apparently. Well known as a trouble maker.’
‘Okay, thanks, Sergeant. Where are you now?’
‘Off to see the last geezer who hung back at the gallery, a bloke called Chester Gerachi. Why is it all these arty types have such weird names?’
Pendragon ignored the question and closed his phone. ‘That was my sergeant,’ he said, turning a hard gaze on Jackson Price. ‘Tells me there was a gatecrasher at the private view. You failed to mention that.’
Price showed little reaction, simply shrugged. ‘I hardly thought it was important,’ he said evenly. ‘It was just Arcade. He is never welcome, but almost
Pendragon gave him a puzzled look.
‘Francis Arcade’s a joke,’ Price went on. ‘I’m surprised he doesn’t hire himself out as a party entertainer, a performance artist.’
‘So, what happened?’
‘What happened? Mr Arcade showed up about ten-thirty. He hadn’t been invited, naturally. He was turned away, but wouldn’t take no for an answer and forced his way into the room. It was dreadfully dull. He should change the script a little.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Oh, he grabbed a drink, threw it over someone. Standard stuff. I was all for letting him stay. In a way, that’s the last thing he would have wanted. Would have defused things. But …’
‘But?’
‘Kingsley wouldn’t have any of it.’ Price’s voice dropped almost to a whisper.
‘Mr Berrick intervened?’
‘Well …’
‘Either he did or he didn’t, Mr Price.’
‘Yes, he intervened. He and Arcade traded insults and then Kingsley took his arm. It looked for a moment as though it might turn really nasty, but then someone else took Arcade’s other arm and the stupid kid just went limp … sort of gave up. Made his point, I suppose. They led him outside, and that was that.’
‘Who was the other person?’
Price stared at the floor unable to look Pendragon in the face. ‘I think you know, Chief Inspector.’
Chapter 14
To Mrs Sonia Thomson
13 October 1888
My mother died after a deliciously protracted illness. I was thirteen. I remember sitting with her in the darkened room directly opposite the top of the stairs in the east wing of the house. I grew fascinated by her physical degeneration. I had no emotional reaction to it whatsoever, but carefully catalogued each increment of her descent into Hell. For I was sure that if there were such a place, she would be heading that way. In fact, I took great pleasure in terrifying her with prophecy when we were alone together in that room. I spun such a tale of her sins … amplifying her every bad deed, convincing her utterly that she was destined for the eternal fires, that the flames would be lapping around her very soon. I recall standing outside the door and listening to my father’s pathetic attempts to calm her down and his lame efforts to make her believe that she would be going to Heaven, that the Lord would forgive her sins. She could never mention to him what I had said, of course, because I had convinced her that if she did say anything, she would merely be compounding her own guilt.
But perhaps the most satisfying moment came when I managed to steal the crimson handkerchief she’d so cherished. She held it in her right hand where it lay outside the bedspread. My father and I were sitting on opposite sides of the bed, the curtains drawn tight shut. A single feeble lamp burned on a cabinet to my side of the room. The room stank of illness. I remember eyeing that handkerchief, waiting for the moment I could make my move, for I knew my unbeloved mother was close to death. I wanted to prise the scrap of crimson from her living fingers.
Then my moment came. Father left the room briefly. I stood up quietly and walked over to where my mother lay. I slipped the handkerchief from between her enfeebled fingers, thrust it into my pocket and returned to the chair just as Father stepped back into the room. The horrible woman died that night. I celebrated by taking the handkerchief down to the river and burning it in the silvery moonlight.
I have a certain Dr Egbert Farmer to thank for facilitating my eventual escape from Hemel Hempstead. Dr Farmer was my headmaster, and it was he who first took notice of my emerging artistic talent. He was a ridiculous, fat man with an absurd sense of self-importance, but he was also one of those individuals who felt the need to encourage those he believed to be talented.
I had conceived a great love for drawing, and later painting, which was my only release from the strictures of my unhappy childhood. My walks and adventures along the river and my occasional dalliances with the Lord’s furred and feathered creations held limited charms, which I quickly outgrew. For a long time the incident with the boy from London loomed large in my mind, as you may appreciate. I relived the experience over and over again, my memory of it fresh and powerful. I could recall every fine detail of that hour by the river. I learned that his stinking body had been washed up downriver two days later. I would have given anything to have seen his corpse, but of course that was not possible.
I often sketched Fred, the drowned boy. I spent long hours struggling to bring to the page his expression of terror, the pleading light in his eyes as he slid away from this world. I fantasised about the look of him as he drifted under the water carried by the current, his head battered against rocks, his face cut by rushes, and I tried to visualise his bloated, green-tinged form as his parents would have seen it after he was fished from the river.
Needless to say, these were not the pictures Dr Farmer saw. By the time I was sixteen, I had quite a decent portfolio of conventional pieces, and I had entered a landscape in a school art competition. When I won the prize, it seemed to be the first time anyone at school even noticed I was there. Before then, I had been little more than a shadow. Even Father took some notice when he heard of my success. Until then, he had not shown the slightest interest in my efforts but merely scoffed at the very idea his son should be interested in something so meretricious as art.
As a consequence, my father was quite bemused when Dr Farmer wrote to him inviting us to meet him. We dutifully went along to tea at the head-master’s cottage not far from the school, and when the good doctor explained to my father that he thought I was the most promising young artist he had ever seen, and that he believed I had a chance of a scholarship to study Fine Art at Oxford, Father was struck dumb.
He himself was not in the least bit academic, but he held Dr Farmer in high regard. Farmer had been an Oxford man himself and had once been something of an ambitious young fellow. Sadly for him, he had been wounded in the Crimea and never regained his health. He came from a wealthy family with connections who had secured him a teaching post in Hemel Hempstead, and when the former headmaster, Mr Bathurst, had died back in the late sixties, the good doctor had succeeded him in the post. And I’m grateful he did or else I might never have achieved the wonders for which I am now infamous.
On my first view of it, Oxford was shrouded in rain. The carriage taking me from the railway station rattled over cobbles and splashed through muddy puddles swamping Botley Road. It travelled past Northgate, on to Turl Street, and pulled up outside my new home, Exeter College. I was in reflective mood, paying little heed to my surroundings. It was only the next morning when bright sunshine lit up my meagre room that I felt I had actually arrived.
My dear lady, to whom I have promised to tell only the truth and only the relevant details of my tale, I will not bore you with the minutiae of my introduction to university life. We have all heard such mundanities before, have we not? Let us not waste time, but instead move straight on to the meat of the story. If you’ll excuse the pun.
Since my earliest childhood, I had, as you know, led a solitary existence, and so being thrust suddenly into a community like the University came as something of a shock. I quickly realised that I could spend my three years
