The Dark Clue by James Wilson Page B

eyes can’t see. He saw into the heart of things.’
    I found myself thinking:
Dear Lord, I hope the heart of things doesn’t look like that.
But I said:
    â€˜Yes, they are magnificent.’
    That seemed to please her. She brightened, and – as if surprised by her own candour – said:
    â€˜Would you like to see the room where he died, Miss Halcombe?’
    In truth, I should have preferred to stay where I was, and finish my tea, and ask her more questions; but I could not very well refuse, so I replied:
    â€˜Yes, I should. Very much.’
    We went up the cramped staircase, which squeaked under our weight like a procession of complaining mice, and entered a small attic at the front of the house. The feeble sun seeped through a square, deep-set dormer, casting a watery pattern of light and shadow on the neighbouring wall. The left-hand side of the room was dominated by a simple brass bed, and a single wheelback chair stood before the window. The boards were bare, and there was no other furniture save a plain cupboard, a small table set with a bowl and ewer, and an iron ladder leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling. It looked like the kind of lodging where a struggling actor or a poor travelling salesman might seek refuge from the disappointments of the day.
    â€˜This was his room,’ said Mrs. Booth. ‘Every morning he would rise before dawn, and throw a blanket round him, and go up there’ – here she indicated the ladder – ‘on to the roof, and sketch the sunrise.’
    â€˜Ah,’ I said. ‘That’s why the parapet’s railed?’
    She nodded. ‘And then he’d come back to bed, and rest till breakfast time. And so he went on, right up until his last illness. He was indefatigable, Miss Halcombe. Even when I was nursing him, I had to make sure he always had pencils and paper to hand.’
    â€˜Was he still able to paint, then?’ I asked.
    â€˜Not at the very end,’ she said. ‘But not to have the hope of it would have killed him that much sooner. So I always kept up the pretence:
Perhaps tomorrow, my dear.
’
    How many housekeepers call their master ‘my dear’?
    â€˜He was very lucky to have you, Mrs. Booth,’ I said.
    She did not answer, seemingly lost in her own thoughts. At length she said:
    â€˜I’ll tell you a strange thing, Miss Halcombe. A few weeks before he died, the police dragged out of the river some poor girl, who had fallen into disgrace, and drowned herself.’ She moved towards the window, and pointed down to the embankment steps, where the watermen were still idling the afternoon away. ‘Just there. And Mr. Turner was very troubled by it, and kept waking me in the night, and saying he saw her face, and feared to sleep. “I must draw it,” he said. “I must draw that face, or I shall have no rest.” And so he drew it, and it was almost the last picture he ever made.’
    â€˜And was he still haunted by it?’ I asked.
    â€˜He never spoke of it again,’ she said. ‘Leastways, not that I recall.’
    She was quiet then, and I feared I had lost her to her own memories. I said:
    â€˜How did he come to see her, if he was in bed, and she outside?’
    â€˜It was a terrible winter,’ she said. ‘Nothing but fog and smoke for weeks on end. He’d say, “I wish I could see the sun again” – but he could barely more than whisper it by then, it’d break your heart to hear him. So he’d roll on to the floor, and try to crawl to the window to look for it.’
    â€˜I see,’ I said. ‘So he was there when the police found her?’
    She nodded abstractedly, as if her mind were on something more important. ‘Sometimes’, she said, ‘he was too weak even to go that far, and I’d find him here, by the chair, and have to help him back to bed.’
    Again she was silent, and, though she faced the window, I