‘We won’t keep you a moment, sir.’ Barnaby moved forward very slightly and Michael Lacey stepped back very slightly, just enough to let the two men enter the cottage. Uncarpeted stairs were directly to the left of him and he sat on them, leaving the other two standing.
‘Did you know Miss Simpson well?’
‘I don’t know anyone well. She let me do a series of paintings of her garden . . . different times of the year . . . but that was ages ago. I hadn’t seen her for . . . ohh . . . a couple of months at least.’ He gazed at the chief inspector, alert, detached, a little amused, deciding to treat this enforced interruption as an entertainment.
‘Could you tell me where you were on the afternoon and evening of last Friday?’
‘Here.’
‘Well that’s certainly a prompt reply, Mr Lacey. Don’t you need to reflect at all?’
‘No. I’m always here. Working. Sometimes I take a break to walk in the woods.’
‘And did you walk in the woods that day?’ inquired Barnaby.
‘I may have done. I really don’t remember. As all my days are the same I don’t need to keep a diary.’
‘It seems rather a dull life for a young man.’
Michael Lacey looked at his bare feet. They were beautiful feet: long, narrow, elegant, with papery skin and fine bones. Byzantine feet. Then he looked directly at Barnaby and said, ‘My work is my life.’ He spoke quietly but with such a charge of passionate conviction that Barnaby, dabbler in watercolours, casual member of the Causton Arts Circle, felt a stab of envy. He then told himself that conviction didn’t mean talent, as many an exposure to Joyce’s drama group had confirmed. Armed with this rather churlish perception, he said, ‘There are one or two more questions, Mr Lacey, if you wouldn’t mind -’
‘But I do mind. I hate being interrupted.’
‘I understand,’ continued Barnaby smoothly, ‘that you were present when the late Mrs Trace was killed.’
‘Bella?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Yes I was but I can’t see . . .’ He paused. ‘You don’t think there’s any connection . . . ?’ His previous animosity seemed forgotten. He looked genuinely interested. ‘No . . . how could there be?’
‘I gather from the newspaper report that you were the first person to reach Mrs Trace.’
‘That’s right. Lessiter said not to touch her but to run and ring for an ambulance, which I did.’
‘Was there anyone at Tye House at the time?’
‘Only Katherine. Toadying away like mad.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘In the kitchen making sandwiches, stuffing vol au vents, chopping up hunter’s pie.’
‘Whilst you were helping with the beating.’
‘That’s different. I was being paid!’ Barnaby’s dig stung the anger back into his voice. He confirmed that no one in the party had been in a position to shoot Mrs Trace, then said, ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me. I didn’t even have a gun.’
‘I understand that you and the other beater searched for the cartridge afterwards?’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that. We had a cursory poke round but it seemed so pointless that we soon gave up.’
‘Thank you, Mr Lacey.’
As the two policemen climbed into the car Troy, remembering his earlier gaffe about the Rover, strove to think of something perceptive and intelligent to say. ‘Did you notice that he locked the door of the room where he was painting? I thought that was a bit strange.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Creative people often have an intensely protective attitude about work in progress. Look at Jane Austen’s creaking door.’
Sergeant Troy reversed, using a large, double-sided mirror which had been fixed in the hedge, giving a view of the approaching path and the front of the cottage. ‘That’s a point, sir,’ he replied. There was no way he was going to let on he knew nothing of Jane Austen’s creaking door. As for Michael Lacey being love’s young dream, well . . . He glanced in the mirror and briefly smoothed his carrot-coloured hair. Surely it was only in romantic novels that girls preferred dark men.
Michael Lacey watched from the porch while the car drove away then returned to his studio. He picked up his palette and brush, stared at the easel for a moment, then put them down again. The light was dying. In spite of the recent interruption he had had a good day. Sometimes he worked in a fury of resentment; tearing up sketches, painting over scenes that would not come right in a frenzy, occasionally weeping with rage. But days like that paid for days like this. From the striving came, sometimes, a marvellous and felicitous ease. He studied the figure in the painting. There was still a lot to do. He had put on the dead colour, that was all. But he was excited by it. He had the absolute conviction that it was going to be successful. It was tremendous when that happened. The belief that, no matter what he did, how he approached it, whatever the technique, it was going to work. His conviction was so strong that he felt he couldn’t spoil it even if he tried.