One thing they all had in common was that when you looked at her, you never thought of age. Later, I calculated that she must have been close to forty when they were painted, but it didn’t show. There was no doubt that Sam had idealised her image and projected his own desire into his creations, but they gave me a definite, palpable sense of Grace, something I had been unable to grasp before, when I was chasing after whispers, searching for the motif, the theme, or the telling detail that would bring her to life. And here it was, in Sam Porter’s storeroom. A cascade of images of Grace, with nothing hidden but her soul, though I even fancied I could glimpse that in certain expressions, certain poses, certain turns of the head and angles of the neck. I felt intoxicated by her, dizzy, entranced, under her spell.
Sam studied my reaction. ‘Still rate Vivian Mountjoy?’ he asked.
I could only shake my head in wonder. ‘Did the police see these?’ I asked, my mouth dry.
‘Good Lord, no! Can you imagine their reaction? Philistines. That would certainly have added fuel to the fire.’
‘But surely they searched your flat?’
‘My flat was the size of a water closet. I did most of my painting in Staithes, in a studio a local group of artists let me share. They were all older than me, but they sort of took me under their wing. They had connections with the Staithes Group, quite collectible these days, and I picked up a bit of the Impressionist influence from them. Have you heard of Laura Knight?’
‘I’m afraid not. My modern art isn’t quite up to scratch.’
‘She was one of the few surviving members at the time. Formidable woman. Must have been about seventy- five around then, but you wouldn’t have known it. And the things she’d seen. She was the official war painter at the Nuremberg trials, you know. That’s when she did “The Dock, Nuremberg”, one of her most famous works. She wasn’t up at Staithes often, but the times we met she and Grace got along like a house on fire, spent hours together gabbing away, God knows what about. I’ve never seen Grace so animated as those times.’
‘Did you know any of her other female friends?’
‘I don’t think she really had any. Acquaintances, yes, from the various societies she belonged to, and from other social activities, but not close friends.’
‘Didn’t she keep in touch with anyone from the war?’
‘She mentioned a woman called Dorothy once or twice. They might have seen one another now and then. But other than that… no, I don’t think she did.’
‘I thought I recognised the east coast in some of the backgrounds.’
‘Very perceptive of you, when the foreground’s so absorbing.’
‘So you kept them at your studio?’
‘One of the older artists, Len, let me use his lock-up, and I kept all my nudes of Grace there. The police didn’t search the Staithes studio, but even if they had, they wouldn’t have found them. They would have had no reason to search Len’s property.’
‘When did you paint them?’ I asked, as Sam turned out the light and we made our way back to the living room.
‘In the summer and autumn of 1952, when we were first together. As you can see, they’re mostly derivative, the poses and styles, at least. There was nothing derivative about Grace’s beauty. She wasn’t perfect. Perfection is so boring. You probably noticed the flaws on her skin. She must have suffered badly from the sun at one time. But I couldn’t imagine anyone more beautiful. She deserved much better than I could ever do. I’ve never… since. I haven’t been able to, even from the sketches, haven’t wanted to try. I study them sometimes, but not so often as I used to do. I sometimes wonder what my executors will make of them when I’m dead.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for allowing me to see them.’
Sam grunted, sat down and took a long sip of Armagnac. ‘You’re the first person I’ve ever shown them to since they were painted,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know why I did.’
‘You never thought of exhibiting them, or selling any?’
‘Never.’
He seemed weary now, pale and spent, as if it had all been too much for him: the day, me, dinner, our conversation, the paintings, his memories.
I was just about to take my leave when he looked at me with a desolate, almost frightened, expression on his face and said in a trembling voice, ‘Christ, she was so beautiful. So alive. So alive. Please go now, Chris. I’m sorry… I…’ He waved his hand. ‘It’s unbearable. I’m so tired. Please just go.’
I went.
9
Famous Trials: Grace Elizabeth Fox, April 1953, by Sir Charles Hamilton Morley
The formal police investigation was as thorough as such things can be over a week after an alleged crime has taken place. Unfortunately, time is frequently of the essence in these matters; evidence decays, or simply disappears; people forget; stories change. However, science does not lie, and the second post-mortem uncovered a high level of potassium in Dr. Fox’s body, along with traces of chloral hydrate, a powerful sedative. Things went badly against Grace Fox from the start, partly because of her own unwillingness to cooperate with the police. At interviews, she was evasive, distant and frequently monosyllabic. She had had plenty of time, the Crown later argued, in the intervening days between her husband’s death and the arrival of the authorities, to clean up after herself. What did she have to hide? All she was able to tell the police was that she didn’t remember very clearly what she did, that she was acting on instinct and must have tidied up, thrown the scrap of paper on the fire and cleaned and sterilised the syringe before returning it to Dr. Fox’s medical bag, along with the remaining nitroglycerine tablets and the digitalis. It was her nature to be tidy about such things, she claimed, part of her nurse’s training. She had also washed the glass Dr. Fox had used to take his stomach powder in a small amount of whisky and milk. It was what she would normally have done, she said, and who was to prove her wrong? After all, she went on, as far as she was concerned, she was not expecting to face such a rigorous investigation, or any investigation at all, for that matter, and she was overwhelmed by shock and grief over the sudden death of her husband. She said she knew nothing about the chloral hydrate, but that her husband occasionally took a sleeping draught. As soon as news of the police investigation spread, ugly rumours started doing the rounds: Grace had a string of lovers in addition to Samuel Porter, people whispered, and her latest was a handsome young soldier with a mysterious birthmark on his hairline, with whom she had been seen in deep conversation on Castle Walk only a few days before her husband’s murder. It was left up to the police to sort out the truth from the mere baseless gossip, and in the end none of this so-called ‘evidence’ of Grace Fox’s promiscuity was actually allowed in court. When it was clear that the police were quickly becoming suspicious that there may have been more to Ernest’s death than the chance misfortune of a heart attack, it was Felicity who first suggested that Grace hire a solicitor, which she immediately did. Afer this, any police interviews were carefully monitored by Mr. Rathbone, and Grace had little of interest to add to any of her earlier statements except to maintain that she had merely done her duty and had done nothing wrong. Grace Fox was finally arrested and formally charged with the murder of her husband Dr. Ernest Fox on Tuesday, 20th January, 1953. She appeared before the magistrate the following day and was remanded into custody. Even at this early stage, the evidence against her appeared damning. In the first instance, she had a clear motive. Her affair with Samuel Porter was threatened by the impending move, and they shared a mutual desire to be rid of her husband without losing access to his money. In the second instance, she had the means. Grace Fox was a trained nurse, well versed in the contents of a medical dispensary and possessed of the knowledge of how to use them. An extensive range of drugs, some of which could be fatal under certain circumstances, or under the wrong conditions, were available in Dr. Fox’s medical bag, or even at his surgery, to which Grace Fox also had easy access before the dinner on 1st January. In the third instance, Grace Fox had ample opportunity. It was she who brought him the stomach powder. Nobody saw her tend to him while he was dying; nobody actually saw her administer the nitroglycerine or the digitalis to him. The two syringes in Dr. Fox’s medical bag were both sterile, and though this did not preclude that one had been used and replaced after cleaning, it certainly could not be said to prove it, either. Digitalis and nitroglycerine were also found in his bag, but that was, of course, where one would
