The Rembrandt Secret (13 page)

18

New York

Charlotte Gorday returned to New York alone. Dreading the long flight, she sat in first class and stared out of the window until it was dark, and then pulled down the blind. She hoped the engine’s incessant murmuring might help her sleep, but sleep proved impossible. Her food remained untouched. Trying to engage her mind, she glanced at the magazines she had bought, then spotted an article that would be sure to interest Owen … But Owen was dead and, remembering this, Charlotte found herself shaking uncontrollably. Embarrassed, she pressed herself against the window, but she was trembling so much she couldn’t control, or disguise, it.

‘Are you all right?’

Charlotte looked up into the air hostess’s face. ‘Yes, fine. Thank you …’

‘Are you a nervous flier?’

No, she wanted to say. No, no, no. Go away. I’m shaking because I’m in shock; I’m shaking because I’ve just left my dead lover behind. I’m shaking because it’s natural, normal. And if you knew what I felt, you’d shake until your teeth rattled.

But she only said, simply, ‘I’ve just lost somebody …’

‘
I’ve just lost somebody.
Not misplaced them. Not forgotten where I put them, but lost them. How careless was that? How little interest did that show?

‘I’d been in love with him for eighteen years,’ she went on numbly, feeling the air hostess’s hand on her shoulder. And then Charlotte pulled herself together. She certainly wasn’t about to fall apart on a plane, in public. That wasn’t her style. Her sense of decorum made her straighten herself up. Controlled elegance helped her to stop shaking. There would be a time to let go – but not now, not here.

‘I’ll be all right,’ she said calmly. ‘Perhaps I should have a little something to eat after all.’

When Charlotte finally arrived at the Manhattan apartment she shared with her husband, Philip, she was surprised to find him at home, waiting for her. In fact, he had cried off a previous dinner engagement.

‘Don’t change your plans for me, Philip.’

‘No problem,’ he assured her. ‘I’d have picked you up from the airport if you’d told me which flight you were coming in on.’

‘I should have rung you. Thoughtless, wasn’t I?’ Charlotte said numbly.

But her husband sat down on the window seat without replying. Several photographs, and a contemporary portrait of Charlotte, stamped her joint ownership on the apartment, but in reality the place lacked her spirit and was mostly her husband’s abode. Newspapers and business books were piled around the room; Philip’s mobile phone lay next to his lap top; an open cigar box had been left on another chair, and his reading glasses stared at her quizzically from the mantelpiece.

‘It was terrible news about Owen Zeigler,’ Philip began, glancing at his wife. ‘I’m so sorry, Charlotte. I want you to know that.’

She turned to him, her expression unravelling, her vulnerability obvious.

‘Thank you … thank you.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘No,’ she said after a pause.

‘I know you loved him,’ Philip went on, a reasonable man who loved his wife, but loved others too. A man who had made no secret of his tendencies, and in Charlotte had found a woman who had also been committed elsewhere. ‘We could go on holiday somewhere …’

She nodded absentmindedly.

‘ … a change of scene might help you,’ he went on, getting up and walking over to her. They had not made love for many years and he found it awkward to be close to her. Nevertheless, he sat down on the sofa and put his arm around her shoulders. He could smell her perfume, gone stale from long hours of travelling, and noticed the puffiness around her eyes. ‘I liked Owen Zeigler,’ he said.

‘I loved him.’

‘You know, sometimes I thought you’d leave me for him,’ Philip said, Charlotte leaning her head against his shoulder. ‘Stay in London, move in with him permanently. I thought I’d lose.’

‘I never thought I would,’ she said honestly, taking her husband’s hand and looking at the wedding ring on his third finger. ‘I don’t know what to do now, Philip. How to live. I don’t know if it was all worthwhile, now that I’ve lost him … I should be grateful for you, Philip, grateful that you’re still here, and I am. But …’ she gazed at him, lost. ‘Why don’t I know what to do?’

‘No one knows what to do at a time like this.’

‘Maybe we should have had children.’

‘We never wanted them.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘It wouldn’t have been fair on them.’

‘Or us.’

‘Or us,’ she echoed, then asked, ‘Was
I
fair on you, Philip?’

He took a breath, looking into her face, did not know how to answer her.

‘Maybe I wasn’t fair on you,’ he admitted slowly. ‘I always had other women.’

‘I only ever had Owen. I never wanted any other man.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘I would have told you, if you’d asked.’ She paused, her voice dipping. ‘Owen was murdered, you know?’

‘Yes, I read about it. Do they have any idea who did it?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Do they know why he was killed?’

‘They say it was a robbery that went wrong.’

‘It happens.’

‘No, it doesn’t. Not like that, Philip. They left the paintings, all the valuable objects they could have taken. Why would they leave them?’

‘I suppose they were disturbed.’

‘They were looking for something.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know,
I don’t know!
’ she said. ‘I keep imagining what Owen must have suffered. How he looked, what he was thinking. I keep wondering why I wasn’t there …’

‘Thank God you weren’t.’

‘I’d gone to the country to visit some friends,’ Charlotte went on. ‘I
never
usually did that. I’d spoken to Owen on the mobile earlier that night and he was worried, I could hear it in his voice. I rang him later to say goodnight and he was surprised because it was so early, until I explained that there was going to be a dinner party and it might finish late. He was always a bad sleeper; he would take pills and then he was out cold for hours. I should have called him when I went to bed, but I didn’t. Then my phone went in the early morning and I picked it up without looking at the number and I said ‘hello, darling, did you sleep,’ but it wasn’t him. It was the police …’

Philip held her tightly, burying his face in her hair.

‘I
should
have called him when I went to bed,’ Charlotte said again. ‘He might have answered the phone, and it might have stopped him going down into the basement.

He might still be alive if I’d called. I could have saved him!’

‘No,’ Philip said firmly. ‘It wasn’t down to you to save him. His death had nothing to do with you, or what you didn’t do, or could have done.’

‘How do I live without him?’

‘You’ve still got me,’ Philip answered, knowing that he would never be enough.

She wept quietly, hardly making a sound, Philip holding onto her and looking at her portrait hanging over the mantelpiece. It was Owen who had organised the sittings with a celebrated artist he knew, and Philip had agreed to it. And over the years, he had grown to like his wife’s lover; not that he
knew
Owen, but he approved of his behaviour. And Philip could enjoy his affairs, feeling less guilty knowing that his wife had someone. He never suffered the misery of jealousy when she wore an outfit or a piece of jewellery he did not recognise. Phone calls and letters that came to the Park Avenue apartment didn’t disturb him; he saw them, instead, as another indication of how remarkable Charlotte was. She had inspired love in two men, constant, unwavering attention – which was something Philip had never managed. Aside from his wife, no woman had loved him enough, which was why Philip Gorday felt it was only right that he support Charlotte while she grieved. Right that he didn’t ignore her distress, or believe – selfishly – that it diluted her affection for him.

It was almost ten o’clock when Charlotte finally fell asleep, Philip having given her a sleeping tablet. When he was sure he couldn’t wake her, he lifted his wife off the sofa and took her into their bedroom. Gently he laid her on the bed and tucked the covers around her. She moved, troubled, murmuring under her breath, but she didn’t wake.

House of Corrections,
Gouda, 1652

I’ve been ill, coughing up blood. A lot of the women do that here because the work’s hard, it’s always cold and the food isn’t good. No fresh fish from the market, or new bread. No thick yellow cheese that you have to chew on your back teeth … An old friend came to see me yesterday. She brought some sweetmeats, smuggling them under her apron, cackling like an idiot when she was confronted. The guard thought she was just another mad old mare, and let her in … Women gamble with their looks. When you’re young you can play a full hand, but when you’re older the stakes get tougher, the face cards showing your age … I used to love cards, and skittles.

When I was a kid, when I was at home, my brother played with me in the back yard, with the skittles my father had made us. My mother was busy, a midwife, always coming home or leaving home, never seeming to stay long. She carried a bag with her which she made me promise never to look into. But I did. One day when I was six I saw the steel instruments and the tubing and snapped the bag closed, because I hoped I’d find a baby in it.

I had a baby once … Sshh … I’m back now, shuffling these papers. I had to stop writing for a while until it was safe again. Where was I? Oh yes, I had a baby when I was very young. Too young, they said, but it wasn’t true. They took my baby away … Listen to me. They carried him off in the middle of the night whilst I slept and when I woke I felt the bed next to me and there was nothing. Not even a warm spot where his body had been … When I wouldn’t stop crying, my father struck me. My brother locked my bedroom door and whispered that I was a whore and what else could our parents do?

My baby had been such a pretty baby. Too pretty for a boy.

One, two, three … there goes the guard. One, two, three. I can hear him pissing up against the outside wall … I was supposed to forget my baby. They’d called me names, so I acted them out. Promiscuous, that was the word. Promiscuous, the same word Rembrandt used all those years later in court. The word my brother and my neighbours used to back him up, to get me put away. I gave evidence, but I also argued. A coarse woman who was more than capable of lying and making trouble for a respectable man – or so they thought … Rembrandt looked at me in that courtroom as though he wanted me dead.

Putting me away would have to be enough.

I never thought he would have done that to me. Not even after I’d played my last face card and I reminded him of his son. Of Carel. I told him, that is your child. Your child … He pretended I was lying, but he knew. Remembered being that clumsy lout, groping a neighbour’s girl … Remembered when he was nudged to remember. Then realised that under his roof was his old lover and his bastard son.

I thought the knowledge would protect me, but it sentenced me … Ssssh, here we go, here we go … The guard’s feet, the pissing … I can see out of the high window that sliver of the world they’ve left me with … I cut myself when I came here first. Rubbed my wrist against the iron bedstead where the metal had worn sharp. Went through the flesh, but not deep enough.

I would like to have chosen my own death.

19

New York.

Coming in from the park, Philip Gorday unfastened the lead from the dog’s collar and walked back into the apartment block. When he had gone out earlier, Charlotte was still deeply asleep, the pill he had given her working overtime. He suspected that it was the first time his wife had rested properly since Owen Zeigler’s death, and he’d stayed out for over an hour, unwilling to disturb her.

The doorman looked up from his desk. ‘Morning, Mr Gorday.’

‘Morning.’

‘No mail for you or your wife.’ He paused, looking at the sturdy lawyer as he moved towards the elevator. ‘How
is
your wife? She seemed very tired when I saw her yesterday.’

‘She had a bad flight, I’m giving her a lie-in,’ Philip replied. ‘I’ll tell her you asked after her.’

Entering the elevator, he pressed the button for the seventh floor, stroking his dog’s head absent-mindedly. Perhaps he should call their family doctor, get some sedatives prescribed to see Charlotte through the next few days. And then, maybe, they would take a trip. He could afford to take time off, even a month if she would agree to it. Thoughtful, Philip opened the apartment door, hushing the dog to be quiet and letting the animal into the kitchen. The drapes in the sitting room were still drawn, a light blinking on the answer phone. He played the message, wrote down a name and reset the machine. Going back into the kitchen, Philip put on some coffee and looked at the headlines in the
Times
, then checked his shares in the financial pages. The dog, tired from its walk, slumped beside the radiator, breathing rhythmically as Philip sat down to read.

He finished the paper and his second cup of coffee, put everything on the counter and went out into the passage. There was no sound from the bedroom, which meant that Charlotte was still sleeping. For a moment he wondered if he should simply leave her a note to explain that he had left for work, but thought better of it and moved to the door. As quietly as he could, Philip entered the darkened room, moving towards the windows to partially draw the drapes. But as he passed the bed he felt something brush against his leg and jumped, reaching down to feel his wife’s hand.

‘Charlotte? Charlotte!’ he said urgently, snapping on the bedside light and then turning back to her.

She was lying across the bed, one arm over the side, almost touching the carpet. Through the pale peach silk of her negligee, a large dark stain spread across her ribcage, a tear in the fine material dark with thickening blood. And in her right hand she was still holding the knife she had used to kill herself. The knife which had slid so accurately and so desperately into the vessels of her heart.