In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

She said this last with a perfectly straight face, as if all round her were canvases by Peter Paul Rubens and not depictions of countless mouths regurgitating everything from oil slicks to motorway pile-ups.

The work of her compatriots wasn't much better from what Barbara could see. The other artists were sculptors like Terry. One used crushed rubbish bins as a medium. The other used rusting supermarket trolleys.

“Yeah. Right,” Barbara said. “But I s'pose it's all a matter of taste.”

Cilia rolled her eyes. “Not to someone who's educated in art.”

“Terry wasn't?”

“Terry was a poser, no offence. He wasn't educated in anything except lying. And he'd got like a first in that.”

“His mum said he was working on a big commission,” Barbara said. “Can you tell me about it?”

“For Paul McCartney, I have no doubt” was Cilia's dry reply. “Depending on what day of the week you happened to have a chat with him, Terry was working on a project that would bring him millions, or getting ready to sue Pete Townshend for not telling the world he had a bastard son-that's Terry, mind you-or stumbling on some secret documents that he planned to sell to the tabloids, or having lunch with the director of the Royal Academy Or opening a topflight gallery where he'd sell his sculptures for twenty thousand a pop.”

“So there was no commission?”

“That's a safe bet.” Cilia stepped back from her canvas to study it. She applied a smear of red to the mouth's lower lip. She followed with a smear of white, saying, “Ah. Yes,” in apparent reference to the effect she'd attained.

“You're coping quite well with Terry's death,” Barbara noted. “For having just heard about it, that is.”

Cilia read the statement for what it was: implied criticism. Catching up another brush and dipping it into a glob of purple on her palette, she said, “Terry and I shared a flat. We shared this studio. We sometimes had a meal together or went to the pub. But we weren't real mates. We were people who served a purpose for each other: sharing expenses so we, like, didn't have to work where we lived.”

Considering the size of Terry's sculptures and the nature of Cilia's paintings, this arrangement made sense. But it also reminded Barbara of a remark that Mrs. Baden had made. “How did your boyfriend feel about the deal, then?”

“You've been talking to Prune-face, I see. She's been waiting for Dan to cut up rough with someone ever since she saw him. Talk about judging a bloke on appearances.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And has he ever? Cut up rough, that is. With Terry. It's not your everyday situation, is it, when one bloke's girlfriend is living with another bloke.”

“Like I said, we aren't-weren't-living with like in living with. Most of the time we didn't even see each other. We didn't hang out with the same group even. Terry had his mates and I have mine.”

“Did you know his mates?”

The purple paint went into the hair of the mouth-sprung woman who was holding the teapot in Cilia's painting. She applied it in a thick curving line then used the palm of her hand to smear it, after which she wiped her palm on the front of her dungarees. The effect on the canvas was disconcerting. It rather looked as if Mother had holes in her head. Cilia took up grey next and advanced on Mother's nose. Barbara stepped to one side, not wishing to see what the artist intended.

“He didn't bring them round,” Cilia said. “It was mostly phone chat and they were mostly women. And they phoned him. Not the other way round.”

“Did he have a girlfriend? A special woman, I mean.”

“He didn't do women. Not that I ever knew.”

“Gay?”

“Asexual. He didn't do anything. Except toss off. And even that's a real maybe.”

“His world was his art?” Barbara offered.

Cilia whooped. “Such as it was.” She stepped back from her canvas and evaluated it. “Yes,” she said, and turned it round to face Barbara. “Voila. Now, that tells a proper tale, doesn't it?”

Mother's nose was excreting an unsavoury substance. Barbara decided that Cilia couldn't possibly have spoken words more true about her painting. She murmured her assent. Cilia carried her masterwork to a ledge along which half a dozen other paintings rested. From among them she selected an unfinished canvas and carried it to the easel to continue with her work.

She dragged a stool to the right of her easel. She rustled in a cardboard box and brought forth a mousetrap with its victim still in place. She set this on a stool and made its companions a moth-eaten, taxidermic cat and ajar of pasta cheese. She shuffled these objects this way and that until she had the composition she required. Then she set upon the unfinished canvas, where the lower lip of a mouth had been harpooned by a hook and a tongue protruded.

“Can I assume Terry didn't sell much?” Barbara asked her.

“He sold sod all,” Cilia said cheerfully. “But then he wasn't, like, ever willing to put enough of himself into it, was he? And if you don't give your all to your art, your art isn't going to give anything back to you. I put my guts right onto the canvas and the canvas rewards me.”

“Artistic satisfaction,” Barbara said solemnly.

“Hey, I sell. A real gent bought a piece off me not two days ago. Walked in here, took one look, said he had to have his own Cilia Thompson straightaway, and brought out the chequebook.”

Right, Barbara thought. The woman had quite an imagination. “So if he never sold a sculpture, where did Terry get the beans to pay for everything? The flat. This studio…” Not to mention the gardening tools that he appeared to have amassed by the gross, she thought.

“He said his money was a payoff from his dad. He had enough of it, mind you.”

“Payoff?” Now, here was something that could lead them somewhere. “Was he blackmailing someone?”

“Sure,” Cilia said. “His dad. Pete Townshend, like I said. As long as old Pete kept the lolly rolling in, Terry wouldn't go to the papers crying, ‘Dad's floating in it and I've got sod all.’ Ha. As if Terry Cole had the slightest hope of convincing anyone he wasn't what he really was: a scam man out for the easy life.”

This wasn't too far from Mrs. Baden's description of Terry Cole, albeit spoken with far less affection. But if Terry Cole had been into a scam, what had it been? And who had been its victim?

There had to be evidence of something somewhere. And there seemed to be only one place where that evidence might be. She needed to have a look through the flat, Barbara explained. Would Cilia be willing to cooperate?

She would, Cilia said. She'd be home by five if Barbara wanted to pop round then. But Constable Havers had better have it straight in her head that whatever Terry Cole had been caught up in, Cilia Thompson had not been part of it.

“I'm an artist. First, last, and always,” Cilia proclaimed. She rearranged the dead mouse and pulled the stuffed cat's paw into a more ominous and chasseur-like position.

“Oh, I can see that,” Barbara assured her.

At Buxton police station, Lynley and Hanken parted ways once the Buxton DI arranged for his Scotland Yard associate to pick up a car. Hanken planned to head for Calver, determined to corroborate Will Upman's alleged dinner date with Nicola Maiden. For his part, Lynley set out towards Padley Gorge.

At Maiden Hall he found that afternoon preparations for the evening meal were going on in the kitchen, which backed onto the car park where Lynley left the police Ford. The bar in the lounge was being restocked with spirits, and the dining room was being set for the evening. There was a general air of activity about the place demonstrating that, as much as possible, life was going on at the Hall.

The same woman who'd intercepted the DIs on the previous afternoon met Lynley just beyond the reception desk. When he asked for Andy Maiden, she murmured, “Poor soul,” and left to fetch the former police officer. While he waited, Lynley went to the door of the dining room, just beyond the lounge. Another woman-of similar age and