‘I wanted to tell her, but I …’ He looks unsure. ‘I was hoping, when it was finally published, she’d see it for what it is.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘A love letter, of course. I loved her, you see. I loved her from the first moment I saw her, and my love for her only grew stronger day by day.’ He looks so sad that, despite everything, I feel a twinge of pity.
‘Was it you who left that postcard in her garden?’ I suddenly ask, remembering what Annette had said aboutit. ‘It had something scribbled on the back, apparently, alluding to the past.’
He looks genuinely baffled. ‘No, I didn’t. But I did drop off a batch of postcards to the local bookshops in the area, and they promised to put them out on the counter.’
‘Is that why you were attacked, Dennis? Because of this book?’ I’m still holding it in my hands and I jiggle it in front of him. He steps forward and calmly takes it from me and places it back on his desk on the neat pile.
Then he turns back to me, rubbing his beard thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know why I was attacked. But I don’t think it’s because of the biography.’
I can’t get all this straight in my mind. Did Dennis know that Dorothea killed Bobby?
‘Did you move here on purpose? To be closer to her?’
He hangs his head and thrusts his hands into the pockets of his trousers. Despite being in his seventies there is something little-boy-lost about the gesture. ‘No, I didn’t even know that she was this famous artist when I first met her. But then we got talking, and over the years she revealed more and more about her life, and she was so fascinating.’
‘But she didn’t tell you everything, did she, Dennis? She didn’t tell you Bobby was abusive.’And she didn’t tell you that she killed him, I add silently.
‘No,’ he admits. ‘She never told me that.’
‘So how did you get your information? I can’t believe Dorothea would have told you her innermost secrets and all about her childhood.’
‘She told me bits and pieces over the years and I did my own investigations. When she said she’d been born in Clayton Rocks and worked at a textiles factory there, it wasn’t hard to find someone to talk to in the area who once knew her. That’s how I found out about Bobby. I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely truthful with you earlier – Dotty didn’t ever talk about him to me.’
I was a fool to trust this man because he looked like a kindly grandad.
Then something occurs to me. ‘It was you! You were the man who visited Scarlett in Clayton Rocks, weren’t you? Is that where you were when Harry was hanging around your house?’
‘I wanted to check I hadn’t missed anything. For the epilogue.’
‘You must also have had a source. Journalists always do. So who was yours, Dennis?’
‘Oh, now, I’m not a journalist …’
‘Was it one of Dorothea’s friends? Was it Gabe? I know he’s not doing well financially. Did you pay him to leak information to you?’
It’s a shot in the dark but I can tell by his expression that I’m right.
‘Did you tell him about the secret sculpture?’
A flush forms on his cheeks and he picks at his beard. ‘It slipped out. I didn’t mean it to.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Dennis. Does he know where it is?’
He nods.
‘Her death is suddenly quite lucrative for you, isn’t it? Now that it’s been released to the press that she was murdered.’
His head shoots up. ‘What I do isn’t so different to what you do, my dear.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You were a journalist. You wrote exposés on people all the time.’
‘Yes. Bad people,’ I splutter, shocked that he’s comparing us. And I know Dorothea killed Bobby. I know she’s not innocent but she wasn’t a bad person. ‘Dorothea didn’t do anything to deserve you probing into her life like a … like a snake. Pretending to be her friend!’
