loved Caro, you see, with all the blind, single-minded recklessness of youth. Or perhaps age has nothing to do with it… I don’t know. Our affair ended with Matthew’s conception. I wanted her to leave Gerald and marry me. I would have loved Julia as my own child.” Pausing, he finished his sherry and returned the glass to the tray with deliberate care. “It was a fantasy, of course. Caro was beginning a promising career, she was comfortably ensconced at Badger’s End with the backing of the Asherton name and money. What had I to offer her? And there was Gerald, who has never behaved less than honorably in all the years I’ve known him.
“One makes what adjustments one must,” he said, smiling at Gemma. “I’ve come to the conclusion that great tragedies are created by those who don’t make it through the adjustment stage. We went on. As ‘Uncle Tommy’ I was allowed to watch Matty grow up, and no one knew the truth except Caro and me.
“Then Matty died.”
Kincaid set his empty glass on the cocktail tray, and the click of glass against wood sounded loud as a shot in the silent room. Gemma gave him a startled glance—so focused had she been on Tommy that for a moment she had forgotten his presence. Neither of them spoke, and after a moment, Tommy continued.
“They shut me out. Closed ranks. In their grief Caro and Gerald had no room for anyone else’s. As much as I loved Matty, I also saw that he was an ordinary little boy, with an ordinary little boy’s faults and graces. The fact that he was also extraordinarily gifted meant no more to him than if he’d had an extra finger or been able to do lightning calculus in his head. Not so, Gerald and Caro. Do you understand that? Matty was the embodiment of their dreams, a gift God had sent them to mold in their own image.”
“So how did Kenneth come into this?” asked Gemma.
“My sister is not a bad sort. We all have our crosses—Kenneth is hers. Our mother died while she was still at school. I was barely making ends meet at the time and wasn’t able to do much for her, so I think she married Kenneth’s dad out of desperation. As it turned out, he stayed around just long enough to produce his son and heir, then scarpered, leaving her with a baby to look after as well as herself.”
Gemma saw an echo of her own marriage in Tommy’s account of his sister, and she shuddered at the thought that in spite of all her efforts, her own little son might turn out to be like Kenneth. It didn’t bear thinking of. She finished her sherry in one long swallow, and as the warmth spread to her stomach and suffused her face, she remembered she’d gone without breakfast that morning.
Tommy shifted in his chair and smoothed the fold of his dressing gown across his lap. The cat seemed to take that as an invitation, leaping easily up and settling herself under his hands. His long, slender fingers stroked her chocolate-and-cream fur, and Gemma found she could not force herself to see those hands wrapped around Connor’s throat. She looked up and met Tommy’s eyes.
“After Matty died,” he said, “I went to my sister and poured out the whole story. There was no one else.” Clearing his throat, he reached for the decanter and poured himself a little more sherry. “I don’t remember that time very clearly, you understand, and I’ve just been piecing things together myself. Kenneth can’t have been more than eight or nine, but I think he was born a sneak—possessive of his mother, always hiding and eavesdropping on adult conversations. I had no idea he was even in the house that day. Can you imagine how shocked I was when Connor told me what he had heard, and who had told him?”
“Why did Connor come to you?” asked Kincaid. “Did he ask for money?”
“I don’t think Connor knew what he wanted. He seemed to have got it into his head that Julia would have loved him if it hadn’t been for Matty’s death, and that if Julia had known the truth about Matty, things would have been different between them. I’m afraid he wasn’t very coherent. ‘Bloody liars,’ he kept saying, ‘They’re all bloody hypocrites.’” Tommy laced his fingers together and sighed. “I think Con had bought the Asherton family image lock, stock and barrel, and he couldn’t bear the disillusionment. Or perhaps he just needed someone to blame for his own failure. They had hurt him and he had been powerless, unable to nick even their armor. Kenneth put the perfect weapon into his waiting hands.”
“Couldn’t you have stopped him?” Kincaid asked.
Tommy smiled at him, undeceived by the casual tone. “Not in the way you mean. I begged him, pleaded with him to keep quiet, for Gerald’s and Caro’s sake, and for Julia’s, but that only seemed to make him angrier. In the end I even tussled with him, much to my shame.
“When I walked away from Connor I had made up my mind what to do. The lies had gone on long enough. Connor was right, in a sense—the deception had warped all our lives, whether we realized it or not.”
“I don’t understand,” said Kincaid. “Why did you think killing Connor would put an end to the deception?”
“But I didn’t kill Connor, Superintendent,” Tommy said flatly, weariness evident in the set of his mouth. “I told Gerald the truth.”
CHAPTER
15
Gemma started the Escort’s engine and let it idle while Kincaid buckled himself into the passenger seat. She had been silent all the way from Tommy’s flat down to the car. Kincaid glanced at her, feeling utterly baffled. He thought of the usual free give-and-take of their working relationship, and of dinner at her flat just a few nights ago, when they had shared such easy intimacy. At some level he had been aware of her special talent for forming bonds with people, but he had never quite formulated it. She had welcomed him into her warm circle, made him feel comfortable with himself as well as her, and he had taken it for granted. Now, having seen the rapport she’d developed with Tommy Godwin, he felt suddenly envious, like a child shut out in the cold.
She swatted at a spiraling wisp that had escaped her braid and turned to him. “What now, guv?” she said, without inflection.
He wanted urgently to repair the damage between them, but he didn’t quite know how to proceed, and other matters needed his immediate attention. “Hold on a tick,” he said, and dialed the Yard on the mobile phone. He asked a brief question and rang off. “According to forensics, Tommy Godwin’s flat and car were as clean as a whistle.” Feeling his way tentatively, he said, “Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my conclusions about Tommy. That’s more your style,” he added with a smile, but Gemma merely went on regarding him with a frustratingly neutral expression. He sighed and rubbed his face. “I think we’ll have to see Sir Gerald again, but first let’s have something to eat and see where we are.”
As Gemma drove he closed his eyes, wondering how he might mend their relationship, and why the solution to this case continued to elude him.
They stopped at a cafe in Golders Green for a late lunch, having rung Badger’s End and made sure that Sir Gerald would see them whenever they arrived.
