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Isobel was out when he got back, and he was sorry. He had so clearly in his mind what he wanted to say. Instead, he went up to the studio and pulled out the unfinished portrait of Jane. He set it on an easel near the portrait of Isobel in pink satin.
The Lemprière woman had been right; there was life in Jane’s portrait. He looked at her, the eager eyes, the beauty that he had tried so unsuccessfully to deny her. That was Jane – the aliveness, more than anything else, was Jane. She was, he thought, the most alive person he had ever met, so much so, that even now he could not think of her as dead.
And he thought of his other pictures – Colour, Romance, Sir Rufus Herschman. They had all, in a way, been pictures of Jane. She had kindled the spark for each one of them – had sent him away fuming and fretting – to show her! And now? Jane was dead. Would he ever paint a picture – a real picture – again? He looked again at the eager face on the canvas. Perhaps. Jane wasn’t very far away.
A sound made him wheel round. Isobel had come into the studio. She was dressed for dinner in a straight white gown that showed up the pure gold of her hair.
She stopped dead and checked the words on her lips. Eyeing him warily, she went over to the divan and sat down. She had every appearance of calm.
Alan took the cheque book from his pocket.
‘I’ve been going through Jane’s papers.’
‘Yes?’
He tried to imitate her calm, to keep his voice from shaking.
‘For the last four years she’s been supplying you with money.’
‘Yes. For Winnie.’
‘No, not for Winnie,’ shouted Everard. ‘You pretended, both of you, that it was for Winnie, but you both knew that that wasn’t so. Do you realize that Jane has been selling her securities, living from hand to mouth, to supply you with clothes – clothes that you didn’t really need?’
Isobel never took her eyes from his face. She settled her body more comfortably on the cushions as a white Persian cat might do.
‘I can’t help it if Jane denuded herself more than she should have done,’ she said. ‘I supposed she could afford the money. She was always crazy about you – I could see that, of course. Some wives would have kicked up a fuss about the way you were always rushing off to see her, and spending hours there. I didn’t.’
‘No,’ said Alan, very white in the face. ‘You made her pay instead.’
‘You are saying very offensive things, Alan. Be careful.’
‘Aren’t they true? Why did you find it so easy to get money out of Jane?’
‘Not for love of me, certainly. It must have been for love of you.’
‘That’s just what it was,’ said Alan simply. ‘She paid for my freedom – freedom to work in my own way. So long as you had a sufficiency of money, you’d leave me alone – not badger me to paint a crowd of awful women.’
Isobel said nothing.
‘Well?’ cried Alan angrily.
Her quiescence infuriated him.
Isobel was looking at the floor. Presently she raised her head and said quietly:
‘Come here, Alan.’
She touched the divan at her side. Uneasily, unwillingly, he came and sat there, not looking at her. But he knew that he was afraid.
‘Alan,’ said Isobel presently.
‘Well?’
He was irritable, nervous.
‘All that you say may be true. It doesn’t matter. I’m like that. I want things – clothes, money, you. Jane’s dead, Alan.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Jane’s dead. You belong to me altogether now. You never did before – not quite.’
He looked at her – saw the light in her eyes, acquisitive, possessive – was revolted, yet fascinated.
‘Now you shall be all mine.’
He understood Isobel then as he had never understood her before.
‘You want me as a slave? I’m to paint what you tell me to paint, live as you tell me to live, be dragged at your chariot wheels.’
‘Put it like that if you please. What are words?’
He felt her arms round his neck, white, smooth, firm as a wall. Words danced through his brain. ‘A wall as white as milk.’ Already he was inside the wall. Could he still escape? Did he want to escape?
He heard her voice close against his ear – poppy and mandragora.
‘What else is there to live for? Isn’t this enough? Love – happiness – success – love –’
The wall was growing up all round him now – ‘the curtain soft as silk’, the curtain wrapping him round, stifling him a little, but so soft, so sweet! Now they were drifting together, at peace, out on the crystal sea. The wall was very high now, shutting out all those other things – those dangerous, disturbing things that hurt – that always hurt. Out on the sea of crystal, the golden apple between their hands.
The light faded from Jane’s picture.
Chapter 13
The Listerdale Mystery
‘The Listerdale Mystery’ was first published as ‘The Benevolent Butler’ in Grand Magazine, December 1925.
Mrs St Vincent was adding up figures. Once or twice she sighed, and her hand stole to her aching forehead. She had always disliked arithmetic. It was unfortunate that nowadays her life should seem to be composed entirely of one particular kind of sum, the ceaseless adding together of small necessary items of expenditure making a total that never failed to surprise and alarm her.
Surely it couldn’t come to that! She went back over the figures. She had made a trifling error in the pence, but otherwise the figures were correct.
Mrs St Vincent sighed again. Her headache by now was very bad indeed. She looked up as the door opened and her daughter Barbara came into the room. Barbara St Vincent was a very pretty girl, she had her mother’s delicate features, and the same proud turn of the head, but her eyes were dark instead of blue, and she had a different mouth, a sulky red mouth not without attraction.
‘Oh! Mother,’ she cried. ‘Still juggling with those horrid old accounts? Throw them all into the fire.’
‘We must know where we are,’ said Mrs St Vincent uncertainly.
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
‘We’re always in the same boat,’ she said drily. ‘Damned hard up. Down to the last penny as usual.’
Mrs St Vincent sighed.
‘I wish –’ she began, and then stopped.
‘I must find something to do,’ said Barbara in hard tones. ‘And find it quickly. After all, I have taken that shorthand and typing course. So have about one million other girls from all I can see! “What experience?” “None, but –” “Oh! thank you, good-morning. We’ll let you know.” But they never do! I must find some other kind of a job – any job.’
‘Not yet, dear,’ pleaded her mother. ‘Wait a little longer.’
Barbara went to the window and stood looking out with unseeing eyes that took no note of the dingy line of houses opposite.
‘Sometimes,’ she said slowly, ‘I’m sorry Cousin Amy took me with her to Egypt last winter. Oh! I know I had fun – about the only fun I’ve ever had or am likely to have in my life. I did enjoy myself – enjoyed myself thoroughly. But it was very unsettling. I mean – coming back to this.’
She swept a hand round the room. Mrs St Vincent followed it with her eyes and winced. The room was typical of cheap furnished lodgings. A dusty aspidistra, showily ornamental furniture, a gaudy wallpaper faded in patches. There were signs that the personality of the tenants had struggled with that of the landlady; one or two pieces of good china, much cracked and mended, so that their saleable value was nil, a piece of embroidery thrown over the back of the sofa, a water colour sketch of a young girl in the fashion of twenty years ago; near enough still to Mrs St Vincent not to be mistaken.
‘It wouldn’t matter,’ continued Barbara, ‘if we’d never known anything else. But to think of Ansteys –’
She broke off, not trusting herself to speak of that dearly loved home which had belonged t
o the St Vincent family for centuries and which was now in the hands of strangers.
‘If only father – hadn’t speculated – and borrowed –’
‘My dear,’ said Mrs St Vincent, ‘your father was never, in any sense of the word, a business man.’
She said it with a graceful kind of finality, and Barbara came over and gave her an aimless sort of kiss, as she murmured, ‘Poor old Mums. I won’t say anything.’
Mrs St Vincent took up her pen again, and bent over her desk. Barbara went back to the window. Presently the girl said:
‘Mother. I heard from – from Jim Masterton this morning. He wants to come over and see me.’
