Her coffee finished, Robin made a quick trip to the bathroom, then returned to the gallery in the hope that Satchwell might have entered it while she wasn’t watching, but there was no sign of him. A few people had drifted in to wander around the temporary exhibition. Satchwell’s paintings were attracting the most interest. Having walked the room once more, Robin pretended an interest in an old water fountain in the corner. Covered in swags and lion’s heads with gaping mouths, it had once dispensed the health-giving spa waters.
Beyond the font lay another a room, which presented a total contrast to the clean, modern space behind her. It was octagonal and made of brick, with a very high ceiling and windows of Bristol blue glass. Robin stepped inside: it was, or had once been, a Turkish hammam or steam room, and had the appearance of a small temple. At the highest point of the vaulted ceiling was a cupola decorated with an eight-pointed star in glass, with a lantern hanging from it.
“Nice to see a bit of pagan influence, innit?”
The voice was a combination of self-conscious cockney, overlain with the merest whiff of a Greek accent. Robin spun around and there, planted firmly in the middle of the hammam, in jeans and an old denim shirt, was an elderly man with his left eye covered in a surgical dressing, which stood out, stark white against skin as brown as old terra-cotta. His straggly white hair fell to his stooping shoulders; white chest hair grew in the space left by his undone buttons, a silver chain hung around his crêpe-skinned throat, and silver and turquoise rings decorated his fingers.
“You the young lady ’oo wanted to talk to me?” asked Paul Satchwell, revealing yellow-brown teeth as he smiled.
“Yes,” said Robin, “I am. Robin Ellacott,” she added, holding out her hand.
His uncovered eye swept Robin’s face and figure with unconcealed appreciation. He held her hand a little too long after shaking it but Robin continued to smile as she withdrew it, and delved in her handbag for a card, which she gave him.
“Private detective?” said Satchwell, his smile fading a little as he read the card, one-eyed. “The ’ell’s all this?”
Robin explained.
“Margot?” said Satchwell, looking shocked. “Christ almighty, that’s, what… forty years ago?”
“Nearly,” said Robin, moving aside to let some tourists claim her spot in the middle of the hammam, and read its history off the sign on the wall. “I’ve come up from London in hopes of talking to you about her. It’d mean a lot to the family if you could tell me whatever you remember.”
“Éla ré, what d’you expect me to remember after all this time?” said Satchwell.
But Robin was confident he was going to accept. She’d discovered that people generally wanted to know what you already knew, why you’d come to find them, whether they had any reason to worry. And sometimes they wanted to talk, because they were lonely or felt neglected, and it was flattering to have somebody hang on your words, and sometimes, as now (elderly as he was, the single eye, which was a cold, pale blue, swept her body and back to her face) they wanted to spend more time with a young woman they found attractive.
“All right, then,” said Satchwell slowly, “I don’t know what I can tell you, but I’m hungry. Let me take you to lunch.”
“That’d be great, but I’ll be taking you,” said Robin, smiling. “You’re doing me the favor.”
47
… the sacred Oxe, that carelesse stands,
With gilden hornes, and flowry girlonds crownd…
All suddeinly with mortall stroke astownd,
Doth groueling fall…
The martiall Mayd stayd not him to lament,
But forward rode, and kept her ready way…
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
Satchwell bade the attendant in the art gallery farewell by clasping her hands in a double handshake and assuring her he’d look in later in the week. He even took fulsome leave of the disgruntled painter of Long Itchington, who scowled after him as he left.
“Provincial galleries,” he said, chuckling, as he and Robin headed out of the Pump Rooms. “Funny, seeing my stuff next to that old bat’s postcard pictures, though, wasn’t it? And a bit of a kick to be exhibited where you were born. I haven’t been back here in, Christ, must be fifty-odd years. You got a car? Good. We’ll get out of here, go froo to Warwick. It’s just up the road.”
Satchwell kept up a steady stream of talk as they walked toward the Land Rover.
“Never liked Leamington.” With only one eye at his service, he had to turn his head in exaggerated fashion to look around. “Too genteel for the likes of me…”
Robin learned that he’d lived in the spa town only until he was six, at which point he and his single mother had moved to Warwick. He had a younger half-sister, the result of his mother’s second marriage, with whom he was currently staying, and had decided to have his cataract removed while in England.
“Still a British citizen, I’m entitled. So when they asked me,” he said, with a grand wave backward at the Royal Pump Rooms, “if I’d contribute some paintings, I thought, why not? Brought them over with me.”
“They’re wonderful,” said Robin insincerely. “Have you got just the one sister?” She had no aim other than making polite conversation, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Satchwell’s head turn so that his unbandaged eye could look at her.
“No,” he said, after a moment or two. “It was… I ’ad an older sister, too, but she died when we were kids.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Robin.
“One of those things,” said Satchwell. “Severely disabled. Had
