Тринадцать гостей / Thirteen Guests

Well, he could add a few touches to the picture by himself, and finish the thing on Sunday. He’d have to get it out of the way by then, if Ruth Rowe’s was to follow.

“Where the devil—?” he murmured.

Then he saw the key in the door, and recalled that he must have left it there after his visit with Mr. Rowe before tea. It was then that the picture of Ruth had been decided on.

He turned the key and entered the large room. Ruth’s picture would be dull compared with Anne’s. There was little to paint about Ruth.

There were fathomless depths to reveal in Anne. He knew them. He could pierce through right down to the bed. Yes, he liked this picture—there was something definitely challenging in it. “No whitewashing, my child—we’ll show ’em—a bit of real collaboration. As a rule, I’m the only one that understands, but you understand, too. That’s what makes it!”

And Earnshaw’s presence here this week-end added its touch of ironic justification. Anne could sell her soul, like the rest of them—or the mythical thing that was called a soul!

He switched on the light, and turned to the picture of the Honourable Anne Aveling.

It was almost obliterated by a long, broad smudge of paint. The smudge, crimson lake, began at Anne’s right ear, and descended diagonally across the dark-green riding habit.

“Something could move you!” Nadine’s words screamed through his ears, as though repeated by an invisible loud speaker turned full on.

He found himself trembling. He fought against vulnerable emotion.

“Somebody’s gone mad here,” he thought. “All in a moment.”

He recalled the moment when he had seen red in the passage outside his bedroom. Yes… it could happen.

He turned away from the canvas, to control himself. He stared round the studio. On another easel was a large painting of a stag, done by Anne herself. It was not good, saving for the terrible, dull fear she had somehow planted in the stag’s eyes—a fear she should not have known about, since she hunted.

He concentrated on the stag’s eyes for a few seconds, then turned his own eyes back to the ruined canvas. The fit of trembling had passed.

“Queer game,” he said aloud. “I wonder whether I shall ever have the pleasure of painting the person who did this?”

He glanced at his watch. Five minutes to seven. He left the studio abruptly, locked the door, and put the key in his pocket.