The Twilight Hour (28 page)

I had an intuition of what it might be as I struggled with the inside of the dress at the waist, pulling apart the outer skirt and inner layers of material. I tugged and tugged, but couldn't get at whatever it was. Then I remembered the nail scissors in the bedside table. I sat on the bed and, sawing into the stitching, I managed to separate the inner padding of the skirt and create a slit from which I slowly pulled out a roll of some other, stiff stuff. With a deep intake of breath I unrolled the canvas.

‘Stan! Look!'

It was a painting.

Objects, some obscene, some unpleasantly indeterminate, littered the sand of a desert that receded to a distant point in eerie sunlight. The foreground morphed into a shadowed interior, divorced from the light of the vacant desert, where a girl with black hair stared at her reflection in an oval floor-length mirror on a stand. At her feet lay a hard, pink shell, its vulva-like interior facing outwards, exposed. The mirror seemed to float just above the viscous mauve ground, reflecting the girl's narrow, naked body, the mossy black pubic hair and nipples like mulberries; her buttocks, the cleft accentuated, glimmered in the slimily painted room. The girl in the painting was Gwendolen.

‘It's Gwenny.' Stan's voice was stricken. ‘Oh, my God.' I thought he was going to burst into tears.

‘It's the Dalí!' I stared at the painting. The canvas had cracked a bit where it had been badly rolled. ‘Titus's Dalí.' I couldn't believe it. ‘We must show it to Noel Valentine,' I said. ‘He'll authenticate it. He was certain that Titus Mavor had a Dalí painting. Titus must have given it to Gwendolen. It is a painting of her, after all.'

‘But why did she hide it like that?' muttered Stanley. ‘Ruined that beautiful dress. I'll tell you something. I wanted her to wear it, New Year's Eve. There was a dance at the Aquarium Ballroom. She looked better than Rita Hayworth in that dress, more of a star than any of them. She wouldn't have it. I couldn't understand why, thought it must be female cussedness, but it must have been … we had a row over it. In the end she wore the red and she looked stunning in that too, out of this world. And now …'

And now, I thought, she really was out of this world. I was assailed by a terrible sadness for a moment, although I'd never felt close to her. But now she was dead: like Titus. Titus and Gwen: was there a connection? What was it? ‘Stan – why did you give Titus that money? The hundred and fifty pounds? Was it something to do with Gwendolen?'

He looked at me blankly. ‘What? Oh … that. Well, yes, it was, as a matter of fact. But what made you think of that now?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Mavor was a swine, you know. He was blackmailing her on account of the child. She was desperate to keep that from Enescu. Couldn't afford for it to come out once she was a film star.'

‘There must have been quite a few people who knew, though; the Mavor family, people around Soho.'

‘It was only Mavor who was threatening to leak it to the press. And to Enescu.'

Perhaps Radu found out, I thought, and made her pay for it.

twenty-seven

NOEL PLACED THE CANVAS ON HIS DESK
. The four corners were held down by a paperweight, the inkstand and two books.

‘Hasn't done it any good being rolled up like that. Damaged, I'm afraid. Still …' He was too blasé to express his excitement in words, but his enthusiasm electrified the room. ‘Will Colman want to part with it?' He took a turn up and down the little office. ‘Why did she hide it? If Mavor gave it to her …'

‘Perhaps she'd always had it,' I said, ‘since before the war, since the time she was his mistress. Perhaps Titus was just boasting when he said he had a Dalí.'

‘Yes, but then why hide it?'

‘Perhaps Radu was jealous.' As soon as I said it, I knew that was absurd – Radu so clearly hadn't been jealous. On the contrary, he'd wanted to work with Titus.

‘She was afraid he'd sell it, to get money for the film?'

‘Joan Mainwaring's agreed to come here to talk about Mavor's own work. She might shed some light on it, d'you think? She'll be here any minute.'

Indeed, we heard voices downstairs and Kay came up to say that she'd arrived.

‘Are we going to try to record what she says?'

But we decided we'd confront her together. Kay would be there too. We'd all be downstairs in the gallery.

Joan Mainwaring had smartened up for the occasion and was dressed in a pre-New Look tweed suit and a maroon felt hat with a single feather at the side like a quill pen. She gave me a sharp look, but if my presence was a surprise, she didn't comment on it directly. Yet she must have suspected something, for she said: ‘Have you really invited me here just to talk about Titus's daubs?'

Noel sat her down on the black sofa and drew up chairs for himself and me. Kay brought us coffee and then resumed her place behind the black desk.

‘I've asked you here because I want to make a serious offer. I don't know if you know, but I've spoken to his immediate family, and they have no objection to my making an offer for them. There is one other thing, though. Titus used to put it about that he owned several paintings by very well-known modern artists, other Surrealists, and I wondered if you knew anything about them. There wasn't any sign of them when you generously allowed me to look round the other day …'

‘He'd sold them, of course.'

Neither of us had expected such a direct answer. The news must have knocked Noel back a bit, for there was complete silence.

‘He was on his uppers, wasn't he.' A barking sound seemed to express her amusement at what must have been Noel's dismay. She lit a cigarette.

Noel recovered himself. ‘Was it a private sale? None of them appeared at any auction.'

‘His film director friend got rid of them for him. The
quid pro quo
was part of the proceeds would go to some trashy film he was making, the one with Titus's ex-mistress in it. At first I thought it might be because he was still a bit sweet on her. But he disabused me of that.'

‘When did this happen?' My voice sounded much too loud. I was shaking.

‘Oh …' She looked at me. She still seemed to find our disarray amusing, the old cat. ‘I don't really remember. The film director chap – he was Romanian, wasn't he – came round to see him. I was quite interested in him, I popped round when I saw him coming, Titus introduced us. After he'd gone Titus was quite elated, there was talk of him doing some designs for the film. Titus probably thought he was making an investment, revitalising his own career, salvaging his reputation, some tripe like that, because he was always so pickled he couldn't paint any more. The Romanian would have realised that in the end, so just as well for him Titus went to meet his maker. But the main thing presumably was the paintings. And he definitely got those, because Titus told me. Just to spite me. Think he thought I was hoping to get my hands on them. Which actually I was.' She was still smiling, but her voice was like shards being scraped off a rusting vessel. Her vocal cords must be giving out.

Radu had got what he wanted – the paintings. So he had no motive to murder Titus. I couldn't stop myself. My words tumbled out. ‘Are you sticking to your story about Colin Harris? You got the day wrong, you know that, don't you.'

Her flinty stare gave no quarter. ‘Your friend was working for the Russians. I don't expect you know that, but he was. And what makes you think I got the day wrong?'

Noel put a hand up to stop me telling her.

‘You've got a lot to learn, my dear.' She turned back to Noel. ‘So what sort of price are you going to give me for the daubs?'

‘I need a drink,' said Noel after she'd left. ‘There's some gin upstairs. And we can have another look at the Dalí. At least I've got that.'

We looked at the painting pinned down on his desk. I'd showed the notebook I'd found to Noel as well as Alan, and now we clearly saw the appendix scar. Dalí had even exaggerated it; it was lying along her flat belly like a detached object akin to the other enigmatic objects scattered in the foreground.

‘That's funny.' I was back in her warm, softly-lit pink bedroom at Ormiston Court … my embarrassment as she'd stripped off and pulled herself into the fabulous airforce blue dress … with me pulling the hooks and eyes together at the back … she'd pulled off the cami-knickers over her head … ‘She didn't have a scar.'

.........

Alan had got home before me.

‘We have to see Pauline, we have to get hold of her somehow. We have to find out what it means.'

‘But does it help Colin?' he said. ‘It's all becoming so confusing now. Julius says they probably will be able to introduce the fact that Gwen was murdered in the same way, even though the Brighton police are sticking to the idea that her murderer copied the idea. Then there's Joan Mainwaring and whether she lied. And now – this. I just don't understand what it means.'

‘That's why we need to talk to Pauline.'

‘And then there's Colin's letter.'

We were lying in bed. Alan had been very low since the letter, and now he didn't want to make love, but lay stoically with one arm round my shoulder, holding me curled up against him. Colin hadn't been straight with him, hadn't told him the truth. It should have made him feel less guilty for having cut his friend out of the film contract, but somehow it didn't. He just felt bitter. ‘If he thought that was the right thing to do,' he said over and over, ‘I'd have understood, I wouldn't have told a soul. After all, the Russians were our allies.' But the truth was, he didn't understand. ‘It's one thing to be a socialist, but it's quite another to go along with Soviet foreign policy.'

‘Don't let's talk about that any more,' I whispered. ‘You just have to accept that's what happened. You still want to get him off, don't you – so we have to see Pauline. There has to be something more we don't know about.'

.........

Stan gave me her address, and a telephone number too, which was better. It was odd to hear that unattractive, twangy voice again. Alan told me not to risk going to her flat, so we arranged to meet by the Brighton clock tower. I had to go alone; Alan had had so much time off work, he simply couldn't risk taking any more.

Brighton was chilly and misty that day. Pauline was late and I'd almost decided she wasn't coming, when I saw her making her way towards me, head down, her face half hidden by the peaked cap of one of those military-style hats that had been fashionable in the war.

‘We'll go to Hanningtons,' she said. ‘They have a nice restaurant.' And we walked down the road side by side in awkward silence. Pauline seemed to have aged, to be different from the Pauline I remembered. We reached the department store and she led me to the tearoom. She looked round furtively as she sat down, taking in the solitary man at the next table, eating baked beans on toast, and the two young women eating iced cakes further along.

‘So what is it you want to know? What have you got all excited about? Still trying to get your Bolshie friend out of trouble?'

She didn't like it when I told her I'd found the Dalí. She seemed to freeze and sat in silence, smoking and smoking. I noticed how nicotine-stained her fingers were. I didn't remember her smoking that much. Eventually: ‘You've got the painting. I could kill Beatrice Lomas. She wouldn't let me back in the flat. She had a spare key and I told her I'd left some things there, but she wouldn't. She never liked me. It was to get the painting. I knew where Gwen had hidden it. There were always different places she'd hide it. There was a special cupboard at Ormiston Court. I thought the dress was a rotten idea. And I told her often enough she ought to get rid of it altogether. Destroy it. It brought bad luck to everyone. And it'll bring bad luck to you.' She put her face close to mine. ‘Have you just come down here to taunt me?' She smelled of clothes that had been lying in drawers for too long, a musty smell.

I flinched back from her. ‘Taunt you? Why should I? I'd no idea it meant so much to you. I just wanted to know about the scar. I've no idea if it'll help Colin or not, but we do have to know what it means. Did Gwendolen have plastic surgery or something?'

‘You don't
have
to know anything, do you. I don't have to tell you anything.'

‘
Please
. Whatever it is, it can't hurt Gwendolen now.'

She still had said nothing when the waitress came to take our order. It wasn't until I was pouring tea that she said abruptly: ‘If you let me have the painting. If you promise me that.'

‘
I
haven't got it. It's in an art gallery, Valentines. I work there now.' Then, seeing her bleak, closed-up face, I said desperately: ‘But I can get it for you somehow. I'll – I'll tell Noel Gwen left a will, that it was her bequest to you. I'll think of something. You can get it tomorrow. I promise. Come there tomorrow and I'll make sure you get it.'

‘Promises! So easily broken, aren't they.' But I could see she was cracking. She
wanted
to tell me. I knew she did. ‘As you say, Gwen's gone now. So it doesn't really matter.'

She leaned forward, too close to me again. ‘It's quite a story, is Gwen's. When I first met her I was working in a hospital on the south coast. 1940. I was a staff nurse. She was an orderly. Strange girl, so cold and unfriendly. Yet so strikingly beautiful. It made such an odd impression. No one liked her, specially not the women. The men all tried it on, but she wasn't interested. Cold as a fish. I was intrigued; I sensed that underneath she was different. Tremendous repressed anger underneath the exterior somewhere … rage. She took no more notice of me than of anyone else, but I was determined to
make
her like me. And little by little I wormed my way in and she told me all about her family.

‘They ran a boarding house in Broadstairs – which was where we were, the hospital, that is. She hated them, her mother specially. She was a cold, hard woman, Gwendolen said, she got no love, she was more or less just a skivvy. Kept off school half the time, beaten if she didn't do as she was told. But then the war came, and she was called up for war work. At last she could escape! She said she was leaving home. Her mother flew into a rage and among all the insults she turned around and told her she wasn't their daughter at all.

‘The story was that sometime not long after the end of the First World War this feckless, rackety couple had come to stay. The woman was expecting. Well, when she came back from the hospital, she had twins. She'd had not the faintest idea. They'd pulled one out and then the midwife said, my God, I think there's another one!

‘Two babies were simply more than they could cope with. The landlady had no children of her own and she offered to foster one of them. Or was persuaded to, more likely. There was supposed to be some financial arrangement, but the couple moved on with the other little girl, said they'd come back. Of course, they didn't. Never paid her a penny.

‘So you see, Gwendolen felt she'd been cheated. At least her real parents had had a bit of class. She was determined to track them down. She got this job in the hospital, long hours, hard work, rotten pay – joining the forces, going up to London, all that was out of the question, because every bit of her free time had to be spent trying to track down her parents. No luck. Then, just when she'd more or less given up hope, the other twin contacted
her
.

‘I've called her Gwendolen, but she wasn't called Gwendolen then, in the hospital. Her name was Hilda. It was the twin whose name was Gwendolen.

‘Gwendolen was in a bad way. She'd had a child very young – possibly even under age. She was still only twenty when she turned up; well, so was Hilda, of course. The father of the child – that was Titus Mavor – had deserted Gwen. Her parents were dead, but before she'd died her mother had told her she had a twin, and given her the address of the boarding house, so she went there and they knew where Hilda was working.