Dreaming of the Bones (34 page)

“Mr. Ashby,” called Gemma, as Kincaid put out a hand to stop the door shutting. “We’re police officers. Both of us. From Scotland Yard. We need to talk to you.”

Morgan gave Kincaid a disdainful look, but at least her sally had kept him from shutting Kincaid’s hand in the door, thought Gemma.

“Scotland Yard? So that was a load of bollocks you fed me, too,” Morgan said to Kincaid. “All that sob story about Victoria McClellan being your ex—”

“It was true,” said Kincaid. “Vic came to me
because
I’m a policeman, when she began to feel uneasy about Lydia’s death.”

“Lydia’s death?” repeated Morgan, hesitating for the first time. “What are you talking about?”

Gemma stepped forwards into the opening Kincaid had created with his arm. She had felt a sense of rapport with Morgan Ashby, and now she gambled on it. “Look, Mr. Ashby, please let us come in. We won’t take up more than a few minutes of your time.”

Morgan stared at her for a moment, brows drawn together as though he meant to refuse, then he suddenly shrugged and stepped back. “Say what you have to say, then, and get it over with.”

As an invitation, it was less than gracious, but Gemma moved quickly into the kitchen, and Kincaid followed, closing the door.

Socks and underthings hung drying on a rack suspended above the Rayburn, and Gemma smelled potatoes boiling on the cooker’s
top. Her stomach rumbled, but she couldn’t tell whether it was from hunger or nerves.

Morgan stood with his backside against the cooker and didn’t invite them to sit down. “What do you mean,
uneasy?”
he said, glancing from one to the other. “Why would McClellan have needed to go poking about into Lydia’s death? Isn’t the simple fact of it enough?”

“There were several things that worried Vic about Lydia’s suicide. But first let’s go back a bit.” Kincaid stepped forwards, physically crowding Morgan, and Gemma bit her lip on an admonition. She knew his aggression was an instinctive reaction to Morgan’s belligerence, but her gut feeling told her it wasn’t the way to handle him.

“We’ve just come from a visit with Daphne Morris,” Kincaid said. She saw Morgan tense at the name, his pupils dilating until the gray in his eyes disappeared into black, but Kincaid smiled and continued, “It seems you were all quite well acquainted. She told us some fascinating things about your relationship with Lydia. There was a little matter of a reported assault, for instance, and some fractures—”

Gemma heard the crack of Morgan’s fist against Kincaid’s jaw almost before she saw it—then came a flurry of punches too quick for her to follow, and they were straining together, panting, their faces fierce with intent, and blood welled crimson bright from Kincaid’s split lip.

It seemed to take her aeons to cross the mere two paces of kitchen floor, then she was shoving and shouting at them. “Stop it! Both of you! Morgan, listen to me. Lydia didn’t commit suicide. Someone
killed
her. Do you hear me? It couldn’t have been you—you’d never have poisoned her. But someone did, and you have to help us. Morgan—”

Then suddenly Kincaid had Morgan’s arm pinned back in a hammerlock, and Morgan was grimacing with pain.

“Let me go, goddamnit!” he shouted, kicking at Kincaid’s shin, but Gemma sensed the fight had gone out of him.

Kincaid eased up, but said furiously, “You bloody well keep your hands to yourself, okay?”

Morgan jerked his arm out of Kincaid’s grasp and stepped away,
touching the blood trickling from his nose. He gave a perplexed look at the smear on his fingers, then frowned at Gemma. “Why should they bother to kill her?” he said. “Didn’t they do enough damage as it was?” To Gemma’s horror, his face contorted in a sob.

She guided his now unresisting body into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, then dampened a dishcloth and handed it to him. Slipping into the chair opposite, she said gently, “Who hurt Lydia, Morgan?”

“Bloody perverts.” Morgan dabbed at his nose. Even though he seemed to have got his face under control, unshed tears glistened on his lower lashes.

“Are you talking about Daph—” Kincaid began, but Gemma made an abrupt shushing gesture with her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, he sat down at the far end of the table and held his handkerchief to his lip.

“She’s a cunning bitch,” said Morgan. “She bided her time, all those years—faithful, dependable Daphne, waiting for an opening.”

“Was Lydia sleeping with Daphne?” asked Gemma, in a carefully neutral tone.

“Sleeping.” Morgan gave a bark of laughter. “Bloody euphemism for what they did. All of them, not just Daphne, and Lydia held it up to me, taunted me with it when we had rows. They made her ill, twisted her so that she could never have a normal relationship.

“She had night terrors, did you know that? She’d wake up screaming and sweating from dreams she never remembered. And the worst of it was that she couldn’t bear to be happy. We’d get along well for a bit and then she’d start picking at things, starting rows. Sometimes I think now that she
wanted
me to hurt her, but I was too close to it then. I couldn’t see it.”

“Did she want you to hurt her so she’d have an excuse to leave you?” asked Gemma. “That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no. You’ve got it all wrong.” Morgan shook his head. “She ran to Daphne, but she came back in a few days, and things were all right for a while.”

“Then
she
started in at you again,” said Gemma, now beginning to see the pattern of it.

Morgan nodded, closing his eyes for a moment. Then he said
slowly, “It was when I found myself shaking her with my hands round her throat that I knew I had to be the one to do it.”

Sensing Kincaid stir at that, Gemma gave a quick shake of her head. She waited, resisting the impulse to hurry Morgan or to speak for him.

“I pried my hands away, and I felt as though they’d never be clean again. How had I let her bring me to that? Later that night, when she had cried herself to sleep, I packed my things and walked out. The next day I filed for divorce. I gave her the house and everything in it.” He looked up at Gemma beseechingly. “Was it such a terrible thing to do, abandoning her that way?”

“You couldn’t have done anything else.” Gemma allowed herself to touch his hand. “Morgan, who was it that made Lydia ill? Besides Daphne?”

The skin beneath his eyes crinkled as he frowned at her. “Adam, of course. The spoiler of her virginity, she liked to call him, or the Lamb of God. She thought it funny.”

“Just Adam?” she asked.

“Adam, and Darcy Eliot, and that bloody hypocrite Nathan Winter, who went on afterwards to become the perfect, morally upright husband and father,” Morgan sneered.

“You’re saying that Lydia slept with
all
of them?” Gemma refrained from making eye contact with Kincaid. “Including Daphne?”

“She told me I was unreasonable because I didn’t want them coming round after we were married.”

“But you gave in about Daphne, didn’t you? After Lydia lost the babies, because Daphne was the only woman she could bear to be round. What about afterwards, when you’d separated? Did they continue to see one another?”

Morgan shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t see Lydia again, except for the few occasions when we couldn’t avoid running into one another.” He sounded suddenly very tired.

“There was Francesca.”

“Francesca kept me sane. Still does, though it’s a job I don’t envy her.” Morgan attempted a smile. “We’d both have been better off if I’d—” He paused and tilted his head, listening. “She’s home now. Back from the shops. I can recognize the sound of the bloody old Volvo’s engine a mile away.”

A car door slammed nearby. They waited, and after a moment the back door swung open. Francesca Ashby stepped in, her pleasant face creased with anxiety. She took in Morgan’s face, with the traces of blood drying black beneath his nose, and dropped her parcels where she stood. “Morgan! Are you—”

“I’m fine, love, don’t worry,” he reassured her.

“But—” She glanced at Kincaid, whose cheekbone was beginning to darken in a bruise, then at Gemma. “What happened?” she asked as she went to stand beside her husband.

“Something that should have happened a long time ago,” he said, putting his arm round her waist. “But I’m not sure I can explain it. It’s over, Fran. Finally. They say that someone killed Lydia. She didn’t commit suicide.” He looked at Kincaid for the first time since their scuffle. “Are you sure of it?”

“There’s no physical proof at this point, but I think it’s fairly certain,” said Kincaid.

“And you think this same person may have killed your Dr. McClellan?”

Kincaid nodded. “Do you have any idea who might have done such a thing?”

“No,” said Morgan slowly. “And it’s an odd thing, but I find I don’t really care.”

“Morgan, you can’t mean that.” Francesca stepped away from him, sounding shocked.

He looked up at her. “I don’t mean I think it right, or that I don’t care about justice for her, in a detached sort of way. But don’t you see what this means for me, Frannie?”

“It was never your fault, Morgan, no matter how she died.” She stroked his hair. “You didn’t need that sort of absolution.”

“But I did,” he said softly. “I’m going to sell the house, Fran. Will you help me?” He turned to her, and when she gave him a nod of confirmation, he gave a long, shuddering sigh and rested his head against her breast.

Gemma and Kincaid sat for a moment, watching Francesca’s still face, then got up quietly from the table and let themselves out.

CHAPTER
15

And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,

And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known,

An empty tale, of idleness and pain,

Of two that loved—or did not love—and one

Whose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly,

A long while since, and by some other sea.

R
UPERT
B
ROOKE
,
from “Waikiki”

“So where does this leave us?” Kincaid asked as he picked up his cheese and tomato sandwich, then winced as his first bite caught his swollen lip. Gemma had already started on hers, and he watched the egg salad squish generously over the edges of the brown bread as she bit into it.

They’d chosen a basement tearoom off St. John’s Street, partly on Hazel’s recommendation, and partly because he had made an appointment with Ralph Peregrine, and the offices of Peregrine Press were nearby. Kincaid had to admit the tearoom was a charming enough place, a warm retreat with heavy oak furniture and bright Blue Calico tea services, but the drawing of Alice in Wonderland on the restaurant’s paper menus made him think of Vic.

“You shouldn’t have pushed Morgan, you know,” said Gemma a bit reproachfully, but her expression was concerned as she watched him explore his lip with a careful fingertip. “You’re going to have a
lovely bruise on that cheekbone as well,” she added in a tone of dispassionate interest.

“The man is a wife beater—by his own admission, he nearly killed Lydia. How can you possibly make excuses for him?” Kincaid countered defensively.

“You don’t usually let your personal prejudices get in the way of your judgment.” Gemma looked at him over the rim of her blue and white teacup. “And besides, I’m not sure it’s true—that Morgan’s an abuser, I mean. I think he has a rotten temper, and that Lydia pushed him—”

“You’re not saying that Lydia deserved what she got?” he sputtered through a mouthful of sandwich. “That’s preposterous. I can’t believe you’d—”

“Of course I don’t mean that,” she said, just as hotly. “I’m not saying that what Morgan did was right, only that I think this was something strictly between Morgan and Lydia, a combination of personalities that drove them both beyond their limits.

“Besides, for most men who abuse women, it’s a chronic pattern, but I’d be willing to bet you a month’s wages that Morgan’s never laid a finger on Francesca in all the years they’ve been married.”

“So? That doesn’t mean he didn’t murder Lydia twenty years later.”

“No, but not that way.” Gemma shook her head emphatically. “Morgan acts out of temper. Poisoning requires deliberate forethought, intent to harm, and I don’t think he’s capable of it.” More thoughtfully, she added, “What I’d like to know is whether Lydia really deliberately triggered these episodes, or if that’s just his perception of it—a way of excusing himself.”

“Well, there’s no way we can know that, is there? And I can’t see any point arguing with you unless we turn up something else that incriminates Morgan Ashby,” said Kincaid with a sigh. “Once you make up your mind, you’re as immovable as Mohammed.”

Gemma’s smile held the satisfaction of victory. “Then don’t you think we need to follow up what Morgan told us? We can’t see Daphne again until Monday, but we could have a go at Darcy Eliot and Nathan Winter.” She finished her tea and patted her mouth demurely with her serviette.

“All right,” he conceded. “But I still want to see Ralph Peregrine first. I’m not happy about those missing poems.”

When they had paid their bill, they climbed the steep staircase back to street level, passing through the ground-floor shop with its selection of linens and laces. Kincaid saw Gemma reach out towards a particularly elaborate tablecloth displayed near the door, but she dropped her hand without touching it and followed him out onto the pavement.

The weather had changed in the half hour they’d been inside. Dark clouds had scudded in, and the air held a damp chill. “It must be this way,” said Gemma, as they came to a halt at the intersection of St. John’s and a tiny lane. Remembering that she’d told him she’d done a recce day before yesterday, he followed her without question. They passed a shop selling English cheeses, and olives in an array of colors ranging from pale green to deep aubergine. Beyond that, a shop displayed handmade chocolates, and then, just before they reached Sidney Street, they saw an unobtrusive door bearing a brass nameplate with the Peregrine Press logo.