Gordon lay on his back, his eyes closed. He wore a tee shirt and jeans, his feet were bare, and a pair of boots rested neatly beside his clarinet case. Beneath his head, a folded jacket did duty as a pillow. The sun came out from behind the clouds, and the dappled light filtering through the leaves of the nearest plane tree played along his face and body.
Slowly, Gemma crossed the grass and stood over him. Sam lifted his head, and at the dog’s movement, Gordon opened his eyes and looked up at her. “What fair vision is this?” he asked, straight-faced.
“What are you doing here?” Gemma said.
“Not up to sparkling repartee today, are we?” He sat, lifting his arms above his head and cracking his intertwined knuckles in a stretch. “It’s a free park, i’nt it, lady? I could ask you the same. Join me?”
Gemma looked round as if a chair might materialize, then sank to her knees. “I need to talk to you.”
Gordon nodded in the direction of the musicians. “I’m waiting a turn at this pitch, so I’m all yours as long as the band plays.”
Although still mocking, he seemed more relaxed today than Gemma had seen him before.
“What is it?” he asked, looking at her more closely. “Are you all right?”
Surprised by his tone of concern, she stammered, “I … Yes, of course I’m all right, but—”
“Then sit down properly,” he ordered. “You look like a sprinter at the blocks.” She obeyed gingerly, but before she could cross her legs, Gordon laid a hand on her outstretched ankle. “And take your shoes off. You can’t sit in the grass with your shoes on.” He grasped her sandal by the heel and slid it free as Gemma jerked her foot back, protesting.
“I can’t sit here in the park barefoot with you. It’s not—What would—”
“What are you so afraid of, Sergeant?” He glanced up at her as he lifted her other foot and slipped the shoe off. “You can charge me with assaulting an officer, if it makes you feel better.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she retorted, but she didn’t retrieve her sandals.
Gordon wrapped his arms round his knees, regarding her impassively, while Sam got up and repositioned himself against Gordon’s hip with a sigh. “You said you wanted to grill me?”
“I didn’t mean—” Gemma bit off the rest of her protest. “All right,” she said, tucking her bare feet under her in a cross-legged position. “Did you know that Annabelle had an affair with her sister’s husband?”
The expression on his face told her he was taken aback. “No. I told you—she didn’t talk about herself. And I expect that’s the last thing she’d have told me.” He seemed to hesitate, then said, “Was it … Do you know when?”
“Some time ago. It broke up her sister’s marriage, and apparently he—Martin Lowell—blamed Annabelle.”
“That’s his name?” he asked, frowning. The upward slant of his brows echoed the sharp angle of his cheekbones. “She never mentioned him. But what has this to do with anything?”
“Her fiance found out about her affair with Lowell on Friday night, at her sister’s party.”
“But if her sister’s already divorced, it must have been before Annabelle was engaged to him—what’s his name?”
“Reg Mortimer.”
“So why get his knickers in a twist?”
“Maybe he knew, or guessed, that there was someone else. And he thought that if she could betray her own sister, why not him? Then he saw her with you, in the tunnel.…”
“Are you saying you think he waited for her? That he killed her?”
“It’s a possibility, but so far the evidence doesn’t seem to support it. Did she tell you that she’d broken off her engagement?”
“No. Had she?”
“We don’t know. Your father says he rang her because she left him a message saying she’d called off her engagement, and that she sounded quite upset.”
“My father?” Gordon’s face was once again expressionless.
Gemma felt as if she were walking on eggshells, and fought against her inexplicable urge to protect him. “We’ve seen your father. He also told us that he and Annabelle Hammond had a long-standing relationship, and I’m having a hard time believing you weren’t aware of it.”
“I told you—my father and I aren’t close. Why should I have known?” He kept his voice even, but Gemma could see the tension in the muscles of his jaw.
“Apparently she was seen about with him often enough. This neighborhood is as insular as any village, and considering the way information travels in that sort of environment … I should think you’d have heard sooner rather than later.”
Gordon grimaced and looked away. After a moment, he said, “We lived here when I was a child. I started school here, just up the road. My father was already a presence in the neighborhood, gaining a reputation for trying to save the old buildings—that was pretty eccentric for those days, when most people didn’t believe that the Docks could really die. But they respected his success. Everywhere I went I was Lewis Finch’s son.
“Then, when I was eight, my mum decided we should move to the suburbs; that was her idea of success— bridge and cocktails—but my dad despised it. When they divorced, he came back to the Island for good.”
“You stayed with your mum?”
“Lewis sent me to boarding school. Education meant everything to him, and he was determined I should have the best. What he couldn’t accept was my not making use of what he provided for me—at least not in the way he’d had in mind.”
