“Killed!” he said. “You didn’t say anything about him being killed. I know who Helen Ford is, by the way. I looked her up. A murderess. Why would I want to get involved in this?”
“How about because she was your father’s sister?” I said.
“What!” he exclaimed. His pallor grew more noticeable, and he lurched back on the sofa. He seemed to be wheezing. I didn’t care.
“I’m afraid so. Now, about the painting—”
“Oh my,” he said. I suddenly realized that for all his bluster, Fitzgerald at the best of times was a rather fragile individual, and these were hardly the best of times. “Could you hand me that puffer?” he said, gesturing weakly to the device on the table. “My asthma—”
“Robert,” I said, handing him the puffer but not waiting until he inhaled the medication. “This is really important, or I wouldn’t be here. I’ll explain about your aunt as we go, but you have got to get going on this.”
Breathing restored, he peered at the portrait carefully for a few minutes. “You may be right,” he conceded. “It could well be that someone painted over the original.”
“Can you do it?” I asked.
“I think so. Just give me a minute to get some materials.” He limped to the back while I sat in an agony of anticipation.
The face emerged slowly over the next several hours: dark hair, almond-colored eyes, tawny skin, and a gaze that matched that of the women whose hand was stretched out protectively toward it. “My God,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s a child, and it has to be hers.”
“Is your mother still in town?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Let’s go and see her,” I said.
“Can you do that without me?” he said. “I’m feeling rather strange.” He didn’t look well at all. The pallor he’d exhibited when I’d arrived had in the meantime acquired a tinge of green.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is too much when you’re not well. Just point me in the right direction.”
* * *
“Hello, dear,” Edna Thomas said. She was a tidy little woman with gray hair and blue eyes. Her hands were gnarled with arthritis. “You’re the nice girl who found Bobby and got the doctor, aren’t you?” she said. “Of course I will help you any way I can.” She spoke with that rather indeterminate accent many Americans acquire after they’ve spent many years in England. I found her in what could charitably be called a tourist-class hotel. The room was clean but rather depressingly spare. If her former husband had made money with his paintings, she did not appear to have benefited from them.
“I need to know about Helen Ford. Specifically, I need to know about her children.”
“Mercy!” she exclaimed. “I’m not sure… what children?”
“Mrs. Thomas, please,” I said. “People are dying over this. Your son could have been one of them if I hadn’t found him. This is what I know.” I told her everything I’d read in Will’s manuscript, and then I told her about the painting.
“He should have destroyed it,” she said. “I told him to. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, though. That painting was all he had left of his sister, whom he adored. In order to be able to keep it, he painted over the child with that Buddha.”
“The children,” I repeated. “I must know about them.”
“There were two,” she said. “One by her husband, one by Virat Chaiwong. She was single, of course, when she got pregnant the first time. Both times, come to think about it. That first time, she was sent off to Singapore. That’s what girls did then. They just said they were going back to the States or whatever for a few months. Then they came back looking much like before. Most of them came back empty-handed. Not Helen, although I didn’t know it at first. Robert knew, but he didn’t tell me right away. I confess I was shocked when I saw him. I know I shouldn’t say this, but you have to think of the times. I was horrified. His father was obviously Thai. They are beautiful, though, the children of mixed race. The boy was one of the most beautiful children I have ever seen. It didn’t matter what I thought, of course. This was her love child, and she wasn’t giving him up. She was a stubborn one. She didn’t give two hoots what people thought. The child was cared for by a Thai family. They knew the child was Helen’s but not who the father was. She visited the child every day. There weren’t many places she could meet with the boy, other than the home she’d placed him in. She used to take him to Robert’s studio. They’d sometimes meet Virat there.
“When she killed her husband—and she did, believe me: it was shortly after the birth of Bobby, and I’ve often wondered if it was a really severe postpartum depression. These days she might have got off, with a good lawyer…” She seemed to be fading a little.
“Did she kill the children?” I said, rather brusquely, I’m afraid. I felt I had to keep her focused, or I wasn’t going to find out what I needed. “I must know whether or not she murdered her children.”
“Of course not! How could anybody think that a mother would do such a thing. She told Robert and me to get the children away, that nobody was to know where they were, and no one was to know that Virat’s boy even existed. That’s why Robert painted him out of the portrait. I took the other boy to England. You won’t tell Bobby, will you? I have brought him up as my own son, loved him as my own son.”
“I won’t. If you think he should know, I’ll leave that to you, I promise.” It was tempting to tell her that a large part of Robert Junior’s problem was due to the feeling that he would never be as good an artist as his father, and that he might well feel better knowing he wasn’t the great painter’s son. But this was not the time for that.
“I’ll never tell him,” she said. “He’s rather gruff, but he’s a sensitive soul underneath. This would be too difficult for him. He had a nervous breakdown a year ago. I sometimes wonder if he takes after his mother way too much. She was always what we used to call high strung.”
“And the other child?”
“Thaksin Chaiwong found out about the relationship between Helen and Virat—I don’t know how—and that was the end of it. He was furious. Thaksin was the younger brother, but he took the part of family leader pretty quickly when he found out. He was already settled at that time, with a wife and small child of his own. He demanded that Virat cut all ties with Helen, and for a while, at least, he did. Helen was heartbroken, but she didn’t abandon the child, and as far as I know, Thaksin never knew about the child, couldn’t have known. Virat’s engagement to a Thai girl was announced, and Helen married that dreadful fellow Tom Ford—I could never bring myself to call him Tex— just as you said. It was doomed right from the start. She was pregnant again, and I guess she saw no option this time. Then I think that Helen and Virat started seeing each other again.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened the night Virat was killed, although I do know that it was Tom who killed him. It’s what happened to Ford after that I’m not certain about. But we knew what we had to do to protect the children. Robert, my husband then, sent the Thai family who were looking after the Chaiwong boy, who was about five, to Chiang Mai. We gave them as much money as we could so they could look after him. We didn’t have a lot. We were sure that the Chaiwongs would kill the boy if they found him. They were awful people. At least Helen thought so. They weren’t for having complications where inheritance and such were concerned.”
“Will Beauchamp thought she’d used an antique sword that belonged to the Chaiwongs to do the, you know, chopping,” I said.
“That’s a silly notion. The sword was my husband’s, not Virat’s. Robert acquired a lot of interesting things to use as props: that sword, the stone head of Buddha in Helen’s portrait. You could find things like that in those days, buy them for next to nothing. He used to let his subjects choose a prop for their portrait if they wished. He said it relaxed them, but that it also told him something about them. That’s a laugh, isn’t it? Virat Chaiwong, the swordsman. A rather poor joke, I suppose. I have no idea what she used that night or what weapon killed Virat. But the sword was in my possession that night.