shelf beneath the front windows.
He saw that since the previous night, two additional sculptures had been added to the collection.
They were entirely different from the posturing nudes among which they rested.
Both were marble, and as Lynley studied them, he was reminded of Michelangelo's belief that the object being created from stone was simply imprisoned within the rock itself, that the duty of the artist was to act as liberator. He remembered seeing such a sculpture in Florence, an unfinished piece in which the head and torso of a man seemed to writhe to free itself from the marble. These two pieces before him were much like that, save for the fact that the emerging figures were themselves polished and buffed - suggesting completion - while the rest of the stone was left in its natural state.
Small, rectangular pieces of paper were taped to the base of each sculpture, and Lynley read the uneven handwriting that scrawled across them, Nautilus upon one and Mother and Child on the other. Nautilus was carved from dusky pink marble, and the shell of the mollusc rose out of the stone in a slow, smooth curve that seemed to have neither beginning nor end. White marble had been used for Mother and Child: two heads bent together, the suggestion of a shoulder, the shadowy form of a single arm embracing and protecting. Each was a metaphor, an intimation of reality, a whisper rather than a raucous shout.
Lynley couldn't believe that the creator of the nudes had made such a quantum leap forward in his art. He bent, touched the cold curve of the shell, and caught sight of the initials chiselled into the very bottom of the stone. M. W. He glanced at the nudes, saw K.
W. carved into them. Father and son could not have had a more different artistic vision.
"Those're Mattie's. Not the nudes, I mean. The others."
Lynley turned. Patsy Whateley was watching him from the kitchen doorway. Behind her, a kettle whistled with shrill brevity, followed by the sounds of Sergeant Havers seeing to the tea.
"They're lovely," he replied.
Patsy's slippers slapped against the thin carpet as she joined him at the shelf. This close to her, Lynley caught the biting odours of her unwashed body, and he wondered with an irrational catch of anger what sort of man Kevin Whateley was, that he would leave his wife to face the first full day of this agony alone.
"Not finished," she murmured, gazing fondly upon the mother and child. "Kev brought them in last night. They were in the garden with Kev's other work. Matt started them last summer. I can't think why he never finished them. It wasn't like him not to finish something he began. He always was a finisher. Never could rest until whatever he was doing was done. That was Mattie. Up half the night working on this project or that. Always promising to be off to bed in a tick. „In a tick, Mum,' he'd tell me. But I'd hear him moving round in his room till half-one in the morning. Still, I can't say why he didn't finish these. They would've been quite nice. Not as real-looking as Kev's, but quite nice all the same."
As Patsy spoke, Sergeant Havers came out of the kitchen carrying a plastic tray which she set on the metal-legged coffee table in front of the sofa. Among the teapot, cups, and saucers sat a plate of the promised ginger biscuits bearing telltale signs of having been part of a batch left too long in the oven. Serrations scored their edges where a knife had been used to remove burnt portions.
Sergeant Havers poured, all of them sat, and they spent the next few moments seeing to their tea. As they did so, heavy footsteps passed the front of the cottage, made the turn into the tunnel, and stopped by the door. A key was thrust into the lock, and Kevin Whateley entered. He stopped short at the sight of the police.
He was filthy. Dust covered his thinning hair and creased into the wrinkles on his face, neck, and hands. Exertion and sweat had dampened it there, so it blotched his skin with uneven patches. He wore blue jeans, a denim jacket, and workboots, all of which were equally covered by grime. Upon seeing him, Lynley recalled what the boy Smythe-Andrews had told him about Kevin Whateley's profession as a tombstone carver. It seemed inconceivable that Whateley had managed to face that sort of work