A finer end - Deborah Crombie [56]
“It does seem odd, doesn’t it? She must have been coming to see me. There’s no one else along here.”
“If you hadn’t found her—” Jack stopped, embarrassed by the sudden sting of tears.
“But that’s odd too,” Fiona said thoughtfully. “I don’t usually go for walks that time of night. But I’d been painting and I needed the air.”
“Coincidence?”
“Probably. But—” Fiona gazed at him, then seemed to change the subject. “I want to show you something.” She stood and led the way towards the back of the house.
Baffled, Jack followed her through the open sitting area and into a corridor, where she opened a door and entered a glass-walled studio.
Beyond the glass the ground dropped away, so that the room seemed to hang in space, suspended over the Coombe with its white puffs of sheep in the green grass, like a child’s drawing of clouds in an emerald sky. Canvases were stacked neatly against the walls, but face-inwards, as was the canvas on the easel. “You don’t display your paintings?”
“I don’t need to see them,” Fiona said baldly. “But this one … this one was different.” She turned the canvas on the easel round.
Jack felt his mouth go dry. He’d seen the paintings in magazines, and occasionally in a gallery window in Glastonbury, but he hadn’t been prepared for the power and immediacy of such an intimate exposure. “They’re …”
“Don’t you dare use the F word,” said Fiona, when he hesitated.
“F word?”
“Fairies.” She scowled. “Like Tinkerbell. Victorian. Silly, fluffy things.”
Jack shook his head. “No. They … I was going to say they frighten me. They remind me of Blake’s visions. Beautiful. And terrible.”
“Exactly.” Fiona met his eyes. “But this one—Oddly enough, in the twenty-some-odd years I’ve lived here in Glastonbury, I’ve never painted the Abbey before. So why paint it now, on this particular night?”
The creatures, some winged, some not, with their severe asexual faces, thronged round the familiar silhouette of the ruined Great Church, hands extended in supplication. Behind them, the sky was a mottled bruise reflecting the setting sun, pierced by the dark shape of the Tor.
Fiona turned back to the canvas. “And there was something else. They sang to me. I can’t describe it. It was”—she shrugged—“it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard, and yet the saddest. I’d give anything if I could re-create it, even in my head, but I can’t. That’s not my gift.” Her voice was filled with regret.
Slowly, Jack said, “Did Winnie ever speak to you about what we were doing?”
“The automatic writing? A bit.”
“You didn’t think it odd?”
Fiona smiled. “What’s odd to me? I’ve lived with oddness since I was a child. Is your expression of a voice from the past any more strange than my ability to see things that other people can’t?”
“I suppose not. We’ve guessed all along that Edmund communicated with me for a reason, but now we think it may have something to do with the sacred chant that was banished from the Abbey after the Conquest.” He gestured at her painting. “It seems more than coincidence that you should paint this, and hear singing, on a night that Winnie was coming unexpectedly to see you.”
“If only she’d rung me first …”
“Do you know of anything that might have been worrying her?”
Frowning, Fiona ran a finger along the edge of her canvas. “I know she was quite distressed by Andrew’s behavior. I suppose a rift was inevitable when Winnie formed a strong attachment to someone else—Andrew had taken her for granted for too many years—but I wouldn’t have expected him to go so far off the rails.”
“Do you think he would hurt her?”
“Hurt Winnie? I wouldn’t think so.” Fiona sounded less than confident. “But after the dinner party, I’d think you should watch your back.”
“Did you see or hear anything—or anyone—unusual last night?”
“I was painting. I didn’t even hear Bram come in. But … I’ve been thinking about it since.… There was something, before I found Winnie.… The woods seemed unsettled … as if there was violence lingering in the air.” She shot him a sharp