Darkness & Light: A Frank Elder Mystery (Frank Elder Mysteries)

by John Harvey

  Pausing, he looked out at his audience, as if making sure they realized this was a significant point.

  “It was a name,” he continued, “that the poet William Carlos Williams claimed had been inspired by his book of essays, In the American Grain, which was itself strongly influenced by none other than D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence, who, as we all know, was born not far from where we are now, in the small mining town of Eastwood. And Stieglitz, who had himself corresponded with Lawrence, came to believe, as did Lawrence, of course, in the primacy of the physical in life as in all creative art. What you touch; what you feel; what you see. The body first and not the mind.”

  Elder watched as several students hurried to scribble down the final sentence. A sentiment that would reappear, he felt, on the walls of sundry student rooms; encouragement, if such were needed, for various kinds of mindless behaviour.

  Along the row, a man with fair hair wisping round his ears, jerked suddenly upright and looked guiltily around, in case anyone had spotted him dozing off.

  “Finally,” Blaine said, his voice both intimate yet marked by that sardonic distance so beloved of academics, “and lest you should think Stieglitz’s passion was fired only by whatever he could observe from his Madison Avenue window, let me leave you with this, a portrait of the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, made in 1918, when O’Keeffe was just thirty-one and Stieglitz was fifty-four.”

  In the photograph, O’Keeffe was seemingly naked beneath an embroidered robe, her arms across her chest, fingers holding the robe not quite in place; a glimpse of navel, one thumb resting on the suggestion of a breast. The hair, long and unkempt, was that of someone who has just risen from bed.

  “O’Keeffe had met Stieglitz in New York when she was a student, barely twenty years of age, a relationship that led to their marriage in 1924, six years after this portrait was made. Between the time of their first meeting and his death in 1946, aged eighty-two, Stieglitz would take more than three hundred pictures of the woman he loved. Photographs of her hands, her face, her neck; photographs of her fully clothed and nude. And this portrait, with its strange, almost haunted quality, is, in my estimation, one of the finest.”

  Elder continued to stare at the screen as Blaine sat down to more than polite applause, and a slender man with a slight stammer began a short speech of thanks.

  It was the look in the eyes that intrigued him most, dark eyes staring out at something above and slightly to one side of the camera’s lens, something remembered or not yet seen. Not a portrait, Elder felt, of someone at ease, relaxed, at rest; rather someone anticipating pain, regret.

  Around him, people were rising to their feet, pushing back chairs, exchanging words. Several of the students had gathered round Blaine, attempting to engage him in conversation, and for several minutes he stood, collecting together his papers, listening with half an ear, before finally dismissing them with a remark which made them laugh aloud.

  Elder waited near the back of the room.

  A few last words with the organizer and Blaine buckled the straps of his leather case and crossed toward him.

  “I know you,” Blaine said affably enough, “but you’ll have to excuse me, I can’t recall from where.”

  “Frank Elder.”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Eight years ago. I was...”

  “No, wait. I have it now. That unfortunate woman who was found dead in her hotel room.”

  “Irene Fowler.”

  “Yes, of course. You were the officer leading the investigation into her death.”

  Elder nodded.

  “Detective inspector, I believe.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And now...” the beginnings of a smile, “now you’re interested in photography.”

  Behind his glasses, Elder noted, Blaine’s eyes were blue.

  “Not really,” Elder said.

  “Lawrence, then? That’s where your interest lies? His reputation’s sadly not what it was, but a fascinating man I’ve always thought. Misunderstood. Here especially. His own part of the world.”

  “No,” Elder said. “Not Lawrence.”

  He had tried Lady Chatterley once; the rude bits, at least. All they’d succeeded in doing was making him laugh.

  “I can’t believe,” Blaine said, “you wandered into the gallery by chance.”

  Elder shook his head. “Irene Fowler—I’m taking another look at her murder.”

  “After all this time?”

  “Whoever was responsible, they were never caught.”

  Blaine looked at him carefully before speaking. “And for that, you feel responsible.”

  “Not exactly,” Elder said. Though to a large extent, of course, he did.

  The organizer was hovering near the door, trying not to look concerned. Doubtless there was a caretaker somewhere, ready to complain about the event overrunning, even as he clocked up another hour’s overtime.

  “Maybe we could talk over a drink?” Elder said.

  “You mean now?”

  “If that’s not inconvenient.”

  “I’m afraid it is. I’ve a friend waiting. We’re going out to supper.”

  They crossed the gallery floor, walked through a second room and then down the stairs toward the exit, lights being switched off behind them as they went.

  “Some time tomorrow then?” Elder said. “It needn’t take too long.”

  Blaine stopped on the bottom step and gave Elder his card. “I’m afraid I can’t recall my schedule exactly. Why don’t you telephone tomorrow morning? Any time after eight. I’m sure something mutually convenient can be arranged.”

  The woman waiting for Blaine had been in the audience, sitting, Elder remembered, at one end of the front row. She was what might once have been called handsome: a strong face, dark reddish hair, a good inch taller than Blaine himself. As they moved away, down toward the Old Market Square, she slipped her arm through his.

  THEY HAD TRIED MANY OF THE NEW RESTAURANTS THAT had opened in the city in the past three years, opened and, some of them, closed and replaced; but time after time they found themselves coming back here, to Sonny’s, on the corner of George Street and Goose Gate, at the Lace Market edge.

  Lively on weekends, but never rowdy, earlier in the week it was a quiet haven of linen napkins and white candles, well-prepared food and hushed conversations.

  Flush from the evening so far, Blaine ordered the Felton Road pinot noir.

  “So what did you think?” he said. “At the gallery. Your verdict? No beating around the bush.”

  Almost despite herself, Anna Ingram smiled. For all his demeanour might suggest otherwise, there were times when Vincent needed reassurance as much as a child perched uncertainly on the verge of adolescence.

  “You were fine,” she said. “It was fine.”

  “You don’t think I went on for too long?”

  “No, didn’t I just say...”

  “Talking about the early Japanese influence, I couldn’t help noticing more than a few eyes glaze over.”

  “Vincent...”

  “I suppose I could have omitted that section altogether. All that fake japoniste Impressionism, who needs it after all?”

  “Vincent...” she reached forward and tugged at the lapel of his jacket, “it was a perfectly good lecture, well judged for its audience; anyone wanting something more specialized can follow it up on the Internet. Or sign up for one of your courses at the university. Everyone else will have gone home feeling they’ve been entertained and well informed. Now may we please order? I’m starving.”

  The waiter was standing a discreet distance back from the table holding their bottle of wine; having shown Blaine the label and gotten his approval, he poured a small amount for him to try. Observing the ritual, Blaine swirled it slowly around inside the glass, raised it to his nose and sniffed, then sampled, holding the wine against his palate for several moments before allowing it to slip down.

  “Very good,” he pronounced, with an a
pproving nod.

  “Are you ready to order, sir?” the waiter asked.

  “Another few minutes, if you don’t mind.”

  Anna Ingram sighed.

  Having filled both their glasses, the waiter retired. Blaine perused the menu again, torn between the salmon fillet and the liver. Lamb’s liver, cooked just enough but not a second more, was something he loved, and yet could never bring himself to prepare at home, squeamish as he was about both the texture of the meat against his fingers and the slow ooze of blood.

  Anna had already decided on the marinated squid followed by the rack of lamb.

  “Who was that you were talking to?” she asked, once Blaine had finally made up his mind.

  “The student, you mean? The tall one with the ring through his nose like a bull?”

  “No, the man at the end.”

  “Oh, nobody in particular.”

  “It was quite a little conversation—for nobody in particular. And you gave him your card.”

  “Someone I’d met before, that’s all. A policeman.”

  “A policeman?”

  “Yes, is that so extraordinary? Even policemen can have some kind of a cultural life, I suppose.”

  “And that’s why you gave him your card? So you could further broaden his cultural horizons?”

  Blaine cast a fierce sideways glance toward a table of four he construed as making too much noise. “Has anyone ever told you, Anna, that you ask far too many questions?”

  “Indeed they have. Many, many times. Usually it’s you.”

  “Clearly then I’ve been wasting my breath.”

  “Vincent,” she said, raising her glass, “you and I, we are what we are. Set in our ways. We’ll never change and we both of us, I think, know and respect that all too well. It’s why we rub along.”

  “Ah, I’ve often wondered why that was.”

  “And now you know.” With a smile, she rested her hand on his and it was several moments before he pulled his own hand away.

  Chapter 16

  VINCENT BLAINE’S HOUSE WAS IN THE VALE OF BELVOIR, some thirty minutes’ drive east from the city. Leaving the A52, Elder took a narrow road that ran, straight as a die, through fields green with spring pasture or yellowing from the first signs of oilseed rape. A succession of small farms clustered close to the old Grantham Canal and beyond the land rose steeply toward Barkestone Wood, the irregular outline of Belvoir Castle clear against an uncertain sky.

  As instructed, he turned off along what was little more than a track, and which threatened to peter out among a straggle of hedge ends and little more. Then there it was, sheltered by a covert of slender trees, a two-storey farmhouse in recently repainted red brick, low outbuildings to one side.

  “Eleven-thirty,” Blaine had said. “That might be best. I’ve a meeting earlier, here at the house, but it should be over by then.”

  As Elder turned on to the gravel drive, Blaine was bidding goodbye to a young Japanese man wearing a black and silver jumpsuit, a black leather portfolio at his side. Blaine himself was country casual in the older style, olive corduroy trousers and a checkered Viyella shirt, only missing the cravat.

  After much shaking of hands and a small bow, the visitor climbed into a polished but mud-streaked SUV and headed off at some speed back along the track.

  “You found it without difficulty then,” Blaine said, offering Elder his hand.

  “None at all.”

  “That young man,” Blaine said, “has a great talent. A marvellous eye. I’m publishing a book of his photographs toward the end of next year. All taken on the Tokyo subway. There’ll be an exhibition here in the city to coincide—the Djanogly out at Lakeside—possibly the Photographers’ Gallery in London as well. After that we might arrange for it to tour.”

  “And that’s what you do?” Elder said. “Publish photography?”

  Blaine gave him a condescending smile. “That and a little lecturing. What the universities like to call continuing education. The occasional article when I can find the time.” He turned toward the house. “Shall we go inside?”

  A flagstone porch led directly into a large L-shaped room with a long picture window looking out on to the garden at the rear; at least one internal wall had been removed to help make the interior, despite a low ceiling, seem spacious and airy. At angles to a stone fireplace, and facing a low table neat with magazines, were several pieces of furniture in wood and leather, wood and chrome, more stylish than comfortable to Elder’s eyes. Framed photographs, unsurprisingly, dominated the walls.

  “You’ll have coffee, I trust?” Blaine said. “It should be ready any minute now.”

  “Thank you, yes.”

  “One advantage of living here—one of many—you can hear anyone coming from half a mile away. Little chance of being taken by surprise.” For a moment, he smiled. “Privacy, Mr. Elder, in these times more than most, it’s something to be cherished, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Elder would.

  “Milk? Sugar?”

  “A little milk, no sugar.”

  Blaine turned smartly on his heels, leaving Elder alone with the photographs. Prints, Elder supposed, copies of the original, he wasn’t sure how it worked—that he thought must be by the same person whose work Blaine had been discussing in the gallery. Stieglitz, was it?

  A photograph of the moon passing behind clouds was similar if not identical to the one Blaine had shown at the gallery, and then there was a close-up of someone who could have been Georgia O’Keeffe, but framed in such a way it was difficult to know. The head was angled sharply to the right and cut off above the mouth. The neck muscle, prominent and central, stretched tight from below the ear down toward the chest. And at the bottom of the image were the fingers of two hands, resting on bare skin and reaching up toward the neck. Whether they were the model’s own or belonged to another person was unclear.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Blaine said, appearing at Elder’s shoulder.

  “Is it? I’m not so sure.”

  “As a study in form, proportion, design, it’s fascinating. Close to perfect.”

  “And as a portrait?”

  “The part for the whole. Sometimes it’s enough.”

  “You don’t find it disturbing, then?”

  A smile formed along Blaine’s mouth. “Up to a point, we all see what we want to see.”

  Briefly, Elder’s gaze shifted back to the photograph: the way one set of fingers curved inward, the other pointing straight toward the bulging vein.

  “If you want to look at something less troubling,” Blaine said, “come over here.”

  On the side wall was a photographic portrait, almost full-length, of a woman standing on a wooden porch, looking out. No longer young and not yet old, her face was lined, quite full and round, her waved hair suggesting a visit to the beauty parlour the week before or possibly a home perm. There was even a hint of makeup around her eyes.

  The loose cotton dress she was wearing had half sleeves and a brooch fastened across the neck, a white apron tied across at the waist. Her arms hung easily at her sides and her hands, quite large, capable hands, were slightly curled. It was easy for Elder to imagine that what she might be looking at, close by where the photographer must have set his tripod, were chickens pecking in the dirt.

  If she had lived a hard life, and almost certainly she had, if she had known sorrow, as certainly she must, she had come through it all composed, relaxed, almost serene.

  “When I look at that,” Blaine said, “I get a tremendous feeling of peace. And she is beautiful, of course, there’s no gainsaying that. Very beautiful.”

  The coffee was in white china cups, resting on the table on a lacquered tray.

  “Try one of the chairs, why don’t you?” Blaine said, sensing Elder’s hesitation. “Charles Eames. They’re more comfortable than they look.”

  Blaine settled easily onto one.

  “Before I answer your questions, Detective Inspector, perhaps you would be good
enough to answer one of mine?”

  “Of course. But it’s not detective inspector, not any longer. I retired from the police force several years ago now.”

  “Then this is somehow private? Your own crusade?”

  “Not at all. I’m working with the Crime Force Directorate—as a civilian consultant.”

  “An expert.”

  “If you like.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it. As we go through life we garner so much knowledge and expertise, whatever our field. The tendency, until recently, has been to allow all that intelligence to go to waste.”

  Elder let that pass. “What was your question?” he said.

  “Nothing untoward, I assure you. Simply this: after so long an interval, why have you focused back on Irene Fowler’s death?”

  Elder tasted his coffee: it was as strong as it looked. “There was another murder recently, you may have read something about it. Claire Meecham? The circumstances of her death were such as to bring the earlier case to mind.”

  “She was strangled?”

  “Yes.”

  “And found where? In a hotel?”

  “No. At home.”

  “So not exactly the same.”

  “There were similarities, as I said.”

  “Enough to make you think the murders might be linked.”

  “Yes.”

  “Carried out by the same person even?”

  “It’s far too early to say.”

  “Of course, of course.” Blaine set down his cup and saucer on the tray. “To a layman, it’s all fascinating. Murder. Detection. Violent crime. Whereas to you, I suppose, it’s mundane, everyday.”

  Elder made no reply.

  “These other connections you’ve noted,” Blaine continued, “between the two deaths—you wouldn’t be at liberty to tell me what they were?”

  A little, Elder thought; a little but not too much. “The victims were of similar backgrounds,” he said. “Similar age.”

  Blaine shifted his position on the settee. “Irene Fowler was, let me see, somewhere in her fifties?”