No place to sit. Don't laugh. Rickety old boards were placed over the loo. Sir John had written a whole treatise on his flush gadget in 1596, calling it The Metamorphosis of Ajax, bragging that it required merely 'a cisterne, not a whole Terns [Thames] full... to keep all sweete ...' It's a document that collectors go mad for nowadays. He made one of his loos for his godmother – she happened to be Queen Elizabeth I – and installed it in Richmond Palace, love his heart. Did more good for mankind than all the doctors and politicians before or since. He forgot to take out a patent, incidentally, but a clockmaker called Mr Cummings patented it nearly two centuries later and made a fortune out of that unique S-bend. A lesson for us all. The brilliant Joseph Bramah perfected it in 1797
– hence our slang word 'braumer' for anything superb.
Where was I? No place to sit in a gong.
No place to sit because of file boxes resting on a stack of papers. I looked. They weren't old at all. How very odd. A hiding place for modern documents? The last place anybody would think of looking, right enough. The instant I heard the activity resume convincingly in the studio I had a shufti. I mean, who wouldn't? I'm a great believer in privacy, but Bernicka had put me in this mess by heartlessly breaking her promises.
Okay, so I'd betrayed her trust, but whose fault was that? Well, mine actually... I paused and thought, hello, what's this? I caught sight of a name I loathed. Good old Hugo? I pulled it out. A summary of a creditors' meeting in London.
The boxes and the stacks of papers moved to the grassy floor, in grand style I sat to read.
Later, the daylight starting to fade, I slowly emerged from the outhouse. I'd heard a motor start up some time before, but thought it best to read on. I replaced the files and papers very much as I'd found them. You can't do much about a trodden grassy floor.
No sign of Bernicka. No light on upstairs, though it was fading day. I crossed to the house. If she caught me, I'd lie that I had shouted and knocked. The cat was gone. I did my burglar's tread and peered into the studio.
The horse statue was smashed to smithereens. Nothing left except a heap of plaster.
The structure was a mass of twisted wire. Tools lay all about. Wire cutters, hammers, mallets and a crowbar. My respect for Bernicka rose. Don't cross a sculptress. Bernicka could have fought a war with that tackle.
Then I remembered her weeping, that terrible wail and gulping sound she'd made as she'd destroyed her beloved Leonardo's sculpture while Olive had cajoled her. Uneasily I tried to shout upstairs but had no voice. The house was eerily quiet. I toured the ground floor, kitchen to front door, hall to living room. She wasn't there. Bernicka would never leave without locking up.
Finally I cleared my throat at the bottom of the stairs and called up, 'Bernicka? It's me, Lovejoy.' Then another effort, almost louder this time.
'Hello, love? You up there?' I tried humour. 'It's me. I thought I'd see how your, er, horse was getting on. You okay?'
In case she was in the bath or anything, 'Can I come up? It isn't anything, just something I'd like to ask. About,' I improvised stupidly, 'er, Il Maestro. Shall I come up?
Only, I think your cat's poorly. It looks a bit off colour.'
Nothing. There was no cat.
Then I got frightened. I started on the stairs, one at a time, calling.
'Did you say to come up?' I bleated. I could see daylight seeping from an open door onto the landing, a towel on a handrail. 'I'm coming.'
Another step. 'Is it okay?' Step. 'Me coming up, I mean?'
Finally two steps, bravely one more. 'Right?'
A sandalled foot hung over the edge of a bed. No movement. Was this bad? Or was she in a fuming temper at Lovejoy who'd betrayed her with a forged drawing?
Did it look pale? I was unable to recall whether she had pale feet. Where I come from you never go to bed with shod feet, like you don't dare put shoes on a bed. It heralds death, so watch it. I once got thumped for nearly doing that when I wasn't even three.
Not knowing superstitions was no excuse.
'Er, Bernicka?'
A leg. I craned to see. The other leg came into view. Sandalled. She wore a working brat, no gloves. Her cat lay on her. It looked stiff. I'd run out of stairs, stood there in her bedroom doorway.
'Bernicka, love. It's me.'
Nothing. I think you can tell. The cat didn't move either.
Bernicka didn't breathe. Her features, usually so vehement and coloured – she's really into emotion – looked drained and still. So utterly still. 'A mirror,' I said aloud to her, like she'd helpfully hand me a mirror to see if she was still breathing or dead.
In fright I raced downstairs and dialled 999, managing to drop the phone twice. I got a snatch of the Cuckoo Waltz played on some bloody cinema organ and an automated voice telling me I was in a queue, hold on please, the world of emergency services was champing at the bit to help but would respond as soon as they could be bothered.
Translation: they were still at that snooker match.
After a full year hanging on, couldn't have been less, somebody bored said, what? I told her to send an ambulance fast because a young woman looked dead. I ran back upstairs, budged the cat aside and tried shoving Bernicka's chest like they do on films. I think I got some air puffing in and out but wasn't sure. I tried counting like I'd seen in those American hospital serials on TV, but what was I counting and how fast? I stuck at it.
An aeon later ambulance folk rushed in. They wore thick uniforms, very macho, yelled a lot and undid cables. I left them to their game. I don't honestly know if their tardiness made a difference. The real delay had been mine, waiting in the decrepit outhouse, reading those hidden files, giving myself priority instead of coming out and taking a risk that Olive Makins might see me.
Instead I'd dawdled while Bernicka went upstairs and took whatever drugs she'd had to hand and dosed her cat so it came with her too.
While the ambulance lot did their thumping rituals I went to look in the studio. It was a ruin. Sketches of Il Cavallo were tacked to the walls, with the portrait of Leonardo looking down. A candle, thick and stubby, burned before it. How long since it had been lit? Two hours, three? Drawings of mock-ups were pasted to the door. A bunch of flowers, suspiciously new, stood in a vase amid the crushed plaster. Bernicka must have gone into her garden and picked a bouquet for her bloke's picture. She may even have walked past the outhouse.
She'd known what she was about to do.
Had Olive Makins known that would have been the consequence, Bernicka's suicide?
Her life's work for da Vinci had fallen apart because of what Olive said. I pondered this, while the goons upstairs rushed in and out.
Now, whatever else she'd been, Bernicka was that troublesome thing known as a woman in love. Okay, forget that she'd had the odd bloke now and then – she wasn't going to go short of physical love while she was a slave to Leonardo. Fine.
That being so, why take that terrible final step? The logical thing would be to sweep up and begin anew, right? To look, as I was doing that instant, at the heaped chunks of her statue and then start again. The Bernicka I knew simply wouldn't give in. Just like any woman who, deterred because her embroidery colour suddenly looks wrong, undoes the whole thing and simply restarts. It's what birds do. It's also what blokes do.
They curse that blinking wrong gadget, strip the engine down, and set about making new cogs for that steam engine they've set their heart on. It's human. Annoying, maddening, but human.
So there was something else. Something lethal. And Olive Makins, instrument of Bernicka's death as she was for Timothy Giverill's, knew what.
And now, after my slothful reading in the outhouse, so did I.
Time to see Sandy, to get my ghost paintings back, and find Mrs Thomasina Quayle.
A policeman strolled in, wanting to take a statement. I pointed into the house and said,