Leave The Grave Green

by Deborah Crombie

  Vivian looked away, grasping the table’s edge with one hand, as if she were physically restraining herself from getting up. After a moment, she said, “We don’t talk about that. But yes, I’m sure Con’s death has made life more difficult than usual for Julia. It’s made life difficult for all of us.”

  Kincaid, who had been sitting quietly, chair pushed back a bit from the table, mug cradled in his hands, leaned forward and said, “Did you like Connor, Mrs. Plumley?”

  “Like him?” she said blankly, then frowned. “It never occurred to me whether or not I should like Connor. He was just… Connor. A force of nature.” She smiled a little at her own analogy. “A very attractive man in many ways, and yet… I always felt a little sorry for him.”

  Kincaid raised an eyebrow but didn’t speak, and Gemma followed his cue.

  Shrugging, Vivian said, “I know it sounds a bit silly to say one felt sorry for someone as larger-than-life as Con, but Julia baffled him.” The gold buttons on her cardigan caught the light as she shifted in her chair. “He could never make her respond in the way he wanted, and he hadn’t any experience with that. So he sometimes behaved… inappropriately.” A door slammed in the front of the house and she cocked her head, listening. Half-rising from her chair, she said, “They’re back. Let me tell-”

  “One more thing, please, Mrs. Plumley,” Kincaid said. “Did you see Connor on Thursday?”

  She sank down again, but perched on the edge of her seat with the tentative posture of one who doesn’t intend staying long. “Of course I saw him. I prepared lunch-just cold salads and cheese-and we all ate together in the dining room.”

  “All except Julia?”

  “Yes, but she often works through luncheon. I took a plate up to her myself.”

  “Did Connor seem his usual self?” Kincaid asked, his tone conversational, but Gemma knew from his still concentration that he was intent on her answer.

  Vivian relaxed as she thought, leaning back in her chair again and absently tracing the raised flower pattern on her mug with her fingers. “Con was always teasing and joking, but perhaps it seemed a bit forced. I don’t know.” She looked up at Kincaid, frowning. “Quite possibly I’m distorting things after the fact. I’m not sure I trust my own judgment.”

  Kincaid nodded. “I appreciate your candor. Did he mention any plans for later in the day? It’s important that we trace his movements.”

  “I remember him glancing at his watch and saying something about a meeting, but he didn’t say where or with whom. That was toward the end of the meal, and as soon as everyone had finished I came in here to do the washing up, then went to my room for a lie-down. You might ask Caro or Gerald if he said something more to them.”

  “Thank you. I’ll do that,” Kincaid said with such courtesy that Gemma felt sure it would never occur to Vivian Plumley that she’d just told him how to do his job. “It’s strictly a formality, of course, but I must ask you about your movements on Thursday night,” he added almost apologetically.

  “An alibi? You’re asking me for an alibi for Connor’s death?” Vivian asked, sounding more surprised than offended.

  “We don’t yet know exactly when Connor died. And it’s more a matter of building known factors-the more we know about the movements of everyone connected with Connor, the easier it becomes to see gaps. Logic holes.” He made a circular gesture with his hands.

  “All right.” She smiled, appeased. “That’s easy enough. Caro and I had an early supper in front of the fire in the sitting room. We often do when Gerald’s away.”

  “And after that?”

  “We sat before the fire, reading, watching the telly, talking a little. I made some cocoa around ten o’clock, and when we’d finished it I went up to bed.” She added with a touch of irony, “I remember thinking it had been a particularly peaceful and pleasant evening.”

  “Nothing else?” Kincaid asked, straightening up in his chair and pushing away his empty mug.

  “No,” Vivian said, but then paused and stared into space for a moment. “I do remember something, but it’s quite silly.” When Kincaid nodded encouragement, she continued. “Just after I’d fallen asleep I thought I heard the doorbell, but when I sat up and listened, the house was perfectly quiet. I must have been dreaming. Gerald and Julia both have their own keys, of course, so there was no need to wait up for them.”

  “Did you hear either of them come in?”

  “I thought I heard Gerald around midnight, but I wasn’t properly awake, and the next thing I knew it was daybreak and the rooks were making a god-awful racket in the beeches outside my window.”

  “Couldn’t it have been Julia?” Kincaid asked.

  She thought for a moment, her brow furrowed. “I suppose it could, but if it’s not terribly late, Julia usually looks in on me before she goes up.”

  “And she didn’t that evening?”

  When Vivian shook her head, Kincaid smiled at her and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Plumley. You’ve been very helpful.”

  This time, before rising, Vivian Plumley looked at him and said, “Shall I tell them you’re here?”

  Sir Gerald Asherton stood with his back to the sitting room fire, hands clasped behind him. He made a perfect picture of a nineteenth-century country squire, thought Gemma, with his feet spread apart in a relaxed posture and his bulk encased in rather hairy tweeds. He even sported suede elbow patches on his jacket. The only things needed to complete the tableau were a pipe and a pair of hunting hounds sprawled at his feet.

  “So sorry to have kept you waiting.” He came toward them, pumped their hands and gestured them toward the sofa.

  Gemma found the courtesy rather disarming, and suspected it was meant to be.

  “Thank you, Sir Gerald,” Kincaid said, returning it in kind. “And Dame Caroline?”

  “Gone for a bit of a lie-down. Found the business at the undertakers rather upsetting, I’m afraid.” Sir Gerald sat in the armchair opposite them, crossed one foot over his knee and adjusted his trouser leg. An expanse of Argyle sock in autumnal orange and brown appeared between shoe and trouser cuff.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Sir Gerald,” Kincaid smiled as he spoke, “it seems a little odd that your daughter didn’t take care of the arrangements herself. Connor was, after all, her husband.”

  “Just so,” answered Sir Gerald with a touch of asperity. “Sometimes these things are best left to those not quite so close to the matter. And funeral directors are notorious for preying on the emotions of the newly bereaved.” Gemma felt a stab of pity at the reminder that this burly, confident man spoke from the worst possible personal experience.

  Kincaid shrugged and let the matter drop. “I need to ask you about your movements on Thursday night, sir.” At Sir Gerald’s raised eyebrow, he added, “Just a formality, you understand.”

  “No reason why I shouldn’t oblige you, Mr. Kincaid. It’s a matter of public record. I was at the Coliseum, conducting a performance of Pelleas and Melisande.” He favored them with his large smile, showing healthily pink gums. “Extremely visible. No one could have impersonated me, I assure you.”

  Gemma imagined him facing an orchestra, and felt sure he dominated the hall as easily as he dominated this small room. From where she sat she could see a photograph of him atop the piano, along with several others in similar silver frames. She stood up unobtrusively and went to examine them. The nearest showed Sir Gerald in a tuxedo, baton in hand, looking as comfortable as he did in his country tweeds. In another he had his arm around a small dark-haired woman who laughed up at the camera with a voluptuous prettiness.

  The photograph of the children had been pushed to the back, as if no one cared to look at it often. The boy stood slightly in the foreground, solid and fair, with an impish gap-toothed grin. The girl was a few inches taller, dark-haired like her mother, her thin face gravely set. This was Julia, of course. Julia and Matthew.

  “And after?” she heard Kincaid say, and she turned back to the conversat
ion, rather embarrassed by her lapse of attention.

  Sir Gerald shrugged. “It takes a while to wind down after a performance. I stayed in my dressing room for a bit, but I’m afraid I didn’t take notice of the time. Then I drove straight home, which must have put me here sometime after midnight.”

  “Must have?” Kincaid asked, his voice tinged with skepticism.

  Sir Gerald held out his right arm, baring a hairy wrist for their inspection. “Don’t wear a watch, Mr. Kincaid. Never found it comfortable. And a nuisance taking it off for every rehearsal or performance. Always lost the bloody things. And the car clock never worked properly.”

  “You didn’t stop at all?”

  Shaking his head, Sir Gerald answered with the finality of one used to having his word taken as law. “I did not.”

  “Did you speak to anyone when you came in?” Gemma asked, feeling it was time she put an oar in.

  “The house was quiet. Caro was asleep and I didn’t wake her. I can only assume the same for Vivian. So you see, young lady, if it’s an alibi you’re after,” he paused and twinkled at Gemma, “I suppose I haven’t one.”

  “What about your daughter, sir? Was she asleep as well?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say. I don’t remember seeing Julia’s car in the drive, but I suppose someone could have given her a lift home.”

  Kincaid stood. “Thank you, Sir Gerald. We will need to talk to Dame Caroline again, at her convenience, but just now we’d like to see Julia.”

  “I believe you know your way, Mr. Kincaid.”

  “Good God, I feel like I’ve been dropped right in the bloody middle of a drawing room comedy.” Gemma turned her head to look at Kincaid as she preceded him up the stairs. “All manners and no substance. What are they playing at in this house?” As they reached the first landing, she stopped and turned to face him. “And you’d think these women were made of glass, the way Sir Gerald and Mrs. Plumley coddle them. ‘Mustn’t upset Caroline… mustn’t upset Julia,’” she hissed at him, remembering a bit belatedly to lower her voice.

  Kincaid merely raised an eyebrow in that imperturbable manner she found so infuriating. “I’m not sure I’d consider Julia Swann a good candidate for coddling.” He started up the next flight, and Gemma followed the rest of the way without comment.

  The door swung open as soon as Kincaid’s knuckles brushed it. “Bless you, Plummy. I’m star-” Julia Swann’s smile vanished abruptly as she took in their identity. “Oh. Superintendent Kincaid. Back so soon?”

  “Like a bad penny,” Kincaid answered, giving her his best smile.

  Julia Swann merely stuck the paintbrush she’d held in her hand over her ear and stepped back enough to allow them to enter. Studying her, Gemma compared the woman to the thin, serious child in the photo downstairs. That Julia was certainly visible in this one, but the gawkiness had been transmuted into sleek style, and the innocence in the child’s gaze had been lost long ago.

  The shades were drawn up, and a pale, watery light illuminated the room. The center worktable, bare except for palette and white paper neatly masking-taped to a board, relieved the studio’s general disorder. “Plummy usually brings me up a sandwich about this time,” Julia said, as she shut the door and returned to the table. She leaned against it, gracefully balancing her weight, but Gemma had the distinct impression that the support she drew from it was more than physical.

  A finished painting of a flower lay on the table. Gemma moved toward it almost instinctively, hand outstretched. “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said softly, stopping just short of touching the paper. Spare and sure in design, the painting had an almost oriental flavor, and the intense greens and purples of the plant glowed against the matte-white paper.

  “Bread and butter,” said Julia, but she smiled, making an obvious effort to be civil. “I’ve a whole series commissioned for a line of cards. Upscale National Trust, you know the sort of thing. And I’m behind schedule.” Julia rubbed at her face, leaving a smudge of paint on her forehead, and Gemma suddenly saw the weariness that her smart haircut and trendy black turtleneck and leggings couldn’t quite camouflage.

  Gemma traced the rough edge of the watercolor paper with a finger. “I suppose I thought the paintings downstairs must be yours, but these are quite different.”

  “The Flints? I should hope so.” Some of the abruptness returned to Julia’s manner. She shook a cigarette from a pack on a side table and lit it with a hard strike of a match.

  “I wondered about them as well,” Kincaid said. “Something struck me as familiar.”

  “You probably saw some of his paintings in books you read as a child. William Flint wasn’t as well known as Arthur Rackham, but he did some marvelous illustrations.” Julia leaned against the worktable and narrowed her eyes against the smoke rising from her cigarette. “Then came the breastscapes.”

  “Breastscapes?” Kincaid repeated, amused.

  “They are technically quite brilliant, if you don’t mind the banal, and they certainly kept him comfortably in his old age.”

  “And you disapprove?” Kincaid’s voice held a hint of mockery.

  Julia touched the surface of her own painting as if testing its worth, then shrugged. “I suppose it is rather hypocritical of me. These keep me fed, and they supported Connor in the lifestyle to which he’d become accustomed.”

  To Gemma’s surprise, Kincaid didn’t nibble at the proffered bait, but instead asked, “If you dislike Flint’s watercolors, why do they hang in almost every room in the house?”

  “They’re not mine, if that’s what you’re thinking. A few years ago Mummy and Daddy got bitten by the collector’s bug. Flints were all the rage and they jumped on the bandwagon. Perhaps they thought I’d be pleased.” Julia gave them a brittle little smile. “After all, as far as they’re concerned, one watercolor looks pretty much like another.”

  Kincaid returned her smile, and a look of understanding passed between them, as if they’d shared a joke. Julia laughed, her dark hair swinging with the movement of her head, and Gemma felt suddenly excluded. “Exactly what lifestyle did your husband need to support, Mrs. Swann?” she asked, rather too quickly, and she heard an unintended note of accusation in her voice.

  Propping herself up on her work stool, Julia swung one black-booted foot as she ground the stub of her half-smoked cigarette into an ashtray. “You name it. I sometimes thought Con felt honor-bound to live up to an image he created-whiskey, women and an eye for the horses, everything you’d expect from your stereotypical Irish rogue. I wasn’t always sure he enjoyed it as much as he liked you to think.”

  “Were there any women in particular?” Kincaid asked, his tone so lightly conversational he might have been inquiring about the weather.

  She regarded him quizzically. “There was always a woman, Mr. Kincaid. The particulars didn’t concern me.”

  Kincaid merely smiled, as if refusing to be shocked by her cynicism. “Connor stayed on in the flat you shared in Henley?”

  Julia nodded, sliding off the stool to pull another cigarette from the crumpled packet. She lit it and leaned back against the table, folding her arms against her chest. The paintbrush still positioned over her ear gave her an air of slightly rakish industry, as if she might be a Fleet Street journalist relaxing for a brief moment in the newsroom.

  “You were in Henley on Thursday evening, I believe?” Kincaid continued. “A gallery opening?”

  “Very clever of you, Mr. Kincaid.” Julia flashed him a smile. “Trevor Simons. Thameside.”

  “But you didn’t see your husband?”

  “I did not. We move in rather different circles, as you might have guessed,” said Julia, the sarcasm less veiled this time.

  Gemma glanced at Kincaid’s face, anticipating an escalating response, but he only answered lazily, “So I might.”

  Julia ground out her cigarette, barely smoked this time, and Gemma could see a release of tension in the set of her mouth and shoulders. “Now if you don’t mind,
I really must get back to work.” She included Gemma this time in the smile that was so like her father’s, only sharper around the edges. “Perhaps you could-”

  “Julia.”

  It was an old interrogation technique, the sudden and imperative use of the suspect’s name, a breaking down of barriers, an invasion of personal space. Still, the familiarity in Kincaid’s voice shocked Gemma. It was as if he knew this woman down to her bones and could sweep every shred of her artifice away with a casual flick of a finger.

  Julia remained frozen in mid-sentence, her eyes locked on Kincaid’s face. They might have been alone in the room.

  “You were only a few hundred yards from Connor’s flat. You could have stepped out for a smoke by the river, bumped into him, arranged to meet him later.”

  A second passed, then another, and Gemma heard the rustle as Julia shifted her body against the worktable. Then Julia said slowly, “I could have. But I didn’t. It was my show, you see-my fifteen minutes in the limelight-and I never left the gallery at all.”

  “And afterward?”

  “Oh, Trev can vouch for me well enough, I think. I slept with him.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “Division of labor,” Kincaid told Gemma as they stopped for a quick lunch at the pub in Fingest. “You see if you can confirm Sir Gerald’s alibi-that’ll allow you a night or two at home with Toby-and I’ll tackle Henley. I want to go over Connor Swann’s flat myself, and I want to have a word with-what did Julia say his name was? Simons, that was it-Trevor Simons, at his gallery. I’d like to know a bit more about Julia’s movements that night,” he added, and Gemma gave him a look he couldn’t interpret.

  They finished their sandwiches under Tony’s watchful eye, then Gemma ran upstairs to pack her bag. Kincaid waited in the graveled carpark, jingling the change in his pockets and drawing furrows in the gravel with his toe. The Ashertons were very plausible, but the more he thought about it, the more difficult it became to make sense of what they had told him. They seemed to have been on close terms with a son-in-law their daughter barely tolerated, and yet they also seemed to go to great lengths to avoid confrontation with Julia. He made a J in the gravel with his shoe, then carefully raked it over again. How had Julia Swann really felt about her husband? In his mind he saw her again, her thin face composed and her dark eyes fixed on his, and he found he didn’t quite buy the tough persona she wore so successfully.