Three Little Maids(21)

‘It must have a great view.

‘She said it gives her inspiration for painting and that was all she had when she first came back here after a car accident. She lost her small four-year-old daughter, Becky in it. Roger was driving and they went through hell together afterwards. She was in hospital for a long time and he doesn’t like anyone mentioning it much. Carole knows more than I do what went on in that marriage but she doesn’t tell me everything, even now. She used to visit as the district nurse and became a good friend to Sara.’

Kent rang the front doorbell and heard an attractive husky voice inquire, ‘Who is it?’

‘The police, MrsWelbeck. Detective Inspector Kent and Sergeant Turner. We would like to ask you a few questions concerning Maureen Carey. If we may co me in please?’

‘Okay.’ There was a buzz. ‘Push the door inwards and come up the stairs facing you, please. Or, if you don’t fancy, the exercise you can use the lift in the hall on the side. It’s up to you, gentlemen. I’m in the studio room in the front.’

‘Stairs, Turner.’

‘Right, guv.’

Sara Welbeck opened the adjoining studio doors to them. She was in her wheelchair, a slim, attractive green-eyed fair-haired woman with a devastatingly sweet smile that made Turner toes want to curl up. She always had that disturbing effect on him.

‘Good afternoon, gentlemen. I was really in need of a break and you’ve come at just the right time. Is this is about Maureen Carey? The dead girl?’

‘It is, we shan’t take up too much of your time I hope, MrsWelbeck. Thank you for agreeing to see us. We would like some information about last Thursday evening. Was your husband spending the evening with you at home?’

Turner took out his notebook and popped a sweet into his mouth, his biro poised over the blank page.

‘No, I’m afraid not. But why haven’t you asked him yet? Oh, I see...’ She smiled. ‘You want to see if our statements match. Well, he will tell you that he was rehearsing for the Mikado at the local theatre. Roger belongs to the local Amateur Operetta theatre club. He has a good tenor voice, actually, and he plays Nanky Poo.’ She chuckled. ‘Aiden Ludlam is in it too by the way. He would be able to vouch for Roger, I’m sure. They would have both been at the rehearsal.

‘I’ve been kept busy finishing a painting I was commissioned to do. Roger was late coming in, I think. He generally pops into the Nag’s Head for a pint or two after the rehearsals. To lubricate his tonsils, he says, and I often work well into the wee small hours when I have to get something finished, and this portrait has been especially difficult.’ She shrugged her slim shoulders and made a slight moue with her generous mouth. ‘So it really doesn’t trouble me if he’s late home, within reason of course.’

‘Does Mr. Ludlam have a drink afterwards in the Nag’s Head?’

‘Aiden, doesn’t frequent the local pubs as a rule. I would think that Roger would have been home in bed by eleven thirty.’

‘Did you hear him come in?’

‘I didn’t, Inspector. I don’t hear anything as a rule. Not when I’m so involved with a painting.’

‘What, or who, is the subject, MrsWelbeck?’ Kent’s gaze went over to the covered picture on the easel at the back of the large sunlit studio room. ‘It must be important to keep you working so late.’

‘It’s a girl’s portrait. Waiting for collection. But you didn’t know the girl personally, did you, Inspector Kent? It’s Maureen Carey.’





13




‘It’s good.’ Kent gazed at the finished oil painting of Maureen Carey on the easel and back to Sara Welbeck in the wheelchair. Surprise echoed clearly in his voice. ‘Very good and you were commissioned to do it?’

‘Her father wanted it for his wife’s birthday this month. Maureen wasn’t an easy subject but I think that I brought out the living essence of the girl. What do you think?’

He studied the portrait carefully and stood well back from it. Now he could tie up the resemblance here to the girl he’d last seen lying on the mortuary slab. Like a fairy-tale princess, the girl in the blue silk dress stroked the fluffy white Persian kitten on her lap but the look in those heavy lidded, lapis blue eyes revealed that if a young Lolita ever existed, she was portrayed here on the canvas before him now, and it made him feel uneasy.

Turner beside him, coughed gently, felt in his pocket for the bag of peppermint lumps, popped one into his mouth and chewed it vigorously.

Sara Welbeck, watching Kent closely, said coolly; ‘I suppose you know much more about the wretched girl by now.’ Kent glanced at her quickly but made no comment. ‘As I did and I knew, when I was painting her, that Maureen Carey was no sweet innocent. She was a little tramp and she set out to seduce my husband, Inspector. She succeeded and she didn’t care a tinker’s cuss if I knew it.’