The Legacy

by Kirsten Tranter

  I nodded.

  ‘I swear – I saw a burn on her arm. Jesus.’ He rested his forehead in his hand. ‘But she said I didn’t need to worry. She had gone into this mode – she had a plan for something, but she wouldn’t say what it was. It wasn’t for leaving him – at least I didn’t think so – she just said I didn’t need to worry, that she was going to sort it all out. I wondered if she’d been trying to talk him into spending more time up at the house, less time in the city, just so he would be around less.’

  He got up suddenly, and went to the kitchen and came back with the bottle of whisky. There wasn’t much left. He poured it all out into the glass and drank some and handed the glass to me. ‘And that was the last time I saw her. August.’

  ‘So when she disappeared you thought that Grey had – that he’d killed her.’

  It was difficult to get my mind around this idea, even after seeing the bruise. People hit people – that was different to killing them. I remembered the feel of Jones’s thumb against my jaw, his hand against my neck, my face, pushing. A whole series of images passed across my mind in quick succession – the pomegranates in their golden bowl on the granite island – Grey’s delicate hand against Ingrid’s back – his feet again, stepping up the stairs – Ingrid in my dream, hands opening to show me the scroll that was a painting.

  Richard was thinking, choosing his words. ‘I thought there was a possibility that he’d killed her, yes, that he’d gone really out of control.’ He looked down at the glass in his hand.

  ‘What did Grey say about it?’

  ‘Well, our conversations about it – they weren’t really conversations. The police got involved right away. He’s very convincing, the grieving husband, I’m the raving mad rejected lover, you can imagine. Pretty soon I was legally restrained from going within a whole city block of him.’ He interlaced his fingers, parted them again. ‘It sounds paranoid, I know. In grief, you know – everything starts to look strange. I don’t know why it was easier to believe that than to believe the other thing, that she just died like everyone else.’

  That was it – her special, exceptional quality, that brilliant thing we held on to. It hit me like a stone. He looked up at me.

  ‘It was that strange edginess she had that last time. Like I could see all the fear that she had been trying not to show for so long, but only because it was over, and it had been replaced by a new kind of fear, a new kind that she hadn’t figured out yet how to hide. She was on the verge of something.’

  He looked at the envelope. ‘And now I think that this was it.’

  ‘Do you think she was blackmailing him?’ I wanted to listen to Richard’s thoughts about it, my own ideas too dark to open, starting to unfurl.

  ‘Here’s what I think,’ he said, leaning towards me. ‘She must have figured out at some stage that something wasn’t quite right with Fleur, with the paintings.’

  I recalled the dinner party at Maeve’s the night it started snowing, after we’d seen Fleur’s work at the Whitney, the phone call and how Fleur hadn’t shown up. It had been right after that show that she had stopped painting. Had the pressure of the Whitney show made it all unbearable, whatever secret was encoded in the pictures Trinh had given me?

  ‘Ingrid must have figured it out,’ Richard said. ‘She could have known something, whatever, for a long time and let it lie to protect Fleur. She loved her, you know. They really were close. But when it got worse with Grey – maybe she’d been digging around at the Hudson house that summer and found these.’

  ‘But what for?’ I asked. ‘What would she have blackmailed him for if she didn’t want to leave him?’

  ‘Maybe she was going to leave him and just didn’t want to tell me. Or just to stop him hitting her,’ Richard said bluntly, ‘and let her live a little bit.’

  ‘But if she broke the secret it would hurt Fleur too.’

  ‘That’s what could have made it impossible to really wield it for all that time.’

  ‘But what would Fleur have thought about it?’ I persisted.

  ‘They were pretty loyal to each other,’ he said. ‘Maybe she decided to go along.’

  ‘Or maybe she didn’t.’

  ‘Who knows.’

  ‘But the pictures …’ I began. ‘What do they actually show?’

  He looked at them. ‘There’s no signature on them. But they are clearly the pictures on the wall in this photograph, or ones very much like them, studies or versions. And you can see Maeve in this one – you can see how young she is – and Grey in the other – it’s before Fleur was born. Or before she started painting.’ He pulled out one edge of the photograph of Maeve. Her eye looked out at me in black and white.

  ‘It raises a lot of questions about the process behind Fleur’s painting,’ he said. ‘Who was really behind the paintings in the first place.’

  ‘I can see that,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t show whose they really are. Are those Maeve’s paintings, or drawings,’ – I looked at the drawing of the spindly tree on top of the pile – ‘or Grey’s?’ The paintings in the picture seemed to have signature marks on them, too small to make out.

  ‘I don’t know. But my money’s on Maeve. I’ve seen Grey’s writing, and I don’t think it’s his hand.’

  ‘Drawing’s different though, isn’t it, from writing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Maeve’s level gaze in the photograph seemed tragic now and conspiratorial all at once. She had made such a neutral, dispassionate dismissal when I had asked her if she herself was an artist, back in Kirribilli, years ago. No talent, she had said. Eve had taken me aside later that afternoon and told me the rumour that Maeve had been a painter once – she denied now that she’d ever taken it seriously – and had been devastated by her initial failure. She had sworn off it and buried all evidence of her early work. ‘None of her paintings survive,’ Eve had said, ‘except one or two I’ve seen at her house – she says that they didn’t deserve to.’

  I pitied her, and Grey – what frustrated ambitions had gone into the production of their child prodigy, the talented girl? But I remembered the look that had passed between them at her house that night, before the snow fell, and began to allow myself to develop a glimpse of the secrets and bonds that underlay it, and I hated them both.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, exactly, whose these are,’ Richard said. ‘Whoever they’re by, if not Fleur, it would bring them all down – Maeve and Fleur and Grey.’ He looked strangely satisfied. ‘It was never really clear to me before, what could have made him snap – I thought it was something to do with this new thing with Ingrid, this new fear she had. Now I think it’s clear – she confronted him with these, or he found out that she had taken them, and he couldn’t risk it – he had to find a way to silence her. And then the towers came down – it was the perfect opportunity, the perfect cover, I’ve always thought so – that’s what I tried to explain to the police. If you were planning a murder and were just waiting for the right time, wouldn’t you just try to seize that when it happened? It’s so convenient – she disappears, and it’s the one day ever when you will never, ever have to explain someone’s disappearance.’

  He was talking faster and faster, and I was starting to see some of the manic edge that might have convinced the police that he was a little unhinged.

  ‘But, Richard,’ I said. The purple of the bruise wouldn’t go away, a coloured blur over part of my vision. I blinked ‘He’s clearly a horrible, violent man and I suppose I can believe that he would think about that and want to do that. But she was there. She was downtown, she was at the Trade Center.’

  ‘He always claimed that she was.’

  ‘But I’ve seen her diary. I’ve seen the appointment.’

  ‘What appointment?’

  ‘The appointment at nine. At 9 am, with her financial adviser downtown.’ Paul, 9.

  Richard was silent.

  ‘How – where did you see it?’

  ‘It’s on her desk. It was on her desk when I
went there, when I was here before, when I went to see Grey at the apartment. I was in her room. I looked through it …’ My cheeks flushed. ‘I was looking through the things on her desk – I was just glancing – anyway, I saw the diary – the calendar – there and I looked at it. It’s written in there: 9 am, Paul.’ I recalled the single line of writing on that date, the blue ink, the length of the line on the page.

  ‘Was it her writing?’

  I paused. ‘It looked like her writing.’

  He made an impatient sound. ‘But that’s just it – how easy it would be for him to write that in there afterwards, it’s perfect – to make up proof that she was there. How do you even know she had an accountant down there?’

  ‘I imagine that it wouldn’t be too hard to check. Why would he make up a lie that obvious?’

  Richard looked unsettled. He stood and paced behind the couch.

  ‘Can you get hold of it?’ ‘What?’

  ‘The calendar. I’d like to see it.’

  ‘I told you – it’s at Grey’s place. It’s in Ingrid’s room there.’

  ‘Right, so you know where it is.’

  ‘You think I’m going back there to take it?’

  He stopped pacing. ‘Come on, Julia.’

  I swallowed.

  ‘I know how good you are. I saw you take that photo from Fleur’s drawer. I couldn’t see the picture, but I saw you slip it in your pocket. Very smooth.’

  My mouth was dry. ‘Oh.’

  He started pacing again.

  ‘I’m not that good,’ I said. ‘It’s a big thing, it’s obvious – it would be obvious if I took it. I don’t even know how I’d get in there.’

  ‘We’ll figure that out.’

  ‘You have to be joking.’

  ‘No.’

  His presence was somehow larger and heavier than I’d seen it before, more strength in his body than I had realised.

  ‘Richard – you’ve been telling me that you think Grey killed Ingrid. Bludgeoned her to death or whatever you think he did. Now you’re asking me to go and get evidence – if that’s what it is – from his house.’

  He looked at me blankly. ‘But he doesn’t know you have any of this.’ He motioned to the pictures. ‘Or know that we’ve spoken about this. Why couldn’t you just ask to go and pay another visit to your old friend’s room? Why would he care?’

  ‘We weren’t that close towards the end, you know.’

  There it was again – this feeling that I wasn’t quite entitled to this position of grieving, intimate friend.

  ‘Would Fleur let you in?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He waited.

  ‘Let me use your phone,’ I said.

  I called Mrs Bee.

  ‘It’s Julia.’

  ‘Yes, how are you?’

  ‘I’m OK. Look – can you tell me – the person you said was on his way – did he show up?’

  She was quiet for a moment. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I believe you took it into your own hands and went to see him instead.’

  ‘When? Just now?’

  She laughed softly. ‘Sorry, I can’t tell – it’s just not clear. It may have happened – has it? Or it may be still waiting to happen.’

  ‘That isn’t very specific.’

  ‘No. Are you alright, dear?’

  ‘Did you mean Gil, or Richard?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I oughtn’t to have said anything. I didn’t realise it would be so unsettling.’

  I hung up. I thought of Jones – the one I had been thinking of at Mrs Bee’s place earlier, the one who wasn’t coming. According to her. I wondered if he had been more angered or put out by my question about his wife the other night than he had shown. We hadn’t spoken to each other that night much at all, and he hadn’t been around since. Something told me he wouldn’t be around again for a while.

  It was late. Half the windows were dark in the buildings opposite. The few cars on the street below drove slowly by.

  Richard joined me at the window. ‘If you’d like to stay, you’re welcome.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I stayed there at the window for a while and heard him quietly treading around the small apartment, putting things in the sink and moving around. Sounds of water running from the bathroom, doors opening and closing. When I turned around there were pillows and covers on the couch, which was long enough to lie down on comfortably. A toothbrush still in its plastic wrapping was set on the pillow. I imagined a neat collection of them in a cupboard somewhere.

  The envelope was on his desk. I went over and put it back inside my bag and rested it next to the couch. The lights were off except for the desk lamp and a light in Richard’s bedroom. He stood in the doorway, wearing a T-shirt now and long, dark pyjama pants, his glasses still on. ‘Please, use anything you need,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’ He turned and pulled the door almost closed without shutting it.

  I brushed my teeth in the bathroom, white tiled walls and pink, black and white tiles on the floor. A light shone down from above the mirrored cabinet on the wall. My face was pale in the mirror against my dark hair, faint traces of lipstick left on my mouth, and the reflected walls were smooth and white. The cabinet had three mirrored doors that opened so that one surface would reflect the other. I pulled the two outer ones open and looked at the side of my face reflected the wrong way around, the multiple walls and corners that appeared. I thought about the photograph of Ingrid and how I’d tried to find that angle from the Promenade.

  I sat down on the edge of the bathtub. The tap for hot water was warm to my touch but it was stiff in my fingers when I tried to turn it and my desire for a bath disappeared. My legs felt cold against the tub, feet bare against the tiles.

  Richard’s door was at a right angle to the bathroom door. It was still almost closed, the door’s latch not quite touching the edge of the jamb. The handle was long, the kind you pushed down to open rather than a knob that turned. It looked like brass. I looked at it for a while, and put my hand to it, white in the dark against the brass, and pushed it. The room was larger than I had expected it to be. His bed was set under a window across from the door with a white shade pulled all the way down. He was lying on his back, and raised himself up on his elbows slowly when he saw me open the door. His face was a blur in the dark. The shapes of an elegant chair in the corner and mirrored closet doors emerged. He stayed still.

  I shut the door so that the latch caught, but it was noiseless. I stepped to the bed, my feet making no sound, and the quietness was so absolute that my own breath was silent when it should have been loud. His head turned to follow me. The echo of a light from a passing car or truck passed quickly across the window for a moment, leaving the room darker than ever when it was gone. Sound seemed to return then, and a floorboard creaked under my foot. I thought I heard him say my name, but it was strangely muffled, and I wondered if I was dreaming after all. He was motionless as a statue. The desire that filled my body was for proximity and I wanted to lie in the bed just to know that I was not alone. My name echoed in my head, his voice, not his voice. I was about to turn around and leave when he spoke, and it was his voice this time.

  ‘Don’t go.’

  It was the same thing I had said to him at Fleur’s party. I slipped under the covers and we lay there, side by side, not touching. The sheets felt stiff and newly laundered, the down cover light and soft. I glanced over at his face in the dark and his profile was turned away to the side, neck exposed. A pulse beat there somewhere in the throat, under the skin, and I wanted to lift my fingers to that place under the jaw just like you see people doing when they’re checking to see if a person is really dead, to feel the proof of life there.

  The next morning the room was dim, no direct sunlight. The detailed scrolls of the ornate bed frame were visible that had been shadowed in darkness in the night, metal painted glossy black, chipped in places to reveal old layers of colour underneath – leaden white, pale blue. On the
floor next to the bed was a glass of water, almost empty, and a newspaper folded to the crossword. Every clue was filled in except for one.

  The walls were empty like the rest of the flat apart from that one poster in the hallway, saying nothing.

  The silence of last night had lifted but the apartment was still quiet. I stayed in bed, half-sitting up, listening for him, but there was no sound. After a few minutes the front door opened, keys in each of the four locks, one by one, and brought the sound of footsteps entering, paper bags being set down, the faint slap of a newspaper on the counter. Other noises followed, and then the jerky bubbling of the coffee maker.

  I pulled myself out of bed and left the room. My jeans were still there, thrown over the back of the armchair, the only sign of disorder. The covers and pillows were gone from the couch. Richard didn’t say anything. I took the jeans and went into the bathroom to shower. The water came on with a shudder, fast and scalding hot. The yellow shampoo had the smell of grapefruit that had been on the pillow last night.

  Richard was standing at the kitchen counter, looking at the paper, drinking coffee, when I came in, dressed, my hair wet. The look he gave me was a combination of hostility and desire, and he quickly looked back down at the paper and flattened out the page he was reading.

  ‘There’s coffee,’ he said, his voice neutral.

  I poured some.

  He sat down with the paper. There was a small, square, black table under the window, separated from the kitchen by a high ledge. The tension was something like what I would have expected if we had slept together and regretted it, but we hadn’t. His bed was wide and we had managed to fall asleep with a body’s worth of distance between us, though when I woke up I was almost over on his side of the bed.