Again Jack didn't answer, and Charlie's brows snapped together ferociously. "You are not obliged to answer my questions, Mr. Blakeney, but you would be very unwise to forget that I am investigating murder and attempted murder here. Silence won't help you, you know."
Jack shrugged, apparently unmoved by threats. "Even if any of this were true, what does it have to do with Mathilda's death?"
"Dave Hughes told me an interesting story today. He says he watched you clean a gravestone in the cemetery at Fontwell, claims you were obviously so fascinated by it that he went and read it after you'd gone. Do you remember what it says?"
" 'George Fitzgibbon 1789-1833. Did I deserve to be despised, By my creator, good and wise? Since you it was who made me be, Then part of you must die with me.' I looked him up in the parish records. He succumbed to syphilis as a result of loose living. Maria, his wretched wife, died of the same thing four years later and was popped into the ground alongside George, but she didn't get a tombstone because her children refused to pay for one. There's a written epitaph in the record instead and hers is even better. 'George was lusty, coarse and evil, He gave me pox, he's with the devil.' Short, and to the point. George's was ridiculously hypocritical by contrast."
"It all depends who George thought his creator was," said Charlie. "Perhaps it was his mother he wanted to take to hell with him."
Idly Jack traced a triangle on the surface of the table. "Who told you Mathilda had an adopted son? Someone reliable, I hope, because you're building a hell of a castle on their information."
Jones caught Cooper's eye, but ignored the warning frown. As Cooper said, their chances of respecting Jane Mariott's confidences were thin. "Mrs. Jane Marriott, whose husband was the boy's father."
"Ah, well, a very reliable source then." He saw the gleam of excitement in the Inspector's eyes and smiled with genuine amusement. "Mathilda was not my mother, Inspector. If she had been I'd have been thrilled. I loved the woman."
Charlie shrugged. "Then Mrs. Gillespie lied about having a son, and it's your wife who's Cordelia. It has to be one or other of you or she wouldn't have made that will. She wasn't going to make Lear's mistake and bequeath her estate to the undeserving daughters."
Jack looked as if he were about to deny it, then shrugged. "I imagine Mathilda told Jane Marriott it was a boy out of spite. She never referred to her by name, always called her that 'prissy creature at the surgery.' It was cruel of her, but then Mathilda was usually cruel. She was a deeply unhappy woman." He paused to collect his thoughts. "She told me about her affair with Paul after I'd finished her portrait. She said there was something missing from the painting, and that that something was guilt. She was absolutely racked with it. Guilt for having given up the baby, guilt for not being able to cope, guilt for blaming the second baby's adoption on Joanna's crying, ultimately, I suppose, guilt for her inability to feel affection." Briefly he fell silent again. "Then Sarah turned up out of the blue and Mathilda recognized her." He saw the look of incredulity on Charlie Jone's face. "Not immediately and not as the baby she'd given away, but gradually as the months went by. There were so many things that matched. Sarah was the right age, her birthday was the same day as the baby's birthday, her parents had lived in the same borough in London where Mathilda's flat was. Most importantly she thought she detected a likeness in Sarah's and Joanna's mannerisms. She said they had the same smile, the same way of inclining their heads, the same trick of looking at you intently while you speak. And from the start Sarah took Mathilda as she found her, of course, the way she takes everyone, and for the first time in years Mathilda felt valued. It was a very potent cocktail. Mathilda was so convinced she'd found her lost daughter that she approached me and commissioned me to paint the portrait." He smiled ruefully. "I thought my luck had changed but all she wanted, of course, was an excuse to find out more about Sarah from the only person available who knew anything of value."
"But you didn't know that while you were painting her?"
"No. I did wonder why she was so interested in us both, what our parents were like, where they came from, if we had brothers and sisters, whether or not I got on with my in-laws. She didn't confine herself to Sarah, you see. If she had, I might have been suspicious. As it was, when she finally told me that Sarah was her lost child, I was appalled." He shrugged helplessly. "I knew she couldn't be because Sarah wasn't adopted."
"Surely that was the first thing Mrs. Gillespie asked you?"
"Not in so many words, no. She never put anything as directly as that." He shrugged again in the face of the Inspector's scepticism. "You're forgetting that no one in Fontwell knew about this child, except Jane Marriott, and Mathilda was far too proud to give the rest of the village a glimpse of her clay feet. She was looking for a private atonement, not a public one. The closest we ever came to it was when she asked me if Sarah had a good relationship with her mother and I said, no, because they had nothing in common. I can even remember the words I used. I said: 'I've often wondered if Sarah was adopted because the only explanation for the disparity between the two of them in looks, words and deeds is that they aren't related.' I was being flippant, but Mathilda used it to build castles in the air. Rather as you're doing at the moment, Inspector."
"But she'd made up her mind before you started painting that portrait, Mr. Blakeney. If I remember correctly she began consulting Mr. Duggan about the will in August."
"It was like a faith," said Jack simply. "I can't explain it any other way. She needed to make amends to the child who'd had nothing, and Sarah had to be that child. The fact that the ages, birthdays and mannerisms were pure coincidence was neither here nor there. Mathilda had made up her mind and all she wanted from me was the gaps filled in." He ran his fingers through his hair. "If I'd known sooner, then I'd have disabused her, but I didn't know, and all I achieved, quite unwittingly, was to fuel the belief."
"Does Dr. Blakeney know any of this?"
"No. Mathilda was adamant she never should. She made me promise to keep it to myself-she was terrified Sarah would treat her differently, stop liking her, even reject her completely-and I thought, thank God, because this way no one gets hurt." He rubbed a hand across his face. "I didn't know what to do, you see, and I needed time to work out how to let Mathilda down gently. If I'd told her the truth, there and then, it would have been like taking the baby away from her all over again."
"When was this, Mr. Blakeney?" asked Charlie.
"About two weeks before she died."
"Why did she tell you, if she didn't want anyone to know?"
Jack didn't answer immediately. "It was the portrait," he said after a moment. "I took it round to show it to her. I still had some work to do on it but I wanted to see what her reaction was so that I could paint that into the picture. I've had some amazing responses in the past: anger, shock, vanity, irritation, disappointment. I record them all beneath my signature so that anyone who understands the code will know what the subject thought about my treatment of his or her personality. It's a sort of visual joke. Mathilda's reaction was intense grief. I've never seen anyone so upset."
"She didn't like it?" suggested Charlie.
"The exact opposite. She was weeping for the woman she might have been." His eyes clouded in reflection. "She said I was the first person who had ever shown her compassion."
"I don't understand."
Jack glanced across at the Sergeant who was still sitting staring at the floor. "Tommy does," he said. "Don't you, my old friend?"
There was a brief pause before Cooper raised his head. "The gold at the heart of the picture," he murmured. "That was Mathilda as she was in the beginning before events took over and destroyed her."
Jack's dark eyes rested on him with affection. "Goddammit, Tommy," he said, "how come I'm the only one to appreciate your qualities? Does anything escape you?"