‘That’s fantastic. I have this feeling, Dorothy Bird, that you could be huge. There is just one thing. The name. It’s a little …’ He pulled a face.
Dorothy didn’t know whether to be offended or amused. Although a name change would be a great way of keeping herself hidden, she thought. The perfect way to distance herself from her past.
And from what she had done.
‘What do you suggest?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. You decide. Something more grandiose, memorable.’ He thrust his card at her. ‘Shall we say eleven a.m. at my office? We can talk about it then.’
‘Sure, that sounds good,’ Dorothy replied, even though she wasn’t sure at all. Even though this whole thing terrified her. She couldn’t afford to be huge, could she? It would be better for her to stay in the shadows. Anonymous.
41
Imogen
Alison gasps, blinking rapidly in the dull light. The papier-mâché figure stares back at us. I’ve burdened her with all of this: psychopaths on motorbikes, dead magpies in trees, the attack on Dennis, the man snooping around the woods, the intruder I found going through Dorothea’s study, the general, unsettling feeling of being watched. She’d listened in silence, somehow not commenting until I’d finished.
She shudders. ‘This is really creepy,’ she announces. ‘What does it mean?’
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to find out.’
‘And Dorothea left this to you? Like a message from beyond the grave. Wow.’
‘A message I’m trying really hard to decipher.’
She moves forward and reaches out to touch the sculpture tentatively, as though it might suddenly come to life. ‘Have you asked Dorothea’s friends? There was one who Mum really liked. Jeanette something.’
‘Annette Baker-Hume. I don’t know. I worry that Dorothea didn’t trust anyone else with this.’
The bunker smells damp and metallic and the cold air wraps itself around us. I can almost picture Dorothea down here in her trusty paint-splattered overalls and Birkenstocks with her hidden secrets layered beneath all the paint and fabric, breathing life and meaning into this papier-mâché figure.
‘It’s just so … weird,’ Alison says, lightly touching the crochet butterfly on one of the magpies. ‘Who is the woman supposed to be?’
‘I think it’s Dorothea with the hiking boots and blonde hair …’
‘I can’t decide if it’s hideous or a work of genius,’ she says, touching a strand of blonde wig before recoiling.
‘A bit of both,’ I laugh.
‘Seven magpies. A secret, obviously.’
‘Yes! That’s exactly it,’ I say, enjoying this moment with Alison, both of us trying to work it out together. ‘She kept it back from the rest of the collection on purpose. She wanted me to find this.’
I indicate the miniature Zippo lighter and explain about the one I found by the bunker. ‘Dorothea was married to a man called Robert Falkner and I think the lighter I found belongs to him.’ I then fill her in on what Harry told me about seeing an elderly man hanging around the villa a few days before Dorothea was murdered. ‘Maybe that’s what Dorothea has been trying to tell me through this sculpture. That Bobby was back. And she suspected he was going to kill her.’
Her eyes widen. ‘Was he abusive to her?’
‘I’m not sure, but the biography made it sound like a possibility.’
Alison is silent for a few moments while she takes it all in before saying, ‘It must have taken her so long. All the little details.’ She looks up at me. ‘And you think this guy on the motorbike is trying to find this? Do you think he could be this ex-husband?’ She looks doubtful. ‘Although he’d be at least in his mid-seventies, wouldn’t he? Isn’t that a bit old to be zooming around on a motorbike?’
‘I don’t know. And why would he attack Dennis?’
Her eyes dart towards the bunker door, which I’ve left propped open with a heavy rock, leaving Solly as guard dog.
‘Do you recognize this?’ I ask, pointing to the denim patch on the wool jacket.
Alison shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so …’
