Page 46 of The Blue Hour

From the bridge, he can see a crowd gathering on the west side of the main house where the bonfire has been built; he can hear laughter and the shrieks of children tearing around the lawn. He can smoke, he realizes, because if he has one now, the smoke from the fire will cover the smell of cigarette.

He leans against the guardrail, looking over the edge. Even in the half-light he can see that the water is frozen solid. He takes a deep breath, feeling the scrape in his lungs, the twitch of a muscle in his chest; it’s the feeling of fate, tempted. He pushes his hands into his pocket to feel for his cigarette papers, but his fingers come upon something else. The letter he took from Grace’s kitchen. He’d forgotten all about it.

There is just about enough light left for him to read it.

February 2003

Dear Grace,

Sorry I have not replied to your last few letters, but between legal matters and the leaking roof, I’ve not had a lot of time to spare. I think the lawyers may finally have reached an agreement with Douglas – it will be a great relief to have that settled, it’s been a strain and a distraction. Money will be even tighter, but I go nowhere these days, and I spend nothing, so I should be all right.

I had a message from Isobel – she is still very angry with me. Despite the letter I sent, she clings to the fiction I have offered no words of sympathy. She is in France now – apparently a man matching Julian’s description was seen somewhere on the Riviera. Somehow I doubt she’d be following the lead up if the sighting had been in Riyadh or Rhyl. It is a waste of time, of course.

I have found a way to work. Being alone has helped. I am more creative when left to my own devices, I always have been. I can keep my own hours and not worry about anything or anyone else. I have not been painting much but I have started work on a new sculpture series – I call it‘Division’ – working with found objects as well as ceramics. It’s a new direction and I think it has promise.

I don’t know how to respond to your letter, only to say that I don’t want you to come back to Eris. You know things you shouldn’t. I’m not sure how to be around you again. I hope you understand what I mean.

We need to be free of each other now,

Love,

Vanessa

A gust of wind catches the paper, almost snatching it from Becker’s fingers. His heart rate skitters upward. A cheer goes up behind him, he hears the crackle and pop of sap in the wood as the fire takes hold, the children’s excitable voices reaching fever pitch.

We need to be free of each other– almost exactly the same words Vanessa used in her note to Julian Chapman. She writes about freedom all the time in the diaries; it comes up in interviews, too. It’s the thing she seemed to cherish above everything else, above love or friendship or companionship even. How far would she have gone, Becker wonders, to set herself free? What does she mean when she writes that Graceknows things that she shouldn’t? What does Grace know? The feeling of dread Becker thought he’d left at the hospital returns; it wraps itself around his shoulders like a cloak.

On the far side of the bonfire, a group of children clamours excitedly around Sebastian who appears to be doling out treats. The lord of the manor, Becker thinks, dispensing largesse. When Sebastian spots him, he waves and smiles so warmly Becker is skewered on his own lack of charity. ‘There you are! Howareyou? How’s our girl?’

Becker feels his smile falter for a fraction of a second. ‘She’s good,’ he says. ‘She’s much better. She’s thrown me out of the house, actually – apparently I’ve been hovering.’

‘Ah well, I might be able to help with that – I’ve a mission that might take you away for a day or two. Can you get out to Eris again within the next week?’

Becker pulls a face. ‘I’d really rather not go away right now. Why do you want me to go back?’

Sebastian is about to reply when an elderly man approaches, a child at his side. It’s Graham Bryant, the gamekeeper. Thepatsy, as Becker has come to think of him. Bryant greets Sebastian, introduces his grandson, asks after Emmeline. ‘I expect she’ll be outshortly,’ Sebastian beams at him, ruffling the child’s hair. ‘Don’t go anywhere, I know she’ll want to say hello.’

The smile slides from his face as he turns back to Becker. ‘I’m concerned,’ he says, ‘about what happens if it turns out there is a DNA match between the bone and Julian Chapman. We’re not going to be able to control the story, because the first person to be notified will be Chapman’s sister. She might not go to the press—’

‘But given what I’ve read about Isobel,’ Becker interrupts, ‘there’s a good chance she will.’

Sebastian nods. ‘And then there will be afrenzyof press interest in Eris – the island, the house, the place the bone was found …’

Becker sees where he is going. ‘Grace will panic,’ he says. Who knows what she might do? She might even start to get rid of anything she thinks is private, or sensitive.

Sebastian puts a friendly arm around his shoulder. ‘I know you don’t want to leave Hels right now, I understand that. But she’s doing better – you said so yourself. And I can keep an eye on her.’

Becker leaves Sebastian at the bonfire. In his darkened office, he sits at his desk and composes a brief email to Grace, explaining why he left Eris in a hurry, and asking whether it will be all right if he comes to Eris this week to pick up the rest of the papers. Then he thinks better of it: better if he speaks to her on the phone, surely?Friendlier.He’ll call her instead. He deletes the message, shuts his computer and leaves the room, noticing as he does a shaft of light spilling into the corridor from the open door to the Great Hall.

Except for the spotlights on the paintings, the gallery is dark. Becker enters, walking slowly into the gloom, coming to a halt in front ofBlack I–Darkness Causes Us Not Discomfort, Vanessa’s firstpainting of the sea. Its seaweed greens and oily splashes of crimson absorb the glare from the spotlight, making the image on the canvas seem to roil and churn.

‘Ghastly, isn’t it?’

Becker jumps. Somehow, Emmeline has snuck up on him. In the dim light she looks small and pale, as insubstantial as a ghost.

‘If it were up to me,’ she says, peering up at the painting, ‘I’d take it outside and put it on the fire with the guy.

‘Justghastly,’ Emmeline repeats, turning her back on the canvas and on him. She begins to walk slowly around the gallery in an anticlockwise direction, towards the north wall where more of the seascapes hang. ‘You know she only left them to him to spite me,’ she says.

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