'You better wake her up.'
'I can't do that. She's had a big day. A big day and a big night.' The lipstick smear on Rico's face touched his words with comic lewdness.
'Ask her if she'll see us. We're investigating a murder, as you possibly know.'
'Mr. Archer and Miss Siddon,' Betty Jo said.
'I know who you are.'
Rico let us into the long front room and turned on the light. With his dark bald-eagle head jutting out of his long brown dressing gown, he looked like some kind of wild medieval monk. There was stale smoke in the deserted room. Through it I could almost hear the remembered buzzing hum of party conversation. Empty and half-empty glasses stood on most of the horizontal surfaces, including the keyboard of the grand piano. Except for the paintings on the walls-quiet windows into a more orderly world, which even murder didn't seem to have changed-the room was like a visible hangover.
I moved around the room inspecting the portraits and trying in an amateurish way to tell if the same hand had painted the Biemeyers' picture. I couldn't tell, and neither, she said, could Betty Jo.
But I found that the murder of Grimes, and the possible murder of Whitmore, had after all subtly changed the portraits or my perceptions of them. Their eyes seemed to regard me with suspicion and a kind of fearful resignation. Some looked at me like prisoners, some like jurors, and some like quiet animals in a cage. I wondered which, if any, reflected the mind of the man who had painted them.
'Did you know Chantry, Betty Jo?'
'Not really. He was before my time. Actually I did see him once.'
'When?'
'Right here in this room. My father, who was a writer, brought me to meet him. It was a very special occasion. He hardly saw anybody, you know. All he did was work.'
'How did he strike you?'
She considered the question. 'He was very remote and shy, as shy as I was. He held me on his knee but he didn't really want to. He got rid of me as soon as he could, I think. And that suited me. Either he didn't like little girls at all, or he liked them too much.'
'Did you really think that at the time?'
'I believe I did. Little girls are quite aware of such things, at least I was.'
'How old were you?'
'I must have been four or five.'
'How old are you now?'
'I'm not saying.' She said it with a slightly defensive smile. 'Under thirty?'
'Barely. It was roughly twenty-five years ago, if that's what you're getting at. Chantry disappeared soon after I visited him. I often seem to have that effect on men.'
'Not on me.'
A little color invaded her cheeks and made her prettier. 'Just don't try to hold me on your knee. You could disappear.'
'Thanks for the warning.'
'Don't mention it. Seriously,' she added, 'it gives me a funny feeling to be in this same room prying into Richard Chantry's life. It makes me wonder if certain things aren't fated. Do you think they are?'
'Of course. By the place and the time and the family you're born into. Those are the things that fate most people.'
'I'm sorry I asked. I don't really like my family. I don't like the place and time too well, either.'
'So react against them.'
'Is that what you do?'
'I try.'
Betty Jo's eyes shifted to a point behind me. Mrs. Chantry had quietly entered the room. Her hair was brushed, her face looked newly washed. She was wearing a white robe that molded her figure from neck to knee and swept the floor.
'I do wish you'd find another place to react, Mr. Archer. And by all means another time. It's dreadfully late.' She gave me a long-suffering smile, which hardened when she turned to Betty Jo. 'What is this all about, dear?'
The younger woman was embarrassed. Her mouth moved, trying to find the right words.
I got out my black-and-white photograph of the stolen painting. 'Do you mind taking a look at this, Mrs. Chantry? It's a photograph of the Biemeyers' picture.'
'I have nothing to add to what I told you earlier. I'm sure it's a fake. I'm familiar with all of my husband's paintings, I believe, and this isn't one of them.'
'Look at it anyway, will you?'
'I've already seen the painting itself, as I told you.'
'Did you recognize the model who sat for it?'
Her eyes met mine in an instant of shared knowledge. She had recognized the model.
'No,' she said.
'Will you take a look at this photo and try again?'
'I don't see the point.'
'Try anyway, Mrs. Chantry. It may be important.'
'Not to me.'
'You can't be sure,' I said.
'Oh, very well.'
She took the photograph from my hand and studied it. Her hand was shaking, and the picture fluttered like something in a high wind from the past. She handed it back to me as if she were glad to get rid of it.
'It does bear some resemblance to a woman I knew when I was a young girl.'
'When did you know her?'
'I didn't really _know_ her. I met her at a party in Santa Fe before the war.'
'What was her name?'
'I honestly can't say. I don't believe she had a definite surname. She lived with various men and took their names.' Her eyes came up abruptly. 'No, my husband wasn't one of those men.'
'But he must have known her if he painted the picture.'
'He didn't paint this picture. I told you that.'
'Who did, Mrs. Chantry?'
'I have no idea.'
Impatience had been rising in her Voice. She glanced toward the door. Rico was leaning there with his hand in the pocket of his robe; and something larger than a hand, shaped like a gun. He moved toward me.
I said, 'Call off your dog, Mrs. Chantry. Unless you want this written up in the paper.'
She gave Betty Jo an icy look, which Betty Jo managed to return. But she said, 'Go away, Rico. I can take care of this.'
Rico moved reluctantly into the hallway.
I said to Mrs. Chantry, 'How do you know your husband didn't paint it?'
'I would have known if he had. I know all his paintings.'
'Does that mean you still keep in touch with him?'
'No, of course not.'
'Then how do you know he didn't paint this some time in the last twenty-five years?'
The question stopped her for a moment. Then she said, 'The woman in the painting is too young. She was older than this when I saw her in Santa Fe in 1940. She'd be a really old woman now, if she's alive at all.'
'But your husband could have painted her from memory, any time up to the present. If _he's_ alive.'
'I see what you mean,' she said in a small flat voice. 'But I still don't think he painted it.'
'Paul Grimes thought he did.'
'Because it paid him to think so.'
'Did it, though? I think this picture got him killed. He knew the model who sat for it, and she told him your husband had painted it. For some reason the knowledge was dangerous. Dangerous to Paul Grimes, obviously, and dangerous to whoever killed Grimes.'
'Are you accusing my husband?'
'No. I have nothing to go on. I don't even know if your husband is alive. Do you know, Mrs. Chantry?'
She took a deep breath, her breasts rising like fists under her robe. 'I haven't heard from him since the day he left. I warn you, though, Mr. Archer, his memory is all I live for. Whether Richard is dead or alive, I'll fight for his reputation. And I'm not the only one in this city who will fight you. Please get out of my house now.'
She included Betty Jo in the invitation. Rico opened the front door and slammed it behind us.
Betty Jo was shaken. She crept into my car like a refugee from trouble.
I said, 'Was Mrs. Chantry ever an actress?'
'An amateur one, I think. Why?'
'She reads her lines like one.'
The girl shook her head. 'No. I think Francine meant what she said. Chantry and his work are all she cares about. And I feel small about doing what I just did. We hurt her and made her angry.'
'Are you afraid of her?'
'No, but I thought we were friends.' She added as we drove away from the house, 'Maybe I am a little afraid of her. But also I'm sorry that we hurt her.'
'She was hurt long ago.'
