The Bohemian Girl

walked down the studio to look at the portrait of the two young girls, then addressed them rather than Wenzli. ‘Did you kiss her? Was there more than that — touching-?’

‘Get out!’

‘You won’t get a knighthood by lying to me, Wenzli. Did you touch her or didn’t you?’

‘There was nothing between us!’

‘I think there was. You did kiss her, didn’t you. And then there was more — she didn’t discourage you — she wouldn’t undress for you but she’d do certain things — with her hands, was it, Wenzli? Or her mouth?’

‘Stop it, stop it! This is disgusting!’

‘You could take me to court. But I don’t think you will. I think that those things happened and then-’ Denton could see it. He knew how it went. He knew how he had done it himself, once upon a time. ‘And then you got a bit rough. And you frightened her.’

Wenzli was red-faced. He had moved away from the bell-pull and had, perhaps unconsciously, taken up a mahlstick, the padded stick that he used to support his painting hand when he was working on fine detail. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it told Denton that he’d touched a spot. And he realized that Wenzli was capable of frightening a woman, even with his softness and his apparent weakness. He was arrogant, and frustration made him angry, a potent combination. Wenzli might well be capable of hurting a small woman. ‘You frightened her, Wenzli.’

‘I didn’t do anything of the kind.’

‘So she wrote the note for you to find, but I believe you that you never found it — or you’d have destroyed it. But she disappeared, and you heard that she’d gone — or maybe she just didn’t come back, didn’t keep an appointment — and then you were frightened. You wanted to erase your relationship with her. You never went back to Geddys’s. You wrote him you didn’t want the painting. You let him keep the deposit.’

Wenzli tapped the mahlstick against his thigh, then threw it towards the marble table; it hit and bounced off and thudded on the carpet.

Denton kept pushing. ‘What was so important about the painting? ’

‘I decided I didn’t like it.’

‘No, there was more than that. What?’ He waited. He said, ‘I really don’t want to bring the police into it, Wenzli. They won’t pursue her disappearance unless I stir it up for them. They’re busy men; they have more important cases. She’s been gone a long time. But if I lay it all out for them, they’ll come to question you. Do you want it in the cheap papers — “Noted Artist Questioned in Girl’s Disappearance”?’ He waited. ‘Does your wife want that?’

‘You shit!’

‘What was the Wesselons to her?’

Wenzli threw himself into one of the armchairs. ‘She wanted it. I said I’d buy it for her.’

‘A present.’

Wenzli nodded.

‘Pretty nice present for somebody who modelled a few times.’ Wenzli waved a hand. He put his forehead on the fingers of the other hand, elbow on the carved chair arm. ‘She was a greedy little thing. I gave her money — small amounts. I–I didn’t want her to go without.’

‘You bribed her, but you never got her.’

Wenzli shook his head without lifting it from his hand. ‘She was fascinating. Innocent, but-’ He shook his head again.

‘Did she blackmail you?’

Wenzli snorted. ‘Nothing happened that I could have been blackmailed for! I tell you, it was all innocent! I only wanted to give her things. To please her. Then when she didn’t come for an appointment, I thought — perhaps it was better. To stop seeing — employing her. Seen in that light, I thought giving her the painting was a mistake. So I wrote to Geddys.’

‘She missed an appointment to model?’

Wenzli nodded.

‘But she needed money?’

‘She always wanted money. She was greedy. But innocent. Like a child.’

‘And because she missed one appointment, you knew she was gone?’

Wenzli put his face in his hand. ‘She came every Tuesday and Thursday. She missed both days. Then I thought-I waited until the following week.’

‘It didn’t occur to you that something might have happened to her?’

Wenzli’s head moved back and forth on his hand. He said, in almost a groan, ‘I was glad she was gone — don’t you understand?’

Denton waited. There was nothing more. He found that he believed Wenzli. The man looked abject, worn out. By his admission, or by the infatuation that lay behind it? It was a new slant on Mary Thomason — an innocence that had the power to make a man like Wenzli risk a fall. The same innocence that had apparently infatuated Geddys.

Denton said that he would keep what had been said to himself, and he went out, Wenzli still sitting with his head on his hand, looking at nothing.

‘But it doesn’t hang together, Denton. Why did she run off if she wanted the painting so?’

‘Something more important happened.’

‘I can see her putting the letter in the back of the painting as a warning to him. But that would mean she really expected him to pick the painting up, pay for it and then handle it, or his man handles it, and the letter is found. And then he turns the painting over to her.’

‘Out of guilt, if nothing else. She didn’t mean to end it with the letter, I think. Just to warn him. Then he gives her the painting, and he’s warned, and he’ll behave. There may have been more to it — maybe she was going to deliver the painting to him, make sure he found the letter. But the point is, I don’t think Wenzli was responsible for her disappearance. I believe him.’

‘The type who’d hit a woman but not kill her?’

They were in her favourite Aerated Bread Company shop in Aldgate. She was saying goodbye to her former job; she’d taken the two women who had worked for her to tea and was going on to a dinner at a hotel with the well-to-do men and women who funded the Society.

‘Are they giving you a testimonial?’ he said.

‘If the worst thing people do, Denton, is mean well, I shan’t be too unhappy. What I’ve done for the last ten years didn’t accomplish much, but the Society at least tries. Better to try than not.’

He shrugged. ‘Anyway, Wenzli looks like a dead end. He was really frightened, maybe of himself. Like a man who finds he likes drink — suddenly understands he’s got it in him to destroy himself.’

‘He didn’t call it love? Most men would.’

‘Once she was gone and he’d had a few days to think it over, he knew he was well out of it. I must have come like the ghost at the banquet. He’ll be shaking in his boots for weeks.’

‘But it rounds off Mary Thomason. You know now why she wrote the letter, and you’ve done what you could.’

‘I’d still like to talk to Himple, RA. So far as we know, Mary Thomason is still missing, and Himple knew her.’

‘I still don’t entirely trust Wenzli.’

He shook his head. ‘I believed him. Let’s see what Himple, RA, has to say. I haven’t heard from him — maybe RAs don’t answer letters from mere authors — so let’s see what happens if I simply call on him.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN