Chapter Eleven

I felt my heart thudding uncomfortably and my stomach tightening. The key was taken out, put in again and the turn was attempted with more force. I could hear the person outside swearing quietly.

Someone coming to River House after killing Damien Newbold? Someone with something to find, or tracks to cover?

I stole back into the hall and crept towards the door, putting my eye to the spyhole. A woman’s distorted face came into view. No one I’d met before. Her dark hair was flying in the breeze and she looked mystified. Her face disappeared from view for a moment as she leant forward, perhaps to examine the lock. She was turning the key over in her hand now. Then she moved away from the door and, as I stepped back and glanced into the drawing room, I could see that she was peering in through the window. Moments later she returned to the front door and began clattering the brass lion’s head.

I paused for a moment, trying to think logically. In my panic my mind refused to engage properly, but I held onto the fact that if she was knocking, she wasn’t trying to come in in secret.

I went and opened up and, now that I could see her face to face, she was familiar. It was like collecting cards in happy families. This was the woman who had looked pleading and eager in Damien Newbold’s nudes collection. And presumably she had no idea that he was dead. In my initial panic I hadn’t thought about the much more likely possibility of her being an innocent bystander. What the hell was I going to tell her?

She was looking at me with her head on one side, her mouth set in a grim, straight line. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but, if you don’t mind me asking, who the hell are you? And,’ she looked down at her key, ‘what the heck’s going on?’

How many of Damien Newbold’s girlfriends had his door keys for heaven’s sake? What would he have done if they’d all turned up at once? Enjoyed the spectacle probably.

I explained my presence.

‘House-sitter? I had no idea.’ Her eyes were fixed on a dark corner of the hall, but I didn’t get the impression that she was taking in what was in front of her. Her look was far away, focused on piecing together a puzzle she didn’t understand. ‘I knew Damien was going away, of course. And he told me to come in as usual, so everything would be in order when he got back.’

My mind grappled with her words. ‘In order?’

She nodded. ‘I come in and set Damien’s home to rights.’

‘A sort of housekeeper?’

She nodded again, and raised her eyes to meet mine, but then her shoulders sagged. ‘Or indeed glorified dogsbody, cleaner, bottle washer. Call it what you will. When I want to feel good about myself I liken it to being a kind of household PA. Damien would describe me as “the woman who does”.’

That was exactly how he had referred to her in his notes in fact. And judging by the painting, she definitely had done. It was interesting to note that he had asked her to come in as usual during his time away, when he’d told me that he’d called her off, since I was there to do the work instead. ‘I think I’ve been fulfilling the same role,’ I said, then added hastily, ‘well, almost.’

‘I noticed the folding bed through the window.’ Suddenly she laughed, her hair falling over one eye. ‘I think that’s why I wanted to share. Dogsbodies of the world unite.’

‘Why don’t you come in?’ I said. ‘I think it might be handy to have a chat, if you don’t mind. There are a couple of things it would be useful to check.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll need to get on and do my jobs, anyway. I hope I won’t be in your way. My name’s Tilly by the way; Tilly Blake.’

‘Ruby.’ It was all so friendly and polite and – on the surface – normal.

As she came into the hall, I went towards the kitchen, but she stepped to one side and poked her head around the drawing room door. ‘I thought my eyes must be playing tricks on me when I looked through the window,’ she said, ‘but he really has put that seascape up over the mantelpiece in there. It’s normally in his bedroom. I wonder why he’s swapped it with the mirror. Seems a bit odd.’

‘I found the remains of the mirror in the bin,’ I said as she followed me through to the back of the house. ‘Broken, I’m afraid. So he must have brought the seascape down from upstairs.’

She nodded.

Well, the seascape hadn’t left an obvious gap on his bedroom wall. Did that mean he’d re-arranged his other paintings too? And how could I carry on producing chit-chat about paintings and cleaning routines when I knew he was dead? And she clearly didn’t.

‘Tea?’

‘Thanks,’ she said, perching on one of the chairs. ‘It would be nice to have a drink before I start.’

And, as I filled the kettle, I knew that I had to tell her, whether it was officially the right thing to do or not. However, my mind went blank when I tried to call up the words. I must have looked like a goldfish, my mouth forming a shape and then letting it go again as I abandoned each phrase I’d thought of starting. As I poured boiling water into our mugs I said instead, ‘I was quite surprised by the paintings in his bedroom.’

Tilly rolled her eyes. ‘The one of Maggie Cook, you mean?’ she said. ‘It is a bit “in your face”, isn’t it? She and Damien have had an on-off thing going for years. He says it’s mainly off these days, but I’m not so sure.’

I turned my back on her to get the milk out of the fridge.

‘He certainly doesn’t seem to want to take her picture down, anyway.’ She sighed as I put her drink in front of her. ‘Thanks. Maggie’s an actor you know. Lives up to the dramatic stereotype too.’

‘And what about the other paintings?’ I said.

Tilly shrugged. ‘I’m no expert, but I quite like the still life. Why do you ask?’

My mind was still working on what she’d said, so that I didn’t reply for a moment and she continued with her next train of thought. ‘Where will you want to be this morning, by the way?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I was just wondering what order to do the rooms in, so I don’t disrupt you too much.’

‘Oh, I see.’ I suddenly saw my moment. ‘Tilly, look, I don’t think you need to do the cleaning today. I couldn’t work out how to tell you, but I’m afraid I had some awful news last night. Really awful …’

I suppose there’s no mistaking someone’s meaning when they utter words like that. Even if one hasn’t had to deal with them in reality, one’s seen them uttered on a hundred different television dramas. I was sure Tilly knew what I was going to say before I said it, but it seemed precious little in the way of preparing her for the shock.

She looked up at me, her eyes suddenly wide and scared. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m afraid Damien Newbold’s been found dead.’

‘What happened?’ she asked at last, her voice almost a whisper.

I explained the call I’d had the previous night. ‘I’m so very sorry. I’m expecting the police here this morning, to come and look through the house.’

I was glad that I hadn’t had to tell her about how Damien Newbold had deliberately double booked us, ensuring that I did cleaning I didn’t need to, whilst she had a wasted journey. Bad enough that he was showing her how little he cared by failing to tell her about my presence, worse still if she’d found she’d been deliberately set up like that.

‘I can’t believe it’s true,’ Tilly said. She looked at me with eyes still forced wide by shock, her face blank and white, and then at last she started to cry: large, silent tears.

It was some time before it seemed right to speak again. When she’d regained some control I said, ‘When did you start working for him?’

She blew her nose on a tissue. ‘Just after I’d been made redundant from TomorrowTech. You know that’s where he worked?’

I nodded.

‘Well, Damien sympathised with my situation and asked me out for a drink. He said then that he had some work in mind for me.’ She let out a rather bitter laugh. ‘To be honest, I thought he meant something to do with marketing. That’s what I’d done for the company. But it turned out he needed a cleaner. We …’ she paused and tears filled her eyes. ‘We had a bit of thing together at the time, and he said how nice it would be to have me around the place. We used to combine my visits with … well, with other things. Otherwise I’d have said no. But the job market’s been crap recently, and although I’ve got some freelance work since I left, I needed the extra cash.’

‘To be honest,’ I said, ‘I was pretty sure you and he must have been close, at least at some point.’

Tilly looked up at me, a glimmer in her wet eyes. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Did he say something about me?’

The woman who does. Hell. I wondered what to do. ‘Well, it sounds as though you’re not aware of this,’ I said, wondering how best to put it, ‘but when I arrived, Maggie’s wasn’t the only nude image on Damien Newbold’s bedroom wall.’

She looked at me, frowning. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He’d put your painting up there too.’

‘My painting?’

I nodded.

‘I need to see.’

Which wasn’t ideal, given the other two I hadn’t yet mentioned. But Tilly was already making her way towards the hall, striding up the stairs.

We stood together in the doorway of the master bedroom as she took in the scene.

‘I had no idea,’ she said at last.

‘You didn’t sit for the portrait?’

She shook her head. ‘He did once take some photos of me. He must have had it done from one of them, but he never said, and when we were together …’ She paused, unable to go on for a moment. Eventually she managed to add, ‘When we were together, Maggie’s was the only nude portrait he had up here. He used to say I shouldn’t object to the presence of a beautiful image, and that it didn’t mean anything.’ She looked at me. ‘But I always knew that it did.’

So Damien Newbold had set up this little exhibition especially for me. My head swam for a moment. He’d engineered so much: my meeting with Maggie, the trail that led her to him, and now my meeting with Tilly. And had he envisaged this scene in his bedroom too?

‘Do you know who the other two women are?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen that one before,’ she said, pointing to the shy nude next to the wardrobe. ‘But there’s a photograph of that one downstairs.’ She indicated the painting of the joyous woman that faced Newbold’s bed and I noticed she was shivering.

‘You mean the one in the DVD cupboard?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘If there’s one there, then it’s another,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you the one I know about.’

And I followed her down the stairs and into Damien Newbold’s study. Tilly took me over to the wall opposite the door, which I now saw was rather damp. She leant behind a dark, mahogany chest and, as I peered over her shoulder, I could see a photograph frame, right down next to the skirting board, turned to face the wall.

‘I asked him why he’d left it like that, and he said she was out of favour. He was a bit weird that way.’ She shivered again. ‘I found it when I was cleaning, but he told me never to dust down there again. He wanted it left, he said, because she hated spiders, and he wanted as many cobwebs down there as possible.’

‘That’s sick.’

She nodded. ‘Even before I knew about that photo I was aware he could be obsessional.’ She looked at me as though willing me to understand. ‘But it was too late by then. I’d already fallen for him, hook, line and sinker. It seems awful, but when he showed me that photo I was just glad that it wasn’t me he was treating like that. I think for a while I stopped seeing things in the round.’

She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s nine o’clock. I guess the police’ll be with you soon. I’d better go.’ She swallowed. ‘I suppose they’ll want to talk to me too, especially with that painting hanging upstairs in Damien’s bedroom.’

I nodded and she got out a piece of paper, scribbling down her number. ‘Perhaps you could give them that,’ she said. ‘My number’s not in Damien’s address book. I made the mistake of looking once.’

After she left I went into the dining room to wait for the police to turn up, taking the photograph with me. There wasn’t much for them to look through in there – assuming they weren’t interested in Damien Newbold’s sideboard contents – so I should be safely out of the way if I kept to that room.

When I’d dusted off the glass that protected the photograph I could see clearly that the woman pictured was beautiful. Her hair fell in long, full waves over her shoulders and she was wearing a knitted dress with zigzag patterns on it in browns and orange. Her look was fashionably retro.

What was it all about? I glanced at the back of the frame, which had clips you could turn through ninety degrees to release the backing. Once I had it out, I could see the reverse of the photo. It was signed by the same artist who’d done the portrait. Nico. And once again he’d drawn that little hat symbol next to his name.

Inspiration suddenly struck and I fetched my laptop, pacing the room as I waited for it to boot up. If this Nico did photographs and portraits that he signed in that flamboyant way, maybe he was well known for his work.

I keyed ‘Nico’, ‘artist’, ‘photographer’ and ‘hat’ into Google. If I could track him down, I might possibly be able to identify his subject.

It was surprisingly easy. Wikipedia came up with the top link and provided the information I needed in its first summary paragraph. Nicholas ‘Nico’ Sidorov. Russian-born artist and photographer, sought after by society and celebrity clients during the late 1960s and 1970s. Born June 1939. Died of pancreatic cancer, November 1981.