The ensuing silence went on for a long time, yet Barnaby was loath to break it. She had withdrawn totally and was staring into the speckled but extremely grand Venetian mirror over the fireplace, frowningly perturbed, as if the person looking back at her was a stranger. He hoped all these painful recollections had not brought some immovable portcullis clanging down in her mind leaving her beyond the reach of his questions and immune to all persuasion. He was on the point of interrogatively reprising her final remark when she started to speak again.
‘I’d started haunting the house. It was a compulsion. A drug, I’d go there after dark hoping to catch sight of him through the window. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone saw me, but I couldn’t stop. I felt there must be another side to him - no one could be that starchy and formal all the time. I thought if I could discover what it was it would help me reach him. Well, I got more than I bargained for.’ The nearness of revelation stretched her flat, colourless voice taut as a drumskin.
‘I was looking into the kitchen, loathing myself for the awful indignity of it, as I always did, when I heard a car draw up at the front of the house. I ran into the trees at the side of the house and saw a woman getting out of a taxi. She paid off the cab then knocked at the door. It opened and she went inside. I was devastated. I saw her through the sitting-room curtains. Very elegant, black suit, long fair hair. He’d given her some wine and she was lifting her glass to him, lifting it . . .’
Laura swung her own glass high and whisky flew about, splashing the looking glass. Some droplets fell on her face. She stared around the room. Her eyes were vague and dull with rings beneath them the colour of fresh bruises. Seeing that she was on the point of passing out, Barnaby got up quickly and took her arm.
‘Come and sit down, Mrs Hutton.’ He had to put his arm around her once she had released the mantelpiece. She was a dead weight. He guided her to a low nursing chair. ‘Would you like us to make you some coffee?’
‘. . . coffee . . .’
Barnaby nodded at his sergeant and Troy went off reluctantly to find the kitchen. Once there he searched for a jar of instant in vain but did discover a box of Sainsbury’s individual filters. This was a relief, for he did not relish messing about with some complicated and no doubt expensive equipment, with perhaps disastrous results.
Common or garden mugs seemed to be at a premium, but there were some cups hanging from the shelves of the dresser. Troy took them down with great care. The handles were shaped like harps and there were apricots and walnuts and pale green, delicately veined leaves painted on the bottom. The cups were translucent and shallow, more like dishes really. Troy held one up to the light, squinting appreciatively before putting it tenderly down on the matching saucer and filling the kettle.
Even before the coffee came Laura Hutton was recovering. Barnaby watched her in the glow of the lamp dredging up the energy to reassemble her wits and gather her diffused attention. He could see she already regretted her rash revelations. The baring of her romantic soul. People always did. When he put another question (Did she see the visitor leave?) she replied, tartly, ‘What do you think? I couldn’t get home fast enough.’
‘And did you go out again, Mrs Hutton?’
‘Absolutely not.’
He let things ride for a few minutes after that, sitting silently, looking around the room at the books and ornaments. It was all so perfect, like an expertly assembled set for a period drama. Only the clothes were wrong. She should have been in high button boots and leg-of-mutton braided sleeves, he in a celluloid wing collar with a curly brimmed bowler balanced on his knee. She was talking again.
‘I cheered myself up briefly by deciding she was a pro. An escort, as I believe they now call themselves. Or is it masseuse? I mean - turning up in a taxi at that hour.’
‘More than likely, Mrs Hutton.’
‘Oh - do you think so?’ The note of dull fatalism had vanished. She sounded hopeful, even excited. As if it could possibly matter now. ‘Actually, I know this’ll sound unlikely - but she seemed to remind me of someone.’
‘Oh?’ Barnaby looked up sharply. ‘Who was that?’
‘I couldn’t think at first. The feeling was so certain but though I went over and over it in my mind the answer escaped me. I ran back to the house - obviously sleep was out of the question - and was sitting in here bawling my head off when it came to me. And it wasn’t a person at all.’ She smiled for the first time and pointed over Barnaby’s left shoulder. ‘It was that.’
He got up and turned round. Hanging behind him on the wall was a painting - a large portrait, ornately framed, of a boy who appeared, from the elaborate richness of his apparel, to be a fifteenth-century princeling. A heavy velvet cloak of russet and silver was folded over one slim shoulder and secured with some sort of papal decoration. His slashed doublet was thickly embroidered with pearls and golden thread. There were pearl drops in his ears too, and he wore a russet velvet cap which had a speckled feather curving across his cheek.