Local Artist

by Paul Trembling

  She punched in the code, and I was nearly dazzled by a brilliant flash as the doors slid open. Peering in, I saw another CSI adjusting a camera on a tripod. Dozens of little arrows had been stuck all over the walls, and the camera seemed to be pointing directly at one of them from only a foot or so away.

  “As you see, the superglue worked. We’re only looking at marks around this end of the room – there’s no indication that anything happened beyond that point – and only at marks with some clear detail visible. Even so, that’s a lot of marks.”

  The other CSI glanced in our direction, grunted something inaudible, and went back to his work.

  “Excuse him. He doesn’t like to be interrupted, so I won’t even try introductions.”

  “Do all those arrows indicate fingerprints?” I asked.

  “We usually refer to them as ‘skin ridge impressions’,” Kepple explained. “Could be fingerprints, palm prints, or partials.”

  “They can’t all be the murderer’s, surely?”

  “Oh, no. Most of them will be marks left by legitimate users. We’re lucky that this is a fairly new building: under the right conditions, fingerprints can last for years, and superglue is very good at bringing them out! Has anyone talked to you yet about eliminations?”

  I shook my head.

  “OK. At some point we’re going to need elimination prints from all your staff at least. But that’s not what I wanted to ask you about just now. You see that bracket over there?”

  “Yes. It should have a fire extinguisher in it. Where’s it gone?”

  “That’s the question. Can you confirm that it was there when you were last in here?”

  “I don’t know about when I was last in here,” I answered, forcing myself to stay calm. “That was when we discovered the body, and I certainly wasn’t looking at extinguishers. But it was definitely there on Monday – we had a regular check of all the extinguishers, and everything was OK.”

  “Thanks, that’s all I needed.” She shepherded me back into the main library, apparently unaware of the trauma she’d potentially put me through. “Just drop the mask into that yellow bag, there, and we’ll dispose of it.”

  “Glad to be of help,” I said, trying to be sincere not sarcastic. I put her down as not deliberately insensitive, just very focused on her job. And I needed to get over it.

  “Oh, and some mail came. I put it all on the desk in the upstairs office. On top of the big envelope.”

  “Thanks.” It occurred to me that I didn’t remember any big envelope. “Just a minute – what envelope?”

  Kepple had hit the button to close the doors again, and answered me through the narrowing gap. “Big brown envelope. Or package, or something. It was on your desk when we went up there.”

  The door finished shutting before I could ask anything else. Easier, in any case, to go and look for myself.

  On the way, I passed Yvonne, who was sorting through piles of paintings and trying to arrange them by artist.

  “Are they OK?”

  “Some of them are quite good. Others… not to my taste.”

  “No, I meant is there any damage?”

  “Not that I can see. I think that this one’s meant to look damaged.” She held up a framed canvas that had been carefully covered with loose strips of cloth and some ornamental tassels. “Does this mean anything to you?”

  “Well – it’s an interesting combination of textures and colours. Perhaps that’s what was intended?”

  Yvonne snorted. She has very conservative tastes when it comes to art. “I wouldn’t hang it on my wall, that’s for sure!”

  Our discussion was interrupted by the sound of raised voices from the main entrance. We exchanged raised eyebrows, and I went to see what was happening.

  Jonathan Carr was at the door, arguing with the PCSO. “What do you mean, the ‘scene is still being preserved’? You’ve let the library staff in – that’s Sandra Deeson’s car parked outside if I’m not mistaken!”

  The PCSO, a short and slightly built young woman, tried to answer, but Carr talked right over her.

  “I’m secretary of the Templeton Art Club, and I have the right and the responsibility to ensure that our members’ artwork is being properly preserved and that every effort is being made to return it as soon as possible! I have been in touch with senior officers and they have assured me that I would have the full cooperation of the police – which is not what I am getting from you now!”

  Carr was perhaps a few years older than me, though you had to get close to notice it. His dark and wavy hair showed no traces of grey and he was normally the epitome of smooth and cultured. But now an uglier side was showing as he leaned over the PCSO in an intimidating manner. His lips were pulled back in what was almost a snarl.

  All credit to her, she stood her ground and, after several attempts, finally managed to get a word in. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have had no instructions to let anyone in except for police personnel and library staff. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll contact my sergeant and if she’s OK with it, then you can have access!”

  “Contact your sergeant? Young woman, I am a personal friend of your chief constable! I think that outranks a mere sergeant!”

  It’s amazing how many friends chief constables have, especially among people who are trying to get something out of the police. But things had gone far enough.

  “Perhaps I can help?” I stepped up next to the PCSO as I spoke.

  Carr blinked, and a remarkable transformation took place: the angry bully was instantaneously transfigured into a polite and civilized gentleman being harassed by obdurate officialdom.

  “Sandra!” he exclaimed. “What a pleasure to see you! And how fortunate! Perhaps you could explain to this officer who I am and why I need to come in and examine our paintings?”

  I looked at the PCSO. “He won’t need to go into the area where the CSIs are working. If I promise to escort him to the paintings and out again, will that be OK?”

  Wheels turned inside the girl’s head. Passing on responsibility to someone else is always an attractive option, especially when the alternative is to be the subject of another diatribe.

  “He’ll have to sign in,” she said firmly. “And I’ll have to inform Sergeant Henshaw.”

  “Of course. That’ll be fine, won’t it, Jonathan?” We’d never been on first-name terms before, but I certainly wasn’t going to let him patronize me.

  He flashed his teeth at me. “Of course, Sandra.” Ignoring the well-worn ballpoint offered by the PCSO, he produced a stylish and expensive piece of silver and enamel jewellery that incorporated a pen, signed the log with an unnecessary flourish, and strode majestically into the library.

  He ignored the stepping plates. Mindful of the warning about possible chemical contamination, I said nothing. Damage to his shiny leather footwear would be fitting recompense for his manners, I thought.

  “The paintings are all in the Children’s Section.” I indicated the way. But he stopped in front of the reception desk and shook his head slowly.

  “What a terrible mess! These people have no respect for property, do they?”

  “The property isn’t important. We can sort that out easily enough. But somebody died, and they’re irreplaceable.”

  Carr turned his attention to me, putting on a concerned expression.

  “Of course. I heard that you actually discovered the body. What a terrible shock for you! I don’t know how you can even bear to come back in the building!”

  I shrugged. “It wasn’t pleasant. But I’m coping with it.”

  “Clearly you are. But shouldn’t you be taking some time off?”

  He was doing his best to sound sympathetic, but to me it seemed a little forced. “No, I’m better off with something to do.”

  “Well, I think you’re being very brave. And I understand that this person is still unidentified? Unidentifiable, perhaps?”

  An image flickered across my mind – body, face down, pool of blood
. I pushed it away.

  “I think the police are still working on that.”

  “So do they have no clues at all? Have they mentioned anything?”

  “Not to me. And at the moment we’re more concerned about Emily. Emily Coombe, that is – she’s a member of your art club. She seems to have disappeared.”

  “Oh dear! That’s sad news. Miss Coombe was so very helpful in organizing our exhibition, and so enthusiastic about art. I do hope that she’s all right.”

  “We all do,” I agreed.

  “Has there been any word of her at all? Any sightings, any ideas where she might be?”

  “Not as yet. Not that I’ve been told, anyway.”

  “But surely one of her friends or colleagues here must know if she had somewhere she might go? To hide, perhaps?” The sympathy was still on his face, but his eyes were intent.

  I frowned. “Why would she hide?”

  He shrugged dismissively. “Oh, I don’t know. Just a figure of speech.”

  “Well, in any case, no one knows anything like that.” I didn’t like Carr, and I didn’t like his manner. The sooner he did whatever he wanted to do and left us to get on, the better. “The paintings are over here – the police had to move them for their forensic work…”

  I started moving towards the Children’s Section again, but Carr went the other way.

  “So this was where it happened?” He indicated the closed doors of the Laney Grey Wing.

  “Yes. You can’t go in. CSI are still working there.”

  “Hmm. Yes. I see. Very substantial doors, aren’t they? Much more than you’d expect in a library. And that keypad – is that the only way to open them?”

  “Yes,” I answered shortly. I was finding his interest in the murder scene ghoulish.

  “Well. Well well.” He glanced round, taking it all in. “Quite a classic mystery, isn’t it? A locked room, a body in the library…”

  “I believe you came to see the art club paintings?” I was struggling to keep my tone polite.

  “Of course.” He turned away from the door, and strode briskly back across the library to where Yvonne was still sorting the artwork.

  “You’ve met my assistant, Yvonne?”

  Carr gave a perfunctory nod in her direction, and turned his attention to the paintings. “Is everything here?”

  “As far as we know. Yvonne was just checking them.” Yvonne was giving Carr a stony look in response to his casual dismissal of her. He ignored it.

  “Very well. If there’s anything damaged or missing, it will be up to the artist to sort out any liabilities between the library and the police. However, the art club will expect a full refund of our booking fee. I’ll inform our members that they can come and collect their work.”

  With that, and without waiting for a reply, he turned and strode out again.

  With the look that Yvonne sent after him, he was lucky to make it out alive. “That man is a slimy stain on the surface of the earth,” she muttered. “And what did he want anyway? All that fuss to get in and he barely bothers to look at the paintings!”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. He was more interested in the murder than the paintings. Probably just wanted an excuse to see the scene. Never mind. Forget him. I meant to ask you before he interrupted – do you remember seeing a large brown envelope on my desk before all this happened?”

  “No. But there could be anything on your desk, Sandy, and no one would know about it. Entire undiscovered tribes could be living on there!”

  “Yes, OK, thanks. You said all that before. I’ll just go and look.”

  It was an old issue between us. Yvonne thought that my comfortable clutter was inefficient. However, I agree with Einstein: “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk the sign?” I’d printed that quotation off, framed it, and put it on my desk for Yvonne’s benefit. It’s still there, somewhere.

  Admittedly, it was hard to see any one specific item at a glance. The computer monitor poked up from behind a collection of brightly coloured folders, and at the other end of the desk the telephone was clearly visible on top of the directory, just next to the three-tier letter tray, each tier cheerfully stuffed with paperwork. In between… the keyboard was somewhere in there, and after a moment I identified the pile of mail that Kepple had mentioned. It was indeed on top of a large brown envelope. Very large – A2 size. Big enough to be hard to miss, even on my desk.

  Had it been there on the night of the murder? I didn’t remember seeing it, but I hadn’t looked at my desk. I’d only come into the office to check on the safe. I probably glanced at my desk in passing, but I couldn’t say for sure if the envelope had been there then.

  It certainly couldn’t have been there the last time I went on the PC, since it was half covering the keyboard. And that would have been during the afternoon before the art club people arrived to start setting up. Someone might have dropped it on my desk while I was busy with that. But who? Only the library staff should have access to the office – but the door might have been open, so someone could have come in.

  I dumped the pile of mail on the chair, and picked up the envelope. There was only one thing written on the outside. My name. Not even my full name.

  “SANDY DEESON” it said. Block capitals in blue ink. Carefully written. Informal, someone who was comfortable calling me “Sandy”, not “Sandra” or “Mrs Deeson”. Someone who labelled things with neat capitals.

  You couldn’t really tell handwriting from block capitals. But I did know someone who tended to label things like that, with neat capitals.

  Emily. Emily had done that.

  I held the envelope carefully, feeling the weight of it. Not especially heavy, but it was very stiff. Cardboard-backed, and heavy-duty paper.

  I fumbled round my desk for a letter opener, and carefully slit it open.

  The contents were tightly fitted, hard to pull out. As I tugged at them a small bit of paper came loose and fluttered to the floor. I picked it up.

  “Dear Sandy, This is a personal gift for you. You’ll understand why when you’ve seen the exhibition paintings. We plan to donate prints from them to the library, once things have quietened down a bit! But we thought that this would be appropriate for you to have. Emily.”

  Clearly her handwriting, on a large yellow Post-it note. Cramped, to fit in the space. But hers.

  I was shaking slightly. I took a deep breath. Then pulled out the remaining contents of the envelope.

  It was a painting, in a cardboard mount.

  Much of it was executed in shades of grey, so the eye was drawn at first to the small section of bright colour. A flower, a potted plant, stood in a shaft of brilliant golden light, leaves and petals upturned to drink it in. Some sort of orchid, I thought. Or perhaps something that never existed outside of the artist’s mind. If so, they had a powerful imagination and a technical skill to match. Each petal was a brilliant swirl of colour – predominantly a rich, deep red, shading to brighter crimson at the edges, but laced with intricate patterns in white and yellow. The leaves below were done in similar detail, the veins making a tracery of green shades on the green background.

  But even as I absorbed the beauty of the flower, I was becoming aware of the rest of the picture. There were other flowers there. A row of them – or perhaps a circle, as they seemed to curve in towards the edge of the picture, as if the point of view was the centre of a ring of potted orchids.

  But no sunlight fell on these, and no bright petals glowed. These were all dead or dying. Leaves drooping, petals falling, stalks withered and sagging. Here and there a trace of colour showed what beauty could have been there – a line of dark blue, a hint of purple. But everything else was grey. The plants were grey, the pots were grey. The stone flags on which they stood were grey and worn, and behind them were shadows and darkness, with just the hint here and there of thick wooden beams in dark grey and black, of crumbling old bricks and peeling paint.

  Ther
e was a window, boarded up, except for one broken slat through which that one light beam came. Touching that one flower, and giving it life. While everything around it was death and decay.

  It was powerful, and clearly symbolic – but symbolic of what?

  I had the feeling that I should know. That there was something here that I should be recognizing.

  I looked at the note again. “You’ll understand when you see the exhibition paintings.”

  What paintings? None of those I’d seen seemed to bear any relation to this one. Did she mean the four that had had the best places reserved for them? The places left for the unnamed artist?

  I looked again at the picture, searching for a signature or at least an initial, but nothing stood out.

  Footsteps on the stairs, then Yvonne came in, already talking.

  “Finally got that lot into some sort of order. You’d think they could have taken some care to keep them together when they took them out, but no, just dumped any old place! No damage that I can see though, so the artists – if that’s what they are! – can come and collect their masterpieces any time.” She stared warily at what I was holding. “Now don’t tell me that there’s more of them up here! Surely they could have at least put them into one room?”

  “There’s just this one. And it’s not part of the exhibition. It’s from Emily.”

  “Emily!” Yvonne came over for a closer look. “That doesn’t look like Emily’s work. I’ve seen her paintings – there were some in the exhibition. She did watercolour landscapes. Quite nice, but nothing like that.”

  “No, it’s not her work. But she left it here, for me.”

  “For you?”

  I showed Yvonne the note. She raised an eyebrow, then took the picture from me and held it so the light caught it. “Well, I’m no expert, but this looks pretty good to me. Some sort of mixed media, do you think?”

  “Yes. Acrylics for the colour, and charcoal or pencil for the rest, perhaps.”

  “And what about these prints for the library? Anything else in the envelope?”

  I picked up the envelope again and peered inside, but it was empty apart from a faint smell. Distinctive. Something that I might have come across before sometime, but I couldn’t place it.