But she could see that everything was immaculately maintained, and there were footprints leading to the door and welcoming lights in the windows. Sam charged ahead and flung open the front door, shouting, “Mum!”
It was Duncan, however, not Juliet, who came hurrying into the hall to meet them. “Jules is changing,” he explained, “and Caspar seems to have gone walkabout.”
“Did Mummy really find a body?” asked Sam, hopping from one foot to the other with impatience.
“Yes, I’m afraid she did,” Kincaid answered gravely. “I’ll let her tell you about it if she wants.”
“But what did it—”
Rosemary, still holding the punch box, forestalled her grandson. “Let’s get these things in the kitchen. Gemma, I’ll do the honors for Juliet. Take off your coats—there’s a cupboard just to your right.”
While Sam and Lally shoved their things into the cupboard willy-nilly, followed a little more carefully by Kit and Toby, Gemma took the opportunity to look about her. The sitting room to her right had forest-green walls and pristine white sofas, while the magnificent Christmas tree in one corner was decorated with white silk roses and shimmering crystal drops. The dining room on the left was just as elegant, but done in deep reds, and the long mahogany table was already set with china and crystal, as if awaiting a feast for ghosts. The rooms had none of the slightly shabby comfort of the Kincaids’ house, and none of the effortless style. It made Gemma think of a stage set, and she could see why Juliet was happy to spend her days mucking about on a building site.
When their coats were stowed—and Gemma realized that here nothing would ever be tossed casually over the back of a chair—Hugh took the box from his wife, saying, “Just tell me where you want this.”
“In the kitchen, of course,” she snapped, but Gemma had the feeling that her sharpness was not really directed at her husband. She seemed ill at ease, and Gemma suspected it had to do with her son-in-law’s absence.
“Come see our rooms,” Sam demanded of Kit and Toby, and as the children trooped obediently after him up the wide staircase, Gemma found herself momentarily alone with Duncan. He seemed to slump a little, as if glad of a respite.
“Are you all right?” he asked, touching her cheek. “Is Kit? I’m sorry it took longer than I expected.”
“What was—” she began, but he interrupted her.
“A baby. But it had been there a long time, probably years. Jules is a bit upset.” He didn’t quite meet her eyes, and his face wore the careful expression she had come to recognize.
God, how she wished he would stop treating her as if she were made of glass, and would shatter at the mere mention of an infant. She was about to protest when she heard a rustling on the stairs. Looking up, she saw a dark-haired woman coming down, dressed in just the sort of red velvet dress Gemma had imagined appropriate for the evening. While Gemma would have recognized her from the few family photos Duncan had shown her, she had not envisioned Juliet Newcombe’s delicacy, nor the haunted look about her eyes.
“You must be Gemma,” said Juliet as she reached them. She took both Gemma’s hands in her own, and although her smile seemed to take an effort, her voice held genuine warmth. “I’m so glad to meet you.”
At that moment, Gemma realized that she had been prepared to dislike Juliet, and felt a rising blush of shame. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a difficult night,” she told her, giving Juliet’s small, cold hands a squeeze before letting them go.
“Not the best of circumstances,” Juliet agreed. “But still, I’m glad you’re here, both of you.” She turned to Kincaid. “The children—I thought I heard—”
“Upstairs. Sam’s acting the tour guide,” answered Duncan.
“And Caspar—Has he—”
Duncan shook his head. “Not here yet. You should have rung him, Jules. Maybe he’s out looking for you.”
“I doubt that,” she answered, and this time her smile was as brittle as ice.
“Look,” Duncan said into the awkward silence that followed this conversation stopper, “Mum and Dad are in the kitchen making the famous punch. Can we help with any—”
The front door opened and Juliet froze as a man stepped into the hall, her hand raised to her breast in an unconsciously defensive gesture. “Caspar.”
Tall and thin, dark haired like his wife, Caspar Newcombe was fastidiously dressed and wore expensive-looking rimless glasses. His rather patrician good looks were marred, however, by the peevish set of his mouth and the cold glare he directed at his wife. He neither greeted nor acknowledged Gemma and Duncan. It was only when he took a step forward and listed dangerously to one side that Gemma realized he was drunk. He put a hand to the wall and propped himself up with deliberate nonchalance.
Juliet returned the glare and took the offensive. “Where have you been?”
“The Bowling Green.” Caspar made no effort to keep his voice down. “Having a bit of Christmas cheer, which I’m not likely to get at home, am I, my dear wife? I could ask you the same, but at least I know you’ve not been dispensing your favors to my partner, because he was in the office with me. But maybe you’ve been having a bit of rough-and-tumble with one of your lads? Or is the correct term ‘coworker’ these days?” He smirked at his own cleverness.
“You bastard,” Juliet said quietly. “Did Piers just happen to suggest that to you, too, over a confidential drink? Or did you think of it yourself?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Gemma glimpsed a movement at the top of the stairs. Looking up, she saw the treaded bottom of a trainer and a ragged denim cuff disappear round the landing. Lally. She’d noticed earlier that the bottoms of Lally’s jeans were fashionably shredded. She reached out to Juliet in warning, but Juliet was speaking again, her attention so focused on her husband that the house could have come down round their ears before she noticed.
“You’re a gullible fool, Caspar,” said Juliet, her voice rising now. “But whatever you think I am, and whatever you think I’ve done, I’m not a liar and an embezzler.”
At least he was warm, thought Ronnie Babcock as he stood in the Fosters’ sitting room, although he suspected that soon his damp clothes would start to visibly steam. Tom and Donna Foster had invited him in, albeit grudgingly, but had not taken his coat, or given him a seat. Nor had they offered that most obvious of courtesies on such a miserable night—a drink. Maybe they’d simply thought he’d refuse on principle, but that was a charitable interpretation.
He guessed the couple to be in their mid-to late fifties, townies who had embraced the country life and brought their slice of heaven along with them, transforming the interior of what must once have been a charming traditional farmhouse into a replica of the most banal suburban semidetached.
The electric two-bar heater that had been pulled in front of the empty brick hearth radiated waves of a harsh, dry heat that had at least defrosted Babcock’s extremities, even though half blocked by Foster’s considerable bulk. The wife was thin, with a tightly drawn face and hair lacquered a very unnatural shade of red. The sparkling sequined reindeer on her jumper was by far the most cheerful—not to mention the most tasteful—thing in the room. She’d perched on the edge of the sofa, part of a hideous three-piece suite done in peach plush, and kept glancing at the large television hulking in one corner of the room, its sound muted, as if she couldn’t bear to tear herself away.
Tired of standing around waiting for frostbite to set in while he watched the techies do their jobs, Babcock had decided to call on the previous owners of the barn. He’d gone on his own, intending to give his subordinates the rest of their evening off before the investigation swung into full gear tomorrow, but he’d begun to wish he had brought along a friendly face.
“I’d very much like to know what’s going on, Inspector,” demanded Tom Foster, as if he had summoned Babcock for an interview. “You lot have been up and down our lane all night, making a muck of things. We’ll be lucky to get our car out in the morning.” His accent was
broad Mancunian. Babcock didn’t know about the wife’s, as she hadn’t spoken, even though her husband had included her in his perfunctory introductions.
“It’s Chief Inspector,” Babcock said mildly, but he didn’t apologize for the inconvenience. “Mr. Foster, I understand that, until recently, you owned the old barn down by the canal.”
“That’s right,” agreed Foster, his bald head gleaming in the glare of the ceiling light. “Bought the property as an investment five years ago, didn’t we?” If he’d hoped for confirmation from his wife, he was disappointed, as her eyes had swiveled back to the girls in skimpy Santa outfits parading across the telly screen.
“Figured we couldn’t lose, with the property market going up, and we didn’t, oh no.” Foster allowed himself a satisfied smirk. “Made as much on the sale of the barn and surrounding pasture as we spent on the whole place, including this house. Of course, the house was in a terrible state, and the owners left it full of moldy old bits. Had to call the junkman to haul them off.
“We’ve done the house up proper since. All the mod cons.” Foster looked round with the pride of a monarch surveying his kingdom.
Babcock realized he was beginning to grind his teeth, and that he was sweating inside his overcoat. He made a conscious effort to relax his jaw and unfastened the top button of his coat. “Mr. Foster, has the barn been in use since you bought the property?”
“What’s all this about the barn, Inspector?” Foster’s temporary joviality vanished. “Have those kids been getting into things? I won’t have them crossing my property—I’ve told them often enough—and if they’ve been trespassing down the building site, the Bonners have a right to know.”
“It’s not kids, Mr. Foster. The builder, Mrs. Newcombe, made a discovery. Someone mortared a baby into the barn wall.”
In the shocked silence that followed Babcock’s announcement, he heard a faint squeak, like the mew of a distressed kitten. He’d succeeded in removing Mrs. Foster’s attention from the television.
“What? What did you say?” Foster shook his head as if he had water in his ears.
“A baby,” whispered Mrs. Foster. “He said they found a baby. How horrible.”
Babcock relented a fraction. “It’s been there a good while, Mrs. Foster. Perhaps years.” On second thought, he wasn’t sure why the passage of time made the child’s fate any less terrible, but Mrs. Foster nodded, as if he’d said something profoundly comforting. Neither husband nor wife expressed any concern for Juliet Newcombe’s ordeal.
“Before our time, then.” Foster seemed to find some personal satisfaction in that.
“We won’t know for sure until the experts have examined the child’s remains,” said Babcock smoothly. He wasn’t about to reveal to the Fosters that the experts’ opinions might not give him a well-defined time frame, nor did he intend them to know how handicapped he was by the lack of that knowledge. “That’s why I need to know if there’s been any activity in the barn in the time you’ve owned it.”
“Never go down there, myself,” said Foster. “But we see if anyone goes up and down the lane. And we’d see lights if there was any funny business at night.”
Babcock had surveyed the prospect from their front garden himself, and felt quite sure that the bend in the lane would block any view of lights in the barn. “So you’re saying you haven’t seen anything?”
The struggle between the desire for importance and the wisdom of noninvolvement was clearly visible in Foster’s face. Caution won out. “No. No, I can’t say as we have.”
“When exactly did you sell the property to the Bonners?”
Foster screwed up his already round face in concentration, so that he looked like an overripe plum about to burst. “Must be just on a year, now. After Christmas. Old hulk of a place—we thought sure the Bonners would raze it and build new. And why on earth would they hire an inexperienced girl as a contractor? We said as much, but they paid no heed. Taken leave of their senses, if you ask me.”
Juliet Newcombe must be in her late thirties, Babcock calculated, and he doubted very much that she would think being referred to as a “girl” a compliment. “Why did they choose Mrs. Newcombe against your advice?” he asked.
“Referred by his high muckety-muck up the lane,” said Foster, jerking his head towards the Barbridge road. “Dutton. Piers Dutton. Though if you ask me, he’d like you to call him Lord Dutton.”
“We’ve asked him for drinks a half dozen times. He always has some sort of excuse,” added Mrs. Foster. Babcock felt a twinge of sympathy for the neighbor, stalked by the social-climbing Fosters, who had undoubtedly been angling for a return invitation and a look at the Victorian manor house.
Piers Dutton…an unusual name, he thought. Then a gear meshed in his brain and he realized where he had heard it. Piers Dutton was Caspar Newcombe’s partner. Perhaps Dutton had felt more sociable towards the Bonners, and it was only natural that he should recommend his partner’s wife to his new neighbors—although considering that his relationship with the Bonners would be ongoing, he must have had confidence in Juliet’s ability to do the job.
“And the people who owned the property before you? The Smiths, wasn’t it? If you could give me a contact address for them—”
“But we haven’t heard from them in years,” said Mrs. Foster. “Have we, Tom?” Babcock pegged her as one of those women who wouldn’t like to say the sun was shining without confirmation from her husband. When Foster nodded in agreement, she went on. “You see, we came along just as they’d put the place on the market. They’d expected to take their time looking for something else, but as it was, they went into rented accommodation—a flat here in Nantwich, I remember. We sent them a Christmas card that first year, but we never heard from them after.”
“Have you any idea where they meant to go?” asked Babcock. It seemed the simplest things always turned out to be the most difficult.
“I know they had a grown daughter in Shropshire, but they hadn’t decided what they wanted to do. Only that they’d had their fill of farming, and they’d made enough on the sale of the property to give them a quiet retirement.”
“If you have the address of the rented flat, perhaps they left forwarding instructions.”
Mrs. Foster looked stricken. “But I’d not have saved it, not when we didn’t hear from them the next Christmas.”
“Of course not.” Babcock had the disheartening vision of names of unresponsive recipients crossed off the Christmas card list, year after year. “What about the estate agent who handled the sale?”
“Craddock and Burbage, on the High Street,” said Tom.
Babcock made a note in his notebook, although he doubted he’d forget. Jim Craddock, like Kincaid, was an old schoolmate—one who, unlike Kincaid, had stayed in Nantwich and taken on the family business.
He’d have to hope the Smiths had left forwarding information with the estate agent, or that they’d remained on friendlier terms with some of their other neighbors. And that was assuming, of course, that they were both still living. “They were an older couple, then, I take it?” he asked. “No children left at home?”
“I only heard of the one daughter. But they did say something about being nearer the grandchildren,” answered Mrs. Foster. Then she gaped as the realization struck her. “You surely don’t think the Smiths had anything to do with the child you found? But that’s—that’s—”
“We have to examine all the possibilities.” Babcock thought it likely he could rule out the Fosters themselves. Still, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to put the wind up these two, if only for the momentary satisfaction of wiping the smug expression off Tom Foster’s face. “And you, Mr. and Mrs. Foster?” he said. “Do you have any children?”
The snow had stopped but for the occasional flake drifting erratically through the air, like a sheep straying from its flock. Hugh Kincaid led Gemma through the shrouded garden, his jacket brushing miniature flurries from the shrubs as he passed. When they rea
ched the street, he paused and gazed up at the star sparkling clearly in the eastern sky.
“I think that’s it for tonight,” he said. “The storm seems to have blown itself out—just in time, too. I hate to think of the roads blocked on Christmas.”
Gemma took a deep breath, shaking off the atmosphere of the house, and the frigid air rushing into her nasal passages seemed to sear straight into her brain—a result, she suspected, of drinking too much of Rosemary’s lethal punch. Making an effort not to wobble on her feet, she glanced back towards the house and said hesitantly, “Are you sure we should go? I feel we should be helping tidy—”
“Not to worry. I promised you a tour of the town, and it’s the least I can do to make up for the first impression you must have of us,” answered Hugh, sounding pained. The subject of Juliet and Caspar’s behavior, and the fiasco that had been dinner, hung awkwardly in the silence that followed his comment.
Gemma hated to embarrass him further by agreeing, yet to pretend the evening had gone smoothly would be akin to ignoring an accident in the middle of the road—and a bloody accident, at that. “It must be difficult,” she ventured after a moment. “For you. And for the children.”
Earlier, Rosemary had put a stop to the shouting match in the hall, coming in from the kitchen with the fury of the Valkyries blazing in her face. “Whatever this is about, you will stop it this moment, and behave in a civilized manner,” she commanded. “The children will hear you, and you have guests, in case you’d forgotten.”
Juliet flushed as scarlet as her dress and looked round, belatedly, towards the top of the stairs. Caspar glared at his mother-in-law, as if he might rebel, but after a charged moment, he stomped off to his study and slammed the door.
“Thank you for reminding me, Mother,” Juliet had said stiffly, but without apparent sarcasm, and she then led the way back into the kitchen. There she’d organized the food and passed it to Duncan to carry to the table, all without speaking an unnecessary word. With her head up and her back held ramrod straight, she’d seemed almost to vibrate with repressed tension and anger.
Water Like a Stone Page 8