As much as she would have enjoyed spending an hour or two in the warmth of Hazel’s sitting room, Gemma felt a strong desire to be home alone with Toby, to reinforce her sense of their identity as a family. “Thanks, Hazel, but I’d better not. Toby will forget how to go to sleep in his own bed, and besides”—she patted the books in her lap—“I’ve got a lot of reading to do.”
Llangollen, Wales
30 September
1963 Dear Mummy
,
Please forgive me for giving you my news this way. It seems unfair at best, and cowardly at worst, especially when I know you wish only the best for me. But it all happened so suddenly, and we felt such a sense of urgency, that it seemed best to take the plunge and the conventions be damned
.
Morgan and I were married, yesterday, in the Cambridge registry office
.
I know what you’re thinking, darling Mummy, that we hardly know each other, that we’ve taken leave of our senses. But we’ve known
each other more than a year, even though it’s only in the last few months that we’ve discovered that we see life with the same passion and intensity; and that we have the same goal, to record this life honestly, and to live it as well as we can
.
And as for our senses, we’ve only just discovered them. Being with him makes me see things in ways I never imagined, and yet smell and taste and touch are magnified as if I were suddenly blind, and the beauty of the world round us is almost exquisitely painful. Oh, Mummy, his photographs will make your heart ache. He’s so brilliant, so talented, and I’m going to be his support and encouragement, as he will be mine
.
I’m writing poems that are searingly good, and Morgan’s shown me that the rest—all the academic pretensions and stultifying traditions of university life—are only impediments to doing our best work. We are neither of us going back next week for the beginning of term. We’re going to live instead, and practice our chosen vocations
.
We’ve found a tiny flat in Cambridge—little more than a bed-sit, really, but it’s ours—and we have already moved in our few bits and pieces. Morgan has an offer of a job as assistant at a photography studio in town, and while it’s the most boring of work (weddings, baby portraits, etc.), he will do it well, and it will give him the facilities to process his own photographs
.
Dr. Barrett has been most understanding, and has kindly offered to send some tutoring my way, and when I’m not working I am going to write and write and write
.
Don’t worry, Morgan’s very practical, and while we won’t be living in luxury we will make ends meet. And as long as we have food in our mouths and clothes on our backs, what else matters?
I promise you’ll love him, too, Mummy. His brooding dark looks conceal a wonderful sense of humor and the sort of kindness I’ve never met in anyone but you. He makes me feel adored, and safe
.
Be happy for me—
Lydia
CHAPTER
11
Would God, would God, you could be comforted.
R
UPERT
B
ROOKE
,
from a fragment
Adam found Nathan sitting in the sun in the garden, with a rug over his knees like an old man.
He walked across the lawn, his shoes leaving a dark trail in the silver-dewed grass, and hunkered down beside Nathan’s chair so that he could study his friend’s face. Pale, though not so pasty as yesterday, but his eyes were still dull as river pebbles left out to dry.
“How are you?” he asked gently.
“If you mean am I sober, the answer is yes,” said Nathan, then he sighed and looked away. “I’m sorry, Adam. Sit down.” He gestured at the other lawn chair. “If you want to know the truth, I feel as though an enormous wave has washed through me and left me weak and empty on the beach. It’s dull, and restful, and I wish it would last. But I don’t think it will.”
“No,” said Adam as he lowered himself into the canvas curve of the lawn chair, “I don’t suppose so. But the worst is over.”
“Is it? I rather think not.” Nathan shivered and pulled up the rug a bit. “Because now the bloody instinct for self-preservation has reared its ugly head, and oblivion would have been far preferable to going on. It’s too bad you had your friend Father Denny come and confiscate my shotgun.”
Adam had called the Grantchester vicar in a panic the previous
morning, asking him to go round and not only remove the gun, but stay with Nathan until he could get there himself. Unfortunately, Adam had two terminally ill parishioners who depended on his daily visits, but otherwise he had delegated his church duties so that he could be with Nathan as much as possible.
“Let me ring your daughters, Nathan,” pleaded Adam, as he had the day before. “It would do you good to have them here.”
“No.” Nathan shook his head. “I couldn’t bear to have them fussing over me. And they’d be a bit condescending with it, because they can’t imagine anyone over thirty feeling… what Vic and I…”
“Passion,” said Adam. “The young think they have a monopoly, and nothing but experience will disabuse them of it. We were the same.”
“Were we?” Glancing at Adam, Nathan said, “You felt that way about Lydia, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But age did temper it. You teach yourself to focus on other things, even to take pleasure in them. But still, I wished it had been me she’d called that last day. It took me a long time to forgive you for that.” Adam saw Nathan’s eyes widen in a surprise that mirrored his own. He hadn’t meant to tell Nathan that, not ever, and especially not now.
“I didn’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter now. But I always thought I might have changed her mind, or at least given her some comfort—”
“You think she’d have told
you
what she meant to do? Or that you’d somehow have divined it, when I didn’t?” said Nathan, with a spark of anger.
“Can’t you see her intention now, looking back?” asked Adam reasonably.
“No, I bloody well can’t.” Nathan pushed the tartan rug from his legs. “Vic asked me the same thing, but Lydia sounded perfectly ordinary that day, only perhaps a little excited about something, a bit urgent. And to think I was always glad you were spared—” Nathan broke off, and Adam thought that even now he found it difficult to talk about how he had found her.
In the silence, Adam became suddenly aware of the sparrows chirping in the hedge, and of the warmth of the sun on his face. After a moment, he said, “But it would have given me some sort
of… closure. You see, I understand how you felt… when you couldn’t see Vic.”
“Vic and Lydia,” said Nathan under his breath. “Lydia and Vic. They’re so intertwined now that sometimes I can’t separate what happened to one from the other.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” said Adam. “But it is odd that Vic should have a weak heart as well…” He thought again of his visit with Vic, and of what they’d talked about. “All those questions Vic asked about Lydia’s suicide—she didn’t believe in it, did she?”
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” said Chief Superintendent Denis Childs. “Or that I won’t yank you back here faster than you can blink if I get the least complaint of interference from the Cambridge force.” His chair creaked as he sat back and sighed. “Don’t be a bloody fool, man. I know Alec Byrne. He’s a good man, even if his predecessor may have been a bit of a slacker. Let him do his job.”
“I have no intention of keeping him from it,” Kincaid had said, and thanking his chief, had let himself out of Childs’s office. And it was true, he thought, as he picked up the M11 towards Cambridge. But it was also true that he had prior knowledge that Alec Byrne was not inclined to take seriously, and that he was bound by both duty and need to make use of it.
The bag containing Vic’s papers and manuscript sat beside him, wedged into the Midget’s passenger seat. He was happy enough now to turn them over to Byrne, for before he’d left the Yard last night he’d photocopied every single scrap of paper. Then he’d stayed up reading until he had some sense of what Vic had been doing.
The biography, though incomplete, was as seamless and as compelling as a novel. He’d followed Lydia, the solitary child, as she grew into an ambitious young woman, seen her give up scholarship, and, before his body had forced him to sleep, seen her marry. Vic’s intense and compassionate account of Lydia’s devotion to Morgan Ashby had made him wonder if Vic had once felt that way, too.
He intended to find out why Morgan Ashby had refused to see Vic. And he intended to see Vic’s friend and neighbor, Nathan Winter, but first he had better tackle Alec Byrne.
* * *
“I’d like to see the pathologist’s report, Alec,” he said, sitting once more in Byrne’s office. “I’ve been a good boy—surely you can have no objection.”
“And surely
you’ve
pushed the bounds of friendship and obligation far enough. You’ve interfered with my crime scene, for which I could have made official complaint, and on top of that you’ve been bloody rude and overbearing.”
This time Kincaid controlled his impulse to anger. Calling Byrne’s bluff would not get him what he wanted, but groveling very well might. “You’re right, Alec,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I’d think you’d have done the same in my position. Vic is dead, and I don’t have the luxury of good taste. What possible harm can it do to let me see the pathologist’s report? I might even be able to offer some helpful suggestions.”
Byrne hesitated, his long fingers steepled together under his chin. Finally, he said, “I’ll tell you what she said, and you’ll have to be satisfied with that. Dr. McClellan’s heart failed due to an overdose of some form of digitalis, as you know. The pathologist couldn’t hazard a guess as to when the poison was administered, because the different forms of digitalis have varied reaction times. Digitoxin is very quick acting, while digoxin, on the other hand, takes several hours. Most cases of digitalis poisoning result from therapeutic overdose rather than homicidal intent, but we’ve tracked down Dr. McClellan’s physician, and he confirms that she had no history of heart disease and was not currently taking any medication.”
“What medication did Lydia take?” Kincaid asked, wishing he could remember more of the detail from the file he’d read.
Byrne pulled another folder from his desk drawer, and Kincaid was glad to see that he had at least kept Lydia’s file at hand. “Let’s see,” Byrne muttered as he opened the folder and skimmed the pages, using his finger to mark his place. “Lydia took digoxin for a minor heart arrhythmia, although there’s a note here from the pathologist that digoxin is not usually the first choice for that condition, because the therapeutic dose is so near the toxic dose. If Lydia had not had a previous history of attempted suicide, he would have been inclined to rule it an accidental death.”
“But they can’t tell if Vic was given the same thing?”
Byrne steepled his fingers again. “No. Nor can we even be certain that Lydia Brooke actually died from an overdose of her own medication, even though digoxin was present in her body, because—as I understand it, and I’m no chemist—digoxin is one of the metabolic by-products of digitoxin.” He glanced at the report. “The twelve-hydroxy analog, to be exact, if that’s any help.”
“So basically what you’re telling me is that it all comes down to the same thing in the end,” said Kincaid. “Was there anything else?”
Switching folders, Byrne said, “Dr. McClellan had a trace of alcohol in her blood, but nothing else of interest that I can see.”
“So she might have had wine or beer with her lunch?” asked Kincaid. He didn’t remember that Vic had been fond of drinking during the day, but perhaps she’d changed her habits.
“Her stomach was empty, but that doesn’t necessarily tell us anything, as she’d have digested her lunch by that time anyway. We have yet to confirm where or with whom she had a meal.”
Kincaid refrained from saying that they’d had almost forty-eight hours, and just what exactly had they been doing? Instead he made an effort to say mildly, “And did you turn up anything in the garden?”
Byrne grimaced in disgust. “You’d think a herd of cows had been milling about on the river side of that sodding gate. We’ve taken a few casts, but I don’t expect much from them.”
More likely every busybody in the village, thought Kincaid, and any passerby curious enough to wonder what the villagers were gawking at. But he said noncommittally, “Mmmm. And the house?”
“Nothing of interest so far, although it looks as though Dr. McClellan might have meant to make herself a cup of tea when she … um, lost consciousness. According to the doc, she might have felt a headache coming on, or some nausea. If she hadn’t been alone, it’s quite possible she could have been saved.”
Kincaid closed his eyes for a moment. Dear God, he thought, don’t let Kit ever hear that. The child would carry enough guilt as it was. “What about time of death?” he asked. “Could the pathologist narrow it down at all?”
Smiling, Byrne said, “That’s about as likely as squeezing blood out of a turnip. Her son said he thought she was still breathing
when he found her at five o’clock, and I think we’ll have to take that as fact, at least for now.” He shuffled the papers back into their respective files. “The coroner held the inquest this morning, and I believe the family has asked the vicar to arrange a small memorial service, as the release of the body may be delayed indefinitely. They feel the boy needs some sort of closure.”
For once, Kincaid had to agree with his former in-laws, but he felt certain that any real consideration for Kit’s feelings came from Bob rather than Eugenia. “Do you know when they’ve scheduled the service?”
“I believe it’s Friday at one o’clock, in the church at Grantchester.”