Black Valley (7 page)

‘To be honest, I feel bloody furious with my mother,’ Elinor went on, abruptly changing the subject, which made Jess wonder whether her accusation against Blake had been serious.
‘If she hadn’t come round to see me that day, unannounced as usual, none of this would have happened.’

Jess pricked up her ears. This was what she’d been waiting for. At last, she hoped, Elinor was going to talk about the death of her mother.

Elinor tried to settle herself, wriggling her shoulders to get comfortable, but she seemed ill at ease.

‘That afternoon, I’d gone to buy some ink pens in this nice little arts and crafts shop in the Arcades. Once I’d got in there, I spent hours looking at the different kinds of
nibs, and so on. They have whole books of them, tiny little nibs with different shapes. Like a butterfly album.’ She paused. ‘I bought several tiny ones, just to see what I could do
with them – I haven’t used inks before – but actually, they weren’t that good, as it turned out. They were so delicate, they kept bending out of shape when you pressed them
on the paper, and splattering ink everywhere.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps I was using them in the wrong way.’

Come on, thought Jess. That’s enough about nibs. Get to the point.

‘Anyway,’ Elinor went on, realizing she was digressing, ‘while I was out, my mother came round. She was over from Italy. They’d moved out there about ten years ago, when
my father got ill and retired, leaving me to look after the house on Llandaff Green for them. I was short of money, you see, so they let me live there rent free. By that time, Isobel was married to
Blake, and they had a big place in the Vale, so she was fine.’ There was a note of bitterness in Elinor’s tone. ‘But when Pa died, Ma kept coming back. She normally stayed with
Isobel and Blake when she was over, said she couldn’t bear to be back in the old house, that it held too many memories for her. But in actual fact, she was always popping round for one reason
or another, usually without warning. It was one of the things I found rather . . .’ She hesitated. ‘. . . A little bit irritating about her. She was terribly lonely after my father
died, though, so we tried to be patient with her. Isobel was better at it than I was.’

She came to a halt. There was a touch of resentment in her tone, but it passed as she continued.

‘Ursula – my mother – had a set of keys to the house. She wasn’t supposed to let herself in any time she felt like it, but she often did. Anyway, that day she came round,
and when she found nobody there, she went down to the studio in the garden.’ Elinor’s brow furrowed. ‘That was odd, I thought. She didn’t usually go anywhere near the
studio. She didn’t like to see me working in all that clutter, she said.’ She paused. ‘It was a bit of a mess, I suppose. There wasn’t much space in there. But it went
deeper than that, I think.’

‘Deeper?’ Elinor didn’t seem to need much prompting now, but occasionally Jess echoed a word, just to let her know she was following her story.

Elinor nodded. ‘You see, she’d given up painting when she got married and had us. It was never quite clear why. I mean, obviously, when we were little, it wasn’t easy to fit it
in, but later, she had plenty of time. And Pa always encouraged her. But for some reason, she never took it up again. I think that made her restless and . . .’ She hesitated again. ‘A
little bit jealous, perhaps. Of me.’

Elinor spoke the words tentatively, as if voicing something she’d known for a long time, but never expressed before.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, after a pause, ‘for whatever reason, Ma went down to the studio. I don’t know what she was doing, possibly looking for something, but when she got
in, she found someone already there.’

Elinor spoke as if willing herself to continue.

‘The man – I suppose it was a man – must have crept down the side path from the front of the house to the studio. It was locked, but he broke in.’ A look of renewed
anguish came over her face. ‘I wish I hadn’t kept that painting in there.’

‘The Gwen John?’

Elinor nodded.

There was a silence.

‘We don’t know exactly what happened when she came in the door, but she must have disturbed him because he attacked her. Hit her with something big and heavy. The police didn’t
find a weapon. He must have taken it with him.’ She paused, as if steeling herself to continue. ‘Anyway, he beat her round the head, on the right-hand side.’ Her tone became flat
and unemotional. ‘The autopsy said the impact to the head caused her brain to move inside the skull. A
coup-contrecoup
effect, they call it. She died of a massive brain
haemorrhage.’

There was another silence, this time a longer one.

‘When I arrived home and found her, it was a terrible shock, of course. I came into the house and went down to the studio. I wanted to try out my new nibs. I found the door unlocked, which
I thought was strange. I turned the lights on and saw her there, lying on the floor. My first thought was that she’d had a heart attack. I rushed over to her, and then I saw the bruise on the
right-hand side of her head. At first I didn’t think it looked that bad, just a purple blotch on her temple. I thought perhaps she’d fallen over and banged it, that she was just
concussed. Her skin was still warm to the touch. She was a terrible colour, though, very pale. Then I saw this clear liquid coming out of her nose and mouth. I pushed her hair back and saw it was
coming out of her ears as well. That’s when I knew something terrible had happened.’

Elinor shifted her head on the cushion, as if her neck was hurting her.

‘I phoned the ambulance right away. I still didn’t believe she was dead. While I waited, I did what I could. I laid a blanket over her, to try and keep her warm. I thought about
pushing on her chest, you know, the Heimlich manoeuvre or whatever it’s called, but I decided it was best not to move her. I wondered about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but I didn’t
have a clue how to do it. So I ended up just sitting beside her, holding her hand, as it grew colder and colder in mine.’

She came to a halt. Elinor let the silence surround them for a moment, as if to honour the gravity of what had happened.

‘The paramedics examined her. They confirmed that she was dead.’ Elinor’s voice shook slightly as she said the word. ‘They said I’d done all the right things, not
moving her, keeping her warm. That I couldn’t have resuscitated her, whatever I’d tried to do. That was important to me.’

Jess nodded silently. She’d heard that paramedics were now being given training as to how to deal with relatives when a death occurs. She was glad that, in this case, it had benefited
Elinor.

Elinor took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out again. She seemed more comfortable now, relieved that she’d got near the end of her story.

‘After that,’ she went on, ‘everything started to happen at once. The studio seemed to be full of people. The police were called, and the coroner, and the undertaker, who took
away the body. I was in a daze. The police started questioning me, asking if anything in the studio had been taken. It was only then that I realized the painting wasn’t on the wall. I
hadn’t noticed it up to that point.’ She paused. ‘The funny thing was, although it had been my prize possession, I wasn’t really bothered. I felt a sense of relief that it
was gone, actually.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘But then they asked me if anything else was missing, so I went over to my desk at the window, and saw that my paints and brushes had
been meddled with. In particular, there was a phial of ochre that had been spilled. When I saw that, I suddenly felt absolutely furious. I couldn’t understand it. My mother had just been
murdered, and all I seemed to care about was the fact that someone had been mucking about with my paints.’

‘That’s quite a common reaction, you know.’ Jess spoke quietly. ‘It’s a kind of displacement. When someone’s had a shock they often find something
insignificant to focus their emotion on.’

‘But the feeling hasn’t left me.’ There was a note of anger in Elinor’s voice. ‘I’m terribly upset about what happened to my mother, of course, but sometimes
I just feel fed up that my life has been disturbed. I’ve got this bloody claustrophobia to cope with now. I can’t go into the studio. Or concentrate on my work.’ She paused.
‘And then, of course, I feel guilty about being so selfish.’

Jess chose her words with care, aware that she didn’t want to offer meaningless reassurances.

‘Well, your life has been disturbed. The shock does seem to have triggered this claustrophobia. You can’t lead a normal life. You can’t paint any more. It’s not
surprising you should feel frustrated about that.’

Elinor sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right. There are so many things to deal with now, it just seems never-ending. It took ages for them to release the body for the funeral, the inquest
seemed to go on and on, and in the end they just told us what we knew already – that she’d been beaten about the head and had died as a result of brain injury. Then there was this
police investigation, which hasn’t yielded anything, either. And now there’s a ton of legal stuff to sort out. I’m absolutely sick of the whole thing.’

Jess was concerned. Elinor seemed strangely detached – a coping mechanism, she knew, as was her anger at having her paints disturbed. But she also wondered whether there might perhaps be a
grain of truth in the way Elinor had described herself, as selfish. That was what artists were like, she knew – she’d had quite a few of them in therapy. In general, she’d found
them obsessed with themselves and their work, frustrated by intrusions of any kind – often to the point where they seemed unable to understand that anything else, including the death of a
family member, could be more important. And she found herself questioning certain aspects of what Elinor had told her – if the police had no leads on the robbery, why did this policewoman
keep turning up at the house? What was she after? And why had Elinor’s mother gone down to the studio after letting herself in, thus disturbing the thief? Could she have been looking for
something in there? Was it perhaps she who’d been looking through Elinor’s paints?

Elinor fell silent, gazing out of the window. She seemed impervious to the cold, although by now Jess was having trouble stopping her teeth from chattering.

‘Do you think perhaps we could close the window a little bit?’ Jess formulated the question in the most tactful way she could think of.

Elinor sat up and, to Jess’s surprise, shut the window completely. Then she lay down on the couch again.

‘I’m glad I told you all that.’ She sighed. ‘I feel better now.’

So there it all was, thought Jess, just as she’d anticipated. The cramped, cluttered studio, where Elinor had experienced the horror of finding her mother’s body, could well have
triggered an association in her mind between an enclosed space and a terrifying event. Her anger at her mother’s persistent meddling, which this time had led to tragedy, would have been
another factor in the mix. Moreover, since she’d suggested that her relationship with her mother was a difficult one, she might perhaps be feeling a sense of profound relief, as well as shock
and sadness, at her mother’s death; her guilt about that, expressed as anger at herself for having failed to install a burglar alarm, might also have contributed to her neurosis. That much
was clear.

However, there were many other parts of Elinor’s psyche still to be explored – her relationship with her sister Isobel, her jealousy of Blake, and her rather paranoid accusation that
he’d been behind the robbery.

‘I think we’ll have to stop there for today, Elinor.’ Jess spoke in a low, gentle tone. ‘Our time is up.’

Jessica was masochistically torturing herself. She was watching Tegan Davies presenting the news.

She’d tried to stop herself all week, but by Friday, her curiosity had got too much for her. The minute she’d come in from work, she’d switched on the television and watched
the six o’clock news, which was something she very rarely did. Even more rare, she’d stayed watching until the announcement came on, ‘and now for the news in
your
area’. Then Tegan had appeared, against a backdrop of the red-brick Pierhead building in the Bay, lit up at night. She was a pretty blonde, with regular features and a perfectly made-up face.
Around her neck was a gold chain with a blue stone at the collarbone, matching the earrings that glinted under her coiffed hair.

Jess scrutinized her as she spoke, not hearing her words. Her clothes were odd, she thought: a cream jacket over a cream camisole. Like Lana Turner in
The Postman Always Rings Twice
,
minus the turban. She studied her face; it was hard to tell what it was like under the make-up, but it seemed forgettable. Blue eyes, made larger by professionally applied shadow and mascara; a
thin, rather insignificant nose; and fleshy lips, slathered in gloss. She looked down at her torso; it was difficult to see what her body was like under the modest blouse, but she appeared somewhat
flat-chested . . .

‘Mum?’ Nella came into the sitting room.

Jessica picked up the remote control, pressed the button, and Tegan Davies disappeared.

‘Come and talk to me for a minute.’ Jess patted the sofa. ‘How was your day?’

‘Not too bad.’ Nella didn’t sit down. Instead, she hovered by the doorway, pulling at the hem of her T-shirt and standing on one leg, twisting the other round it.

‘Did you manage to get in to college?’

Nella nodded. ‘I was a bit late, though.’

Jessica was about to embark on her time-worn lecture about being punctual for lessons, but decided against it. Her daughter knew perfectly well what she was supposed to do; if she didn’t
keep up, she’d have to face the consequences, in the form of failing or retaking exams. Jess had explained that to her often enough. At nearly seventeen, she was too old to be treated like a
child.

‘Is Gareth coming over tonight?’

‘No, we’re going out.’ Nella paused, as if there was something more she wanted to say, but had decided against it. She looked guilty about something, Jess thought. She wondered
what it was.