Deborah Crombie - Leave The Grave Green

“Tommy and Mummy?” said Julia. “But that means Matty…” She subsided, her eyes wide and dark with shock. Kincaid wished he could have softened it for her somehow, wished he could comfort her as he had yesterday.

Vivian Plumley also watched the others, and Kincaid saw in her the perpetual observer, always on the edge of the family but not privy to its deepest secrets. She nodded once and compressed her lips, but Kincaid couldn’t tell if her expression indicated distress or satisfaction.

“What utter nonsense, Superintendent,” said Caroline. She laid her hand lightly on Gerald’s shoulder. “I won’t have it. You’ve overstepped the bounds of good manners as well as-”

“I am sorry if it distresses you, Dame Caroline, but I’m afraid it is necessary. Sir Gerald, will you tell me exactly what you did after Connor left you that night?”

Gerald touched his wife’s hand. “It’s all right, Caro. There can’t be any harm in it.” He roused himself, sitting forward a little and draining his teacup before he began. “There’s not much to tell, really. I’d had quite a stiff drink with Tommy, and I’m afraid I kept on after he left. By the time I left the theater I was well over the limit. Shouldn’t have been driving, of course, very irresponsible of me, but I managed without mishap.” He smiled, showing healthy, pink gums above his upper teeth. “Well, almost without mishap. I had a bit of a run-in with Caro’s car as I was parking mine. It seems my memory misled me by a foot or so as to its position, and I gave the paintwork a little scrape on the near side. It must have been close on one o’clock when I wobbled my way up to bed. Caro was asleep. I knew Julia was still out, of course, as I hadn’t seen her car in the drive, but she’s long past having a curfew.” He gave his daughter an affectionate look.

“But I thought I heard you come in around midnight,” said Plummy. She shook her head. “I just opened my eyes and squinted at the clock-perhaps I misread it.”

Caroline slipped from the arm of the sofa and went to stand with her back to the fire. “I really don’t see the point to this, Superintendent. Just because Connor was obviously disturbed does not mean we should be subjected to some sort of fascist grilling. We’ve already been over this once-that should be enough. I hope you realize that your assistant commissioner will hear about your irrational behavior.”

She stood with her hands clasped behind her back and her feet slightly apart. In her black turtleneck, with fitted trousers tucked inside soft leather riding boots, she looked as though she might have been playing a trouser role in an opera. With her chin-length dark hair and in those clothes, she could easily pass for a boy on the verge of manhood. Her color was a little high, as befitted the hero/heroine under trying circumstances, but her voice, as always, was perfectly controlled.

“Dame Caroline,” said Kincaid, “Connor may have been emotionally distraught, but he was also telling the truth. Tommy admitted it, and Sir Gerald has confirmed it as well. I think it’s time-” He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Caroline’s jacket slid from the back of the sofa to the cushion with a rustling sound, the soft black leather as fluid as running water.

An odd sensation came over him, as if he had suddenly receded down a tunnel, distorting both his hearing and his vision. Blinking, he turned again to Caroline. Rearrange a few insignificant pieces in the pattern, and the whole thing shifted, turning on itself and popping into focus, clear and sharp and irrefutable. It amazed him now that he hadn’t seen it all from the beginning.

They were all watching him with various degrees of concern. Smiling at Gemma, who had frozen with her cup poised midway in the air, he set his own empty cup firmly upon the table. “It wasn’t the doorbell you heard that night, Mrs. Plumley, it was the telephone. And it wasn’t Gerald you heard coming in a few minutes after midnight, but Caroline.

“Connor rang this number from the flat a little before eleven o’clock. I think it likely that he was looking for Julia, but it was Caroline who answered the phone.” Kincaid rose and went to stand against the piano, so that he could face Caroline directly. “He couldn’t resist baiting you, could he, Caroline? You were the architect of the deception he felt had cost him his happiness, after all.

“You thought you could calm him down, make him see reason, so you said you’d meet him. But you didn’t want him making a scene in a public place, so you suggested somewhere you wouldn’t be overheard-what could have been more natural than your favorite walk along Hambleden Lock?

“You dressed quickly, I imagine in something quite similar to the things you’re wearing just now, and put on your leather jacket. The night was cold and damp, and it’s a good brisk walk from the carpark to the river. You slipped quietly out of the house, making sure not to wake Plummy, and when you reached the river you waited for Con at the beginning of the weir.”

He shifted his position a bit, putting his hands in his trouser pockets. They all watched him, as mesmerized as if he were a conjurer about to pull a rabbit from a hat. Julia’s eyes looked glazed, as if she were unable to assimilate a second shock so soon after the first.

“What happened then, Caroline?” he asked. Closing his eyes, he pictured the scene as he spoke. “You walked along the weir, and you argued. The more you tried to reason with Con, the more difficult he became. You reached the lock, crossing over it to the far side, and there the paved path ends.” He opened his eyes again and watched Caroline’s still, composed face. “So you stood with Connor on the little concrete apron just upstream of the sluicegate. Did you suggest turning back? But Con was out of control by that time, and the argument disintegrated into-”

“Please, Superintendent,” said Sir Gerald, “you really have gone too far. This is all absurd. Caro couldn’t kill anyone. She’s not physically capable-just look at her. And Con was over six feet tall and well built…”

“She’s also an actress, Sir Gerald, trained to use her body on the stage. It may have been something as simple as stepping aside when he rushed at her. We’ll probably never be certain of that, or know what actually killed Connor. From the results of the postmortem I think it likely he had a laryngospasm-his throat closed from the shock of hitting the water, and he died from suffocation without ever drawing water into his lungs.

“What we do know,” he said, turning back to Caroline, “is that help was less than fifty yards away. The lockkeeper was at home, he had the necessary equipment and expertise. And even had he not been available, there were other houses just a bit farther along the opposite bank of the river.

“Whether Connor’s fall into the river was an accident, or self-defense, or a deliberate act of violence, the fact remains that you are culpable, Dame Caroline. You might have saved him. Did you wait what seemed a reasonable time for him to come up again? When he didn’t surface, you walked away, drove home and climbed back into bed, where Gerald found you sleeping peacefully. Only you were a bit more flustered than you thought, and didn’t quite manage to leave your car exactly as it had been.”

Caroline smiled at him. “That’s quite an amusing fiction, Mr. Kincaid. I’m sure the chief constable and your assistant commissioner will find it most entertaining as well. You have nothing but circumstantial evidence and an overactive imagination.”

“That may be true, Dame Caroline. We will have forensics go over your car and your clothes, however, and there’s the matter of the witness who saw a man and, she assumed, a boy wearing a leather jacket on the weir walkway-she may recognize you in an identity parade.