“Sir Gerald—”
The sitting room door opened and Caroline came in, followed by Julia. “What a perfectly horrid day,” said Caroline, shaking fine drops of water from her dark hair. “Superintendent. Sergeant. Plummy’s just coming with some tea. I’m sure we could all do with some.” She slipped out of her leather jacket and tossed it wrong-side-out over the sofa back, before sitting beside her husband. The deep red silk of the jacket’s lining rippled like blood in the glow from the fire.
Kincaid met Julia’s eyes and saw pleasure mixed with wariness. It was the first time he had seen her with her mother, and he marveled at the combination of contrast and similarity. It seemed to him as if Julia were Caroline stretched and reforged, edges sharpened and refined, with the unmistakable stamp of her father’s smile. And in spite of her tough mannerisms, her face was as transparent to him as his own, while he found Caroline’s unreadable.
“We’ve been to Fingest church,” said Julia, speaking to him as if there were no one else in the room. “Con’s mum would have insisted on a Catholic funeral and burial, with all the trappings, but it didn’t matter the least bit to Con, so I mean to do what seems right to me.” She crossed the room to warm her hands by the fire. Dressed for the outdoors, she wore a heavy oiled-wool sweater still beaded with moisture, and her cheeks were faintly pink from the cold. “I’ve been round the churchyard with the vicar, and I’ve picked a gravesite within a stone’s throw of Matty’s. Perhaps they’ll like being neighbors.”
“Julia, don’t be irreverent,” said Caroline sharply. Turning to Kincaid, she added, “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Superintendent?”
“I’ve just been telling Sir Gerald—”
The door swung open again as Plummy came through with a laden tea tray. Julia went immediately to her aid, and together they arranged the tea things on the low table before the fire. “Mr. Kincaid, Sergeant James.” Plummy smiled at Gemma, looking genuinely pleased to see her. “I’ve made extra, in case you’ve not had a proper lunch again.” She busied herself pouring, this time into china cups and saucers rather than the comfortable stoneware mugs they’d used in the kitchen.
Refusing the offer of freshly toasted bread, Kincaid accepted tea reluctantly. He looked directly at Gerald. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid we must go on with this.”
“Go on with what, Mr. Kincaid?” said Caroline. She had taken her cup from Plummy and returned to perch on the arm of the sofa, so that in spite of her small stature she seemed to hover protectively over her husband.
Kincaid wet his lips with a sip of tea. “The night Connor died, Dame Caroline, Tommy Godwin visited your husband in his dressing room at the Coliseum. He told Sir Gerald that he had just had a very unpleasant encounter with Connor. Although Connor was a little drunk and not terribly coherent, it eventually became clear that he had discovered the truth about Matthew’s parentage, and was threatening to make his knowledge public with as much attendant scandal as possible.” Kincaid paused, watching their faces. “Connor had discovered, in fact, that Matthew was Tommy’s son, not Gerald’s.”
Sir Gerald had sunk into the sofa cushions again, eyes closed, his hand only loosely balancing the cup on his knee.
“Tommy and Mummy?” said Julia. “But that means Matty…” She subsided, her eyes wide and dark with shock. Kincaid wished he could have softened it for her somehow, wished he could comfort her as he had yesterday.
Vivian Plumley also watched the others, and Kincaid saw in her the perpetual observer, always on the edge of the family but not privy to its deepest secrets. She nodded once and compressed her lips, but Kincaid couldn’t tell if her expression indicated distress or satisfaction.
“What utter nonsense, Superintendent,” said Caroline. She laid her hand lightly on Gerald’s shoulder. “I won’t have it. You’ve overstepped the bounds of good manners as well as—”
“I am sorry if it distresses you, Dame Caroline, but I’m afraid it is necessary. Sir Gerald, will you tell me exactly what you did after Connor left you that night?”
Gerald touched his wife’s hand. “It’s all right, Caro. There can’t be any harm in it.” He roused himself, sitting forward a little and draining his teacup before he began. “There’s not much to tell, really. I’d had quite a stiff drink with Tommy, and I’m afraid I kept on after he left. By the time I left the theater I was well over the limit. Shouldn’t have been driving, of course, very irresponsible of me, but I managed without mishap.” He smiled, showing healthy, pink gums above his upper teeth. “Well, almost without mishap. I had a bit of a run-in with Caro’s car as I was parking mine. It seems my memory misled me by a foot or so as to its position, and I gave the paintwork a little scrape on the near side. It must have been close on one o’clock when I wobbled my way up to bed. Caro was asleep. I knew Julia was still out, of course, as I hadn’t seen her car in the drive, but she’s long past having a curfew.” He gave his daughter an affectionate look.
“But I thought I heard you come in around midnight,” said Plummy. She shook her head. “I just opened my eyes and squinted at the clock—perhaps I misread it.”
Caroline slipped from the arm of the sofa and went to stand with her back to the fire. “I really don’t see the point to this, Superintendent. Just because Connor was obviously disturbed does not mean we should be subjected to some sort of fascist grilling. We’ve already been over this once—that should be enough. I hope you realize that your assistant commissioner will hear about your irrational behavior.”
She stood with her hands clasped behind her back and her feet slightly apart. In her black turtleneck, with fitted trousers tucked inside soft leather riding boots, she looked as though she might have been playing a trouser role in an opera. With her chin-length dark hair and in those clothes, she could easily pass for a boy on the verge of manhood. Her color was a little high, as befitted the hero/heroine under trying circumstances, but her voice, as always, was perfectly controlled.
“Dame Caroline,” said Kincaid, “Connor may have been emotionally distraught, but he was also telling the truth. Tommy admitted it, and Sir Gerald has confirmed it as well. I think it’s time—” He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Caroline’s jacket slid from the back of the sofa to the cushion with a rustling sound, the soft black leather as fluid as running water.
An odd sensation came over him, as if he had suddenly receded down a tunnel, distorting both his hearing and his vision. Blinking, he turned again to Caroline. Rearrange a few insignificant pieces in the pattern, and the whole thing shifted, turning on itself and popping into focus, clear and sharp and irrefutable. It amazed him now that he hadn’t seen it all from the beginning.
They were all watching him with various degrees of concern. Smiling at Gemma, who had frozen with her cup poised midway in the air, he set his own empty cup firmly upon the table. “It wasn’t the doorbell you heard that night, Mrs. Plumley, it was the telephone. And it wasn’t Gerald you heard coming in a few minutes after midnight, but Caroline.
