Brenda Joyce - [Francesca Cahill 04] Read Free

rampage in the large, airy room.
    At a glance, it appeared to have been ransacked.
    Canvases, palettes, paints, and jars were overturned. Two windows were broken, as if someone had smashed them with an ax or thrown an object through them. Glass covered the floor by them. Paint in the primary hues had been splattered across the floor and walls, the effect vivid, brilliant, disturbing. Because amid the yellows, blues, and greens there was dark, dark red and slashes of black. It was almost as if another artist had formed an abstract collage of colors upon the floor.
    And for one instant, Francesca thought the red was blood.
    She rushed forward, kneeling, dabbing her finger into one drying pool of dark red. It was paint, not blood. Relief flooded her instantly.
    Then she saw the canvas lying faceup on the floor.
    Whatever that canvas had once been, it was now unrecognizable. It had been saturated with the same dark red paint that looked exactly like blood, and then it had been slashed into ribbons.

Two
    FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1902 — 11:00 A.M.
    “Sarah! I cannot believe what happened!” Francesca cried. She had been pacing in a gilded salon, which was as overdone as the outside of the house. A bear rug with a growling head and vicious fangs competed with the Orientals on the floor; chairs had hooves and claws for feet, and one lamp had a tusk for a pull cord. Mr. Channing, God rest his soul, had been a hunter and a collector of strange and exotic objects. Apparently his widow was continuing his hobby.
    Sarah had just entered the room. Today she was wearing a drab blue dress covered with splotches of paint. Francesca had never seen her with her dark hair down—today it rioted down her back to her waist in Pre-Raphaelite curls. It quite made Sarah appear ethereal—like a tiny angel. She appeared very pale, her nose and eyes red. Clearly she had been weeping. “Francesca? What are you doing here?” she asked softly—brokenly.
    Francesca forgot all about her own problems. She rushed forward and embraced her friend. “You poor dear! Your mother sent for me. Who would do such a thing?”
    Sarah trembled in her arms. “I told Mother not to call you! An inspector was already here. You have a badly burned hand and you are recuperating, and not just physically!”
    Francesca took Sarah’s hand with her own good one. “How could you not call me? I am your friend! Sarah, we must catch this miserable culprit! Who could have done such a thing?”
    “Yes, that is the question, is it not?” Sarah returned hoarsely. She had big brown eyes, the color of chocolate, now tear-filled. “I am so devastated, I cannot think clearly.
Every time I try to consider who might have done such a thing, my mind becomes useless, racing in incoherent circles. I just found out this morning at five-fifteen, when I usually begin work,” Sarah said, and she was shaking visibly.
    “I cannot even imagine how you must feel,” Francesca returned softly. And it was the truth. She tried to imagine how she would feel if someone had gone into her room and destroyed her notes, her journal, her books. It was an impossible stretch of the imagination, and she was not a brilliant artist, merely an intellectual woman. She knew it would be awful, but she did not think it would be the same as what Sarah was going through.
    Besides, every instinct told her that there was a terrible symbolism to the blood-red paint.
    Sarah turned her liquid brown eyes upon Francesca. She had a way of looking so directly at a person that one almost wished to run and hide. “Francesca, how can you take my case now—when you are hurt? Besides, didn’t you promise to cease all investigative work for a few weeks?”
    Francesca had, and clearly she had mentioned her resolve to Sarah in the past two days—and just as clearly, she had been under the influence of laudanum when she had spoken. “Never you mind, my hand is healing very well; Finney said so himself. I would never let down a