Borrowed Time (6 page)

Kington was exactly as I remembered it: a small unpretentious town busily attending to its own affairs. The media circus that had rolled in the week before had rolled out again, leaving the staleness of old news in its wake. Normality had so completely reasserted itself that I could have believed—as part of me wanted to—that nothing had happened there at all.

With some difficulty, I persuaded Bella to leave the car by the church at the western edge of the town and walk down Hergest Road to Butterbur Lane. On foot I thought we’d look less like sensation-seekers than townies out for a stroll, but Bella’s idea of casual wear didn’t preclude a conspicuous quantity of jewellery and an ostentatiously styled hat straight out of
Harper’s & Queen
. We attracted several suspicious looks from occupants of wayside cottages who happened to be in their gardens. And the haughty stare which Bella treated them to in return probably convinced them we were a TV director and his secretary-cum-mistress researching locations for a fictionalized study of rape and murder in the Welsh borders.

Butterbur Lane itself was quieter, as if the residents were deliberately lying low. The cottages here were tucked away behind overgrown hedges and folds in the hillside, sheltered from prying eyes as well as winter winds. We climbed in silence towards a sharp bend which I knew from the map was about halfway to Whistler’s Cot. Nothing but the knowledge of what had occurred there infected the scene with strangeness, the breathless air with expectancy. But even Bella sensed it.

“What a place for such a thing to happen,” she whispered to me. “It’s so . . . eerie.”

“You’re imagining it.”

“I know. But that doesn’t—”

Suddenly, a car burst round the bend ahead of us, the sound of its approach deadened till the moment it appeared by the banks and hedges to either side. It was a large maroon estate, travelling too fast for such a narrow lane. It slewed round the corner, peppering a garden fence with pebbles, then swung back to the crown of the road and headed straight for us. Instinctively, I grabbed Bella’s arm and pulled her towards the ditch. Only for the driver to realize the danger and slam on the brakes. More pebbles showered up behind him, followed by a crunching skid and a cloud of dust. Far too late for comfort, he lurched to a halt.

And stared blankly at us through the open side window of the car. He was a man of fifty or sixty, with a thatch of silver-grey hair and a round sagging face. Loose skin hung beneath his jaw where once it might have sat confidently as a double chin. His cheeks were hollow, his eyebrows drooping. And he was crying. His eyes were red and brimming, the tear-tracks moist against his skin. For a second or two, he looked at me, as if trying to frame an apology. I saw him lick his lips. Then he mumbled, “Sorry,” released the brake and coasted on down the lane.

“Stupid bugger,” hissed Bella. “He could have killed us.” I heard him engage a gear and speed up, moderately this time, as if he’d been shocked back to reality. “What did he think he was doing?”

“Probably didn’t
think
at all. You know what it’s like. Some old codger who’s never passed a test or driven in town.”

“He wasn’t
that
old.”

No. He wasn’t. Nor did he fit the picture I’d painted in any other way. He hadn’t looked remotely bucolic. The car was new and in good condition, for which we could be grateful. And he was disorientated by grief, not failing faculties. But I was reluctant to draw the obvious conclusion—that he’d been mourning one or both of the people killed at Whistler’s Cot. Why I couldn’t have explained. Unless it was the intensity of his grief, the glimpse it had given me of the passion such events could stir. Perhaps I wasn’t ready to admit how deep it could run, how formidable it could be. Perhaps I just didn’t want to understand.

We went on, both of us shaken but pretending not to be. The bend approached, then fell behind. The cottages thinned. Hints of field and heath appeared beyond the hedges. And then we were there. I recognized Whistler’s Cot instantly from newspaper photographs: an old half-timbered dwelling facing the lane, with a modern brick wing running away behind and a garage to one side, set a little back from the line of the house. A gravelled path between led to the rear, without gate or hindrance. The garden looked neglected, the house likewise. Tiles slipping, paint peeling: money spent but never followed up, or never replenished. The name, Whistler’s Cot, carved on a wooden sign in runic characters. And some weird sculpture by the front door, half cherub, half God knows what, crudely carved by design, one hand raised, as if to beckon or bar the way but uncertain which.

“Is this it?” asked Bella, a note of disappointment in her voice.

“Yes. This is all there is.” I glanced around. Several windows were open. When Bantock was alive, that wouldn’t have meant much. Now it implied occupation. His family, perhaps? If so, I didn’t want them to notice us. “Shall we walk on?”

“Aren’t we going to take a closer look?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, I didn’t drive a hundred and fifty miles just to
walk on
. Let’s see if there’s anybody in.” She started towards the door.

“Bella!”

But she wasn’t to be deterred. Pausing only to stick out her tongue at the statue, she rapped the knocker. Then, when several silent seconds had passed and I’d begun to hope she might give up, she rapped it again, louder.

At which the garage door slowly swung up and a figure appeared beneath it, craning across the bonnet of an old Triumph sports car to operate the handle. He was a slightly built man in corduroy trousers and check shirt, a narrow squirrel-like face framed by tufts of ginger hair. He peered out at me with raised inquisitive eyebrows and all I seemed able to say was a weak “Good morning.”

“It’s afternoon, actually,” he replied. “The afternoon of a long and trying day. I’d be grateful—enormously grateful—if you didn’t make it any more trying than it already has been.”

“Sorry. I—”

“Was just nosing around the scene of the crime? Believe me, you’re not the first. And it would be unreasonable of me to expect you to be the last, wouldn’t it?”

“We
are
sorry,” said Bella, walking boldly across to him, hand outstretched. “But we’re not what you think.”

“No?” He sounded sceptical, but Bella’s smile was hard to resist. His head twitched slightly, as if he were about to bow, even kiss her hand. Instead, he merely shook it. “What then, might I ask?”

“My brother—” She glanced towards me, acknowledging the misrepresentation with a faint flick of the eyebrows. “Knew Lady Paxton.”

“Really?” Doubt wrestled for a moment with susceptibility, then gave way. “Well, pleased to meet you, Mr. . . .”

“Timariot. Robin Timariot.”

“Henley Bantock.” We shook hands. “Nephew and heir of Oscar Bantock.”

“My . . . er . . . sister, Bella . . . Timariot.”

“Delighted, I’m sure.”

“Lady Paxton’s death came as a . . . a terrible shock. I . . . felt I had to . . .”

“That’s quite all right. Why don’t you both come inside?” He led the way and we fell in behind, Bella treating me to a triumphant smirk. “I’m sorry if I was a little curt. This is the first day the police would allow me past the door and I’ve been attempting to sort things out. But the interruptions have been continual. Neighbours thinking I might be a squatter. Tradesmen flapping unpaid bills under my nose.” We were heading for the rear of the house, taking the same route the postman had that fateful morning. “And, just before you came, a well-dressed middle-aged man weeping—yes, I do mean weeping—on the doorstep. He was in floods of tears. It was quite pitiful.”

“Who was he?” I asked.

“I really couldn’t say. You might have known him. I’m surprised you didn’t meet him in the lane.” The studio was in front of us now, commanding a broad view to the south, where the garden sloped away. It was an airy structure, lit by enough windows to resemble a conservatory. The blinds were half down, but, through the gaps beneath them, I could see disorderly piles of canvases, large and small, covered in aggressive swirls of colour; Oscar Bantock had been nothing if not prolific. “As a result, I’ve made scant progress. Which is inconvenient, to say the least.” He opened the kitchen door and ushered us in. “Call me superstitious if you like, but I’ve no intention of staying here overnight.”

And so we entered the house where two people had died—violently and recently. But their deaths had left no presence there, not one I could detect anyway. There were no bloodstains, of course, but, even if there had been, I’m not sure it would have helped me conjure up what had happened. The studio, bathed in sallow light, filled with half a lifetime’s unappreciated work and its impedimenta: canvases, frames, brushes, paints, palettes, easels, rags, pots of varnish, bottles of turps and a spattered smock gathering dust in its folds. I’d never seen Oscar Bantock alive and I couldn’t imagine him dead, a stark slumped form beneath one of the benches. There was no helpful chalk outline of the corpse to tell me where he’d been found and I hadn’t the heart to ask his nephew. Not that Henley Bantock looked or sounded like a man gripped by grief. He stood between us in the kitchen, watching calmly as we stared through the open doorway into the room where his uncle had been choked to death with a noose of picture-hanging wire. Then he sighed heavily.

“It’s going to be quite a task, shifting that lot. And cataloguing it, of course. I can’t abide the stuff myself. I mean, why couldn’t he have turned out tasteful landscapes? But it sets some people’s pulses racing, so who am I to complain?”

“Lady Paxton liked his work,” I murmured.

“Yes. So I believe. You could say
she
died for
his
art.” Catching my eye, he added: “I’m sorry. That was unfeeling of me.”

“The picture she wanted.
Black Widow
. Is it here?”

“Wrapped up in the lounge. I haven’t moved it. Uncle Oscar must have had it ready for her, I suppose.”

“Could we see it?”

“Why not? Who knows, you might want to . . .” He frowned. “Were you a close friend of Lady Paxton, Mr. Timariot?”

“Not close, no.”

“A friend of the family, perhaps?”

“Not really.”

“Only one of her daughters is due to meet me here this afternoon. I wondered if . . .”

“We
would
like to see the painting,” put in Bella with a winning smile. “If that’s possible.”

“Certainly. Follow me.” He led us out of the kitchen, down a short passage and into a sitting-room. It was comfortably if untidily furnished. There were well-stocked bookshelves and several paintings by Bantock—or fellow Expressionists—lining the walls. A parcel stood on the only table, the wrappings folded open to reveal the back of a canvas, already hooked and strung with copper-coated wire. Henley lifted the picture out and propped it against the wall behind the table, then stepped back to let us admire it. “The English Rouault, they said of him in the sixties. I think this one dates from that period. No better or worse than the rest, in my opinion. But, happily,
my
opinion counts for little.”

Black Widow
measured about three feet by two foot six. It depicted a woman’s face—or a young boy’s—seen against a pale blue background. The hair and shoulders were splashes of black and purple, the face yellow tinged with red, the eyes nowhere save in the contrivance of dab and daub, their gaze—solemn, averted, downcast, defiant—a haunting mix of whatever you wanted to read there: the spider, the widow, the murderess, the victim. There was nothing pretty or comforting about it. Louise Paxton hadn’t wanted this picture to brighten her wallpaper. But precisely why she’d wanted it we’d never know now.

I stepped back to view it from the doorway. As I did so, Bella moved closer to Henley, cocking her head to squint at the image before her. “I’d have to agree with you, Mr. Bantock,” she said with a chuckle. “Not quite my idea of art.” I saw Henley glance appreciatively at the smooth T-shirted outline of her breasts beneath her linen jacket. His idea of art was fairly obvious: more Ingres than Rouault, I’d have guessed. “Inheriting all this must have caused you quite a few problems.”

“It certainly has. The police. The press. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Have you travelled far today?”

“From London.”

“You must have made an early start, then.”

“Indeed I did.”

I edged out into the passage. There were the stairs, leading up to the room she’d died in. Why not go up and take a look? Henley would tell Bella his entire life story if she continued to encourage him. She was assessing him, of course. I knew that. Worth getting to know, or not? Not, I suspected. But clearly she hadn’t yet reached that conclusion. And until she did . . .

I took the stairs two at a time, relieved not to set off a fusillade of creaks. The landing was small and narrow. There was a bathroom in front of me, built over the houseward half of the extension. Through a window I could see the shuttered skylights of the studio. The bedrooms were to left and right. The one on the left had been given over to storage: a desk and filing cabinet marooned in a sea of tea chests, packing cases and yet more canvases. From the one on the right came a faint draught. Henley must have opened the window, in an attempt to blow away the memory as well as the mustiness. I walked in, hurrying to forestall any sense that what I was doing was better not done.

But there was nothing to see. A bare room, with white walls and no paintings. One wardrobe, its doors closed. A large double bed, stripped to the mattress, its pillows, sheets and blankets all gone. Absurdly feminine flower-patterned curtains stirring languidly. And a huge gilt-framed mirror on the wall facing the bed, smashed in one corner, cracks radiating to all sides, fracturing the reflection of the room into random triangles. When had it been smashed? I wondered. At what moment? Before? Or after? I shivered and looked at the bed. It was impossible to imagine, too awful to want to imagine. The breath straining, the wire tearing, the flesh yielding. So much agony. So much revulsion. Too much of everything. And now, as its antithesis, a vacuum, a space waiting to be filled. The room was drained, as the house was drained, exhausted by the violence that had briefly filled it. The night of July 17 wasn’t there any more. Even the impression it had left had been removed, on strips of tape and forensic slides, in sterile bags and sealed envelopes. In its place was an empty tomb.