Apartment 16

Thirty-three

To which Apryl laughed. And felt her efforts confirmed. She was a little overdressed, but had come prepared for this afternoon with Seth to become an evening with Seth. It could take that long to win his confidence, his trust. Her drinking would be measured. Tonight was going to be about Seth. What he had to say. And she was not accustomed to having her attempts to impress men rebuffed.

Nerves skittered about her stomach and she would rely on them being calmed by the first glass of wine, which Seth promptly went to buy at the bar. It had been hard to settle since she met Seth. She had tried to distract herself with meeting the estate agents and by conducting some aimless shopping during the day, followed by a meeting with Miles, where he struggled again to accept her gush of conspiracy theories about the vanishing of Felix Hessen, right from his own living room, followed by the incineration of his work. And as for her assertion of his lingering influence at Barrington House, and her intention to interrogate Seth, Miles had become both pale with concern for her and terribly disappointed in her ability to believe such things.

But Seth had been, she was certain, in the presence of Felix Hessen’s work inside Barrington House. Tom Shafer must have been wrong: some of the paintings had survived and were still in existence, somewhere in that building. Maybe in number sixteen itself. Seth had discovered them. And she intended to find out how. It was preposterous: Miles was wrong and the Friends of Felix Hessen were right.

There was no mistaking the signature Hessen thematics and style in Seth’s drawings, but they also contained an anticipation of what Hessen might have achieved as a painter. Seth was a capable artist. A man able to emulate the vision in what he must have seen in Hessen’s actual work — oil paintings that took the horror of Hessen’s surviving sketches one long step further. Miles would believe her when he saw Seth’s work and confirmed the comparison.

And if she was careful, she might even be able to show Miles the unthinkable: a surviving original. Something the strange, lonely night porter had discovered in that wretched building. Or been shown by Hessen’s presence. But something that had guided his own hand as an artist and, perhaps, even his role as an accomplice in the murder of the most senior residents. She found it hard to associate the lanky, introverted figure with violence. But someone was helping the residue of Hessen in that building. Someone was in collusion with the indistinct but palpable evil that had haunted the building for fifty years. Right now, with Stephen avoiding her, Seth was the number one suspect. He was involved somehow; he gave himself away last night. But how and why he was involved, she had no idea, and needed a lot more to go on than hearsay and guesswork. In that respect, Miles was right.

Seth returned from the bar holding a large glass of white wine. She forced herself to hold back from deluging him with questions, reminding herself to work him carefully for the information required. Like she had done with Betty Roth and the Shafers. It took coaxing. They had nothing to gain from telling her anything and much to lose when they did. Or so it seemed. She let Seth start the conversation.

‘So tell me, please, about this Felix Hessen,’ he said, in between nervous sips of his pint.

‘Well, I’m no expert, and from what I have seen of your work I suspect you could tell me a lot more than I can tell you. About his style anyway.’

Seth looked down at his hands on the table as they fumbled with a cigarette paper. She’d made him nervous again and she quickly changed tack. ‘You can borrow this book. I know the author, Miles. It’s the only book in print about Hessen’s work.’ She withdrew Miles’s book from her bag and passed it across the table. ‘I know Miles would be impressed by your drawings too. He works at the Tate.’

Seth blushed and nodded quickly. He seized the book and held it in his lap. ‘You said some really kind things. I don’t get much encouragement these days.’ He laughed nervously. ‘But things are changing. I’m working on something quite ambitious. At home. In my room. More of a studio really.’ His eyes were suddenly alive with an intensity she found startling. ‘Maybe I could show this Miles guy before I move it to canvas.’

Slowly, she crossed her legs and moved them out from under the table so he could see them. And she asked him more about himself, his background, where he studied, his family, to which he became immediately awkward and evasive. Or possibly none of these things held any interest for him. He seemed uninterested in anything but his most recent work, of which he talked enthusiastically, but gave little away. Or, she even suspected, was unable to articulate what it was he was producing.

After she returned to the table with the third round of drinks, having switched to Coke for her second, he seemed more loquacious. ‘I’ve stopped trying to analyse everything that comes out, Apryl. It gets me nowhere. But I feel like I’m in touch with something right at the bottom of myself. And it has some relevance with what’s out there. And maybe what comes after all this. You know, life. But it is only relevant in images. There isn’t language for it. I can’t explain it.’

She carefully studied his quick eyes and perpetual smoking and fidgeting, but didn’t suspect him of trying to cultivate a mystique by being evasive about his work. It was something else. She had a hunch that Seth was deeply anxious, if not even afraid, of what he was doing, despite his compulsion to do it.

He spoke at length about London, about the people, and had nothing good to say about either. ‘It’s a terrible place, Apryl. Everything here is difficult. It’s falling to pieces. It changes people. Anyone who stays here. The energy is all wrong. It doesn’t work. I’ve been trying to work it out ever since I arrived.’ He tapped the cover of Miles’s book on Hessen. ‘I think he was on to the same thing.’

At times it was hard to follow the thread and meaning of what Seth said. His head was a storm of ideas and thoughts all struggling to find their way out at the same time. It was like he was trying to make sense of his own manic temperament by speaking out loud to her. She found him exhausting, and after his third pint had been drained, she suggested they go and eat, wary that he might otherwise become irreparably drunk and a hindrance to what she needed to learn.

Over dinner she would find the right moment to ask about Barrington House and apartment sixteen. He was becoming garrulous and wanted to impress her, desperately. It was nearing the right time to seek from him a disclosure about what he’d seen, what he knew, and what he’d done.

It must have been a long time since he’d been in the company of a woman. She caught him staring at her with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. It was no longer only a question of seducing herself into his confidence, but also one of regulating the consequences. But in the small Indian restaurant he led her to, Seth’s mood changed. After they’d ordered, it was as if something caught his eye outside the window. She turned her head to follow his gaze, but saw nothing out of the ordinary except for the usual diverse mix of humanity and fashion that filled every sidewalk in a city that seemed unable to stay still.

‘What is it? Someone you know?’ she asked.