The Killings at Badger's Drift(78)

She looked at him. He was really getting into his stride. Shredded rhubarb eyeballs staring, a frothy tic of malice tweaking at his lips. She would have to manage without a car. Three in one household was ridiculous. Mrs Holland would be given notice. The gardener’s hours drastically revised. It wouldn’t hurt Barbara to find out what a hard day’s work was like. Or a hard night’s work come to that. The days of freeloading were over. Ah - that had reached her. At last it had sunk in which side the bread was buttered. She was coming over now, a tender smile on her face. She reached out a hand and laid it gently on his arm.

‘Fuck off, Pookie,’ she said.





Chapter Eleven

Barnaby sat in the Orion at the end of Church Lane. The windows were open and the sun was warming his face. He was thinking.

Lacey’s alibi was, as he had expected it to be, confirmed. The man was innocent of the murder of Iris Rainbird. Yet he had made a run for it. Why? Had he really just panicked? Sensed a frame-up? The first folds of a net falling around him cast by an unknown hand? It was feasible enough, Barnaby knew. He had seen people bolt more than once on a lot less provocation. Lacey had set off running like the wind yet Troy, who had to pick himself up from the floor before setting off in pursuit, had caught the man and brought him down before he had covered more than a few yards.

Barnaby recalled the scene, superimposing Lacey’s face on his mind’s eye. Amazement first. Then panic. And something else. They had looked at each other for a moment just before Lacey had been bundled into the back of the car and Barnaby had been aware of a third emotion behind the eyes. Unexpected and out of place. What was it? Barnaby found himself sweating as he struggled to recall precisely those few seconds, so fleeting and imprecise.

And then he had it. The third emotion was relief. Now, holding on to this new realization, he replayed the scene for a second time. Lacey running; Lacey getting caught almost certainly before he needed to have done; Lacey relieved. And when exactly had he started running? Not, as would have been expected, when the knife was produced. But minutes later, when Barnaby was about to turn back into the studio. That must be it. They had found something in Holly Cottage. But they had not found what Lacey was afraid they would find.

Barnaby got out of the car and crossed the road. His mouth was dry and he could feel his heart thumping in his breast. As he walked he recalled the studio. Neat. Professional. Trestle tables. Brushes and paints. Nothing out of the ordinary, but as he hurried down the dirt track he became more and more convinced that his sudden perception was correct.

Holly Cottage, no longer basking in the sun, looked cold and grey once more. Barnaby opened the front door, calling ‘Miss Lacey’ up the stairs. He thought it unlikely that she had slept there last night but, just in case, did not want to alarm her. There was no reply. He stepped through the doorless opening into the studio.

Everything looked exactly the same. He picked up all the jars, tubes and tins; opened and sniffed. They seemed to contain nothing unorthodox. The brushes were just brushes. There were lots of paperbacks and art catalogues in a corner cupboard. He opened them and shook the pages. No incriminating letter fell to the floor. There was a jar of clean spirit, one paint-muddied, and a few rags, some clean and neatly folded, some stained and crumpled. The windowsill was bare. Barnaby turned his attention to the paintings.

He wasn’t sure what he expected. Iris Rainbird had called them ugly, violent things. Barnaby was aware that this remark had started an ignoble hope in his own breast, once he had met the man, that Lacey had no talent. A hope now rudely shattered.

The first canvas he picked up was the portrait of Dennis Rainbird, and it was stunning. The paint glistened as if still fresh. A combination of grey and yellow ochre reminded Barnaby of a newly turned lump of sticky clay. Close to, the painting looked unfinished, almost crude, but put upon the windowsill a few feet away it leapt into instant complicated life. Dennis was wearing an open-necked shirt the outline of which, like his hands, was blurred, fading into a shadowy background. The bones at the base of his throat showed through the fine skin clear and fragile like those of a small bird. The planes of his face were thick yellow slabs of paint which miraculously managed to suggest the subtle living tissue of real flesh with all its tides and secrets. The mouth was very tightly controlled and the gaze turned inwards reflecting the sitter’s personal thoughts. His eyes showed loneliness and sorrow. The painter had understood and realized on canvas much more than Dennis Rainbird’s physical appearance. He had exposed the man’s secret heart. No wonder his mother had hated it.