“I wouldn’t know,” Kincaid answered in bland policemanese, all the while thinking, Does one not, or does one consider the consequences and choose to act anyway? The image of his ex-wife came to him, her straight flaxen hair falling across her shuttered face. Had Vic considered the consequences?
“You don’t live here, then?” he asked, breaking the train of thought abruptly. He gestured toward the door across the garden.
“No. In Sonning, a bit farther upriver. The flat was included in the property when I bought the gallery, and I use it mainly as a studio. Sometimes I stay over when I’m painting, or when I’ve an opening on.”
“You paint?” asked Kincaid, a little surprised.
Simons’s smile was rueful. “Am I a practical man, Mr. Kincaid? Or merely a compromised one? You tell me.” The question seemed to be hypothetical only, for he continued, “I knew when I left art school I wasn’t quite good enough, didn’t have that unique combination of talent and luck. So I used a little family money and bought this gallery. I found it a bit ironic that Julia’s opening also marked the anniversary of my twenty-fifth year here.”
Kincaid wasn’t inclined to let him off the hook, although he suspected his curiosity was more personal than professional. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yes, I paint, and I feel insulted if I’m referred to as a ‘local artist’ rather than an ‘artist who paints locally’ It’s a fine distinction, you understand,” he added mockingly. “Silly, isn’t it?”
“What sort of things do you paint?” Kincaid asked, scanning the paintings on the walls of the small room.
Simons followed his gaze and smiled. “Sometimes I do hang my own work, but I haven’t any up just now. I’ve had to make room for Julia’s paintings, and frankly I’ve other things that sell better than mine, although I do paint Thames landscapes. I use oils-I’m not good enough yet to paint in watercolor, but one day I will be.”
“Is what Julia does that difficult, then?” Kincaid allowed himself to study Julia’s lamplit painting, and discovered that he had been deliberately resisting doing so. It drew him, as she did, in a way that felt both familiar and perilous. “I always thought that one just made a choice, watercolors or oils, depending on what one liked.”
“Watercolor is much more difficult,” Simons said patiently. “In oil you can make any number of mistakes and just as easily cover them up, the more the merrier. Watercolor requires a confidence, perhaps even a certain amount of ruthlessness. You must get it right the first time.”
Kincaid looked at Julia’s paintings with new respect. “You said she was self-taught? Why not art college, with her talent?”
Simons shrugged. “I suppose her family didn’t take her seriously. Musicians do tend to be rather one-dimensional, even more so than visual artists. Nothing else exists for them. They eat, sleep and breathe music, and I imagine that to Sir Gerald and Dame Caroline, Julia’s paintings were just amusing dabs of color on paper.” He stepped down into the lower room and walked over to the large painting, staring at it. “Whatever the reason, it allowed her to develop in her own way, with no taint of graphic mediocrity.”
“You have a special relationship,” Kincaid said, watching the way Trevor Simons’s slender body blocked the painting in an almost protective posture. “You admire her-do you also resent her?”
After a moment Simons answered, his back still to Kincaid. “Perhaps. Can we help but envy those touched by the gods, however briefly?” He turned and the brown eyes behind the spectacles regarded Kincaid candidly. “Yet I have a good life.”
“Then why have you risked it?” Kincaid said softly. “Your wife, family… perhaps even your business?”
“I never intended it.” Simons gave a self-mocking bark of laughter. “Famous last words-I never meant to do it. It was just… Julia.”
“What else didn’t you intend, Trevor? Just how far did your loss of judgment take you?”
“You think I might have killed Connor?” His eyebrows shot up above the line of his spectacles and he laughed again. “I can’t lay claim to sins of that magnitude, Mr. Kincaid. And why would I want to get rid of the poor bloke? Julia had already chewed him up and spat out the partially digested remains.”
Kincaid grinned. “Very descriptively put. And will she do the same to you?”
“Oh, I expect so. I’ve never been able to delude myself sufficiently to think otherwise.”
Pushing aside an untidy stack of papers, Kincaid sat on the edge of Simons’s desk and stretched out his legs. “Did you know Connor Swann well?”
Simons put his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight in the manner of a man suddenly territorially displaced. “Only to speak to, really. Before they separated he came in with Julia occasionally.”
“Was he jealous of you, do you think?”
“Con? Jealous? That would be the pot calling the kettle black! I never understood why Julia put up with him as long as she did.”
A passerby stopped and peered at the painting in the window, as had several others since Kincaid had come into the gallery. Beyond her the light had shifted, and the shadows of the willows lay longer on the pavement. “They don’t come in,” Kincaid said as he watched her move toward the tea shop and pass from his view.
“No. Not often.” Simons gestured at the paintings lining the walls. “The prices are a bit steep for impulse buying. Most of my customers are regulars, collectors. Though sometimes one of those window-shoppers will wander in and fall in love with a painting, then go home and save up pennies out of the housekeeping or the beer money until they have enough to buy it.” He smiled. “Those are the best, the ones that know nothing about art and buy out of love. It’s a genuine response.”
Kincaid looked at the illuminated painting of the girl in the meadow, her eyes gently closed, her faintly freckled face tilted to the sun, and acknowledged his own experience. “Yes, I can see that.”
He stood and regarded Trevor Simons, who, whatever his sins, seemed a perceptive and decent man. “A word of advice, Mr. Simons, which I probably shouldn’t give. An investigation like this moves out in ripples-the longer it takes the wider the circle becomes. If I were you I’d do some damage control-tell your wife about Julia if you can. Before we do.”
Kincaid sat at the table nearest the window in the tea shop. The tin pot had leaked as he poured, and his cup sat in a wet ring on the speckled plastic tabletop. At the next table he recognized the woman who had stopped at the gallery window a few minutes before-middle-aged, heavyset, her graying hair tightly crimped. Although the air in the shop was warm enough to form faint steamy smudges on the windowpanes, she still wore a waterproof jacket over her bulky cardigan. Perhaps she feared it might rain unexpectedly inside? When she looked up, he smiled at her, but she looked away, her face frozen in an expression of faint disapproval.
Gazing idly at the river again, he fingered the key in his trouser pocket. Gemma had acquired Connor’s key, address and a description of the property from Thames Valley along with the initial reports. Until a year ago Julia and Connor had lived together in the flat he thought must be just along the terrace, near the willow-covered islands he could see from the window. Julia might have stopped in here often for a morning coffee or a cup of afternoon tea. He imagined her suddenly, sitting across the booth from him in a black sweater, smoking jerkily, frowning in concentration. In his mind she rose and went out into the street. She stood before the gallery for a moment, as if hesitating, then he heard the door chime as she opened it and went in.