“Her?”
I interrupted. “Do you mean Clara?”
“I’m talking about Sterling Harper.”
He looked speculatively at me. “She’s the artist.” He paused. “That would have been years ago when she did a lot of painting. They had a studio in the house, as I understand it. I’ve never been there, of course. But she used to bring in a number of her works, most of them still lifes, landscapes. The painting you’re interested in is the only portrait I recall.”
“How long ago did she paint it?”
“At least fifteen years ago, as I’ve said.”
“Did someone pose for it?” I asked.
“I suppose it could have been done from a photograph …”
He frowned. “Actually, I really can’t answer your question. But if someone posed for it, I don’t know who that might have been.”
I didn’t show my surprise. Beryl would have been sixteen or seventeen and living at Cutler Grove then. Was it possible Mr. Hilgeman, the people in town, didn’t know this?
“It’s rather sad,” he mused. “Such talented, intelligent people. No family, no children.”
“What about friends?” I asked.
“I really don’t know either of them personally,” he said.
And you never will, I thought morbidly.
Marino was wiping off his windshield with a chamois cloth when I went back out into the parking lot. The melted snow and salt left by road crews had splotched and dulled his beautiful black car.
He didn’t look happy about it. On the pavement beneath the driver’s door was an untidy collection of cigarette butts he had unceremoniously dumped from his ashtray.
“Two things/’ I began very seriously as we buckled up. “In the mansion’s library is a portrait of a young blond girl that Miss Harper apparently had framed in this shop approximately fifteen years ago.”
“Beryl Madison?” He got out his lighter.
“It may very well be a portrait of her,” I replied. “But if so, it depicts her at an age much younger than she would have been when the Harpers met her. And the treatment of the subject is a little peculiar. Lolita-like …”
“Huh?”
“Sexy,” I said bluntly. “A little girl painted to look sensual.”
“Yo. So now you’re going to tell me Gary Harper was a closet pedophile.”
“In the first place, his sister painted the portrait,” I said.
“Shit,” he complained.
“Secondly,” I went on, “I got the distinct impression the owner of the framing shop has no idea Beryl ever lived with the Harpers. It makes me wonder if other people know. And if not, I wonder how that’s possible. She lived in the mansion for years, Marino. It’s just a couple of miles from town. This is a small town.”
He stared straight ahead as he drove and didn’t say a word.
“Well,” I decided, “it may all be idle speculation. They were reclusive. Perhaps Gary Harper did his best to hide Beryl from the world. Whatever the case, the situation doesn’t sound exactly healthy.
But it may have nothing to do with their deaths.”
“Hell,” he said shortly, “healthy ain’t the word for it. Reclusive or not, it don’t make sense for no one to know she was there. Not unless they had her locked up or chained to a bedpost. Damn perverts. I hate perverts. I hate people picking on kids. You know?”
He glanced over at me again. “I really do hate that. I’m getting that feeling again.”
“What feeling?”
“That Mr. Pulitzer Prize took Beryl out,” Marino said. “She’s going to spill the beans in her book, and he freaks, comes to see her and brings a knife.”
“Then who killed him?”
I asked. “So maybe his batty sister did.”
Whoever murdered Gary Harper was strong enough to inflict blows so forceful he was rendered unconscious almost immediately, and cutting someone’s throat didn’t fit with a female assailant. In fact, I had never had a case in which a woman did such a thing.
After a long silence, Marino asked, “Did Old Lady Harper strike you as senile?”
“Rather eccentric. But not senile,” I said. “Crazy?”
“No.”
“Based on how you’ve described things, it don’t sound to me like her response to her brother getting whacked was exactly appropriate,” he answered.