Another few yards brought him to a clearing in which stood a redbrick cottage surrounded by a low-walled garden. On a sunny patch of lawn he saw a woman, her back to him, pacing and speaking to herself. She wore trousers and a pale blue cotton shirt, and her slender figure was almost boyish, an impression furthered by the short cropping of her auburn hair. She reached the end of her circuit and turned, then came to a surprised halt as she looked up and saw him standing at the bottom of her garden. As her face came into the sunlight, he saw that she was considerably older than he’d first thought, well past middle age, perhaps.
“Hullo,” he called. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m looking for someone called Burne-Jones.”
Coming forward, she rested her hands on the rusting, wrought-iron gate and examined him. “My name is Burne-Jones. What can I do for you?” Her face was pleasant and open, and her eyes, although on close inspection surrounded by a network of fine lines, were a bright and inquisitive blue.
Kincaid slipped his warrant card from his jacket and presented it. “My name’s Kincaid, with Scotland Yard. I’ve
some questions about the house”—he gestured back towards the way he had come—“and the people who stayed here during the war.”
“The war?” She frowned and took the card from his hand, scanning it carefully before handing it back. “What could you possibly—” Pausing, she looked back at the cottage, then seemed to come to a decision. “Right. Come in, Superintendent. I was about to make coffee.
“It’s just that I’ve a deadline,” she explained, looking back over her shoulder as he followed her into the house. “When I’m a bit stuck on something, I work it out in the garden.”
As they entered the front room of the cottage, he saw that the worktable set against the front window held a computer monitor and keyboard, and that a good portion of the pleasant room was filled with well-stuffed bookcases. “Are you a writer, Miss Burne-Jones?” he asked, taking in the comfort of the room, with its squashy, chintz furniture, worn Aubusson carpet, and robin’s-egg-blue walls. A large, new television and VCR were positioned to one side of the fireplace.
“A freelance political journalist. And you can dispense with the awkwardness—I’m Irene. Just have a seat and I’ll be back in a moment,” she added as she disappeared through a door he thought must lead to the kitchen. But instead of sitting, he had a look at the bookcases.
Irene Burne-Jones’s taste in reading matter was wide-ranging, with a concentration in British history and political biography, and he gathered from the number of volumes on him that she had a particular fondness for Winston Churchill.
He had removed William Manchester’s
The Last Lion
and was thumbing through it when Irene reentered with a tray. “Sorry,” she said as she pushed a stack of obviously unread newspapers aside to make room for the tray on the coffee table. “Things tend to accumulate when I’m finishing up an article. Do you like books, Mr. Kincaid?” She glanced at him as she poured coffee into mugs.
“Second nature. My parents own a bookshop,” he answered, returning the volume to its spot and taking a seat in the armchair.
“I’m not sure I’d have liked that,” Irene replied. “Taking books for granted, that is. My parents weren’t great readers, so I found books a revelation.” She added a dash of cream to her coffee and sat back, regarding him curiously. “Now, tell me how I can help you.”
“Did your family own the Hall during the war, Miss Burne—Irene?” he corrected himself.
Irene shook a cigarette from the packet of Dunhills on the table and lit it thoughtfully. “It belonged to my aunt Edwina. There were no surviving Haliburtons, so when she died she left the estate to my father, and upon his death it passed to me. I’m afraid our family has suffered the attrition of spinsters and childless marriages until I’m all that’s left of it.” The glance she gave him was wry and not the least self-pitying.
“And you sold it?”
“What else was I to do?” she said. “The very idea of living there was preposterous. This was in the mid-seventies; I had my life and my career in London, and the upkeep on the place had become prohibitive. You know what happens with these old houses. I kept the cottage as a weekend retreat—my lover at the time was married, so it came in quite handy.…” She gave him an amused glance, as if checking to see if she’d shocked him.
Suddenly wishing he’d known her a quarter of a century ago, he smiled at her, and she went on, “Then a few years ago I decided I’d had enough of the city and moved down here full-time. With a fax and a modem it’s not really necessary to be in the middle of things these days.”
“I believe your aunt Edwina had a boy staying here during the war, her godson. His name was William Hammond.”
“William?” Irene stared at him. “Why do you want to know about William? Has something happened to him?”
“You knew him?” Kincaid asked, his interest quickening.
“Well, of course.” Irene took an impatient drag on her cigarette. “I spent two and a half years of the war here myself, evacuated from London when our house was bombed. We were inseparable … William, Lewis, and I,” she said more softly. Then, raking Kincaid again with her bright blue glance, she ground her cigarette out in the ashtray. “Tell me what’s happened to William.”
“You won’t have seen it, then,” Kincaid said, with a gesture at the stack of unread papers. “It’s his youngest daughter, Annabelle, who had taken over as managing director of the firm. She’s been murdered.”
“Murdered?” Irene exclaimed. “How awful for him. But I don’t understand what that has to do with the Hall.”
Kincaid reached for his coffee before asking, “Did you mean Lewis Finch, a moment ago?”
“Yes, of course. But how would you know that?” Irene frowned. “And what has Lewis to do with William’s daughter?”
“He was having an affair with her, for a start.”
“Lewis? And William’s daughter?” She sounded astonished. And perhaps a bit amused? “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Annabelle Hammond not only had a relationship with Lewis, she sought out his son and seduced him—although I don’t imagine he gave her much argument.”
“She was beautiful?”
“Yes. But it wasn’t only that. She was a very strong personality, used to having her way.”
“Have you any idea why she took such an interest—if you want to call it that—in the Finches?”
“She was extremely curious about Lewis Finch, and that seems to have extended to members of his family. Did you know that Finch has been actively trying to buy William Hammond’s property the last few years?” Kincaid asked.
“No, but it doesn’t surprise me. The Hammond’s warehouse is just the sort of thing Lewis would snap up in a minute.”
“Apparently, Annabelle was as eager to sell as Lewis was to buy—she felt the warehouse was a liability to the future
of the firm, and that the profit from such a sale should be used to set up the business in more modern and cost-efficient premises downriver. The thorn in all this was William Hammond. He refused to consider a sale under any circumstances, and he still owned enough shares to block it unless all the other major shareholders voted against him.”
Irene leaned forward and tapped another Dunhill from the packet, then made a slow business of lighting it and extinguishing the match. “You’d think William would have seen that change was inevitable, but he was always a bit obsessive about Hammond’s. I suppose he was fortunate that one of his children inherited his passion for tea, if not for preserving the family heritage. His daughter’s death must have been a dreadful shock for him. And for poor Lewis, if he cared for her. Who’d have thought things would come to such a pass for any of us?” She sighed. “There were a few magic years when I thought we three could overcome anything.”
“During the war?”
“You have to understand our circumstances, Mr. Kincaid. Our friendship was so uncomplicated at first—we were so young, and we had all been removed from our homes, our security. We became family to one another. But we were growing up that last year, and things changed between us.”
“You fell in love with William,” guessed Kincaid.
“Oh, no. It wasn’t like that at all,” Irene said quietly, gazing out the casement of the sitting room window, where fat bees sampled the roses and lavender in the perennial bed. She looked up and met his eyes with her direct gaze. “You see, Superintendent, I fell in love with Lewis.”
“D
OODLEBUGS,” SAID
I
RENE
. “T
HAT’S WHAT
E
DWINA’S
friends at the War Office are calling them.” She kicked her heels against a hay bale outside Zeus’s stall, and the white
cotton shirt she was wearing above an old pair of Edwina’s jodhpurs looked luminous in the light of the barn. They had turned the horses out to graze on the lush June grass, then Irene had followed Lewis back into the barn with the determined expression that meant she had something to say
.
He looked up from forking the dirty straw out of the stall but didn’t answer. He supposed it had been too much to hope that the raids of the winter and spring would be the last Hitler could throw at them. But with the Allied invasion of Europe earlier in the month, they had begun to hear rumors of a German retaliation weapon, and three days ago had come the first serious assault on Greater London
.
“Everyone’s saying they’re really pilotless planes, and that you hear the engine stop just before they explode,” Irene continued, hugging herself as if the thought made her cold in spite of the summer warmth
.
“I’m still going home, bombs or no bombs. Anything’s better than that bastard digging at me all the time.” There was no need to say who he meant: the presence of Freddie Haliburton seemed to have worked its way into every nook and cranny of their lives
.
At first they’d thought Edwina would get over feeling sorry for him because of his injuries and begin to see him for what he was. But they learned soon enough that Freddie presented a different side to Edwina, and it seemed that she was too honest herself to suspect deception in others
.
Freddie was always watching the three of them, always eavesdropping, always ferreting out a weakness or the smallest misdeed as a target for his ruthless tongue. That morning he’d picked apart Lewis’s translation of Virgil with such vicious sarcasm that Lewis’s face had flamed from the humiliation of it, and when he’d protested, Freddie had pinched his earlobe so hard he’d nearly cried aloud. It was only Irene’s quick hand on his arm and a
quelling glance from William that had kept him in his seat, and he’d been simmering ever since
.
“Well, I think you’re bloody selfish, Lewis Finch.” Irene glared at him, her chin up. “We swore a blood pact, the three of us, that we’d stick together no matter what—”
Lewis jammed the fork into the straw. “It’s all right for you. He doesn’t call you a guttersnipe, and a … a barrow boy—”
“Why is that worse than him making fun of me because I’m a girl? We’re all in this, and it’s not been easy for William, either. You know how Freddie loves to tell him horrid stories about the war just because he knows how much they upset him.” She slid down the bale until her booted feet touched the ground and her face was almost on a level with his. “Sometimes I think you’re the only thing that keeps William from doing something really silly. You can’t just leave us—”
“You’d be all right; you and William will stick up for each other—”
“How can you be so bloody stupid, Lewis? I’m trying to tell you that I don’t want you to go. Can’t you see that?”
Baffled, he stared at her. Under the thin white shirt her chest was rising and falling quickly, and her blue eyes snapped with anger
.
“But …” His tongue refused to cooperate. “I don’t—”
Irene stretched up on tiptoe, placed her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him hard on the mouth. Then she stepped back and put her hands on her hips. “Now tell me you want to go.”
“I—” Lewis’s head spun with confusion and a rush of desire. For months he’d tried to ignore the way Irene had made him feel; he’d never dreamed it might be the same for her. “I—” he began again, then gave up trying to sort things out in words and reached for her. This time her lips were soft against his and he felt the pressure of her breasts against his chest
.
“Irene.” He pulled away with a groan. “What about William? If he sees us—”
“He won’t. He’s working on some project in the attic and he told me to sod off, it was none of my business.” She added, “This can be our secret,” as she kissed him again
.
Lewis felt he might drown in the pleasure of it, but he didn’t care. With his hands, he felt the curve of her back and the definition of her ribs, then the beginning of the swell of her breasts. So lost was he that it took a moment for the faint cough to register, and before he could react he heard Freddie say, “How sweet. Love amidst the hay.”
Lewis and Irene jumped apart as if shot and whirled towards the door. Freddie stood just inside, his shoulder propped against the jamb, his thumbs hooked through his braces. He stepped forward, smiling and shaking his head. “My, my. It’s a good thing I’m the one volunteered to look for you two, isn’t it? It might have been Edwina, and then where would we be?”
Beside Lewis, Irene drew a swift breath and opened her mouth, then shut it again with a sharp shake of her head
.
“Look,” said Lewis, anger overcoming his fear. “You won’t say anything to Edwina.”
Freddie’s smile grew wider, distorting the grotesque mask of his face. “Not unless it suits me,” he said, very softly, and the menace in his words made the hair rise on Lewis’s arms. “But just now she wants you inside, Lewis, and if I were you I’d pop along like a good lad.”
“I’m coming with you to the house,” said Irene as Lewis took a step towards Freddie, and taking Lewis by the elbow, she tugged him from the barn
.
“Don’t be stupid,” she hissed as they crossed the yard. “That’s just what he wants.”