That name sounded familiar. A quick search on my tablet picked up fresh news stories. She’d drowned in the Cam, and her death was being investigated by Detective Sergeant Angus Spencer, the colleague who just months ago had arrested my daughter.
Breathe, Morris, I had to tell myself, again.
I have progress. I have possibilities, I reminded myself. If our cases are colliding, I decided, mine is going to come out on top.
Chapter 9
Laurie Ambrose
I CHOSE A LIGHT grey suit, not black, and compared hair-up to hair-down in the mirror. I planned to say that I was simply “a friend,” but what if someone asked me where from? I couldn’t say from the museum; friends from the museum would likely be there and know that I’m not. I didn’t know anything else about Hannah-Claire Finney. Well, I knew a lot, but nothing that I could say.
The body had been released. The husband, Henry Ware, had been questioned but not actually jailed. He was “assisting police with their enquiries.” I assumed that there must have been photos of him and Hannah together, but the ones used by the media were separate: Hannah, exuberantly smiling in the local Botanic Garden (I recognised the glasshouses in the background), and Henry coming out of Parkside Police Station last week. Hannah looked happy, promising. Like Annalise Williams said of Annalise Wood: they chose an appealing picture. Henry looked angry in his, but anyone would be angry if, as they exited a police station, someone snapped a picture. Today I was going to see him look sad. I was curious to see him smile. Not today, but in the recent past. I wanted to see evidence of them having been together and happy. I wanted that for Hannah.
They had married quickly, which is usually due to either eager, naive enthusiasm, or pregnancy. No child or obvious pregnancy had been reported, so I dared to hope for the former.
Simon and I had been married almost a year already. I still sent him a little “monthiversary” text when I noticed on the calendar that it was a 10th of the month. Two champagne corks from our post-ceremony family dinner were in front of my mirror right then, with my makeup brushes and straightening iron. Eventually I’ll toss the corks as dust-catchers, or tuck them in a corner of my jewellery drawer. For now, they still caused a frisson of delight when I caught sight of them as I readied myself each day. Perhaps Hannah still had corks, or cards on the mantel, or even thank-you notes left to write. Just one month. It felt so short. Her life was too short. She was younger than me.
I dabbed at my eyes and breathed in through my nose. Get ahold of yourself.
I hadn’t been to a funeral since Tom’s.
Downstairs, Simon’s papers were spread out over the dining table. He was applying for angel funding for his company. I could hear the fan in his laptop, a sign that it’s been on too long. He’d been at this for hours.
“Don’t forget to take a break,” I told him lightly.
Despite my chipper voice I must have looked apprehensive, because he looked at me and said, “You sure you want to do this?”
I couldn’t ask him to come with me. Two of us would be more obvious. I shouldn’t have been going at all. Prisha would not have approved. Part of the confidentiality we owe each client is the fact of their being a client at all. “I need to.”
“You look upset.”
“I’ll fit right in, then. It’s a funeral,” I reminded him. My voice quivered.
“Laurie,” he said, pushing out his chair.
I slipped into his embrace. The curve of my forehead rested against his neck.
Simon had attended Tom’s funeral. I don’t remember him there. He and Tom hadn’t been close after university, but Tom, when a graduate student, had been Simon’s supervisor one year. So Simon came. He’d told me about that when we were just starting to date, and that night at home I’d looked for his name in the service guest book, the first and only time I’ve ever opened that horrid memento. His signature was a scrawl, but he’d written a quote neatly in the “notes” column: “At the going down of the sun and in the morning …”
That’s from a Remembrance Day poem:
They shall grow not old
as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them
nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
we will remember them.
Tom had died in early November four years ago, just before Remembrance Day. Some people still had their paper-and-plastic poppies tucked in their coat lapels at the funeral two weeks later. That’s why the poem had been in Simon’s mind. No one in my family had died in either of the World Wars, so Remembrance Day has become about Tom to me, and to the kids.
When Blake was first at university, he’d stumbled on a formal Remembrance Day service there. He and Clara both chose Tom’s old college, Jesus College, here in Cambridge. Simon and I had both been at Christ’s College, practically just across the street. The college names are remnants of their history as religious schools, a theme now in name only. But for Blake, that service, beginning in the cloister at the centre of the college and then proceeding into the twelfth-century chapel, had stirred in him a longing for spiritual structure.
He began to attend evensong services, and discussion groups in the chaplain’s rooms. He was eventually invited to take on the responsibility of chapel secretary, lighting candles and setting out hymnals. He’s never tried to evangelise any of us, though he does invite us to special services, and I do go. Now that he and Clara are both at Jesus, we all attended the annual Remembrance service together last week. The ceremony is so moving that I’m almost tempted each time to become religious myself. The choir voices, the names of the college’s wartime dead carved into the stone walls … It’s difficult to resist the comfort of eternal life and eventual justice.
Hannah’s funeral service was to be at the Catholic church in Cambridge, so I expected that there would be a similar emphasis on afterlife. But I wanted to know about her life.
“I’ll be fine,” I assured Simon, stepping back and forcing a smile. Looking at his face, my smile gradually became real. He still looked young to me, in his wire-framed glasses that he’d worn since uni. His inquisitive eyes and tilted head added to the studenty impression. It’s only when I look at my children, now university students themselves, that I realise how old Simon and I really are.
“I’m going to see Clara afterwards,” I told him. “She asked me to bring her her gloves and school scarf.”
Clara and Blake each have a room in this house, for holidays, but because the house is new to them there’s no accumulation of childhood toys and teen posters. The rooms look like guest rooms, which I dislike. It makes me feel like they’re “visiting” when they’re here, instead of “coming home.”
The things she wanted were easy to find in an accessories box on her nearly empty bookshelf. All of her Harry Potters and Horrible Histories had been given to charity shops years before. Some picture books I’d saved for future grandchildren, but they’re in a plastic bin in the attic, with special baby clothes and the toy dog she used to sleep with. Now she read mostly on her iPad.
I decided that I’d stop at Heffers on the way, to buy her a book.
“Prisha called while you were in the shower,” Simon told me.
“From Vienna?”
“Baby girl. Eight pounds.”
“Aw, lovely. She must be thrilled.”
Simon was smiling, but I preferred to tiptoe around such topics. I worried that he felt badly that he couldn’t father children. “I’ll get a present from both of us,” I told him, protecting him from shopping for baby things.
He kissed me, a deep kiss, his hand on the back of my head. Our mouths separated, and I kissed him in three quick, grateful bursts.
“I love you. I’m not sure when I’ll be home. Do you have any calls tonight?” Time zones often forced him to do business in the evenings.
“None. I’m all yours.” His fingertip traced my jawline, then trailed off behind m
y ear.
I shouldn’t be thinking of sex on my way to a funeral, I reproached myself as I buckled into the car. But isn’t that just human? I defended myself. It’s life-affirming. It’s distracting. It’s present.
The church service was carried along by repetitive hymns and familiar-ish readings. It was the rhythm of it, more than the content, that was comforting. The very existence of a set service reminds that death has happened over and over, and grief has been survived. The readings told what the Bible says about what happens to dead people; I worried about what happens to those of us left behind.
I wanted to slip away at the end without having to explain myself to anyone. The priest had positioned himself by the main door, so I used the excuse of looking for the ladies’ room to seek a back way out, or at least to wait out the hand-shaking. I wished that Simon had come with me after all, to deal with the priest, or to hold my handbag if I ever found the toilets. My blouse smelled of his cologne because we’d embraced earlier, or maybe I just imagined that it did, remembering.
So I was reminded of our incongruous groping earlier when I walked in on Henry Ware and a woman, in a closet I’d mistaken for the ladies’ loo.
I recognised him by his sandy hair and the hint of a carefully trimmed beard just above his collar: the grieving husband. The woman was almost fully hidden by his body, her face covered by his. Their clothes were mussed but on, thank goodness. Her arms around his neck were in black sleeves; her legs were in black tights. Close enough to Hannah-Claire to wear black to the funeral, I thought.
They were kissing and rubbing in there, a tight, frantic clutching. I gasped like an ingenue. He grunted, either in pleasure because of her or angry because of me.
I slammed the door and ran out of the church.
THE ROUTE IS ingrained. I ended up in front of Christ’s College gate.
Christ’s had been home to me for six years. Well, I didn’t always live in college, but, even when I lived out, college was one of my homes. As I entered, Doran, one of the porters, greeted me by name, even after all these years. They’re magical, porters. They know everyone and never forget. The familiarity was enveloping, and warm. I wrapped my arms around my middle in an anxious self-embrace.
There was a bit of time before Clara expected me. I needed to calm down. I didn’t want to bring that kind of turmoil to my daughter.
How dare he, was my first thought, as if Henry’s actions today could still somehow hurt poor Hannah-Claire. Then, What if it was a relative, instead of me, who’d walked in on them? What if it had been a child? Irresponsible. Inappropriate. Self-indulgent. Arrogant! Prioritising his lust, or—best-case—his overwhelming grief, over respect for others and the memory of his supposedly beloved wife …
I wondered who the woman was. A close friend, judging by her ostentatiously black outfit, or perhaps just an acquaintance with dramatic flair. Was it an affair? Had they been carrying on for weeks or months? Were they … celebrating?
I shuddered, then reminded myself that what they were doing didn’t mean that there was an extramarital relationship a week ago. I reminded myself that even if there had been an affair, it didn’t mean that either of them killed Hannah.
It was motive.
I argued back: It’s not my business.
Again, my route was automatic. My footsteps took me to New Court, and to the aptly nicknamed “Typewriter”: stacked concrete boxes on a slope, the ceiling of each student room serving as a front patio for the one above. It’s an anomaly when compared with the much older and harmonious architecture of the rest of the college. The Typewriter had gone up in the sixties, as much a victim of fashion as the clothes of the time.
The word “victim” made my shoulders shimmy in disgust. At the funeral I’d seen people who didn’t seem sad or involved, just interested. The possibly criminal nature of her death had attracted gawkers.
A student with a heavy backpack jostled past me on the path. I had lived here when I dated Tom. The memory of our breezy happiness then and later my intense, acerbic grief softened me. Henry could just have been lonely, achingly lonely.
A student came up the path behind me, with what appeared to be her parents in tow. They oohed at the life-sized bronze of young Darwin, Christ’s most famous alumnus, seated on a bench in a little garden. That was new, from the Darwin bicentennial not long ago.
He looks so young, Darwin. The girl with her parents looked young too. I had felt so adult when I lived here. I was engaged and about to graduate. I’d had no idea how young, desperately young I was.
I glanced at my watch. Time to visit Clara.
THE BAG OF books banged against my thigh as I walked. I’d chosen Edward Lear nonsense poetry for Clara. Tom used to read her “The Jumblies” when she was little, and “The Owl and the Pussycat.” I got it today so she could read it in little spurts between studying, little reliefs.
Next to Lear in the bag was a pair of oversized, colourful Orlando books for Prisha’s new niece, about the adventures of a cat family in the 1930s and ’40s.
In the shop, on the shelf above the Orlandos, I’d seen the book that Annalise Williams had mentioned: Small or Tall. It was just as she had described it, with the skyscraper, moon, and cape. I noted the copyright date: 2009. I had just assumed she’d been remembering a book from her childhood. Evidently not.
But I was forty-two and was shopping in the children’s section. Perhaps she babysat or had little siblings, or older siblings who had made her an aunt. I’d tucked it back between its neighbours on the shelf and retreated to the main floor of the shop. In “True Crime,” there she was, Annalise Wood, with her serene smile in the last school photo of her. I’d snatched up both paperbacks with her on the cover and paid for everything before I lost my nerve.
I’d felt furtive carrying those crime books in my bag, guilty even. It’s not my place to explore things related to my clients’ private lives. At the bookshop till I’d added in a beautiful blank book and boxed pen for Prisha, clearly, I admitted to myself, to compensate for doing what I know she wouldn’t approve of. I’d also added a coffee-table book for Blake, photos of the insides of all the Cambridge college chapels.
Clara met me at Jesus College’s porters’ lodge. She noticed my bag. “Ooh, a present for me?” she asked automatically. That has always been her question, whether I’m carrying armfuls of groceries or a briefcase full of work. Now she asked it out of sentimental habit, to make me laugh. It worked.
“As a matter of fact, it is. And your gloves and scarf. I’m so glad you asked me to come by today.” We hugged. Her wavy hair tickled my cheek. She’s beautiful, more beautiful than I remember being at that age. She was wearing a rugby shirt over leggings, studying attire, but she shone.
“I’ve got two dresses for the May Ball. You have to help me choose.” She slipped her arm through the crook in mine and led me towards her room.
“Thinking ahead?” I asked. The annual college balls—held in June despite the name—are extravagant and exhausting, and were seven months away. If you build them up too much in your mind, they disappoint, but if you go for just a bit of fun, special moments have half a chance of surprising you. I wanted to tell her that, but she left no gaps, describing hairstyles and fascinators and what her friends might wear.
Passing through the cloister led us out into Chapel Court. A vibrant lawn mown in strict stripes was bordered by a symmetry of red-brick nineteenth-century student rooms. A rare blue sky swelled behind the dozens of chimneys. This has become a home to me, too, via my children.
When Blake had received his offer from the college, I’d been proud of his achievement, of course, and pleased he was able to follow in his father’s footsteps, which he had so desperately wanted to do. With those reasons for happiness had been one more: that a university so grounded in continuous history, so full of traditions and … and order, I realised, was good for him. I recognised then that he needed order, even if I hadn’t yet articulated it that way to myself. His eventual
attraction to religion should not have surprised me.
Clara’s room is at the top of her staircase. All the rooms had been recently refurbished, with new en suite bathrooms and decorated in the college colours, red and white. The upgrades made the student rooms more viable as conference accommodation out of term, and justified the costs that had been added since I was a student. We were fully subsidised in those days, but with fewer frills. I was tempted to lecture her on how luxurious she had it. I remember wandering the halls of Christ’s in my dressing gown with a basket of shampoo and soap, off to the communal showers.
She had a painting up that I hadn’t seen before, of a woman in an old-fashioned bathtub.
“Is that you?” I asked. The head was facing away but the hair was similar.
“No! Of course not.” But she cocked her head. “It does look like me, doesn’t it? I know the artist. I bought it for ten pounds. I never sat for it, but maybe he thought of me when he painted.” She struck the pose and laughed.
She hadn’t told me about any boyfriends. She talked about the May Ball as if going with a clique of girls. I’d have guessed she was still a virgin but I tried not to think about it. I supposed she felt the same way about my sex life.
I gave her the book, and she cooed over it. She stood it up on her desk so, she said, she’d remember to notice it. She was clearly pleased, but was too excited about other things to linger on the topic.
She pulled out two dresses from her closet: one a long white halter dress that a goddess might wear, the other a princessy affair with net skirts and a ballerina top, both from charity shops. “I promised Anna that whichever one I don’t wear, she can. What do you think?”
She alternated holding them against herself and went on. “Eleanor said the white one is more flattering, which is fine for everyone who’s going to be looking at me, but the pink one is good for twirling and more fun to wear.” She demonstrated.
I was trying to keep track of the important people in her life. “Eleanor is the one whose mother is a news reader, right?”
Look for Her Page 11