Deep Waters (35 page)

The interior of the house was as unexpected as its owner. No trace of period features remained in the open-plan sitting room which comprised most of the ground floor. The walls were the colour of clotted cream, the floors were stripped wood, and there were French doors leading to a back garden, letting in light from the south. ‘What a lovely house,’ Neville said involuntarily.

She smiled, transforming her rather austere face. ‘I’m glad you like it.’ Gesturing him into a chair, she went on, ‘Now, Inspector. I imagine you’d like a cup of coffee?’

‘That would be very nice.’

In what seemed little more than a few seconds, she reappeared with a tray containing a cafetière, two cups, milk jug and sugar bowl, and a plate of thin shortbread biscuits. She slid it onto the glass coffee table and waited for the coffee to brew. ‘You’re here to ask me about Dr di Stefano, I imagine,’ she said.

‘Yes, that’s right. I understand that you…knew him well.’

Rosemary Harwood smiled. ‘You could say that. We went back a very long way. More than twenty years, if you can believe it.’

‘Twenty years!’

She seemed to be doing a sum in her head. ‘About
twenty-seven
years, actually. He was just eighteen or so when we met—an undergraduate.’

‘And you were…?’

‘Oh, I was doing the same job I’m still doing. Departmental secretary in the sociology department. Frightening, isn’t it? How time gets away from you, and the years just whizz by?’

Neville didn’t want to get side-tracked down that path. ‘So you knew Joe di Stefano when he was a student.’

‘Just over from Italy,’ she confirmed. ‘His English wasn’t very good in those days. He used to ask me for help when he didn’t understand certain words. Now, of course, you wouldn’t know he wasn’t native-born.’

‘I never met Dr di Stefano,’ Neville reminded her.

‘Oh, how silly of me.’ Rosemary Harwood blinked back a few tears, the first sign he’d seen of emotion. She leaned over and pressed down on the plunger of the cafetière.

‘So he spent his entire career at the university?’ Neville asked quickly.

She swallowed, then answered. ‘That’s right, Inspector. He was an undergraduate, then a graduate student, then became a lecturer, and moved up from there. He’d planned to go back to Italy, initially,’ she added. ‘When he’d finished his studies. But of course he married, and that changed things.’

Neville could imagine: no chance that Serena would leave her family—and the family business—to follow her husband back to the ancestral homeland. She and Mark were London-born, with no desire to leave the place of their birth. Instead, Joe had been sucked into the Lombardi family and had put down new roots.

‘And how did you feel when he married?’ Neville asked.

Rosemary Harwood stared at him for a moment. ‘I was happy for him, of course. Surely you’re not suggesting that I was interested in him romantically?’

Neville back-pedalled furiously. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Because that would be…silly. I was old enough to be his mother, Inspector. We were friends, for many years. I felt protective
of him, especially as he had no family in this country to begin with. And as I never had children myself…’

He understood: if anything, Joe di Stefano had been a
child-substitute
for Miss Harwood, not a longed-for lover. ‘Yes, I see,’ he said. ‘So you were upset when Dr di Stefano…died.’

The tears welled up again as she handed him a cup of coffee. ‘Help yourself to milk and sugar,’ she invited before addressing his question. ‘Yes, I was upset. Terribly upset. I’d known him so long, you see. And it was a sort of…I suppose you could say it was a wake-up call,’ she said.

Neville wasn’t sure what she meant. ‘A wake-up call?’

‘Life is too short,’ she said simply. ‘We put off doing the things we want to do, and the years slip by, and suddenly…’

‘It’s too late,’ he said, without meaning to.

‘Exactly, Inspector. So I’ve decided not to wait any longer to do the things I want to do.’

‘And that would be…?’

‘I’ve always wanted to live by the sea,’ she said, stirring a bit of milk into her coffee. ‘In a little cottage, very close to the sea, where I could potter along the beach and spend my days painting water-colours.’ She smiled, looking into the distance as though she were picturing it in her mind. ‘So I’m going to do it,’ she added resolutely. ‘I’m going to retire from the university, sell my house, and move to the seaside.’

‘You’re going to sell this house?’

She must have picked up something of the excitement in his voice, because Rosemary Harwood re-focused her attention on him. ‘Why? Do you want to buy it?’

‘I do,’ he said, and meant it. ‘I’d very much like to buy your house, Miss Harwood.’

‘Graham is a prince among men,’ Callie sighed, leaning back into the whirlpool jets. ‘What a brilliant gift this was.’

‘This is just the beginning,’ Frances said. ‘Lots more to come.’

‘Mmm.’

Frances plucked the strap of her swimming costume. ‘This is looking decidedly tired,’ she stated. ‘I think I need a new one.’

‘Mmm.’ Callie didn’t even open her eyes.

‘What do you think?’

Callie forced her eyes open a crack. It looked fine to her, but that evidently wasn’t what Frances wanted to hear. ‘I think you could use a new one,’ she said obediently. ‘It’s loose on you. You must have lost weight.’

‘Liar.’ Frances splashed some water in her direction. ‘Did I tell you that Graham and I are thinking about going to the States this summer?’

‘I don’t think you’ve mentioned it. To see Heather?’

Frances smiled. ‘Yes. She says she wants us to come.’

‘Where, exactly?’

‘She and Zack are living in California.’

The less said about Zack the better, Callie judged. Frances had made a real effort to accept her new son-in-law, but he wasn’t the mate Frances would have chosen for her only child. Approaching sixty, Zack had grey plaits…and a vasectomy. Callie knew how much Frances had looked forward to having grandchildren one day; now that probably wasn’t going to happen. Not unless Zack obliged them by dying in the not-too-distant future, leaving Heather to re-marry while she was still in her childbearing years. ‘Sounds like a nice trip,’ she said neutrally.

The water bubbled along her spine; she shifted a few inches to direct a jet at her tight shoulders. ‘Do you know what one of the nicest things about today is?’ she asked, heedlessly
ungrammatical
. ‘Apart from spending time with my best friend, of course.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The only decision I have to make,’ Callie said on a sigh, ‘is what colour to have my nails painted.’

Calm down, Neville told himself. Maybe the rest of the house is totally unsuitable.

‘Would you like to see the rest of the house?’ Rosemary Harwood asked him. ‘If you’re serious, that is.’

‘I’m serious,’ he assured her. ‘My wife is expecting a baby. We really need to find a proper house, before the baby comes. And the location here—it just couldn’t be better.’

‘It’s not the sea,’ she said with a smile. ‘But if one has to live in London, Ladbroke Square is as good a view as any. It’s almost like living in parkland.’

‘Close to Paddington for me,’ Neville said, ‘and the Central Line Tube for my wife. It’s perfect.’

After showing him the modern kitchen/diner, she took him upstairs, and it was just as delightful as the ground floor: three
bedrooms
on two floors, a large family bathroom, and an ensuite.

‘It’s always been too large for me, really,’ Miss Harwood said, almost apologetically. ‘It was my family home, you see. I’ve lived here all my life. When my parents died, I thought about
selling
it and buying something smaller. But I didn’t want to leave Ladbroke Square. So I modernised it instead. Gutted the place, got rid of all the fireplaces and the Victoriana my mother loved so much. Opened it up, took up the carpets, stripped the floors. I did quite a bit of the work myself, in the evenings.’

A woman of many talents, clearly.

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Neville. Clean, bright rooms,
overlooking
the parkland in the front and the south-facing garden at the back. Triona would adore it. ‘I’d love to buy it. If I can afford it,’ he added, with belated dismay.

‘I’m sure we can come to some arrangement,’ Miss Harwood said. ‘After all, if I don’t have to go through an estate agent, a private sale would save me quite a bit of money.’ She smiled at him. ‘And I’d love to think of a family living here again.’

They went downstairs to finish their coffee. Neville’s head was spinning: was this really too good to be true? There had to be a catch somewhere.

With difficulty, he turned his thoughts back to Joe di Stefano and the derailed interview. There were still questions he needed to put to Rosemary Harwood.

‘Did you ever see a bottle of Lucozade in Dr di Stefano’s office?’ he asked.

She looked puzzled at the question. ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘Quite often, on his desk. Sometimes he’d go out running during his lunch hour. Recently, that was. Within the last six months or so.’

The next one was tricker; he phrased the question as delicately as he could. ‘Were you aware of a relationship he had with a young woman called Samantha Winter?’

Miss Harwood pressed her lips together. ‘Yes,’ she said.

There was a moment of silence. ‘And you didn’t approve?’ he prodded.

‘Certainly not. It was most…unsuitable,’ she said crisply. ‘He was a married man. And she was a student. Too young for him, even if he didn’t already have a wife.’

‘Did you say anything to Dr di Stefano about it?’

‘Many times.’ She sniffed. ‘He knew I didn’t approve. But he was absolutely besotted by the girl. He wouldn’t listen to anyone. He was…reckless. Even when his wife found out, he didn’t break it off.’

‘So his wife knew.’

‘Yes, he told me she’d found out. He didn’t like hurting her. He wasn’t a cruel man,’ she said earnestly. ‘But as I said, he was besotted.’

There was another delicate question to be posed. ‘She wasn’t the first, though, was she? I mean, there had been other students in the past.’

Rosemary Harwood raised her eyebrows. ‘Why would you think that, Inspector?’

‘I just assumed…’

‘That if there’d been one, there were a whole string of them? Not at all,’ she stated. ‘Until that little…Samantha,’ she checked herself, ‘came into his life, he never even thought of going astray. He was a faithful husband. He loved his wife. I’d stake my life on that.’

Well, well, thought Neville. If that was indeed the case, he’d be willing to bet that Samantha was the one who had initiated the affair, as well as breaking it off.

‘But the…relationship…was over before he died?’ Neville continued.

‘It ended a month or two ago,’ she confirmed. ‘He was
devastated
. I’ve never seen a man more cut up. I’m sure he tried to hide it from his family, but he didn’t hide it from me.’ For a moment she gazed off into the distance with a thoughtful expression. ‘You haven’t told me why the police are interested in Joe di Stefano’s death,’ she said at last. ‘I’d been given to understand that he died of a heart attack. A natural death. Would I be right in thinking that you suspect he somehow committed suicide?’

‘Let’s just say that we’re keeping our options open.’ Maybe, Neville told himself, he’d been too hasty in ruling out suicide. A horrible way to go, but if the man were that low…