Pagan Spring: A Mystery (A Max Tudor Novel) (29 page)

The painter caught Max’s eye and said, “I remember that case like it was yesterday. The nobs—they always stick together, don’t they?”

An American country-western song played softly in background, coming from speakers mounted near the ceiling of the studio. It was one of those songs of longing and loss: losing your girl, losing your horse, drinking too much and falling off your horse—the lyrics were easy to anticipate, and seemingly interchangeable from one song to the next.

Coombebridge’s studio was just outside Monkslip Curry—a village so obscure as to make Nether Monkslip seem by comparison a metropolitan hub. It had taken Max half an hour to drive there over narrow roads, and a further quarter hour to find the cottage down one particularly rutted track.

It was a place bohemian and rifely picturesque, perched as it was on a remote, spindly outcropping overlooking the sea—the sea which was the artist’s constant if ever-changing subject. From this vantage, Coombebridge had a gull’s view over the water, to the east, south, and west. He had painted a famous series of fifty-two paintings in a fevered rush—one painting a week throughout the seasons. Each was of the same scene outside the cottage, and each was as different in color and composition as if painted in different countries.

“Look at the turquoise and purple in this picture,” Coombebridge was saying. “The blue of the turquoise sea and the deep amethyst of the sky and the streak of goldenrod at the horizon. I don’t make this up. God makes this up, and you can see evidence for Him—for Her—everywhere you look.”

Looking at the seascape, Max felt that if he put out a hand to touch the water shining in the sunset, his hand would sink into the canvas like a hand sinking in bathwater. The illusion was so powerful, he felt the nerve endings of his hand tremble, stinging with the desire to touch and see if the illusion were real.

Struck by the man’s unexpected religious leanings, Max smiled. He said, “I keep your paintings in my study at the vicarage. They inspire me as I write my sermons. Perhaps that is why.”

“I draw no conclusions,” said Coombebridge. “I can only paint what I see. I leave it to everyone else to interpret what
they
see on the canvas—as they see fit, so to speak. It’s amazing to me, some of the stuff people come up with. The ‘deep meaning’ behind my ‘intent.’ When I paint, I’m on autopilot, and nothing else exists. I see, hear, think nothing. Once, I nearly burned the cottage down when I let the kettle boil itself to a melted mass. But the amazing moment comes when I step back from the canvas, to discover I’ve put down brushstrokes there. It’s almost as if someone else came in, knocked me out, and did the painting for me while waiting for me to come around. It’s ‘in the blood,’ I suppose. My father was an artist, too. During the war, he went over to France and used his painting as a cover so he could roam about the countryside, recruiting people to the Resistance efforts. It helped that his French was flawless. And that he could charm the paint off furniture.”

Apparently, the apple had not fallen far from the tree: If his father had been able to persuade people to risk their lives participating in the Resistance, he’d been persuasive indeed. As Coombebridge turned toward him, Max felt the blast of his personality warming the air around them like a furnace.

“Now, I’m sure you didn’t come here to swap theories of creativity with me, nor to seek out my views on the Creator.”

Max smiled.

“It’s a bit hard to explain. You’ve heard we’ve had a murder in Nether Monkslip?”

Coombebridge shook his head. “I don’t read the newspapers until they aren’t news anymore. I don’t really care, you see.” Coombebridge picked up a brush and turning slightly away, made a well-considered dab at the canvas.

“Ah,” said Max, as there seemed to be no answer to that. Most people would at least ask a token question about who had been murdered, how, and why.

“Does the name Bottle mean anything to you?”

Coombebridge shook his head in the negative.

“How about the name Crew? This would be from some years back.”

Again, no reaction.

“Do you remember selling a painting to anyone named Cuthbert?”

“I’m not a car salesman. I let other people handle the selling for me.” Coombebridge stepped back to eye the painting from several feet away. Then resuming his stance, he made several more dabs at the canvas.

“It’s just that—I’m not sure what is going on yet, but perhaps you should take extra care,” said Max. “My concern may have nothing to do with your paintings, but one of them sparked a very strange reaction in one of the villagers of Nether Monkslip. I can’t help but think it’s tied to the murder, which occurred the next night. The police are keeping an eye out for any peculiar activity in the area, but you’re so isolated here, and the police are so few. So it will be up to you, you see, to take care of yourself. Certainly any strangers out here would be noticed.”

“Strangers like yourself?” asked Coombebridge, smiling. “You needn’t have worried. I always look out for myself.”

If the rumors he’d heard were halfway to being true, Max knew that was the case. Even at Coombebridge’s age, the stories of simultaneous affairs and discarded friends and mistresses swirled. Taking care of Coombebridge would always be his number-one priority.

“Which painting of mine was it?” This was Coombebridge’s only concern.

Max told him, although he soon realized that describing a seascape in words made it sound awfully like another seascape.

Coombebridge made a stab at remembrance, casting those unusually colored eyes to the ceiling, as if making a mental survey of his creations, before shaking his head. A local reporter had had a try at explaining the artist’s personal appeal, which Max was experiencing for himself, despite the fact Coombebridge did have a gift for turning a blind eye to anything and anyone who wasn’t directly concerned with his art. The reporter had interviewed various people who had known the artist in his youth, and the fewer who knew him now, since in some ways he was a reclusive man. Most of them were former lovers, so any chance of a balanced assessment, one would have thought, was slight. Still, most people, even though they had been suddenly left in the dust by the painter, were generous—thrilled, even, at having had the chance to bask in the man’s greatness. Such was the power of charm, Max reflected. “He was selfish,” said one, a young woman more than half Coombebridge’s age at the time. “But he was up front about it, he made no apology for it, and he was absolutely no hypocrite about taking what he wanted. The art was what mattered to him. You had to respect his genius, and his single-minded devotion to his art—which was, as he was first to say, far more important to him than people.”

Without stopping his work, Coombebridge said, “I don’t suppose you approve of me, Padre. It’s true, I’ve left some broken hearts behind, and more than a few children born on the wrong side of the blanket.”

Max paused, as if considering. “I don’t suppose it would be worth my while to try to change you.”

This was greeted with a bark of laughter. “That hasn’t prevented many people, mostly women, from trying.” Coombebridge returned his attention to the sworls of colors on his painter’s palette. A bit of paint splashed onto the floor. Max resisted the urge to inspect the soles of his shoes—too late now; he’d already stepped into whatever wet paint there was to step in. Pictures of incalculable value were stacked everywhere, against walls, waiting to be tripped over. Max supposed the preferred word was
paintings.
He thought of the Picts of Scotland, so-called by the Romans, from the Latin word for “painted” or “tattooed,” a train of thought perhaps inspired by being around all these canvases with their infinite shades of blue. The warriors had used some sort of a plant dye mixed with animal fat for their blue body paint.

Coombebridge suddenly astonished Max by turning, running his eyes over him as if measuring him for a suit, and asking Max if he would pose for him.

“Me? I thought you did only land-and seascapes?”

“I
sell
only land-and seascapes. Portraits go into my private collection. They are mine; they are never for sale. They are seldom for public viewing, either.” He scrabbled around in a stack of paintings and turned to Max’s gaze one of a slender young man standing at the water’s edge. Gold gleamed from the sea and on the golden curls at the boy’s neck, and on an earring created by a single stroke of white paint. The boy’s pensive expression was caught in profile, his face half-turned to look at the painter. Max wondered if the boy might be one of Coombebridge’s sons.

Max remembered now that someone at the dinner party—Lucie—had said this was true, that the artist kept the portraits to himself. Something about the possessiveness in Coombebridge’s voice and words made Max hesitate. There was something off-putting about being part of anyone’s private collection.

“That is too bad,” Max said. “That you won’t sell the portraits. There is a friend of mine I would love to have a portrait of.”

“Depends who it is. I don’t take commissions. I paint who and what I like.”

“You would like her.”

Coombebridge, who was nothing if not perceptive, gave Max a sharp glance. And then he smiled.

“Depends,” he repeated. “Maybe I could make an exception in your case, Father Max.”

*

It was some time later, and Max was making moves as if to leave. Coombebridge invited him to help himself to instant coffee if he wanted it. Max declined.

“I never,” said Coombebridge, “was able to drink coffee in the afternoon. It doesn’t pick me up; it makes me irritable.” Max wondered briefly how he could tell the difference. Coombebridge added that he thought the whole afternoon coffee routine was a plot by French invaders from across the English Channel. “However, I guess we won that particular war; otherwise, we would have to call it the French Channel.”

“That probably is what they call it, among themselves, as they sip wine or coffee in their cafés, not la Manche.”

Suddenly, he was struck by Coombebridge’s words: “French invaders.” Now, what did that remind him of? He recalled Thaddeus saying something to Lucie Cuthbert, something about the proof of a craftsman being in the work he produced—something pompous and self-referential like that. Later, Max had heard them murmuring together in French, and Lucie laughing at Thaddeus’s joke, a joke that seemed to involve just the two of them. Max’s French was just good enough for him to have understood what was said. Gabby must have understood, as well, if she’d overheard, although she had left the nuns in France behind long ago. A language learned as a child tended to stayed with one.

Melinda had said and Cotton had confirmed that Thaddeus was adopted. Had he possibly been adopted by a French family? Or had he been born into one?

And why did he, Max, think it mattered?

Melinda had said Thaddeus’s accent
stayed
. He could hear her high, childish voice now, saying that Thaddeus’s French accent had stayed in such good form. Because of his first wife, the suicide.

There was some old wallpaper, peeling and splattered with paint, covering one wall of Coombebridge’s studio. It had once been white, with red roses and blue geraniums; now the design was almost indistinguishable from the bright splashes of paint, the white background nearly obliterated. Coombebridge had hung several paintings against this wall—not the best background for display, but the strength of the work, the strong lines, overrode these aesthetic considerations. Still, there was no avoiding the fact that the Coombebridge that hung in Lucie and Frank Cuthbert’s dining room had looked much more striking against their black-and-white-striped wallpaper.

Somewhere behind Max’s eyes, a sensation grew—a queasiness of mind, as it seemed to him. He watched the paintbrush as Coomebridge dabbed it against the canvas, filling in the blank white spaces with color. The blue water stood out against the striated cliffs, carved into shadows of black and white, and the white clouds. Black and white.

Max quickly turned away. “What I just said—you can forget all that.”

“Which part?”

Max was already headed for the door. “The part about taking care. It’s nothing to do with your paintings. You’re quite safe. Safe as houses.”

“Of course I am.”

And Max flung himself out the door, to be met by a heavy shower of rain. He jumped into the Land Rover, starting the engine before the door was quite closed.

Coombebridge stood at the door of his cottage, mystified.

“Well, adios, Padre,” he said to the rapidly retreating, blurred vision of the Rover’s back window.

*

A theory was forming in Max’s mind—hazy and disconnected. But through the mist he could glimpse a shape—then hundreds of shapes, thousands, multiplied and floating eternally above the earth. They served as a caution or a warning, perhaps—or did they come seeking retribution?

Max had left his mobile in the Land Rover. He used it now to call Awena’s mobile.

She answered on the first ring.

“I’m glad you called, Max. Melinda’s been taken ill.”

“Melinda?” said Max. “But … how are
you
? Where are you?”

“I’m fine, Max. I’m at Melinda’s house—she started feeling unwell while we were having tea at Gabby’s place. Some sort of stomach bug. Or the mushroom quiche disagreed with her. We brought her home, and when she seemed to be getting worse, Gabby called for an ambulance. But Gabby isn’t well, either. She’s just leaving to go back home.”

Oh God. It’s moving faster than I thought.
Everything was slipping out of control—his control, and the killer’s. In which case it was hard to know how to prevent the worst, except—“
You must get out of there,
” he said in an intense, quiet voice, so as not to be overheard. “Wait until Gabby leaves; then
you
leave.” He was now frantic with fear, willing himself at Awena’s side, and unsure of how best to protect her apart from keeping her isolated. “Wait for the ambulance outside,” he said. “You feel all right, don’t you?”

“Yes, I’m fine; I only drank a little tea. But I can’t leave her. She’s—”