Dreaming of the Bones (7 page)

“I see you’ve given it up,” he said as he settled into the visitor’s chair.

“Had to, I’m afraid. Developed a bit of a spot on my lung.” Byrne shrugged a bony shoulder beneath an exquisitely tailored suit jacket. “Decided it wasn’t worth dying for.”

“You look well.” Kincaid meant it sincerely. A tall man, still as thin as he’d been when Kincaid had first known him, Byrne looked whippet fit. His reddish fair hair had receded above the temples, leaving him a pronounced and rather distinguished widow’s peak.

“I’m not too stubborn to admit that I feel better.” Byrne smiled. “I knew becoming a fanatic was the only way I Could do it, so I changed my diet and I started exercising—I’m rowing again, can you believe it? Joined a club.”

Byrne had been nonchalant concerning his Cambridge blue, but he’d also made sure it got about among his fellow rookies, and his athletic prowess had done much to alleviate their distrust of his upper-class background. The suspicion Byrne’s Cambridge degree had aroused seemed odd now, in this new era of educated policing, but it seemed to Kincaid that the man had always had an instinct for being ahead of his time.

“Thanks for seeing me, Alec. I know how busy you must be.”

“You know all too well, I’d imagine—and of course that makes me wonder what you’re doing
here
, but I’ll try to keep my curiosity in check. I’ve had the file you asked for brought up from the dungeon. I’d suggest you take it to the canteen and look at it while you
have a cuppa.” Byrne handed a folder across his desk to Kincaid. “But you owe me, old chap.”

“I’m sure you’ll find some suitable revenge.” Kincaid accepted the fat file and realigned the errant papers.

“You can buy me a pint when you’ve finished. I’m sure they’ll never miss me.”

“Privilege of rank?” Kincaid suggested.

Byrne answered in his most sardonic drawl. “Hardly worth it, otherwise, I dare say.”

“I see you didn’t handle Lydia Brooke’s case,” Kincaid said as he set two foaming pints of bitter on the table at The Free Press. The pub was tucked away in a residential street behind the station, and was, Byrne had informed him zealously, the only nonsmoking pub in Britain, at least as far as he knew.

“No, the Brooke case was Bill Fitzgerald’s, one of his last before he took his peptic ulcer and his pension off to a bungalow in Spain. He sends us a postcard occasionally.” Byrne raised his pint to Kincaid. “Cheers. May we someday do the same.”

“I’ll drink to that.” For the first time in years, Kincaid had a brief
vision of his
honeymoon with Vic in Majorca. Sun and rocks and scarlet bougainvillea climbing on stuccoed walls … He shook himself back to reality. “About Lydia Brooke—did you know her when you were at Cambridge?”

Byrne shook his head. “No, she left a few years before I came up, but I heard the occasional odd thing about her. I remember the case well enough, though. Just about this time of year, wasn’t it, five years ago? She died from an overdose of the medication she took for her heart arrhythmia, leaving everything to her ex-husband. It seemed a fairly obvious suicide, and it at least got her a mention on the local news. You know—’tragic death of award-winning Cambridge poet’—that sort of thing.”

Kincaid pulled his notebook from his breast pocket and flipped it open, then drank off a bit of his pint. He’d taken the bench, putting the wall at his back, and from where he sat he could see the day’s specials carefully lettered on the chalkboard over the bar. “Mushroom stroganoff,” it read, and “Courgette flan.” It followed, he
supposed, that a smoke-free pub would also be vegetarian. Glancing at the notebook, he said, “I understand that Brooke had a history of more violent suicide attempts.”

“She had a reputation as a bit of an hysteric, if I remember correctly. All part of the artistic persona.”

“What crap,” Kincaid said. “In my experience, artists are more likely to be driven like furies, and are a hell of a lot more disciplined than your average accountant.” He sat back and lifted his pint once more. “Do you remember the details of the previous attempts?”

Byrne shook his head. “Not really, except that they seem to have been rather elaborately staged, as was this one.”

“Yes … except there were one or two things about this one that seemed a bit odd to me. Her clothes, for instance.”

“Clothes? I don’t remember that there was anything unusual about them.”

“That’s the point. Lydia Brooke seems to have had a heightened sense of the dramatic, I will give you that.” Kincaid smiled at Byrne, then glanced again at his notes. “According to her file, there was music repeating on the stereo when her body was discovered, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, to be exact. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the piece at all, but I’d say it’s probably the most wrenchingly sad music I’ve ever heard.”

“I know the piece,” Byrne said. He closed his eyes for a moment, then hummed a few bars, keeping time with his finger. “And I’d be inclined to agree with you. It’s quite powerful stuff.”

“So picture this,” Kincaid continued. “She lay on the sofa in her study, arms crossed on her breast, a candle burning on the table beside her. In her typewriter there was a fragment of a poem about death, and the music playing.” He pushed his pint aside and leaned forwards. “But she was wearing khaki trousers and a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Eat Organic Food.’ She had dirt under her fingernails. For Christ’s sake, Alec, she’d been gardening. Are we to surmise that Lydia Brooke had a particularly difficult encounter with her herbaceous border and decided to end it all?”

Byrne tapped his long fingers on the tabletop. “I take your point. After she went to so much trouble to set the scene, you’d think she’d have worn something more suitable to the occasion.
But I think you’re stretching it a bit—suicides aren’t always so logical.”

Kincaid shrugged. “Perhaps. It just struck me, that’s all. I don’t suppose anyone checked to see if she’d left her gardening tools out?”

“Haven’t the foggiest. I wouldn’t be willing to wager on it.”

“Do you remember the statement of the man who found the body?”

“No,” Byrne answered, beginning to sound a bit exasperated. “I can’t say that I ever actually read the file. I only know what was circulating in the department at the time.”

Consulting his notes again, Kincaid said, “His name was Nathan Winter. He was a friend, apparently, as well as her literary executor. Brooke had rung him and asked him to come round, but when he arrived later that evening he found the porch dark. She didn’t answer when he rang the bell, so he tried the door and found it unlocked. Do you know if anyone ever found out why the light was out?”

Frowning, Byrne studied Kincaid. “I suspect where you’re going with this, and I think I’ve contained my curiosity long enough. Why this interest in a straightforward case that’s been closed for almost five years? Do you think we’re not capable of doing a job properly?”

“Oh, bollocks, Alec. You know perfectly well that’s not true, so don’t come the injured provincial with me. Besides, it wasn’t your case. You were the new boy on the block then, remember? And isn’t it just possible that old Bill was more interested in looking at travel brochures than in doing much digging on a case that came all wrapped up in a pink ribbon?”

For a moment Byrne seemed to be concentrating on placing his tankard in the exact center of his beer mat, then he looked up at Kincaid. “Even supposing you’re right—and I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far, mind you—why are you sticking your nose in?”

It was Kincaid’s turn to fiddle. He drew rings in the moisture on the tabletop, wishing he’d started as he meant to go on. Finally, he said, “It’s personal.” When Byrne merely raised his brows expectantly, Kincaid went on. “My ex-wife—her name is Victoria McClellan—is working on a biography of Brooke. She’s at All Saints’—a Fellow—and she lectures at the University as well,” he added quickly, as if Byrne had questioned her credentials.

“I see,” Byrne drawled. “She asked you to ferret out the details so she could use them in her book. And you agreed?”

Kincaid bridled at the mildly amused censure. “Not at all. I’d not have agreed to it, for one thing, and for another, I think scandal value is the last thing on Vic’s mind. Look, Alec, I know how it sounds, but Vic isn’t given to flights of fancy. I daresay she knows Lydia Brooke down to the color of her knickers, and she doesn’t believe Brooke committed suicide.”

“Murder?” Byrne laughed. “Tell that to the AC, with bells on. Just let me be there to see his face turn that lovely apoplectic purple.” His mirth subsiding, he looked pityingly at Kincaid. “Duncan, I can tell you now, you don’t stand a hope of getting the AC to reopen this case unless you come up with some new, absolutely incontrovertible physical evidence—or you get a confession.” He shook his head and eyed his friend ruefully. “And I’d say your chances of doing either are about on a par with the proverbial snowball’s.”

Kincaid stood outside the police station, watching squirrels chase one another across the green expanse of Parker’s Piece. Two young men played a desultory game of Frisbee with a mongrel dog, and a woman pushing a pram crossed the space slowly on the diagonal.

Reluctantly, Kincaid pulled his phone from his breast pocket and punched in Vic’s number. He supposed he might as well get it over with, see her while he was in Cambridge and tell her he’d done what he could. Alec Byrne was right, of course: a few unanswered questions were not going to arouse the local lads’ interest in an old case more conveniently let lie.

As he listened to the distant ringing, a cloud skittered across the sun, momentarily erasing the long afternoon shadows. He heard a click, then Vic’s voice, and so immediate and natural did she sound that it took him a moment to realize he’d reached her answer phone. At the beep he hesitated, then hung up without leaving a message. He glanced at his watch before again consulting his notebook. There might still be time to catch her at her office, but he realized she hadn’t given him the number. Glancing up, he saw a taxi rounding the corner. If he hurried, he might just make it in person.

*   *   *

A black cab delivered him swiftly to a Victorian house across the river. He stood a moment after paying the driver, regarding the sign near the gate that informed him that this was the
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE FACULTY OF ENGLISH, NO UNAUTHORIZED PARKING ALLOWED.
A heavy screen of evergreens partially concealed a graveled car park, but in a sheltered spot near the house he could see a battered Renault and an N registration Volvo. It looked as though he might find someone lingering past the stroke of five.

The gray-brick, peaked-roof house had seen grander days. Overgrown shrubbery and a swath of dead creeper across the facade gave it a desolate air, alleviated only by clean white trim round the windows and a glossy navy blue door. Kincaid knocked lightly, then turned the knob and stepped inside. He found himself in a small reception area that originally must have functioned as the entrance hall, and as he stood for a moment wondering which door he should try, the one on the left opened and a woman looked round the edge at him.

“Thought I heard someone come in, and I didn’t recognize the tread.” She smiled and came through into the hall, and he saw that she was plump and pleasant-looking, with wavy brown hair and glasses that slid down the bridge of her nose. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Um, I was hoping I might catch Dr. McClellan before she left for the day,” said Kincaid, wondering a bit late about the advisability of intruding unannounced into Vic’s life.

“Oh, too bad. You’ve just missed her by a few minutes. Kit had a soccer match this afternoon and she does like to be there if she can.” The woman held her hand out. “I’m Laura Miller, by the way, the department secretary. Can I give her a message?”

“Duncan Kincaid,” he said, shaking her hand. “Just tell her I dropped by, if you wouldn’t—” He paused as a door slammed above, then came the sound of quick, heavy footsteps on the stairs.

“Damn it, Laura, I can’t find that bloody fax anywhere. Are you sure it’s not gone out with the rubbish?” A man—large, leonine, and flushed with the high color that derives from quick temper—followed the voice round the last landing of the stairs. “You know what liberties Iris takes with other people’s papers, it’s a wonder
one ever finds any—” He stopped in midtirade as he reached the bottom of the stairs and saw Kincaid. “Oh, hullo. Sorry, sorry, didn’t know anyone else was about. You’d think we had pixies, the way things disappear in this place.” A lock of the thick gray-brown hair flopped over his brow as he gave Kincaid an apologetic grin. “And poor Laura bears the brunt of our frustration, I’m afraid.”

The secretary gave him a sharp look, but answered easily. “For once it is on Dr. Winslow’s desk, Dr. Eliot. But since it concerned the entire department…” She glanced at Kincaid, then amended whatever she’d been about to say. “I’ll just get it for you. I’m sure she won’t mind you taking care of it.”

With a smile for Kincaid, she slipped back into the office on the left and returned a moment later with a flimsy sheet of fax paper. “Iris Winslow is our Head of Department,” she explained. “We’ve been in a bit of a bother over a change in some of the University exam procedures. Dr. Eliot”—she nodded at the large man by way of introduction—“teaches the history of literary criticism, among other things. Dr. Eliot, this is Mr. Kincaid. He was asking after Vic.”

Kincaid felt the level of interest rise in the room as Eliot eyed him speculatively.

“You don’t say. Is it anything we can help with?” The urgent fax apparently forgotten, Eliot slipped a hand inside his jacket, resting it against his plum-colored knitted waistcoat in a vaguely Napoleonic gesture.

The waistcoat, Kincaid thought at second glance, looked to be cashmere, and the jacket Harris Tweed. Eliot and the secretary watched him expectantly, smiles hovering, eyes bright, and he had the sudden feeling he’d wandered into a tank of barracuda. “No, thanks. Please don’t trouble yourselves over it. I’ll just give her a ring.” He nodded and went out.

He walked slowly down West Road until he reached Queens’ Road again. The crossing light was red and he looked about him as he waited, hands in pockets. The way to the train station lay to his right, across the river. The carriages would be jam-packed this time of day, stuffy with the remnants of the afternoon’s warmth, and he found the prospect of fighting the crowds unappealing. He cursed
himself doubly for not bringing the car—as well as avoiding rush hour on British rail, it would have allowed him to drive to Grantchester and wait for Vic at her cottage.