She was happily surprised when Rosalind replied that she had no engagements that afternoon that could not be put off, even though it meant that Emily was not nearly as well prepared as she would like to be as to exactly how she would conduct herself to gain the best advantage she could. She knew perfectly well that she wanted to acquire some information that would assist Pitt, and therefore Jack, in determining what had happened to Kitty Ryder, and who had caused it. She would very much like the perpetrator not to be anyone in the Kynaston house.
She took great care dressing. The pink had been a disaster. Simply for the memory, apart from anything else, she would not wear it again. In fact, she might well avoid all warm, light colours! She had sufficient means to choose anything she wished. With her fair hair and pale skin, especially after the winter, something delicate and cool was the obvious choice. How had she been so foolish as to do otherwise? Desperation is never a good judge!
She chose a very pale teal, half-way between blue and green, with a white silk fichu at the neck. She regarded herself critically in the glass, and was satisfied. She must now forget the whole dress issue and concentrate on what she would say.
They met on the steps of the gallery, Rosalind arriving only moments after Emily. They greeted each other warmly and went inside. It was a very pleasant day, but the wind still had a March bite to it.
‘I apologise for such inconsiderate haste,’ Emily said as they reached the entrance hall. ‘I just had a sudden urge to go somewhere simply for the sake of it, not to be correct and have to make conversation.’
‘I was delighted,’ Rosalind said with feeling. She glanced at Emily very directly. ‘We shall play truant from obligation for a whole afternoon.’ She did not add anything about her sister-in-law, but somehow it hung in the air between them. The very absence of her name was an observance in itself.
Emily knew she must not be too direct too soon. She smiled as they walked towards the first gallery.
‘I have always liked Impressionist paintings. They seem to have a freedom of the mind. Even if you don’t like the work itself, it offers you a dozen different ways to see it and interpret it. Something that is strictly representational forces on you its reality straight away.’
‘I never thought of that,’ Rosalind said with very evident pleasure. ‘Perhaps we could stay here all afternoon?’ She did not add how much the idea appealed to her; it was clear in her face.
The first room was taken up almost entirely with paintings of trees, light on leaves, shadows on grass, and impressions of movement in the wind. Emily was happy to gaze at them for their own beauty for quite some time, and allow Rosalind to do the same, although she did glance several times at her face and study the expression in it. Rosalind was clearly troubled. Emily had been right in her observation that the subtle nature of the art allowed a great deal of one’s own interpretation, the dark as well as the light. It has been an emotionally dangerous place to come. So much feeling could be laid bare. And yet with time brief, and perhaps the stark reality of betrayal waiting, still the best one. But one mistake of too much candour too soon could destroy it all, like smashing a mirror, so that you would never know what it had reflected.
She moved up to join Rosalind in front of a pencil drawing of windblown trees.
‘Doesn’t it make you wonder what was going on in the mind of the artist?’ she said quietly. ‘There is so much strain in those branches. Some of them look close to breaking.’
‘I suppose everyone has their own wind, and their own darkness,’ Rosalind said quietly. ‘Perhaps that is what real art is. Any good journeyman can capture the individual and reproduce what the eye sees. A genius can capture the universal in what everyone feels … or perhaps not everyone, but people of a thousand different sorts.’
There would never be a clearer opportunity. It was almost as if Rosalind were seeking an opening to speak.
‘You are right,’ Emily agreed quietly so that anyone else entering the room would not chance to overhear her. ‘This drawing looks as if the branches are all hugging each other in the darkness, afraid of the violence outside.’
‘I see the violence inside, and the darkness beyond,’ Rosalind said with a tiny, tense little smile. ‘And I see them huddling, but not together except by chance.’
Emily affected not to have noticed anything raw or painful in her words, but her heart was hammering in her chest. ‘What about the picture over there?’ She indicated one also of branches, but utterly different in mood. The inner knots unravelled, and one smiled simply to look at it. ‘To me it is the complete opposite, and yet the subject is the same.’
‘The light,’ Rosalind said without hesitation. ‘In that one the wind is warm, and they are dancing in it. All the leaves flutter, like frills, or skirts.’
‘Dancers,’ Emily said thoughtfully. ‘That’s right — absolutely. It is very difficult for someone else to tell how your partner is holding you, lightly, supportively, or so tightly you are bruised and you know you cannot escape. I wonder if someone has painted real dancers that way. Or would it be too obvious? It would be something to attempt, wouldn’t it? If you were a painter?’
‘Perhaps that is what group portraiture is about,’ Rosalind suggested.
Emily laughed. ‘Not if you want another commission!’
Rosalind spread her hands in a tiny little gesture of submission. ‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘You must paint people the way they wish to be seen. But would any great artist do that, except to earn enough to live on?’
‘Can anyone afford not to make accommodations?’ Emily asked in return.
It was a moment or two before Rosalind replied. By then they had moved to the next room where most of the paintings were seascapes, or views of lakes and rivers.
‘I like the sea pictures better,’ Rosalind observed. ‘The open horizon.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘That one is beautiful and terrible — the loneliness in it, even despair. It looks like a gravel pit, deserted and filled in with water.’
Emily said nothing, waiting.
‘I’m sure you must have heard that my lady’s maid is missing,’ Rosalind went on, looking at the painting, not at Emily. ‘And that there was a body found in the gravel pits near us. We don’t know yet whether it is Kitty, or not.’
‘Yes,’ Emily agreed. ‘It must be dreadful for you … I can’t imagine.’ She could imagine very well, but it was not the time to be speaking about herself, or the tragedies of her own past.
‘The worst part is the suspicion,’ Rosalind went on. ‘I can’t help hoping she is alive and well somewhere, for everyone’s sake. But she wasn’t an irresponsible person at all. Everyone is suggesting that she ran off with the young man she was courting, but I don’t believe it. I can’t. She liked him, but she wasn’t in love. Ailsa says she was, but I know better. Either she’s dead, or she ran away for a reason that seemed real to her.’ For a moment Rosalind’s face looked as utterly bleak as the painted gravel pit on the wall.
Emily felt she must say something, not only because she could not let the opportunity slip out of her grasp, but out of ordinary kindness.
‘Are you sure you are not letting your fondness for her make you overlook her faults?’ she asked gently. ‘Wouldn’t you rather think she was flighty and on rare occasions selfish, rather than dead? After all, who could she be so afraid of that she would run off into the night without a word?’ Dare she take it any further? If she did, it must be now! She hesitated only a moment. ‘Wouldn’t you have sensed it? A look in her face, a clumsiness perhaps, an inattention to detail? It is very hard to conceal fear great enough to make you run off alone into a winter night! It was January then, wasn’t it? I don’t really like to go out in January even wrapped up and in a carriage, and knowing I will come back to my own bed.’