by Carola Dunn
“The little—? Ah yes, the children from the Chinese restaurant.”
“You have a good memory, Inspector. However, I suppose I could just as well have been doing that after returning from committing murder in Padstow. It must have been about five o’clock. What time did Geoff die?”
“We haven’t received the doctor’s report as yet,” Scumble said warily.
“So it was a policeman who actually took the trouble to examine the scene who decided I couldn’t have killed him just as the others arrived?”
“That’s as may be. I’m the one asking questions. %Were you unloading Mrs Trewynn’s car in Port Mabyn at five after returning from Padstow?”
“Hardly! You can easily find out from Mr Alarian what time I left him, if you really must. I’d rather he didn’t know anything about this business, of course. But, short of hiring a helicopter, I couldn’t possibly have reached Port Mabyn—or Padstow, come to that—earlier than half past four. Someone would surely have noticed a helicopter, not that I have the funds to hire one. Nor any reason to do so, considering I didn’t know till I got to my shop what that bastard had done.”
Scumble sat up straighter. “What he’d done. You’re referring to Geoffrey Clark.”
“Of course I’m referring to Geoffrey bloody Monmouth Clark!” Nick exploded. Then he calmed down. “Sorry, bad choice of adjectives in the circs.”
“That part of the story’s true, is it?”
“What do you mean? What story?”
“Miss Maris’s. Consider our position for a moment, Mr Gresham. When a statement is made by a hysterical woman—”
Megan coughed. For a wonder, he noticed and correctly interpreted the cough. He glared at her.
“Let me rephrase that,” he responded, however, thanks no doubt to a recent memo from Superintendent Bentinck. While decrying the demands of women’s lib, the Super had reluctantly ordered his subordinates to attempt to avoid stereotyping. “When a statement is made by an overwrought person, unsupported by other evidence, it is normally regarded with a degree of scepticism. When part of it is more or less disproved, the rest can’t be taken very seriously.”
“What did Stella say?” Nick demanded.
Scumble brushed this aside. “She has very little credibility just now. Or rather, what she said while in the throes of hyst—overexcitement has very little credibility. When she’s calmed down, she’ll get another chance. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Nick frowned. “She had every excuse for being distraught,” he said. “She’d been living with Geoff for a couple of years, two or three, and someone murdered him. I just happened to be there when she found him.”
“We’ll get to that later. Will you kindly tell me what happened when you reached Port Mabyn, or I’ll start thinking you’re stalling for time to invent your story.”
“Sorry.” Nick passed a weary hand over his face. “It’s … It’s something I’d just as soon forget. I drove back from Launceston. As I parked the car outside the LonStar shop, I noticed the closedsign hanging in the door of my place—it’s next door, you may remember. It wasn’t my summer closing time yet by half an hour or so, so I was a bit annoyed with Stella. I went straight away to see if she was still there.”
“You went into your shop? Was the door locked?”
“Yes. I think so. What does it matter? You people are always harping on locking doors.”
“If it was unlocked, anyone could have got in and … But I’m getting ahead of you. Go on. You unlocked the door and—”
“Yes, I’m sure I did. It was locked. I went into the gallery. I could see right away that…” He swallowed. His face was very pale and Megan wondered if she should offer to fetch a glass of water, or strong tea, or something stronger, to counteract shock. Remembered shock, though, not immediate. He’d survive. “That several of my paintings had been wrecked.”
“Wrecked?”
“Slashed, with a knife. Or perhaps a dagger. There would be a kind of poetic justice in that, if I’d stabbed Geoff. I knew at once that he must have done it.”
“Wasn’t that rather jumping to conclusions? Why should he do such a thing?”
“Envy. Jealousy.”
“Which? Did he find out about and object to his—uh—girlfriend making a pass at you? Were you a much more successful artist?”
“Nothing to do with Stella. At least, I doubt it. And he made much money than I do. But—I don’t know if you’ll understand this—being an artist is as much a matter of passion as any love affair. What he hated was that I make a living of sorts solely by selling my paintings to people who appreciate them as art.” He frowned, reflecting, then nodded. “Yes, I think you can say that even of the tourist landscapes. Geoff’s money came from his commercial work. I’m sure you must have seen his adverts for Tintagel Brewery’s King Arthur’s Stout?”
“He painted those?” Megan asked, forgetting her place. “The one with King Arthur standing there with his sword drawn? And it quotes, ‘A stout heart and a trusty hand…’ That one?”
Scumble scowled at her.
“That’s one of them,” Nick confirmed. “Lots of people notice and remember it, but not one in a hundred knows who painted it, or cares. The trouble is, he’s obsessed with the Pre-Raphaelites, and no one really cares for them these days, neither the general public nor connoisseurs.”
“Wait a bit! What are these Pre-Whoosis when they’re at home?”
“You’ve heard of the Arts and Crafts movement? No. William Morris? Burne-Jones? Dante Gabriel Rossetti?”
Scumble stared at him stolidly. Megan, anticipating a lecture, wondered how much to write down and how much to leave out of her report.
“All right. To keep it simple, they were a group of Victorians who rejected modern mass-production and advocated a return to individual craftsmanship. They also developed a style of painting based on mediaeval themes. Geoff works in—worked in that style, which has been very much out of fashion for decades, like everything Victorian. It sells beer, apparently, but people don’t actually want it hanging on their walls. There’s a revival of interest in the fantasy-mediaeval genre, though, since Lord of the Rings has become so popular. If he’d been patient—”
“Geoffrey Clark didn’t choose to die just as his work was about to stage a come-back, Mr Gresham.”
“That’s not what I meant. I was just speculating, selfishly, I suppose, that—But you don’t want to hear my speculations.”
“On the contrary. Go ahead.”
“Oh, it’s just that if Geoff had expected success in the near future, he wouldn’t have been jealous enough to damage my work. Then perhaps he would have spent the afternoon peacefully at my place with Stella and wouldn’t have scarpered to his own gallery to be murdered, saving us all a lot of trouble.”
“You seem to think the two things are connected, the murder and the vandalising of your paintings.”
“We’d get on faster, Inspector, if you’d just rid yourself of the notion that I’ve discovered some miraculous means of being in two places at once. The two are obviously linked in time, in sequence. I’m damned if I can see any cause for the sequence.”
“Let’s go back to your discovery of the vandalism. Did you find any evidence, beyond guesswork, of who was responsible?”
“Not right away. I didn’t look very far because Donna appeared on the threshold, wanting to know if she should start to unload the car. I didn’t want her to see and start asking questions, so we—”
“We?”
“Eleanor—Mrs Trewynn had followed me in. We went out. I locked the door behind me. I unloaded the car—”
“Aided by Donna and the little Chins,” said Scumble, rolling his eyes.
“Exactly. Mrs Trewynn went up to her flat to make tea.”
“Tea!”
“Tea. We had, after all, found damaged paintings, not, at that point, a body. Though come to think of it, we were also dosed with tea at the police station after finding th
e body. Eleanor hoped it would calm me down before I dashed down to Padstow and did something I might regret.”
“Like killing Clark.”
“Like giving him a bloody nose. Which reminds me, in the middle of tea I suddenly wondered whether Stella might have tried to protect my stuff and been attacked by Geoff, who was, you will recall, in a fury and wielding a knife. I had a horrid vision of her lying bleeding behind the counter, or in the studio, somewhere I hadn’t looked. So I rushed off to check, and that’s when I found her note.”
“Aha! Did you keep it?”
“I can’t remember. If I did, it’s probably in one of my pockets, as I slept in my clothes last night.” Nick felt in the pocket anorak, then snapped his fingers. “No, wait a bit, they took everything off me last night. I had to sign a list. I’m sure it wasn’t there. I must have chucked it in the bin.”
“Pity. What did it say?”
“I can’t quote it. It was obviously written in a hurry, a mess of phrases, not a carefully thought-out screed. But she informed me that she’d told Geoff about my luck in London, he’d got into a tiswas and attacked my pictures, and she’d cleared out with him. If I’m not mistaken,” he added sardonically, “she did say she was sorry it had happened.”
“I’d like to get my hands on that note. I hope it’s safe at home in your waste paper basket. What did you do next?”
“Eleanor insisted on driving me to Padstow, feeling that in her presence I was unlikely to resort to violence. We parked in Rock and crossed by the ferry. The door of King Arthur’s Gallery wasn’t locked, so we went in. And I found Geoff in the back room, lying on his face with a dagger sticking out of his back. I knelt down to feel his pulse, just in case he was still alive, though he didn’t look it. No sign of a pulse.”
“You’re quite certain of that?”
“Absolutely. In fact, in spite of the warm day, he was already colder than I thought could be possible for a living person. I’d like to point out that I’m still wearing the same trousers, which are not bloody about the knees. At the time I presumed the colour I knelt on must be oil-paint, but that wouldn’t have dried enough in a few hours not to stain my trousers. I remembered later that he used coloured inks for his commercial work—it reproduces better. It also dries quite fast and keeps a sheen when dry.”
“Red ink.”
“Red ink.”
TWELVE
Margery Rosevear had declined Eleanor’s help with the washing-up.
“Why don’t you go and look round the studios,” she suggested. “Jeanette, dear, I’m sure Mrs Trewynn would love to see your work.”
Looking rather sulky, Jeanette added her own tepid invitation. As soon as they were out in the cobbled courtyard, she said, “Margery can be a bit bossy. You don’t have to look at my stuff. I hate showing it to people who feel obliged.”
“I’d like to see it, unless you’d rather I didn’t. I don’t want to disturb you if you’re about to get to work.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I don’t expect I’ll get anything done today, not after what happened.” She hesitated, then said fiercely, “I don’t believe Nick Gresham killed Geoff. It was awful, what Geoff did, but Nick’s just not that sort of person.”
“He didn’t do it.”
“You don’t think so, either?”
“I know. I was with him the whole time.”
“You were?” Stopping with her hand on the knob of the middle door in the row of converted stables on the south side, Jeanette turned a hostile gaze on Eleanor. “Who are you? What are you doing here? I don’t understand.”
“I’ll explain. Shall we go in?”
“I suppose so.”
“Do you mind if Teazle comes, too? She’ll stay outside if I tell her.”
“She can come.” Jeanette opened the door and stood back while Eleanor entered.
Following, she left the door open, though the morning air was still cool. Eleanor was quite glad to have an escape route easily available. Though she was not a suspicious person, and she was quite certain Jeanette was sincere, it did occur to her that someone more suspicious than herself might think the lady did protest too much. Her defence of Nick could conceivably be a smoke screen, though a rather complicated one, the ramifications of which Eleanor didn’t have time to sort out just now.
Her immediate impression of the studio was an almost obsessive neatness. Crammed into the small space were a painter’s easel, a draughtsman’s table, canvases tidily stacked against the walls, a sink, shelves, and all the other paraphernalia of artistic endeavour, including a faint smell of turpentine.
Jeanette said belligerently, “Well?”
“I’m Nick’s friend and next-door neighbour. I fetched him from the station in Launceston when he came home from London. I was with him all the time until we found Geoff’s body. He can’t possibly have stabbed him.”
“Oh, thank heaven! Then why haven’t you told the police? Or didn’t they believe you?”
“They were busy talking to everyone else. I was waiting for my turn and it never came. That’s why I’m here. Inspector Pearce told me they’d come and see me here this morning.”
“Oh, I see.” Jeanette sounded doubtful. “But I don’t understand why they didn’t question you last night. Then Nick needn’t have spent the night at the police station.”
“I don’t understand it myself, my dear. If I hadn’t been so very tired, I expect I would have made a fuss, but by the time I realised what was going on, it was too late. Margery offered to put me up for the night, and off we went.”
“Margery did?” She frowned. “Don’t you think that’s fishy?”
“Fishy?” Eleanor asked in surprise. “I thought it was extremely kind of her.”
“She complains about how much work we make for her. Why should she add another person to take care of, unless she has an ulterior motive?”
“Just for one night!”
“Suppose she killed Geoff. She wouldn’t want you to have a chance to persuade the police Nick didn’t do it.”
“Why on earth should Margery want to kill Geoff?”
“They had an affair, when Geoff first came here. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I think Doug found out and they had a row. I mean, no one cares about that stuff nowadays, only Marge wanted to go off with Geoff—she was really in love with him—but he said it wasn’t serious. You can imagine how that hurt.”
“But he’s still living here? I’d have thought Doug would throw him out.”
“Marge had given him a two-year lease. Of course Doug had signed without reading it. It’s very difficult to break a lease, I gather. Over time, naturally, everything simmered down. Besides, apparently Geoff’s one virtue is that he pays his rent on time, and it’s not so easy to find someone who’ll take a whole bungalow in the middle of an artists’ colony. Most of us can’t afford more than our two rooms.”
“It simmered down, you say. Is there a reason why it should suddenly boil up again just now?”
“Oh, I dunno. I’m not saying it was Marge who stabbed Geoff, but if it wasn’t Nick, it’s got to be someone else, right? Doug perhaps. Or one of the others. No one could stand him—except Stella, of course. I just said Marge because of her inviting you, but that’s the sort of thing she’d do, really. She’s a nice person.”
“I must say, that was my impression. What was it you particularly disliked about Geoffrey?”
“Me?” Jeanette’s fair colouring made her blush startlingly vivid. “I didn’t have anything in particular against him. He just … I just didn’t much like him. D’you want to look at my picture books or my paintings?”
“Both. But in case you’re expecting an expert, I should warn you that I don’t know much about art and I haven’t any children.”
Jeanette giggled. “That’s all right. The ones that drive me up the wall are the ones who pretend to be terribly knowledgeable. Though I must say they often buy something just to prove they know what they’re talking about. T
hen there are the people who page through the books, leaving thumbprints and bent corners, and say, ‘How adorable, but you never can tell with children these days, I always give book tokens.’”
Eleanor hastily examined her hands. “No thumbprints, I promise.”
Judging by Margery’s comments, she had expected the picture-books to be mawkishly sentimental, but to Eleanor the puppies and kittens involved, though engaged in unrealistic pursuits, looked very realistic, and—well, adorable. She didn’t like to say so, since the adjective had aroused such apparent scorn in the artist, but she did say she liked them very much. “I hope my nieces and nephews will start families soon, so that I can justify buying them. You must love animals to be able to paint them so well.”
“I do. I wouldn’t mind spending all my time drawing and painting them.”
“Why don’t you, then?”
“Oh, it’s not proper art. I just do it to make some money to live on. They’re sold in bookshops all over the country.”
“Oh good, then I’ll be able to find them when I have someone to buy them for. Let me see your ‘proper art,’” Eleanor requested.
She didn’t expect to understand the paintings Jeanette now turned face out from the wall. She was surprised, though, to find she actively disliked them. They were abstract, as Margery had told her, but despite the innocuous, not to say bland titles, they radiated energy. At least, that was the best way Eleanor, unfamiliar with the proper artistic vocabulary, could explain it to herself.
She suspected that the very fact that they spoke to her so strongly must mean they were “good,” whatever that meant.
They reminded her of one of Nick’s paintings in particular, Storm over Rough Tor, but that was a semi-abstract celebration of the power of natural forces. Jeanette’s ZigZag was angry. So, less explicably, was Grey Circle.
How could a grey circle express anger? Was it all in Eleanor’s imagination? She didn’t know, but it made her uneasy. She must remember to ask Nick’s opinion.
