The Black Painting. Neil Olson

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СКАЧАТЬ to it, or there was a type of person able to withstand the portrait’s awful gaze. More than withstand it, but learn and prosper from the contact. This was explained to Teresa by her father, Ramón, who counted himself among those so gifted. For he had seen the painting many times. Whether and how it had damaged him was anyone’s guess.

      There were many reasons Teresa could invent for her obsession with art. Because it was something she shared with her father and grandfather, who took her to all the best museums in New York and Boston. Because her impulse toward the mystical and curiosity about her Spanish heritage found their perfect union and expression in the artists she adored: El Greco, Zurbarán, Goya. Because she was so bad at the hard sciences that a humanities degree was her only choice. But she knew very well that the obsession had its roots in that first terror and fascination of childhood. The haunted self-portrait by Goya from his solitary days in the Quinta del Sordo. A painting that had left one man dead in Teresa’s lifetime, and carried the rumor of death and insanity in a long train behind it. A painting she had never seen, and never would.

      * * *

      The ambulance made its slow way around the drive and out of sight. No lights or siren. There was no need. A police cruiser escorted it, but the nondescript brown sedan that arrived later was still parked out there. The detective must be somewhere talking to Audrey, yet the house was quiet. Teresa was in the sitting room. She had been lying down, recovering from her migraine. But the settee was too hard, made for perching, not reclining. She was sitting up now, sipping from a glass of water Audrey had left for her. Everything that had happened since finding the dead man was vague and disjointed.

      She was ashamed of her uselessness. She should be calling people, starting with her mother. She should be speaking to the sad-faced detective—it was she who had found the body, after all. Mostly she should not be falling to pieces like a fragile girl, leaving Audrey to handle everything. Audrey, who had been praising Teresa’s toughness only an hour ago. Who had kept her cool in the presence of death. Whatever her faults, the woman clearly had strengths which Teresa had been slow to perceive. Slow or unwilling. Her sense of Audrey as a person was trapped in the past, in a wounded child’s perceptions.

      Voices approached down the hall, and Teresa stood. She was unsteady, but did not want to seem meek or ill. Audrey’s voice rose sharply just outside of the room, then fell silent. One set of footsteps retreated, and a moment later the detective appeared in the door.

      He was tall and lean, though his face was puffy. Dark hair retreated from his forehead, and his hound dog eyes made you want to comfort him. It was a face you trusted, which must be useful for a detective.

      “Miss Marías. How are you?”

      “Fine,” she said, pleased by the firmness of her voice. “Call me Teresa.”

      “I’m Detective Waldron.”

      “You introduced yourself before,” she remembered.

      “Right, I wasn’t sure if you, ah...”

      “Was in my right mind?” she supplied, forcing a smile. “I really am okay now. Won’t you sit down?”

      Won’t you sit down! Who was she, a society hostess? This wasn’t even her house. But he did sit, and she did, too, which was a relief.

      “This shouldn’t take long,” he said, flipping through a small notepad. “Ms. Morse has filled me in pretty thoroughly. I wonder if you could run through your arrival here, and the um, the discovery of your grandfather’s body?”

      Your grandfather’s body, thought Teresa, reality hitting home. Not “the body” or “the dead man” but Alfred Arthur Morse. Arrogant, secretive collector of and dealer in European art, with a big house, a bad heart and three estranged children. A man to whom Teresa had once felt close, and for whom she harbored a lingering affection. She had suppressed how deeply she was looking forward to seeing him, and tears welled up in her eyes.

      “I’m sorry,” Waldron said, closing the notepad and beginning to stand. “Your cousin said it was too soon.”

      “Is this normal?” Teresa asked tightly. Humiliated by his sympathy.

      He slumped back into the chair.

      “Your shock? It’s absolutely normal, most people never have to—”

      “I mean you being here,” she corrected. “He obviously had a heart attack or a stroke or something. Why would they send a detective? Is it because he’s rich or, or what?”

      He nodded several times.

      “His prominence has something to do with it,” Waldron conceded. “That’s off the record, please. Also, there’s the matter of the housekeeper.”

      “Ilsa.” She had forgotten all about the woman.

      “Yes, um, Ilsa Graff. I understand that she lives in the house. For the last—” he consulted his notes “—thirty years or so?”

      “I guess that’s right,” Teresa said.

      “Do you have any idea where she is?”

      “No, none. She was supposed to meet me at the train. Or I think she was. I don’t remember anymore what we agreed.”

      “But you didn’t see her at the station?” he prompted.

      “No,” Teresa replied, clutching the water glass nervously. Why was she nervous? “So I started walking. And I got about half a mile before Audrey pulled up.”

      “There was no understanding between you two beforehand? She simply appeared?”

      “There’s only one road,” Teresa said, annoyance creeping into her tone. “Whether you walk or drive.”

      “Nothing implied,” Waldron said, holding up a forbearing palm. “These are routine questions. I hope you understand.”

      “I don’t, to tell you the truth.” The headache was pulsing behind her eyes again. “You think Ilsa did something to my grandfather?”

      He puffed up his cheeks and exhaled.

      “I think her not being here when you two were expected is odd. But I have no theories at this time, and every expectation that it’ll turn out as you say. Older man, weak heart. We just have to be as thorough as possible.”

      “All right.”

      “So you were walking to the house when your cousin drove up?”

      “Excuse me?”

      “Ms. Morse said you were standing off to the side of the road. She couldn’t say with certainty which direction you had been going before she came around the turn. I just want to confirm you were coming from the station.”

      As opposed to where? Teresa’s hands were shaking, and there was a buzzing in her ears. She could not tell whether she was stunned or furious or both.

      “Is this about my father?” she blurted.

      He sat back and gazed at her curiously.

      “I don’t know. Is there some reason it should be?”

      Idiot, СКАЧАТЬ