Sid took a seat on a stool at the kitchen island. Paul opened the blinds, and the drab outside light drifted into the open-plan space. The décor was simple, but expensive. Designer lamps and abstract paintings brought color to the sleek, minimalist furnishings.
Paul prepared coffee. As he set the French press and two mugs out on the island, Sid noticed his hands were shaking.
Paul said, “I’ve been meaning to get in touch, mate. Just been a bit busy. How’s it going? The cottage working out for you?”
“Yeah, great. We like it.” Sid paused. “Can I ask you about a woman who lived there before me and Anya?”
“Not sure I know much about that,” Paul said.
“She worked for the Institute. Her name was Minxu, or Min.”
“Oh, yeah, maybe Giulia mentioned her. What’s this about, mate?”
“Do you know what kind of work Minxu did?”
Paul shrugged. “I dunno. Historical stuff, I guess, like the others. Giulia didn’t talk about her much. I don’t think she was there long.” His words couldn’t have sounded blander, but there was a muscle twitching in his jaw. Sid watched him carefully.
“Did she leave abruptly?” Paul would surely know this, as it was his job to manage the cottage.
“Yeah, I think she did. I’d forgotten, but now you say it.” Paul plunged the French press, poured the coffee. There was that tremor again.
“Milk or sugar?” he asked.
“Black’s fine.”
“Yeah,” Paul said as he slid Sid’s mug toward him. “It’s coming back to me a bit. I think Min might have had some family troubles. They wanted her home.”
“Right,” Sid said. “Makes sense.”
Paul took a sip of coffee and put his cup down. He seemed to have to force himself to raise his eyes to meet Sid’s, and when he did, he shook his head. Sid felt his stomach lurch, because there was no mistaking what he saw in Paul’s expression. It was pure fear.
Clio
Clio waited at Harringay Green Lanes tube station, her usual coffee order in hand. Large latte, fully caffeinated. The train arrived in a screech of brakes and a rush of hot, stinky air. Clio stepped on board, grateful that it wasn’t too full. She’d always been an early bird because she felt it gave her an advantage. What was that old saying about women in the workplace? They had to work twice as hard for half as much.
She was getting used to the office without Lillian. They all were; it had been hard for everybody. Usually, Clio tried not to think about it, but since she’d been to Wiltshire and spoken to Lady Arden she couldn’t get Lillian out of her mind. She wondered if she should give that butler a call, find out if he had a name for the woman who’d been to the house to ask about the embroidery before she did.
At the office, she squeezed past her colleagues’ desks to reach her own. Since Lillian retired, and, ominously, hadn’t been replaced,Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Squad office space consisted of just four desks and four officers, in a cramped corner of a large open-plan workspace. They were responsible for policing the second-largest art market in the world. As her boss was fond of reminding them, Italy employed two hundred carabinieri to do the same job.
Clio loved her work, though. It was a man’s world but not overtly misogynist. Nothing she couldn’t handle, anyway. The humor tended toward childish, not harmful. If it crossed a line, Clio gave as good as she got, just the way Lillian taught her.
“Catch-up?” A rhetorical question from the boss, Detective Inspector Tim Keenan. A career burdened by groaning caseloads, two divorces, and a chronic case of mortal ennui had etched deep lines on his face.
“Yep. Coming,” she said.
They gathered in a meeting room. Clio listened carefully to updates on a major fraud case. It was complicated, the money trail long and complex, leading from London via Paris to some shell companies registered in the Bahamas.
“So, there’s that,” Tim said, “and we’ve had an email from a CID colleague asking for help. I’ll read it to you. ‘Dog walker found a body in the early hours this morning in a park in Tower Hamlets. The body has been laid out in a weird way on a chalk drawing.’ She’s sent a photo, but I haven’t looked at it yet. They’re asking for help to interpret it.”
He swiveled his laptop so everyone could see the screen. The photograph was horrendous.
They were looking at a dead female, with an exit wound in her forehead. She was dressed in an old-fashioned costume: a dark red dress, low cut, with white details on the cuffs and the décolletage, and a tasseled scarf wrapped loosely around her head, like a turban. Her body lay on its side, posed in a sort of crouch, knees bent, bare feet slightly separated, toes pointed.
Her arms were arranged so that one hand was bent toward herbosom, and in it was a long, feathery palm frond. The other hand was resting on a chalk drawing of a spiked wheel. Chalk had also been used to draw a crown on her head, topped by a line that could suggest a halo, and elsewhere it had been heavily applied to create a rectangle around her body, framing it from the waist up. Suddenly, the symbolism made sense to Clio. “This is supposed to represent an actual painting, Artemisia Gentileschi’s portrait of St. Katherine of Alexandria. It’s in the National Gallery. May I?”
Tim pushed the laptop toward her. Clio made a new tab and brought up an image of the painting beside the photograph the detective had sent so she could show them the similarities. The painting was one of her favorites, which made this feel strangely personal. She studied both images closely.
Where else had she seen a palm frond lately? The answer came to her suddenly: it was in a botanical print on the wall of Eleanor Bruton’s study. Which made her think of something else: the sun that Eleanor Bruton had drawn at the top of her poem. What if it wasn’t a sun, but a wheel just like this one? Spiked, or flaming. Eleanor was no artist, but it didn’t matter which she’d intended—both were symbols of Saint Katherine.
