“When did you recognize him?” asked Gemma.
“Didn’t. Not his body, anyway. But I looked at his wallet when they took it out of his pocket, and I knew the name seemed familiar. Took me a minute to place it.”
Kincaid moved to the window and looked out. “Where had you heard it?”
Smith shrugged. “Pub gossip, most likely. Everyone hereabouts knows the Ashertons and their business.”
“Do you think he could have fallen in from the top of the gate?” Kincaid asked.
“Railing’s not high enough to keep a tall man from going over if he’s drunk. Or stupid. But the concrete apron continues for a bit on the upstream side of the gate before it meets the old tow-path, and there’s no railing along it at all.”
Kincaid remembered the private homes he’d seen upstream on this side of the river. All had immaculate lawns running down to the water, some also had small docks. “What if he went in farther upstream?”
“The current’s not all that strong until you get close to the gate, so if he went in along there,”-he nodded upstream-“I’d say he’d have to have been unconscious not to have pulled himself out. Or already dead.”
“What if he went in here, by the gate? Would the current have been strong enough to hold him down?”
Smith gazed out at the lock a moment before answering. “Hard to say. The current is what holds the gate closed-it’s pretty fierce. But whether it could hold a struggling man down… unlikely, I’d say, but you can’t be sure.”
“One more thing, Mr. Smith,” Kincaid said. “Did you see or hear anything unusual during the night?”
“I go to bed early, as I’m always up by daybreak. Nothing disturbed me.”
“Would a scuffle have awakened you?”
“I’ve always been a sound sleeper, Superintendent. I can’t very well say, now can I?”
“Sleep of the innocent?” whispered Gemma as they took their leave and Smith firmly shut his door.
Kincaid stopped and stared at the lock. “If Connor Swann were unconscious or already dead when he went in the water, how in hell did someone get him here? It would be an almost impossible carry even for a strong man.”
“Boat?” ventured Gemma. “From either upstream or down. Although why someone would lift him from a boat downstream of the lock, carry him around and dump him on the upstream side, I can’t imagine.”
They walked slowly toward the path that would take them back across the weir, the wind at their backs. Moored boats rocked peacefully in the quiet water downstream. Ducks dived and bobbed, showing no concern with human activity that didn’t involve crusts of bread. “Was he already dead? That’s the question, Gemma.” He looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “Fancy a visit to the morgue?”
CHAPTER 3
The smell of disinfectant always reminded Kincaid of his school infirmary, where Matron presided over the bandaging of scraped knees and wielded the power to send one home if the illness or injury proved severe enough. The inhabitants of this room, however, were beyond help from Matron’s ministrations, and the disinfectant didn’t quite mask the elusive tang of decay. He felt gooseflesh rise on his arms from the cold.
A quick call to Thames Valley CID had directed them to High Wycombe’s General Hospital, where Connor Swann’s body awaited autopsy. The hospital was old, the morgue still a place of ceramic tiles and porcelain sinks, lacking the rows of stainless-steel drawers which tucked bodies neatly away out of sight. Instead, the steel gurneys that lined the walls held humped, white-sheeted forms with toe tags peeking out.
“Who was it you wanted, now?” asked the morgue attendant, a bouncy young woman whose name tag read “Sherry” and whose demeanor seemed more suited to a nursery school.
“Connor Swann,” said Kincaid, with an amused glance at Gemma.
The girl walked along the row of gurneys, flicking toe tags with her fingers as she passed. “Here he is. Number four.” She tucked the sheet down to his waist with practiced precision. “And a nice clean one he is, too. Always makes it a bit easier, don’t you think?” She smiled brightly at them, as if they were mentally impaired, then walked back to the swinging doors and shouted “Mickey” through the gap she made with one hand. “We’ll need some help shifting him,” she added, turning back to Kincaid and Gemma.
Mickey emerged a moment later, parting the doors like a bull charging from a pen. The muscles in his arms and shoulders strained the thin fabric of his T-shirt, and he wore the short sleeves rolled up, displaying an extra inch or two of bicep.
“Can you give these people a hand with number four, Mickey?” Sherry enunciated carefully, her nursery-teacher manner now mixed with a touch of exasperation. The young man merely nodded, his acne-inflamed face impassive, and pulled a pair of thin latex gloves from his back pocket. “Take all the time you want,” she added to Kincaid and Gemma. “Just give me a shout when you’ve finished, okay? Cheerio.” She whisked past them, the tail of her white lab coat flapping, and went out through the swinging doors.
They moved the few steps to the gurney and stood. In the ensuing silence Kincaid heard the soft expulsion of Gemma’s breath. Connor Swann’s exposed neck and shoulders were lean and well formed, his thick straight hair brown with a hint of auburn. Kincaid thought it likely that in life he had been one of those high-colored men who flushed easily in anger or excitement. His body was indeed remarkably unblemished. Some bruising showed along the left upper arm and shoulder, and when Kincaid looked closely he saw faint, dark marks on either side of the throat.
“Some bruising,” Gemma said dubiously, “but not the occlusion of the face and neck you’d expect with a manual strangulation.”
Kincaid bent over for a closer look at the throat. “No sign of a ligature. Look, Gemma, across the right cheekbone. Is that a bruise?”
She peered at the smudge of darker color. “Could be. Hard to tell, though. His face could easily have banged against the gate.”
Connor Swann had been blessed with good bone structure, thought Kincaid, high, wide cheekbones and a strong nose and chin. Above his full lips lay a thick, neatly trimmed, reddish mustache, looking curiously alive against the gray pallor of his skin.
“A good-looking bloke, would you say, Gemma?”
“Probably attractive, yes… unless he was a bit too full of himself. I got the impression he was quite the ladies’ man.”
Kincaid wondered how Julia Swann felt about that-she hadn’t impressed him as a woman willing to sit home meekly while her husband played the lad. It also occurred to him to wonder how much of his desire to see Connor had to do with assessing the physical evidence, and how much to do with his personal curiosity about the man’s wife.
He turned to Mickey and raised a questioning eyebrow. “Could we have a look at the rest?”
The young man obliged wordlessly, flipping the sheet off altogether.
“He’d been on holiday, but I’d say not recently,” Gemma commented as they saw the faint demarcation of a tan against belly and upper thighs. “Or maybe just summer boating on the Thames.”
Deciding he might as well imitate Mickey’s nonverbal style of communication, Kincaid nodded and made a rolling motion with his hand. Mickey slid both gloved hands beneath Connor Swann’s body, turning him with an apparent ease betrayed only by a barely audible grunt.
Wide shoulders, faintly freckled; a thin pale band on the neck bordering the hairline, evidence of a recent haircut; a mole where the buttock began to swell from the hollow of the back-all trivial things, thought Kincaid, but all proof of Connor Swann’s uniqueness. It always came, this moment in an investigation when the body became a person, someone who had perhaps liked pickle-and-cheese sandwiches, or old Benny Hill comedies.
“Had enough, guv?” Gemma said, sounding a bit more subdued than usual. “He’s clean as a whistle this side.”
Kincaid nodded. “Not much else to see. And nothing does us much good until we’ve traced his movements and got some estimate of time of death. Oka
y, Mickey,” he added, as the expression on the young man’s face indicated they might as well have been speaking in Greek. “I guess that’s it. Let’s look up Sherry Sunshine.” Kincaid looked back as they reached the door. Mickey had already turned Connor’s body and tidied the sheet as neatly as before.
They found her in a cubbyhole just to the left of the swinging doors, bent industriously over a computer keyboard, cheerful as ever. “Do you know when they’ve scheduled the post?” Kincaid asked.
“Um, let’s see.” She studied a typed schedule stuck to the wall with Sellotape. “Winnie can probably get to him late tomorrow afternoon or early the following morning.”
“Winnie?” Kincaid asked, fighting the absurd vision of Pooh Bear performing an autopsy.
“Dr. Winstead.” Sherry dimpled prettily. “We all call him that-he’s a bit tubby.”
Kincaid contemplated attending the postmortem with resignation. He had long ago got over any sort of grisly thrill at the proceedings. Now he found it merely distasteful, and the ultimate violation of human privacy sometimes struck him as unbearably sad. “You’ll let me know as soon as you schedule it?”
“Quick as a wink. I’ll do it myself.” Sherry beamed at him.
Out of the corner of his eye Kincaid saw Gemma’s expression and knew she’d rag him about buttering up the hired help. “Thanks, love,” he said to Sherry, giving her his full-wattage smile. “You’ve been a great help.” He waggled his fingers at her. “Cheerio, now.”
“You’re absolutely shameless,” said Gemma as soon as they were through the outer doors. “That poor little duck was as susceptible as a baby.”
Kincaid grinned at her. “Gets things done, though, doesn’t it?”
After a few unplanned detours due to her unfamiliarity with High Wycombe’s one-way system, Gemma found her way out of the town. Following Kincaid’s directions, she drove southwest, back into the hidden folds of the Chiltern Hills. Her stomach grumbled a bit, but they had decided that they should interview the Ashertons again before lunch.
In her mind she ran through Kincaid’s and Tony’s comments about the family, her curiosity piqued. She glanced at Kincaid, a question forming on her lips, but his unfocused gaze told her he was somewhere else entirely. He often got like that before an interview, as if it were necessary for him to turn inward before bringing that intense focus to bear.
She concentrated again on her driving, but she suddenly felt extraordinarily aware of his long legs taking up more than their share of the room in her Escort’s passenger compartment, and of his silence.
After a few minutes they reached the point where she had to make an unfamiliar turning. Before she could speak, he said, “Just here. Badger’s End lies about halfway along this little road.” His fingertip traced a faint line on the map, between the villages of Northend and Turville Heath. “It’s unmarked, a shortcut for the locals, I suppose.”
Ribbons of water trickled across the pavement where a stream bed ran down through the trees and intersected the narrow road. A triangular yellow road sign warned DANGER: FLOODING, and suddenly the story Gemma had heard of Matthew Asherton’s drowning seemed very immediate.
“Hard left,” Kincaid said, pointing ahead, and Gemma turned the wheel. The lane they entered was high-banked, just wide enough for the Escort to pass unscathed, and on either side thick trees arched until they met and intertwined overhead. It climbed steadily, and the high banks rose until the tree roots were at eye level. On the right, Gemma caught an occasional flash through the foliage of golden fields dropping down to a valley. On the left the woods crowded, darkly impenetrable, and the light filtering through the leafy canopy over the lane seemed green and liquid.
“Sledging,” Gemma said suddenly.
“What?”
“It reminds me of sledging. You know, bobsledding. Or the Olympic luge.”
Kincaid laughed. “Don’t accuse me of poetic fancy. Careful now, watch for a turning on the left.”
They appeared to be nearing the top of the gradient when Gemma saw a gap in the left-hand bank. She slowed and eased the car onto the leaf-padded track, following it on and slightly downhill until she rounded a bend and came into a clearing. “Oh,” she said softly, surprised. She’d expected a house built with the comfortable flint and timber construction she’d seen in the nearby villages. The sun, which had chased fitfully in and out of the cloud bank, found a gap, making dappled patterns against the white limestone walls of Badger’s End.
“Like it?”
“I’m not sure.” Gemma rolled down the window as she turned off the engine, and they sat for a moment, listening. Beneath the silence of the woods they heard a faint, deep hum. “It’s a bit eerie. Not at all what I imagined.”
“Just wait,” said Kincaid as he opened the car door, “until you meet the family.
Gemma assumed that the woman who answered the door must be Dame Caroline Stowe-good quality, tailored wool slacks, blouse and navy cardigan, short, dark, well-cut hair liberally streaked with gray-everything about her spoke of conservative, middle-aged good taste. But when the woman stared at them blankly, coffee mug poised halfway to her mouth, then said, “Can I help you with something?” Gemma’s certainty began to waiver.
Kincaid identified himself and Gemma, then asked for Sir Gerald and Dame Caroline.
“Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve just missed them. They’ve gone down to the undertakers for a bit. Making arrangements.” She transferred the coffee mug to her left hand and held out the right to them. “I’m Vivian Plumley, by the way.”
“You’re the housekeeper?” Kincaid asked, and Gemma knew from the less-than-tactful query that he’d been caught off guard.
Vivian Plumley smiled. “You might say that. It doesn’t offend me, at any rate.”
“Good.” Kincaid, Gemma saw, had recovered both aplomb and smile. “We’d like a word with you as well, if we may.”
“Come back to the kitchen. I’ll make some coffee.” She turned and led the way along the slate-flagged passage, then stepped back and let them precede her through the door at its end.
The kitchen had escaped modernization. While Gemma might sigh over photographs of gleaming space-age kitchens in magazines, she knew instinctively that they provided no emotional substitute for a room like this. Nubby braided rugs softened the slate floor, a scarred oak refectory table and ladder-backed chairs dominated the room’s center, and against one wall a red-enameled Aga radiated warmth and comfort.
“Sit down, why don’t you,” said Vivian Plumley, and gestured toward the table. Gemma pulled out a chair and sat, feeling tension she hadn’t been aware of flow out of her muscles. “Elevenses?” added Vivian, and Gemma shook her head quickly, fearing they’d lose control of the interview entirely, seduced by the room’s comfort.
Kincaid said, “No, thank you,” and seated himself, taking the chair at the table’s end. Gemma took her notebook from her bag and cradled it unobtrusively in her lap.
The drip coffeemaker worked as quickly as its expensive looks implied. It was only a few moments before the smell of fresh coffee began to fill the room. Vivian put together a tray with mugs, cream and sugar in silence, a woman enough at ease with herself not to make small talk. When the coffeemaker had finished its cycle, she filled the mugs and brought the tray to the table. “Do help yourself. And that’s real cream, I’m afraid, not dairy substitute. We have a neighbor who keeps a few Jerseys.”
“A treat not to be missed,” said Kincaid, pouring generously into his cup. Gemma smiled, knowing he usually drank it black. “Are you not the housekeeper, then?” he continued easily. “Have I put my foot in it?”
Vivian clinked her spoon around twice in her coffee cup and sighed. “Oh, I’ll tell you about myself, if you like, but it always sounds so dreadfully Victorian. I’m actually related to Caroline, second cousins once removed, to be exact. We’re as close to the same age as never-mind, and we were at school together.” She paused and sipped from her cup, then made a sl
ight grimace of discomfort. “Too hot. We drifted apart, Caro and I, once we’d finished school. We both married, her career blossomed.” Vivian smiled.
“Then my husband died. An aneurysm.” The palms of her hands made a slapping sound as she brushed them together. “Just like that, he was gone. I was left childless, with no job skills and not quite enough money to get by. This was thirty years ago, mind you, when not every woman grew up with the expectation of working.” She looked directly at Gemma. “Quite different from your upbringing, I’m sure.”
Gemma thought of her mother, who had risen in the early hours of the morning to bake every day of her married life, then worked the counter in the shop from opening till closing. The possibility of not working never occurred to Gemma or her sister-it had been Gemma’s driving ambition for the work to be of her own choosing, not something done purely for the necessity of putting food on the table. “Yes, very different,” she said, in answer to Vivian Plumley’s statement. “What did you do?”
“Caro had two toddlers and a very demanding career.” She shrugged. “It seemed a sensible solution. They had room, I had enough money of my own not to be totally dependent on the family, and I loved the children as if…”
They were your own. Gemma finished the sentence for her, and felt a rush of empathy for this woman who seemed to have made the best of what life had dealt her. She ran her fingers along the tabletop, noticing faint streaks of color embedded in the wood’s grain.
Watching her, Vivian said fondly, “The children did everything at this table. They had most of their meals in the kitchen, of course. As much as their parents traveled, formal family dinners were a rare treat. School assignments, art projects-Julia did her first paintings here, when she was in grammar school.”
The children this… the children that… It seemed to Gemma as if time had simply stopped with the boy’s death. But Julia had been there afterward, alone. “This must all be very difficult for Julia,” she said, feeling her way into the subject delicately, “after what happened to her brother.”
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