The Mezzotint Chapter 5 part 2 Hope Disappears

‘I have a confession to make’ Creest said

‘As good a place as any’ It was a cliché but the vicar sensed a slice of banality was a requisite to counter balance the strange events he’d related to Creest.

‘I broke into her cottage’

The vicar laughed but Creest face remained stolid.

‘Actually I didn’t break in I sort of let myself in’

‘She left the door open?  Silly these days even in a quiet spot like Greeven’

‘A window; I crawled through her kitchen window’

‘Good God man’ the vicar replied and cast his eyes to heaven in apology. ‘I mean what on earth compelled you to do such a thing?’

‘I can’t really say.  Like you, in Church the other day, I felt drawn.  I needed to know if she had left the village’

‘Aren’t you being a little presumptuous?  She may be off visiting’

‘No, no, the house is completely bereft of personal items, even the piano I helped her move.  Only the furnishings are left and I expect they came with the cottage’.

‘It does seem odd, but I’m sure they’ll be a logical motive for her going.  Perhaps someone close to her is ill?’

‘I considered that’ said Creest, ‘but there’s something else’

‘Else?  My dear man you are not obsessed with the girl are you?’

‘Not at all’ Creest lied

‘Did she show signs of talent at all then?’ the vicar offered, leaving a door open for a rational excuse.

‘In what way?’ Creest seemed baffled and uncomfortable

‘I was rather thinking along the lines of your profession’

‘An artist? Miss Lincoln? Nothing of the kind, in fact she gave me a picture she’d painted of this cottage.  I have it here; just a moment.’  He scuffled off to fetch it and handed it to the clergyman without glancing at it. 

‘Even to an untrained eye as yourself, it must be obvious that the attempt is almost childish.  No feel for the dimensions of the building and surrounding countryside.  The colours too, are garish, and offer no contrast to demarcate light and shadow’

The vicar looked at it and nodded in submission as if he understood Creest’s objections and then something caught his eye and he spoke, a triumphal nuance accentuated his words.  ‘I think, you know Professor, the young lady may have more about her than you think’.

‘What do you mean?’ Creest answered, a little stung but discerning that the man of the cloth may have had a little too much Shiraz.

The vicar stood up as if he were repudiating any notion of such and laid the picture out on Creest’s lap.  ‘Look there, at the bottom of the garden.  What do you see?’

The professor scanned that area of the canvas and after a few seconds sat back in his chair, rigid.  ‘But that was not there before’ he cried.  ‘I’ve been looking at art for almost 50 years.  I would’ve spotted that straight away’

The vicar, smugly, went on as if he were the expert now.  ‘A strange little thing isn’t it.  Do you think it’s a child?  Perhaps it’s Miss Lincoln’s ‘take’ on Red Riding.  Yes that’s what it must be; which makes you professor, the wolf sitting in Grandma’s house!’

The last sentence was wasted on Creest.  He knew it wasn’t Red Riding.  After all, the figure, if anything, was clad in grey.  It was the figure from the mirror.