The Dead Lie Down (48 page)

‘I’d live where I live now,’ he said, after a few seconds of awkward silence.

‘Sorry?’

‘You asked me before—where I’d live if I could live anywhere. ’

A quick glance told her he meant it. ‘Where you live now? You mean Spilling, or your house?’

‘My house is in Spilling. I mean both. I like where I am—why would I want to live anywhere else?’

‘I’d live in Torquay,’ Charlie heard her voice harden as she said it. No way was she moving into Simon’s place after they were married. The kitchen was as narrow as a drainpipe and the bathroom was downstairs, behind it. The house was right on the pavement, too; people peered into the lounge as they walked past. And it was too close to Simon’s parents.
No way.

‘I’d never live by the sea,’ he said. ‘It’s one big, blue dead-end. I’d feel hemmed in.’

‘You wouldn’t be.’ What other insane opinions was he harbouring that she didn’t know about? ‘You could take a boat.’

‘Mary Trelease killed Gemma Crowther. To get her picture back—
Abberton
.’

There goes our intimate chat, thought Charlie. She added ‘wouldn’t like to live by the sea’ to the list of what she knew about her fiancé.

‘She was outside Crowther’s flat on Monday night, when I was there—the same person who saw me saw her. She stayed after I’d gone. She knew Seed and Crowther were inside having a cosy evening together, with her picture up on the wall . . .’

‘No one broke in, remember?’

‘Trelease could easily have persuaded Crowther to let her in somehow, or maybe she used the gun from the off, backed Crowther into the flat at gunpoint, down the hall and into the front room where she shot her. She wanted her picture back—perhaps she was jealous, too. If she followed Aidan Seed to London, that suggests he was on her mind.’

‘Maybe you were the one she was following,’ Charlie suggested. ‘Maybe you’re the person she most admires in the whole wide world. No—that really is implausible.’

If she’d been trying to upset him, she didn’t succeed. Usually Simon was easily riled. He only wasn’t when he was in the grip of one of his fixations. Charlie knew the signs: verbal abuse rolled off him like rain off an umbrella. And that occupied look in his eyes, so that you could almost see his brain whirring . . .

‘Trelease killed Crowther and made Seed go with her somewhere, ’ he said. ‘She had a gun with her, must have had a car too. Wherever she took Seed, they went in her car, having first locked the painting in the boot of his, to make sure any suspicion fell on him.’

‘Why must she have had a car?’

‘She couldn’t hold a gun to his head as they walked along the street, could she? If she had a car, she could make him drive, sit behind him and—’

‘I don’t believe this!’

‘You said the picture hooks in Crowther’s gums was a woman’s touch,’ Simon reminded her. ‘Crowther was shot, then someone carefully knocked her teeth out with a hammer and replaced them with picture hooks. Compare that to Seed’s description of strangling Mary Trelease—a killing at close range, her struggling, naked, right next to him, or under him, or on top of him . . .’

‘So now he killed her while they were having sex? Another detail you’ve invented.’

‘. . . Seed feeling his thumbnail pressing into his own flesh as he held his hands closed around her throat . . .’

‘You forget, you’re describing a killing we
know
didn’t happen.’

‘I think it did,’ said Simon. ‘Aidan Seed killed someone, exactly as he described to me. Not Mary Trelease—someone else.’

‘Then why say it was Trelease?’

‘That’s what we have to find out. The first step’s obvious.’

‘Not to me it isn’t,’ said Charlie.

‘Seed grew up in the Culver Valley on a council estate—that
Times
article said so. Megson Crescent used to be council-owned. Seed’s in his early forties—let’s assume he didn’t kill anyone before he was eleven . . .’

‘Did they start quite so young in those days?’ said Charlie glumly.

‘Mary Trelease bought 15 Megson Crescent only two years ago. Who else has lived in that house? Who’s died there?’

Charlie stared at him. ‘Bloody hell,’ she murmured.

‘We’ve been focusing on the name instead of the other details. Like the house.’

‘But . . .’ Charlie was shaking her head. ‘Why offer a full confession—complete with an address, a description of the scene, the method of killing—and lie about the victim?’

‘I can’t answer that. Yet,’ said Simon. ‘It might not be as crazy as it seems, though. Some truth, some fiction: that’s the mixture that makes for the best lies. Mary Trelease’s death is the fictional part. She’s alive—we know that.’

‘And the true part . . .’ Much as Charlie would have liked to laugh at his theory, she couldn’t help wondering if there might be something in it. There wasn’t a bed in the front bedroom of 15 Megson Crescent now, but before Mary moved in there might well have been. Most people put beds in their bedrooms.

‘Aidan Seed killed someone in that house,’ said Simon. ‘Someone who used to live there. Years ago—just like he told Ruth Bussey.’

‘Aidan and I used to paint in this room,’ says Mary. ‘Together. For hours at a time, without speaking. After Martha died, I had a key cut for him, for the cottage. He often stayed overnight.’ She turns to me. ‘He slept in the spare room, where you slept last night.’

I make sure to keep my face neutral. There’s something I don’t feel quite right about in this room, but I’m not sure what it is. I stare at the pile of ruined paintings in front of me, barely able to believe it’s real.

‘Do you mind that I didn’t tell you?’ It dawns on me that Mary is talking about Aidan, the spare bed. ‘It’s only a room. I don’t believe rooms retain memories of the past. There’s no such thing as an atmosphere—it’s in people’s minds, like everything of any interest.’

‘You had a key cut for Aidan?’ Suddenly, it seems important to check all the facts. ‘But it’s not your cottage. You don’t own it.’

Mary shrugs this off. ‘So? I’m the one who uses it.’

‘How did Martha’s mother feel about Aidan staying here?’ If I had a daughter who’d hanged herself after being treated badly by a man, I’d want him nowhere near me or any house of mine.

‘I didn’t tell Cecily,’ says Mary. ‘I didn’t tell anyone.’

‘Why didn’t Martha’s parents give up the cottage after Martha died?’ I ask. ‘Why do they carry on paying the rent so that you can use it—someone who’s not even related to them?’

‘I’m a leftover from Martha’s life.’ Mary smiles. ‘Cecily doesn’t think much of me, but she wants me around even so—a dog-eared souvenir of her precious daughter.’

My eyes return to the mound in front of me. ‘How many paintings did you cut up to make . . . this?’

‘I didn’t count. Hundreds.’

‘Whose were they?’

‘Mine. I painted them and I owned them. Though for a while I thought I’d sold some of them to other people.’

I wait for her to say more.

‘Aidan used to tell me when my paintings weren’t good enough. He was always right, which made it worse. Eventually, with his help, it happened less and less often. He doesn’t find it easy to give praise, but the criticisms stopped. One day he asked me if I felt ready for my first exhibition. He mentioned a gallery I’d never heard of, said he knew the owner. If I didn’t mind, he said, he’d take my pictures to London for this guy to look at.’ Mary barks out a laugh. ‘Of course I didn’t mind. I was thrilled. Aidan took the pictures—eighteen of them, there were. Came back the next day with the best news—the gallery wanted me. They wanted to give me a show.’

I watch the happiness and excitement drain from her face as she remembers what happened next. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t ask to go to London with Aidan, see the gallery for myself—I did none of that, asked for nothing. Aidan kept saying, “Leave it to me,” and I did. When I asked him when the private view would be, he told me there wasn’t going to be one. This gallery never did them, he said. Now I know there’s no such thing as an art gallery that doesn’t do previews—they’re crucial for sales, and publicity. At the time, though, I was new to the art world. Aidan was the experienced one, the one who’d had a sell-out exhibition and residencies at Trinity College, Cambridge and the National Portrait Gallery. I believed what he told me. I said I wanted to meet the gallery owner who’d liked my work, but Aidan advised against it. “They hate it when artists hang around,” he told me. “Better to stay away, use me as a middle-man to communicate any messages.” He said the gallery owner was intrigued by the idea of me, and we needed to keep it that way by making sure I kept my distance. Like a fool, I fell for it.

‘He brought me back an exhibition catalogue. Nothing fancy, just a few sheets of paper folded in the middle and stapled. But it had the titles of my paintings, the dates of the exhibition, some biographical notes about me. I was so proud of it.’ Mary blinks away tears. ‘Aidan went back and forth to London—or I thought he did—to check on how things were going. Well; it was going well, that was what he said whenever he came back. He seemed genuinely pleased for me. My pictures were selling—I couldn’t believe it. One day Aidan came back and told me they were all sold. He even . . .’ Her face screws up in agony. ‘He had a sales list, so that I could see who’d bought what. There were nine names on it. I don’t need to tell you what they were.’

I have no idea what she’s talking about. How could I know who had bought her paintings?

‘The first was Abberton,’ she says softly. ‘Don’t say the others, please. I can’t bear to hear them.’

A shiver runs the length of my back.

‘Aidan took me out for dinner that night, to celebrate the sell-out. That’s when I betrayed Martha.’

‘You spent the night with Aidan.’ I’d prefer to say it myself rather than have her tell me.

‘No.’ Her face sets in a mask of displeasure. ‘Aidan and I have never had sex. Martha slept with him, and I knew what a failure that had been.’

‘How did you betray Martha?’ I ask.

‘I told Aidan that if I had to choose between a happy, fulfilling personal life and my work, I’d choose the work. My painting. He smiled at me when I said it, and we both knew what it meant: that we were the ones, that Martha had never been like us. We’d discussed it, you see—Aidan told me Martha had admitted to having lied to the journalist who interviewed them.’ Mary squints at me. ‘Did I tell you about that?’

I nod.

‘She pretended she’d choose her writing, when really she’d have given it up like a shot if she could have kept Aidan. He despised her for lying. He despised her shallow attitude to her work—he didn’t want to be with someone like that. Martha didn’t deserve Aidan, she never did.’ Mary presses her hand against her mouth.

‘Tell me about the exhibition,’ I say.
Eighteen paintings. Eighteen empty frames on Aidan’s walls.
But I don’t know there are eighteen of them. I never counted.

‘The day after our celebratory dinner, once I came back down to earth, I started to ask questions: when would I get the money? Was the gallery empty now, if my paintings had all sold? Aidan teased me for my ignorance, explained that the show stays up until the end of the final day, as planned. Buyers collect after take-down and that’s when they pay. He’d made me inflate the prices in order to be left with a decent whack once the gallery had taken its commission. He joked about taking commission himself, since he was the one who set it up. I never stopped to wonder why he’d want to help me to that extent. He was spending more time on me and my exhibition than he was on his own paintings. If I’d thought about it, I’d probably have decided it was down to my talent, which had overwhelmed him.’

I hear the self-hatred that underlies the casual sarcasm.

‘I knew how good I was. I could see it. Aidan was an artist—artists should care about art more than anything. I believed he did. Until I found myself in London one day visiting a friend, and decided to disobey his orders.’

‘You went to the gallery?’

‘I couldn’t resist.’ Mary turns on me. ‘Would you have been able to? I thought it couldn’t do any harm, as long as I didn’t go in. I was going to look in the window, nothing more, just to catch a glimpse of my work in that strange, exciting setting—a real gallery. I wanted to see the red sold stickers on the labels . . .’ Her words peter out. A solid, paralysing silence descends on the room, one I’m afraid to break.

‘Mary? What did you see?’

She doesn’t answer. I ask again.

‘He should never have told me the name of the gallery. Or he should have made one up—how hard is it to make up a name? He’s got no imagination. That’s why I’m a better artist than he ever was. Artists need imagination. Connaughton.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The gallery. Connaughton Contemporary. My pictures weren’t there. The man there had never heard of me. I rang Aidan, and when I told him what had happened, what I’d seen—
not
seen, rather—he told me to come back to the cottage. His voice sounded so . . . unwelcoming, so flat, nothing like the person I thought I knew. It was as if he’d been possessed by some remote, horrible stranger, and the old Aidan had been wiped out. That’s when I remembered that the old Aidan had driven Martha to suicide. I’d allowed myself to ignore what I knew about him in my desperation to latch on to someone after Martha’s death. We’d experienced the horror of it together—for a while, that was all that mattered.’

I shut my eyes and think about London, when Aidan’s behaviour towards me changed.
Whenever a friend succeeds, something in me dies.
He’d written that in a card to Martha Wyers, after she sent him a copy of her published novel. Did he set Mary up for a fall because he was jealous of her talent as a painter? I wish he was telling me the story instead of Mary, to help me understand why he did what he did.