In case she was in the bath or anything, 'Can I come up? It isn't anything, just something I'd like to ask. About,' I improvised stupidly, 'er, Il Maestro. Shall I come up?
Only, I think your cat's poorly. It looks a bit off colour.'
Nothing. There was no cat.
Then I got frightened. I started on the stairs, one at a time, calling.
'Did you say to come up?' I bleated. I could see daylight seeping from an open door onto the landing, a towel on a handrail. 'I'm coming.'
Another step. 'Is it okay?' Step. 'Me coming up, I mean?'
Finally two steps, bravely one more. 'Right?'
A sandalled foot hung over the edge of a bed. No movement. Was this bad? Or was she in a fuming temper at Lovejoy who'd betrayed her with a forged drawing?
Did it look pale? I was unable to recall whether she had pale feet. Where I come from you never go to bed with shod feet, like you don't dare put shoes on a bed. It heralds death, so watch it. I once got thumped for nearly doing that when I wasn't even three.
Not knowing superstitions was no excuse.
'Er, Bernicka?'
A leg. I craned to see. The other leg came into view. Sandalled. She wore a working brat, no gloves. Her cat lay on her. It looked stiff. I'd run out of stairs, stood there in her bedroom doorway.
'Bernicka, love. It's me.'
Nothing. I think you can tell. The cat didn't move either.
Bernicka didn't breathe. Her features, usually so vehement and coloured – she's really into emotion – looked drained and still. So utterly still. 'A mirror,' I said aloud to her, like she'd helpfully hand me a mirror to see if she was still breathing or dead.
In fright I raced downstairs and dialled 999, managing to drop the phone twice. I got a snatch of the Cuckoo Waltz played on some bloody cinema organ and an automated voice telling me I was in a queue, hold on please, the world of emergency services was champing at the bit to help but would respond as soon as they could be bothered.
Translation: they were still at that snooker match.
After a full year hanging on, couldn't have been less, somebody bored said, what? I told her to send an ambulance fast because a young woman looked dead. I ran back upstairs, budged the cat aside and tried shoving Bernicka's chest like they do on films. I think I got some air puffing in and out but wasn't sure. I tried counting like I'd seen in those American hospital serials on TV, but what was I counting and how fast? I stuck at it.
An aeon later ambulance folk rushed in. They wore thick uniforms, very macho, yelled a lot and undid cables. I left them to their game. I don't honestly know if their tardiness made a difference. The real delay had been mine, waiting in the decrepit outhouse, reading those hidden files, giving myself priority instead of coming out and taking a risk that Olive Makins might see me.
Instead I'd dawdled while Bernicka went upstairs and took whatever drugs she'd had to hand and dosed her cat so it came with her too.
While the ambulance lot did their thumping rituals I went to look in the studio. It was a ruin. Sketches of Il Cavallo were tacked to the walls, with the portrait of Leonardo looking down. A candle, thick and stubby, burned before it. How long since it had been lit? Two hours, three? Drawings of mock-ups were pasted to the door. A bunch of flowers, suspiciously new, stood in a vase amid the crushed plaster. Bernicka must have gone into her garden and picked a bouquet for her bloke's picture. She may even have walked past the outhouse.
She'd known what she was about to do.
Had Olive Makins known that would have been the consequence, Bernicka's suicide?
Her life's work for da Vinci had fallen apart because of what Olive said. I pondered this, while the goons upstairs rushed in and out.
Now, whatever else she'd been, Bernicka was that troublesome thing known as a woman in love. Okay, forget that she'd had the odd bloke now and then – she wasn't going to go short of physical love while she was a slave to Leonardo. Fine.
That being so, why take that terrible final step? The logical thing would be to sweep up and begin anew, right? To look, as I was doing that instant, at the heaped chunks of her statue and then start again. The Bernicka I knew simply wouldn't give in. Just like any woman who, deterred because her embroidery colour suddenly looks wrong, undoes the whole thing and simply restarts. It's what birds do. It's also what blokes do.
They curse that blinking wrong gadget, strip the engine down, and set about making new cogs for that steam engine they've set their heart on. It's human. Annoying, maddening, but human.
So there was something else. Something lethal. And Olive Makins, instrument of Bernicka's death as she was for Timothy Giverill's, knew what.
And now, after my slothful reading in the outhouse, so did I.
Time to see Sandy, to get my ghost paintings back, and find Mrs Thomasina Quayle.
A policeman strolled in, wanting to take a statement. I pointed into the house and said,
'The bloke who phoned the ambulance? He's waiting in there, mate. I'm with the ambulance.'
And walked away from my dead friend. I'm good at that.
26
THE MOTEL WAS grottier than I'd expected. She'd booked in her name, Mrs Alicia Domander, which worried
