Free Last Nocturne by Marjorie Eccles Page B

implications, somewhat revising his opinion of the dead young man who’d occupied one room in this house: a disreputable top floor room the landlady called a studio, full of the sort of mess artists created around themselves, with an unmade bed in one corner and a sink in the other. It didn’t accord with the sort of background he would have associated with someone known to the chief, though young folks today…well, who could tell? Coming from all walks of life, taking up with anything and anyone. ‘Rum lot, artists,’ he ventured.
    ‘As you say, Cogan. Tell me what else you’ve found out, then we’ll go inside the house and take a look.’
    ‘Not much of a place, sir. The owner’s a widow, a Mrs Kitteridge. Rents out rooms by the month. Benton had lodged with her about eight or nine months – been working abroad before then, it seems. She says he was no trouble, not compared with some.’ A look of disapproval settled on his heavy features. ‘Not averse to a drop or two, though, seemingly.’ A strong reek of spirits had still been emanating from the corpse when Cogan had first seen it, a smell which had been equally strong in the room the young man had so recently vacated. ‘Unless it was a bit of Dutch courage he needed, before he jumped.’
    Lamb listened with a certain detachment while Cogan went on to make him further privy to what information had already been gathered, thinking about Theo Benton, whom he had only once met, maybe six or seven years ago, having escorted his sister to the engagement party of Theo’s sister. Good-natured, not long out of school, with a brilliant and unexpected smile and expressive dark eyes. A beautiful boy. He would soon have women falling at his feet, but at that time his interest had been entirely centred on the ambition to make his mark as an artist, in the face of all-round disapproval from his seniors. He and Lamb had had a short conversation, along the lines of ‘What are you hoping to do with your life now?’ in the garden where Lamb had gone to smoke a cigarette, and the boy to kick his heels. An odd exchange, it had been, utterly certain on Theo’s part, reluctantly admiring on Lamb’s, despite his feeling that the boy was wrong and the older generation probably right in regard to what Theo could expect through this rejection of everything that had been expected of him. Unless he was a genius, he’d have a hard time overcoming the obstacles towards making his name – still less his living – in the much misunderstood and underpaid art world. Very likely this last had been the main cause of the disagreement with his self-made father. Whatever the case, it was causing a great deal of discord, and though not yet amounting to outright war, Benton senior had apparently been threatening to cut his son off without a penny if he persisted in his reckless aims.
    Perhaps because he’d sensed a certain sympathy in Lamb that night, a willingness to listen he hadn’t found in those close to him, Theo had opened up more than he might otherwise have done, and Lamb had ended by being much impressed. He was young and vehement and at that moment hotly indignant at the opposition to his ambition, but it was obvious that his desire to express in paint something important about life as he saw it was genuine. Lamb sensed that he might be walking into disaster – almost certainly was – on the other hand, who could foretell the future? Sincerely, he had wished him luck.
    It had to be said that a great deal of Lamb’s sympathy with Theo was based on fellow feeling. He’d once vaguely gone along with the expectation that he would enter his father’s law practice after graduating from Oxford, mainly because no other option had presented itself, although the prospect of further years burying himself in dusty law books didn’t particularly appeal. It might still have turned out that way had he not, one evening when he was bored, casually attended a lecture on the new scientific