He lifted an amused eyebrow. "Are you jealous?"
"What's to be jealous of>" she hissed.
"Success," he murmured, holding a finger to his lips as they heard Mrs. Powell returning.
"If you want to smoke," she said, passing a coffee cup to Lisa and a glass of red wine to Deacon, "I'll find you an ashtray." She put her own wineglass on the table near an armchair and looked at them both.
"No thank you," said Lisa, thinking of JP's instruction.
"Yes, please," said Deacon, doubting he could stand the scent of rose petals for an hour. He wished Lisa hadn't mentioned them. Once noticed, the smell was cloying, and he was reminded of the second Mrs. Deacon who had plundered his very mediocre fortune in order to douse herself in Chanel No. 5. It had been the shorter of his two marriages, lasting a mere three years before Clara had cleared off with a twenty-year-old boy toy and rather too much of her husband's capital. He took the china saucer Mrs. Powell handed him, then placed a cigarette between his lips and lit it. The smell of burning tobacco immediately swamped the roses, and Deacon felt guilt and satisfaction in equal measures. He left the cigarette jutting from his mouth as he took a tape recorder and a notebook from his pocket and placed them on the table in front of him. "Do you mind if I record what you say?"
"No."
He set the tape in motion and reluctantly broached the subject of photographs. "We'd like a small visual to accompany the piece, Mrs. Powell, so have you any objections to Lisa photographing you?"
She stared at him as she sat down. "Why would you want photographs of me if you're planning to write about Billy Blake, Mr. Deacon?"
Why indeed? "Because in the absence of pictures of Billy, which we've established don't exist," he lied, transferring the cigarette to the ashtray, "I'm afraid you're the next best thing. Is that a problem for you?"
"Yes," she said flatly. "I'm afraid it is. I've already told you I have no intention of being used by your magazine."
"And, as I told you, Mrs. Powell, I don't make a habit of using people."
She had ice-blue eyes which reminded him of his mother's, and that was a shame, he thought, because in other respects she was quite attractive. "Then surely you agree that it's absurd to illustrate an article on poverty and the homeless with a picture of a woman who lives in an expensive house in an expensive part of London." She paused for a moment, inviting him to speak. When he didn't, she went on: "In fact, there are pictures of Billy Blake. I have two which I'm prepared to lend you. One is a mug shot from when he was first arrested and the other was taken in the mortuary. Either would illustrate poverty better than a photograph of me."
Deacon shrugged but didn't say anything.
"You said you were interested in Billy."
She sounded put out, he thought, and that made him curious for he'd been a journalist long enough to recognize that Mrs. Powell was keener to tell her story than he was to hear it. But why now, when she had refused to talk to the press at the time? That question intrigued him. "No pictures of you, no story, I'm afraid," he said, reaching forward to switch off the tape. "Editor's instructions. I'm sorry to have wasted your time, Mrs. Powell." He looked with regret at his untouched wine. "And your Rioja."
She watched him as he began to gather his bits and pieces together, clearly weighing something in her mind. "All right," she said abruptly, "you can take your photographs. Billy's story needs to be told."
"Why?" He shot the word at her as he depressed the record button a second time.
It was a question she had prepared for. The words came out so fluently that he was sure she'd rehearsed the answer in advance. "Because we're in terrible trouble as a society if we assume that any man's life is so worthless that the manner of his death is the only interesting thing about him."
"That's a fine sentiment," he said mildly, "but hardly very newsworthy. People die in obscurity all the time."
"But why starve to death? Why here? Why does nobody know anything about him? Why had he told the police he was twenty years older than he actually was?" She searched his face intently. "Aren't you at all curious about him?"
Of course! Curiosity wormed like a maggot in his brain, but he was far more interested in her than he was in the man who had died in her garage. Why, for example, did she take Billy's death so personally that she was prepared to be exploited in order to have his story publicized? "Are you sure you didn't know him?" he suggested with apparent indifference.
Her surprise was genuine. "No. Why would I need answers if I'd known him?"
He opened his notebook on his lap, and wrote: Why does anyone need answers about a complete stranger six months after his death? "Which would you prefer," he asked, "that Lisa takes her photographs before we talk or while we're talking?"
"While."
He waited as Lisa unzipped her bag and removed her camera. "Do you have a Christian name, Mrs. Powell?"
"Amanda."
"Do you prefer Amanda Powell or Mrs. Powell?"
"I don't mind." She frowned into the camera lens.
"A smile would be better," said Lisa. She snapped the shutter. Click. "That's great." Click. "Could you look at the floor? Good." Click. "Keep your eyes cast down. That's really touching." Click, click.
"Go on, Mr. Deacon," said the woman curtly. "I'm sure you don't want me to be sick over my own carpet."
He grinned. "I prefer Deacon or Mike. How old are you?"
"Thirty-six."
"What do you do for a job?
She glanced at him as Lisa took another photograph. "I'm an architect."
"On your own or with a firm?"
"I'm with W. F. Meredith." Click.
Not bad, he thought. Meredith was about as good as you could get. "What are your political affiliations, Amanda?"
"None."
"How about off the record?"
She gave a faint smile which Lisa caught. "The same."
"Do you vote?" She caught him watching her, and he looked away.
"Of course. Women fought long and hard to give me that right."
"Are you going to tell me which party you usually vote for?"
"Whichever I think will do the least damage."
"You seem to have little time for politicians. Is there a particular reason for that or is it just fin de siecle depression?"
The faint smile again as she reached for her wineglass. "Personally, I'd hesitate to qualify a huge abstract concept like fin de siecle depression with 'just,' but for the purposes of your article it's as truthful as anything else."
He wondered what it would be like to kiss her. "Are you married at the moment, Amanda?"
"Yes."
"What does your husband do?"
She raised the glass to her lips, momentarily forgetting the camera lens pointing at her, then lowered it with a frown as Lisa took another photograph. "My husband wasn't here when I found the body," she said, "so what he does is irrelevant."
Deacon caught the look of amused cynicism on Lisa's face. "It's human interest," he countered lightly. "People will want to know what sort of man a successful architect is married to."
Perhaps she realized that his curiosity was personal, or perhaps, as Lisa had guessed, there was no Mr. Powell. In either case, she refused to expand on the matter. "It was I who found the body," she repeated, "and you have my details already. Shall we continue?"
The pale eyes, so like his mother's, rested on Deacon's craggy face too long for comfort, and his mild fantasy about kissing her shifted from harmless fun to sadistic revenge. He could imagine what JP's reaction was going to be to the paucity of information that he'd managed to drag out of her so far. Name, rank, and number. And he had little optimism that the photographs would be any better. Her features were so controlled that she might as well be a poker-faced prisoner of war backed against a wall. He wondered if fires had ever burned in her cool little face, or if her life had been entirely passionless. Predictably, the idea excited him.