Cold Heart (46 page)

Lorraine stepped onto the veranda, which also needed sweeping. The lamp on the porch was broken, but antique. Lorraine rang the doorbell and waited. She could hear soft music playing. She rang again and a woman’s voice called out that she was coming.

Mrs Nathan was wearing a satin floral print robe, which reached to her bare, mottled calves, and a pair of very old and worn pointed Moroccan leather slippers. She looked older than she had seemed at the funeral, but perhaps the deterioration in her appearance was due to grief. She put out a tiny hand, with thin fingers and arthritic knuckles. ‘Hello. You must be Mrs Page.’

‘Yes, thank you for seeing me, Mrs Nathan.’

Mrs Nathan ushered her straight into the drawing room, as there was no hallway. ‘Sit down.’ She indicated a satin-covered Victorian sofa, with curving sides and ugly, heavy legs. ‘I won’t be a moment.’ She disappeared into the kitchen.

Lorraine looked around the room: there was a huge chandelier of fine Italian glass, and the place was crammed with antiques, ornaments and trinkets. A collection of hundreds of tiny glass animals and Victorian children’s toys stood in several glass-fronted cabinets. Dust was thick on all the ornaments and furniture, and newspapers, empty envelopes and circulars were littered around the room – a complete contrast to her elder son’s obsessive neatness. Lorraine wondered if the house had always been so neglected, or if Mrs Nathan had simply let everything go after her son had died.

She returned with a carved wooden tray, two chipped china cups and mismatched saucers. As there was no space on any of the tables, she set the tray down on a footstool, and asked how Lorraine took her coffee. ‘Black, please, no sugar,’ Lorraine answered. ‘Have you lived here long?’

‘Forty years,’ the old lady answered. ‘I meant to move when my husband died, but I brought my boys up here and you can’t put memories like that in a packing crate.’

She carried her own cup to the big armchair, kicking aside the newspapers that covered the floor around it, and settled herself, like a small, rotund Buddha, her feet resting on an embroidered footstool in front of her. ‘Also, of course, I can’t bear the thought of having to pack up all these treasures – I’m a collector, as you see. I don’t collect anything that isn’t of intrinsic value, of course, I’ve never seen the point.’

‘You have some lovely things,’ Lorraine said.

‘It’s a sort of pastime for me, since I’ve travelled so much, all round the world so many times,’ Abigail Nathan continued, seeming to want to make sure that Lorraine realized that she had been a rich woman and accustomed to deference. ‘My boys came with me when they were young, and that’s where they got their education. Artistic talent can’t flourish, I’ve always thought, without the soil of culture,’ she concluded grandiosely. ‘I knew from the time the boys were babies that they would create.’

Lorraine made an effort to keep her face impassive as Mrs Nathan talked as though her elder son’s vulgar movies and her younger son’s daubs ranked as great art. ‘You mentioned that you were working for poor Harry’s laywer – did you ever meet my son?’ Abigail Nathan went on.

‘No, but I met Nick – in fact, I bought one of his canvases,’ Lorraine said, hoping that she would be pleased.

‘You’ll be able to sell it for ten times what you paid in a couple of years,’ Mrs Nathan said with complete confidence. ‘I have high hopes that Nicky’s work will be recognized. Ever since he was a small boy, painting has been his life.’

‘Do you mind if I ask you some questions?’ Lorraine said.

‘Please do. I’m obviously interested – my son must have left a considerable amount of money. I haven’t been told how the estate is to be divided, and when I telephoned Mr Feinstein, he said that woman’ – clearly, as Raymond Vallance had said, there had been no love lost between Abigail and Sonja – ‘has the house at least. I feel certain that there must be some mistake. Harry would not have forgotten his brother, of course. They simply adored each other. The boys always got along so well.’

Lorraine eased the cup and cracked saucer onto a table crowded with knick-knacks. ‘It is indeed a considerable sum of money, Mrs Nathan, and there seems to be no trace of it in any of your son’s known accounts. That means that it’s likely he had banking facilities elsewhere – perhaps here in Chicago, I thought, or perhaps in other names?’

‘I don’t know anything about that. My son never discussed either money or business with me,’ Abigail Nathan said, as though mentioning subjects unfit for ladies’ ears.

‘Did he visit here frequently?’ Lorraine asked.

‘He came when he could,’ the old lady said. ‘He had a busy life in Los Angeles, though he wrote me regularly and, of course, I used to visit with him, when he was married to Kendall.’

Lorraine seized the opportunity to embark on another line of questioning. ‘Mrs Nathan, the primary assets missing from your son’s estate are some valuable modern paintings. It seems that there may have been certain . . . irregular dealings on the art market.’ She knew better than to accuse Harry Nathan directly of fraud to his mother. ‘Which Kendall may initially have instigated.’

‘Well, I find that simply impossible to believe,’ Mrs Nathan responded, with a haughty sniff. ‘I count myself a pretty fair judge of character, and Kendall was the only decent woman my son was ever involved with.’

‘Can you think of anyone else involved in the art market whom Harry might have been working with?’

‘I certainly can,’ Abigail Nathan said with emphasis, then hesitated as though trying to bring herself to utter an indecent word. ‘That wretched woman who wrecked my son’s life. Sonja, whatever she calls herself now. I can tell you that if there was any kind of irregularity going on, that woman was behind it. She is a person without moral sense or scruple of any kind.’

‘I have recently interviewed Sonja Nathan,’ Lorraine said, keeping her voice expressionless. ‘She denies having any sort of contact with Harry since they got divorced. The separation was not amicable, I understand.’

‘No wonder.’ Mrs Nathan snorted. ‘Sonja couldn’t stand the fact that Harry finally realized that he should have married a nice, sweet, normal, natural girl.’ God knows how he ended up with Kendall in that case, Lorraine thought privately, but the older woman was in full flow. ‘Sonja was a completely unnatural woman from the day and hour Harry met her, and she simply got worse with age. I blessed the day Harry got that woman out of his life, and it broke my heart when he started seeing her again.’

‘What makes you think he war seeing her again?’

‘He used to telephone her from here,’ Abigail Nathan said, and Lorraine felt her pulse quicken. At last: someone had stated that Harry and Sonja Nathan had indeed remained in contact, but whether it was an indulgent mother’s attempt to cover up her son’s wrongdoing and incriminate a woman she disliked remained to be seen. ‘It was the only time Harry ever lied to me. That woman had a hold over him of a kind I’ve never seen.’

‘What sort of untruth do you mean?’ Lorraine asked.

‘He said he was talking to some business associate, fixing up meetings, but I knew it was her.’

‘How did you
know
it was her?’ Lorraine asked.

‘Because I called the phone company and got a record of the long-distance calls made on my line,’ Mrs Nathan said, giving Lorraine an arch look.

‘I don’t suppose you still have these records anywhere in the house,’ Lorraine asked, glancing around the room – it looked as though nothing had been thrown out in a decade, and it struck her suddenly that if Nathan had been in regular correspondence with his mother, those letters, too, were in all probability nearby.

‘I might have,’ Mrs Nathan said, looking carefully at Lorraine, as though her appearance might yield some clue as to whether or not she could be trusted.

‘Mrs Nathan, if Sonja is responsible for a substantial fraud and perhaps a more serious crime,’ Lorraine said, meeting Mrs Nathan’s eyes with what she hoped was a frank, honest gaze, ‘then I will naturally be handing over the matter to the police.’

‘I told the police that I suspected that woman was mixed up in my son’s death and they pretty much told me to go home to my patty-pans. Just an old lady with a bee in her bonnet. They didn’t have to say it, but that’s what they were thinking.’

No doubt they were, Lorraine thought, and the fact that Harry Nathan had called his ex-wife a few times must have seemed innocent enough. But in the context of so many other circumstances that seemed to point to Sonja, and in particular the flat denials Lorraine had received from both Sonja and Arthur that there had been any contact between her and Harry after they divorced, it was important evidence. Though Nathan could, of course, have been calling to speak to Arthur – the two men had known one another for years, and it was possible that Arthur was helping Nathan with his forgery scam without Sonja’s knowledge. Lorraine realized she had never asked Arthur if
he
had had any contact with Harry Nathan. But that had seemed unlikely – Harry Nathan had to be the last person with whom Arthur would secretly have been best buddies.

‘I’m afraid that the police often take such allegations lightly when they’re made by a member of the public,’ she said, ‘but they might be more inclined to take it seriously against a background of other evidence coming from a . . . more professional source.’

‘You mean from you,’ Abigail Nathan said bluntly.

‘Yes, I do.’

There was silence for a few moments while the old lady weighed up the pros and cons of trusting Lorraine. ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I could go and look upstairs, if you have time to wait.’

‘I’m in no hurry,’ Lorraine said. ‘Or I could come and help you, if you’d like.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Abigail Nathan. ‘You wait right here. You can look around my collection.’

She got up, and Lorraine heard her slow footsteps climbing the stairs. Look around the collection was exactly what she would do, and particularly the collection of papers in the ginger jar. She waited until she heard the woman’s footsteps overhead, tipped it out and flicked through the contents – Abigail Nathan had kept all sorts of junk, matchbooks, photographs, dinner menus and letters, but the most recent was from a woman friend, dated 1994.

There were papers all over the house, and Lorraine decided to investigate further. She opened the door to the next room noiselessly and found herself in a den full of trinkets and toys, bursting out of cupboards and balanced on a number of little spindle-legged tables. Looking round the room, her eye was caught by a most unusual display of carved red wooden devils, no more than a few inches high, with hideous faces and cloven hoofs, holding a pack of miniature playing cards. Lorraine bent down to look closer, genuinely interested, and saw, tucked into the corner of the cabinet, an airmail envelope with a German stamp. She eased it out, recognizing Harry Nathan’s large, untidy handwriting. The postmark was a few months old.

‘Mrs Page?’ Abigail Nathan called. ‘Are you down there?’

Scarcely thinking what she was doing, Lorraine reached under her jacket and slipped the letter into the back of the waistband of her skirt, then walked smartly out to see the old lady making her way downstairs.

‘Yes, I’m here, Mrs Nathan. I just went to the bathroom.’

‘I see. I have what you wanted here – I never throw anything away.’

She held out two sheets of paper. Lorraine’s hand almost trembled as she took them. ‘Thank you, Mrs Nathan,’ she said. ‘May I take these back to LA?’

‘You take them wherever you like,’ Abigail Nathan replied, ‘if it’ll help to get justice for my son.’

Lorraine placed the sheets of paper in her briefcase, and said, ‘I’d better be on my way now, I’m afraid. Can I call a cab?’

‘Certainly,’ Mrs Nathan said graciously, waving her hand towards the filthy kitchen as though ushering Lorraine into a palace. ‘Phone’s through there.’

Lorraine found a card for a cab company pinned next to the phone and made a quick call. ‘It’ll just be a few minutes,’ she said, hanging up. ‘One last thing, Mrs Nathan. I don’t suppose you know anything about a man named Arthur? I don’t know his last name, but Harry knew him as a young man and he’s living with Sonja now in the Hamptons.’

‘You mean Arthur Donnelly. He and Harry were in college together. He was a painter, he said, but I knew he’d never get anywhere. Masterly technique, of course, but simply nothing of his own to say. I told him he ought to count his blessings and join the family firm.’ She laughed at the recollection.

‘What was that, Mrs Nathan?’ Lorraine asked curiously.

‘Oh, an outfit in the antique trade. All reproduction.’

Another piece of the puzzle slotted into place, Lorraine thought, recalling the sticker Cindy had found inside the fake antique jar. It looked like Arthur had indeed taken Mrs Nathan’s advice.

The doorbell rang and Lorraine picked up her briefcase. She thanked Mrs Nathan profusely.

‘So glad to have been of assistance – if I have – and if you hear anything you will contact me, won’t you?’

Once the cab was clear of Abigail Nathan’s house, Lorraine reached carefully under her jacket and extracted the envelope. She took out a single sheet of folded airmail notepaper, with no address, simply the salutation ‘Dearest, sweetest Cherub-face’. The first few lines expressed hopes that she was sticking to a diet, using her exercise bike and not, underlined, eating too many cookies. He went on to say that he was abroad for just a few days, and from Germany he would be going on to Switzerland, but then underlined was, ‘No one must know, that also means do not’ underlined ‘tell even Nicky.’ He said he would explain on his return. He went on to say that within a few months he would be mega-rich, that he was on to something that would set him up for the rest of his life. The writing was slapdash, and looked as if it had been scrawled in a hurry: some was in cursive script, the rest in capital letters.

Lorraine replaced the note in the envelope and slipped it into her case. There had been no record of this trip to Germany and, most importantly, to Switzerland on Nathan’s official passport. This must be a clear lead to the secret bank accounts. She suddenly sat up. Germany! Sonja Nathan had said what? There was an exhibition of her work being shown in Berlin. Sonja was there now, and Lorraine did not doubt that it was in connection with the art fraud that she and Arthur had evidently been running with Nathan.