Kincaid stood outside the police station, watching squirrels chase one another across the green expanse of Parker’s Piece. Two young men played a desultory game of Frisbee with a mongrel dog, and a woman pushing a pram crossed the space slowly on the diagonal.
Reluctantly, Kincaid pulled his phone from his breast pocket and punched in Vic’s number. He supposed he might as well get it over with, see her while he was in Cambridge and tell her he’d done what he could. Alec Byrne was right, of course: a few unanswered questions were not going to arouse the local lads’ interest in an old case more conveniently let lie.
As he listened to the distant ringing, a cloud skittered across the sun, momentarily erasing the long afternoon shadows. He heard a click, then Vic’s voice, and so immediate and natural did she sound that it took him a moment to realize he’d reached her answer phone. At the beep he hesitated, then hung up without leaving a message. He glanced at his watch before again consulting his notebook. There might still be time to catch her at her office, but he realized she hadn’t given him the number. Glancing up, he saw a taxi rounding the corner. If he hurried, he might just make it in person.
* * *
A black cab delivered him swiftly to a Victorian house across the river. He stood a moment after paying the driver, regarding the sign near the gate that informed him that this was the UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE FACULTY OF ENGLISH, NO UNAUTHORIZED PARKING ALLOWED. A heavy screen of evergreens partially concealed a graveled car park, but in a sheltered spot near the house he could see a battered Renault and an N registration Volvo. It looked as though he might find someone lingering past the stroke of five.
The gray-brick, peaked-roof house had seen grander days. Overgrown shrubbery and a swath of dead creeper across the facade gave it a desolate air, alleviated only by clean white trim round the windows and a glossy navy blue door. Kincaid knocked lightly, then turned the knob and stepped inside. He found himself in a small reception area that originally must have functioned as the entrance hall, and as he stood for a moment wondering which door he should try, the one on the left opened and a woman looked round the edge at him.
“Thought I heard someone come in, and I didn’t recognize the tread.” She smiled and came through into the hall, and he saw that she was plump and pleasant-looking, with wavy brown hair and glasses that slid down the bridge of her nose. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“Um, I was hoping I might catch Dr. McClellan before she left for the day,” said Kincaid, wondering a bit late about the advisability of intruding unannounced into Vic’s life.
“Oh, too bad. You’ve just missed her by a few minutes. Kit had a soccer match this afternoon and she does like to be there if she can.” The woman held her hand out. “I’m Laura Miller, by the way, the department secretary. Can I give her a message?”
“Duncan Kincaid,” he said, shaking her hand. “Just tell her I dropped by, if you wouldn’t—” He paused as a door slammed above, then came the sound of quick, heavy footsteps on the stairs.
“Damn it, Laura, I can’t find that bloody fax anywhere. Are you sure it’s not gone out with the rubbish?” A man—large, leonine, and flushed with the high color that derives from quick temper—followed the voice round the last landing of the stairs. “You know what liberties Iris takes with other people’s papers, it’s a wonder one ever finds any—” He stopped in midtirade as he reached the bottom of the stairs and saw Kincaid. “Oh, hullo. Sorry, sorry, didn’t know anyone else was about. You’d think we had pixies, the way things disappear in this place.” A lock of the thick gray-brown hair flopped over his brow as he gave Kincaid an apologetic grin. “And poor Laura bears the brunt of our frustration, I’m afraid.”
The secretary gave him a sharp look, but answered easily. “For once it is on Dr. Winslow’s desk, Dr. Eliot. But since it concerned the entire department…” She glanced at Kincaid, then amended whatever she’d been about to say. “I’ll just get it for you. I’m sure she won’t mind you taking care of it.”
With a smile for Kincaid, she slipped back into the office on the left and returned a moment later with a flimsy sheet of fax paper. “Iris Winslow is our Head of Department,” she explained. “We’ve been in a bit of a bother over a change in some of the University exam procedures. Dr. Eliot”—she nodded at the large man by way of introduction—“teaches the history of literary criticism, among other things. Dr. Eliot, this is Mr. Kincaid. He was asking after Vic.”
Kincaid felt the level of interest rise in the room as Eliot eyed him speculatively.
“You don’t say. Is it anything we can help with?” The urgent fax apparently forgotten, Eliot slipped a hand inside his jacket, resting it against his plum-colored knitted waistcoat in a vaguely Napoleonic gesture.
The waistcoat, Kincaid thought at second glance, looked to be cashmere, and the jacket Harris Tweed. Eliot and the secretary watched him expectantly, smiles hovering, eyes bright, and he had the sudden feeling he’d wandered into a tank of barracuda. “No, thanks. Please don’t trouble yourselves over it. I’ll just give her a ring.” He nodded and went out.
He walked slowly down West Road until he reached Queens’ Road again. The crossing light was red and he looked about him as he waited, hands in pockets. The way to the train station lay to his right, across the river. The carriages would be jam-packed this time of day, stuffy with the remnants of the afternoon’s warmth, and he found the prospect of fighting the crowds unappealing. He cursed himself doubly for not bringing the car—as well as avoiding rush hour on British rail, it would have allowed him to drive to Grantchester and wait for Vic at her cottage.
But even though he couldn’t fulfill his main objective, he thought, shrugging, why should he hurry back to London? Since Sunday, Gemma had treated him with studied politeness at work and had been conveniently busy afterwards, and he had no reason to suppose this evening would be any different.
The light flashed yellow and he crossed with the flow of pedestrian traffic, then paused on the opposite pavement. With sudden decisiveness he turned left, taking the path that meandered along the Backs. He could see King’s College Chapel across the river, and as he walked, the clouds parted and the last of the sun’s rays gilded the tips of the spires. Did one take such sights for granted, he wondered, if one saw them every day?
Had Lydia Brooke grown accustomed to them as she went about Cambridge on her business, her head full of lectures and love? And most likely in reverse order, he added to himself, smiling, then he sobered as he thought of the report he’d read that afternoon. He understood Alec Byrne’s defensiveness, but the case had an unfinished feel, and he thought if it had been his he would not have been satisfied with such a pat solution. Had anyone tried to discover what she’d been doing that day? Or whom she’d seen, and what she might have said to them? And if she’d been gardening, as seemed obvious, had there been anything unusual about that day’s tasks? Had she done what looked to be a final planting, for instance, or some sort of grand tidying up, as if she were taking her leave of the garden?
The business about the porch light nagged at him as well. Had anyone checked to see if it had been out for some time, or had it just coincidentally expired on the night of Lydia’s death?
