

  “Madeleine.”

  He looked angry. “In future I’d advise you to take anything she tells you with a hefty pinch of salt. She rewrites history to suit herself.” He took a breath through his nose. “I hope you haven’t repeated it to anyone.”

  “Of course not. Who would I repeat it to?”

  “Jess?”

  “No.”

  He relaxed a little. “If Madeleine heard that story from her mother, she must have misunderstood what Lily was saying.” A carefully evasive statement, I thought.

  “It’s not true then?”

  He couldn’t bring himself to give a straightforward “no,” so he equivocated. “It’s a ridiculous suggestion. No one looks for an audience in those circumstances.”

  They do if they want to draw attention to themselves, I thought. There was a long history of fanatics killing themselves in public for the sake of a cause, and the shock waves were always tremendous. Perhaps that had been Jess’s motive, for I didn’t doubt the suicide bid was true. Even without the scars on her wrists, Peter’s obvious discomfort at my knowing would have persuaded me.

  I made some banal remarks in agreement, while wondering if he thought I was the only person Madeleine had told. I had the impression that it was he who had divulged the secret, and not Lily, which is why he was so uncomfortable. I found his question about whether I’d repeated the story to Jess particularly strange. Did he think she was unaware that Madeleine knew abou
t it? Or was he worried that reminders of suicide might push her into trying again? I thought of the casual way she’d referred to my interest in her wrists and her indifference to rebutting accusations of “knifing strangers.”

  “You’re living in cloud-cuckoo-land if you think Jess doesn’t know the secret’s out,” I said abruptly. “I didn’t mention it but she did. She talked about the scars on her wrists, and Madeleine spreading her poison, and how she’s given up trying to convince people that she has no plans to knife them.” I paused. “I expect Madeleine’s worked her version up to put Jess in a bad light, but she was bound to gossip about it. There’s no love lost between them.”

  “What else did she tell you?”

  “Jess or Madeleine?”

  “Madeleine.”

  “That Jess’s family was poor…that her grandmother immigrated to Australia to get away from her son…that Jess is a lesbian.” I watched the anger gather in his face again. “She also said she was a stalker…that she makes threatening phone calls and takes revenge when she’s rejected. Oh, and she’s appalled that you didn’t warn me how disturbed Jess is.” I smiled slightly. “Should you have done?”

  “No.”

  “Does she take revenge? Madeleine told me to check with Mary Galbraith at Hollyhock Cottage.”

  Peter gave a frustrated shake of his head. “Well, you’ll certainly get confirmation from Mary,” he said. “She’s convinced Jess is out to get her and her husband.”

  “Why?”

  Another frustrated shake of the head. “Ralph Galbraith drove into the back of Jess’s Land Rover in the middle of the village, and Jess called the police when she smelt drink on his breath.” He nodded at my questioning look. “Three times over the limit, lost his licence and was ordered to retake his test at the end of the ban. Mary was very upset about it. She said there was no reason for the police to be involved—it was a small shunt and no one was hurt—and it’s only because Jess is vindictive that they were called.”

  I remembered her confiscation of my car keys. “She has draconian views on dangerous driving.”

  “She has draconian views on everything,” he said. “Compromise doesn’t exist in her vocabulary. In this case, a blind eye would have been kind. Ralph Galbraith’s over seventy and never drove more than twenty miles an hour, or farther than Tesco’s and back, so he was a hardly a danger to other drivers. Plus he’s unlikely to pass the test again at his age, so he and Mary have to rely on friends and taxis to take them shopping. I’m afraid most people thought Jess behaved badly…me included. She could have left them their independence.”