No Mark upon Her

and berries stood on a plain wooden table.

Tavie filled an old kettle and set it on the range, then began placing mugs on a tray.

Turning his attention to the sitting room, Kincaid thought that it was just as simple and appealing as the kitchen. There was a wooden chair painted in light blues and greens, adorned with a red throw, a stack of books on the floor beside it. A small table held a globe, and wide ledges like the ones in the kitchen displayed a few unframed portraits in oil. Sisal carpeting covered the floor, and a gas fire burned in an iron fireplace with a tile surround. Tosh, the German shepherd, had curled up on a floral hooked rug before the fire. Beside her, dog toys spilled from a woven basket.

It was very much a single woman’s house, Kincaid thought, and it reminded him of the tiny garage flat that Gemma had lived in before they’d moved into the Notting Hill house together.

Kieran Connolly, squeezed into the small upholstered armchair, looked as awkward as the proverbial bull in the china shop, and just as unhappy. Finn had settled at his master’s feet.

Kincaid sat carefully on the sofa, suddenly aware of his own long legs. “How are you feeling?” he asked Connolly, who shrugged.

“I’ll live.” He reached up as if to touch the wound, then dropped his hand. “Tavie says I’m going to look like Harry Potter.”

“That might not be a bad thing.” Kincaid smiled, hoping to put him at ease. “Can you tell me what happened tonight?”

Tavie came back into the room, bearing a tray with a teapot and mugs decorated in an alternating pattern of blue-and-white hearts and stars. A fanciful touch for a serious woman, Kincaid thought.

“I was—I was having a bit of a rest,” Connolly said. The glance he gave Tavie told Kincaid there was some shared meaning to this. “On the camp bed in my shed. I repair boats, and I live in the shop. There’s just the one room.”

Kincaid took a cup from Tavie, nodded yes to milk and shook no to sugar. She poured Kieran’s without asking—black, with two spoonfuls—and sat on the edge of the painted chair. “Go on,” Kincaid prompted Kieran.

“There was a crash. Glass breaking. Then flames shooting up. For a minute I thought—” Kieran wrapped both hands round his mug. The tea sloshed. He was trembling. “It was like Iraq . . .” He held the mug to his lips, sipped, swallowed, and this seemed to steady him. “But then I saw the bottle burning. What was left of it. It was a wine bottle—I could tell because the label stayed in one piece. So did the neck, with the burning rag stuffed in it.

“Finn was barking like mad and pushing at me. I knew I had to get him out. We reached the door. Then there was this—this sort of sucking whoosh. I knew what it was—the air goes just before an explosion. I grabbed Finn by the collar and dived for the lawn.”

Kieran closed his eyes for a moment, then drank the rest of his tea as if suddenly very thirsty. “The next thing I remember is Tavie telling me to get up.”

“Something like that,” she agreed drily, but she looked pale. “I thought you were bloody dead.” Refilling Kieran’s mug, she said, “Good thing your neighbors didn’t dither calling 999. But still, you must have been out for several minutes. That’s quite a blow. You need to get an X-ray—”

He gave her a look that clearly meant this was one argument she was not going to win. “I’m fine. Just a little shaky.”

Kincaid held his mug out for a refill as well, although after the pot of tea at home with Gemma, he was about ready to swim in the stuff. “Kieran, do you have any idea why someone would have done this to you?”

“I— It’s crazy. You’ll think I’m mad.”

“No, I won’t.” Kincaid leaned forward, resting his cup on his knee. “Why don’t you tell me.”

Kieran looked up, met Kincaid’s eyes, assessing him. Whatever he saw there seemed to swing the balance in Kincaid’s favor. “I saw something. On Monday evening, before Becca went out on the river. And on Sunday, the same time.”

“What do you mean, you saw something?” asked Tavie. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t have a chance.” He looked back to Kincaid. “I was running. Since the days have got shorter, I’ve been rowing in the mornings and running in the evenings. You know where we found the Filippi?”

Kincaid nodded. “Yes. And you were upset. You said that Becca Meredith wouldn’t have capsized on a calm evening. That she was too good a rower.”

“No one believed me.” Kieran’s face was set in a scowl.

“We did, actually,” Kincaid reassured him. “And I believe you now. Is that where you saw something? Where we found the boat?”

“No. But that’s not where she went in the water.”

Kincaid sat forward, his pulse quickening. “How do you know?”

“Because I know where she did go in.”

“What?” said Tavie. “Kieran, what are you—”

The German shepherd, who had been lying quietly by the hearth, raised her head and barked, punctuation to her mistress’s alarm.

“Okay, okay.” Kincaid held up his hand like a traffic cop. “Let’s all take it easy. Kieran, why don’t you back up and start from the beginning.”

Kieran shifted in his chair and shot another uneasy glance at Tavie. “Look, I know it sounds as if I was some sort of a stalker, but it wasn’t like that. When I first met Becca, last summer, I was rowing in the evenings—I told Tavie that. But now I’ve been taking my shell out at first light. Then, in the evenings, I’d run the river path about the time I knew Becca would be rowing. That made it easy for us to . . . to meet up afterwards.”

Tavie shifted on the edge of her chair. When Kincaid glanced at her, the expression on her delicate face was one of disapproval. And, Kincaid thought, possibly hurt.

“Sometimes I’d go to the cottage, after she’d taken the shell back to Leander.” Kieran threw that out like a challenge, as if her unspoken response had irritated him. Then, he sighed. “But mostly, I just liked to watch her row. It was—beautiful—you can’t imagine.”

“I wish I’d seen her,” said Kincaid, and he did.

Kieran nodded, an acknowledgment. “I was never as good as that, nowhere near, but I could tell when she was doing something wrong, getting into a bad pattern. I suppose I was sort of an unofficial coach. But—this last weekend, she was—different.” He hesitated, looking uncomfortable again.

“Would you like to speak to me on your own?” Kincaid asked, wondering if the problem lay with Tavie.

Kieran hesitated, then said, “No. No, I want Tavie to stay. It’s just that—how things were with Becca and me . . . When I try to explain it, it sounds—weird. But it didn’t seem that way. What we did together was something that was just between us.”

“Okay. I get that,” Kincaid reassured him. “So what was odd about last weekend?”

“I didn’t see her on the river on Friday evening. Or on Saturday morning, which was usually her biggest training day. So I went to the cottage. Just to make sure she was all right, you know, not ill or anything. The Nissan wasn’t in the drive. I thought she wasn’t home, so I was surprised when she came out.”

Kieran’s frown drew down the corner of his bandage. “But she was—I don’t know—tense. Preoccupied. Not”—his lips tightened—“pleased to see me. She said she’d taken the train home the night before, and she’d never done that, not once in the time I’d known her.

“And then, when I offered to run her into London to pick up the car, she was—short with me. She said she had things to do.”

“Did she say what?”

“No. I just left. What else could I do?” Kieran shrugged. “I saw her out on Sunday evening, rowing, but she didn’t speak to me. I thought—I thought maybe I’d done something wrong, something to upset her, but I couldn’t imagine what. Then, on Monday, I must have been a bit early for my run, or she was a bit late going out from Leander, because I missed her altogether.”

His face twisted with grief. “If I’d just been there . . .” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I might have stopped him.”

“Stopped who, Kieran? You said you saw something. Are you saying you saw someone?”

Kieran nodded. “I thought he was a fisherman. On the Bucks bank, between Temple Island and the last