Blood on the Wood

  As the porters took her off the easel to begin her long journey across the Atlantic there was a moment when her eyes seemed to be looking straight into mine, laughing. I thought how she, Bobbie and I had shuffled along the dark corridor, crammed into the broom cupboard among the mops and bedpans. I’d taken her to places where she wouldn’t have wanted to go and she’d certainly done the same for me. She looked better on it than I did. I waved her goodbye and went back to Clement’s Inn trying to be as pleased as everybody else would about the money.

  * * *

  Walter Sutton didn’t have to go back to Swindon and the railway carriages after all. Some other lover of craftsmanship appreciated his work so much that he set up a new studio for him near Chipping Campden. He and Janie had another baby and last I heard were prospering. And Daniel and Felicia got married. He teaches music at a girls’ school in London and in their spare time they run folk-dancing classes for children in the London docks. I happened to drop in on one of them recently and saw him leading the dancing with almost as much bounce as ever and her playing the piano, children’s voices chanting Here we come up the green grass, This fine day. Not much green grass in the docklands. No place for a girl playing her violin in the firelight, insubstantial as a flame. But then those were wild times and she belonged in a different song.

  Also by Gillian Linscott

  A HEALTHY BODY

  MURDER MAKES TRACKS

  KNIGHTFALL

  A WHIFF OF SULPHUR

  UNKNOWN HAND

  MURDER, I PRESUME

  And featuring Nell Bray

  SISTER BENEATH THE SHEET

  HANGING ON THE WIRE

  STAGE FRIGHT

  WIDOW’S PEAK

  CROWN WITNESS

  DEAD MAN’S MUSIC

  DANCE ON BLOOD

  ABSENT FRIENDS

  THE PERFECT DAUGHTER

  DEAD MAN RIDING

  BLOOD ON THE WOOD. Copyright © 2003 by Gillian Linscott. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Linscott, Gillian.

  Blood on the wood / Gillian Linscott.—1st St. Martin’s Minotaur ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-33148-7

  EAN 978-0312-33148-1

  1. Bray, Nell (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—England—Fiction. 3. Painting—Forgeries—Fiction. 4. Suffragists—Fiction. 5. England—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6062.I54B57 2004

  823'.914—dc22

  2003069721

  First published in Great Britain by Virago

  First St. Martin’s Minotaur Edition: May 2004

  eISBN 9781466826410

  First eBook edition: August 2012