‘I’d started haunting the house. It was a compulsion. A drug, I’d go there after dark hoping to catch sight of him through the window. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone saw me, but I couldn’t stop. I felt there must be another side to him - no one could be that starchy and formal all the time. I thought if I could discover what it was it would help me reach him. Well, I got more than I bargained for.’ The nearness of revelation stretched her flat, colourless voice taut as a drumskin.
‘I was looking into the kitchen, loathing myself for the awful indignity of it, as I always did, when I heard a car draw up at the front of the house. I ran into the trees at the side of the house and saw a woman getting out of a taxi. She paid off the cab then knocked at the door. It opened and she went inside. I was devastated. I saw her through the sitting-room curtains. Very elegant, black suit, long fair hair. He’d given her some wine and she was lifting her glass to him, lifting it ...’
Laura swung her own glass high and whisky flew about, splashing the looking glass. Some droplets fell on her face. She stared around the room. Her eyes were vague and dull with rings beneath them the colour of fresh bruises. Seeing that she was on the point of passing out, Barnaby got up quickly and took her arm.
‘Come and sit down, Mrs Hutton.’ He had to put his arm around her once she had released the mantelpiece. She was a dead weight. He guided her to a low nursing chair. ‘Would you like us to make you some coffee?’
‘... coffee ...’
Barnaby nodded at his sergeant and Troy went off reluctantly to find the kitchen. Once there he searched for a jar of instant in vain but did discover a box of Sainsbury’s individual filters. This was a relief, for he did not relish messing about with some complicated and no doubt expensive equipment, with perhaps disastrous results.
Common or garden mugs seemed to be at a premium, but there were some cups hanging from the shelves of the dresser. Troy took them down with great care. The handles were shaped like harps and there were apricots and walnuts and pale green, delicately veined leaves painted on the bottom. The cups were translucent and shallow, more like dishes really. Troy held one up to the light, squinting appreciatively before putting it tenderly down on the matching saucer and filling the kettle.
Even before the coffee came Laura Hutton was recovering. Barnaby watched her in the glow of the lamp dredging up the energy to reassemble her wits and gather her diffused attention. He could see she already regretted her rash revelations. The baring of her romantic soul. People always did. When he put another question (Did she see the visitor leave?) she replied, tartly, ‘What do you think? I couldn’t get home fast enough.’
‘And did you go out again, Mrs Hutton?’
‘Absolutely not.’
He let things ride for a few minutes after that, sitting silently, looking around the room at the books and ornaments. It was all so perfect, like an expertly assembled set for a period drama. Only the clothes were wrong. She should have been in high button boots and leg-of-mutton braided sleeves, he in a celluloid wing collar with a curly brimmed bowler balanced on his knee. She was talking again.
‘I cheered myself up briefly by deciding she was a pro. An escort, as I believe they now call themselves. Or is it masseuse? I mean - turning up in a taxi at that hour.’
‘More than likely, Mrs Hutton.’
‘Oh - do you think so?’ The note of dull fatalism had vanished. She sounded hopeful, even excited. As if it could possibly matter now. ‘Actually, I know this’ll sound unlikely - but she seemed to remind me of someone.’
‘Oh?’ Barnaby looked up sharply. ‘Who was that?’
‘I couldn’t think at first. The feeling was so certain but though I went over and over it in my mind the answer escaped me. I ran back to the house - obviously sleep was out of the question - and was sitting in here bawling my head off when it came to me. And it wasn’t a person at all.’ She smiled for the first time and pointed over Barnaby’s left shoulder. ‘It was that.’
He got up and turned round. Hanging behind him on the wall was a painting - a large portrait, ornately framed, of a boy who appeared, from the elaborate richness of his apparel, to be a fifteenth-century princeling. A heavy velvet cloak of russet and silver was folded over one slim shoulder and secured with some sort of papal decoration. His slashed doublet was thickly embroidered with pearls and golden thread. There were pearl drops in his ears too, and he wore a russet velvet cap which had a speckled feather curving across his cheek.
Beside him was a table holding an astrolabe and an exquisitely painted mask on a stick. In the background was a dark landscape of wooded hills cleanly divided by a silken waterfall. An angel, bright-winged, posed rather stiffly in the air and looked sternly down in the rather directorial way that angels have. A ray of grace beamed from its hand. The whole scene was bathed in a soft, feathery light. In the bottom right-hand corner were the initials ‘H.C.’.
‘I bought it twelve years ago in Dublin,’ said Laura. ‘A sale of country house furniture. Cost me all I had, but I told myself I’d eventually make a profit, or at least get my money back. In the event I could never bring myself to part with him.’
She had moved to stand beside Barnaby during this speech and reached out now, laying the tips of her fingers on the heavily beringed hand of the boy. The whole painting was crazed and spidery cracks ran over the ivory skin.
‘Doesn’t he look sad?’
‘Terribly sad, yes.’
The boy carried the weight of his heavy robes with sweet dignity but the wide-apart green eyes were dreamily mournful and the lovely curve of his mouth inclined more to sorrow than to joy. Barnaby had the sudden, deeply fanciful notion that his pallor could have come from recent tears.
‘How old do you think he is?’ asked Laura.
‘I would have said fifteen or so, except for these.’ He pointed to the delicate, well-shaped hands. ‘They belong to a young man.’
‘Yes. I wonder about him and because I’ll never know I make things up. That his parents are insisting on a dynastic marriage with someone he hates. That he reigns over a kingdom struck down by plague. That the court necromancer has him in thrall. Whatever the reason, I feel sure his heart is breaking.’
And that, thought the chief inspector, as his ears picked up the sound of a delicate crash, as of many falling china fragments, is not all. Mrs Hutton appeared not to have noticed. Moments later Troy eased open the door with his foot and came in with a tray.
The coffee was delicious, though lukewarm as the filters would not fit the dish-like cups and Troy had had to hold them over the cups one at a time while the stuff dripped through. He gave Mrs Hutton the freshest.
As they sat sipping Barnaby sought to bring the conversation back to that summer afternoon when she had called on Hadleigh and stolen (although of course he did not describe it so) his likeness. But she got more upset and started shouting that she had had enough.
‘Please I’m almost through—’
‘You’re almost through?’
‘Surely you want to help us discover—’
‘How can you ask me that? Me of all people.’ Her face was white with outrage. She threw back the heavy mane of tangled hair and glared at him, then made as if to rise, appeared overcome by giddiness and fell back into her seat.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Hutton?’
‘I’ve taken a pill. You woke me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Are you allowed to do this? Just turn up at someone’s house and ... browbeat them?’