I, Richard

This was part of the resilience of youth, he decided (somewhat pompously since he himself was not yet forty), and having spent fifteen years in pursuit of the criminal element, he allowed himself a moment wistfully watching Polly Simpson at work with her camera before retracing his steps to the group. He was crossing through the kitchen on his way to the buttery when the significance of what he'd just seen in the courtyard finally struck him. And even then it only struck him because he'd recalled more than once playing the pack mule for his former lover's photographic equipment, hearing her say more to herself than to him, “I'll need the twenty-eight millimeter to get this shot,” and then standing patiently by while she made the switch in her lenses.

More than that, he realised that all throughout the tour and before it-as he and Helen had made a circuit of the grounds among the other visitors to Abinger Manor-he'd seen a truth without actually registering what he was seeing. Which was so easy to do, he thought, when you don't consider the logic behind what's in front of your eyes.

He strode through the buttery. From there, he went out into the courtyard. So sure he was of what he was about to do that he dismissed the Germans and the two English families and waited in grim silence while they left the courtyard. When they had done so, he sought out Polly Simpson and without ceremony, he took the camera from her shoulder.

She protested with, “Hey! That's mine. What're you-”

He silenced her by opening the first of the film containers that were affixed to the strap of the camera. It was empty. As were the others. He said, “I've been noticing you taking pictures since we arrived. How many would you say you've exposed?”

She said, “I don't know. I don't keep count. I just keep taking them till I run out.”

“But you've brought no extra film, have you?”

“I didn't think I'd need it.”

“No? Curious. You began taking pictures the moment you stepped into the garden. You haven't stopped, except during the crisis in the gallery, I expect. Or did you photograph that as well?”

Emily Guy gasped. Sam Cleary said, “See here…” and would have gone further had his wife not clutched at his arm.

“What's this all about?” Victoria Wilder-Scott said. “Everyone knows Polly always takes pictures.”

“Indeed? With this lens?” Lynley asked.

“It's a macro zoom,” Polly said, and as Lynley grasped the lens forcefully, she cried, “Hey! Don't! That thing cost a mint.”

“Did it,” Lynley said. He twisted it off. He upended it smartly against the palm of his hand. Two pieces of silver tumbled out.

Several people gasped.

“A dummy,” Cleve Houghton said soberly.

And every eye in the courtyard went to Polly Simpson.

It was a sombre History of British Architecture class that returned to Cambridge late that evening. They were, of course, minus three of their members. What remained of Ralph Tucker was undergoing the postmortem knife while his widow made the most of her circumstances by accepting the hospitality of a solicitous Augusta, dowager countess of Fabringham, who was well aware of Americans' bent towards litigation at the drop of the hat and was eager to avoid a close encounter with any form of American jurisprudence. And Polly Simpson was in the custody of the local police, charged with the primary crime of murder and the secondary thwarted crime of burglary.

Polly Simpson was heavily on the minds of her fellow students, needless to say. And needless to say, they all felt rather differently about her.

Sam Cleary, for one, felt a perfect fool for having failed to recognize that Polly's fascination with him had in reality extended only as far as his knowledge of botany. She'd hung on his every word and story, it was true, but hadn't she guided him most towards his work, till she had what she needed from him: a poison she could put her hands on simply by taking a walk along the college backs in Cambridge.

Frances Cleary, for another, felt reassured. True, Ralph Tucker was dead so the cost was high, but she'd learned that her husband wasn't the object of young girls' fatal attraction that she'd thought he was, so she rested far more secure in her marriage. Secure enough, indeed, to allow Sam to ride home in the mini-coach right next to Emily Guy.

Emily Guy and Victoria Wilder-Scott felt disappointed and depressed by the day's events, but for different reasons. Victoria Wilder-Scott had just lost the first enthusiastic student she'd had in a summer session from America in years while Emily Guy had discovered that a pretty young girl, so much admired because she had no weakness for men, had a weakness for something else instead.

And the men themselves-Howard Breen and Cleve Houghton? They thought of Polly's arrest as a loss. For his part, Cleve mourned the fact that her arrest would put an end to his hopes of getting her to bed despite the twenty-seven years between their respective ages. And for his part, Howard Breen was happy to see the last of her… since her departure left Cleve Houghton available to him. After all, one could always hope, at the end of the day.

And that's what the Americans actually ended up learning in the History of British Architecture class that summer in Cambridge: Hope hadn't worked for Polly Simpson. But that's not to say it wouldn't work for the rest of them.

Introduction to The Surprise of His Life

The inspiration for this story came from a double homicide that caught my attention in the early 1990s. It received a great deal of publicity at the time and although the defendant was found not guilty of the charges, I spent a lot of time considering his potential for guilt and how, if indeed he committed the crime, the killing might have come about. Here's what I concluded:

Although there were two victims of that crime-a young man and a slightly older woman-it seemed to me that the wife was the target.

The husband was an obsessive man estranged from his wife. His life was dominated by thoughts of her, specifically with thoughts of how she had left him and, in leaving him, how she had humiliated him. He was a minor celebrity. In his mind, she was nothing. Yet she walked out on him and, to make matters worse, she no longer gave any indication that things might work out eventually between them. She'd initially said she wanted a cooling-off period because their relationship was so volatile. He'd agreed to that. But now she was talking about divorce and the d-word made him feel like a fool. Not only would he probably lose his kids-they had two of them, a boy and a girl-but a divorce was going to cost him a bucket and she didn't deserve a dime of what he had.

Thoughts like these began swarming in his mind until every hour of every day was torture for the husband. Only when he slept was he free from the wife and from her plans to take his kids, take his money, and no doubt hook up with some young stud… all at his expense. But even then, at night, the husband dreamed about her. And the thoughts during the day and the dreams at night were driving him so crazy, he thought he'd die if he couldn't do something about them.

It seemed to him that the only way to wipe her out of his mind was to kill her. She deserved it anyway. He'd always watched how she came on to men. She'd probably been unfaithful to him a dozen times already. She was a lousy wife and a lousy mother and he'd be doing his kids a favor at the same time as he'd be wiping her out of his mind if he just got rid of her.

So he laid his plans.

He and the wife lived no great distance apart. If he got his timing down to the second, he could zip over to her house, kill her, and be back at his own place…all within about fifteen minutes. Maybe less. But he knew that the cops would want him to account for every second on the night his wife was murdered, so he decided to set things up for a night when he had a flight to catch to another part of the country. To make things look even tighter, he'd phone a limousine to take him to the airport. Who the heck, he thought, would ever figure that a killer would off his wife barely a half hour before a limo was picking him up?