Thirty-one

It had been a while since anyone had called her ‘miss’ here. Apryl’s smile changed into something not so tight.

Despite the intense stare and the look of harried surprise on his pale face, this one was younger and less sure of himself than the others. She hadn’t seen him before, but she made him nervous; he kept clearing his throat and was unable to hold her stare for long. She’d seen this look many times before, in the faces of men infatuated with her.

‘I’m sorry to bother you so late. I’m not staying here any more, but I’ve been coming back in the day to show real-estate people an apartment. And when I was leaving the building this morning I saw an ambulance out front. So I just wanted to check in and make sure it was nothing serious. What happened to Mrs Roth made me a bit jumpy.’ She would have continued to keep up the charade, but the sudden clench of anxiety on the porter’s face stalled her. ‘Was it serious?’

The porter cleared his throat. ‘Yes. Someone died.’

Someone else, she wanted to say. ‘I am sorry. Who. was it sudden?’

He cleared his throat. ‘He was quite old. Mr Shafer hadn’t been well for a long time.’

‘Oh, my God. The ambulance? Was that him? I mean how. When did it happen? I was only just there with him. ’

‘Would you like to sit down, miss?’ He motioned for her to sit in one of the cane chairs arranged before the garden windows. ‘Can I get you something?’

‘No. Thank you. I’m just. a bit shaken. After what happened. to Mrs Roth. But what about his wife? Mrs Shafer? Is she all right?’

‘Not really. No. She’s taken it very badly and is in hospital.’

Apryl shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry. Look at me here, being so selfish. It must be hard for you. I know how close you guys get to the residents. Stephen said you become part of the family. And to lose two of your people so quickly. I am sorry.’

When she said that the expression in his quick eyes changed again and she thought she detected embarrassment, even guilt, as he still failed to look her in the eye. Painfully shy too, and possibly disappointed in life. To be young and working night shifts in a building like this, it had to be tough.

Slowly, she crossed her legs, and didn’t hurry to correct her hemline, which slithered along her sleek thigh. ‘Please, why don’t you sit down? Tell me what happened. Maybe it will help to talk about it. And I haven’t even introduced myself properly. I’m Apryl. Lillian’s great-niece. Lillian Archer. who also passed away recently.’

He cleared his throat. His eyes flicked from her face to her legs, back to her face, to the floor. ‘Seth.’ He sat in the chair opposite her. Perched on the end and rearranged his hands and feet several times. ‘I believe it was very quick. For Mr Shafer. Heart attack they say. I wasn’t here when they found him. I work night shifts. But I was told this evening when I came in. You see, miss—’

‘Apryl, please. You can call me Apryl.’

‘Apryl. Many of the residents here are quite elderly. It’s a terrible loss, of course, but it happens quite often. I mean, it’s not unusual.’

She nodded. ‘So I hear. But isn’t it so strange that three people should die in such a short time? I mean, they all knew each other, from way back. Did you know that?’

He looked up from his shoes quickly, but said nothing.

Apryl nodded. ‘My great-aunt wrote all about it. And Mrs Roth told me a few things too. And Mr Shafer. Right before they died. You know, they all thought they were in danger here.’

Seth’s face was very pale now and one of his hands started to twitch. He tucked it under his thigh. ‘Were you. ’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘Were you and Mrs Roth close?’

‘She was helping me with some research about my great-aunt. And this building. They both lived here for a long time.’ Apryl paused, noticing how alert Seth had become.

‘Research?’ he said quickly, then swallowed and leant forward as if afraid he might fail to hear everything she said.

‘Yes. Because so few people seem to be aware that an artist lived at Barrington House.’

‘Mmm,’ he said, and his face was so drained and twitchy it was becoming uncomfortable to look at.

‘After the Second World War. They all knew him. Mrs Roth, my great-aunt, the Shafers. He disappeared, you know. Did you know that?’ Apryl watched Seth’s face closely so no flicker of recognition could escape her scrutiny.

‘No,’ he blurted out. Then gathered himself to control his voice. ‘What was his name? The painter? I studied fine art.’

Odd how he assumed the artist was male and a painter. His body and his quick anxious eyes were betraying him. He knew something. He spent all night here; could hear and see and come across all kinds of things. She shivered at the thought of what might be roaming these corridors at night. What could come out of that empty but still active place. A place Mrs Roth had bought in order to keep it silent; as though she had purchased the scene of a crime. Stephen had told her she’d bought it and kept it empty for fifty years. Piotr and Jorge had just blinked with incomprehension or mystification when she’d pressed them earlier about Betty Roth and the Shafers. But Stephen had stiffened. And now Seth was twitching.

‘Felix Hessen.’ She watched Seth’s face closely.

He looked into the middle distance and his eyes narrowed as if struggling to recall the name. ‘It sounds familiar. But not a painter I recognize.’

‘Only his sketches survived. And he fell out of favour with the establishment because of his politics. He was a fascist. Was into all kinds of weird things. Like the occult. Used to draw corpses and stuff. Really freaky. Then he came to live here and disappeared. Just vanished from out of this building. Did you not know?’

Seth stood up quickly. He looked like he was going to throw up. He rubbed at his mouth and closed his eyes, then rushed across to his desk. Snatched up a pen and paper. ‘Felix Hessen, you say.’ His voice was a whisper. ‘Sounds German.’

‘Austrian-Swiss.’

‘This is incredible,’ he said to himself, and scratched down the name on a notepad.

His teeth were terribly stained. Brownish. She had no idea what this young man had been through, but the aspect of neglect and melancholy and tension about him suggested he carried a serious burden, like depression. Yeah, maybe there was a touch of the bipolar about him. She recognized the manic signs from what she’d seen in her own mother and in her roommate, Tony, back home.

‘So why here?’ She couldn’t resist the question.

Seth had become preoccupied again, and was staring down the hall as if she was no longer there. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘Why do you work here?’

He suddenly flushed. ‘I. Well. Well I’m an artist too.’

Apryl sat stunned for several seconds. ‘Then why would a painter hang out here all night? I thought you guys needed natural light and stuff to work by.’

He looked embarrassed. It was another question that seemed to cause him discomfort. ‘Well, I only draw here. Nothing really. Just sketches. Now and again. Ideas. And I thought this would be the ideal job. You know, some peace and quiet. The solitude of night. That’s why they wanted an artist – thought it would suit one.’

‘They?’

‘The building. The management. The ad I saw said the job was ideal for an art student. But then. but then it never quite worked out that way. And yet. ’ He seemed distracted again, anxious and uncomfortable.

Behind the desk on his leather chair, she saw a large white pad and a pencil box. She stood up and moved towards the desk. ‘Is that some of your work?’ When she entered she must have disturbed him. He had been drawing, though she still couldn’t see what. Not clearly from this angle. Leaning forward, she screwed up her eyes and angled her head to one side to get a better look.

Detecting her interest in his sketches, he snatched up the pad and concealed the drawings against his chest, leaving her with only the memory of what she had glimpsed. Of what had momentarily stunned her.

Seth was breathing fast now and beginning to perspire. She could see his forehead glistening.

‘Please. Let me see. I want to see that. Did you do it?’ She couldn’t help herself. Couldn’t restrain her interest, her desperation even, in seeing that sketch.

She reached out for the pad. ‘Go on, please. Let me see.’

He lowered the pad from where he clutched it to his chest. ‘I’m sorry. But. Well, my work is not very pleasant. I mean, it’s not finished. No good. I’d be glad to show you when I’m done.’

And then he looked to his left and swallowed hard, like he’d suddenly seen something unpleasant, even threatening. She followed the direction of his stare, but saw only a wall and an indoor plant with long waxy fronds drooping to the immaculate carpet.

‘Go on, Seth. Show the pretty lady. You’s pictures are good, mate. I told you, didn’t I?’

The terrible reek of damp ashes, spent incendiary chemicals and melted fabric had preceded the arrival of the watching child a fraction of a second before he appeared. But the advance warning did nothing to ease the shock of his appearance. Seth stared at the hooded thing with a stronger aversion than ever before. Of late its presence was an omen for imminent death. He shook his head.

‘You’s shouldn’t be shy, mate. Go on, show the tart. She’ll love ’em. I told yous he was bringing you summat sweet, like. And she’s been sticking her beak everywhere, mate. Looking for ’em. So go on, give the slit a fright.’ The kid giggled and the hood shook in a way Seth found loathsome. ‘Her aunty-bitch was just the same. And she saw more than she bargained for.’

Seth swallowed again, cleared his throat and shook his head, now aware of Apryl watching him intently.

‘Go on, Seth.’ The boy’s voice dropped to something low and mean and uncompromising. ‘Fuckin’ do as you is told, mate.’

Apryl softened her face into a smile and looked straight into his eyes. ‘Seth. What I just saw was. good. Please, let me see.’

He looked away from the plant that he seemed to have been having some kind of unhinged communication with, and peered down at what he had drawn. Winced, hesitated, then passed the pad to Apryl. As soon as her painted nails touched the paper, he shoved his hands deep inside his pockets and looked at his shoes, like a bashful and diffident child.

Apryl stood back from the desk and stared into the smear of shading, lines, smudges and scratches, elements that together formed a hunched, faceless and yet tormented parody of an old man, or something composed of sticks and made to look vaguely more human than animal, imprisoned inside some sort of transparent cube or rectangle. Quickly, she flipped over the page.

Seth said something in objection, but she didn’t hear him clearly because she was so engrossed as she stared at a bird-like effigy, clutched in the hands of something implausibly thin. And to the next page she turned, and the next and the next, unaware and uncaring about how fast her heart beat, how quickly her chest rose and fell as if in shock as she observed these dreadful suggestions of torment and incapacitation and despair, as she saw how haunted the eyes and slack the mouths of these things in the porter’s pictures were, and realized how they filled her head and rendered her unable to think or feel anything besides what they demanded of her. When she reached the final sketch she forced herself to look up, to regain her presence of mind. The similarity between the styles was indisputable. They could actually be forgeries of Hessen’s work. ‘I don’t understand why you would say you were unfamiliar with Hessen.’

He looked hurt at the tone of accusation in her voice.

‘Because these look just like Hessen’s sketches. You must have seen his work.’

His eyes flicked from left to right as if searching for a place where he could hide. He had lied. Maybe he’d learned from Mrs Roth or one of the other residents about Hessen, then researched him and begun to replicate the style so convincingly, it was as if. as if Hessen himself had drawn them, or at least tutored his hand.

‘Seth, I’m sorry. But I’m at something of a loss here. These could have been drawn by Felix Hessen. I’m no expert on art. But these are so like his pictures. Pictures I’ve spent a lot of time looking at. The ones that survived.’

‘I. I don’t know the name. Maybe I saw something once. ’

He was frightened. Really scared of what she was saying. If she wasn’t careful she’d lose him. ‘Please understand, Seth, why I’m saying this. I find an artist working in this building as a security guard who has produced what look like original Hessen drawings. But you claim you know nothing of him. I don’t know what to say. I mean, how could you not know?’

Seth started to speak. Then stopped. He tried again, but held back.

‘What is it? Tell me. You were going to say something.’

He shook his head. ‘I have seen something.’ He glanced at her then looked away. ‘But I didn’t know it was this Hessen who painted it. I mean, I don’t always check. You know. When I see something I like.’

He was lying again. Jabbering to cover himself and unable to look her in the eye.

‘Where, Seth? Where did you see it? Did you see it here?’

When she said that his fringe shrank back from his forehead. He swallowed but was unable to speak and was showing too much of his eyes. It was the only answer she required.

Her thoughts became frantic. Some of Hessen’s work had survived inside Barrington House. Tom Shafer said they destroyed it all: he and Arthur Roth and her great-uncle Reginald took ‘that crap’ down from the walls and burned it in a basement furnace. And maybe the artist along with it. But not everything went up in smoke.

The story Shafer concocted about Hessen disappearing had frightened her, but her sense of reason had still clamoured that it couldn’t possibly have been true, as if Hessen were some kind of illusionist with a mangled face who could vanish from inside a locked room full of mirrors and ritualistic markings. She had kept telling herself it was bullshit. All day. That his crazy wife had locked the truth down inside him a long time ago. Same with Mrs Roth. Who also tried to confess to something too improbable and terrible to actually say out loud. Something like murder – a murder they were all complicit in.

But as soon as she was inside Barrington House she believed it. She knew, instinctively, that no one – not Lillian nor Betty Roth nor Tom Shafer – had been lying. Stephen had though. And so was Seth now. She could tell. They were both lying to her, covering something up. She could barely breathe.

Only cranks like the Friends of Felix Hessen would ever believe such a thing. But here was Seth, right here in Barrington House, nervous, stuttering, anxious Seth, right underneath the place where so much had been done and now refused to be forgotten. ‘They’re still here, aren’t they? His paintings.’

His hands were shaking and one foot tapped quickly against the floor.

Apryl tried to calm him with a smile. He was freaking out. Though he appeared frightened and vulnerable and not at all threatening, she wondered if he was dangerous. And maybe unstable enough to confess what he knew.

‘I’d like to see more. More of your work. Like this. I mean it. And the work that inspired it. What you saw. In here. I won’t tell a soul. We can keep this between us. And then I’ll share something with you. You see, I know about Felix Hessen. About. what he left behind. A legacy. Here. At Barrington House. That no one else knows.’

Seth didn’t speak. It was as if he couldn’t. He just kept swallowing.

She placed the sketch pad upon the desk. ‘We need to talk, Seth. Not here. ’ She looked about herself nervously. ‘Tomorrow. Can we do that?’

‘I don’t know.’

Reaching out, she touched his hand. ‘I’m not trying to get you in a bind here, Seth. We’ll have a nice dinner. And just talk. It seems like fate. For us to meet like this. When I came here tonight I never expected this. But it’s a connection.’

He began to wet his lips. He wanted to speak but couldn’t regain his voice.

‘Let me give you my number,’ she said. She took the pad from behind the desk and wrote the number of her cell phone down on the top sheet.