I nodded, surprised. I felt that he was treating me differently than I’d been treated before. And I was suddenly conscious that my clothes were a little crumpled, my hair not blow-dried, my face bare of makeup. No one from my life in New York would have recognized me as I furiously sang the lullaby in Dr. Nichols’s consulting room. I wasn’t the slickly presented, self-controlled person I’d been in the States, and I wondered if that encouraged other people to let the untidy aspects of themselves and their lives show in return.
As I watched William leave the café, I wondered, as I still do now, if I’d been wanting to meet someone who reminded me of you, even a little bit. And I wondered if it was hope that made me see a likeness to you, or if it was really there.
I have told Mr. Wright about my visit to Dr. Nichols, followed by my conversation with William.
“Who did you think had played her the lullabies?” Mr. Wright asks.
“I didn’t know. I thought that Simon was capable of it. And Emilio. I couldn’t imagine Professor Rosen knowing enough about a young woman to torture her like that. But I’d got him wrong before.”
“And Dr. Nichols?”
“He’d know how to mentally torture someone. His job guaranteed that. But he didn’t seem in the least cruel or sadistic. And he had no reason to.”
“You questioned your opinion of Professor Rosen but not Dr. Nichols?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Wright looks as if he’s about to ask me another question, then decides against it. Instead he makes a note.
“And later that day Detective Inspector Haines phoned you back?” he asks.
“Yes. He introduced himself as DS Finborough’s boss. I thought, to start with, it was a good thing that someone more senior was calling me back.”
DI Haines’s voice boomed down the telephone; a man used to making a noisy room listen to him.
“I have sympathy for you, Miss Hemming, but you can’t simply go around indiscriminately blaming people. I gave you the benefit of the doubt when Mr. Codi lodged his complaint, out of sympathy for your loss, but you have used up your quota of my patience. And I have to make this clear—you cannot continue crying wolf.”
“I’m not crying wolf, I—”
“No,” he interrupted. “You’re crying several wolves all at once, not sure if any of them are actually wolves at all.” He almost chortled at his own witticism. “But the coroner has reached a verdict about your sister’s death based on the facts. However unpalatable the truth is for you—and I do understand that it is hard for you—the truth is she committed suicide and no one else is responsible for her death.”
I don’t suppose the police service recruits people like DI Haines anymore: superior, patriarchal, patronizing toward other people and unquestioning of himself.
I struggled to sound self-possessed, not to be the irrational woman he thought me. “But surely with the lullabies you can see that someone was trying to—”
He interrupted. “We already knew about the lullaby, Miss Hemming.”
I was completely thrown. DI Haines continued, “When your sister went missing, her upstairs neighbor, an elderly gentleman, let us into her flat. One of my officers checked to see if there was anything that might help us find her whereabouts. He listened to all the messages on her answering machine tape. We didn’t think the lullaby was sinister in any way.”
“But there must have been more than one lullaby, even though only one was recorded. That’s why she was scared of the phone calls. That’s why she unplugged the phone. And Amias said there were calls, plural.”
“He is an elderly gentleman who readily admits that his memory is no longer perfect.”
I was still trying to seem composed. “But didn’t you find even one strange?”
“No more strange than having a wardrobe in the sitting room or having expensive oil paints but no kettle.”
“Is that why you didn’t tell me before? Because you didn’t think the lullaby was sinister or even strange?”
“Exactly.”
I turned the phone on to speaker and put it down, so he wouldn’t realize that my hands were shaking.
“But surely together with the PCP found in her body, the lullabies show that someone was mentally torturing her?”
His booming voice on speakerphone filled the flat. “Don’t you think it far more likely that it was a friend who didn’t realize that she’d already had the baby and was unintentionally tactless?”
“Did Dr. Nichols tell you that?”
“He didn’t need to. It’s the logical conclusion. Especially as the baby wasn’t due for another three weeks.”
I couldn’t stop the shake in my voice.
“So why did you phone me? If you already knew about the lullabies but had dismissed them?”
“You phoned us, Miss Hemming. As a courtesy I am returning your call.”
“The light is better in her bedroom. That’s why she moved the wardrobe out, so she could use the bedroom as a studio.”
But he had already hung up.
Since living there, I understand.
“And a week after you heard the lullaby it was the college’s art show?” asks Mr. Wright.
“Yes. Tess’s friends had invited me. Simon and Emilio were bound to be there, so I knew I had to go.”
And I think it’s appropriate that it was at the college’s art show—with your wonderful paintings on display, your spirit and love of life visible to everyone—that I finally found the avenue that would lead me to your murderer.
18
The morning of the art show your friend Benjamin came round looking businesslike, his Rasta hair tied back, with a young man I didn’t recognize and a beaten-up white van to take your paintings to the college. He said it wasn’t the end-of-year one, which was a big formal affair, but it was important. Potential buyers could come and everyone had family attending. They were solicitous toward me, as if I were fragile and could be broken by loud noise or laughter.
As they left your flat with the pictures, I saw that both of them were near tears. Something had prompted it, but it was a part of your life I didn’t know; maybe they were simply remembering the last time they were at the flat and the contrast—me here and not you—was painful.
I had packed up your paintings myself, but when I walked into the exhibition, I think I literally gasped. I hadn’t seen them on a wall before, just stacked on the floor, and put together they were an explosion of living color, their painted vibrancy arresting. Friends of yours whom I’d met at the café came to talk to me, one after another, as if they had a rota of looking after me.
I couldn’t see any sign of Simon, but through the crowded room, I saw Emilio on the far side of the exhibition hall. Near to him was the Pretty Witch and by her expression I knew something was wrong. As I went toward him, I saw he had the nude paintings of you on display.
I went up to him, livid, but I kept my voice quiet, not wanting anyone to hear, not wanting him to have an audience.
“Does your affair with her carry no penalties for you now she’s dead?” I asked.
He gestured to the nudes, looking as if he was enjoying this spat with me. “They don’t mean we had an affair.”
I must have looked incredulous.
“You think artists always sleep with their models, Beatrice?”
Actually, yes, that’s what I did think. And using my first name was inappropriately intimate, just as displaying the nudes of you was inappropriately intimate.