Gemma started the Escort’s engine and let it idle while Kincaid buckled himself into the passenger seat. She had been silent all the way from Tommy’s flat down to the car. Kincaid glanced at her, feeling utterly baffled. He thought of the usual free give-and-take of their working relationship, and of dinner at her flat just a few nights ago, when they had shared such easy intimacy. At some level he had been aware of her special talent for forming bonds with people, but he had never quite formulated it. She had welcomed him into her warm circle, made him feel comfortable with himself as well as her, and he had taken it for granted. Now, having seen the rapport she’d developed with Tommy Godwin, he felt suddenly envious, like a child shut out in the cold.
She swatted at a spiraling wisp that had escaped her braid and turned to him. “What now, guv?” she said, without inflection.
He wanted urgently to repair the damage between them, but he didn’t quite know how to proceed, and other matters needed his immediate attention. “Hold on a tick,” he said, and dialed the Yard on the mobile phone. He asked a brief question and rang off. “According to forensics, Tommy Godwin’s flat and car were as clean as a whistle.” Feeling his way tentatively, he said, “Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my conclusions about Tommy. That’s more your style,” he added with a smile, but Gemma merely went on regarding him with a frustratingly neutral expression. He sighed and rubbed his face. “I think we’ll have to see Sir Gerald again, but first let’s have something to eat and see where we are.”
As Gemma drove he closed his eyes, wondering how he might mend their relationship, and why the solution to this case continued to elude him.
They stopped at a cafe in Golders Green for a late lunch, having rung Badger’s End and made sure that Sir Gerald would see them whenever they arrived.
Much to Kincaid’s satisfaction, Gemma ate her way steadily through a tuna sandwich without any of the reluctance she’d shown at breakfast. He finished his ham-and-cheese, then sipped his coffee and watched Gemma as she polished off a bag of crisps. “I can’t make sense of it,” he said when she had reached the finger-licking stage. “It can’t have been Gerald whom Con phoned from the flat. According to Sharon, Con made that call at a little after half-past ten, when Gerald was busy conducting a full orchestra.”
“He might have left a message,” said Gemma, wiping her fingertips with a paper napkin.
“With whom? Your porter would have remembered. Alison what’s-her-name would have remembered.”
“True.” Gemma tasted her coffee and made a face. “Cold. Ugh.” She pushed her cup away and folded her arms on the table-top. “It would make much more sense if Sir Gerald rang Con after Tommy had left.”
According to Tommy, Gerald had expressed neither shock nor outrage at his revelation. He gave Tommy a drink, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, then said as if to himself, “The worm ate Arthur’s empire from the inside, too, as he always knew it would.” Tommy had left him sitting slumped in his makeup chair, glass in hand.
“What if the call Sharon overheard had nothing to do with Connor’s murder? We have no proof that it did.” Kincaid drew speculative circles on the tabletop with the damp end of his spoon. “What if Con didn’t follow Sharon out of the flat? He didn’t tell her he meant to leave right away.”
“You mean that if Gerald had rung him after Tommy left, he might still have been there? And he might have agreed to meet him at the lock?” continued Gemma with a spark of interest.
“But we’ve no proof,” said Kincaid. “We’ve no proof of anything. This entire mess is like a pudding-as soon as you sink your teeth into it, it slides away.”
Gemma laughed, and Kincaid gave thanks for even a small sign of a thaw.
By the time they reached Badger’s End, the drizzle had evolved into a slow and steady rain. They sat for a moment in the car, listening to the rhythmic patter on roof and bonnet. Lamps were already lit in the house, and they saw a flick of the drape at the sitting room window.
“The light will be gone soon,” said Gemma. “The evenings draw in so early in this weather.” As Kincaid reached for the door handle, she touched his arm. “Guv, if Sir Gerald killed Connor, why did he want us in on it?”
Kincaid turned back to her. “Maybe Caroline insisted. Maybe his friend, the assistant commissioner, volunteered us, and he didn’t think he should protest.” Sensing her discomfort, he touched her fingers and added, “I don’t like this, either, Gemma, but we have to follow it through.”
They dashed for the house under the cover of one umbrella, and stood huddled together on the doorstep. They heard the short double ring as Kincaid pushed the bell, but before he could lift his finger, Sir Gerald opened the door himself. “Come in by the fire,” he said. “Here, take your wet things off. It’s beastly out, I’m afraid, and not likely to get any better.” He shepherded them into the sitting room, where a fire blazed in the grate, and Kincaid had a moment’s fancy that it was never allowed to go out.
“You’ll need something to warm you inside as well as out,” said Sir Gerald when they were established with their backs to the fire. “Plummy’s making us some tea.”
“Sir Gerald, we must talk to you,” said Kincaid, making a stand against the tide of social convention.
“I’m sorry Caroline’s out,” said Gerald, continuing in his hearty, friendly way as if there were nothing the least bit odd about their conversation. “She and Julia are making the final arrangements for Connor’s funeral.”
“Julia’s helping with the funeral?” asked Kincaid, surprised enough to be distracted from his agenda.
Sir Gerald ran a hand through his sparse hair, and sat down on the sofa. It was his spot, obviously, as the cushions had depressions that exactly matched his bulk, like a dog’s favorite old bed. Today he wore another variation of the moth-eaten sweater, this time in olive green, and what seemed to be the same baggy corduroys Kincaid had seen before. “Yes. She seems to have had a change of heart. I don’t know why, and I’m too thankful to question it,” he said, and gave them his engaging smile. “She came in like a whirlwind after lunch and said she’d made up her mind what should be done for Con, and she’s been putting us through our paces ever since.”
It would seem that Julia had made peace with Con’s ghost. Kincaid pushed the thought of her aside and concentrated on Gerald. “It’s you we wanted to see, sir.”
“Have you found something?” He sat forward a bit and scanned their faces anxiously. “Tell me, please. I don’t want Caroline and Julia upset.”
“We’ve just come from Tommy Godwin, Sir Gerald. We know why Tommy came to see you at the theater the night Connor died.” As Kincaid watched, Gerald sank back into the sofa, his face suddenly shuttered. Remembering the comment Sir Gerald had made to Tommy, Kincaid added, “You knew that Tommy was Matthew’s father all along, didn’t you, sir?”
Gerald Asherton closed his eyes. Under the jut of his eyebrows, his face looked impassive, remote and ancient as a biblical prophet’s. “Of course I knew. I may be a fool, Mr. Kincaid, but I’m not a blind fool. Have you any idea how beautiful they were together, Tommy and Caroline?” Opening his eyes, he continued, “Grace, elegance, talent-you would have thought they’d been made for one another. I spent my days in terror that she would leave me, wondering how I would anchor my existence without her. When things seemed to fizzle out between them with Matty’s conception, I thanked the gods for restoring her to me. The rest didn’t matter. And Matty… Matty was everything we could have wanted.”
“You never told Caroline you knew?” put in Gemma, disbelief evident in her tone.
“How could we have gone on, if I had?”
It had started, thought Kincaid, not with outright lies but with a denial of the truth, and that denial had become woven into the very fabric of their lives. “But Connor meant to wreck it all, didn’t he, Sir Gerald? You must have felt some relief when you heard the next morning that he was dead.” Kincaid caught Gemma’s quick, surprised glance, then she moved quietly to stand by the piano, examining the photographs. He left the fire and sat in the armchair opposite Gerald.
“I must admit I felt some sense of reprieve. It shamed me, and made me all the more determined to get to the bottom of things. He was my son-in-law, and in spite of his sometimes rather hysterical behavior, I cared for him.” Gerald clasped his hands and leaned forward. “Please, Superintendent, surely it can’t benefit Connor for all this past history to be raked over. Can’t we spare Caroline that?”
“Sir Gerald-”
The sitting room door opened and Caroline came in, followed by Julia. “What a perfectly horrid day,” said Caroline, shaking fine drops of water from her dark hair. “Superintendent. Sergeant. Plummy’s just coming with some tea. I’m sure we could all do with some.” She slipped out of her leather jacket and tossed it wrong-side-out over the sofa back, before sitting beside her husband. The deep red silk of the jacket’s lining rippled like blood in the glow from the fire.
Kincaid met Julia’s eyes and saw pleasure mixed with wariness. It was the first time he had seen her with her mother, and he marveled at the combination of contrast and similarity. It seemed to him as if Julia were Caroline stretched and reforged, edges sharpened and refined, with the unmistakable stamp of her father’s smile. And in spite of her tough mannerisms, her face was as transparent to him as his own, while he found Caroline’s unreadable.
“We’ve been to Fingest church,” said Julia, speaking to him as if there were no one else in the room. “Con’s mum would have insisted on a Catholic funeral and burial, with all the trappings, but it didn’t matter the least bit to Con, so I mean to do what seems right to me.” She crossed the room to warm her hands by the fire. Dressed for the outdoors, she wore a heavy oiled-wool sweater still beaded with moisture, and her cheeks were faintly pink from the cold. “I’ve been round the churchyard with the vicar, and I’ve picked a gravesite within a stone’s throw of Matty’s. Perhaps they’ll like being neighbors.”
“Julia, don’t be irreverent,” said Caroline sharply. Turning to Kincaid, she added, “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Superintendent?”
“I’ve just been telling Sir Gerald-”
The door swung open again as Plummy came through with a laden tea tray. Julia went immediately to her aid, and together they arranged the tea things on the low table before the fire. “Mr. Kincaid, Sergeant James.” Plummy smiled at Gemma, looking genuinely pleased to see her. “I’ve made extra, in case you’ve not had a proper lunch again.” She busied herself pouring, this time into china cups and saucers rather than the comfortable stoneware mugs they’d used in the kitchen.
Refusing the offer of freshly toasted bread, Kincaid accepted tea reluctantly. He looked directly at Gerald. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid we must go on with this.”
“Go on with what, Mr. Kincaid?” said Caroline. She had taken her cup from Plummy and returned to perch on the arm of the sofa, so that in spite of her small stature she seemed to hover protectively over her husband.
Kincaid wet his lips with a sip of tea. “The night Connor died, Dame Caroline, Tommy Godwin visited your husband in his dressing room at the Coliseum. He told Sir Gerald that he had just had a very unpleasant encounter with Connor. Although Connor was a little drunk and not terribly coherent, it eventually became clear that he had discovered the truth about Matthew’s parentage, and was threatening to make his knowledge public with as much attendant scandal as possible.” Kincaid paused, watching their faces. “Connor had discovered, in fact, that Matthew was Tommy’s son, not Gerald’s.”
Sir Gerald had sunk into the sofa cushions again, eyes closed, his hand only loosely balancing the cup on his knee.
“Tommy and Mummy?” said Julia. “But that means Matty…” She subsided, her eyes wide and dark with shock. Kincaid wished he could have softened it for her somehow, wished he could comfort her as he had yesterday.
Vivian Plumley also watched the others, and Kincaid saw in her the perpetual observer, always on the edge of the family but not privy to its deepest secrets. She nodded once and compressed her lips, but Kincaid couldn’t tell if her expression indicated distress or satisfaction.
“What utter nonsense, Superintendent,” said Caroline. She laid her hand lightly on Gerald’s shoulder. “I won’t have it. You’ve overstepped the bounds of good manners as well as-”
“I am sorry if it distresses you, Dame Caroline, but I’m afraid it is necessary. Sir Gerald, will you tell me exactly what you did after Connor left you that night?”
Gerald touched his wife’s hand. “It’s all right, Caro. There can’t be any harm in it.” He roused himself, sitting forward a little and draining his teacup before he began. “There’s not much to tell, really. I’d had quite a stiff drink with Tommy, and I’m afraid I kept on after he left. By the time I left the theater I was well over the limit. Shouldn’t have been driving, of course, very irresponsible of me, but I managed without mishap.” He smiled, showing healthy, pink gums above his upper teeth. “Well, almost without mishap. I had a bit of a run-in with Caro’s car as I was parking mine. It seems my memory misled me by a foot or so as to its position, and I gave the paintwork a little scrape on the near side. It must have been close on one o’clock when I wobbled my way up to bed. Caro was asleep. I knew Julia was still out, of course, as I hadn’t seen her car in the drive, but she’s long past having a curfew.” He gave his daughter an affectionate look.
“But I thought I heard you come in around midnight,” said Plummy. She shook her head. “I just opened my eyes and squinted at the clock-perhaps I misread it.”
Caroline slipped from the arm of the sofa and went to stand with her back to the fire. “I really don’t see the point to this, Superintendent. Just because Connor was obviously disturbed does not mean we should be subjected to some sort of fascist grilling. We’ve already been over this once-that should be enough. I hope you realize that your assistant commissioner will hear about your irrational behavior.”
She stood with her hands clasped behind her back and her feet slightly apart. In her black turtleneck, with fitted trousers tucked inside soft leather riding boots, she looked as though she might have been playing a trouser role in an opera. With her chin-length dark hair and in those clothes, she could easily pass for a boy on the verge of manhood. Her color was a little high, as befitted the hero/heroine under trying circumstances, but her voice, as always, was perfectly controlled.
“Dame Caroline,” said Kincaid, “Connor may have been emotionally distraught, but he was also telling the truth. Tommy admitted it, and Sir Gerald has confirmed it as well. I think it’s time-” He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Caroline’s jacket slid from the back of the sofa to the cushion with a rustling sound, the soft black leather as fluid as running water.
An odd sensation came over him, as if he had suddenly receded down a tunnel, distorting both his hearing and his vision. Blinking, he turned again to Caroline. Rearrange a few insignificant pieces in the pattern, and the whole thing shifted, turning on itself and popping into focus, clear and sharp and irrefutable. It amazed him now that he hadn’t seen it all from the beginning.
They were all watching him with various degrees of concern. Smiling at Gemma, who had frozen with her cup poised midway in the air, he set his own empty cup firmly upon the table. “It wasn’t the doorbell you heard that night, Mrs. Plumley, it was the telephone. And it wasn’t Gerald you heard coming in a few minutes after midnight, but Caroline.
“Connor rang this number from the flat a little before eleven o’clock. I think it likely that he was looking for Julia, but it was Caroline who answered the phone.” Kincaid rose and went to stand against the piano, so that he could face Caroline directly. “He couldn’t resist baiting you, could he, Caroline? You were the architect of the deception he felt had cost him his happiness, after all.
“You thought you could calm him down, make him see reason, so you said you’d meet him. But you didn’t want him making a scene in a public place, so you suggested somewhere you wouldn’t be overheard-what could have been more natural than your favorite walk along Hambleden Lock?
“You dressed quickly, I imagine in something quite similar to the things you’re wearing just now, and put on your leather jacket. The night was cold and damp, and it’s a good brisk walk from the carpark to the river. You slipped quietly out of the house, making sure not to wake Plummy, and when you reached the river you waited for Con at the beginning of the weir.”
He shifted his position a bit, putting his hands in his trouser pockets. They all watched him, as mesmerized as if he were a conjurer about to pull a rabbit from a hat. Julia’s eyes looked glazed, as if she were unable to assimilate a second shock so soon after the first.
“What happened then, Caroline?” he asked. Closing his eyes, he pictured the scene as he spoke. “You walked along the weir, and you argued. The more you tried to reason with Con, the more difficult he became. You reached the lock, crossing over it to the far side, and there the paved path ends.” He opened his eyes again and watched Caroline’s still, composed face. “So you stood with Connor on the little concrete apron just upstream of the sluicegate. Did you suggest turning back? But Con was out of control by that time, and the argument disintegrated into-”
“Please, Superintendent,” said Sir Gerald, “you really have gone too far. This is all absurd. Caro couldn’t kill anyone. She’s not physically capable-just look at her. And Con was over six feet tall and well built…”
“She’s also an actress, Sir Gerald, trained to use her body on the stage. It may have been something as simple as stepping aside when he rushed at her. We’ll probably never be certain of that, or know what actually killed Connor. From the results of the postmortem I think it likely he had a laryngospasm-his throat closed from the shock of hitting the water, and he died from suffocation without ever drawing water into his lungs.
“What we do know,” he said, turning back to Caroline, “is that help was less than fifty yards away. The lockkeeper was at home, he had the necessary equipment and expertise. And even had he not been available, there were other houses just a bit farther along the opposite bank of the river.
“Whether Connor’s fall into the river was an accident, or self-defense, or a deliberate act of violence, the fact remains that you are culpable, Dame Caroline. You might have saved him. Did you wait what seemed a reasonable time for him to come up again? When he didn’t surface, you walked away, drove home and climbed back into bed, where Gerald found you sleeping peacefully. Only you were a bit more flustered than you thought, and didn’t quite manage to leave your car exactly as it had been.”
Caroline smiled at him. “That’s quite an amusing fiction, Mr. Kincaid. I’m sure the chief constable and your assistant commissioner will find it most entertaining as well. You have nothing but circumstantial evidence and an overactive imagination.”
“That may be true, Dame Caroline. We will have forensics go over your car and your clothes, however, and there’s the matter of the witness who saw a man and, she assumed, a boy wearing a leather jacket on the weir walkway-she may recognize you in an identity parade.
“Whether or not we can build a case against you that will hold up in court, those of us here today will know the truth.”
“Truth?” said Caroline, at last allowing her voice to rise in anger. “You wouldn’t know truth if it came up and bit you, Mr. Kincaid. The truth is that this family will stand together, as we always have, and you can’t touch us. You’re a fool to think-”
“Stop it! Just stop it, all of you.” Julia rose from the sofa and stood shaking, her hands clenched and her face drained of color. “This has gone on long enough. How can you be such a hypocrite, Mummy? No wonder Con was furious. He’d bought your load of rubbish and taken on my share of it, too.” She paused for a breath, then said more evenly, “I grew up hating myself because I never quite fit into your ideal circle, thinking that if I’d only been different, better somehow, you would have loved me more. And it was all a lie, the perfect family was a lie. You warped my life with it, and you would have warped Matty’s, too, if you’d been given a chance.”
“Julia, you mustn’t say these things.” Sir Gerald’s voice held more anguish than when he’d defended his wife. “You’ve no right to desecrate Matthew’s memory.”
“Don’t talk to me about Matty’s memory. I’m the only one who really grieved for Matty, the little boy who could be rude and silly, and sometimes had to sleep with his light on because he was frightened of his dreams. You only lost what you wanted him to be.” Julia looked at Plummy, who still sat quietly on the edge of her seat, her back straight as a staff. “I’m sorry, Plummy, that’s unfair to you. You loved him-you loved both of us, and honestly.
“And Tommy-as ill as I was I remember Tommy coming to the house, and now I can understand what I only sensed then. He sat with me, offering what solace he could, but you were the only one who might have comforted him, Mummy, and you wouldn’t see him. You were too busy making high drama of your grief. He deserved better.”
In two lightning steps, Caroline crossed the space that separated her from Julia. She raised her open hand and slapped her daughter across the face. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that. You don’t know anything. You’re making a fool of yourself with this ridiculous scene. You’re making fools of us all, and I won’t have it in my house.”
Julia stood her ground. Even though her eyes filled with tears, she neither spoke nor lifted a hand to touch the white imprint on her cheek.
Vivian Plumley went to her and put an arm gently around her shoulders. She said, “Maybe it’s time someone made a scene, Caro. Who knows what might have been avoided if some of these things had been said long ago?”
Caroline stepped back. “I only meant to protect you, Julia, always. And you, Gerald,” she added, turning to him.
Wearily, Julia said, “You’ve protected yourself, from the very beginning.”
“We were all right as we were,” said Caroline. “Why should anything change?”
“It’s too late, Mummy,” said Julia, and Kincaid heard an unexpected note of compassion. “Can’t you see that?”
Caroline turned to her husband, hand out in a gesture of supplication. “Gerald-”
He looked away.
In the silence that followed, a gust of wind blew a spatter of rain against the window, and the fire flared up in response. Kincaid met Gemma’s eyes. He nodded slightly and she came to stand beside him. He said, “I’m sorry, Dame Caroline, but I’m afraid you’ll need to come with us to High Wycombe and make a formal statement. You can come in your own car, if you like, Sir Gerald, and wait for her.”
Julia looked at her parents. What judgment would she pass on them, wondered Kincaid, now that they had revealed themselves as all too fallibly human, and flawed?
For the first time Julia’s hand strayed to her cheek. She went to Gerald and briefly touched his arm. “I’ll wait for you here, Daddy,” she said, then she turned away and left the room without another glance at her mother.
When they had rung High Wycombe and organized the preliminaries, Kincaid excused himself and slipped out of the sitting room. By the time he reached the top landing he had to catch his breath, and he felt a welcome ache in his calves. He tapped lightly on the door of Julia’s studio and opened it.
She stood in the center of the room, holding an open box in her arms and looking about her. “Plummy’s cleaned up after me, can you tell?” she said as he came in.
It did look uncharacteristically clean and lifeless, as if the removal of Julia’s attendant clutter had stripped it of its heart.
“There’s nothing left I need, really. I suppose what I wanted was to say good-bye.” She gestured around the room with her chin. The mark of her mother’s hand stood out clearly now, fiery against the pale skin of her cheek. “I won’t be back here again. Not in the same way. This was a child’s refuge.”
“Yes,” said Kincaid. She would move on now, into her own life. “You’ll be all right.”
“I know.” They looked at one another and he understood that he would not see her again, that their coming together had served its purpose. He would move on now as well, perhaps take a leaf from Gemma’s book-she had been hurt, as he had, but she had put it behind her with the forthright practicality he so admired.
After a moment, Julia said, “What will happen to my mother?”
“I don’t know. It depends on the forensic evidence, but even if we turned up something fairly concrete, I doubt we’ll make anything stiffer than involuntary manslaughter stick.”
She nodded.
Near to the eaves as they were, the sound of the rain beating against the roof came clearly, and the wind rattled the windows like a beast seeking entrance. “Julia, I’m sorry.”
“You mustn’t be. You only did your job, and what you knew was right. You couldn’t violate your integrity to protect me, or my family. There’s been enough of that in this house,” she said firmly. “Are you sorry about what happened with us, as well?” she added, with a trace of a smile.
Was he sorry? For ten years he had kept his emotions safely, tightly reined, until he had almost forgotten how it felt to give another person access. Julia had forced his hand, made him see himself in the mirror of her isolation, and what he found frightened him. But probing beyond the fear, he felt a new and unexpected sense of freedom, even of anticipation.
He smiled back at Julia. “No.”