‘Because I’ve heard it so often before. So have you. It’s not very original.’
‘But it’s true. You don’t believe me?’
‘Go on.’
‘A dear friend, who drank too much and behaved unwisely. Some embarrassing pictures fell into Wylie’s hands. I got them back. That’s what I paid him for.’
‘And the name of this friend?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Of course not. And the pictures have now been destroyed, and all we’re left with is an image of you and Wylie conferring over a copy of
…’ Brock peered at the photograph,‘… Tiny Tots.’
‘He pushed that into my hands…’ Beaufort stopped abruptly and straightened in his seat as if he’d suddenly realised that he’d been betrayed. Brock could almost see the thoughts crystallising, some aphorism of the Iron Duke, perhaps, whom Beaufort increasingly resembled; Never apologise, never explain.‘I have nothing further to say,’ he said stiffly.‘I am leaving now.’
‘Well, that’s up to you, but Mr Wylie has given us other material, much more graphic and incriminating. In fairness, I’d like to give you the chance to give us your point of view. Are you sure you don’t want to call a solicitor?’
Beaufort looked shocked.‘What other material?’
In the same year that Henry Fuseli painted Death Steals the Child at Midnight, another star of eighteenth- century London culture, Sir John Soane, Architect to the Bank of England, began the demolition and reconstruction of his terrace house at number twelve Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This project, which was to continue for the rest of Soane’s life and to expand into numbers thirteen and fourteen next door, involved the creation of a private treasure house to display his extraordinary collection of architectural fragments, antique objects, plaster casts, books and paintings. Near the end of his life he bequeathed the house to the nation by a private Act of Parliament which stipulated that its arrangements should be kept intact as at the time of his death.
Kathy arrived in the early afternoon, still feeling fragile, with a dull ache throbbing at the back of her head. Lincoln’s Inn Fields was a grander version of Northcote Square, with the Fields forming a sizeable park in the centre, in one corner of which four lawyers from Lincoln’s Inn were gamely thumping a ball around a tennis court. She found the museum in the centre of the north side and took the steps up to the front door of number thirteen. She was met in the hallway by a small, silver-haired woman who explained that entry was free but she might care to buy a guidebook. Kathy agreed, and said that she was looking for a particular painting in the collection.
‘The best place to start would be the Picture Room,’ the woman said. ‘The guide there will help you. If it isn’t there, he’ll know where it is.’ She pointed out the route on the map in the guidebook, and Kathy went through a door into the dining room and library, with its cunning mirrors set above the bookcases and behind objects to create an illusion of space. From there she passed through two small rooms, tall and narrow like the architect Soane himself, to reach the special chambers at the back of the house.
She found herself in what might have been an ancient vaulted crypt, crammed with urns and sculptures, and with fragments of classical buildings covering the walls. The light was ethereal, filtering down from above through yellow glass, and she felt as if she might have been transported back in time to Pompeii, perhaps, or ancient Rome. She heard a voice from an adjoining room, a cry of surprise, and made her way towards the sound. An elderly, impish man was pointing out features to a pair of visitors in a tall room filled with paintings. Kathy recognised some of the pictures from Hogarth’s series, The Rake’s Progress. Having finished his story, the man tugged at the wall panel, folding it back to reveal more paintings behind. This trick was duly met with cries of delight, and was repeated again and again as more ingenious folding panels were demonstrated.
When the other visitors finally drifted away, Kathy spoke to the guide.
‘Ah, Fuseli, yes. Soane was a great admirer of the artists of the terrible sublime-John Martin, James Barry, Henry Fuseli, they’re all here. Fuseli’s The Italian Count is over there on the west wall. Now, let me see…’ He went to a corner of the room and folded back a screen, then another, to reveal a dark painting of a man brooding over the body of a dead or sleeping woman.‘Recognise this one?’he asked.
Kathy said,‘It looks a little like The Night-Mare, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes indeed. That came two years later. This one is called Ezzelin and Meduna. Now…’ He eased that screen away and there, on the final layer of the wall, was what Kathy was looking for.
‘Death Steals the Child at Midnight. A gloomy little thing, hidden away at the back here. There seems to be a revival of interest in Fuseli. I’ve never had anyone ask after this until this month, and now you’re the second. Are you an artist too?’
‘No, but I think that may have been someone I knew,’ Kathy said.
‘Ah, that would explain it.’
‘Can you remember when that was?’
‘Not long ago. I had last week and the week before off, so it would have been the week before that.’
‘Are you quite sure?’
‘Of course. I went down to Devon to stay with my sister.’ He pulled a small diary from his pocket and turned the pages. ‘I finished here on Friday the tenth, so your friend would have been here earlier that week. Why, is it important?’
‘Actually it is. You see, he’s dead now.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ The little man looked puzzled. ‘But you said “he”. The person who came here was a woman.’
‘A woman? Can you remember what she looked like?’
‘Rather stocky, dark hair, cropped short. She was wearing trousers, but I’m sure it was a woman. I know sometimes these days it’s hard to tell. Oh dear, am I mistaken?’
‘No, I know now who you mean. She’s a friend of the man I meant. Can you remember anything she said?’
The man pondered. ‘Yes, I do… She said she was doing research. She was interested in portrayals of a lost child. She said she’d seen a reference to the Fuseli but not found an illustration, and she asked if she might take a photograph for her records.’ His look became anxious.‘My goodness, I wondered if it might be hers, but it’s not yours, is it? The lost child?’
‘Not mine, no. I’m with the police. We’re trying to trace the movements of the man who died, and we thought he might have come here. And you’re quite positive about the date she came? It couldn’t have been yesterday or Monday of this week?’
‘No, it was definitely before I went away. I’m absolutely certain of that.’
Kathy thanked him, took a note of his name and made her way back out into the square. The lawyers had abandoned their tennis on the Fields, returned to work perhaps behind the Tudor archway of Lincoln’s Inn, or in the Royal Courts of Justice a couple of blocks to the south, beyond the little pub where Brock had met the CPS solicitor. Kathy wondered if Jugular Jack had ever practised here, thrashing his opponents in both law and tennis courts. She forced her mind back to what she had just learned, and took out her own diary, checking the dates again. The guide in the Picture Room had been a credible witness. If what he’d told her was true, Poppy Wilkes had been researching the theme of the missing child at least three days before Tracey disappeared.
Sir Jack Beaufort sat immobile, staring at the four photographs on the table. The anger had gone, leaving him seized by a terrible stillness.
‘It’s an awful thing,’he murmured at last,‘to become an unreliable witness. It renders you… infantile.’ He made an effort and roused himself. ‘Was he stalking me or her, do you suppose?’
Brock didn’t answer, and Beaufort went on. ‘This first one is as I told you. I met the girl by chance in the square, we recognised each other and said hello.’
‘You appear to be giving her something.’
‘I believe she showed me her watch and told me the time. I’d forgotten that.’
‘Did Betty Zielinski see you?’
The judge stared into the distance. ‘Yes, you’re right. Unreliable again. She was there, feeding her birds. She shouted something at us, I don’t know what exactly, and the girl took fright and ran off home.’
‘Home? You knew where she lived?’
‘Yes. Reg Gilbey had told me. As I said, I’d heard of her father.’
