Black Valley (22 page)

When she’d gone, Jess got up, left the cafe, and walked up the grand marble staircase with its polished copper balustrade, past the statue of the Greek god brandishing the Medusa head, and
into the gallery where the Morris paintings were housed. It was a large room with other rooms leading off it, and when she walked in, there was nobody there, apart from a uniformed museum employee
hovering in the background. In the empty space, the great black canvasses hanging on the walls seemed to reverberate silently, in a way that was almost religious, like a gathering of monolithic
dark angels around a tomb. As she approached one of the paintings, it subtly transformed itself, so that it became a dirty pavement, smeared with globules of tar; but when she stood in front of it,
she found herself looking at a slab of coal that glittered menacingly in the light, prosaic yet strangely beautiful. Leaning in to scrutinize it, the surface of the coal began to sparkle
seductively, then became a deep shaft; she followed it until it seemed to disintegrate into a void, a vortex that threatened to suck her into nothingness . . .

She stepped back, frightened by its malicious intensity yet drawn to it. She knew about black holes. Rose had been studying them in school. They came into being when massive stars collapsed at
the end of their life cycle, sucking everything in the vicinity down with them. There was a surface around them called an event horizon, from which there was no return.

Walking away from the painting, Jess became aware that she had been standing on that edge for some time, ever since Bob left, without realizing it. Morris wasn’t painting that, of course;
he was painting the social collapse of the South Wales valleys, and the communities that had remained there, the gravitational pull of their lives torn away from them, forever balancing on the
event horizon of the black hole that threatened, as it grew, to engulf them. But it was still emotional loss, wasn’t it, to a greater or lesser degree, and its aftermath of grief and despair
. . .

Get a grip, Jessica told herself, as she walked round the rest of the room, merely glancing at the rest of the paintings. You’re just overtired. You need some space and time to unwind. She
knew it had all been a bit too much, what with finding Blake’s body, her new affair, and the split with Bob. Going over the weekend’s events just now with Lauren Bonetti hadn’t
helped, either. You need to slow down.

As if obeying this inner dictum, Jess found herself walking through the other rooms of the gallery, looking for her favourite paintings. She didn’t have a client waiting, and although
there was work to catch up on, she could afford to linger a while longer in the museum. And she owed it to herself. Looking at paintings, she knew, like observing nature, was therapy for free . . .
the seeing cure, if you like.

She stopped in front of the Cézanne, his painting of the Mont Sainte-Victoire that caught exactly the light of Provence, where she’d spent an unforgettable year as a student in her
youth – another time, another life. There was the Barbara Hepworth, the ‘conker’, as the children had called it, that she’d always had to stop them stroking, poking their
fingers through the holes, when they were little. Yet another time, another life. Finally she came to the Johns, Gwen and Augustus.

Here they were, Gwen’s minute, detailed studies of quiet women sitting in shadowed rooms, their hands neatly folded on their laps. The pale young girl in the blue dress, the nun in her
habit, the lifeless Japanese doll sitting by the wooden box. And Jess’s favourite, the empty wicker chair by the attic window, a shaft of sunlight falling on an open book beside it. There was
a profound, sombre beauty to these paintings, but they were also suffocating. The same small items were painted and repainted over and over again – the chair, a table, a checked tablecloth.
You could almost hear the clock ticking away the minutes on the mantelpiece as the artist’s life went by.

Jess moved on to Augustus, whose works took up an entire wall of the room. They were the polar opposite, in spirit, to those of his sister. He painted his wives and lovers and socialite friends
on big canvasses in bright, bold colours. Never mind that these days, Gwen’s paintings were, in many circles, more prized than her brother’s, her work spoke of frustration, constraint,
the claustrophobia of domesticity, while the record Augustus had left behind was that of a sensual, expansive life lived with vim and gusto.

As she moved between the paintings, Jess couldn’t help thinking of Elinor. She could well imagine how Elinor might have felt crushed by the influence of Gwen John’s style. She
wondered whether the claustrophobia had abated, or whether it had intensified after the traumatic events of the weekend.

It was useless to speculate, she admonished herself. For the time being, Elinor had left therapy, and there was no knowing whether she’d be back. Jess had left her current slot open for
her, as she’d promised. But if she didn’t come back to her session that week, she’d have to think about filling it. There was always a long queue of people waiting to be seen.

The consulting room needed a facelift, Jess was thinking. A change. Nothing too drastic, of course. She wouldn’t want to upset her patients. Perhaps a slightly brighter
colour on the walls, to make the most of the light filtering through the window. At present, they were a pale, calming grey. Or patterned curtains, instead of the plain cream ones that hung either
side of the bay window. She’d seen a fabric she liked at Mari’s house: a subtle, contemporary design of bare branches in muted tones that would echo the movement of the tree outside the
window.

The white relief on the wall, behind the patient’s armchair, would have to stay, of course. That was her emotional compass. Today, as she looked up at it, the circle was throbbing slightly
among the squares instead of sitting quietly, telling her to take care, warning her of some potential imbalance in her psyche.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. Elinor had arranged to come in for her session that day, but kept delaying her return. It had been two months now, and each time she’d phoned to
postpone, Jess had felt hurt, disappointed. It was a familiar enough feeling – she nearly always became attached to her patients in this way, was sad when they left, however difficult and
demanding they’d been. But what surprised her was how intense her relationship with Elinor had become, over such a short period of time. Perhaps, with Bob gone, and this new affair with
Dresler on the go, her emotional life had become more intense altogether, and was affecting all her relationships, at work as well as at home.

There was a knock at the door. Jessica’s heart leapt. That was odd, too, she thought. This feeling of excitement whenever Elinor deigned to appear.

She walked over to the door, opened it, and Elinor walked in.

‘Hello.’ Elinor gave her a warm smile, which was unusual. She looked healthy, as if she’d been sleeping and eating properly: there was a tinge of pink to her cheeks, and the
lines on her face seemed to have smoothed out a little. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in before. Things have been rather . . . well, you can imagine.’

She was wearing an immaculate linen jacket that didn’t accord with her usual style of dress. As she took it off and hung it on the hat stand, Jess realized that it was exactly the kind of
thing Isobel would have worn. She’d probably borrowed it.

Elinor went over to the couch. Jess noticed that she didn’t even glance at the window, which was open just a crack, in readiness for her session.

‘It’s been crazy.’ Elinor settled herself on the couch. ‘We’ve had so much to do over the past couple of months. Dealing with the police, the post-mortem, the
funeral. The gallery, the Morris artworks, Blake’s financial affairs . . . it’s all so complicated.’ She sighed. ‘But we’re getting through it.’

‘You say “we”?’

Elinor looked puzzled. ‘Me and Isobel, of course. She’s staying with me at the moment. We’re thinking of selling Ebenezer.’

‘Ebenezer?’

‘The converted chapel where they’ – she didn’t say Isobel and Blake, but that was what Jess took her to mean – ‘both lived. It’s about ten miles away,
in the Vale.’

‘I see.’ So now Isobel and Blake had become ‘they’. Isobel and Elinor had become ‘we’. Clearly, thought Jess, Blake’s death had been something of a
relief to Elinor. Besides offering closure on the mystery of Ursula’s death, it had enabled her to resume her relationship with her sister Isobel; they’d become twins again, living
together under one roof, back in the family home. No wonder she seemed unusually cheerful. Isobel had told Jess that Elinor had never been able to come to terms with the fact that Isobel had
married and moved away. The sisters had quarrelled; now, with Blake dead, the rift had healed, and Elinor had her sister back to herself again.

‘It’s been pretty difficult.’ A frown came over Elinor’s face. ‘Isobel’s been very up and down. She’s been living with a great deal of stress for a long
time.’

Jessica didn’t respond.

‘You see, Blake had been very worried,’ Elinor continued. ‘People didn’t realize, because he was good at keeping up appearances.’

Not that good, thought Jess, recalling Blake’s panic-stricken behaviour, both at the private view and at the tower.

‘But the fact was, he was in a great deal of financial trouble. He’d overreached himself. He’d got so excited about discovering Morris, he’d been neglecting the business,
running into debt.’ She paused. ‘He made it look like a coup, selling the Morris painting to the National Museum. Mounting the exhibition. But it was all just hype, really. He sold the
painting for practically nothing. He was just hoping that by pulling the whole thing off, he’d create a stir in the art world up in London, get Morris noticed.’

‘And did it work?’ Jess let her curiosity get the better of her.

‘It might have. But it all took longer than he’d thought. He began to run out of money. He borrowed from the gallery, from the bank. He began to neglect his clients, his other
artists. He stopped paying his bills. It was all getting very precarious. Isobel says it was around the time of Ursula’s murder that he started losing his mind. He’d wake up at night
and wander round the house, complaining that the walls were closing in. He started coming up with all sorts of ludicrous, short-term plans to make money. She was very worried about him, but of
course, at that time she and I . . . well, we weren’t on very good terms, so she didn’t tell me.’

Jess wondered whether to press her on that point, but decided not to.

‘Anyway, he finally decided to steal the Gwen John from my studio. He had a key. He went round while I was out, let himself in, and went down to the studio. It should have been
easy.’ Elinor paused, frowning. ‘But evidently, my mother came in and caught him red-handed. So he panicked. Beat her to death. He was desperate, I think. Out of his mind.’ She
shivered, clasping her arms around her body, as if trying to warm her limbs. ‘And then he ran off with the painting,’ Elinor continued. ‘He obviously intended to sell it later. It
would have been easy enough for him to find buyers for a painting like that. He knew so many collectors.’

‘But wouldn’t it be difficult for him to sell a well-known painting like that?’

‘Not really. There are plenty of collectors in the art world who buy stolen work for private viewing. In fact, it gives them a kind of frisson to own paintings that nobody knows they
have.’

‘But wouldn’t selling the painting immediately mark him out as the murder suspect?’

Elinor shrugged. ‘I don’t see why. Dodgy art collectors don’t go to the police, do they? Not when they’re busy buying a stolen painting.’

‘But why did Blake hang on to the painting for so long? If he was desperate for money?’

‘These things take time, I suppose. Or maybe it wasn’t as easy as he’d expected. The whole thing had to be done in secret. So, while he was looking for a buyer, he hid the
painting in his wardrobe. And there it remained until Isobel found it.’ Elinor paused. ‘I suppose, after he’d done it, he must have been overcome with guilt. He couldn’t
tell anyone. Isobel and I were distraught about Ursula, of course. And the pressure was still mounting up financially. Then there was the stress of the private view, pretending everything was
hunky-dory. And after that, the police started closing in, asking questions. So I suppose it got too much for him, and he decided to end it all.’

‘Why did he come looking for you that day, then?’

Elinor shrugged. ‘I think he wanted me to talk him out of it. Maybe he wanted to confess, and felt it would be easier to tell me than Isobel. I don’t know. But when I saw him, he was
in such a hysterical state, I was scared of him. He started screaming that he’d killed Ursula, that it was all her fault for interfering. I couldn’t handle it. I thought he might attack
me. That’s why I ran off. I feel terrible about it now.’

Elinor sighed. It was a sigh of remorse, but Jess also detected an element of satisfaction in it.

Jess couldn’t help feeling shocked by Elinor’s lack of feeling for Blake. She knew that Elinor hadn’t had anything directly to do with Blake’s death – she and
Isobel had been driving away from the tower at the time, and the log on Blake’s phone had confirmed that he’d made his last panicky phone call to Isobel before his death. But her
apparent indifference was unnerving.

Finally Jess broke the silence.

‘So how are you feeling about all this now, Elinor?’

Elinor thought for a moment. ‘A mixture of emotions, really. It’s been a relief to find out who killed my mother. A shock, of course, to discover it was Blake. And I miss him. We
were . . . close, in some ways. He was always a great supporter of my painting. He thought I was really good.’ She paused. ‘And I feel sad for Isobel. She’s broken-hearted. She
loved him, you know.’

Elinor spoke the words as if in surprise. ‘But she’s back with me now, so she’ll be OK. In time.’ There was the note of satisfaction in her tone again. ‘Everything
will be back to normal.’

‘Normal?’