A Bed of Scorpions by Judith Flanders Page B

Aidan was already there, and it looked like he had been for a while, papers in front of him, iPad open. Anna was coming from work, and would be there closer to eight. The plan was that the three of us would speak first, them as client–solicitor, me as unofficial conduit of police information. But it all felt slightly underhand, just as Jake being invited later felt underhand. And shabby.
    Helena picked up her laptop, which she’d put down when I let myself in. ‘We’re going through the Stevenson inquest reports,’ said Helena, answering my unspoken query. ‘As Stevenson’s dealer, Aidan had a representative there.’
    ‘I read the
New York Times
reports, and I saw the English papers last month. What was there that wasn’t reported?’
    Aidan rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted. ‘That’s what makes no sense. There wasn’t anymore. The situationwas weird, but not disturbing, you know?’ He looked over at me, presumably as a connoisseur of the difference between weird and disturbing. Weirdly
and
disturbingly, I knew exactly the difference.
    ‘Delia and Celia both told exactly the same story, there was nothing off,’ he continued, looking aggravated rather than worried.
    ‘Delia and Celia?’
    ‘Stevenson’s widow and daughter.’
    ‘Seriously? A woman named Delia named her child Celia? And she wasn’t convicted of child cruelty?’ I shook my head, amazed by the sheer bizarreness of the world. I felt a laugh bubbling up, but then stopped, the smile left pasted on my lips, like a napkin I’d forgotten to untuck.
    Aidan would have gone on, but Helena knew me better. ‘What is it? What have you just thought of?’
    ‘Celia. She lives here in London, right?’ I looked at Aidan. ‘A tall, cool redhead? Married to a man named Stein?’ They were questions, but I already knew the answers.
    ‘Divorced,’ said Aidan, missing the point, but Helena was on it like a terrier snapping at a cube of cheese. ‘How do you know about her?’ She stiffened. ‘Or do you
know
her?’
    ‘I know her. Sort of. I didn’t know I knew her.’ I held up a hand to stop Helena telling me I was being incoherent. I knew I was, and so I started again. ‘I didn’t know who she was when I met her, what her maiden name had been. And since I didn’t know the gallery represented Stevenson, even if I had known who she was, it would have just been a sort of interesting “Did you know?” thing.’ I replayed the conversation I’d had withMiranda in my head. Miranda had said she’d tried to get hold of someone at the Daylesworth Trust for weeks, but no one had been interested. Then, out of the blue, Celia Stein had phoned and agreed to see me. Phoned the day after Frank’s death, and despite the fact that her role at the trust barely impinged on my subject. I thought about the meeting. She had a Stevenson hanging on the wall of her office, too. What else could those bright colours and cartoon figures have been? I just don’t expect people to have pictures by world famous artists on their office walls. Even if I had recognised it, I would have assumed it was a reproduction.
    I told Helena and Aidan what had happened, how she’d been in touch, ending, ‘But why? Why would she want to see me?’ I tried to unpick it. ‘What is her function? Does the family run the Stevenson estate, or is it lawyers?’
    Aidan was dour. ‘Good question. The legal situation is clear, the human one less so. Stevenson was officially “missing”, not dead, for years, and the estate was administered by court-appointed trustees. But in reality Delia made the decisions. She was Stevenson’s legatee, even if his will would only go into effect once he was declared dead, which since he’d written to say he was leaving, took the full seven years. We – that is, Frank – had represented Stevenson before his disappearance, and a few years after he vanished Frank bought everything he’d left behind. Stevensons weren’t getting a great price, and Delia