Dreaming Of The Bones

personal affairs with a complete stranger? I have a right to my life, and my memories—”

“But what about Lydia?” interrupted Gemma. “Surely if you cared about Lydia you’d have wanted her portrayed accurately. And Lydia’s letters certainly suggest that you might give the most unbiased picture—”

“Letters?” whispered Daphne, her face ashen. “What letters?”

“Oh, Dr. McClellan had access to Lydia’s letters, of course,” said Gemma brightly. “Did she not mention that? Including Lydia’s extensive correspondence with her mother over the years, in which she mentioned you repeatedly. It appears that you weren’t on the best of terms with Morgan Ashby. Was there some particular reason why Morgan disliked you?”

For a moment, Daphne seemed too stunned to answer, then she rallied. “It’s none of your business. And I didn’t give a damn how Lydia appeared in Dr. McClellan’s book. Biography is a useless exercise, a picking over of bones when the meat is gone.” She took a breath and clasped her trembling hands together. “Look, I’m not saying that Victoria McClellan didn’t have good intentions, but no amount of letters or interviews could ever have conveyed—”

“Well, that’s rather a moot point now, isn’t it?” Kincaid drawled. “Because there won’t be a biography. And if someone preferred that the details of Lydia’s life remain buried, then they’d be feeling quite comfortable with it all, wouldn’t they? Enjoying weekends in the country and all that.” He smiled. “It has come to our attention, by the way, that you might have had very good reason to safeguard the details of your relationship with Lydia Brooke, Miss Morris. Say if your relationship was of an… unorthodox sexual nature, for instance? I doubt that would go over smashingly well with the school governors.” He looked round with evident admiration. “It is rather a prestigious institution, as far as girls’ boarding schools go, I understand.”

Daphne jerked to her feet, knocking the delicate gilded chair over backwards, where it bounced soundlessly on the soft carpet. Ignoring the chair, she shouted, “You’ve been talking to Morgan, haven’t you? He’d say anything to hurt me, the jealous, paranoid bastard. Did he tell you that he was arrested for assaulting Lydia?” Their surprise must have shown in their faces, because she went on with great satisfaction, “Oh, yes. Did he tell you he broke her ribs? And her jaw? Did you think Morgan’s famous artistic temper was all bark and no bite?”

“When exactly did this happen?” asked Gemma.

The calmness of Gemma’s tone seemed to communicate itself to Daphne, for she wiped a shaking hand across her mouth, then touched the hair that had escaped its binding. She had large hands, Kincaid noticed, more suitable to a milkmaid than a goddess.

“I shouldn’t have said that. I promised Lydia I’d never tell anyone.” She shook her head. “And I’ve never in all these years broken a promise to Lydia.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“There will be records, you know, hospital admissions and so on, if we’re forced to trace them,” Gemma continued. “But it would be better coming from you. Was this shortly before Lydia died?”

Daphne gave her a look of blank incomprehension. “I’m sorry?”

“You told us Morgan attacked Lydia.” Kincaid said carefully. “Did this happen near the time of her death?”

“Lydia hadn’t seen Morgan for years when she died, as far as I know This was just weeks before they separated. She came to me.” Daphne groped backwards for her chair, and Kincaid moved quickly to right it for her. “Why do you keep talking about Lydia’s death?” she asked. “What has that to do with anything?” Daphne’s hands gripped the seat of the gilded chair beneath her thighs as if it were a frail craft on a storm-tossed sea.

“Vic—Dr. McClellan—thought that Lydia’s death might have been … engineered,” said Kincaid. “She was, in fact, convinced that Lydia Brooke was murdered. And don’t you find it rather odd, Miss Morris, that Victoria McClellan should have been murdered, too?”

Cambridge

11 February 1968

Somehow I never thought it would come to this. Fragmented. Observed and observer. The first Lydia dispassionate, rational, knowing there were only two inevitable conclusions—death or division.

The other Lydia knows death would have been the better alternative.

Lydia watches Lydia lying fetus-curled in the sweat-soaked bed. Lydia knows it for sabotage, knows the other one couldn’t bear the fine, clean strength of what they had between them. So the other poisoned it, a word here, an expression there, provoked when she should have comforted, drew blood with savage appetite.

And Lydia watched, Electra tongueless, mute, the poet silenced.

There will be no more.

“She never denied it,” said Gemma, glancing at Kincaid as he drove. “Who never denied what?” he asked, frowning, distracted by the traffic at the Newnham roundabout as he signaled for the Barton Road.

“Daphne never actually denied her relationship with Lydia.”

“Maybe she didn’t think the allegation worth denying,” Kincaid suggested, looking away from the road long enough to grin at her. “Maybe she thinks we’re as round the twist as Morgan Ashby. Maybe by this time she’s called the Yard to complain about our irrational behavior—we have, after all, just accused a respected professional woman of having a homosexual relationship, not to mention murder, on the basis of nothing whatsoever.”

Stung by his reckless sarcasm, Gemma said hotly, “She’s not telling the whole truth. She was relieved when I said the letters were to Lydia’s mother. I’m sure of it.”

“She also seems to have a cast-iron alibi for the afternoon of Vic’s death.”

They had spoken again to Jeanette, and had a look at Daphne’s daily calendar, both of which confirmed that Daphne had had a full schedule of meetings and appointments on Tuesday, but Gemma was not ready to capitulate. “There are always holes in alibis. And we don’t know where Vic went when she left the English Faculty that afternoon. What if she went to Daphne’s flat? Daphne could have slipped out of her office and met her with no one the wiser.”

She knew from the look on his face that he’d considered the possibility, but rather than agreeing with her, he said, “Now that we’ve already done six impossible things before lunch, as well as buggering any claim to reputable behavior, how do you suggest we persuade Morgan Ashby to sit down and have a nice pleasant conversation about