The Start of Everything (29 page)

Stephen’s prize watch was not among the inventory of objects in the house or on his body. Stephen’s friends agreed that he always wore it. It wasn’t one of them, though, who stirred things up around the fact. It was Andy, who’d seen me in the gents’ at the pub and known me for me.

It was enough to spark as rumour the same story our mother had formed. Daisy’s parents ran with it. They weren’t content with the verdict of accident; they wanted blame to be laid. Where better than on a living person who could be punished? They felt that the fire had been purposely set, and there was little satisfaction in blaming the dead.

They persuaded the police to talk with me about it, though I didn’t think they believed in the convoluted story of Stephen’s revenge. They asked me to prove I was George, which was surprisingly hard to do. Neither of us had had surgery. We each had a filling in the same tooth. Twins are not truly alike; we had our own fingerprints. But to what to compare them? We’d both been at home for Christmas. My room at Cambridge had been cleaned. Stephen’s house with Daisy was …

That was ten years ago. I returned to Cambridge and revelled in the work. At graduation, I gripped the Praelector’s third finger, knelt before the Vice-Chancellor, and basked in the Latin. The students who tick-box the option for generic words rather than the standard Christian formula are ignorant of the point of ceremony.

Mother guarded the watch and kept it secret. It was her treasure, supposedly proving that it was her favourite son who was alive. I let her think it; I needed her on my side. Dozens of people had seen the watch on “Stephen’s” arm that night. If it was found to have not been lost in the fire, the theory that George had died, not Stephen, would be given more weight. Along with the assumption that I, supposedly Stephen, had arranged it.

I began doctoral study at the Institute of Astronomy. I excelled. Back home, news of my achievement restarted the rumour that I was Stephen, having killed to take back my proper place in the order of things. My success was proof that I couldn’t really be me.

CHAPTER 25

CHLOE FROHMANN

T
he car park and grounds of the Leys school are thick with parents dropping off their teenagers for term. Suitcases, musical instruments, tennis racquets, and quick, intense hugs abound. I intercept an adult without children in the hope that she works there. She does, and she’s not happy to have that work interrupted.

Her glare flicks back and forth between my warrant-card photo and my face. Once satisfied, she demands, “Quickly, please. Today is not a good day.”

I ask if Drusilla Bennet has arrived. She knows her. “We have only one Drusilla. Perhaps you mean Dru Rodgers?”

That’s right; Ian Bennet’s her stepfather. “Yes, please,” I say.

She lifts her hand to her head like a showy prophet calling on second sight rather than plain old memory. “Yes. She dropped her bags in her room. She was here with her mother and sister.” She snaps out of it to editorialise: “Poor thing. Leukaemia, I think.”

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t eavesdrop. But it was impossible to refrain from hearing that they intended to visit the Botanic Garden.” She points with a pen. “Across the road.” Off I go.

Keene had told me something of what they look like. The girls are fifteen and thirteen, Dru with long fair hair, and Max in a similar wig. The mum has that “mum look.” That’s not how he said it. He said: conservative clothes, shoulder-length hair in a clip, harried. I did the translation to “typical mum” all by myself.

I swear at the tangle of paths through the garden; how am I to guess which way they’d gone? But the long views across lake, lawn, and beds allow me to cover more than one area at once. I’m looking for three women together; that’s distinct enough. My eyes skip anyone with toddlers, anyone alone, and every man.

I climb atop a rocky mound that hosts tenacious, colourful shrubs and mosses. I shade my eyes from the sun and scan the lawns. I spy them quickly from there.

Max’s shiny blond waves puddle on the ground where she sits. It’s thicker than real hair, or perhaps she’s just so thin it seems that way. Her mother crouches behind, winding hanks of it into thin, decorative plaits.

Dru leans back on her elbows, legs stretched. Her loose jeans and rugby shirt bunch up around her body. I don’t blame her for making the most of comfort; school uniform starts this week.

The clouds shift. Sunshine falls hard on them, as sudden and dense as a cloudburst. For a moment, they glow gold. Dru closes her eyes.

I put on my talking-to-minors voice for the girls, and hand my warrant card to Mrs. Bennet. “Hi, I’m from the police. I need to ask you a few questions about Grace Rhys.”

“Who?” Mrs. Bennet is flustered. “I thought you people were looking for … the nanny? Katja?” Yes, Keene had asked them in their car park this morning.

“Mum,
Grace
!” Max reminds her, twirling a slim braid and stabbing at it with a small daisy. It’s already fraught with little wildflowers and bits of grass.

“Oh! The other one. The Cambridge girl. Well, why don’t you go
and talk to her?” She lifts her open palms to indicate Cambridge all around us. “She doesn’t live at the house anymore.”

“Yes, I’m keen to know more about the day she left. That was the day it snowed.”

You might think it snows on us right now. The three of them freeze still for a moment.

“We weren’t home that day. We were in London,” says Mrs. Bennet.

Funny use of “we.” “All of you?”

Max says, “Me and Mum.”

Dru is digging a little hole in the grass with a stick. Mrs. Bennet snatches it. “Stop it, Dru. How do you think the gardener will feel?” She tosses the stick away towards the base of a tree.

“Dru, did you go into London that day?”

She shakes her head. Max strokes Dru’s hair, loosely plaiting it.

Mrs. Bennet’s voice rises. “Dru, use words! You’re not a toddler!” To me she says, “Do you have teenagers?” in commiseration.

“No,” I say, wondering how old she thinks I am. And what does it say about my upcoming motherhood that I identify much more with the surly daughter?

“We had a fight that day. We fight almost every day that we’re together, despite giving Dru
everything she ever asks for
.” She thrusts her face forward for each of those last five words, and finally gets the rise she’s looking for:

“We fight because you don’t listen! We fight because when I give you a real answer instead of a fake one, you get mad! We fight because you don’t
like
me!”

“Shhhh …” says Max, resting her head on Dru’s shoulder.

“Do you see what you do to your sister? Do you see?”

“I’m all right, Mum,” insists Max. She sounds tired.

This could go round for hours. “Dru, you stayed behind on the snowy day? Did you see Grace at all?”

“No.”

“Did you play outside, make snowmen, throw snowballs?” I try to sound upbeat.

“No.”

“You stayed in your flat?” This was key. If that’s the place the Finleys overheard, it’s essential to clarify who was in it.

Dru nods, which triggers Mrs. Bennet again. “What a waste! This is exactly what I’m talking about! Do you see, Dru, that your behaviour is a bigger problem than you and me not getting along? You have issues, Dru. It’s bad enough you shut out your own mother—but you shut out
life
!”

Dan had woken me up the day it snowed. We didn’t play outside, either. We watched it from bed, drinking hot chocolate, until we had to shovel around the car to get me to work. “Sometimes I don’t care for the cold myself, Mrs. Bennet.” I smile at Dru, but she looks at the ground, pulls up grass.

Mrs. Bennet grabs her hand. “I should think Ian’s hard work in the house and garden would give you more respect for what effort goes into maintenance.”

Speaking of … “Your stepfather was home that day as well? What was he doing?”

“Working,” says Mrs. Bennet. “He’s always working. The upkeep on the property requires constant attention.”

“Dru?” I say, as if the target of my question hadn’t been clear enough the first time.

“Working,” she agrees.

“Working on what? Something inside?”

“I thought this was about Grace,” says Mrs. Bennet.

Good catch, Mum
. I dial back the emphasis on her husband. “Yes, I’m trying to ascertain who interacted with her that day.”

“Well, apparently my daughter did not. Apparently my daughter holed up in her room and interacted with no one. As for my husband, you’ll have to ask him if he was shovelling, or cleaning, or renovating the new flat. Probably all three in turns.” She stands up and brushes loose grass off her tan trousers. “We’re not wealthy, you know. Ian sacrifices so that I don’t have to work. Before Ian, I barely had the time to be with …” She swallows. “Now I can look after my girls. Even if one doesn’t want me to.”

“Mum …” says Max, in the elongated whine of embarrassed teenagers.

Dru doesn’t say anything.

“Are you married, Inspector?” Mrs. Bennet asks me.

I say yes, even though Dan and I haven’t had the wedding yet.

Her lips split, showing me all the front teeth. Her cheeks squeeze her eyes. It has all the right ingredients but isn’t quite a smile. “Aren’t we
lucky
,” she says.

I follow them to the exit of the Botanic Garden. They stop to use the toilets, which gives me a chance to get ahead of them and position myself around the corner. Dru and Max link arms, while Mum leads them down Trumpington Street. They turn off into Brown’s.

This could take a while. Brown’s is for lingering. It’s a university-town chain that started in Oxford and became the go-to restaurant for parents visiting their little scholars. It’s a place for drinks, and multiple courses, and coffee after.

I lean against a brick wall and unwrap an energy bar.

I’m not sure how Grace fits into the family drama I’m getting into, but when something is this explosive, anyone near can get hurt.

I feel sick. Walking helps. I retrace the path back towards the Botanic Garden, and stop at the thick, octagonal monument to Hobson’s Conduit, marking the old path for fresh water into the city.

A spring-fed brook separates the traffic of Trumpington Road and the quiet streets alongside it. The water is subject to winter highs, summer lows, and periodic drain-downs for maintenance. It was during one of these that the bloody shirt and hammer had been found.

A teacher from Perse Girls, disgusted by what appeared to be rubbish, had pulled it out with a stick to throw it away. When she saw the stains, she brought it to the police. Her alarm was justified.

The stand-out discrepancy to me is:
If this came from killing Grace, why not dump it with the body?

Shirts can be tricky, though. I remember an old case where the killer had wiped every trace of his presence from inside the crime scene, then gone out for a drink with blood on his face. It’s easy to see everything yet forget oneself. If this killer only realised the blood on his shirt after the fact, then it makes sense he would want to avoid returning to the initial dump site.

This was the address that had got Keene excited, a three-storey,
grey-brick terraced house. It was like all its neighbours: six steps up to the front door, and a dugout front below, to give each basement a sunken patio six feet beneath pavement level. Front windows jutted out, each half a hexagon, stacked three-high to serve basement, ground, and first floors.

George Hart-Fraser. I don’t think much of that theory. Why dispose of something so obviously close to home? A dad dropping his stepdaughter off for term, on the other hand, might well feel safe here.…

Hillary Bennet and daughters will be a long time eating—if they’ve even got their food yet—so there’s no harm going down this rabbit hole. I can’t follow up on Ian Bennet until they’re done, and the mum and sister set off home. Dru won’t talk with her family present.

I follow through with Keene’s suggestion and ring George’s shrill bell. He’s an academic; he could well be at home at odd hours during the day.

A woman comes to the door. Curly black hair and dangling bead earrings accentuate her round face.