Sam Bourne - Pantheon

‘Get off me!’

‘There we are, all done,’ the policeman said, stepping back and wiping his hands on his handkerchief. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘You better have a bloody good explanation, Riley, or I shall be lodging a complaint. I’ve never-’

‘Calm down, Zennor. I’ll decide who’s in trouble here. I caught you engaged in an act of criminal trespass, remember? Take a seat.’ James remained standing, his eyes burning. ‘Now.’

Slowly, James sat down, reining in his temper, bringing the dog to heel.

‘Good. Forgive my little impromptu exam, but this job ain’t always pleasant. Now, I just had a very interesting visitor here.’

James, still struggling to keep the lid on his anger, said nothing.

‘The lady who lives next door to the Lund residence, as a matter of fact. Says she heard some noise late Monday night. Went to her window to check and — guess what — she saw a man leaving the house.’

‘We’ve been through this. You know I was fast asleep at the Elizabethan-’

‘Will you shut the hell up and listen for a moment? Turns out there’s a street lamp right by the Lund house. Lady says the man was tall, roundabout your height. She didn’t see his face, but the lamp did pick out his hair. Very distinct, she said it was. What they call salt-and-pepper. Little bit black, little bit silver.’

There was a pause as James said nothing and sought to ensure his face did the same.

Riley went on. ‘Hence my little poke around up top just now. Wanted to see if you’d dyed your hair, you know, to cover it up.’

‘But I haven’t,’ said James, quietly.

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘Which means someone else killed George Lund.’

Riley leaned back in his chair. ‘I think you’re jumping to conclusions again, Dr Zennor. This could still be what it looked like. Suicide.’

‘Except you said his wife said he was planning for his future. A baby upstairs.’

‘I know what I said.’

‘And how many suicides die with a metal badge in their mouths? Tell me, Detective, there was no sign of a break-in at the house, was there?’

‘No. And that usually means no one else was involved.’

‘Either that,’ said James, ‘or someone who Lund knew well enough to let into his home late at night.’

‘Don’t try to do my job, Dr Zennor.’

‘OK, I won’t.’ James could feel the blood pumping around his brain; he pictured it, different zones lighting up like the pinball machine he had seen at the drugstore on College Street. ‘But could I ask you a favour?’

‘Depends what it is now, doesn’t it?’

‘I’m presuming you’re going to release me. When you do, it would be a great help if you told no one that you have — especially not the editor of the Yale Daily News.’

‘You’re making a lot of presumptions there, Mister. I mean-’

‘Not even your superiors here, if you can help it. I can’t explain why, but if you trust that I’m an honest man — and I suspect you do — then I’d like you to believe me when I say it may help. Not just me, but you too.’

‘Maybe it’s normal to talk to police officers this way in England, but I got to tell you, this is not-’

‘Now, where do I sign?’ James asked with a smile. ‘I have somewhere I need to get to as quickly as possible.’

What they call salt-and-pepper. Little bit black, little bit silver.

Distinct, Riley had called it and it certainly was. His hair was one of the first things James had noticed about Preston McAndrew. The man the neighbour had seen was the right height too.

If he had heard it described to him, he would have dismissed it as fantastical, the kind of tale feasted upon by the Sunday newspapers back home: the dean of a university involved in a murder. But in the light of the evidence, surely it was rational to conclude that Preston McAndrew had murdered George Lund, that despite his veneer of charm and scholarly sophistication, the holder of one of the most prestigious posts in the American academy had strangled his immediate subordinate, then strung up the body to make it look like a suicide. For James, one implication stripped ahead of all the others: it meant that McAndrew’s warm reassurances about his endeavours to find Florence and Harry were worthless. This man was not to be trusted, but feared.

James was striding quickly now, right on Wall Street, left on Church Street, navigating entirely from memory, glad for the simplicity of New Haven’s layout and for his own memory. His shoulder was sore, urging him to rest, but adrenalin was beginning to kick in and it was an effective anaesthetic.

James could see it now, the same walk-up, two-step entrance to the modest, pretty Lund house. How idiotic he had been to bring Lake with him, McAndrew’s niece. No wonder the woman had clammed up. And then he and Dorothy had gone from here to eat dinner together. He had talked about Florence and he had dropped his guard, allowing himself to believe that Dorothy liked him. When of course she was nothing more than a woman doing a job.

James was furious with himself. He was nearly thirty, too old to be guilty of such naivete. He should have seen through the sudden appearance of a beautiful, intriguing young woman at the Wolf’s Head, ready to help and be at his side. But he was also — what was it? — not angry, exactly, but disappointed in Dorothy. Despite all their negotiations and gamesmanship, he thought he had detected a connection between them. And then there was the concern, almost maternal, he had seen in her eyes when he spoke about Harry… He could not accept that that was entirely fake.

It was late afternoon but the sun was still bright. As he stood on the doorstep he could not see inside the windows; too much glare.

He knocked on the door. Silence. He knocked again, this time pressing his ear to the door to listen. None of the voices and hubbub he had heard yesterday. He stepped away from the entrance, towards the bay window of the main room. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he peered in. All was dark.

‘You looking for the family?’

The voice came from the porch of the house next door. An elderly man in a blue blazer was sitting on a wicker chair, a newspaper on his lap. He spoke again, as if unsure he had been heard the first time. ‘You a mourner?’

James offered a concerned smile. ‘I’m here to see Mrs Lund, yes. Do you happen to know-’

‘They left this morning.’

‘They left?’

‘That’s right. All of them, her parents, the baby. Early too.’

‘Really?’

‘I can’t sleep later than four, four-thirty these days. It’ll happen to you someday, believe me.’

‘And, what-’

‘I came down and I saw them packing up. In a hurry too. Just shoving those suitcases in the trunk of the automobile and off they went. She waved at me, the younger one.’

‘Margaret?’

‘That’s right. She was holding the baby. And then they were off.’

‘At dawn.’

‘You bet. Break of dawn. Yes, sir.’

‘Did they say where they were going?’

‘No. They didn’t stop to talk.’

James thanked the man and headed back down the street, trying to digest what he had just been told.

There are some very powerful people around here. That was what Margaret Lund had said yesterday. She believed they had killed her husband to keep their secret safe. Those were her words. She must have concluded that they would be ready to kill her too, that she was in sufficient peril to warrant leaving her home in a dawn panic. Perhaps Lund had told his wife what he suspected. No wonder she had not wanted to pass it on, especially with the woman she knew to be the Dean’s niece present. It would expose her — and whomever she told — to great danger. He thought of the intensity of her stare, so incongruous as she held her baby. Not for my sake. For yours.