Chapter Twenty-one
‘Everything points at you, Dr Zennor. The bust-up in the restaurant, you storming out after him, smashing the place up — all witnessed by at least a dozen people. Why don’t you tell me what happened?’
‘I’ve already told you this.’
‘Well, tell me again.’
James sighed. He was sitting in a grey holding room in the Yale Police Department headquarters which was, to his dismay, a real police station. The name had misled him: he had assumed the Yale Police Department would be an outfit equivalent to the ‘Bulldogs’ who policed Oxford, an arm of the academic authorities rather than a genuine force. But these men were dressed like the policemen he had seen in gangster films back home and they sounded and acted that way, too. Once out of the squad car, he had had to pose for a man with a camera — face on and sideways, like the men in Lund’s photographs — then press each one of his fingertips into a small pad of black ink. This was, he realized, serious.
The bureaucratic processing was long and drawn-out: his mind wandered back to Oxford and the autumn of 1937.
He remembered being surrounded by the paraphernalia of new life, a cot in the nursery, a pram in the hall — signposts pointing to the future. Florence had tiny Harry at her breast, her body fuller and, to James, more beautiful than ever. They were newly married in a new house, a new family brimming with hope and possibility.
That was what the visitors saw, at any rate — the likes of Virginia Grey, pitching up with chicken livers wrapped in greaseproof paper from Harris’s because, ‘My dear, as a nursing mother you will be suffering from depleted stocks of iron which you will need to replenish immediately.’
But neither she nor anyone else saw Florence repeatedly pleading with her husband to pick up their baby and to hold him, urging James to overcome his fears that his shattered shoulder would let him down. No one else was there to witness his insistence that he held no such fears, that it was just that he had to be in college in fifteen minutes or that he had an urgent journal article to complete, or that the baby clearly wanted his mother. Go on Florence, take him, he’s obviously crying out for you.
Just as no one had seen the late November afternoon when, while Florence napped, James had gingerly approached the crib after Harry had woken. He had stared at his child for a long minute, like a wrestler sizing up an opponent, before reaching down with his good arm and trying to scoop the baby up one-handed, curling his right hand under and then around Harry’s back. It had worked at first, the child effortlessly light in his father’s grip, James almost managing a smile as he carefully hoisted Harry upward. But then the baby, not yet two months old, had wriggled. James’s left hand tried to come to the rescue, but it was too slow, its movements still too jagged and awkward. Little Harry escaped from his grasp, tumbling out of his hand and into the empty, dangerous air, while James watched uselessly, frozen in place.
Only luck ensured that the child bounced back into the soft blankets of the crib. A few inches to the left or right and Harry would have crashed onto the hard, wooden floor. At that realization, James had let out a sound he had never made before: part scream, part roar. And either that or the impact of the fall had set Harry off, crying silently at first, his baby jaw trembling, his tongue oscillating until James was terrified he was taking in no oxygen, before giving voice to loud, hoarse bawling. Florence had rushed in, her features stretched wide with anxiety, as if a jolt of electricity had just shocked her from sleep.
She had picked Harry up in a single smooth movement, placing him on her shoulder, letting him feel her warmth, his face nuzzling into her neck. He was still crying, but soon the register altered, the sobs becoming calmer and more regular. Keeping her eyes on her husband, who had retreated into the corner, on the other side of the cot, Florence had moved towards him, stretching out her free hand in a gesture that said she knew what had happened. James had recoiled, then pushed her arm away. He refused to be comforted. He refused to be pitied. She had soothed Harry, but she would not soothe him. He fled from the room.
Now, nearly three years later and thousands of miles away, he let out a deep sigh. Fear had prevented him from trying to pick his boy up again. Until this moment he had thought that the mistake he had made that day had been dropping the baby. Now he understood better — but he had left it too late.
‘Do you speak English in England? Or are you deaf?’
Startled, James looked up to see a detective glaring at him. ‘I’m sorry?’ Like a gramophone record spinning at half speed, it dawned on him only slowly that this man had replaced the officer who had arrested him. He took in the man’s face: pale, fleshy with thinning hair. What was his name? Riley? It struck James that the name went along with his accent, an accent that he had heard several times this morning from other officers. All older, grey- or white-haired, with the air of men who had worn uniforms all their lives. He forced himself to listen to what the man was saying.
‘I’m afraid it’s not your lucky day. You’re staring at an Irishman and we ain’t too fond of the English. No offence, but that’s how it is.’
‘You’re from Ireland?’
‘No. But my Pa was. Once you lot had starved him out, he went to Boston, didn’t he?’
James looked through the door, which had been left open, spotting two more of Riley’s colleagues. So that was it. They were retired officers from the big city, men used to dealing with thugs and thieves rather than plagiarist scholars and exam cheats, or whatever kept them busy at Yale. Which meant they were probably relishing the prospect of a proper crime, like a murder. Well, they could damn well find somebody else to liven up their day.
‘Like I said, everything points at you, Dr Zennor. The only thing I can’t for the life of me figure out is motive. Why d’you do it?’
‘This is outrageous!’ James said, slamming his fist onto the table. ‘I insist that you contact the Dean’s office immediately. They’ll explain who I am and what I’m doing here. Jesus Christ!’
‘Don’t you dare swear at me, you limey bastard, or I’ll shove you in those cells so fast you won’t know what’s hit you.’
Riley was staring at him, his pointed finger hovering in the air in front of James’s face. James stayed exactly where he was, his gaze meeting the detective’s without wavering. ‘I did not kill that man. I am here to find my wife and child. That’s why I’m here, in America. She is one of the Oxford mothers who arrived here a week or so ago.’
‘So you say.’
‘And Lund confirmed it! For heaven’s sake-’
‘I warned you once, Zennor. Now calm down. One thing I’ve learned in this job is you university men are very good at talking fast and spinning a story. You Brits probably the best of the lot. I may not be as smart as you, but I know my job. So you take it nice and slow unless you want to be telling this story all over again to a jury.’
So for the third time, James explained how he had gone to the Dean’s office — twice — how he had adopted a different tack the second time, inventing a story about research simply because he was desperate to find out where his family had gone. Without planning to, he repeated to Riley the question he had asked the harbourmaster in Liverpool: if your family had gone missing, wouldn’t you resort to any means to get them back?
‘That’s what worries me, Dr Zennor. That you were ready to resort to anything. Even murder.’
James leaned forward again, baring his teeth. ‘This is insane. The man threw me out of his office, but whispered that I should see him later that evening. I went to meet him, I asked what he knew but he wouldn’t tell me. He was speaking in riddles.’
‘This was at Frank Pepe’s?’
‘Yes. He was very agitated, and he became more so the longer we spoke. Then, when he went to the lavatory, I saw the-’
‘I know. The photographs. You see how this looks, though, don’t you? You’re angry. You threaten a secretary. You somehow track down the man who-’
‘I didn’t track him down! He told me to meet him there.’
‘We only have your word for that. You track down the man who holds the information — which you’ve just admitted you will do anything to get — to the place where he’s eating dinner. You argue. People in the restaurant hear that. Then he goes to the bathroom, you break into his briefcase and snoop through his personal property-’
‘It wasn’t like that! I thought he might have Florence’s file in there. That’s all I wanted. That’s all I want: to
