The smell of disinfectant always reminded Kincaid of his school infirmary, where Matron presided over the bandaging of scraped knees and wielded the power to send one home if the illness or injury proved severe enough. The inhabitants of this room, however, were beyond help from Matron’s ministrations, and the disinfectant didn’t quite mask the elusive tang of decay. He felt gooseflesh rise on his arms from the cold.
A quick call to Thames Valley CID had directed them to High Wycombe’s General Hospital, where Connor Swann’s body awaited autopsy. The hospital was old, the morgue still a place of ceramic tiles and porcelain sinks, lacking the rows of stainless-steel drawers which tucked bodies neatly away out of sight. Instead, the steel gurneys that lined the walls held humped, white-sheeted forms with toe tags peeking out.
“Who was it you wanted, now?” asked the morgue attendant, a bouncy young woman whose name tag read “Sherry” and whose demeanor seemed more suited to a nursery school.
“Connor Swann,” said Kincaid, with an amused glance at Gemma.
The girl walked along the row of gurneys, flicking toe tags with her fingers as she passed. “Here he is. Number four.” She tucked the sheet down to his waist with practiced precision. “And a nice clean one he is, too. Always makes it a bit easier, don’t you think?” She smiled brightly at them, as if they were mentally impaired, then walked back to the swinging doors and shouted “Mickey” through the gap she made with one hand. “We’ll need some help shifting him,” she added, turning back to Kincaid and Gemma.
Mickey emerged a moment later, parting the doors like a bull charging from a pen. The muscles in his arms and shoulders strained the thin fabric of his T-shirt, and he wore the short sleeves rolled up, displaying an extra inch or two of bicep.
“Can you give these people a hand with number four, Mickey?” Sherry enunciated carefully, her nursery-teacher manner now mixed with a touch of exasperation. The young man merely nodded, his acne-inflamed face impassive, and pulled a pair of thin latex gloves from his back pocket. “Take all the time you want,” she added to Kincaid and Gemma. “Just give me a shout when you’ve finished, okay? Cheerio.” She whisked past them, the tail of her white lab coat flapping, and went out through the swinging doors.
They moved the few steps to the gurney and stood. In the ensuing silence Kincaid heard the soft expulsion of Gemma’s breath. Connor Swann’s exposed neck and shoulders were lean and well formed, his thick straight hair brown with a hint of auburn. Kincaid thought it likely that in life he had been one of those high-colored men who flushed easily in anger or excitement. His body was indeed remarkably unblemished. Some bruising showed along the left upper arm and shoulder, and when Kincaid looked closely he saw faint, dark marks on either side of the throat.
“Some bruising,” Gemma said dubiously, “but not the occlusion of the face and neck you’d expect with a manual strangulation.”
Kincaid bent over for a closer look at the throat. “No sign of a ligature. Look, Gemma, across the right cheekbone. Is that a bruise?”
She peered at the smudge of darker color. “Could be. Hard to tell, though. His face could easily have banged against the gate.”
Connor Swann had been blessed with good bone structure, thought Kincaid, high, wide cheekbones and a strong nose and chin. Above his full lips lay a thick, neatly trimmed, reddish mustache, looking curiously alive against the gray pallor of his skin.
“A good-looking bloke, would you say, Gemma?”
“Probably attractive, yes… unless he was a bit too full of himself. I got the impression he was quite the ladies’ man.”
Kincaid wondered how Julia Swann felt about that-she hadn’t impressed him as a woman willing to sit home meekly while her husband played the lad. It also occurred to him to wonder how much of his desire to see Connor had to do with assessing the physical evidence, and how much to do with his personal curiosity about the man’s wife.
He turned to Mickey and raised a questioning eyebrow. “Could we have a look at the rest?”
The young man obliged wordlessly, flipping the sheet off altogether.
“He’d been on holiday, but I’d say not recently,” Gemma commented as they saw the faint demarcation of a tan against belly and upper thighs. “Or maybe just summer boating on the Thames.”
Deciding he might as well imitate Mickey’s nonverbal style of communication, Kincaid nodded and made a rolling motion with his hand. Mickey slid both gloved hands beneath Connor Swann’s body, turning him with an apparent ease betrayed only by a barely audible grunt.
Wide shoulders, faintly freckled; a thin pale band on the neck bordering the hairline, evidence of a recent haircut; a mole where the buttock began to swell from the hollow of the back-all trivial things, thought Kincaid, but all proof of Connor Swann’s uniqueness. It always came, this moment in an investigation when the body became a person, someone who had perhaps liked pickle-and-cheese sandwiches, or old Benny Hill comedies.
“Had enough, guv?” Gemma said, sounding a bit more subdued than usual. “He’s clean as a whistle this side.”
Kincaid nodded. “Not much else to see. And nothing does us much good until we’ve traced his movements and got some estimate of time of death. Okay, Mickey,” he added, as the expression on the young man’s face indicated they might as well have been speaking in Greek. “I guess that’s it. Let’s look up Sherry Sunshine.” Kincaid looked back as they reached the door. Mickey had already turned Connor’s body and tidied the sheet as neatly as before.
They found her in a cubbyhole just to the left of the swinging doors, bent industriously over a computer keyboard, cheerful as ever. “Do you know when they’ve scheduled the post?” Kincaid asked.
“Um, let’s see.” She studied a typed schedule stuck to the wall with Sellotape. “Winnie can probably get to him late tomorrow afternoon or early the following morning.”
“Winnie?” Kincaid asked, fighting the absurd vision of Pooh Bear performing an autopsy.
“Dr. Winstead.” Sherry dimpled prettily. “We all call him that-he’s a bit tubby.”
Kincaid contemplated attending the postmortem with resignation. He had long ago got over any sort of grisly thrill at the proceedings. Now he found it merely distasteful, and the ultimate violation of human privacy sometimes struck him as unbearably sad. “You’ll let me know as soon as you schedule it?”
“Quick as a wink. I’ll do it myself.” Sherry beamed at him.
Out of the corner of his eye Kincaid saw Gemma’s expression and knew she’d rag him about buttering up the hired help. “Thanks, love,” he said to Sherry, giving her his full-wattage smile. “You’ve been a great help.” He waggled his fingers at her. “Cheerio, now.”
“You’re absolutely shameless,” said Gemma as soon as they were through the outer doors. “That poor little duck was as susceptible as a baby.”
Kincaid grinned at her. “Gets things done, though, doesn’t it?”
After a few unplanned detours due to her unfamiliarity with High Wycombe’s one-way system, Gemma found her way out of the town. Following Kincaid’s directions, she drove southwest, back into the hidden folds of the Chiltern Hills. Her stomach grumbled a bit, but they had decided that they should interview the Ashertons again before lunch.
In her mind she ran through Kincaid’s and Tony’s comments about the family, her curiosity piqued. She glanced at Kincaid, a question forming on her lips, but his unfocused gaze told her he was somewhere else entirely. He often got like that before an interview, as if it were necessary for him to turn inward before bringing that intense focus to bear.
She concentrated again on her driving, but she suddenly felt extraordinarily aware of his long legs taking up more than their share of the room in her Escort’s passenger compartment, and of his silence.
After a few minutes they reached the point where she had to make an unfamiliar turning. Before she could speak, he said, “Just here. Badger’s End lies about halfway along this little road.” His fingertip traced a faint line on the map, between the villages of Northend and Turville Heath. “It’s unmarked, a shortcut for the locals, I suppose.”
Ribbons of water trickled across the pavement where a stream bed ran down through the trees and intersected the narrow road. A triangular yellow road sign warned DANGER: FLOODING, and suddenly the story Gemma had heard of Matthew Asherton’s drowning seemed very immediate.
“Hard left,” Kincaid said, pointing ahead, and Gemma turned the wheel. The lane they entered was high-banked, just wide enough for the Escort to pass unscathed, and on either side thick trees arched until they met and intertwined overhead. It climbed steadily, and the high banks rose until the tree roots were at eye level. On the right, Gemma caught an occasional flash through the foliage of golden fields dropping down to a valley. On the left the woods crowded, darkly impenetrable, and the light filtering through the leafy canopy over the lane seemed green and liquid.
“Sledging,” Gemma said suddenly.
“What?”
“It reminds me of sledging. You know, bobsledding. Or the Olympic luge.”
Kincaid laughed. “Don’t accuse me of poetic fancy. Careful now, watch for a turning on the left.”
They appeared to be nearing the top of the gradient when Gemma saw a gap in the left-hand bank. She slowed and eased the car onto the leaf-padded track, following it on and slightly downhill until she rounded a bend and came into a clearing. “Oh,” she said softly, surprised. She’d expected a house built with the comfortable flint and timber construction she’d seen in the nearby villages. The sun, which had chased fitfully in and out of the cloud bank, found a gap, making dappled patterns against the white limestone walls of Badger’s End.
“Like it?”
“I’m not sure.” Gemma rolled down the window as she turned off the engine, and they sat for a moment, listening. Beneath the silence of the woods they heard a faint, deep hum. “It’s a bit eerie. Not at all what I imagined.”
“Just wait,” said Kincaid as he opened the car door, “until you meet the family.
Gemma assumed that the woman who answered the door must be Dame Caroline Stowe-good quality, tailored wool slacks, blouse and navy cardigan, short, dark, well-cut hair liberally streaked with gray-everything about her spoke of conservative, middle-aged good taste. But when the woman stared at them blankly, coffee mug poised halfway to her mouth, then said, “Can I help you with something?” Gemma’s certainty began to waiver.
Kincaid identified himself and Gemma, then asked for Sir Gerald and Dame Caroline.
“Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve just missed them. They’ve gone down to the undertakers for a bit. Making arrangements.” She transferred the coffee mug to her left hand and held out the right to them. “I’m Vivian Plumley, by the way.”
“You’re the housekeeper?” Kincaid asked, and Gemma knew from the less-than-tactful query that he’d been caught off guard.
Vivian Plumley smiled. “You might say that. It doesn’t offend me, at any rate.”
“Good.” Kincaid, Gemma saw, had recovered both aplomb and smile. “We’d like a word with you as well, if we may.”
“Come back to the kitchen. I’ll make some coffee.” She turned and led the way along the slate-flagged passage, then stepped back and let them precede her through the door at its end.
The kitchen had escaped modernization. While Gemma might sigh over photographs of gleaming space-age kitchens in magazines, she knew instinctively that they provided no emotional substitute for a room like this. Nubby braided rugs softened the slate floor, a scarred oak refectory table and ladder-backed chairs dominated the room’s center, and against one wall a red-enameled Aga radiated warmth and comfort.
“Sit down, why don’t you,” said Vivian Plumley, and gestured toward the table. Gemma pulled out a chair and sat, feeling tension she hadn’t been aware of flow out of her muscles. “Elevenses?” added Vivian, and Gemma shook her head quickly, fearing they’d lose control of the interview entirely, seduced by the room’s comfort.
Kincaid said, “No, thank you,” and seated himself, taking the chair at the table’s end. Gemma took her notebook from her bag and cradled it unobtrusively in her lap.
The drip coffeemaker worked as quickly as its expensive looks implied. It was only a few moments before the smell of fresh coffee began to fill the room. Vivian put together a tray with mugs, cream and sugar in silence, a woman enough at ease with herself not to make small talk. When the coffeemaker had finished its cycle, she filled the mugs and brought the tray to the table. “Do help yourself. And that’s real cream, I’m afraid, not dairy substitute. We have a neighbor who keeps a few Jerseys.”
“A treat not to be missed,” said Kincaid, pouring generously into his cup. Gemma smiled, knowing he usually drank it black. “Are you not the housekeeper, then?” he continued easily. “Have I put my foot in it?”
Vivian clinked her spoon around twice in her coffee cup and sighed. “Oh, I’ll tell you about myself, if you like, but it always sounds so dreadfully Victorian. I’m actually related to Caroline, second cousins once removed, to be exact. We’re as close to the same age as never-mind, and we were at school together.” She paused and sipped from her cup, then made a slight grimace of discomfort. “Too hot. We drifted apart, Caro and I, once we’d finished school. We both married, her career blossomed.” Vivian smiled.
“Then my husband died. An aneurysm.” The palms of her hands made a slapping sound as she brushed them together. “Just like that, he was gone. I was left childless, with no job skills and not quite enough money to get by. This was thirty years ago, mind you, when not every woman grew up with the expectation of working.” She looked directly at Gemma. “Quite different from your upbringing, I’m sure.”
Gemma thought of her mother, who had risen in the early hours of the morning to bake every day of her married life, then worked the counter in the shop from opening till closing. The possibility of not working never occurred to Gemma or her sister-it had been Gemma’s driving ambition for the work to be of her own choosing, not something done purely for the necessity of putting food on the table. “Yes, very different,” she said, in answer to Vivian Plumley’s statement. “What did you do?”
“Caro had two toddlers and a very demanding career.” She shrugged. “It seemed a sensible solution. They had room, I had enough money of my own not to be totally dependent on the family, and I loved the children as if…”
They were your own. Gemma finished the sentence for her, and felt a rush of empathy for this woman who seemed to have made the best of what life had dealt her. She ran her fingers along the tabletop, noticing faint streaks of color embedded in the wood’s grain.
Watching her, Vivian said fondly, “The children did everything at this table. They had most of their meals in the kitchen, of course. As much as their parents traveled, formal family dinners were a rare treat. School assignments, art projects-Julia did her first paintings here, when she was in grammar school.”
The children this… the children that… It seemed to Gemma as if time had simply stopped with the boy’s death. But Julia had been there afterward, alone. “This must all be very difficult for Julia,” she said, feeling her way into the subject delicately, “after what happened to her brother.”
Vivian looked away, grasping the table’s edge with one hand, as if she were physically restraining herself from getting up. After a moment, she said, “We don’t talk about that. But yes, I’m sure Con’s death has made life more difficult than usual for Julia. It’s made life difficult for all of us.”
Kincaid, who had been sitting quietly, chair pushed back a bit from the table, mug cradled in his hands, leaned forward and said, “Did you like Connor, Mrs. Plumley?”
“Like him?” she said blankly, then frowned. “It never occurred to me whether or not I should like Connor. He was just… Connor. A force of nature.” She smiled a little at her own analogy. “A very attractive man in many ways, and yet… I always felt a little sorry for him.”
Kincaid raised an eyebrow but didn’t speak, and Gemma followed his cue.
Shrugging, Vivian said, “I know it sounds a bit silly to say one felt sorry for someone as larger-than-life as Con, but Julia baffled him.” The gold buttons on her cardigan caught the light as she shifted in her chair. “He could never make her respond in the way he wanted, and he hadn’t any experience with that. So he sometimes behaved… inappropriately.” A door slammed in the front of the house and she cocked her head, listening. Half-rising from her chair, she said, “They’re back. Let me tell-”
“One more thing, please, Mrs. Plumley,” Kincaid said. “Did you see Connor on Thursday?”
She sank down again, but perched on the edge of her seat with the tentative posture of one who doesn’t intend staying long. “Of course I saw him. I prepared lunch-just cold salads and cheese-and we all ate together in the dining room.”
“All except Julia?”
“Yes, but she often works through luncheon. I took a plate up to her myself.”
“Did Connor seem his usual self?” Kincaid asked, his tone conversational, but Gemma knew from his still concentration that he was intent on her answer.
Vivian relaxed as she thought, leaning back in her chair again and absently tracing the raised flower pattern on her mug with her fingers. “Con was always teasing and joking, but perhaps it seemed a bit forced. I don’t know.” She looked up at Kincaid, frowning. “Quite possibly I’m distorting things after the fact. I’m not sure I trust my own judgment.”
Kincaid nodded. “I appreciate your candor. Did he mention any plans for later in the day? It’s important that we trace his movements.”
“I remember him glancing at his watch and saying something about a meeting, but he didn’t say where or with whom. That was toward the end of the meal, and as soon as everyone had finished I came in here to do the washing up, then went to my room for a lie-down. You might ask Caro or Gerald if he said something more to them.”
“Thank you. I’ll do that,” Kincaid said with such courtesy that Gemma felt sure it would never occur to Vivian Plumley that she’d just told him how to do his job. “It’s strictly a formality, of course, but I must ask you about your movements on Thursday night,” he added almost apologetically.
“An alibi? You’re asking me for an alibi for Connor’s death?” Vivian asked, sounding more surprised than offended.
“We don’t yet know exactly when Connor died. And it’s more a matter of building known factors-the more we know about the movements of everyone connected with Connor, the easier it becomes to see gaps. Logic holes.” He made a circular gesture with his hands.
“All right.” She smiled, appeased. “That’s easy enough. Caro and I had an early supper in front of the fire in the sitting room. We often do when Gerald’s away.”
“And after that?”
“We sat before the fire, reading, watching the telly, talking a little. I made some cocoa around ten o’clock, and when we’d finished it I went up to bed.” She added with a touch of irony, “I remember thinking it had been a particularly peaceful and pleasant evening.”
“Nothing else?” Kincaid asked, straightening up in his chair and pushing away his empty mug.
“No,” Vivian said, but then paused and stared into space for a moment. “I do remember something, but it’s quite silly.” When Kincaid nodded encouragement, she continued. “Just after I’d fallen asleep I thought I heard the doorbell, but when I sat up and listened, the house was perfectly quiet. I must have been dreaming. Gerald and Julia both have their own keys, of course, so there was no need to wait up for them.”
“Did you hear either of them come in?”
“I thought I heard Gerald around midnight, but I wasn’t properly awake, and the next thing I knew it was daybreak and the rooks were making a god-awful racket in the beeches outside my window.”
“Couldn’t it have been Julia?” Kincaid asked.
She thought for a moment, her brow furrowed. “I suppose it could, but if it’s not terribly late, Julia usually looks in on me before she goes up.”
“And she didn’t that evening?”
When Vivian shook her head, Kincaid smiled at her and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Plumley. You’ve been very helpful.”
This time, before rising, Vivian Plumley looked at him and said, “Shall I tell them you’re here?”
Sir Gerald Asherton stood with his back to the sitting room fire, hands clasped behind him. He made a perfect picture of a nineteenth-century country squire, thought Gemma, with his feet spread apart in a relaxed posture and his bulk encased in rather hairy tweeds. He even sported suede elbow patches on his jacket. The only things needed to complete the tableau were a pipe and a pair of hunting hounds sprawled at his feet.
“So sorry to have kept you waiting.” He came toward them, pumped their hands and gestured them toward the sofa.
Gemma found the courtesy rather disarming, and suspected it was meant to be.
“Thank you, Sir Gerald,” Kincaid said, returning it in kind. “And Dame Caroline?”
“Gone for a bit of a lie-down. Found the business at the undertakers rather upsetting, I’m afraid.” Sir Gerald sat in the armchair opposite them, crossed one foot over his knee and adjusted his trouser leg. An expanse of Argyle sock in autumnal orange and brown appeared between shoe and trouser cuff.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, Sir Gerald,” Kincaid smiled as he spoke, “it seems a little odd that your daughter didn’t take care of the arrangements herself. Connor was, after all, her husband.”
“Just so,” answered Sir Gerald with a touch of asperity. “Sometimes these things are best left to those not quite so close to the matter. And funeral directors are notorious for preying on the emotions of the newly bereaved.” Gemma felt a stab of pity at the reminder that this burly, confident man spoke from the worst possible personal experience.
Kincaid shrugged and let the matter drop. “I need to ask you about your movements on Thursday night, sir.” At Sir Gerald’s raised eyebrow, he added, “Just a formality, you understand.”
“No reason why I shouldn’t oblige you, Mr. Kincaid. It’s a matter of public record. I was at the Coliseum, conducting a performance of Pelleas and Melisande.” He favored them with his large smile, showing healthily pink gums. “Extremely visible. No one could have impersonated me, I assure you.”
Gemma imagined him facing an orchestra, and felt sure he dominated the hall as easily as he dominated this small room. From where she sat she could see a photograph of him atop the piano, along with several others in similar silver frames. She stood up unobtrusively and went to examine them. The nearest showed Sir Gerald in a tuxedo, baton in hand, looking as comfortable as he did in his country tweeds. In another he had his arm around a small dark-haired woman who laughed up at the camera with a voluptuous prettiness.
The photograph of the children had been pushed to the back, as if no one cared to look at it often. The boy stood slightly in the foreground, solid and fair, with an impish gap-toothed grin. The girl was a few inches taller, dark-haired like her mother, her thin face gravely set. This was Julia, of course. Julia and Matthew.
“And after?” she heard Kincaid say, and she turned back to the conversation, rather embarrassed by her lapse of attention.
Sir Gerald shrugged. “It takes a while to wind down after a performance. I stayed in my dressing room for a bit, but I’m afraid I didn’t take notice of the time. Then I drove straight home, which must have put me here sometime after midnight.”
“Must have?” Kincaid asked, his voice tinged with skepticism.
Sir Gerald held out his right arm, baring a hairy wrist for their inspection. “Don’t wear a watch, Mr. Kincaid. Never found it comfortable. And a nuisance taking it off for every rehearsal or performance. Always lost the bloody things. And the car clock never worked properly.”
“You didn’t stop at all?”
Shaking his head, Sir Gerald answered with the finality of one used to having his word taken as law. “I did not.”
“Did you speak to anyone when you came in?” Gemma asked, feeling it was time she put an oar in.
“The house was quiet. Caro was asleep and I didn’t wake her. I can only assume the same for Vivian. So you see, young lady, if it’s an alibi you’re after,” he paused and twinkled at Gemma, “I suppose I haven’t one.”
“What about your daughter, sir? Was she asleep as well?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say. I don’t remember seeing Julia’s car in the drive, but I suppose someone could have given her a lift home.”
Kincaid stood. “Thank you, Sir Gerald. We will need to talk to Dame Caroline again, at her convenience, but just now we’d like to see Julia.”
“I believe you know your way, Mr. Kincaid.”
“Good God, I feel like I’ve been dropped right in the bloody middle of a drawing room comedy.” Gemma turned her head to look at Kincaid as she preceded him up the stairs. “All manners and no substance. What are they playing at in this house?” As they reached the first landing, she stopped and turned to face him. “And you’d think these women were made of glass, the way Sir Gerald and Mrs. Plumley coddle them. ‘Mustn’t upset Caroline… mustn’t upset Julia,’” she hissed at him, remembering a bit belatedly to lower her voice.
Kincaid merely raised an eyebrow in that imperturbable manner she found so infuriating. “I’m not sure I’d consider Julia Swann a good candidate for coddling.” He started up the next flight, and Gemma followed the rest of the way without comment.
The door swung open as soon as Kincaid’s knuckles brushed it. “Bless you, Plummy. I’m star-” Julia Swann’s smile vanished abruptly as she took in their identity. “Oh. Superintendent Kincaid. Back so soon?”
“Like a bad penny,” Kincaid answered, giving her his best smile.
Julia Swann merely stuck the paintbrush she’d held in her hand over her ear and stepped back enough to allow them to enter. Studying her, Gemma compared the woman to the thin, serious child in the photo downstairs. That Julia was certainly visible in this one, but the gawkiness had been transmuted into sleek style, and the innocence in the child’s gaze had been lost long ago.
The shades were drawn up, and a pale, watery light illuminated the room. The center worktable, bare except for palette and white paper neatly masking-taped to a board, relieved the studio’s general disorder. “Plummy usually brings me up a sandwich about this time,” Julia said, as she shut the door and returned to the table. She leaned against it, gracefully balancing her weight, but Gemma had the distinct impression that the support she drew from it was more than physical.
A finished painting of a flower lay on the table. Gemma moved toward it almost instinctively, hand outstretched. “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said softly, stopping just short of touching the paper. Spare and sure in design, the painting had an almost oriental flavor, and the intense greens and purples of the plant glowed against the matte-white paper.
“Bread and butter,” said Julia, but she smiled, making an obvious effort to be civil. “I’ve a whole series commissioned for a line of cards. Upscale National Trust, you know the sort of thing. And I’m behind schedule.” Julia rubbed at her face, leaving a smudge of paint on her forehead, and Gemma suddenly saw the weariness that her smart haircut and trendy black turtleneck and leggings couldn’t quite camouflage.
Gemma traced the rough edge of the watercolor paper with a finger. “I suppose I thought the paintings downstairs must be yours, but these are quite different.”
“The Flints? I should hope so.” Some of the abruptness returned to Julia’s manner. She shook a cigarette from a pack on a side table and lit it with a hard strike of a match.
“I wondered about them as well,” Kincaid said. “Something struck me as familiar.”
“You probably saw some of his paintings in books you read as a child. William Flint wasn’t as well known as Arthur Rackham, but he did some marvelous illustrations.” Julia leaned against the worktable and narrowed her eyes against the smoke rising from her cigarette. “Then came the breastscapes.”
“Breastscapes?” Kincaid repeated, amused.
“They are technically quite brilliant, if you don’t mind the banal, and they certainly kept him comfortably in his old age.”
“And you disapprove?” Kincaid’s voice held a hint of mockery.
Julia touched the surface of her own painting as if testing its worth, then shrugged. “I suppose it is rather hypocritical of me. These keep me fed, and they supported Connor in the lifestyle to which he’d become accustomed.”
To Gemma’s surprise, Kincaid didn’t nibble at the proffered bait, but instead asked, “If you dislike Flint’s watercolors, why do they hang in almost every room in the house?”
“They’re not mine, if that’s what you’re thinking. A few years ago Mummy and Daddy got bitten by the collector’s bug. Flints were all the rage and they jumped on the bandwagon. Perhaps they thought I’d be pleased.” Julia gave them a brittle little smile. “After all, as far as they’re concerned, one watercolor looks pretty much like another.”
Kincaid returned her smile, and a look of understanding passed between them, as if they’d shared a joke. Julia laughed, her dark hair swinging with the movement of her head, and Gemma felt suddenly excluded. “Exactly what lifestyle did your husband need to support, Mrs. Swann?” she asked, rather too quickly, and she heard an unintended note of accusation in her voice.
Propping herself up on her work stool, Julia swung one black-booted foot as she ground the stub of her half-smoked cigarette into an ashtray. “You name it. I sometimes thought Con felt honor-bound to live up to an image he created-whiskey, women and an eye for the horses, everything you’d expect from your stereotypical Irish rogue. I wasn’t always sure he enjoyed it as much as he liked you to think.”
“Were there any women in particular?” Kincaid asked, his tone so lightly conversational he might have been inquiring about the weather.
She regarded him quizzically. “There was always a woman, Mr. Kincaid. The particulars didn’t concern me.”
Kincaid merely smiled, as if refusing to be shocked by her cynicism. “Connor stayed on in the flat you shared in Henley?”
Julia nodded, sliding off the stool to pull another cigarette from the crumpled packet. She lit it and leaned back against the table, folding her arms against her chest. The paintbrush still positioned over her ear gave her an air of slightly rakish industry, as if she might be a Fleet Street journalist relaxing for a brief moment in the newsroom.
“You were in Henley on Thursday evening, I believe?” Kincaid continued. “A gallery opening?”
“Very clever of you, Mr. Kincaid.” Julia flashed him a smile. “Trevor Simons. Thameside.”
“But you didn’t see your husband?”
“I did not. We move in rather different circles, as you might have guessed,” said Julia, the sarcasm less veiled this time.
Gemma glanced at Kincaid’s face, anticipating an escalating response, but he only answered lazily, “So I might.”
Julia ground out her cigarette, barely smoked this time, and Gemma could see a release of tension in the set of her mouth and shoulders. “Now if you don’t mind, I really must get back to work.” She included Gemma this time in the smile that was so like her father’s, only sharper around the edges. “Perhaps you could-”
“Julia.”
It was an old interrogation technique, the sudden and imperative use of the suspect’s name, a breaking down of barriers, an invasion of personal space. Still, the familiarity in Kincaid’s voice shocked Gemma. It was as if he knew this woman down to her bones and could sweep every shred of her artifice away with a casual flick of a finger.
Julia remained frozen in mid-sentence, her eyes locked on Kincaid’s face. They might have been alone in the room.
“You were only a few hundred yards from Connor’s flat. You could have stepped out for a smoke by the river, bumped into him, arranged to meet him later.”
A second passed, then another, and Gemma heard the rustle as Julia shifted her body against the worktable. Then Julia said slowly, “I could have. But I didn’t. It was my show, you see-my fifteen minutes in the limelight-and I never left the gallery at all.”
“And afterward?”
“Oh, Trev can vouch for me well enough, I think. I slept with him.”