Leave the Grave Green (21 page)

“And they weren’t true?”

“Not then.” She lifted her eyebrows and gave him a little flirtatious smile, challenging him.

“You’re telling me that Connor was jealous of
you
?”

Julia laughed, and the smile that transformed her thin face moved him in a way he couldn’t explain. “It’s so ironic, isn’t it? What a joke. Connor Swann, everyone’s favorite Lothario, afraid his own wife might be messing him about.” Kincaid’s consternation must have shown, because she smiled again and said, “Did you think I didn’t know Con’s reputation? I would have to have been deaf, dumb and blind not to.” Her mirth faded and she added softly, “Of course, the more I slipped away, the more women he notched on his braces. Was he punishing me? Or was he just looking for what I couldn’t give him?” She stared past Kincaid at the window he knew must be darkening.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” he said again, but this time gently.

“What?” She came back to him from her reverie. “Oh, the flat. I
was exhausted, in the end. I ran away. It was easier.” They looked at each other in silence for a moment, then she said, “You can see that, can’t you, Duncan?”

The words “ran away” echoed in his mind and he had a sudden vision of himself, packing up only the most necessary of possessions, leaving Vic in the flat they had chosen with such care. It had been easier, easier to start over with nothing to remind him of his failure, or of her. “What about your studio?” he said, shutting off the flow of memory.

“I’ve missed it, but I can paint anywhere, if I must.” She leaned back in the chair, watching him.

Kincaid thought back to his earlier interviews with her, trying to put a finger on the change he sensed. She was still sharp and quick, her intelligence always evident, but the brittle nervousness had left her. “It wasn’t easy for you, was it, those months you spent at Badger’s End?” She stared back at him, her lips parted, and he felt again that frisson along his spine that came with knowing her in a way more intimate than words.

“You’re very perceptive, Duncan.”

“What about Trevor Simons? Were you seeing him then?”

“I told you, no. There wasn’t anyone.”

“And now? Do you love him?” A necessary question, he told himself, but the words seemed to leave his lips of their own accord.

“Love, Duncan?” Julia laughed. “Do you want to split philosophical hairs over the nature of love and friendship?” She continued more seriously, “Trev and I are friends, yes, but if you mean am I in love with him, the answer is no. Does it matter?”

“I don’t know,” Kincaid answered truthfully. “Would he lie for you? You did leave the opening that night, you know. I have an independent witness who saw you go.”

“Did I?” She looked away from him, fumbling for the cigarette packet that had slipped under the chair. “I suppose I did, for a bit. It was rather a crush. I don’t like to admit it, but sometimes things like that make me feel a little claustrophobic.”

“You’re still smoking too much,” he said as she found the packet and lit another cigarette.

“How much is too much? You’re splitting hairs again.” Her smile held a hint of mischief.

“Where did you go, when you left the gallery?”

Julia stood up and went to the window, and he twisted around, watching her as she closed the blinds against the charcoal sky. Still with her back to Kincaid, she said, “I don’t like bare windows, once it’s dark. Silly, I know, but even up here I always feel someone might be watching me.” She turned to him again. “I walked along the River Terrace for a bit, had a breath of air, that’s all.”

“Did you see Connor?”

“No, I didn’t,” she answered, coming back to her chair. This time she curled herself into it with her legs drawn up, and as she moved the bell of her hair swung against her neck. “And I doubt I was gone more than five or ten minutes.”

“But you saw him earlier that day, didn’t you? At Badger’s End, after lunch, and you had a row.”

He saw her chest move with the quick intake of breath, as if she might deny it, but she only watched him quietly for a moment before answering, “It was such a stupid thing, really, such a petty little end note. I was ashamed.

“He came upstairs after lunch, bounding in like a great overgrown puppy, and I lit into him. I’d had a letter that morning from the building society—he’d not made a payment in two months. That was our arrangement, you see,” she explained to Kincaid, “that he could stay in the flat as long as he kept up the payments. Well, we argued, as you can imagine, and I told him he had to come up with the money.” Pausing, she put out the cigarette she’d left burning in the ashtray, then took another little breath. “I also told him he needed to think about making other arrangements. It was too worrying, about the payments, I mean… and things were difficult for me at home.”

“And he didn’t take that well?” Kincaid asked. She shook her head, her lips pressed together. “Did you give him a time limit?”

“No, but surely he could see that we couldn’t go on like that forever…”

Kincaid asked the question that had been bothering him from
the beginning. “Why didn’t you just divorce him, Julia? Get it over with, make a clean break. This was no trial separation—you knew when you left him that it couldn’t be mended.”

She smiled at him, teasing. “You of all people should know the law, Duncan. Especially having been through it yourself.”

Surprised, he said, “Ancient history. Are my scars still visible?”

Julia shrugged. “A lucky guess. Did your wife file against you?” When he nodded, she continued, “Did you agree to her petition?”

“Well, of course. There was no point going on.”

“Do you know what would have happened if you had refused?”

He shook his head. “I never thought about it.”

“She would’ve had to wait two years. That’s how long it takes to prove a contested divorce.”

“Are you saying that Connor refused to let you divorce him?”

“Got it in one, dear Superintendent.” She watched him as he digested this, then said softly, “Was she very beautiful?”

“Who?”

“Your wife, of course.”

Kincaid contrasted the image of Vic’s delicate, pale prettiness with the woman sitting before him. Julia’s face seemed to float between the blackness of her turtlenecked jersey and her dark hair, almost disembodied, and in the lamplight the lines of pain and experience stood out sharply. “I suppose you would say she was beautiful. I don’t know. It’s been a long time.”

Realizing that his rear had gone numb from sitting on the hard table edge, he pushed off with his hands, stretched and lowered himself to the Persian rug. He wrapped his arms around his knees and looked up at Julia, noticing how the difference in perspective altered the planes and shadows of her face. “Did you know about Con’s gambling when you married him?”

She shook her head. “No, only that he liked to go racing, and that was rather a lark for me. I’d never been—” She laughed at his expression. “No, really. You think I had this very sophisticated and cosmopolitan upbringing, don’t you? What you don’t understand is that my parents don’t do anything unless it’s connected with music.” She sighed, then said reflectively, “I loved the colors and
the movement, the horses’ grace and perfect form. It was only gradually that I began to see that it wasn’t just fun for Con, not in the sense it was for me. He’d sweat during the race, and sometimes I’d see his hands tremble. And then I began to realize he was lying to me about how much he’d bet.” Shrugging, she added, “After a bit I stopped going.”

“But Con kept betting.”

“Of course we had rows. ‘A harmless pastime’ he called it. One he deserved after the pressures at work. But it was only toward the end that it became really frightening.”

“Did you bail him out, pay his debts?”

Julia looked away from him, resting her chin on her hand. “For a long time, yes. It was my reputation, too, after all.”

“So this row you had last Thursday was old business, in a sense?”

She managed a small smile. “Put that way, yes, I suppose it was. It’s so frustrating when you hear yourself saying things you’ve said a hundred times before—you know it’s useless but you can’t seem to stop.”

“Did he say anything different when he left you? Anything that varied from the normal pattern of these arguments?”

“No, not that I can remember.”

And yet he had gone straight to Kenneth. Had he meant to borrow the money for the mortgage? “Did he say anything to you about going to London that afternoon, to the Coliseum?”

Julia lifted her head from her hand, her dark eyes widening in surprise. “London? No. No, I’m sure he didn’t. Why should he have gone to the Coli? He’d just seen Mummy and Daddy.”

The childish diminutives sounded odd on her lips, and she seemed suddenly young and very vulnerable. “I’d hoped you might tell me,” he said softly. “Did you ever hear Connor mention someone called Hicks? Kenneth Hicks?” He watched her carefully, but she only shook her head, looking genuinely puzzled.

“No. Why? Is he a friend?”

“He works for a local bookie, does some collecting for him, among other things. He’s also a nasty piece of work, and Connor
paid him large amounts of money on a regular basis. That’s why I came back, to have another look at Connor’s checkbook.”

“I never thought of looking through Con’s things,” Julia said slowly. “I’ve not even been in the study.” She dropped her head in both hands and said through her splayed fingers, “I suppose I was putting off the inevitable.” After a moment she raised her head and looked at him, her lips twisting with a mixture of embarrassment and bravado. “I did find some woman’s things in the bedroom and in the bath. I’ve packed them up in a box—I didn’t know what else to do with them.”

So Sharon had not come back. “Give them to me. I think I can return them to their rightful owner.” Although he read the question in her expression, she didn’t speak, and they regarded one another in silence. He sat near enough to touch her, and the desire came to him to raise his hand and lay the backs of his fingers against the hollow of her cheek.

Instead, he said gently, “He was seeing someone, you know. A quite steady arrangement, from the sound of it. She has a four-year-old daughter, and Con told her that he would marry her and look after them both, just as soon as you’d let him have a divorce.”

For a long moment Julia’s face went blank, wiped as clean of expression as a mannequin’s, then she gave a strangled laugh. “Oh, poor Con,” she said. “The poor, silly bastard.”

For the first time since Kincaid had met her, he saw her eyes film with tears.

Gemma finished her second packet of peanuts and licked the salt from the tips of her fingers. Looking up, she saw Tony watching her and smiled a little shamefacedly. “Starving,” she said by way of apology.

“Let me have the kitchen fix you something.” Tony seemed to have adopted her as his own personal responsibility and was even more solicitous than usual. “We’ve got lovely pork chops tonight, and a vegetarian lasagna.”

Surreptitiously, Gemma glanced at her watch beneath the level of the bar. “I’ll wait a bit longer. Thanks, Tony.” After leaving
Dame Caroline, she had driven to the pub and carried her case upstairs. Suddenly overcome by a wave of exhaustion, she’d stretched out on top of the duvet in her good clothes and slept deeply and dreamlessly for an hour. She’d awakened feeling cold and a little stiff, but refreshed. After a good wash and brush, she’d changed into her favorite jeans and sweater and gone down to wait for Kincaid.

Tony, polishing glasses at the far end of the bar, still kept an anxious eye on the level of cider in her glass. She had almost decided to let him refill it when he looked toward the door and said, “There’s your boss now, love.”

Kincaid slid onto the stool beside her. “Has Tony been plying you with drink?” He went on without waiting for an answer, “Good, because I’m going to ply you with food. Sharon Doyle told me that Connor favored the Red Lion in Wargrave—only place the food was up to his standards. I think we should suss it out for ourselves.”

“Will you be having a drink before you go, Mr. Kincaid?” asked Tony.

Kincaid looked at Gemma. “Hungry?”

“Famished.”

“Then we had better go straight on, Tony.”

Tony flapped his dishcloth at them. “Cheerio. Though if you don’t mind my saying so,” he added in a slightly affronted tone, “their food’s no better than ours.”

Having lavished reassurances upon Tony, they escaped to the car and drove to Wargrave in silence.

Only when they had settled at a table in the cheerful atmosphere of the Red Lion did Gemma say, “Tony said you had a message from Sergeant Makepeace. What did he want? Where have you been?”

Kincaid, intent on his menu, said, “Let’s order first. Then I’ll tell you. See anything you fancy? Gratin of haddock and smoked salmon? Prawns in garlic sauce? Chicken breast with red and green peppercorns?” He looked up at her, grinning, and she
thought his eyes looked unusually bright. “Con had it right—no shepherd’s pie or bangers and mash to be found here.”

“Are you sure our expenses will run to this?” Gemma asked.

“Don’t worry, Sergeant,” he said with exaggerated authority. “I’ll take care of it.”

Unconvinced, Gemma gave him a doubtful glance, but said, “I’ll have the chicken, then. And the tomato and basil soup for starters.”

“Going the whole hog?”

“Pudding, too, if I can find room for it.” She closed her menu and propped her chin on her hands. He had seated her with her back to the crackling fire and the warmth began to penetrate her sweater. “I feel I deserve it.”

The barman came round to them, his pad ready. He had a dishcloth tucked into his belt, dark, curling hair restrained in a pony-tail, and an engaging smile. “What will you have?”

Kincaid ordered the gratin for himself and added a bottle of American Fume Blanc. When they had finished the young man said, “Right, then. I’ll just turn this in to the kitchen.” As he slipped back behind the bar, he added, “My name’s David, by the way. Just give me a shout if you need anything else.”

Gemma and Kincaid looked at each other, brows raised, then she said, “Do you suppose the service is always this good, or is it just because it’s slow tonight?” She looked around the room. Only one other table was occupied—in the far corner a couple sat, heads bent close together.