Eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes, mushrooms-and could that possibly be kidneys? Kincaid pushed the questionable items a little to one side with the tip of his fork. Kidneys in steak-and-kidney pie he could manage, but kidneys at breakfast were a bit much. Otherwise the Chequers had done itself proud. Surveying his breakfast laid out on the white tablecloth, complete with china teapot and a vase of pink and yellow snapdragons, he began to think he should feel grateful for Sir Gerald Asherton’s influence. His accommodations when out of town on a case were seldom up to these standards.
As he’d slept late, the more righteous early risers had long since finished their breakfasts and he had the dining room to himself. He gazed out through the leaded windows at the damp and windy morning as he ate, enjoying his unaccustomed leisure. Leaves drifted and swirled, their golds and russets a bright contrast against the still-green grass of the churchyard. The congregation began to arrive for the morning service, and soon the verges of the lanes surrounding the church were lined with cars parked end to end.
Wondering lazily why a church in a village as small as Fingest would draw such a crowd, he was suddenly struck by the desire to see for himself He pushed a last bite of toast and marmalade into his mouth. Still chewing, he ran upstairs, grabbed a tie from his room and hastily knotted it on his way back down.
He slipped into the last pew just as the church bells began to ring. The notices tacked up in the vestibule answered his question quickly enough-this was the parish church, of course, not just the village church, and he must have been living too long in the city not to have realized it. It was also most likely the Ashertons’ church. He wondered who knew them and if some of those gathered had come out of curiosity, hoping to see the family.
None of the Ashertons were in evidence, however, and as the peaceful order of the service settled over him, he found his mind drawn back to the previous evening’s revelations.
It had taken him a few minutes to calm her down enough to get her name-Sharon Doyle-and even then she’d taken his warrant card and examined it with the intensity of the marginally literate.
“I’ve come for me things,” she said, shoving the card back at him as if it might burn her fingers. “I’ve a right to ’em. I don’t care what anybody says.”
Kincaid backed up until he reached the sofa, then sat down on its edge. “Who would say you didn’t?” he asked easily.
Sharon Doyle folded her arms, pushing her breasts up against the thin weave of her sweater. “Her.”
“Her?” Kincaid repeated, resigned to an exercise in patience.
“You know. Her. The wife. Julia,” she mimicked in an accent considerably more precise than her own. Hostility seemed to be triumphing over fright, but although she moved nearer him, she still stood with her feet planted firmly apart.
“You have a key,” he said, making it a statement rather than a question.
“Con gave it to me.”
Kincaid looked at the softly rounded face, young beneath the makeup and bravado. Gently, he said, “How did you find out Connor was dead?”
She stared at him, her lips pressed together. After a moment her hands dropped to her sides and her body sagged like a rag doll that had lost its stuffing. “Down the pub,” she answered so quietly that he read her lips as much as heard her.
“You’d better sit down.”
Folding into the chair across from him as if unaware of her body, she said, “Last night. I’d gone round to the George. He hadn’t rung me up when he said, so I thought ‘I’m bloody well not going to sit home on my own.’ Some bloke’d buy me a drink, chat me up-serve Con bloody well right.” Her voice wavered at the last and she swallowed, then wet her lips with the pink tip of her tongue. “The regulars were all talking about it. I thought they were havin’ me on, at first.” She fell silent and looked away from him.
“But they convinced you?”
Sharon nodded. “Local lad came in, he’s a constable. They said, ‘Ask Jimmy. He’ll tell you.’”
“Did you?” Kincaid prompted after another moment’s silence, wondering what he might do to loosen her tongue. She sat huddled in her chair, arms folded again across her breasts, and as he studied her he thought he saw a faint blue tinge around her lips. Remembering a drinks trolley he’d seen near the wood-stove as he explored the room, he stood and went over to it. He chose two sherry glasses from the glassware on the top shelf, filling them liberally from a bottle of sherry he found beneath.
On closer inspection he discovered that the stove was laid ready for a fire, so he lit it with a match from the box on the tiled hearth and waited until the flames began to flicker brightly. “This will take the chill off,” he said as he returned and offered the drink to Sharon. She looked up at him dully and lifted her hand, but the glass tipped as she took it, spilling pale gold liquid over the rim. When he wrapped her unresponsive fingers around the stem, he found them icy to the touch. “You’re freezing,” he said, chiding her. “Here, take my jacket.” He slipped off his tweed sport coat and draped it over her shoulders, then circled the room until he found the thermostat for the central heating. The room’s glass-and-tile Mediterranean look made for a pleasant effect, he decided, but it wasn’t too well suited for the English climate.
“Good girl.” He sat down again and lifted his own glass. She’d drunk some of hers, and he thought he saw a faint flush of color on her cheeks. “That’s better. Cheers,” he added, sipping his sherry, then said, “You’ve had a rough time, I think, since last night. Did you ask the constable, then, about Connor?”
She drank again, then wiped her hand across her lips. “He said, ‘Why you want to know, then?’ and gave me this fishy-eyed look, so I knew it was true.”
“Did you tell him why you wanted to know?”
Sharon shook her head and the blond curls bounced with the movement. “Said I just knew him, that’s all. Then they started a slanging match about whose round it was, and I slipped out the door by the loo.”
Her survival instincts had functioned well, even in shock, Kincaid thought, a good indication that she’d had plenty of experience looking out for herself. “What did you do then?” he asked. “Did you come here?”
After a long moment she nodded. “Stood about outside for hours, bloody well freezing it was, too. I still thought, you know, maybe…” She put the fingers of both hands over her mouth quickly, but he’d seen her lip tremble.
“You had a key,” he said gently. “Why didn’t you come in and wait?”
“Didn’t know who might come in here, did I? Might tell me I hadn’t any right.”
“But today you got up your courage.”
“Needed my things, didn’t I?” she said, but she looked away, and Kincaid fancied there was more to it than that.
“Why else did you come, Sharon?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
She met his eyes and seemed to see in them some possibility of empathy, for after a moment she said, “I’m nobody now, do you see? I thought I’d never have another chance just to be here, like… we had some good times here, Con and me. I wanted to remember.”
“Didn’t you think Con might have left you the flat?” Kincaid asked.
Looking down into her glass, she swirled the few remaining drops of sherry. “Couldn’t,” she said so quietly that he had to lean forward to hear.
“Why couldn’t he?”
“Not his.”
The drink didn’t seem to have done much in the way of lubricating her tongue, Kincaid thought. Getting anything out of her was worse than pulling teeth. “Whose is it, then?”
“Hers.”
“Connor was living in Julia’s flat?” He found the idea very odd indeed. Why hadn’t she booted him out and stayed herself, rather than going back home to her parents? It sounded much too amicable an arrangement for a couple who had supposedly not been speaking to one another.
Of course, he added to himself as he considered the girl sitting across from him, it might not have been true. Perhaps Connor had needed a handy excuse. “Is that why Connor didn’t have you move in with him?”
His jacket slipped from Sharon’s shoulders as she shrugged, reexposing the pale swell of her breasts through the weave of the pink fuzzy sweater. “He said it wasn’t right, it being Julia’s house and all.”
Kincaid hadn’t imagined Connor Swann being a great one for moral scruples, but then Connor was proving to be full of surprises. Glancing at the open-plan kitchen, he asked, “Do you cook?”
Sharon looked at him as if he had a slate loose. “Course I can cook. What do you take me for?”
“No, I mean, who did the cooking here, you or Connor?”
She thrust her lower lip out in a pout. “’E wouldn’t let me touch a thing in there, like it was a bloody church or something. Said fry-ups were nasty, and he’d not have anything boiled in his kitchen but eggs and water for the pasta.” Still absently holding her glass, she stood and wandered over to the dining table. She traced a finger across its surface. “’E cooked for me, though. No bloke ever did that. Nobody ever cooked anything for me but me mum and me gran, come to think of it.” Looking up, she stared at Kincaid as if seeing him for the first time. “You married?”
He shook his head. “I was once, a long time ago.”
“What happened?”
“She left. Met someone else.” He said the words flatly, with an ease born of years of practice, yet it still amazed him that such simple sentences could contain such betrayal.
Sharon considered that, then nodded. “Con made me supper-‘dinner,’ I mean-he’d always remind me to say ‘dinner.’ Candlelight, best dishes. He’d make me sit while he brought me things-‘Try this, Shar, try that, Shar.’ Funny things, too.” She smiled at Kincaid. “Sometimes I felt like a kid playing dress-up. Would you do things like that for a girl?”
“I’ve been known to. But I’m afraid I’m not up to Con’s standards-my cooking runs more to omelets and cheese-on-toast.” He didn’t add that he’d never been inclined to play Pygmalion.
The brief animation that had lit Sharon’s face faded. She came slowly back to her chair, empty glass trailing from her fingertips. In a still little voice she said, “It won’t happen to me again.”
“Don’t be silly,” he scolded, hearing the false heartiness in his voice.
“Not like with Con, it won’t.” Looking directly at Kincaid, she said, “I know I’m not what blokes like him go for-always said it was too good to be true. A fairy tale.” She rubbed the sides of her face with her fingers, as if her jaws ached from unshed tears. “There’s not been anything in the papers. Do you know about the… arrangements?”
“No one in the family’s rung you?”
“Rung me?” she said, some of her earlier aggression returning. “Who the hell do you think would’ve rung me?” She sniffed, then added, mincing the names, “Julia? Dame Caroline?”
Kincaid gave the question serious consideration. Julia seemed determined to ignore the fact that her husband had existed, much less died. And Caroline? He could imagine her performing a distasteful, but necessary, duty. “Perhaps, yes. If they had known about you. I take it they didn’t?”
Dropping her gaze to her lap, she said a little sullenly, “How should I know what Con told them-I only know what he told me.” She pushed the hair from her face with chubby fingers, and Kincaid noticed that the nail on her index finger was broken to the quick. When she spoke again the defiance had gone from her voice. “He said he’d take care of us-little Hayley and me.”
“Hayley?” Kincaid said blankly.
“My little girl. She’s four. Had her birthday last week.” Sharon smiled for the first time.
This was a twist he hadn’t expected. “Is she Con’s daughter, too?”
She shook her head vehemently. “Her dad buggered off soon as he knew I was going to have her. Rotten swine. Not heard a word from him since.”
“But Con knew about her?”
“Course he did. What do you take me for, a bloody tart?”
“Of course not,” Kincaid said soothingly, and, eyeing her empty glass, unobtrusively fetched the bottle. “Did Con get on with little Hayley, then?” he asked, dividing the last of the sherry between them.
When she didn’t answer, he thought perhaps he’d gone over the mark with the sherry, but after a moment she said, “Sometimes I wondered… if it was really her he wanted, not me. Look.” Digging in her handbag, she pulled out a worn leather wallet. “That’s Hayley. She’s lovely, isn’t she?”
It was a cheap studio portrait, but even the artificial pose and tatty props couldn’t spoil the little girl’s beauty. As naturally blond as her mother might have been as a child, she had dimples and an angelic, heart-shaped face. “Is she as good as she looks?” Kincaid asked, raising an eyebrow.
Sharon laughed. “No, but you’d never think it to look at her, would you? Con called her his little angel. He’d tease her, call her names in this silly Irish voice. ‘Me little darlin’,” she said in a credible Irish accent. “You know, things like that.” For the first time her eyes filled with tears. She sniffed and wiped the back of her hand across her nose. “Julia didn’t want any kids. That’s why he wanted the divorce, but Julia wouldn’t give it to him.”
“Julia wouldn’t divorce Connor?” Kincaid asked, thinking that although no one had actually said, that wasn’t the impression he’d had from Julia or her family.
“When the two years were up he was going to divorce her-that’s how long it takes, you know, to obtain a divorce without the other party’s consent.” She said the last bit so precisely Kincaid thought she must have memorized it, perhaps repeating something Connor had said in order to comfort herself.
“And you were going to wait for him? Another year, was it?”
“Why shouldn’t I have done?” she said, her voice rising. “Con never gave me reason to think he wouldn’t do what he said.”
Why indeed? thought Kincaid. What better prospect had she? He looked at her, sitting back a little in her chair now, with her lower lip pushed out belligerently and both hands clasped around the stem of the sherry glass. Had she loved Connor Swann, or had she merely seen him as an attractive meal ticket? And how had such an unlikely union taken place? He certainly doubted that they had moved in the same social circles. “Sharon,” he said carefully, “tell me, how did you and Connor meet?”
“In the park,” she said, nodding toward the river. “Just there, in the Meadows. You can see it from the road. In the spring, it was. I was pushing Hayley in the swings and she fell out, skinned her knee. Con came over and talked to her, and before you knew it she’d stopped her bawling and was laughing at him.” She smiled, remembering. “Him and his Irish blarney. He brought us back here to look after her knee.” When Kincaid raised an eyebrow at that, she hurried on. “I know what you’re thinking. At first I was afraid he might be… well, you know, a bit funny. But it wasn’t like that at all.”
Sharon looked relaxed now, and warm, sitting with her feet in their preposterous shoes stretched out in front of her, sherry glass cradled in her lap. “What was it like?” Kincaid asked softly.
She took her time answering, studying her glass, the fan of her darkly mascaraed lashes casting shadows on her cheeks. “Funny. What with his job and all, it seemed like Con knew everybody. Always lunches and dinners and drinks and golfing. Busy, you know, important.” She raised her eyes to Kincaid’s. “I think he was lonely. In between all those engagements, there wasn’t anything.”
Kincaid thought about the desk diary he’d seen upstairs, with its endless round of appointments. “Sharon, what was Con’s job?”
“’E was in advertising.” Wrinkling her brow, she said, “Blakely, Gill… I can never remember. In Reading, it was.”
That certainly made sense of the diary. Remembering the deposit stubs, he recited, “Blackwell, Gillock and Frye.”
“That’s it.” Pleased at his cleverness, she beamed at him.
Kincaid ran back through the checkbook register in his mind. If Connor had helped Sharon out financially, he had done it on a cash basis-there had been no checks made out in her name. Unless he had passed the money through someone else. Casually, he asked, “Do you happen to know someone called Hicks?”
“That Kenneth!” she said furiously, sitting up and sloshing what remained of her drink. “Thought you were him, didn’t I, when I first came in and heard you upstairs. Thought he’d come for what he could get, like a bloody vulture.”
Was that why she’d been so frightened? “Who is he, Sharon? What connection did he have with Con?”
A little apologetically, she said, “Con liked the horses, see? That Kenneth, he worked for a bookie, ran Con’s bets for him. ’E was always hanging about, treated me like I was dirt.”
If that were the case, Connor Swann had not played the ponies lightly. “Do you know what bookmaker Kenneth Hicks worked for?”
She shrugged. “Somebody here in the town. Like I said, he was always hanging about.”
Remembering all the Red Lion notations in the diary, Kincaid wondered if that had been their regular meeting place. “Did Con go to the Red Lion Hotel often? The one next to the chur-?”
Already shaking her head, she interrupted, “All tarted up for the tourists, that one. A posh whore, Con called it, where you couldn’t get a decent pint.”
The girl was a natural mimic, with a good memory for dialogue. When she quoted Con, Kincaid could hear the cadence of his voice, even the faint hint of Irish accent.
“No,” she continued, “it was the Red Lion in Wargrave he liked. A real pub, with good food at a decent price.” She smiled, showing a faint dimple like her daughter’s. “The food was the thing, you know-Con wouldn’t go anywhere he didn’t like the food.” Putting her glass to her lips and turning it end up, she drained the last few drops. “’E even took me there, a few times, but mostly he liked to stay at home.”
Kincaid shook his head at the contradictions. The man had lived a boozing, betting life-in-the-fast-lane, by all accounts, but had preferred to stay at home with his mistress and her child. Connor had also, according to his diary, had lunch with his in-laws every single Thursday for the past year.
Kincaid thought back to the aftermath of his own marriage. Although Vic had left him, her parents had somehow managed to cast him as the villain of the piece, and he had never heard from them again, not so much as a card at Christmas or on his birthday. “Do you know what Con did on Thursdays, Sharon?” he asked.
“Why should I? Same as any other day, far as I know,” she added, frowning.
So she hadn’t known about the regular lunch with the in-laws. What else had Connor conveniently not told her? “What about last Thursday, Sharon, the day he died? Were you with him?”
“No. ’E went to London, but I don’t think he’d meant to, beforehand. When I’d given Hayley her supper, I came over and he’d just come in. All wound up he was, too, couldn’t sit still with it.”
“Did he say where he’d been?”
Slowly, she shook her head. “Said he had to go out again for a bit. ‘To see a man about a dog,’ he said, but that was just his way of being silly.”
“And he didn’t tell you where he was going?”
“No. Told me not to get my knickers in a twist, that he’d be back.” Slipping off her high-heeled sandals, she tucked her feet up in the armchair and rubbed at her toes with sudden concentration. She looked up, her eyes magnified by a film of moisture. “But I couldn’t stay, ’cause it were Gran’s bridge night and I had to see to Hayley. I couldn’t…” Wrapping her arms around her calves, she buried her face against her knees. “I didn’t…” she whispered, her voice muffled by the fabric of her jeans “…wouldn’t even give him a kiss when he left.”
So she had been pouting, her feelings hurt, and had childishly snubbed him, thought Kincaid. A small failing, an exhibition of ordinary lovers’ behavior, to be laughed about later in bed, but this time there could be no making up. Of such tiny things are made lifetimes of guilt, and what she sought from him was absolution. Well, he would give whatever was in his power to bestow. “Sharon. Look at me.” Slipping forward in his chair, he reached out and patted her clasped hands. “You couldn’t know. We’re none of us perfect enough to live every minute as if it might be our last. Con loved you, and he knew you loved him. That’s all that matters.”
Her shoulders moved convulsively. He sat back quietly, watching her, until he saw her body relax and begin a barely perceptible rocking, then he said, “Con didn’t say anything else about where he was going or who he meant to see?”
She shook her head without lifting it. “I’ve thought and thought. Every word he said, every word I said. There’s nothing.”
“And you didn’t see him again that night?”
“I said I didn’t, didn’t I?” she said, raising her face from her knees. Weeping had blotched her fair skin, but she sniffed and ran her knuckles under her eyes unselfconsciously. “What do you want to know all this stuff for, anyway?”
At first her need to talk, to release some of her grief, had been greater than anything else, but now Kincaid saw her natural wariness begin to reassert itself. “Had Con been drinking?” he asked.
Sharon sat back in her chair, looking puzzled. “I don’t think so-at least he didn’t seem like it, but sometimes you couldn’t tell, at first.”
“Had a good head, did he?”
She shrugged. “Con liked his pint, but he wasn’t ever mean with it, like some.”
“Sharon, what do you think happened to Con?”
“Silly bugger went for a walk along the lock, fell in and drowned! What do you mean ‘What happened to him?’ How the bloody hell should I know what happened to him?” She was almost shouting, and bright spots of color appeared on her cheekbones.
Kincaid knew he’d received the tail end of the anger she couldn’t vent on Connor-anger at Connor for dying, for leaving her. “It’s difficult for a grown man to fall in and drown, unless he’s had a heart attack or is falling-down drunk. We won’t be able to rule those possibilities out until after the autopsy, but I think we’ll find that Connor was in good health and at least relatively sober.” As he spoke her eyes widened and she shrank back in her chair, as if she might escape his voice, but he continued relentlessly. “His throat was bruised. I think someone choked him until he lost consciousness and then very conveniently shoved him in the river. Who would have done that to him, Sharon? Do you know?”
“The bitch,” she said on a breath, her face blanched paper-white beneath her makeup.
“What-”
She stood up, propelled by her anger. Staggering, she lost her balance and fell to her knees before Kincaid. “That bitch!”
A fine spray of spittle reached his face. He smelled the sherry on her breath. “Who, Sharon?”
“She did everything she could to ruin him and now she’s killed him.”
“Who, Sharon? Who are you talking about?”
“Her, of course. Julia.”
The woman sitting beside Kincaid nudged him. The congregation was rising, lifting and opening hymnals. He’d heard only snippets of the sermon, delivered in a soft and scholarly voice by the balding vicar. Standing quickly, he scrabbled for a hymnal and peeked at his neighbor’s to find the page.
He sang absently, his mind still replaying his interview with Connor Swann’s mistress. In spite of Sharon’s accusations, he just didn’t think that Julia Swann had the physical strength necessary to choke her husband and shove him into the canal. Nor had she had the time, unless Trevor Simons was willing to lie to protect her. None of it made sense. He wondered how Gemma was getting on in London, if she had found out anything useful in her visit to the opera.
The service came to a close. Although the congregants greeted one another and chatted cheerfully as they filed out, nowhere did he hear Connor or the Ashertons mentioned. They glanced curiously and a little shyly at Kincaid, but no one spoke to him. He followed the crowd out into the churchyard, but instead of returning to the hotel, he turned his collar up, stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered among the headstones. Distantly, he heard the sounds of car doors slamming and engines starting, but the wind hummed against his ears. Leaves rustled in the thick grass like small brown mice.
He found what he had been halfway looking for behind the church tower, beneath a spreading oak.
“The family,” said a voice behind him, “seems to have been more than ordinarily blessed and cursed.”
Startled, Kincaid turned. Contemplating the headstone, the vicar stood with his hands clasped loosely before him and his feet spread slightly apart. The wind whipped his vestments against his legs and blew the strands of thinning, gray hair across his bony skull.
The inscription said simply: MATTHEW ASHERTON, BELOVED SON OF GERALD AND CAROLINE, BROTHER OF JULIA. “Did you know him?” Kincaid asked.
The vicar nodded. “In many ways an ordinary boy, transformed into something beyond himself by the mere act of opening his mouth.” He looked up from the headstone and Kincaid saw that his eyes were a fine, clear gray. “Oh yes, I knew him. He sang in my choir. I taught him his catechism, as well.”
“And Julia? Did you know Julia, too?”
Studying Kincaid, the vicar said, “I noticed you earlier, a new face in the congregation, a stranger wandering purposefully about among the headstones, but you did not seem to me to be a mere sensation seeker. Are you a friend of the family?”
In answer Kincaid removed his warrant card from his pocket and opened the case. “Duncan Kincaid. I’m looking into the death of Connor Swann,” he said, but even as he spoke he wondered if that were now the entire truth.
The vicar closed his eyes for a moment, as if conducting a private communication, then opened them and blinked before fixing Kincaid with his penetrating stare. “Come across the way, why don’t you, for a cup of tea. We can talk, out of this damnable wind.”
“Brilliance is a difficult enough burden for an adult to bear, much less a child. I don’t know how Matthew Asherton would have turned out, if he had lived to fulfill his promise.”
They sat in the vicar’s study, drinking tea from mismatched mugs. He had introduced himself as William Mead, and as he switched on the electric kettle and gathered mugs and sugar onto a tray, he told Kincaid that his wife had died the previous year. “Cancer, poor dear,” he’d said, lifting the tray and indicating that Kincaid should follow him. “She was sure I’d never be able to manage on my own, but somehow you muddle through. Although,” he added as he opened the study door, “I must admit that housekeeping was never my strong suit.”
His study bore him out, but it was a comfortable sort of disorder. The books looked as if they might have leaped off the shelves, spreading out onto every available surface like a friendly, invading army, and the bits of wall space not covered by books contained maps.
Setting his mug on the small space the vicar had cleared for him on a side table, Kincaid went to examine an ancient-looking specimen which was carefully preserved behind glass.
“Saxton’s map of the Chilterns, 1574. This is one of the few that show the Chilterns as a whole.” The vicar coughed a little behind his hand, then added, out of what Kincaid thought must be a lifetime’s habit of honesty, “It’s only a copy, of course, but I enjoy it nonetheless. It’s my hobby-the landscape history of the Chilterns.
“I’m afraid,” he continued with an air of confession, “that it takes up a good deal more of my time and interest than it should, but when one has written a sermon once a week for close on half a century, the novelty pales. And these days, even in a rural parish like this one, for the most part our work is saving bodies, rather than souls. I can’t remember when I’ve had someone come to me with a question of faith.” He sipped his tea and gave Kincaid a rather rueful smile.
Kincaid, wondering if he looked as though he needed saving, smiled back and returned to his chair. “You must know the area well, then.”
“Every footpath, every field, or close enough.” Mead stretched out his legs, exhibiting the trainers he had slipped into upon returning to the house. “My feet must be nearly as well traveled as Paul’s on the road to Damascus. This is an ancient countryside, Mr. Kincaid-ancient in the sense the term is used in landscape history, as opposed to planned countryside. Although these hills are part of the calcareous backbone that underlies much of southern England, they’re much more heavily wooded than most chalk downlands-this, and the layer of clay with flints in the soil, kept the area from extensive agricultural development.”
Kincaid cradled his warm mug in both hands and positioned his feet near the glowing bars of the electric fire, prepared to listen to whatever dissertation the vicar might offer. “So that’s why so many of the houses here are built from flints,” he said, remembering how incongruous the pale smooth limestone walls of Badger’s End had seemed, glowing in the dusk. “I’d noticed, of course, but hadn’t carried the thought any further.”
“Indeed. You will also have noticed the pattern of fields and hedgerows in the valleys. Many can be traced back to pre-Roman times. It is the ‘Immanuel’s Land’ of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, ‘…a most pleasant mountainous country, beautiful with woods, vineyards, fruits of all sorts; flowers also with springs and fountains; very delectable to behold.’
“My point, Mr, Kincaid,” continued the vicar, twinkling at him, “lest you grow impatient with me, is that although this is a lovely countryside, a veritable Eden, if you will, it is also a place where change occurs slowly and things are not easily forgotten. There has been a dwelling of some sort at Badger’s End since medieval times, at the least. The facade of the present house is Victorian, though you wouldn’t think it to look at it, but some of the less visible parts of the house go back much further.”
“And the Ashertons?” Kincaid asked, intrigued.
“The family has been there for generations, and their lives are very much intertwined with the fabric of the valley. No one who lives here will forget the November that Matthew Asherton drowned-communal memory, you might say. And now this.” He shook his head, his expression reflecting a genuine compassion unmarred by any guilty pleasure in another’s misfortune.
“Tell me what you remember about that November.”
“The rain.” The vicar sipped his tea, then pulled a crumpled, white handkerchief from his breast pocket and gently patted his lips. “I began to think quite seriously about the story of Noah, but spirits sank as the water rose and I remember doubting my parishioners would find a sermon on the subject very uplifting. You’re not familiar with the geography of the area, are you, Mr. Kincaid?”
Kincaid assumed the question to be rhetorical, as the vicar had gone to his desk and begun rooting among the papers even as he spoke, but he answered anyway. “No, Vicar, I can’t say that I am.”
The object of the search proved to be a tattered Ordnance Survey map, which the vicar unearthed with obvious delight from beneath a pile of books. Opening it carefully, he spread it before Kincaid. “The Chiltern Hills are a legacy of the last Ice Age. They lie across the land at a horizontal angle, from the northeast to the southwest, do you see?” He traced a darker green oblong with his fingertip. “The north side is the escarpment, the southern the dip-slope, with valleys running down it like fingers. Some of these valleys bear rivers-the Lea, the Bulbourne, the Chess, the Wye, and others-all tributaries of the Thames. In others the springs and surface-flow only break out when the water table reaches the surface-during the winter or other times of particularly heavy rain.” Sighing, he gave the map a gentle tap with a forefinger before folding it again. “Hence their name-winterbournes. It’s quite pretty, isn’t it? Very descriptive. But they can be treacherous in flood, and that, I’m afraid, was the downfall of poor young Matthew.”
“What exactly happened?” asked Kincaid. “I’ve only really heard the story secondhand.”
“The only one who will ever know exactly what happened is Julia, as she was with him,” said the vicar, with an attention to detail worthy of a policeman. “But I’ll do my best to piece it together. The children were walking home from school and took a familiar shortcut through the woods. The rain had given us a brief respite, for the first time in days. Matthew, indulging in some horseplay along the bank of the stream, fell in and was caught by the current. Julia tried to reach him, going dangerously far into the water herself, and, failing, ran home for help. It was too late, of course. I think it quite likely that the boy had stopped breathing before Julia left him.”
“Did Julia tell you the story herself?”
Mead nodded as he sipped his tea, then set his cup down and continued. “In bits and snatches, rather less than coherently, I’m afraid. You see, she was quite ill afterward, what with the shock and the chill. No one thought to see to her until hours later, and she’d been soaked to the skin. Even that was Mrs. Plumley’s doing-the parents were entirely too distraught to remember her at all.
“She developed pneumonia. It was touch and go for a bit.” Shaking his head, he held his hands out toward the electric fire, as if the memory had made him cold. “I visited her every day, taking it in turn with Mrs. Plumley to sit with her during the worst of it.”
“What about her parents?” asked Kincaid, feeling the stirrings of outrage.
Distress creased the vicar’s gentle face. “The grief in that house was as thick as the water that drowned Matthew, Mr. Kincaid. They had no room in their minds or hearts for anything else.”
“Not even their daughter?”
Very quietly, almost to himself, Mead said, “I think they couldn’t bear to look at her, knowing that she was alive and he was not.” He met Kincaid’s eyes, adding more briskly, “There now, I’ve said more than I should. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of it, and Connor’s death has brought it all back.”
“There’s more you’re not telling me.” Kincaid sat forward in his chair, not willing to let the matter drop.
“It’s not my place to pass judgment, Mr. Kincaid. It was a difficult time for everyone concerned.”
Kincaid translated that as meaning that Mead thought the Ashertons had behaved abominably, but wouldn’t allow himself to say so. “Sir Gerald and Dame Caroline are certainly solicitous of their daughter now.”
“As I said, Mr. Kincaid, it was all a very long time ago. I’m only sorry that Julia has had another such loss.”
A movement at the window caught Kincaid’s eye. The wind had raised a dervish of leaves on the vicar’s lawn. It spun for a moment, then collapsed. A few leaves drifted toward the window, lightly tapping the panes. “You said you knew Matthew, but you must have come to know Julia quite well, actually.”
The vicar swirled the dregs of his tea in his mug. “I’m not sure anyone knows Julia well. She was always a quiet child, watching and listening where Matthew would plunge into things. It made the rare response from her all the sweeter, and when she took an interest in something it seemed genuine, not merely the latest enthusiasm.”
“And later?”
“She did talk to me, of course, during her illness, but it was a hodgepodge, childish delirium. And when she recovered she became quite withdrawn. The only time I had a glimpse of the child I knew was at her wedding. She had that glow that almost all brides have, and it softened the edges.” His tone affectionate, the vicar’s smile invited Kincaid’s understanding.
“I can almost imagine that,” Kincaid said, thinking of the smile he’d seen when Julia had opened the door to them, thinking it was Plummy. “You said you married them, Vicar? But I thought-”
“Connor was Catholic, yes, but he didn’t practice, and Julia preferred to be married here at St. Barts.” He nodded at the church, its distinctive double tower just visible across the lane. “I counseled Connor as well as Julia before the wedding, and I must say I had my doubts, even then.”
“Why was that?” Kincaid had developed a considerable regard for the vicar’s perceptions.
“In some odd way he reminded me of Matthew, or of Matthew as he might have been had he grown up. I don’t know if I can explain it… he was perhaps a bit too glib for my liking-with such outward charm it’s sometimes difficult to tell what runs beneath the surface. An ill-fated match, in any event.”
“Apparently,” Kincaid agreed wryly. “Although I’m a bit confused as to who wouldn’t divorce whom. Julia certainly seems to have grown to dislike Connor.” He paused, weighing his words. “Do you think she could have killed him, Vicar? Is she capable of it?”
“We all carry the seeds of violence, Mr. Kincaid. What has always fascinated me is the balance of the equation-what factor is it that allows one person to tip over the edge, and another not?” Mead’s eyes held knowledge accumulated over a lifetime of observing the best and worst of human character, and it occurred to Kincaid once again that their callings were not dissimilar. The vicar blinked and continued, “But to answer your question, no, I do not think Julia capable of killing anyone, no matter what the circumstances.”
“Why do you say ‘anyone,’ Vicar?” Kincaid asked, puzzled.
“Only because there were rumors at the time of Matthew’s death, and you are bound to hear them if you poke long enough under rocks. Open accusations might have been refutable, but not the faceless whispers in the dark.”
“What did they say, the whisperers?” Kincaid said, knowing the answer even as he spoke.
Mead sighed. “Only what you might expect, human nature being what it is, as well as being fueled by her sometimes obvious jealousy of her brother. They insinuated that she didn’t try to save him… that she might even have pushed him.”
“She was jealous of him, then?”
The vicar sat up a bit in his chair and for the first time sounded a bit irascible. “Of course she was jealous! As any normal child would have been, given the circumstances.” His gray eyes held Kincaid’s. “But she also loved him, and would never willingly have allowed harm to come to him. Julia did as much to save her brother as anyone could expect of a frightened thirteen-year-old, probably more.” He stood up and began collecting the tea things on the tray. “I don’t possess the temerity to call a tragedy like that an act of God. And accidents, Mr. Kincaid, are often unanswerable.”
Placing his mug carefully on the tray, Kincaid said, “Thank you, Vicar. You’ve been very kind.”
Mead stood, tray balanced in his hands, gazing out the window at the churchyard. “I don’t profess to understand the workings of fate. Sometimes it’s best not to, in my business,” he added, the twinkle surfacing again, “but I’ve always wondered. The children usually took the bus home from school, but they were late that day and had to walk instead. What kept them?”