Free Three Little Maids by Patricia Scott

Nanky Poo.’ She chuckled. ‘Aiden Ludlam is in it too by the way. He would be able to vouch for Roger, I’m sure. They would have both been at the rehearsal.
    ‘I’ve been kept busy finishing a painting I was commissioned to do. Roger was late coming in, I think. He generally pops into the Nag’s Head for a pint or two after the rehearsals. To lubricate his tonsils, he says , and I often work well into the wee small hours when I have to get something finished, and this portrait has been especially difficult.’ She shrugged her slim shoulders and made a slight moue with her generous mouth. ‘So it really doesn’t trouble me if he’s late home, within reason of course.’
    ‘Does Mr. Ludlam have a drink afterwards in the Nag’s Head?’
    ‘Aiden, doesn’t frequent the local pubs as a rule. I would think that Roger would have been home in bed by eleven thirty.’
    ‘Did you hear him come in?’
    ‘I didn’t, Inspector. I don’t hear anything as a rule. Not when I’m so involved with a painting.’
    ‘What , or who, is the subject, MrsWelbeck?’ Kent’s gaze went over to the covered picture on the easel at the back of the large sunlit studio room. ‘It must be important to keep you working so late.’
    ‘It’s a girl’s portrait. Waiting for collection. But you didn’t know the girl personally, did you, Inspector Kent? It’s Maureen Carey.’

     
    13
     
    ‘It’s good.’ Kent gazed at the finished oil painting of Maureen Carey on the easel and back to Sara Welbeck in the wheelchair. Surprise echoed clearly in his voice. ‘Very good and you were commissioned to do it?’
    ‘Her father wanted it for his wife’s birthday this month. Maureen wasn’t an easy subject but I think that I brought out the living essence of the girl. What do you think?’
    He studied the portrait carefully and stood well back from it. Now he could tie up the resemblance here to the girl he’d last seen lying on the mortuary slab. Like a fairy-tale princess, the girl in the blue silk dress stroked the fluffy white Persian kitten on her lap but the look in those heavy lidded, lapis blue eyes revealed that if a young Lolita ever existed, she was portrayed here on the canvas before him now, and it made him feel uneasy.
    Turner beside him, coughed gently, felt in his pocket for the bag of peppermint lumps, popped one into his mouth and chewed it vigorously.
    Sara Welbeck, watching Kent closely, said coolly; ‘I suppose you know much more about the wretched girl by now.’ Kent glanced at her quickly but made no comment. ‘As I did and I knew, when I was painting her, that Maureen Carey was no sweet innocent. She was a little tramp and she set out to seduce my husband, Inspector. She succeeded and she didn’t care a tinker’s cuss if I knew it.’
    ‘And did your husband guess that you suspected him of infidelity, MrsWelbeck.’
    ‘He doesn’t.’ There were traces of tears in those green eyes. ‘And I don’t think he killed her.’ And now a trace of raw agony tempered her husky voice. ‘She really wasn’t worth it and I knew that. But it didn’t stop me wishing her dead. So she was murdered and I might well have done it myself. I had the motive as the wronged wife.’ She shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘I wanted to slash and stab her with my palette knife while she was sitting here smiling back at me so sweetly.
    ‘I want to get this bloody picture out of the house as soon as possible. I’m afraid that I might take the knife to it instead.’ Her laugh was harsh and short. ‘I feel so damn sorry for her poor mother. Does this make me a bad woman, having evil feelings like this, Inspector?’
    ‘I gather that it wasn’t a pleasant situation for you to be in, MrsWelbeck.’
    ‘It wasn’t, Inspector. I could hardly express my reason for not wishing to paint Maureen to her parents.’
    Turner with his biro suspended over his notebook, wondered uneasily how many more lives Maureen Carey might have spoilt and