A Bed of Scorpions

by Judith Flanders

  ‘But if Holder had no authority, then what’s a promise from a junior?’

  ‘According to Aidan, an agreement is an agreement in the art world, and Holder was an accredited representative of the gallery. And Aidan and Frank feared that if they withdrew, Reichel would become a problem. As it turned out, he became a problem anyway.’

  ‘In what way?’ How could a non-client become a problem?

  ‘In the way we know: Holder sued for constructive dismissal, financially backed by Reichel. The gallery ended up paying out a year’s salary and a lot of legal bills to keep Anna’s story quiet.’

  ‘Two things. First, why would Reichel go to the trouble? I’m sure Merriam–Compton have lovely things to sell, but there are millions of other galleries he could buy from. And two, was Aidan saying that the whole story about Werner Schmidt dating Holder was made up, so Anna’s story wouldn’t come out?’

  ‘After dinner the other night’ – her look froze me; I wasn’t going to live down that kick for a very long time – ‘I asked around, spoke to a friend whose firm has done legal work for Reichel for years.’ There isn’t a lawyer in the western hemisphere that Helena doesn’t know well enough that they will tell her things off the record, even ratting out their own clients. I returned idly to the notion that Helena is a Martian. I’d say Superwoman, or one of those other cartoon heroes, but she’d never make such terrible fashion choices. I looked at her grey-green silk suit, and tried to replace it with pants over her tights, or a cut-away bustier and a PVC cape. Never going to happen.

  I snapped back to reality. ‘What did he say?’

  She frowned at me. ‘She.’ Oops. ‘She said that for Reichel a two-year-old grudge was nothing. She was quite sure that he was still plotting revenge on the boy who had scribbled in his colouring book when they were in kindergarten.’

  ‘That’s question one. And Schmidt?’

  ‘Essentially, it was made up. That is, Holder did date Schmidt. Whether Frank cared varied with the day. Sometimes, said Aidan, Frank talked about Schmidt the way anyone would about an old ex. But other times he spoke of it as if it troubled him. Aidan said he never knew if it really mattered, or if it was just one of the many things Frank and Toby found to fight about. But they used the fact that the relationship existed to give colour to Holder’s sacking.’

  I thought about that. Then, ‘I didn’t tell Jake anything about my conversation with Aidan.’

  ‘Because?’ She was giving nothing away.

  ‘Because until Werner Schmidt died, they were content to think that Frank had killed himself, even if they didn’t know why. There were the coincidences.’ I ticked them off on my hands. ‘Frank’s death coming so soon after the discovery of Stevenson’s body, and the similarity in their suicides; Celia Stein getting in touch with me for no reason right after Frank died; and, even more, the death of Schmidt. If I told him we’d learnt that Celia worked for someone Merriam–Compton had quarrelled with, that would add one more level of coincidence, as well as bringing the story back to Holder, and back to Aidan and the gallery.’ I stared miserably out the window. ‘So it just seemed easier not to talk about it.’

  Helena was tart. ‘One of your best things.’

  I wasn’t sure I was ready for a motherly this-is-what-you-need-to-do-to-fix-your-life chat right now. Or ever. I thought never might be a good time for that chat. Maybe I could get her to schedule it in her diary for never. Because yes, I’ve always got by on not discussing anything important, while chattering frivolously and amusingly about everything that isn’t.

  It works for me. I think.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THERE SEEMED NOTHING more to say, so by silent agreement we got out of the car and walked up to the church. The flowers were lined up by the door, ready to be taken out after the service and transported to the cemetery. We stopped and look at them on the way in. That seems to be the etiquette. Or everyone is simply doing it because everybody else always has, and none of us really knows what to do. I bent down to read some of the cards. When I send flowers for a funeral I’m always stumped as to what you’re supposed to write. Most people write directly to the person who is dead, which I think is either ghoulish, or missing the point. Each time I’m hopeful for tips for the next time, and each time I’m disappointed. Today was no different. There were lots of flowers, at any rate, which I hoped would be some comfort to Toby.

  The church itself was still quite empty, but we were very early. We found a pew not too close to the front, and sat on the aisle. People would have to clamber over us to get in, but we’d be in pole position for a fast getaway at the end and we wouldn’t be caught by anyone on the way out, and have to stand around gassing on the church porch. We sat, occasionally greeting people we know – Helena, big surprise, knew almost everyone; I, even bigger, knew almost no one – and I chewed over the Reichel–Celia connection once more. There might be a very simple answer: the art world is as small as publishing, everyone ends up working for everyone else, that kind of thing. But I still didn’t want to bring it back to Stevenson, and, therefore, to the gallery.

  The church was well over half-full now, and Aidan and Anna and their kids were sitting in the second row. Anna looked just as she always did, beautiful, calm, and intelligently observing. Unlike Anna, Aidan didn’t look calm. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a week, and although his clothes were what he usually wore, they also looked like he’d had them on for a week, too. I looked more closely. There was nothing wrong with them, they weren’t wrinkled, or slept-in – Anna wouldn’t have let him go out like that at any time, and definitely not to Frank’s funeral. It was Aidan inside them, in the end, who just looked like death warmed up and served on toast. Cold toast. Cold, stale toast. Toast made from supermarket bread. That had been bought last week.

  I thought about that. Aidan, I mean, not the toast. He hadn’t looked that bad last night. He’d looked tired, and unhappy, but that was natural under the circumstances. Yet less than eighteen hours later, he looked like sleep was a concept he had once heard of, but had never experienced personally.

  Just as Toby and the family were arriving at the front of the church, I felt someone nudge me. I was cross. There was plenty of space on the other side. I didn’t see why latecomers couldn’t go that way. I looked up, ready to give my most British stony-faced look. I might even throw in a sigh if they didn’t seem abjectly apologetic. Oh. Jake. I scooted down the pew, pushing Helena along one seat further.

  ‘Really? The police come to funerals too?’ I whispered, even though the service hadn’t begun yet.

  He sat down and glared at me. ‘I’m here as your partner.’

  I was ashamed. I hadn’t expected him at all, and definitely hadn’t expected him to appear as my other half.

  He didn’t say anything, he didn’t move, but I knew that inside he was shaking his head.

  Just as silently, I told him that he may have told himself he was there as moral support for me, but I saw him watching Toby, and Frank’s family, arrive all the same. True, everyone else in the church was also watching, but everyone else in the church was not investigating Frank’s death. I was watching too. Toby was with an older couple. His parents, most likely. There was a man who looked just like Frank, and must have been Lucy’s father. He was with a much younger woman, so much younger she could not possibly have been Lucy’s mother. Second wife, then. And Lucy and another girl, a bit younger, presumably her sister.

  Then the coffin was carried in, and we were off. We listened to readings from friends, we recited prayers, we sang hymns. I did the first two, and mouthed the words to the latter as a courtesy to everyone in earshot. No one should have to listen to me sing, certainly not at a funeral. The vicar gave a eulogy that even sounded as if he’d known Frank.

  And all the while, I watched people watching. Anna was watching Aidan. Lucy was watching her father. Jake was watching everyone. Only Toby, poor soul, might as well have still been staring at the rug in his sitting room, for all
he was aware of his surroundings.

  Lucy and her sister stood and sang something. Not a hymn, maybe something from an opera, or possibly something written originally for boy trebles, high and pure. Then the coffin was carried back out, and it was over.

  We followed fairly swiftly, but Helena had to stop and say hello to several dozen people on the way. As we reached the pavement, Jake said, ‘I’m parked on the next street.’

  I hadn’t expected to see him, so I hadn’t planned for this. I gestured meaninglessly at the street. ‘I came with … that is—’

  Helena interrupted brightly. ‘You go with Jake, darling, and then I can give the McMasters a lift.’

  ‘Great.’ Or not.

  Jake wasn’t fooled. He slung an arm around my shoulders as we walked away, and kissed the side of my head. ‘Good morning. What are you not telling me?’

  ‘So many, many things.’ I gave him a flat, guarded look.

  He grinned. ‘I expect that. You never tell me anything. But what, specifically, are you not telling me this morning?’

  ‘Have you been talking to Helena?’ I was decidedly cranky now.

  ‘Frequently. She tells me far more than you do.’

  I pressed my lips together and ostentatiously didn’t respond. We got into the car and I made a great production about moving my seat back, putting on my seat belt, getting my handbag settled just so. When I couldn’t delay any further, ‘I’m not telling you the same things I never tell you. I am not not-telling you anything else,’ I enunciated carefully.

  Jake was still annoyingly cheerful. ‘Of course you are. You were talking to me last night, and now you’re not.’

  I didn’t remember much conversation the night before, but now didn’t seem the right time to mention that. Happily, we were only a few minutes from Kenwood, where the after-funeral-thingie was being held. ‘What’s the proper word for an after-funeral-thingie?’ I asked instead.

  Jake looked startled. ‘That’s what you’re not telling me?’

  I smiled at that. ‘No, I’m still not telling you what I’m not telling you. It’s just that I realised I don’t know what you call an after-funeral-thingie. A reception? It can’t be a party, can it?’

  ‘That’s what you’re thinking about?’

  I tried to look inscrutable. ‘Everybody’s got to think of something.’

  Jake didn’t reply. That was sensible.

  Kenwood is a lovely place to go on a summer Sunday afternoon. It was summer, but the rest did not apply. There was nowhere to park nearby – the last parking spot near the Heath was taken sometime in 1957 – so we walked along the hot pavement in the sun, with me bitching the whole way.

  ‘Imagine it’s Sunday and we’re going for a walk.’ Jake was still chipper.

  I wasn’t. ‘If it were Sunday, we would be heading for a drink, or for coffee and a cake, or sitting out on the lawn. I wouldn’t be wearing this bloody awful hot suit, and my shoes would be comfortable.’

  ‘Imagine that they are. You’ll get the drink, and possibly the cake too.’

  ‘And I’ll have to talk to people I don’t know, and who don’t know me, and we’re happy to keep it that way. Or, worse, I’ll have to talk to people who know me and I haven’t got a clue who they are.’

  Jake wasn’t daunted. He rarely was, which really didn’t seem fair. ‘Always the little ray of sunshine, aren’t you, sunshine?’

  Put that way, I guess I was. I smiled apologetically, and we walked the rest of the way in more amicable silence.

  At Kenwood we walked around the main building, where the art gallery is, to the old stables block and kitchen garden. There’s a café there, which is what I’d been thinking of when I mentioned coffee and cake – it was always the focal point of a walk on the Heath, or always my focal point. Next door, it turned out, were two rooms which could be hired for parties, or even after-funeral-thingies. They were a bit gloomy. The front wall of the café had been replaced by glass, giving a spectacular view of the Heath, with London dropping away dramatically below, while the hire-room walls were, well, walls. But the stone floors kept them pleasantly cool, and the period features stopped them feeling as if you’d been teleported to a Holiday Inn while your back was turned.

  The family and closest friends hadn’t returned from the cemetery, so the people who were there already were more uninhibitedly party-like than they would have been if Frank and Toby’s families had been present. I looked around. Helena wasn’t there yet. Not surprising, as she’d been deep in conversation in front of the church when we left. I didn’t immediately see anyone I knew. I’m not very good at walking up to people at parties and introducing myself. (Translation: I’m terrible at it. More accurate translation: I don’t even try.) So I sidled round to the table where the drinks were. There was wine, and something greenish. I took a greenish glass and sipped: lemon and mint. Nice. I picked up another one. Jake would most likely be going back to work, so he wouldn’t want wine either. And it was only just noon, which felt a bit early. Although that was a minority view: the noise level was rising.

  I returned to where Jake was standing near the entrance, hands in his pockets. If you didn’t know he was a policeman, you wouldn’t have known. He was looking at the crowd with the level of interest anyone walking into a party would show. But I knew he was checking things out, cataloguing faces. I wasn’t. I had no idea what he was looking for, and I wouldn’t have recognised it if it had jumped up and hit me with a wet fish. Instead I watched a toddler who had left his parents somewhere in the crush and was exploring. He wiped his nose on the tablecloth holding the drinks and then set off for a glass door behind the bar, which probably led to the catering area. Peek-a-boo with his reflection kept him quiet for a while, but then that got old. He wiped his finger across the glass. At first I thought, given the runny-nose scenario, he was finger-painting with what was left. But he wasn’t enjoying it; he was puzzled. He did it again. It wasn’t puzzlement anymore, it was despair. Something had gone terribly wrong. Of course. He wasn’t wiping, he was swiping. Phones, computers, iPads – you swipe, you get dancing penguins. Here was a perfectly good, very large screen, and yet, however much he swiped, no singing, no dancing, no animals playing counting games, just a bunch of smears. The world was not a good place, and he was going to share that view with us. Loudly. Then his mother came out of the crowd and gave him her phone to play with. Existential crisis averted.

  I turned and saw Jake had stopped watching the crowd and had been watching me. ‘Don’t even think about it.’ The words were out of my mouth before I’d considered them, startling both of us.

  ‘You like Bim.’ He was tentative, but it was something he’d apparently been thinking about.

  ‘I do like him. And when he gets cranky and snotty I like handing him back to Kay.’

  He shrugged. ‘Just wondering.’

  ‘Stop wondering. I’m forty-three, for God’s sake. I’m too old. And I’m not a hen. I don’t do broody.’ I paused and regrouped. ‘A little early for this conversation, isn’t it?’ I looked around. ‘And an ideal place to have it, too, at a funeral.’

  ‘You never want to have any conversations anywhere, at any time, so here and now seems as good a place as any for you to avoid one. And it’s not a funeral. It’s an after-funeral-thingie. I have it on the best authority.’ He smiled, but he wasn’t happy. He was angry.

  I couldn’t blame him, and I hadn’t meant to start a quarrel. ‘You’re right. We do need to talk, and I have been avoiding it. If we can coordinate so that we’re awake at the same time …’ I trailed away. We hadn’t been, much, recently. ‘Are you working this weekend?’

  ‘According to the rota, no, although it depends a bit on this.’ He nodded towards the crowd. Having a we-need-to-talk talk, or having my friends investigated. Life was filled with such wonderful choices.

  ‘We’ll find time then. I promise.’

  ‘It won’t be so terrible. You don’t have to look like you’re about to have y
our wisdom teeth extracted.’ He bent down and kissed me benevolently on the forehead, as though he were my Great-Uncle Hugo returning me to boarding school. Except that I didn’t have a Great-Uncle Hugo, and I hadn’t gone to boarding school.

  By now those who had been to the cemetery had arrived, as had the latecomers from the church, Helena among them. I wiped away my wisdom-teeth-extraction face and plastered on a social smile instead. ‘We should talk to some of the others. And say hello to Toby and the family, do the formal regrets thing.’

  I started to head off and then stopped. ‘Do you want another one?’

  ‘No. You’re safe.’

  I wasn’t going anywhere near that line.

  As we headed towards Helena I saw a silvery glint of hair by the bar. I looked over and, sure enough, it was Delia Stevenson. It made sense. The gallery had looked after the estate for more than twenty years, and Frank had been his dealer before that. She must have known him well, and she was in London anyway for the opening of the exhibition. It would have been strange if she hadn’t come. I steered Jake over, telling him who she was as we went.

  We swapped our empty glasses for full ones, using the manoeuvre as a passport to dropping into conversation with her. I introduced myself, saying I’d seen her at the press conference, and allowing her to assume I’d been there for a reason. As I was now at Frank’s funeral, she probably thought I was something to do with the art world, and I let that slide past, introducing Jake as my partner.

  She was in a different elegant silver outfit – maybe she always dressed to coordinate with her hair. If my hair were that good, I would too. But while the outfit, and her surface, were both polished, she immediately revealed herself to be less so, being very obviously relieved that someone had come up to speak to her, so she neither had to brave the crowd herself, nor stand alone on its edge. We made the usual chit-chat: the funeral, how terrible Frank’s death was, who the family members were. In the guise of idle small talk I asked her about her trip, and she said she’d arrived from the States two weeks ago, which I saw Jake noting was before Frank died. She rambled on, with the blithe disregard for the conventional give-and-take of party conversation of someone who lived alone and rarely had company: she hardly went to shows of her husband’s work, leaving most of the PR side to Celia, and in fact rarely left Vermont. She was only here for this show because it was much bigger, and therefore more important, and besides, she liked London. She was thinking of moving here, because Celia was here, and she was hoping for grandchildren, yadda-yadda, but even though Celia had that huge house, they both liked their privacy, dee-dah-dee-dah, but maybe they’d build an annexe in the garden, and so on and so forth.