"The Whole World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Winslow Emily)

CHAPTER 7

Detective Sergeant Chloe Frohmann picked me up in front of Grantchester’s old church. I would normally be paired with a Detective Inspector on a murder case, but she’d worked with me on the missing person, so I asked to keep her on. “How was the wedding?” she wanted to know. I wasn’t in the mood to answer. It would only encourage her. She was planning her own wedding for next year.

She didn’t need encouragement. “I ask because my cousin got married last year and she wore a suit. She said that any woman over thirty can’t get away with wearing a real dress, but I think that’s crap. Alice is in her thirties, right? Did she wear a suit or a dress?”

There was no getting away from it. “A dress,” I said. Then she asked me this crazy thing: Was it a tea dress or a cocktail dress? I said, “It was a dress.”

“That’s exactly my point,” she said, punctuating “exactly” with a vigorous swerve onto the roundabout.

I leaned my head back and tried to focus. Someone was found. Someone else was dead. There would be two family visits to make.

“Shall I take the parents? Or the husband?” Frohmann does read my mind sometimes.

“We’ll do them together.”

I’d never been up Cantelupe Road. It was a strange road to be on if you didn’t live there. What were both of them doing there?

The crime scene was easy to find: Just follow the bright lights set up for the forensic team and pathologist.

Rose Cottage was a homely scene inside: soft, threadbare furniture, lit yellow by standing lamps with fussy shades. Nick, or rather his friend, had called the police from here. It wasn’t until the paramedics arrived that Nick admitted his name, to a flurry of piqued interest and scepticism. Now he sipped hot chocolate at the kitchen table, his left leg propped up on the chair opposite. Two women stood apart from him next to an Aga, one of those huge country ovens.

“Nicholas Frey?” I asked, to be official. I recognised him.

He nodded and pushed his cup away. “Yes, sir.”

I needed to caution him, in relation to the death outside, but something else bubbled up as more important first. “Richard Keene’s my brother. He’s been very worried.”

He blanched. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

This was murky. The caution had to come out. “Nick. You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence. All right?”

He nodded again.

“Do you understand, Nick? You have to say that you understand.”

He said exactly that: “I do. I understand.”

“Where have you been?” I asked.

He told me about Dovecote. He gestured toward one of the women, who nodded to affirm that she was indeed a family friend who had long ago given him a key. He claimed that she hadn’t been home until today. If so, it wasn’t an affair of some kind.

He explained something complicated and very, very young about letting people down, and trying to fix things, and only making everything worse: for Polly Bailey and Liv Dahl, and for the dead woman outside.

I’d interviewed Gretchen Paul about him. She’d said only that Nick had assisted with a research project that was now ended, and was “competent” and “thorough.” Normally I’d take bland adjectives like that to be avoidance, but from her I think they were praise. Her formal neutrality didn’t mesh with the hysteria he insisted he’d caused.

“Were you having an intimate relationship with Dr. Paul?” I had to ask.

He looked offended. “No, sir,” he said, wagging his head hard.

“What do you think her problem was?”

“I don’t know.” He let out a pent-up breath. “It had something to do with her family, I think. Her mother and her aunt. I’d been helping with some organisation for her. She’s blind, did you know that?” I nodded. I knew. “I’d helped to organise photos for her mother’s biography. She was distressed by the result. I-honestly, sir, I don’t know what was in her mind.”

“Can you guess?” I persisted. I’ve found that people who don’t “know” anything for certain often have interesting suppositions that come out when they’re given permission to muse.

He sat up straighter, as if I had called his name in class and he was ready to deliver the right answer. “Well. I’ve been thinking about it. I think maybe her mother isn’t who she thought she was. She said her mother was Linda Paul, the writer. Linda Paul wrote something a long time ago. And then she gave it all up, to raise Gretchen. But I think… I think that’s what she told Gretchen but that that’s not who she really was.”

“Really.” That was strange. “So… who was she?”

“The nanny. I think. Except there wouldn’t have been a nanny at all if the nanny was the mother… Look. There were three women, all right? Linda Paul, her sister Ginny, and this other woman. Gretchen calls her the nanny. They were in Brussels together, for a World’s Fair. It was one of the last things Gretchen saw.

“I think the woman she calls the nanny was her real mother. A friend of Linda Paul, maybe a hanger-on. Maybe Linda said she couldn’t stay around them anymore, with the baby. She was cut off, and made up this story to herself about how she was Linda Paul, and gave up that life. Fantasised that she was the one making choices, not the one being pushed out. That would make sense of the photos.”

I made him repeat much of that, and drew a diagram in my notebook. He leaned over it to check my work, ever the good little helper. I shut it so fast that the pages fluttered against his chin. “That’s not your place, Nick.”

He swallowed. “No, sir.”

I rapped the closed notebook against the table. “What were you doing on this road?” I demanded. “It doesn’t go anywhere.”

He shook his head again. He opened his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I was following the A to Z. We’d mapped out a route, and I followed signs… We were in Haslingfield. The High Street. Lesley had fallen asleep and I couldn’t well look at the map and drive…”

“Why didn’t you just stop?”

He didn’t answer right away. “I’m not very good with the clutch,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to stop and start.” He shifted position. “I was following signs and all the names were running together in my mind. One said ‘ Cantelupe Road.’ I knew that name. So I took it. I figured it for part of the directions. It’s not a name you’d think to follow if you hadn’t planned to, is it? I recognised it, so I took it.”

I leaned back and thought about how we’d just come. “It’s not the way to Cambridge.” I let the accusation remain implicit. He’s a clever boy. He knew what I meant.

“I’ve never been here in my life, sir. I didn’t expect to be here, I didn’t know Gretchen would be here. Honestly, sir…”

“But you knew the name.”

“I knew the name of the street. I don’t know from where. I thought it was part of the route we’d looked at. I don’t know where else…” He stopped himself. He slapped his hand on the table. “It was the box. At Gretchen’s house. The box of photographs. It was an old packing box. Something had come shipped in it. The address label on top had been for where Gretchen lived years ago. In Brighton. Underneath that was the address for the place the box had been first. That was Cantelupe. Here, in Haslingfield. I noticed it. I suppose it stuck in my head…”

“And this box is in Dr. Paul’s house?”

“No… not anymore. She asked me to destroy it. I threw it in the pond behind my house. My family’s house.”

I nodded, but not as if I necessarily believed or approved. I didn’t trust any of this.

“The constable tells me you were driving without a licence,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you claim you didn’t see her at all? You-”

“I felt her, sir,” he said. He shook his head again. “I felt her under the car. I’d been looking down at the map. I didn’t see anything until I got out of the car and looked at her face.”

He looked like he was going to be sick. It was time to get him home. I could talk to him again after the pathologist’s report. Frohmann offered to help him walk to the car, but he insisted on hobbling. He said to his friend, “I apologise for taking advantage of your hospitality in this way.”

She said, “I won’t intrude on your homecoming, but call if there’s anything I can do.”

“I understand. Tomorrow…”

“Nick. I think your family would prefer I didn’t.”

“I don’t care what they-”

She laid her hand on his cheek. He held perfectly still.

“I’ll be in touch,” she promised.

He glowered. His hands made tight fists for a moment, then he opened them up and slapped his thighs.

Interesting.

She went into the lounge to call a taxi, as we had to keep her car. He watched her. If eyeballs were hands it would have been indecent.

Nick spun back to me. “May I please go home now?” he said.

I sent Frohmann to take him to her car, and wait for me. I wouldn’t be long with the other woman. She looked impatient to get rid of us.

“And you are…?” I asked.

She spelled her name for me: “Melisma Cantor. An M instead of a second S. It isn’t Melissa. It’s like when you slide around on a note of music, dress it up, right? Melisma.”

I wrote down her name, correctly spelled. I omitted the explanation.

All the time I’d been talking with Nick, she’d been putting away kitchen things from a cardboard box. Coffee. Tea towels. Dish soap, but it wasn’t new. It was half-full. She looked to be in her late twenties.

“I got here a couple hours ago. Susan wasn’t home. I’m her stepdaughter.”

“Susan is the owner here?”

“Yes.”

“Was anything out of the ordinary when you arrived?”

“No. No.”

“Did you hear the accident?”

“I heard-something. It must have been the accident. They rang the bell not long after. They asked me to call the police.”

“Had you ever seen them before?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know what Dr. Paul was doing here?”

She shook her head.

“Did you know she was here?”

She bowed her head, and shook it, staring at the tabletop.

“Is something wrong, Ms. Cantor?” She repeated no. “Where’s your stepmother?” She shrugged.

“I don’t know. She’s an adult, you know. She doesn’t always stay here every night.”

“Do you?”

She shook her head, again. “I broke up with my boyfriend, and I’ll be staying here for a little while. I just brought all my stuff from his place.” She held up the half-used Fairy liquid. “I was the only one who washed the fucking dishes. Sorry,” she quickly added. Suddenly she looked as if she’d been left out in the rain. Her long hair appeared limp, her face stretched down. It was the streak of a headlamp through the front window changing the shadows. In a moment she was restored.

“Have you ever seen Dr. Paul with your stepmother before?”

“I don’t know the name.”

All right. “Where’s your father?”

“He’s in Bangalore. He works there. They’re divorced. Look, I’m really tired. I’d like to go to bed.”

I got the father’s name and address in India, and made a move to the cottage door. I fiddled with the handle. It had a proper lock. “Do you have a key, Ms. Cantor?”

“Yes, of course. We used to live here. When they were married.”

“Did your stepmother-what’s her full name, please? Susan…”

“Susan Madison.”

“Was she expecting you today?”

“I’d called earlier. She didn’t pick up, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t know. She screens.”

“Ah.” I nodded. That seemed sufficient for now.

Dr. Jensen stood up from his crouch beside the body. “Two sets of injuries,” he said, plunging right in. “She was hit once, in the vicinity of four hours ago. Likely thrown. There’s damage to the back of her head that matches with a stone underneath it. Lividity suggests that she’s lying where she died. The other injuries occurred post-mortem. She was run over and nearly cut in two by the weight of the vehicle. That’s preliminary. I’ll have more for you tomorrow.”

I stood back to take in the scene. Hit twice on a road so little-used as this? Her body was on the part of the road well past the drive. If it had been dark when Melisma arrived, she wouldn’t have seen the body.

I turned around to head for the car and bumped nose to nose into Nick, who’d been standing right behind me. “Why the hell aren’t you in the car?” I said.

“I was just-if it was going to be much longer I wanted to ask permission to phone… Is it true? Did she really die four hours ago?”

I rubbed the back of my neck and held in several expletives. Frohmann appeared over his shoulder. “Greene asked me to look at something…” she explained, sounding guilty. It was hard to know whether to treat Nick like a suspect or a found missing person.

“That finding is not yet official,” I told Nick, as to the time of death. But he sagged with relief.

In the car, Nick said, “Look, I’m really sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you. I have no doubt there were long hours put in on my behalf, and I’m not surprised that you’re angry with me. I can only apologise.”

Who talks like that? What a perfect little gentleman he is.

I turned around inside my seatbelt and faced him in the back. “Susan Madison. Do you know that name? Has Gretchen ever talked about her?”

“Of course,” he said. “Is that a trick question?”

I held back a nasty retort. “No.” I glared. “Why would it be?”

He smiled. He was lighter and lighter the closer we got to home. “That’s her mother’s character. Susan Maud Madison. She wrote five books about her. Well, Linda Paul did. Gretchen was looking for anyone who’d named her child after the character. You know, been influenced by the books. Looks like she found one.”

Looks like she did.

Nick’s family lived in a white modernist box from the 1930s: all stacked and protruding rectangles, with a long, thin window striping across the whole thing. Tall trees spiked in silhouette behind it, filling the sky over the flat roof.

It was now ten o’clock. There were lights illuminating the ground floor, so we wouldn’t be waking them up. Frohmann pressed the bell. I suppose Nick might have had his key, but he hung back obediently.

Mrs. Frey called out “Alexandra?” as she came down the stairs, and, again, “Alexandra?” while unlocking the door. She saw me and Frohmann first, and recoiled.

We parted to display Nick between us. She pitched forward to embrace him.

Frohmann backed the car out onto the road and we were tossed in our seats by the ruts beneath the wheels. “Damn private roads,” she muttered.

The private segment emptied out onto a proper city-kept street, and shortly thereafter onto a main road that eventually linked with the M11. We took the direction away from the motorway.

“Is it just a husband?” she asked. I think she dreaded facing suddenly motherless children.

“Just a husband,” I assured her.

“Did you know her?”

“Not really.” Richard knew her, but they weren’t close. I knew Gretchen Paul more from this case. She’d paid for Miranda Bailey’s solicitor but, from what I understand, didn’t actually know her. It was odd. I hoped the husband could tell me why. I looked in my notebook for his name. “Harry Reed,” I said. Frohmann nodded.

She turned down Grange Road, driving past Robinson, Selwyn, and Newnham colleges. Grand Victorian houses filled in the gaps between them. Frohmann turned left off Grange Road onto Barton and then almost immediately right onto Millington. The change was immediate: Orbs of gaslight glowed white in the fog.

“What did they do to rate the special effects?” she asked.

“Another private road. So the city didn’t include them in the electric upgrade.” Millington Road has about thirty houses on it. The gas lamps don’t shine much beyond themselves; they’re just dots tracing the right angle of the street.

The house we wanted was typical of the area: brick, gabled, big. I’d not been here during Nick’s investigation; I’d interviewed Dr. Paul in her office.

Our feet crunched down on the thick scattering of pebbles acting as a pavement. It was like walking on the bottom of a dry fish tank.

The bell control was a thin iron rod with a small handle at the bottom. Frohmann twisted it, and we were rewarded with a sound like scraping a butter knife over a glockenspiel.

We waited. She twisted the bell pull again.

“No one’s home. Perhaps he’s out looking for her,” she suggested.

“He’s the husband. He’s a suspect.” I pulled out my mobile and punched in their number. Some people keep a phone by the bed. “Or a sound sleeper,” I said.

The phones inside rang with different bells: one a trill, one a buzz. And then another sound. Some kind of… coo? chirp? Whatever it is that birds do, coming from inside the house.

“Look at this,” Frohmann called. She’d walked around to the side of the house. I joined her.

She shone a torch on a parked car. It had a cracked headlamp and dented front.

“Call for forensics,” I told her.

A sudden light hit my face. Someone else’s torch. “Police,” I barked. “Lower it.”

A smallish man came out from behind the shrubs. “Pardon me,” he said, stepping closer, “you looked suspicious.” He wore a heavy jacket over a dressing gown over pajama bottoms. “I’d like to see some I.D., please.”

We accommodated his request. “Harry Reed?” I asked.

He frowned. “No, I’m not.” He looked back and forth between my I.D. and my face. “I’m the neighbourhood watch coordinator,” he said proudly. I’m surprised he didn’t proffer identification of his own. He added as an afterthought, “I’m his next-door neighbour.”

“Really?” I asked. “Seen anything interesting lately?”

He pointed up.

Several small, colourful birds perched on the roofline. Two more were on the sill of an open window.

He sighed in disappointment at our incomprehension. “They’re cage birds. Norwich canaries.”

I started to get it. “They’re not in a cage.”

The neighbour had noticed the open windows and free birds when he’d come home for lunch. A plump orange bird flew in as a fluffy black-speckled one flew out.

“What time was this?” I asked again.

“As I said, lunchtime. One-fifteen. I always get home at one-fifteen for half an hour.”

“Anything else happen in that time?”

He frowned in thought. “My wife made a proper cooked meal for once,” he said nastily. “That’s notable.” He shrugged again. Then: “You want to get in? I’ve got a key.”

He had many more than one; it looked like every household on the street fell under his protection. He flicked through them, recognising the right one by some obscure system. He held it up and nodded, but when I reached for it he walked past me to the door. I shared a look with Frohmann, who shrugged in response.

The interior of the house was full of art and colour, in contrast to Gretchen Paul’s stark office, where I’d spoken with her about Nick. I’d taken her lack of decoration there as a natural consequence of her blindness. Maybe it was, and this was her husband’s taste. Or maybe she drew a thick line between personal and work.

Some of the birds had stayed inside; one perched on the back of a dining chair. Mindful of forensics, who were on their way, we separated to make a casual check of the home. I jumped when Frohmann called out upstairs. I bounded up to what turned out to be the study. There was another voice, droning. It sounded bizarre. “Police!” I called out.

“You’ve scared it to death.” Frohmann laughed, leaning over the computer.

I leaned over her to see. “It talks,” she said. “This must be Dr. Paul’s computer.”

It was reading out the webpage that was up on the screen. “I jiggled the mouse,” Frohmann confessed. “The screen saver disappeared and it started talking.”

It read from a maps page, telling us how to get to Cantelupe Road from here.

Things were not looking good for Mr. Reed.

The neighbour’s voice came from down the corridor, an urgent bark. He must have followed us in. “What is he doing in the house?” I muttered, ready to be stern with him.

My lecture stalled in me as I joined him at the bottom of the attic ladder. A streak of seeds, droppings, and feathers dribbled down the steps, culminating in a man’s body at the neighbour’s feet. “Get back,” I ordered, kneeling by the head. “Is this Harry Reed?”

The neighbour only made some noises. Frohmann called it in. I felt the neck for a pulse, finding none.

“Is this Harry Reed?” I pressed, looking at the neighbour for a nod. He finally gave it to me, and Frohmann led him out.

Frohmann tugged on latex gloves she’d retrieved from the cache in the car boot. I did the same, and paper shoe covers. I wanted to eyeball the scene in the bird room.

The robot voice from the computer pulled me back into the study. “Quote I love him completely comma quote she said full stop she pulled on her socks and trainers comma girlishly tying the laces in double knots full stop she’s my sister but completely unlike me full stop she dreams about men comma but why should a fish dream about water question mark she’s-”

Frohmann shook her head. “I wouldn’t be able to take that for a whole book…”

“Is that what it is?”

“A book excerpt.”

“Note the URL for me, all right?” I said, escaping the monotone recitation. Behind me I heard it switch to reading out an email header.

The steps had no visible footprints on them. I kept to the far left edge of the steps, and crept up, careful not to use my hands. Someone else might have held on. I just wanted to get my eyes to floor level and get an overview of the scene. More seed, droppings, and feathers, small broccoli florets, and splashes from overturned plastic birdbath bowls.

Flapping and urgent twittering alerted me to a bird with a foot trapped in the door of an overturned cage. A whole wall of wire cages had been pulled down. The central aviary had been bashed down on one side, perhaps by the chair lying on its side across the room. The aviary’s corner was bent in, which would have taken repeated blows, if the wire frame was as strong as it looked. About half a dozen birds were still in it, not having taken advantage of the open door. One flew from one perch to another, back and forth. Two others pressed together in a corner.

The bird with its leg in a cage door was too far to reach from here. I didn’t want to compromise the scene, but I couldn’t leave the animal in distress. I entered the room completely, stepping over debris, and freed the fluffy orange creature. I let it go. It flew up to the top of a wall of cages still standing on the other side of the room, and perched next to a red prize ribbon.

“Sir,” Frohmann called.

“Here.”

“Jensen’s pulled up. Forensics won’t like you in their scene.”

“I know,” I said, descending. I filled her in as we headed downstairs to let Jensen in. “… It’s been savaged up there, especially the aviary and one wall. Maybe means something, or maybe the other cages are just better secured…”

I stuck with forensics until they left at two. Then someone from the RSPCA came to rescue what were left of the birds. I left them to it with a constable to keep an eye out. I slept on a couch at the station and woke with a rotten headache.

She could have killed him, and then been the victim of a random hit-and-run. Except that it was his car that killed her.

He could have killed her, and then returned home to die in an accidental fall down those steep stairs. Except for the condition of the bird room. No accident there.

They were both murdered. Even if one of them did kill the other, there was a third party involved in at least one of the cases.

I spent the morning on a computer, re-creating Gretchen’s web history and branching off into some investigations of my own. She’d taken a taxi to Rose Cottage: A page with the car company’s phone number had been in her browser history, and she’d used a map website to print out directions for the driver.

I drove there myself. Susan Madison was expecting me.

“You can make yourself tea if you want to,” she announced when I arrived. I declined and followed her into the lounge. She sat down in a well-worn club chair and put her feet up onto a footstool.

There was no other seat in that room. Who has a lounge with only one chair? “May I?” I asked, and she nodded. I carried a chair from the kitchen table and squeezed it into the lounge, which was crowded with small tables and chests. She was older than I thought she would be. I had expected fifties. She was seventies.

“You have a beautiful home,” I said, choosing charming.

“Why don’t you ask what you came here for so I can get back to work?”

Work. Ms. Madison is a writer. She was already demonstrating to me a mastery of directness and brevity.

“Where were you last night?” I asked, sitting down in the hard chair.

“I was with a friend. He lives in Great Shelford.” She gave his contact information.

“What time did you arrive there?”

“Around four. My ex-husband’s daughter had announced to me her intentions of leaving her partner and coming to stay with me. I preferred to be elsewhere.”

“And you were with him till morning?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

I tilted my head to one side. “If you didn’t want your stepdaughter to come stay with you, why didn’t you just say so?” Sideways questions sometimes lead interesting places.

“I didn’t want to talk about it,” she said simply. “I didn’t see any reason to engage it at all.”

I uncrossed my legs and leaned forward. “Did you see Gretchen Paul here yesterday?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

I nodded to myself. “I understand she was tracking down people who’d been named after a book character her mother had created…”

“… But I’m too old,” she finished for me. “Yes, I am. As was evident to her immediately. I told her it was merely a coincidence.”

“Is Susan Madison a pen name?” I asked. “That would have been of interest to her. A writer having named herself after this character.”

She mouthed “no.” I think she was unhappy with my jovial persistence.

“Are you sure? Because the publication of your first book in 1963 was also the first year that you paid any tax. Ever. There doesn’t seem to be a record of you before then. And ‘S. M. Madison’ has had a steady, low-key career since then…”

She looked straight ahead, not at me.

I pushed. “Ms. Madison? Was that your name before 1963?”

From Nick I knew the theory about the woman Gretchen called the nanny, Gretchen’s actual mother, admiring her friend Linda Paul too much. She could have made life hell for her idol, enough that Linda had made a drastic escape. And a pretty obvious one, to be honest.

“All right,” she said. “Don’t gloat.”

“You’re Linda Paul.”

She lifted her shoulders and waved her hands in little circles. “I was, and now I’m Susan Maud Madison. It doesn’t matter.”

“Why did you change your name?”

“It’s not illegal to use a new name.”

Maybe. “But why bother? Was Gretchen’s mother harassing you?”

She closed her eyes, retreating.

“Ms. Madison. Please answer.”

“Fine, fine, all right. It was easier to walk away.”

“Your writing career?”

She waved a hand dramatically. “I write. I write.”

“I’m sorry…?”

Her hands balled into fists. She shook them on either side of her head. She didn’t like explaining herself. “I like my own company. I like being in charge of my own small world. I write. And then I let it go.”

I pressed again. “By giving up your name, you gave up your professional status. You had to start over. Why would you do that?”

She began to shiver. I was halfway to calling for an ambulance when I realised this was a fit of laughter. “She wouldn’t leave me alone! She followed me, she imitated me. Oh, oh…” She leaned forward, head over her knees.

So I’d been right about the nanny being a stalker.

“How did Gretchen feel about this?”

She grinned. “Oh, you seem to know everything.”

“Were you aware that Gretchen’s mother used your name?”

“I don’t care what other people do.”

“Were you aware that she-excuse me, what was her original name?” That was a puzzle piece I didn’t have.

She laughed again, a small, mean giggle. “That’s what she wanted to know.”

“Excuse me?”

“She wanted me to tell her that woman’s real name. I’ve forgotten. What was she to me? I’ve forgotten.”

“Gretchen? That’s what Gretchen was asking-her mother’s real name?”

“She got so angry when I didn’t tell her. Then when I explained I couldn’t remember-well, that got rid of her. She left.”

“When was this?”

She flapped a hand at me. “I don’t know. Three? Four?”

“Do you know where she was going?”

She rolled her eyes. All right, I got it-she wasn’t anyone’s keeper. I closed my notebook.

“We both left,” she told me. “She wasn’t stranded. She had a mobile. I saw her talking on it as I drove away. I assume she was calling a taxi.”

She’d called home. We found her phone near the scene. It had been thirty feet from the body. She’d been hit hard, and thrown far.

“There’s only one thing I don’t understand,” I said. “What about the box? The box of photographs. Gretchen had it. It had once belonged to this address, and had been reused to ship to Gretchen’s mother, when she and Gretchen lived in Brighton. They were your photographs. How did they get there?”

“I didn’t want them anymore.”

“You mailed them? You addressed them to ‘Linda Paul’?”

She didn’t say anything else. She closed her eyes.

Frohmann met me at Millington Road. I wanted to look around the house again with a fresh mind. Black clouds of fingerprint dust covered strategic stretches of wall, rails, doorknobs.

Frohmann reported the latest: “It was his car, for sure. Paint match. Tire match. No fingerprints in it except expected ones, and in all the expected places…” We had the appropriate elimination prints from the investigation of Nick’s disappearance.

“Steering wheel wasn’t wiped, then,” I clarified.

“That’s right. Must have worn gloves. Premeditated?”

“Or cold. It’s December.”

She continued: “The vehicle wasn’t cited for anything last night-no speeding tickets, no parking violations.”

I prowled the house, touching all the furniture. I’d had to hold back last night, for fingerprints’ sake. Now I could indulge in getting a feel for the place. Expensive. This was a well-kept house.

“What did he do for a living?” I asked.

She riffled through her notebook. “He bred Norwich canaries.”

“For a living, Frohmann. Birds are a labour of love.”

“They were his only labour, sir. Ex-solicitor.”

I turned in a circle and marvelled. “Look at this place, Frohmann. She was a professor. Where did the money come from?”

“Family, sir. Isn’t that usually the way, with homes like this?”

“Exactly. Find out if it was his family, or hers.” She made a note.

“Also, sir, the driver’s seat was adjusted for Harry’s height.”

“So, driven by Harry, or by someone Harry’s height, or by someone who had the sense to set it back when they were done.”

She sighed at me. I was being negative again.

“Look,” I said. “The question here, the big question, is why bring the car back?”

“To frame Harry,” she answered too quickly.

“Maybe. But he’s dead. How framed could he be?”

“Try this, sir. She messed with his birds, he found out, he killed her, came back here…”

“And had an accident while cleaning up? I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t have left those windows open. He wouldn’t have left those cages toppled over. Last night I saw some of those birds-crushed in their cages, some of them not quite dead yet. He wouldn’t have left them. He’d save them before he’d avenge them.”

“What if he killed her for a different reason? Killed her for something else, and then came home and found the birds? What if the reason she was angry enough to go after his birds might be the same reason he was angry enough to go after her?”

“The neighbour saw the car here at lunchtime, when he also saw the windows open. So, whoever took the car later knew about the birds. Not Harry. It wasn’t Harry.”

I jogged up the stairs, and up again, to the bird room. Frohmann trailed me.

“The killer had no assurance that Harry’s death wouldn’t have been discovered,” I mused. “The birds coming and going might have alerted someone. Returning the car was a risk. Why bring it back? Why?”

The empty cages had been restacked haphazardly. Fallen rosettes had been tossed into a corner: first prize, champion, best in show. The birds had been taken, but nothing had been cleaned. The mess on the floor had been swept into a now stinking pile.

“Maybe, sir… to get his own vehicle? What if the murderer had parked here, and just needed to get his own car away? That would be worth coming back for.”

That was good. That was very good.

“Any witnesses to unusual vehicles, in the driveway or on the street?”

She flipped back through her notebook pages. “Mr. Neighbourhood Watch gave us a list. We ran the plates; no one popped as connected or suspicious.”

The doorbell clamoured before she finished. That grating sound.

Frohmann descended to answer it. I followed more slowly. From the top of the main staircase I watched her open the door to Miranda Bailey, of all people.

“May I help you, Mrs. Bailey?” Frohmann asked politely. I ought to send a thank-you note to her mother for raising her right.

“I-Where’s Harry? I heard about Gretchen. Where’s Harry?”

Frohmann looked up at me for guidance. Polly’s mother followed her gaze. “Oh!” she said. “Inspector Keene.” She looked upset. I’d been the one to interrogate her over Nick.

“Mrs. Bailey.” I descended the stair like a host. I wanted to be kind.

“If you think Harry had anything to do with it, you’re wrong. Where have you taken him? Have you dragged him away to jail?” She was strangling her wrists with the strap of her bag.

“No, no, no, Mrs. Bailey,” I said. “Please, sit down. Please,” I said.

Frohmann got to the point as soon as she was off her feet. “He’s dead, Mrs. Bailey.”

She jumped up. “What? No! No, it’s Gretchen. I was told by someone from the University. Gretchen’s dead.”

“They’re both dead,” Frohmann assured her.

Miranda looked at each of us, back and forth, a little tennis game. “Really?” she finally squeaked.

There was a box of tissues on the mantel. I handed it to her. Frohmann pushed her gently back to sitting, and sat next to her, on the arm of the couch.

“Was he in the car too?” Miranda asked, obviously having heard “car accident” through the grapevine. Her misunderstanding of the facts spoke well for innocence.

I took over. Not everything would be released to the public. “He died here.”

Miranda cried. Frohmann pushed ahead. “Did you know him well, Mrs. Bailey? Why did you come here today?”

“I…” She looked around, as if surprised to find herself here. “I’d heard about Gretchen. I wanted to see if he was all right.”

“How well did you know Mr. Reed?”

She only blinked.

“Harry Reed,” I expanded.

She put her hand to her mouth, and looked back and forth from me to Frohmann. “I thought his last name was Paul,” she finally said.

“A reasonable mistake,” I assured her.

She rocked back and forth. “No, it’s not. It’s really not.”

Frohmann intervened. “How well did you know him, Mrs. Bailey?”

“Apparently, not well at all!” Her laugh was high-pitched.

“Can you tell us why they took such an interest in your arrest?” I pressed. “Did you know either of them before your arrival in Cambridge?”

“They were friends of my daughter. They took an interest in justice. Do I really need to rationalise that?”

“No, Mrs. Bailey,” I agreed. “No, it’s only that your concerns about one another seem to have been deeper than one would expect of friends of family.”

“Then I feel sorry for you,” she said. “You must lead a very insular life.”

“When exactly were you here last?” I asked, ignoring her editorial.

“Yesterday morning. Around ten-thirty? I think?” Her hands were full of crumpled tissue. As she swivelled her head looking for a rubbish bin, she suddenly perceived her vulnerability. “When I left he was alive!” she asserted. “I left him and he was about to take a shower. And I went into town. I took Polly shopping. We bought things. I used a credit card at Robert Sayles! You can trace that! I bought a sweater. I bought her a coat. She wanted a new coat…”

“Sergeant Frohmann will take you home,” I suggested. We would check on that alibi later.

“Oh. No, thank you. No, I have a rental car. A hire car. I’m visiting my old village today. I used to live fairly near, when I was a girl. I wanted Polly to come with me, but she didn’t want to. That’s all right. It’s been a good visit. She let me buy her a coat yesterday. We haven’t been shopping together in a long time, too long. But yesterday she let me. She let me buy her a coat.” She was awfully excited about that coat. She covered her face and eked out a sound like a deflating balloon.

“What do you make of her?” Frohmann asked me, after she’d left.

“She seemed honestly surprised.”

Shouting outside distracted us. Across the street, Miranda and another woman were arguing in the driveway of a house for sale. The other woman sounded belligerent and Miranda cowered.

Frohmann bounded across the street.

The woman arguing with Polly’s mother wore a suit and high-heeled shoes, all in red.

They stopped. Lady-in-red turned her glare to Frohmann. “This car needs to be ticketed. It has no right to park here.”

“Can we back it up a little?” I suggested, catching up. “You are…?”

“Rebecca Phillips-Koster. I represent this home for sale, and I’m tired of people using it as a catch-all parking slot.”

Miranda was crying again. “Yesterday a horrible man put notes on all the windshields of cars parked in the street instead of in driveways. He was on a crusade against Christmas shoppers parking in the road. I didn’t want to deal with him today. You had the police cars in the driveway, so I parked here. I didn’t think it would hurt anyone.”

“What horrible man?” Frohmann asked.

“That man.” She pointed to the house next door to Gretchen and Harry’s. The neighbourhood watch.

“This driveway is not a public car park. This is trespassing!” the red lady insisted.

“All right, all right,” I soothed her. “I understand your frustration. Has this been going on a lot?” I shot Frohmann a significant look.

The red lady looked embarrassed. “Once or twice. But even once is too much! This is private property.”

“Yesterday?” Frohmann prodded. “Was anyone parked here yesterday?”

Red lady shook her head, then switched abruptly to a nod. “Students.” She rolled her eyes, inviting us all to commiserate. “One had left a bicycle here. Propped against the side of the house, around here…” We all walked around the side of the house, and looked where the offending bicycle had once been.

“Did you see this student? Do you remember what the cycle looked like?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see him. But-” She pulled a remote control out of her purse. The garage door slowly inched upward. “I taught him a lesson. I put the bike in the garage. Ha.” She looked satisfied.

I must have looked pretty satisfied myself. “Please don’t touch it,” I said, as she walked toward the garage. Frohmann called forensics on her mobile. I felt a vibration in my front pocket.

“Why haven’t you phoned?” Gwen demanded.

“I’ve been working,” I apologised.

“I assumed so.” Her voice was deliberate. “But I didn’t know it. I was wondering if something had happened.” This comes from every police spouse.

“I slept at the station. Things went late. We found that student…”

“I know. And the professor. It’s on the news.”

“It’s ugly. Look, we’re in the middle of-”

She cut me off. “It’s Dora.”

“What? What’s Dora?”

“We left the wedding after you did. She was exhausted. She was cold. A waitress lent her some dry clothes. She went right to sleep as soon as we got home-”

“Right, right, yes, I get that. What’s happened?”

“I wanted to brush her hair. It was getting matted with all that gel and pins in it. I opened her vanity drawer, to get her brush, and there was a condom in there.”

Shit. I stepped farther away and lowered my voice. “It’s not hers. It must belong to a friend.”

“Exactly,” she said. Meaning a male friend.

“She’s fourteen, Gwen. She’s fourteen…” She didn’t say anything, so I kept talking. “I can’t deal with this right now. We’re in the middle…”

Gwen cried. I couldn’t not deal with this.

I called to Frohmann, “Take care of the bicycle. I’ll catch up with you at the station.” I walked down the driveway, holding the phone tight enough to squeeze the blood out of my fingers. “All right. What can I do?”

“I don’t know.” She was still crying.

“Have you talked to her? Is she there?”

“No. No, she was asleep the moment she fell into bed. I didn’t say anything last night, I just walked out of the room. I waited for you to come home. I kept waiting…”

Sorry, sorry, sorry… “Then what?”

“I fell asleep rather late. She was already out when I got up. She’d left the cereal box open on the table. She’d made herself coffee.” Dora drinks coffee? Since when does a fourteen-year-old drink coffee? “I just kept waiting. I didn’t want to bother you but I was going crazy.”

“Do you know where she is?”

Gwen didn’t answer. I guessed she was shaking her head. When she’s upset she forgets a person on the phone isn’t right in front of her.

“Look, Gwen, she’s probably with Stephanie, right? Stephanie and… what’s the other one?”

“Margaux.”

“Margaux. Right. They hang out together. I’ll bet they’re… shopping or something.” What do teenage girls do? “Have you checked her email?”

“Of course I checked her email. She doesn’t use the email we gave her. She probably uses one of those free ones you can check at a website.”

“All right, all right. Try a few. The computer might be set to remember her login. Try Hotmail. Try Yahoo.”

“She’ll hate us…”

Probably. I reasoned to myself that there was no reason to panic. If the condom was hers, she was either already in deep and today wasn’t any more important than tomorrow, or she was just playing at being a grown-up and there wasn’t any real worry at all.

“She’ll come home for dinner. Or she’ll call. You know she always does,” I said.

Gulping sounds, which I interpreted as more tearful nodding. Then: “You know, what I really want is a co-parent in this situation. What I really want is a partner, a real partner…”

I know, I know, I know…

“I know our daughter’s going to grow up, Morris. I know what’s part of that. I know. But I don’t want it so fast, and I don’t want to parent it alone.”

Sorry, sorry. “I know.”

“She was so beautiful last night, Morris. She’s so beautiful…” She is. She looks like Gwen.

“I’ll come home for lunch. Will you make me lunch?” I felt a bit lord-of-the-manor saying that, but it would distract her.

“It’s late for lunch-” she said.

“I’ll come home,” I said.

The first time I’d met Gwen’s dad I’d been in a panic to impress him. I wore a tie. I bought new shoes. I brought flowers for her mother.

“Mum, Dad,” she’d said. “This is Morris.” It was such an announcement. “This” was Morris: newly a detective constable. New shoes. A tie that had been a despised Christmas gift.

Her dad had shaken my hand. “Gwen likes you,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re supposed to say how much you respect her,” he prompted.

“I do, sir,” I said. Nothing else would come out. What could I say to a dad? That I was hard all day thinking about her? That’s what everything came down to. Her prettiness, her love of animals, her kindness, her cleverness-everything I liked made me want her. That’s the way things are at that age.

The first time we’d done it, which had been a week after that dinner with her parents, I’d been too fast. I’d thought she wouldn’t see me again after that. I’d been drinking, and selfish, and stupid, and eager.

We got better matched over time. We were good together. We were.

Gwen stood at the door, waiting for me. “Oh, Morris,” she said, and started crying again.

I said, “She’s all right, you know. She’s all right.” And Gwen nodded. It really wasn’t the end of the world, was it? It really wasn’t.

“It’s just so early,” she said. “I thought we had years…”

“We have years,” I said, suddenly fierce. “We have years to be parents to a fine girl who’s becoming a fine woman, who’ll drive us crazy sometimes, and scare us sometimes, and make us proud sometimes. We have years of that ahead, so don’t spend all your energy on today. We have years, Gwen, we have years…” At that, she wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled herself tight to me. She almost lifted herself off the floor.

I didn’t know what to do with my arms. We’d been making love like usual, but we hadn’t embraced in a long time.

I put my hands on her back. “Oh, Morris,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

I’d been away, that was sure. I just wasn’t certain I was entirely back.

“I’m sorry, Gwen, it’s been…” I didn’t know what it had been. Richard’s wedding?

She released herself and led me to the table. She’d set out sandwich fixings, and coffee. “I know yesterday was difficult for you,” she said.

I shook my head. “Dancing embarrasses me, but I wouldn’t call it difficult.”

She sighed elaborately but wouldn’t face me. “It was Alice,” she said. Why do people think I carry a torch for Alice? Has Carmen been pushing her ideas on Gwen?

“I don’t give a shit about either Alice, except in the most human, generic manner of wishing them both well,” I said.

She shrugged. We were at a stalemate again. The connection from the doorway was gone.

“Gwen,” I said, reaching across the table. “Gwen, I was never in love with Alice. I hardly knew Alice. I liked her, and I might have had something with her, but I didn’t. I had something with you.”

She ignored my hand. “I always knew I was second choice…” Shit. Where was this coming from? Sixteen years!

“All right, Gwen, all right. When I first met you, we weren’t serious, right? It wasn’t serious for you either. We were just having fun. And I thought about having fun with someone else too, with Alice. That’s ordinary. There’s nothing big there. So I tried to get off with her, and she said no. She said no. And you and me, we kept going on, and we became something, and here we are. This isn’t a contest with places. This is just… life. We went from not being together to being together. Here we are.”

“Yes, here we are,” she said. I wanted to eat to stop the talking but I couldn’t face food. She pushed on, “What can I do, Morris? Is there something I can wear or something I can do to make you look at me again?”

“What on earth would you wear?” I said, knowing it was incendiary as soon as it popped out. But what is it with women thinking how they dress is going to change something? “Stop crying,” I said. “Gwen…”

“Do you remember our first time?” she said. Great. One of my most embarrassing moments. “You made dinner at your flat, and we had strong red wine. I felt elegant, having wine instead of beer. I was nervous so I just kept sipping. I didn’t want the food because I was worried about garlic on my breath. I thought kissing the taste of wine would be nice. So I just kept drinking…” I’d just assumed she’d noticed that I’m a terrible cook. “I knew we were going to go all the way. I was-we knew, didn’t we? Without talking about it. We knew. Morris, I’d never felt so wanted. You were… wild about me. You were on me like…” She shook her head. She couldn’t find the best words. “You were so hungry for me. I’d never felt so perfect in my life.”

Dora interrupted. She’d pushed the door open with a hand full of shopping bags, and had heard the last sentences. “That’s disgusting, Mum. Keep it to yourself,” she said lightly. “Are you trying to corrupt me?”

Gwen pinkened. I jumped right in. “You don’t seem to need much help. What do you have a condom for?”

She froze. “Which one of you went into my things?”

“Not the point, Dora. Just tell us what’s going on.”

She put down the bags and joined us at the table, looking suddenly much younger. She stood holding the back of a chair, looking from one of us to the other. “Margaux and Spencer are doing it. They’ve been dating a year, right, and they think they’re in love.” She rolled her eyes at that, which made me glad. “So she gave one to me and one to Stephanie ‘just in case,’ right? She said it was great and we should be prepared. I put it in my drawer, ’cause what was I gonna do, carry it in my purse like an emergency tampon?” She rolled her eyes again.

I nodded. “All right. That’s a fine answer. In fact, that’s a great answer. I like that answer. But you can come to us when the answer is different too, all right?”

“Ew,” she said, and went upstairs.

I rubbed the back of my neck. Gwen tapped one finger on her cheek.

“Do you believe her?” she whispered.

“I do. I do,” I said. She nodded too.

“Oh, Morris,” she said, relieved and embarrassed, and still fragile.

“You were in a right tizzy,” I teased her.

“No more than you!” We laughed dodged-a-bullet laughs.

“Morris, I’m sorry. Maybe all this”-she said, waving a hand around-“is my fault. I’ve always felt like I was competing with what might have been, and then when Richard got engaged…” She shrugged. “I don’t know why that would have bothered me, but it did. It made me jealous. The newness of what they have. Their love is so… shiny. It’s shiny.”

“What, so their love is a puppy, and our love is an old, hairy, smelly, half-blind dog?” That made her laugh.

“We’re smelly old dogs,” she agreed.

“Aw, Gwen. You’ll always be one of those dumb yapping puppies to me.” I smiled hugely. She came ’round to my side of the table to swat me in the chest. I caught her wrists. “No, babe, no,” I said. “I’m a cop, you can’t get the better of me.” There we were, about to wrestle.

“You haven’t called me ‘babe’ in years,” she said, like she was going to cry again.

My phone vibrated. “Sorry,” I said. She knew my work-voice. It was Frohmann. I had to get to the station. She’d done something magic to get the bike owner’s name so fast.

“I’m proud of you,” Gwen said, seeing me out the door.

“I’ll be home tonight,” I said.

We kissed a kiss like we hadn’t since we were pissed on cheap wine and empty stomachs.