The Stroke of Winter(41)

His reputation, and that of the family, might be tarnished. Would certainly be tarnished. Sebastian Bell was a beloved Wharton son. The paintings might shatter his gilded image. At the very least, it would raise uncomfortable questions.

So what? What would happen then?

The family would have to deal with the aftermath.

Tess adjusted her pillows and snuggled deeper into her soft bed. There was a fine line between genius and madness. Great artists had long histories of mental illness, bad or even criminal behavior, and all manner of flaws. Genius does not preclude one from misdeeds, nor does it protect one from their consequences. Van Gogh was troubled. Picasso had his moments. Hemingway was a notorious misogynist with mental-health issues. Fitzgerald was an alcoholic. When these paintings came to light, when the world saw what Tess had seen, would Sebastian Bell be judged harshly in the face of all who had come before him? Didn’t he deserve to be if he’d been stalking some woman?

And, Tess reasoned, the paintings might not show that at all. They might simply be products of her grandfather’s imagination. Nothing more.

Tess’s eyes fluttered closed as she made peace with it. She’d call her father and Eli tomorrow, explain her thoughts, and as a family they’d move forward together. She didn’t have to bear it all on her own.

Her eyes didn’t stay closed for long.

For all her “so what-ing,” she couldn’t get one thought out of her head.

The red streak on the wall. The portrait of a woman who, if Tess was honest with herself about her impressions of the painting, didn’t seem like she wanted to be posing at all.

And then, there was the last painting, the one of the cliff. The cries of anguished souls the image seemed to evoke.

Tess realized there was another thought on her mind. One that she had been trying to tamp down. Or keep away. Or banish. But as she lay in her bed, with the shadows of the firelight dancing on her walls, she let it come.

Maybe Sebastian Bell wasn’t just a voyeur or a stalker. Maybe he was a murderer. The paintings didn’t show anything of the kind, not exactly. But the feeling that Tess got when she looked at them . . .

Her familiar “so what” exercise wasn’t going to reason that away.

Tess sat up with a start and reached for her phone. Wyatt answered on the first ring.

“Tess,” he said, his voice heavy with sleep. “Are you okay?”

“Sorry to call so late,” she said, taking a big breath in. “I think you might be right.”

“As much as I love to hear that any time, from anyone, I am getting a rather bad feeling about this,” Wyatt said. “Right about what?”

“I think maybe we should call the police,” Tess said. “Not right now. This is not an emergency. But I couldn’t get the portrait of the woman in the studio out of my mind. The red gash. And the last painting of the cliff. Wyatt, could we be looking at a confession?”

Wyatt cleared his throat. “What do you mean, a confession?”

“The paintings, the storyboard, as you aptly called it, tell a story,” Tess said. “What if that story is of a murder? What if those paintings are my grandfather’s confession?”

Tess heard Wyatt gasp. “It makes a terrifying kind of sense,” he said. “I mean, just looking at the paintings in order. Right?”

“Exactly,” Tess said.

“Do you know when your grandmother closed off the studio?” Wyatt asked.

Tess tried to think back. The truth was, she didn’t know. It had been shuttered her whole life.

“When did Sebastian Bell die?” Wyatt pressed on. “And how did he die?”

“I’m not sure the exact date, but I’m sure it’s on the foundation’s website, or any number of websites about him. He died when my dad was a young man. Away at college, if I’m remembering it correctly. It was a heart attack, that much I know, but nothing more. My dad rarely talked about it, and my grandma never talked about it. That was one subject I knew never to bring up with her. That’s odd, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” Wyatt said. “It was common back in the day, especially if something scandalous happened. Or if someone had cancer. Or even had an accident that would sort of bring shame to the family. I know of a guy who had always heard that his grandfather died in the Cliffside tuberculosis sanatorium that used to be just outside of Wharton. Truth was, the grandfather was coming home from a tavern in the winter after having one too many, or several too many, and he froze to death in the snow. Back in the day, people covered up things like that. Spoke about it in whispered tones. As though if you spoke of death, it would hear. And come for you.”

It made a strange kind of sense to Tess. She thought of a friend from college whose grandmother had cancer, but the friend didn’t even know what type. In some families, that just wasn’t spoken of. Something like this? It certainly would have been covered up.

“And about your grandmother closing off the studio,” Wyatt went on. “You don’t know when she did it. And you don’t really know why, right?”

“Exactly right,” Tess said. “She always had these flimsy excuses about it being too expensive to heat. When I was a kid, I never thought twice about it. But now? That’s just ridiculous.”

“I think so, too,” Wyatt said. “I mean, it could be nothing more than grief. Her beloved husband had died, and she wanted to close that room off, just as he left it, as a sort of—I don’t know—shrine that would live out of time. Or something. I know that sounds dramatic. But what if that’s not the reason. What if—”