What Men Say

by Joan Smith

  Loretta took this opportunity to slip downstairs, out of earshot, and leave a message for Audrey at the surgery in Woodstock Road. Five minutes later, Loretta heard the single chirrup which indicated someone had picked up the phone, presumably Bridget trying to reach Sam before the press conference. She had finished her call just in time for Audrey to get through from the call box in Wolvercote.

  A timer sounded as Loretta shook olive oil and balsamic vinegar in a jar and dribbled the mixture onto the salad, reminding her to remove a Marks and Spencer loaf from the oven. She put the various bits and pieces on the table, wishing she had been able to come up with something a bit more adventurous than an insalata tricolore and a bowl of olives, and called up from the bottom of the stairs: “It’s ready.” She listened for a moment until she heard signs of movement on the floor above, footsteps and Janet’s voice getting louder as she and Bridget came into the hall, then returned to the kitchen.

  “What did she say?” Bridget appeared first, pale but composed.

  “Who?” Loretta was flustered and it took her a moment to remember. “Audrey? She’s coming round at four.”

  “Hmm.” Bridget unscrewed the top of the pill bottle she was carrying and shook a capsule onto her palm. “I suppose I’d better take one of these.”

  “What is it?” Loretta knew Bridget’s fondness for quack remedies, ginseng and curious herbal concoctions, and was relieved when she moved closer to see that the typed label on the bottle appeared official.

  “Dunno. Something they gave me at the hospital.” Bridget put the capsule in her mouth, swallowed and looked down at the three places set at table. “Is there some mineral water?”

  Loretta fetched a bottle from the fridge and they sat down to eat. Almost immediately, and to Loretta’s relief, Janet began to talk about the book she was writing, a study of Artemisia Gentileschi commissioned by an American publisher who believed there was a market for lavishly illustrated feminist reinterpretations of art history. Janet had just spent a week in Florence, where an exhibition of Gentileschi’s paintings, the first major retrospective of her work, was being held at Michelangelo’s house, the Casa Buonarroti.

  “Judith Decapitating Holofernes,” Loretta said instantly, recalling an illustration in a magazine. She was about to describe the picture, a gory biblical scene of blood-soaked sheets and a severed jugular vein, but stopped abruptly when she realized it would lead them straight back to the subject of murder.

  “Yes, she really got her own back on men, didn’t she?” Bridget remarked unexpectedly, showing no such qualms. “For being raped, I mean—all those Judiths and Salomes.”

  Janet sighed and speared a smidgeon of avocado with her fork. “So my editor would like to think.”

  Bridget refilled her glass with water. “Well, there are rather a lot of them. You look at a picture and it seems familiar, then you realize it’s yet another woman with some bloke’s head in a basket.”

  “Don’t forget Jael and Sisara. And the flaying of Marsyas, although the attribution isn’t absolutely certain. I should say about a third of her subjects involve violent death, certainly as far as this exhibition goes.”

  Loretta prompted: “But?”

  Janet put down her fork and propped her elbows on the table in front of her, resting her chin lightly on her clasped hands. “The problem is that we don’t look at male painters in that way—autobiographically. Her father, Orazio Gentileschi, produced at least two versions of the Judith story but we don’t assume a personal motive. You have to remember that they were professional painters, they worked to commission, and it wasn’t unusual for them to be asked to repeat a successful subject. Heroic women, Judith and Jael and Cleopatra, they were hugely popular throughout the seventeenth century. Baglione painted Judith and so did Caravaggio.”

  “Who committed a murder himself,” Loretta pointed out.

  “Yes, but . . .” Janet hesitated, frowning as she thought about how best to express herself. “What I’m suggesting is that it’s how she painted, not what she painted, that matters. The history of art is littered with women artists whose work has traditionally been ignored or dismissed because they only painted still life, or in Artemisia’s case because of this facile equation between an event we don’t fully understand—we don’t even know the outcome of Tassi’s trial for rape—and the subject of her most famous paintings.” Janet paused again, narrowing her eyes and flexing her fingers. She had not seen Bridget’s signal to Loretta that the conversation was getting too serious, and before either of them could speak she continued: “The exceptional thing about Artemisia in my view, and I must say it was borne out by seeing the pictures together at the Casa Buonarroti, is her ability to paint women—real women, whether we’re talking about the Judiths or an allegorical figure such as the nude in L’inclinazione, In the Caravaggio decapitation, for instance, the one in Palazzo Barberini in Rome, Holofernes is in agony but there’s something curiously detached about Judith—you wouldn’t guess from her face or from the way she’s holding her arms that she’s in the middle of murdering someone. Caravaggio simply hasn’t given her much thought, her reaction to what she’s doing or her motivation. Whereas in Artemisia’s version, both the Uffizi canvas and the copy in Naples, Judith has a most determined expression and she’s bracing her left arm against his cheek—she’s definitely sawing”

  “Please,” Bridget exclaimed, suddenly looking queasy again, “let’s change the subject.”

  Janet gave her a startled look and seemed to be about to protest but at that moment they all heard the sound of the doorbell stammering its exhausted message. Loretta frowned and glanced at her watch. “It can’t be Audrey yet,” she murmured, and appealed to Bridget: “Are you expecting anyone?” Bridget shook her head.

  The men waiting on the path, talking in low voices, hardly needed to show their warrant cards for Loretta to guess their occupation. They stood with their legs apart, balancing on the balls of their feet, and the one with dark curly hair turned to her with a cocky, assessing look which made her simultaneously angry and nervous.

  “Dr. Lawson?” he asked, sliding his hand out of his pocket just long enough for her to glimpse an official-looking card in his palm. “Sergeant Brandon, Thames Valley Police.” He jerked his head sideways at his younger, fresh-faced companion. “DC Yate. Dr. Bennett in?”

  “Yes,” Loretta admitted, glancing over his shoulder in fear of seeing a squad car which had come to take Bridget away. “But if it’s about the press conference—”

  “What?” He made it sound as though this was the last thing on his mind. A burst of female laughter drifted up from the kitchen and his eyes narrowed. “Down there, is she?” He leaned over the railings and peered into the basement.

  “Yes,” Loretta said again, “we’re just having lunch.” This mild attempt to suggest they had chosen a bad moment had no effect; Brandon advanced until he was so close that Loretta could see the five-o’clock shadow forming on his chin and she had no choice but to fall back. The other detective followed, closing the front door behind him, and suddenly the hall seemed crowded. Loretta retreated further, leading the way down the stairs and trying to explain about preeclampsia, but Brandon brushed past her.

  “Dr. Bennett?” He strode into the kitchen, with Loretta following and making anxious signs, and gave Janet the merest glance; he had obviously been well briefed. “Sorry to bother you again, Dr. Bennett, but there’s a couple of things.” He felt in his pocket and produced two sheets of paper which Loretta, who was just behind him, recognized over his shoulder as photocopies of the handwritten pages Bridget had prepared for the Inspector that morning. Someone had added notes and question marks in blue biro, and ringed one particular day near the beginning.

  “Here we are,” Brandon was saying, “Thursday the twenty-fifth of July. It says here you left home at ten to nine, a few minutes after Mr. Bennett—Mr. Becker. You come into Oxford in separate cars, is that right?”

  Bridget nodded, uncompre
hending.

  “OK, let’s see. You arrived at your—at college around nine thirty, worked for a couple of hours . . . You walked round to the Bodleian Library, got there—it doesn’t say what time but it would take you, what, ten minutes? Quarter to twelve, say? You worked till about quarter to one, it’s all a bit vague, isn’t it? Went out for a bite to eat and do some shopping, came back half one. Worked till half past four, nipped back to college to pick up your car and arrived back at Thebes Farm approx five thirty. Mr. Becker arrived half an hour later and you had a friend round for dinner, a Dr. Michie, it says here.”

  “Yes, he’s a friend of Sam’s. From the university physics department.”

  “You don’t say what time Dr. Michie arrived, Dr. Bennett, or when he left.”

  Bridget breathed out noisily, leaving no one in any doubt that she had no patience for such nit-picking. “He came at seven, if you must know. The thing about physicists”—she glanced at Janet as though this might be of more general interest—“the thing about physicists is they like to eat early, I don’t know why. I didn’t do anything special, there was some fresh pasta in the freezer . . . You really want to know all this?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I wasn’t feeling well and I left them to it after we’d eaten, they had work to discuss. I looked into the dining room about half nine and said good night, and I heard Tony leave around ten. I read for a while and Sam came up after he’d seen News at Ten. That do you?”

  “Mr. Becker didn’t go out at all, then, either during the evening or after you went to bed?”

  “Of course he didn’t go out. What is all this?”

  “Just getting it clear.” He lowered his head, stared at the sheet of paper in his hand and then tried a new tack. “It doesn’t say where you went for lunch, Dr. Bennett, on Thursday the twenty-fifth. If you could be a bit more specific?” The other detective, standing just inside the doorway, took out a notepad and prepared to write.

  “Lunch? This is Thursday two weeks ago we’re talking about?” She waited for confirmation and said uncertainly: “I expect I had a sandwich, I did say I’d done it without my diary—”

  “Ah, yes, I was coming to that. Can we have a look at it, Dr. Bennett, this diary?”

  “My diary—what for?”

  “Fill in the gaps a bit, that’s all. Things you might’ve forgotten to mention—you’d be surprised what turns out to be important in a murder inquiry. This sandwich—you make it yourself? Bring it from home?”

  “No.” Bridget looked comically put out by the suggestion. “I—there’s a sandwich bar in Broad Street.”

  “Sandwich bar in Broad Street.” He glanced at his sidekick, making sure he was writing down her answers. “Called?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve no idea. You can’t miss it, it’s on the opposite side from Blackwell’s. Blackwell’s main shop that is. Near the—not the art shop, the paperback one.” She tailed off, apparently realizing that a shop with no fewer than four branches in the same stretch of street was hardly a useful landmark. “Does it matter?”

  “See anyone you know, did you, Dr. Bennett? In the Bodleian?”

  Bridget shook her head.

  “No one at all? I’d have thought you dons, you’d be bound to know each other.”

  Bridget smiled. “It’s not just members of the university who use it, you know. All sorts of writers and researchers, biographers . . . I don’t know what the membership is but it must be thousands and thousands.”

  “You don’t mind if I ask—what were you doing there?”

  “I . . .” She hesitated. “Research.”

  “What sort of research?”

  “I was—I had to look something up.”

  He nodded, waited.

  “Polidori’s Vampyre . . . for a paper I was writing.”

  “Whose vampire?” He turned and grinned at his colleague. “Spell that, can you, Charlie?”

  “Polidori. P-O-L-I-D-O-R-I. It’s the first vampire story in English.”

  “Dracula, eh? Like all those old films?”

  “Dracula—Bram Stoker’s much later, actually.”

  “Oh.” He accepted the correction without interest. “Where’d you actually do this work, Dr. Bennett? Big place, the Bodleian.”

  “You order the book in the catalog room and then you . . . you collect it and find a place to read.”

  “Where’s that? Where’d you read it?”

  “The Upper Reading Room.”

  “In one of those funny cubbyholes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember the number?”

  “The number?”

  “OK. Just thought you might, staring at it half the day. Staff know you, do they?”

  “The staff? I doubt it.”

  “Not even by sight?”

  “They deal with dozens of people every day.”

  “OK. Thanks, Dr. Bennett . . . Oh, this diary. Where is it, actually?”

  “Where? It’s—I think I left it at college on Friday. By mistake.”

  “What’s the drill then? All right if we go and pick it up?”

  “Pick it up? Good God, no. Donald—Professor Cromer—I’ll get it myself if you really think—”

  “When?”

  “As soon as I—this afternoon.”

  Loretta said warningly: “Remember Audrey’s coming at four.”

  “Oh.” Bridget put a hand up to her hair. “Later maybe, after Audrey’s been, my GP.”

  “OK, Dr. Bennett, we’ll let you get back to your lunch. Come on, Charlie, we’ve disturbed these ladies long enough.” He gave a stagey wave and went to the door, turning back to Bridget as his sidekick disappeared up the stairs. “Give us a ring, won’t you, when you’ve got the diary. We’ll give you a receipt so it’s all nice and official. After you.” He stood back to allow Loretta to pass and, when she didn’t move, left the room with a slight shrug. Loretta followed him up the stairs to the front door, feeling like an unpaid commissionaire.

  “. . . Donald’11 go berserk if they turn up at college,” Bridget was saying when she returned to the kitchen. Her face was flushed and she moved about restlessly, trailing one hand along the mantelpiece and looking down in surprise at the dust on her fingers. “Why do they—can they make me give them my diary? What’s so special about the twenty-fifth?”

  “I assume that’s when she arrived in England.” Janet poured an inch of water into her glass, drank it in one gulp and stood up. “Do you have a solicitor, Bridget?”

  “A—only the one we used for conveyancing. I’m going to ring Sam.” She peered round the room as though she’d forgotten where the telephone was and Loretta, who was standing in front of it, held it out to her.

  “Talk to him about getting a solicitor,” Janet said seriously. “You need someone who’s used to dealing with these people.”

  Bridget was already dialing. “Elaine? Is Sam there? When’re you expecting him back? Could you? At Loretta’s. Thanks.” She replaced the receiver, handed the phone back to Loretta and said bleakly: “He’s gone to the press conference, apparently. I’ve left a message.”

  Janet checked her watch. “I have to go—I’ve got a student coming at half past three.” She rested an arm lightly on Bridget’s shoulders. “You will do something, won’t you? About getting a solicitor?”

  “Mmm.” Bridget nodded distractedly and kissed her cheek. “Thanks for—I’ll come up with you,” she added, suddenly changing her mind and moving towards the door. “They can’t just turn up at college without permission, can they?”

  “Just a second.” Janet turned to Loretta, whom Bridget seemed to have forgotten. “Goodbye, Loretta. Thanks for lunch.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said automatically and listened with relief as the two women went upstairs, returning to the subject of whether the police could enter college premises without seeking formal permission from someone in authority. The discussion continued on the pavement outside the house and Loretta fell
back into a chair, staring into space and rubbing her tired eyes. The kitchen grew dark as unseen clouds passed overhead and she shivered.

  “Let’s go for a walk.” Bridget reappeared, her color still high and her eyes darting round the room as though she was trying to memorize its contents.

  Loretta looked up. “A walk? Now?”

  “Why not? Audrey won’t be here for an hour.”

  “Shouldn’t we—if you’ve got the key to your room I could go and get your diary.” She made the offer unenthusiastically.

  Bridget shook her head violently. “Please, Loretta—just for half an hour.” She turned towards the window as a shaft of brilliant light illuminated the kitchen and said wistfully, if not very accurately: “It’s such a lovely day.”

  Loretta breathed out, throwing back her head and allowing her shoulders to sag. “All right,” she said, conceding it was a more attractive way of spending the afternoon than driving into the center of town and looking for somewhere to park near Bridget’s college. “Just give me five minutes to clear these things away.”

  By the time Loretta had loaded the dishwasher, found her sunglasses and persuaded Bridget to borrow a cotton sweater, the sun was no more than a pale disc behind thick clouds. She followed Bridget out of the house, flinching as a gust of wind seized her hair and flung it across her face. Momentarily blinded, she bumped into Bridget, who had stopped without warning at the wrought-iron gate.

  “Miss Bennett?”

  Loretta pushed her hair back as a dark man in a flashy suit levered himself away from a parked car and strode towards them. His smile faded slightly as he saw Loretta and his eyes flicked back and forth between them as though he was no longer sure which was his quarry. “I’ve been trying your bell but it doesn’t work.”

  “Who are you?” Loretta insinuated herself between Bridget and the gate. Something in her brain murmured “journalist” and for a moment she thought she’d met him before; then she realized he reminded her of an old NUJ recruiting poster, a film still with a satirical caption which John Tracey used to have pinned on the wall above his desk at the Sunday Herald.