‘That was written on your card, yes.’
‘You know the name.’
‘Why, yes. She was my model once or twice. She had an interesting ambience.’
‘She’s disappeared.’
‘Ah. Oh.’ He seemed unsure whether to be surprised. ‘Yes.’
‘You knew that she had disappeared?’
‘I heard something or other.’
‘Where?’
‘Why do you ask?’
Denton studied the man’s face. There was an expression at the sides of the nose and around the eyes as if he might weep easily. There was also a hint of fear. Denton said, ‘What was your relationship with Mary Thomason?’
‘There was no “relationship”! What an improper question!’ Wenzli tried to straighten his back to assume the military pose again, but he stayed several inches shorter than Denton. ‘What are you driving at, sir?’
‘Before she disappeared, Mary Thomason wrote me a letter. She said she was afraid of somebody.’
Wenzli flushed. ‘I was kindness itself to the girl. When I saw her, which was only — two or three times-’
Denton looked around the studio. ‘This is a private spot. Very private.’ He turned back to the painter. ‘She came here?’
‘I work here!’
‘You put down a deposit on a painting at Geddys’s in Burlington Arcade. Where Mary Thomason worked.’
‘What can you be getting at?’
‘And then let the painting and the deposit go — immediately after she disappeared. Why did you do that, Mr Wenzli?’
Wenzli started to pull in his belly again and gave it up. He managed to look stern, nonetheless. ‘I have work to do. You will have to leave.’
‘Did Miss Thomason model in the nude?’
‘There spake the voice of Mrs Grundy! And of ignorance; few real artists need the nude model. No, she did not. What you imply is libellous.’
‘Slanderous, I think.’ Denton picked up one of the brushes and spread the bristles with a thumb.
‘That’s an expensive brush!’
Denton put it down and leaned back against the marble table. ‘You didn’t ask what I do or what I am, Mr Wenzli, so I assume you know. Did Mary Thomason ever mention my name?’
Wenzli started to say something, hesitated. ‘She might have said something. Your articles on travel were very popular just then.’ He meant the articles about the motor car adventure, which Denton had turned into the book.
‘“The former American lawman”.’
‘That’s the reputation you have, I suppose. I really don’t see what this is in aid of.’
‘So that if you saw that Mary Thomason had written to me asking for protection, you’d know she was serious.’
‘Ah-why-What’s the point of all this? You must go, really-!’
Denton went and stood quite close to him. ‘Her letter, in an envelope addressed to me, was in the back of the painting you were going to buy. There’s no question but that she put it there herself. There’s really only one reason for her to have done that that I can see, Mr Wenzli. She wanted you to find it.’
‘This is madness.’
‘You’d know my name; you’d read that she was afraid somebody was going to hurt her; you’d know she was serious. It was a warning. ’
‘But I never found it! I never found such a damned thing!’
‘Were you going to hurt her, Mr Wenzli?’
‘Certainly not!’
‘Had things got to a certain point, Mr Wenzli? Despite yourself? Did you kiss her?’
‘This is infamous!’ Wenzli went to a bell-pull that hung beside the vast chimney-piece; it was heavy enough to have rung changes on cathedral bells.
Denton said, ‘The police have been told about her disappearance.’ He paused an instant; so did Wenzli. ‘I think you’d do better to talk to me than to Detective Sergeant Guillam. He’s a right bastard.’
Wenzli looked more than ever as if he might weep, but he was actually tougher than he looked. He said in a testy voice, ‘I’ll have you thrown out if you won’t leave.’
‘You and that butler couldn’t throw me out between you.’ Denton crossed his arms. ‘It’s the police or me.’ He walked down the studio to look at the portrait of the two young girls, then addressed them rather than Wenzli. ‘Did you kiss her? Was there more than that — touching-?’
‘Get out!’
‘You won’t get a knighthood by lying to me, Wenzli. Did you touch her or didn’t you?’
‘There was nothing between us!’
‘I think there was. You did kiss her, didn’t you. And then there was more — she didn’t discourage you — she wouldn’t undress for you but she’d do certain things — with her hands, was it, Wenzli? Or her mouth?’
‘Stop it, stop it! This is disgusting!’
‘You could take me to court. But I don’t think you will. I think that those things happened and then-’ Denton could see it. He knew how it went. He knew how he had done it himself, once upon a time. ‘And then you got a bit rough. And you frightened her.’
Wenzli was red-faced. He had moved away from the bell-pull and had, perhaps unconsciously, taken up a mahlstick, the padded stick that he used to support his painting hand when he was working on fine detail. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it told Denton that he’d touched a spot. And he realized that Wenzli was capable of frightening a woman, even with his softness and his apparent weakness. He was arrogant, and frustration made him angry, a potent combination. Wenzli might well be capable of hurting a small woman. ‘You frightened her, Wenzli.’
‘I didn’t do anything of the kind.’
‘So she wrote the note for you to find, but I believe you that you never found it — or you’d have destroyed it. But she disappeared, and you heard that she’d gone — or maybe she just didn’t come back, didn’t keep an appointment — and then you were frightened. You wanted to erase your relationship with her. You never went back to Geddys’s. You wrote him you didn’t want the painting. You let him keep the deposit.’
Wenzli tapped the mahlstick against his thigh, then threw it towards the marble table; it hit and bounced off and thudded on the carpet.
Denton kept pushing. ‘What was so important about the painting? ’
‘I decided I didn’t like it.’
‘No, there was more than that. What?’ He waited. He said, ‘I really don’t want to bring the police into it, Wenzli. They won’t pursue her disappearance unless I stir it up for them. They’re busy men; they have more important cases. She’s been gone a long time. But if I lay it all out for them, they’ll come to question you. Do you want it in the cheap papers — “Noted Artist Questioned in Girl’s Disappearance”?’ He waited. ‘Does your wife want that?’
‘You shit!’
‘What was the Wesselons to her?’
Wenzli threw himself into one of the armchairs. ‘She wanted it. I said I’d buy it for her.’
‘A present.’
Wenzli nodded.
‘Pretty nice present for somebody who modelled a few times.’ Wenzli waved a hand. He put his forehead on the fingers of the other hand, elbow on the carved chair arm. ‘She was a greedy little thing. I gave her money — small amounts. I–I didn’t want her to go without.’
‘You bribed her, but you never got her.’
Wenzli shook his head without lifting it from his hand. ‘She was fascinating. Innocent, but-’ He shook his head again.
‘Did she blackmail you?’
Wenzli snorted. ‘Nothing happened that I could have been blackmailed for! I tell you, it was all innocent! I only wanted to give her things. To please her. Then when she didn’t come for an appointment, I thought — perhaps it was better. To stop seeing — employing her. Seen in that light, I thought giving her the painting was a mistake. So I wrote to Geddys.’