“Breastscapes?” Kincaid repeated, amused.
“They are technically quite brilliant, if you don’t mind the banal, and they certainly kept him comfortably in his old age.”
“And you disapprove?” Kincaid’s voice held a hint of mockery.
Julia touched the surface of her own painting as if testing its worth, then shrugged. “I suppose it is rather hypocritical of me. These keep me fed, and they supported Connor in the lifestyle to which he’d become accustomed.”
To Gemma’s surprise, Kincaid didn’t nibble at the proffered bait, but instead asked, “If you dislike Flint’s watercolors, why do they hang in almost every room in the house?”
“They’re not mine, if that’s what you’re thinking. A few years ago Mummy and Daddy got bitten by the collector’s bug. Flints were all the rage and they jumped on the bandwagon. Perhaps they thought I’d be pleased.” Julia gave them a brittle little smile. “After all, as far as they’re concerned, one watercolor looks pretty much like another.”
Kincaid returned her smile, and a look of understanding passed between them, as if they’d shared a joke. Julia laughed, her dark hair swinging with the movement of her head, and Gemma felt suddenly excluded. “Exactly what lifestyle did your husband need to support, Mrs. Swann?” she asked, rather too quickly, and she heard an unintended note of accusation in her voice.
Propping herself up on her work stool, Julia swung one black-booted foot as she ground the stub of her half- smoked cigarette into an ashtray. “You name it. I sometimes thought Con felt honor-bound to live up to an image he created—whiskey, women and an eye for the horses, everything you’d expect from your stereotypical Irish rogue. I wasn’t always sure he enjoyed it as much as he liked you to think.”
“Were there any women in particular?” Kincaid asked, his tone so lightly conversational he might have been inquiring about the weather.
She regarded him quizzically. “There was always a woman, Mr. Kincaid. The particulars didn’t concern me.”
Kincaid merely smiled, as if refusing to be shocked by her cynicism. “Connor stayed on in the flat you shared in Henley?”
Julia nodded, sliding off the stool to pull another cigarette from the crumpled packet. She lit it and leaned back against the table, folding her arms against her chest. The paintbrush still positioned over her ear gave her an air of slightly rakish industry, as if she might be a Fleet Street journalist relaxing for a brief moment in the newsroom.
“You were in Henley on Thursday evening, I believe?” Kincaid continued. “A gallery opening?”
“Very clever of you, Mr. Kincaid.” Julia flashed him a smile. “Trevor Simons. Thameside.”
“But you didn’t see your husband?”
“I did not. We move in rather different circles, as you might have guessed,” said Julia, the sarcasm less veiled this time.
Gemma glanced at Kincaid’s face, anticipating an escalating response, but he only answered lazily, “So I might.”
Julia ground out her cigarette, barely smoked this time, and Gemma could see a release of tension in the set of her mouth and shoulders. “Now if you don’t mind, I really must get back to work.” She included Gemma this time in the smile that was so like her father’s, only sharper around the edges. “Perhaps you could—”
“Julia.”
It was an old interrogation technique, the sudden and imperative use of the suspect’s name, a breaking down of barriers, an invasion of personal space. Still, the familiarity in Kincaid’s voice shocked Gemma. It was as if he knew this woman down to her bones and could sweep every shred of her artifice away with a casual flick of a finger.
Julia remained frozen in mid-sentence, her eyes locked on Kincaid’s face. They might have been alone in the room.
“You were only a few hundred yards from Connor’s flat. You could have stepped out for a smoke by the river, bumped into him, arranged to meet him later.”
A second passed, then another, and Gemma heard the rustle as Julia shifted her body against the worktable. Then Julia said slowly, “I could have. But I didn’t. It was my show, you see—my fifteen minutes in the limelight— and I never left the gallery at all.”
“And afterward?”
“Oh, Trev can vouch for me well enough, I think. I slept with him.”
CHAPTER
4
“Division of labor,” Kincaid told Gemma as they stopped for a quick lunch at the pub in Fingest. “You see if you can confirm Sir Gerald’s alibi—that’ll allow you a night or two at home with Toby—and I’ll tackle Henley. I want to go over Connor Swann’s flat myself, and I want to have a word with—what did Julia say his name was? Simons, that was it—Trevor Simons, at his gallery. I’d like to know a bit more about Julia’s movements that night,” he added, and Gemma gave him a look he couldn’t interpret.
They finished their sandwiches under Tony’s watchful eye, then Gemma ran upstairs to pack her bag. Kincaid waited in the graveled carpark, jingling the change in his pockets and drawing furrows in the gravel with his toe. The Ashertons were very plausible, but the more he thought about it, the more difficult it became to make sense of what they had told him. They seemed to have been on close terms with a son-in-law their daughter barely tolerated, and yet they also seemed to go to great lengths to avoid confrontation with Julia. He made a
