Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

“Did you know his mates?”

The purple paint went into the hair of the mouth-sprung woman who was holding the teapot in Cilia's painting. She applied it in a thick curving line then used the palm of her hand to smear it, after which she wiped her palm on the front of her dungarees. The effect on the canvas was disconcerting. It rather looked as if Mother had holes in her head. Cilia took up grey next and advanced on Mother's nose. Barbara stepped to one side, not wishing to see what the artist intended.

“He didn't bring them round,” Cilia said. “It was mostly phone chat and they were mostly women. And they phoned him. Not the other way round.”

“Did he have a girlfriend? A special woman, I mean.”

“He didn't do women. Not that I ever knew.”

“Gay?”

“Asexual. He didn't do anything. Except toss off. And even that's a real maybe.”

“His world was his art?” Barbara offered.

Cilia whooped. “Such as it was.” She stepped back from her canvas and evaluated it. “Yes,” she said, and turned it round to face Barbara. “ Voila. Now, that tells a proper tale, doesn't it?”

Mother's nose was excreting an unsavoury substance. Barbara decided that Cilia couldn't possibly have spoken words more true about her painting. She murmured her assent. Cilia carried her masterwork to a ledge along which half a dozen other paintings rested. From among them she selected an unfinished canvas and carried it to the easel to continue with her work.

She dragged a stool to the right of her easel. She rustled in a cardboard box and brought forth a mousetrap with its victim still in place. She set this on a stool and made its companions a moth-eaten, taxidermic cat and ajar of pasta cheese. She shuffled these objects this way and that until she had the composition she required. Then she set upon the unfinished canvas, where the lower lip of a mouth had been harpooned by a hook and a tongue protruded.

“Can I assume Terry didn't sell much?” Barbara asked her.

“He sold sod all,” Cilia said cheerfully. “But then he wasn't, like, ever willing to put enough of himself into it, was he? And if you don't give your all to your art, your art isn't going to give anything back to you. I put my guts right onto the canvas and the canvas rewards me.”

“Artistic satisfaction,” Barbara said solemnly.

“Hey, I sell. A real gent bought a piece off me not two days ago. Walked in here, took one look, said he had to have his own Cilia Thompson straightaway, and brought out the chequebook.”

Right, Barbara thought. The woman had quite an imagination. “So if he never sold a sculpture, where did Terry get the beans to pay for everything? The flat. This studio…” Not to mention the gardening tools that he appeared to have amassed by the gross, she thought.

“He said his money was a payoff from his dad. He had enough of it, mind you.”

“Payoff?” Now, here was something that could lead them somewhere. “Was he blackmailing someone?”

“Sure,” Cilia said. “His dad. Pete Townshend, like I said. As long as old Pete kept the lolly rolling in, Terry wouldn't go to the papers crying, ‘Dad's floating in it and I've got sod all.’ Ha. As if Terry Cole had the slightest hope of convincing anyone he wasn't what he really was: a scam man out for the easy life.”

This wasn't too far from Mrs. Baden's description of Terry Cole, albeit spoken with far less affection. But if Terry Cole had been into a scam, what had it been? And who had been its victim?

There had to be evidence of something somewhere. And there seemed to be only one place where that evidence might be. She needed to have a look through the flat, Barbara explained. Would Cilia be willing to cooperate?

She would, Cilia said. She'd be home by five if Barbara wanted to pop round then. But Constable Havers had better have it straight in her head that whatever Terry Cole had been caught up in, Cilia Thompson had not been part of it.

“I'm an artist. First, last, and always,” Cilia proclaimed. She rearranged the dead mouse and pulled the stuffed cat's paw into a more ominous and chasseur-like position.

“Oh, I can see that,” Barbara assured her.

At Buxton police station, Lynley and Hanken parted ways once the Buxton DI arranged for his Scotland Yard associate to pick up a car. Hanken planned to head for Calver, determined to corroborate Will Upman's alleged dinner date with Nicola Maiden. For his part, Lynley set out towards Padley Gorge.

At Maiden Hall he found that afternoon preparations for the evening meal were going on in the kitchen, which backed onto the car park where Lynley left the police Ford. The bar in the lounge was being restocked with spirits, and the dining room was being set for the evening. There was a general air of activity about the place demonstrating that, as much as possible, life was going on at the Hall.

The same woman who'd intercepted the DIs on the previous afternoon met Lynley just beyond the reception desk. When he asked for Andy Maiden, she murmured, “Poor soul,” and left to fetch the former police officer. While he waited, Lynley went to the door of the dining room, just beyond the lounge. Another woman-of similar age and appearance as the first-was placing slender white candles in holders on the tables. A basket of yellow chrysanthemums sat next to her on the floor.

The serving hatch between dining room and kitchen was open, and from within the latter room came the sound of French, rapidly spoken and with some considerable passion. And then in accented English, “And no and no and no! I ask for shallots, it means shallots. These are onions for boiling in the pan.”

There was a quiet response that Lynley couldn't catch, then a torrent of French of which he caught only, “Je t'emtnerde.”

“Tommy?”

Lynley swung round to see that Andy Maiden had come into the lounge, a spiral notebook in his hand. Maiden looked ravaged: He was drawn and unshaven and he wore the clothes he'd had on on the previous evening. “I couldn't wait for the pension,” he said, voice numb. “I lived to retire. I put up with the work without a word because it was leading to something. That's what I told myself. And them. Nan and Nicola. A few more years, I'd say. Then we'll have enough.” Rousing himself to trudge the rest of the way across the lounge to join Lynley seemed to take what few resources he had left. “And look where it's brought us. My daughter's dead and I've come up with the names of fifteen bastards who'd've willingly killed their own mothers if they'd gain by the act. So why the hell did I think they'd serve their time, disappear, and never bother to go after me?”

Lynley glanced at the notebook, realising what it was. “You've got a list for us.”

“I read through the night. Three times. Four. And here's where I ended. D'you want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I killed her. I was the one.”

How many times had he heard that need to take blame? Lynley wondered. A hundred? A thousand? It was always the same. And if there was a glib response that could attenuate the guilt of those who were left behind after violence had done its worst to a loved one, he hadn't yet learned it. “Andy,” he began.

Maiden cut him off. “You remember what I was like, don't you? Keeping society safe from the ‘criminal element,’ I told myself. And I was good at what I did. I was so bloody good. But I never once saw that while I was concentrating on our fucking society, my very own daughter… my Nick-” His voice began to waver. “Sorry,” he said.

“Don't apologise, Andy. It's all right.”

“It'll never be all right.” Maiden opened the notebook and ripped out the last page. He shoved this towards Lynley. “Find him.”