Daphne glanced from Gemma to the darkening bruise under Kincaid’s eye, her unease more evident. “If this is a social call, Mr. Kincaid, I really must—”
“We had a very productive visit with Morgan Ashby, as you may have noticed”—Kincaid smiled—“once he had calmed down a bit. It seems Morgan felt he had a good reason for disapproving of your relationship with Lydia— beyond the fact that Lydia had been intimate with you.”
“Of course we were intimate,” said Daphne with a touch of exasperation. “Lydia was my closest friend.”
“Don’t prevaricate, Miss Morris. You know perfectly well that’s not what I meant, but if you want me to spell it out for you, I will. You had an ongoing sexual relationship with Lydia Brooke. According to Morgan, she bragged about it when they had rows. She must have enjoyed making him feel inadequate.” Kincaid shook his head as if disappointed. “She didn’t tell you that, did she?”
“I don’t know what you mean. I—” Daphne swallowed and clenched her hands together. “It’s not true. She’d never have told Morgan. She said he tried to bully her into admitting it, but she wouldn’t.”
“Do you mean you didn’t have sex with Lydia, or simply that Lydia wouldn’t have shared your secret with her husband?” Kincaid paused, frowning, then added with an air of discovery, “And if she told
“No!” Daphne stood up, gripping the edge of her desk. “You don’t understand. Morgan was a raging paranoid. He imagined things, and if Lydia told him anything it was because he frightened her. They were poison for each other, and he drove her—”
“Why did she marry him, then?” asked Kincaid, and Gemma thought of Morgan thirty years ago, dark and dangerously handsome. The intensity of his need for her must have seemed flattering at first, and she doubted Lydia would have had the judgment to see what might lie behind it.
“I don’t know,” said Daphne. “I never knew. All I can tell you is that something happened that summer. Lydia was never the same after that.”
“Morgan says it was you who changed Lydia—drove her over the edge—you and the others.” Kincaid leaned forwards and jabbed his finger at her for emphasis. “She slept with all of you—you
“We’ve seen Darcy, too, and he confirms the story,” said Gemma, gently. “You may be right about Morgan’s paranoia, but we have no reason not to believe Darcy when he says you and Lydia were lovers. Why should he lie about it?”
Daphne stared down at her white-knuckled hands, and after a moment she let go of the desk and walked slowly to the window. With her back to them, she said, “Darcy is a right bastard. What would he know about lovers—or love—when he never understood anything but his own gratification? And it was so much more complicated than that.” She fell silent and stood looking out into the manicured school grounds.
“More complicated than what?” Gemma prompted.
“Lydia…” Daphne shook her head. “I loved Lydia from the very first moment I saw her, running up the staircase at Newnham with her arms full of books, laughing. She seemed so much more alive, more intense than other people. You thought if you could just get close enough to her, some of that specialness would rub off on you, like fairy dust.
“But there was a vulnerability about her, too, and I suppose that’s what made her a good victim for Morgan.” Turning to face them, Daphne continued, “I’ll tell you what you want to know because I’m tired of hiding things. It’s gone on far too long …” She closed her eyes for a moment, then began on the exhalation of a breath. “We’d experimented a bit at college, but it was just that for Lydia—experimenting. It wasn’t until she came back to Cambridge after her suicide attempt that we began to have a serious affair, but even then she had a different agenda. She was only seeking comfort, emotional support. She’d decided she couldn’t risk another relationship with a man, and I was safe.” Daphne’s smile held little humor.
“Even at college she’d only really enjoyed it when the boys were watching, and so she was more or less doing me a favor in return for stability and companionship.”
“And you knew it,” said Gemma.
“Oh, I tried to fool myself at first, but you can’t keep that up for very long. And as Lydia found her footing again she began to find me … tiresome. Her work was becoming quite successful and she was moving in much more sophisticated circles than her old friends could offer.” Daphne paused, staring past them with an unfocused gaze.
“So she broke off your relationship, and you started planning your revenge,” said Kincaid.
Daphne gave him a startled look, then tilted her head back and laughed aloud. “Don’t be absurd, Mr. Kincaid. It was
“What happened?” asked Gemma, with a quelling look at Kincaid.
“Lydia was utterly and absolutely devastated.” Daphne paused, but there was no tension in it. She leaned back against the windowsill, her arms folded loosely across her chest, as if the telling of her story had released her. “She wrote to me, saying she drove away everyone who mattered to her because she hated herself. The letter came in the post after she’d crashed her car into a tree outside Grantchester.”
This had been the second suicide attempt, thought Gemma, the one for which Vic had found no explanation. “And after that?”
“She recovered slowly, and I supported her. I stopped asking for more than she could give me, and we became friends in a different way. Those were the best years of my life, from that time until Lydia died.” The certainty and the complete lack of self-pity in Daphne’s words made Gemma feel chilled.
“And nothing else happened before she died?” asked Kincaid. “No rows, no odd behavior?”
Daphne shook her head. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Kincaid, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. And I certainly didn’t kill Lydia to protect my reputation, if that’s what you’re getting at. Nor your Dr. McClellan. I’d been considering early retirement even before Lydia’s death. That’s why I bought the weekend cottage, you see, so that Lydia and I could work together, her on her poetry, I on my novel.”
