Can you forgive such a sorry record of reprehensible behaviour? I can only hope that my present candour, at least, will be partial atonement.

Now, Michael, for the proposal. It seems clear to me that, as independent operators, we have both proceeded as far as we can with our inquiries. The time has come for us to join forces. Let me assure you that I have in my possession a great deal of information which would be of assistance to you in your work, and that I am willing to share it all. For my own part, in return, I request sight of only one item: namely, a scrap of paper mentioned in the early stages of your fascinating history, a message jotted down by Lawrence Winshaw, which you describe – with an elegance and concision entirely characteristic, if I may say so, of the whole narrative – as a ‘scribbled note to the butler, asking for a light supper to be sent up to his room’. I believe that this scrap of paper – which I once made my own unsuccessful efforts to retrieve, but which now seems, through some obscure caprice of Fate, to have fallen into your possession – will be of vital importance in establishing Miss Winshaw’s sanity and innocence; that it must contain, in short, some coded meaning or clue which may well have proved elusive – you won’t take this the wrong way, I trust – to someone who is perhaps lacking in my wide and varied experience of these matters.

We must meet, Michael. There are no two ways about it. We must arrange a rendezvous, and there is no time to be lost. Might I make an impish little suggestion, as to an appropriate venue? I notice that on Thursday next the Narcissus Gallery in Cork Street (prop. Roderick Winshaw, as you will certainly be aware) is holding a preview of – true to form – some doubtless vapid new paintings by a young member of the minor aristocracy. I think we can be confident that the lure of such an occasion to London’scognoscenti will not be so overpowering that two strangers would fail to recognize each other in the assembled throng. I will be there at seven-thirty sharp. I look forward to the pleasure of your company, and, more tremblingly, to the beginnings of what I trust will be a fertile and cordial professional association.

The letter ended with a simple ‘Most sincerely’, and was signed, with a flourish:

(Detective)

Roddy

1

Phoebe stood in a corner of the gallery, where she had been standing for the last quarter of an hour. Her wineglass was sticky in her hand, the wine itself warm and no longer palatable. So far not one person had stopped to talk to her, or even acknowledged her presence. She felt invisible.

Three of the guests were known to her, nevertheless. She recognized Michael, for one, even though they had only met once, more than eight years ago, when he was just about to start work on his Winshaw biography. How grey his hair was looking now. He probably didn’t remember her, and besides, he seemed to be deep in conversation with a white-haired and very loquacious pensioner who had done nothing but make rude comments about the paintings ever since he arrived. And then there was Hilary: well, that was all right. They had nothing to say to each other anyway.

But finally, of course, there was Roddy himself. She had caught his guilty eye more than once and seen him turn away in panic, so he clearly had no intention of making his peace. That was hardly surprising: her only real reason for coming to the opening in the first place was to cause him embarrassment. But it had been naïve of her to think that it would work. She was the one who felt embarrassed, by now, as she watched him moving easily among his friends and colleagues, chatting, gossiping. All of them, she was sure, would know exactly who she was, and be fully informed as to the nature of her distant, presumptuous connection with the gallery. Her cheeks started to burn at the very thought. But she would hang on. She would cope. She would just grip her glass more tightly, and stand firm.

This evening, after all, could threaten nothing to compare with the tidal waves of humiliation which had crashed over her when she had first walked through these doors, more than a year ago.

∗

Phoebe had always painted, ever since she could remember, and her talent had been obvious from an early age to everyone but herself. With every school report, her art teacher’s praises had scaled new heights of rapture; but they had rarely been echoed by his colleagues, who found her academic performances on the whole disappointing. When she left school she didn’t have the nerve to apply to art college, and had begun to train as a nurse instead. A few years later her friends managed to persuade her that this had been a mistake, and she went on to study for three years at Sheffield, where her style underwent some rapid changes. All at once, an infinity of unsuspected freedoms had been laid before her: in the space of a few hungry, incredulous weeks she discovered fauvism and cubism, the futurists and the abstract expressionists. Already skilled in landscape and portraiture, she began to produce dense, cluttered canvases, packed with incongruous detail and imbued with a fascination for physical minutiae which drew her towards unlikely sources, including medical textbooks and books of zoological and entomological drawings. She was also starting to read widely for the first time, and in a Penguin edition of Ovid she found the inspiration for her first series of major paintings, all dealing with themes of flux, instability and the continuity of the human and animal worlds. Without realizing it – for she allowed nothing to complicate her exhilaration during this period – she was edging on to dangerous territory: she was heading for that unfashionable cusp between the abstract and the figurative; between decoration and accessibility. She was about to become unsellable.

But even before she was in a position to make this discovery, there were setbacks: a crisis of confidence, the abandonment of her course at the end of its second year, a return to full-time nursing. She didn’t paint for several years. When she took it up again, it was with renewed passion and urgency. She rented a shared studio in Leeds (where she now lived) and spent every spare waking moment there. Small exhibitions followed, in libraries and adult education centres, and there were occasional commissions, none of them very challenging or imaginative. But locally, at least, she had begun to acquire a sort of reputation.

One of her old tutors at Sheffield, with whom she kept sporadically in touch, invited her out for a drink and suggested that it was time to start showing her work to some London galleries. To make the process simpler, he offered her a personal introduction: she had his permission to approach the Narcissus Gallery in Cork Street, and to mention his name. Phoebe thanked him cautiously, for she was a little doubtful about this proposal. Her tutor’s much-vaunted influence with Roderick Winshaw had been something of a standing joke among her fellow students, who had never been able to find much evidence for it. He and Roddy had been at school together, it was true, but there was nothing to suggest that they had ever been close, or that the great art dealer had done anything to keep up the friendship in the intervening years. (When once invited, for instance, to give a guest lecture at the college, he forgot all about it and never showed up.) None the less, this was a real opportunity, and kindly offered, and it was not to be turned down lightly. Phoebe phoned the gallery next morning, spoke to a cheery and helpful receptionist, and made an appointment to come down the following week. She spent the next few days preparing her slides.

∗