The Darkest Hour (45 page)

The two men looked up as the waiter approached and they gave him their order. George reached for his glass and took a sip of the very passable rioja. ‘I’m surprised you have even heard of her,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I suppose there are too few of her paintings in the public domain for her to be a household name.’

‘Did she not produce very much in the course of her career? I know there is one in the Tate.’

George stared down at the table thoughtfully. ‘You are right. Why only one? Where are her other paintings? She was always painting when I was a child, as I told Lucy. The farmhouse where we were brought up was full of her paintings and then when we moved to London I remember them being stacked along the passage on the top floor. But then –’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘My parents got divorced after Granny Rachel died and she and my brother and I moved to a small cottage in Sussex. I suspect a lot of the pictures got left behind with my father. I can still remember that time. I think it was all very acrimonious. He kept the house, of course, and pretty much everything. My brother and I adored the new cottage though. Johnny was much older than me and he didn’t live at home any more, but I revelled in living in the country again.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s strange I don’t count myself a country boy. My whole life is antiques and paintings and London-centred but I suppose I was about fifteen then and into sport and stuff. She sent me to Lancing College and I loved it. Very churchy. That fabulous chapel. Smells and bells. I began to appreciate art there. At home, it was just Mum’s paintings. I suppose I was a bit blasé.’ He sighed. ‘The collection my mother left – most of them painted after we moved in 1960 – was bequeathed directly to my son. He always said it was because she was afraid I would sell them, but I wouldn’t have.’ There was a long silence.

Derek waited for him to continue. He noticed George’s glass was empty and reached for the bottle. ‘Did you and your mother not get along then?’ he asked at last.

George sighed. ‘We got along fine. Really well. Perhaps she and my dad had some sort of an agreement. My brother, Johnny, inherited all her stuff and I inherited from my father. His house, his money, a few paintings.’ He paused again. ‘But not all.’

George went to the keypad and unset the alarm, closed the door behind him and stood for a moment looking down at the hall stand. His cleaning lady had picked up the post and laid it out there for him. One cursory glance told him there was nothing there he wanted to see. He turned into the living room and switched on the lights. It was a gracious room, subtle, he always liked to think, with perfect handpicked furniture. Every now and then he would change the pieces round, bring some things back from the shop, change the mood, but for now it was a restful place, gentle on the eye and perfect as a setting for the five Lucas paintings which hung on the walls. They were all examples of her later work, three that she had given him herself, as were the two sketch portraits he kept in his bedroom. Those he had bought from an auction in Brighton. Over the fireplace was a painting which had been given to him by an old friend of his mother’s who no longer had any room for it. It was large, more strident than her usual palette, in some ways uncomfortable in its depiction of a stormy scene on the Downs, the great trees of Chanctonbury Ring in the background, trees which had later been felled by the great storm of 1987. He loved that painting. It was elemental; violent. It contained rage and frustration and sorrow, somehow predicting the violent end the trees would suffer, and yet, there in the distance was a break in the clouds with a promise of gentle warmth and summer skies to come.

He went over to the front window and drew the curtains. The tree outside was moving slowly in the slight breeze from the heath which had teased his hair as he approached the house. He would enjoy showing Lucy the paintings and if she wanted he would allow her to photograph them for her book. His mother would be pleased, he was sure. He smiled again, aware that supporting Lucy would undoubtedly piss off Christopher.

The noise behind him made him turn round with mild curiosity. He still attributed any untoward noises in the house to dear old Marcus, his wonderful, much missed, tabby cat, alas now departed to the great cat hotel in the sky, although, sometimes, he had to admit he did wonder if his beloved wife, Marjory, though she had been dead for over twenty years, still kept an eye on him. There was no one there, of course. There never was. The house, so full of furniture and paintings and beauty, was, sometimes achingly, empty. He took a step towards the door and another, suddenly aware that there was a shadow there, a shadow which looked strangely like that of a man.

‘Hello?’ he called. He felt nervous now, suspicious. ‘Is someone there?’

To his astonishment the hazy figure that appeared looked exactly like his father.

Evie had made Ralph drive her out towards the coast. They parked at last in a lonely lane near Pagham. Ralph pulled on the handbrake and turned towards her. ‘Not another mile till you tell me what this is all about.’ It was raining hard and a cold wind had scoured the last leaves from the hedgerows.

‘It’s Tony. I have to see him.’

Ralph let out a groan. ‘For goodness’ sake. We have been over this so many times. Can you please leave me out of it! Ring him. Meet him in Chi or somewhere. Daddy will never see you there, but look out for Eddie. You and Tony are both miserable. You are making everyone else miserable. You are both being annoying.’ It was the closest she had seen him to being angry with her for a long time.

‘I did ring him. I left two messages at the Mess and I had no reply. If he cared he would have come to see me. He could have done it. He could have found out when Daddy was away from the farm and come up to see me. He did before.’

Ralph let out a groan. ‘Evie, the poor guy is fighting a war! He does have to do other things. He can’t just chase after you all the time.’

He took her hands in his. They were very cold and he could see the stains from the oil paints in her fingernails. A wave of compassion swept over him. His baby sister always brought out the soft side in him and he cursed himself for it.

‘All right. Just one more time. I will tell him, but if you two can’t arrange something this time then that is it. The end. Right? If he can’t or won’t meet you then you must give up. It means he just can’t do it now. You are putting so much pressure on the chap, Evie, and he is being harangued on every side, being told to leave you alone.’

‘I hate Eddie.’ She said it so quietly he had to bend towards her to hear. ‘It is Eddie, isn’t it?’

‘Eddie is very protective of you, I do know that. And he’s very jealous. So, for God’s sake don’t blurt out that you still love Tony. Eddie is too important to your career.’

Two more of her paintings had been bought by the Commission and were even now on display in London. She had had a personal message from Sir Kenneth Clark praising her work and asking her to produce more sketches of the women of Southampton rallying round to bring some semblance of normality to their lives after the endless repeated bombing of their city. Even now there was a painting on the easel in her studio showing two young women with a group of small children. Their hair tied up in colourful scarves, their coats flapping open over dull brown dresses, the women, barely more than girls themselves were playing with the children in an underground shelter. The small faces were thin and grey with fatigue but they were laughing, as were the adults round them as they all looked down at a game of spillikins, the pins lying on the ground in a small patch of sunshine. The picture had moved Ralph to tears.

‘You heard they have given Tony the DFC?’ he said suddenly. He looked up at her.

She was staring out of the windscreen. A dead leaf had plastered itself on the glass. She shivered. ‘No one told me. That’s good. He’s a brave man.’ She gave a sad little smile.

Ralph frowned incredulously. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

‘Of course I am. He’s a hero. He’s in danger every day.’ Her voice trembled.

‘Yes, he is,’ Ralph replied. ‘So why can’t you see that you have to give him a bit of space, Evie?’ He didn’t point out that all this applied to him as well. That he too was in danger every day, that he too was exhausted and under interminable pressure. She had never even asked if he had a girlfriend, someone somewhere who worried about him and maybe cried when he was late back from a sortie. As far as she was concerned Ralph was her property, there for her and her alone. He reached for the starter button. One of these days he would tell her about Sylvie. ‘I must take you back. There is someone else I have to see before I get back to Tangmere.’

She didn’t even ask who it was.

Christopher and Frances were seated in silence at the kitchen table when the doorbell rang. It was nine o’clock in the morning. The table was bare save for a coffee pot and two mugs. Christopher swore as the bell rang again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you might as well go and see.’

Frances pushed back her chair and walked out into the hall. She was dressed and made up, and her hair was neatly brushed in a half-fringe so that it more or less covered the fading black eye. She unlocked the door and pulled it open. There were two uniformed police officers on the doorstep.

‘Mrs Marston?’ The elder of the two looked at her with such a solemn face she felt her stomach turn over. ‘The children?’ she gasped. ‘Has something happened to the children?’

‘No, Mrs Marston. We are not here about your children.’ The older man had his cap tucked under his arm. ‘I am Sergeant David Hawkins and this is Constable Simon Jones. I wonder, is your husband in, Mrs Marston?’

She turned to call Christopher but he had followed her out of the kitchen and was standing in the hall. ‘What is it?’ he called. ‘What’s happened?’

‘If we might come in please, sir.’

The two policemen followed them into the sitting room. ‘Does your father live in Keats Grove, Hampstead, sir?’

‘Oh God!’ Christopher said. His face had drained of colour. ‘What has happened?’

‘I am afraid your father has been found dead, sir.’

Christopher opened his mouth to say something, found himself incapable of speech and sat down heavily on one of the armchairs.

‘What happened?’ Frances echoed in a whisper. ‘Did he have a heart attack?’

‘At present we don’t know the cause of death. I’m sorry.’

‘You must know something! Who found him? That useless cleaning lady of his, I suppose.’ Christopher looked wildly from one man to the other.

‘At present we know very little, sir. I gather he was found downstairs in his living room. He was alone and there were no signs of a forced entry, but a painting which I gather had been hanging over the fireplace was lying near him. It had been badly damaged. His neighbour found him. I gather he had a key to your father’s house and when he couldn’t get an answer this morning and saw the curtains still shut he let himself in. They had an arrangement to go out together, I understand, and he thought it strange that your father hadn’t rung to tell him if there was a change of plan.’

Christopher seemed incapable of speech. It was Frances who told the police that they had been estranged from Christopher’s father and had not seen him for several years, that he had been ill on and off with a bad heart, that they knew nothing about his friends or business colleagues and who might have seen him last, and it was Frances who calmly locked up and ushered her husband into the back of the police car before climbing in beside him for the drive to London.

The body had been removed when they got there; the painting of Chanctonbury Ring was lying where the police had found it on the carpet in front of the fireplace. There was an ugly hole ripped in the centre. With an exclamation of horror Christopher moved forward to pick it up. The sergeant stepped forward to stop him. ‘I am sorry, sir, but just for now we mustn’t touch anything. Detective Inspector Swire will be here in a moment to speak to you.’

Christopher moved back. He was still staring at the picture. ‘That’s Evie’s,’ he whispered to Frances. ‘One of Evie’s from the seventies. How the hell did he get hold of it?’

‘She was his mother,’ Frances retorted, rather more sharply than she had intended. They both glanced at the sergeant, who pretended not to have heard the exchange. ‘I am sure he had a great many of his mother’s pictures. Surely you didn’t think you had the total monopoly.’

‘Why did he smash it like that?’ Christopher appeared far more concerned about the damage to the picture than his father’s death. He swung round as another man walked into the room.

‘Detective Inspector Swire, sir.’ Medium height, compact build and thinning fair hair gave the inspector a deceptively meek appearance as he held out his hand. ‘Could you tell us, just for the record, where you were last night between midnight and the early hours of this morning?’

‘You can’t possibly think –’ Christopher exploded.

‘No, sir, I don’t.’ Inspector Swire’s voice was cold and surprisingly powerful. ‘Nevertheless I would like to confirm your whereabouts.’