furniture scattered among heavier items—hinted at the Victorian history of the house.
Through an open door on the right, he glimpsed a plum-colored dining room filled with rich mahogany furniture, then Constantine was ushering them into a combined kitchen–sitting room at the back of the house.
Immediately, he saw that they had stepped offstage. This room, while expensively done with the requisite Aga and custom cabinetry, was cluttered with books and papers and used mugs. A laptop computer stood open on the large oak table, and a dog bed festooned with chew toys lay near the stove. The room still held the comforting breakfast scents of toast and coffee, with a faint underlying note of dog.
“I suppose you’d better sit,” said Constantine, scooping papers from two chairs and dumping them onto the already overflowing surface of a Welsh dresser. “Jazz, lie down on your bed,” he commanded the dog.
He took the chair by the laptop himself, and waited with an air of contained impatience for them to get on with whatever it was they wanted.
After a relieved glance at the dog’s retreating hindquarters, Babcock began, “Mr. Constantine, am I right in thinking that at one time you were married to Annie Constantine?”
Constantine frowned. “What do you mean, ‘were married’? We’re still married.”
Babcock flicked a startled glance in Kincaid’s direction before continuing. “Then you and your wife maintain separate domiciles?”
“Yes. She lives aboard her boat, although I don’t see why our marital arrangements are any business of yours. What’s going on here?” There was tension in his voice now, a thread of fear beneath the annoyance. Constantine was a journalist; although Babcock hadn’t identified Kincaid as Scotland Yard, he would realize that
two senior police officers even of local jurisdiction didn’t make routine inquiries.
“But your wife uses the name Lebow?” Babcock used the present tense carefully.
“Sometimes. It’s her maiden name. Look, what’s this about?”
The dog, which had been watching with its head on its paws, sat up and whined.
Babcock sat forward, his eyes fixed on Roger Constantine’s face.
“Mr. Constantine, I’m sorry to tell you that your wife was found dead this morning.”
“What?” Constantine stared at them. Light caught the reflective surface of his glasses, momentarily masking his eyes. “Is this some sort of joke? I just spoke to her last night. There must be a mistake.”
“No, sir. Mr. Cons—”
“It can’t have been Annie.” Constantine gripped the edge of the table, as if assailed by sudden vertigo, and it occurred to Kincaid that in his experience, women often accepted the news of a tragedy more quickly than men. It was as if women carried with them a constant intimation of mortality, while men assumed that both they and their loved ones were invincible.
“I knew your wife, Mr. Constantine,” Babcock said quietly. “I worked with her several times before she retired from Social Services. I identified her body myself.”
In the silence that followed, Kincaid imagined he heard the painful beat of his own heart. Then the dog rose, and the click of its nails on the tile brought a faint relief. It crossed to its master and laid its head on Constantine’s knee.
The man loosed one visibly trembling hand from the table and buried it in the ruff of the dog’s neck. “Oh, no. Christ. What—” He swallowed and tried again. “What happened? Was she ill? Was there an accident with the boat?”
A slight nod from Babcock surprised Kincaid, but he took up the cue. It was a useful technique, handing off the questioning from the person who had broken the news. “It looks as though your wife was attacked, Mr. Constantine. Sometime yesterday evening. What time did you speak with her?”
“Attacked? But why would—”
“I know this is difficult, Mr. Constantine,” Kincaid said. “But if you could just bear with us. It’s important that we get the details.”
He held Constantine’s gaze, and after a moment Constantine nodded and seemed to make an effort to pull himself together.
“It was—it must have been about eight. We’d just come back from our after-dinner walk. I was surprised when I saw it was Annie ringing, because she had just called the day before, to wish me happy Christmas. But she said she wanted to make a date for dinner—
tonight—I was supposed to see her tonight.” Shaking his head, Constantine pulled off his glasses and rubbed at his reddening eyes.
“Did she give a particular reason?”
“No. She just said she wanted to talk.”
Kincaid thought about the reserved woman he had met, and he couldn’t help comparing the almost Spartan neatness of the
“No. At least not in the ordinary sense of having had a quarrel or disagreement, if that’s what you mean.” Constantine seemed almost eager to talk now. “I know our living arrangements seem odd to other people, but our lives just diverged. She likes being on her own—she had some things she needed to sort out, after she left her job. And I was happy enough to stay on here, to look after the house.
We were—we never saw a need to consider divorce.”
“But you talked often?”
“Fairly often. Sometimes I wouldn’t hear from her for a few weeks.
That usually meant she was having a bad time.” Constantine looked from Kincaid to Babcock. “You’re certain she didn’t—”
“There’s no question that your wife harmed herself, Mr. Constantine,” Kincaid said, and saw an easing of the other man’s features.
Why this should be a reassurance, why suicide should seem worse than murder, he didn’t know—perhaps it was that the suicide of a loved one carried with it such responsibility for those left behind.
“Then if she— Was she robbed? I kept telling her— She didn’t have anything of value really, but the boat itself—” Constantine stood suddenly, running both hands through his already bristling white hair as if he could no longer contain his agitation.
Babcock stepped in. “There’s no sign that anything was taken from the boat, or from your wife’s person. We will, of course, need you to look things over for us at some point to confirm this.”
“But then—” Constantine’s eyes were wide, the pupils dilated.
The dog nudged his knee, whining, but he ignored it. “Then what the hell happened to my wife?” he said, his voice rising. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Babcock hesitated, and Kincaid guessed he was weighing the disadvantages of revealing the manner of death against his obligation to provide information to a grieving spouse. Constantine had said nothing to indicate any knowledge of the circumstances, and they wouldn’t be able to keep it to themselves for long in any case. “Your wife’s body was found on the towpath, not on the boat, Mr. Constantine,” Babcock said at last. “Someone hit her over the head.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Grasping the chair back, Constantine eased himself into it again without looking, like a blind man. “Why would anyone want to hurt my wife?”
“We were hoping you might be able to tell us that.”
“Annie never harmed anyone— For God’s sake, she hardly spoke to anyone.” Constantine’s tone was accusatory. “She wasn’t—tell me she wasn’t—” His face lost its little remaining color.
With surprising gentleness, Babcock said, “Your wife does not appear to have been sexually molested.”
Constantine dropped his face into his hands and sat, unmoving.
After a moment, Kincaid rose and went to the sink, finding a glass in the second cupboard he opened. As he filled it from the tap, he noticed a dusting of fine white hairs on the dark blue tile of the work top. It appeared that Roger Constantine and his German shepherd shared their house hold with a cat. He wondered if the cat had been Annie’s, and if so, why she had left it behind. He could imagine her with a cat, a tidy beast that echoed her reserve.
The water from the tap was icy and he held the glass for a moment, feeling the coolness against his
