At this he glanced at Trudy appreciatively. ‘You have lovely hair,’ he said abruptly.
At the unexpected compliment, Trudy felt herself instantly blush, and wished she could get out of this schoolgirl habit. She knew her long, dark, wavy hair was one of her best features, but she was used to it being hidden beneath her policewoman’s cap.
‘Thank you,’ she said somewhat primly. She wasn’t sure that she liked a man like this paying her that sort of attention. It made her feel gauche and out of her depth.
Mortimer Crowley blinked at her decidedly cool tone, then grinned. ‘Sorry, don’t mind me. I have a habit of looking at people with an artist’s eye.’
‘Do you paint yourself?’ Clement came to her rescue, forcing the man’s attention back to himself.
The other man’s lips twisted wryly. ‘Only as a hobby, and purely for my own pleasure. I sell art and appreciate art, but alas, I haven’t any real talent for it myself. My own particular skills lay more in being a facilitator. Matching buyers with artists, finding and encouraging new talent, that sort of thing.’
‘A regular patron of the arts then?’ Clement said.
Mortimer gave him an assessing, slightly unhappy look. ‘If you like,’ he admitted.
Clement nodded. Like Trudy, he was picking up on the fact that underneath the act, this man was not all happy to be answering their questions.
Which, of course, only made him want to ask a lot more.
‘Was Iris one of the talented ones?’
Mortimer snorted in laughter. ‘Good grief, no! I doubt she could draw a daffodil. At least, she never had any daubs that she wanted to show me, which is a relief, I can tell you. The amount of people who seem to think I’m interested in their etchings and insist on showing them to me … ugh!’ He gave a shudder. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but they’re never even remotely interesting.’
‘But you seem to have known Iris well?’ Clement put in, letting the insinuation drift along at its own pace.
Mortimer gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘This bloody village! What’s the gossip been saying about us? No, don’t bother, I can imagine. I was debauching her, or maybe she was debauching me? It has to be one or the other. The way people’s minds work around here. Bourgeoisie doesn’t begin to cover it! But I can assure you we weren’t lovers. I like my women a little older and far more sophisticated. Not that Iris wasn’t … well. And she was eager to become …’ Again he paused and then smiled ruefully. ‘I’m trying to find a nice way of saying this, a way that doesn’t make it sound worse than it is, but …’
‘I think I get the picture,’ Clement said, with another man-of-the-world smile. ‘Would it be fair to say that Iris was a girl who meant to make something of herself, and was eager to learn how?’
‘Yes, that’s fair to say.’
‘And in you, she had found an obvious target for a mentor and … shall we say, a facilitator? An older, sophisticated, well-to-do man from the big bad city who could show her the ropes?’
The art dealer shifted a little uneasily on his chair at this. ‘Well, if you want to be blunt, then yes, that was no doubt what she had in mind. But really, there was in truth little that I could do for her. I wasn’t in the market for a mistress myself, so as a potential source of pretty baubles and fashionable clothes I was a bit of a washout.’ He grinned a little at that. ‘In fact, I rather think I was a disappointment to her all round. I even refused to invite her to my parties. But really, as keen as she was to grow up and spread her wings, I would have felt a right bast … er … rotter, throwing her to the tender mercies of some of my circle. They’d have gobbled the poor girl up and spit her out.’
He said this casually, as if it was taken for granted, and Trudy could feel herself growing ever more disapproving, and wondered if she was being silly and prudish. But the truth was, she simply didn’t like this man. She didn’t like his attitude to life, or the careless way in which he talked about a girl who had been so brutally murdered. Not only as if she didn’t matter, but as if his indifference to it didn’t matter either.
‘But she was often seen in your company,’ Clement repeated, and Trudy felt a flush of pride and pleasure that her friend wasn’t letting him get away with anything.
Mortimer flushed slightly, his first real sign of anger, and then shrugged. ‘Yes, all right, she was a bit of a pest and hung around, and I didn’t like to give her the total brush off. She was so desperate to get to London and get a high-profile job, something to make her parents go grey overnight and give the old village biddies something to really get their tongues wagging. It was like having a puppy following you around, looking at you with big pleading eyes. In the end, I sort of introduced her to a few artists I trusted not to treat her too shabbily, and who were in the market for a pretty model. I knew if nothing else they’d at least pay her well. And if they promised her that they could get her a break into real modelling, or introduce her to someone from a proper modelling agency …’ He shrugged fatalistically. ‘Well, who was I to rain on her parade? Anyway, that seemed to satisfy her.’
‘That was big of you,’ Clement said with another flash of his teeth, and again Trudy felt pleased to see their handsome host look discomfited. ‘Do
