“Second nature. My parents own a bookshop,” he answered, returning the volume to its spot and taking a seat in the armchair.
“I’m not sure I’d have liked that,” Irene replied. “Taking books for granted, that is. My parents weren’t great readers, so I found books a revelation.” She added a dash of cream to her coffee and sat back, regarding him curiously. “Now, tell me how I can help you.”
“Did your family own the Hall during the war, Miss Burne—Irene?” he corrected himself.
Irene shook a cigarette from the packet of Dunhills on the table and lit it thoughtfully. “It belonged to my aunt Edwina. There were no surviving Haliburtons, so when she died she left the estate to my father, and upon his death it passed to me. I’m afraid our family has suffered the attrition of spinsters and childless marriages until I’m all that’s left of it.” The glance she gave him was wry and not the least self-pitying.
“And you sold it?”
“What else was I to do?” she said. “The very idea of living there was preposterous. This was in the mid-seventies; I had my life and my career in London, and the upkeep on the place had become prohibitive. You know what happens with these old houses. I kept the cottage as a weekend retreat—my lover at the time was married, so it came in quite handy.…” She gave him an amused glance, as if checking to see if she’d shocked him.
Suddenly wishing he’d known her a quarter of a century ago, he smiled at her, and she went on, “Then a few years ago I decided I’d had enough of the city and moved down here full-time. With a fax and a modem it’s not really necessary to be in the middle of things these days.”
“I believe your aunt Edwina had a boy staying here during the war, her godson. His name was William Hammond.”
“William?” Irene stared at him. “Why do you want to know about William? Has something happened to him?”
“You knew him?” Kincaid asked, his interest quickening.
“Well, of course.” Irene took an impatient drag on her cigarette. “I spent two and a half years of the war here myself, evacuated from London when our house was bombed. We were inseparable … William, Lewis, and I,” she said more softly. Then, raking Kincaid again with her bright blue glance, she ground her cigarette out in the ashtray. “Tell me what’s happened to William.”
“You won’t have seen it, then,” Kincaid said, with a gesture at the stack of unread papers. “It’s his youngest daughter, Annabelle, who had taken over as managing director of the firm. She’s been murdered.”
“Murdered?” Irene exclaimed. “How awful for him. But I don’t understand what that has to do with the Hall.”
Kincaid reached for his coffee before asking, “Did you mean Lewis Finch, a moment ago?”
“Yes, of course. But how would you know that?” Irene frowned. “And what has Lewis to do with William’s daughter?”
“He was having an affair with her, for a start.”
“Lewis? And William’s daughter?” She sounded astonished. And perhaps a bit amused? “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Annabelle Hammond not only had a relationship with Lewis, she sought out his son and seduced him—although I don’t imagine he gave her much argument.”
“She was beautiful?”
“Yes. But it wasn’t only that. She was a very strong personality, used to having her way.”
“Have you any idea why she took such an interest—if you want to call it that—in the Finches?”
“She was extremely curious about Lewis Finch, and that seems to have extended to members of his family. Did you know that Finch has been actively trying to buy William Hammond’s property the last few years?” Kincaid asked.
“No, but it doesn’t surprise me. The Hammond’s warehouse is just the sort of thing Lewis would snap up in a minute.”
“Apparently, Annabelle was as eager to sell as Lewis was to buy—she felt the warehouse was a liability to the future of the firm, and that the profit from such a sale should be used to set up the business in more modern and cost-efficient premises downriver. The thorn in all this was William Hammond. He refused to consider a sale under any circumstances, and he still owned enough shares to block it unless all the other major shareholders voted against him.”
Irene leaned forward and tapped another Dunhill from the packet, then made a slow business of lighting it and extinguishing the match. “You’d think William would have seen that change was inevitable, but he was always a bit obsessive about Hammond’s. I suppose he was fortunate that one of his children inherited his passion for tea, if not for preserving the family heritage. His daughter’s death must have been a dreadful shock for him. And for poor Lewis, if he cared for her. Who’d have thought things would come to such a pass for any of us?” She sighed. “There were a few magic years when I thought we three could overcome anything.”
“During the war?”
“You have to understand our circumstances, Mr. Kincaid. Our friendship was so uncomplicated at first—we were so young, and we had all been removed from our homes, our security. We became family to one another. But we were growing up that last year, and things changed between us.”
“You fell in love with William,” guessed Kincaid.
“Oh, no. It wasn’t like that at all,” Irene said quietly, gazing out the casement of the sitting room window, where fat bees sampled the roses and lavender in the perennial bed. She looked up and met his eyes with her direct gaze. “You see, Superintendent, I fell in love with Lewis.”
“D OODLEBUGS,” SAID I RENE . “T HAT’S WHAT E DWINA’S friends at the War Office are calling them.” She kicked her heels against a hay bale outside Zeus’s stall, and the white cotton shirt she was wearing above an old pair of Edwina’s jodhpurs looked luminous in the light of the barn. They had turned the horses out to graze on the lush June grass, then Irene had followed Lewis back into the barn with the determined expression that meant she had something to say.
He looked up from forking the dirty straw out of the stall but didn’t answer. He supposed it had been too much to hope that the raids of the winter and spring would be the last Hitler could throw at them. But with the Allied invasion of Europe earlier in the month, they had begun to hear rumors of a German retaliation weapon, and three days ago had come the first serious assault on Greater London.
“Everyone’s saying they’re really pilotless planes, and that you hear the engine stop just before they explode,” Irene continued, hugging herself as if the thought made her cold in spite of the summer warmth.
“I’m still going home, bombs or no bombs. Anything’s better than that bastard digging at me all the time.” There was no need to say who he meant: the presence of Freddie Haliburton seemed to have worked its way into every nook and cranny of their lives.
At first they’d thought Edwina would get over feeling sorry for him because of his injuries and begin to see him for what he was. But they learned soon enough that Freddie presented a different side to Edwina, and it seemed that she was too honest herself to suspect deception in others.
Freddie was always watching the three of them, always eavesdropping, always ferreting out a weakness or the smallest misdeed as a target for his ruthless tongue. That morning he’d picked apart Lewis’s translation of Virgil with such vicious sarcasm that Lewis’s face had flamed from the humiliation of it, and when he’d protested, Freddie had pinched his earlobe so hard he’d nearly cried aloud. It was only Irene’s quick hand on his arm and a quelling glance from William that had kept him in his seat, and he’d been simmering ever since.
“Well, I think you’re bloody selfish, Lewis Finch.” Irene glared at him, her chin up. “We swore a blood pact, the three of us, that we’d stick together no matter what—”
Lewis jammed the fork into the straw. “It’s all right for you. He doesn’t call you a guttersnipe, and a … a barrow boy—”
“Why is that worse than him making fun of me because I’m a girl? We’re all in this, and it’s not been easy for William, ei
ther. You know how Freddie loves to tell him horrid stories about the war just because he knows how much they upset him.” She slid down the bale until her booted feet touched the ground and her face was almost on a level with his. “Sometimes I think you’re the only thing that keeps William from doing something really silly. You can’t just leave us—”
“You’d be all right; you and William will stick up for each other—”
“How can you be so bloody stupid, Lewis? I’m trying to tell you that I don’t want you to go. Can’t you see that?”
Baffled, he stared at her. Under the thin white shirt her chest was rising and falling quickly, and her blue eyes snapped with anger.
“But …” His tongue refused to cooperate. “I don’t—”
Irene stretched up on tiptoe, placed her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him hard on the mouth. Then she stepped back and put her hands on her hips. “Now tell me you want to go.”
“I—” Lewis’s head spun with confusion and a rush of desire. For months he’d tried to ignore the way Irene had made him feel; he’d never dreamed it might be the same for her. “I—” he began again, then gave up trying to sort things out in words and reached for her. This time her lips were soft against his and he felt the pressure of her breasts against his chest.
“Irene.” He pulled away with a groan. “What about William? If he sees us—”
“He won’t. He’s working on some project in the attic and he told me to sod off, it was none of my business.” She added, “This can be our secret,” as she kissed him again.
Lewis felt he might drown in the pleasure of it, but he didn’t care. With his hands, he felt the curve of her back and the definition of her ribs, then the beginning of the swell of her breasts. So lost was he that it took a moment for the faint cough to register, and before he could react he heard Freddie say, “How sweet. Love amidst the hay.”
Lewis and Irene jumped apart as if shot and whirled towards the door. Freddie stood just inside, his shoulder propped against the jamb, his thumbs hooked through his braces. He stepped forward, smiling and shaking his head. “My, my. It’s a good thing I’m the one volunteered to look for you two, isn’t it? It might have been Edwina, and then where would we be?”
Beside Lewis, Irene drew a swift breath and opened her mouth, then shut it again with a sharp shake of her head.
“Look,” said Lewis, anger overcoming his fear. “You won’t say anything to Edwina.”
Freddie’s smile grew wider, distorting the grotesque mask of his face. “Not unless it suits me,” he said, very softly, and the menace in his words made the hair rise on Lewis’s arms. “But just now she wants you inside, Lewis, and if I were you I’d pop along like a good lad.”
“I’m coming with you to the house,” said Irene as Lewis took a step towards Freddie, and taking Lewis by the elbow, she tugged him from the barn.
“Don’t be stupid,” she hissed as they crossed the yard. “That’s just what he wants.”
“What do you suppose he means to do?” whispered Lewis worriedly.
“Hold us hostage.” Irene gave him a quick glance, then released his arm. “But I don’t care. It’s worth it.”
“Irene—”
“It’ll be all right; we’ll talk later. You’d best go see what Edwina wants.” Then she slipped ahead of him through the kitchen door and went to help Cook with the scones for tea.
In the corridor, Lewis straightened his collar and smoothed his hair before tapping on Edwina’s door. Edwina seldom asked to see him on his own and his pulse gave a moment’s anxious jump, but there was no way she could know about what had just happened in the barn. He took a breath and went in.
Edwina stood before the open window, staring out and smoking, and the first thing Lewis noticed was that the cigarette in her right hand had an inch of ash on its end. As he watched, the ash fell to the carpet and shattered, but she didn’t seem to notice.
It was then that he saw the yellowed slip of paper she held in her left hand, half crumpled in her fist. His first thought was that it was John Pebbles, or Mr. Cuddy, killed in action—but for that she’d certainly have called the others in as well.
Then she raised her head and met his eyes, and he knew.
“I SUPPOSE IT WAS A TERRIBLE irony,” Irene said. “His parents survived so much, then to be killed in the first wave of the V1s. If I remember correctly, they were just coming out of the corner shop, such an ordinary thing, on a June day much like this one.…” She shook her head and lit another Dunhill.
“Lewis refused to let William come to the funeral, or me, but Edwina insisted on going with him. He would never speak about it afterwards, or about his parents. Except once.”
Kincaid waited in silence as she smoked for a bit, and in the clear light he could see the deep creases running from her nose to the corners of her mouth—laugh lines, his mother had always called them, but he thought Irene’s face expressed a multitude of joys and griefs.
“He said if he’d been there, it might not have happened,” she went on at last. “He might have heard the rocket in time.”
“And you blamed yourself for his guilt, because you wanted him to stay,” Kincaid said. He knew about guilt, about the relentless game of what if the mind could play.
“Yes. And I tried to comfort him.” For a moment, Irene seemed lost in the memory, then her blue eyes met his. “But nothing could have prepared us for what happened afterwards. You see, Edwina and Freddie Haliburton, our tutor, were killed in an accident very shortly after Lewis’s parents died.” She ground out her half smoked cigarette in the ashtray. “Edwina’s death … it was just too much grief—for all of us, but particularly for Lewis, who had lost both his brothers early in the war, as well as his parents. He left after Edwina’s funeral. There was nothing I could do to persuade him to stay.”
“It must have been hard for you.”
“I went back to my family in Kilburn, bombs and all, but we made it through the last of the war without incident.”
“And William Hammond?”
“William went home to Greenwich. I had the occasional letter, then they dwindled to Christmas cards.”
“And you never heard from Lewis?”
Irene’s smile was self-mocking. “I had fantasies for years that he would find me again someday. Then in the sixties his name began appearing in the papers, and I did some research. He must have lied about his age, because he did a brief stint in the army at the end of the war. Then when he was demobbed at the end of 1945, he joined a rebuilding crew and worked his way up in the construction business. There were great opportunities after the war for those with the brains and the talent to take advantage, and Lewis Finch had both.”
“But you never contacted him?”
“No. I toyed with the idea, of course, but I’d learned he was married. I’ve never been much of a masochist,” she added with a smile.
Kincaid thought for a moment. “William Hammond’s older daughter told us that he had warned her and Annabelle against Lewis Finch. Have you any idea why?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Irene, but Kincaid thought he detected a note of doubt in her voice. She rose, and going to her desk, she idly straightened the papers on its surface. “Although I suppose there was some tension between them that summer.”
“Was William jealous of you and Lewis?”
Irene frowned. “I’m not sure William even noticed what was happening between Lewis and me. He had concerns of his own.” Kincaid waited for her to continue. Softly, she said, “I promised myself I’d never become one of those old biddies who drone on about their youth. But we led an idyllic life in the year and a half we had together, William and Lewis and I, in spite of the hardships of the war. Then Freddie Haliburton came, and everything changed.” Turning, she met Kincaid’s eyes again. “He had a talent for digging out weaknesses and making lives miserable that I’ve seldom seen since.”
“You said he died?” Kincaid asked.
“Yes
. It’s a wonder he wasn’t killed when his fighter crashed in the war, if he flew with the same disregard for the laws of nature he demonstrated when he got behind the wheel of a car. He went up to London every few weeks to drink himself senseless in the officers’ club, and I suspect to do other things that I didn’t understand at the time.” She shook her head. “I can’t say I’ve met many truly wicked people in my life, but Freddie … Freddie was the serpent in the garden of Eden.”
L EWIS STARED OUT THE SCHOOLROOM WINDOW at the rain-washed July morning and tried not to think of other July mornings.… The July he and William had learned to spot planes … summer hikes with Mr. Cuddy on the Downs, imagining themselves to be Roman soldiers … teaching Irene to ride Edwina’s hunter. There were so many closed roads in his mind now … places he could no longer bear to go … and always the one that teased at the edge of thought. Home. His mum, and his dad …
He turned back to the five pages of Latin translation Freddie had assigned him before their regular class time began, as punishment for some transgression, but really because he knew how much Lewis hated it. And hated him.
The door opened and Lewis tensed. He never knew now when the ruler might smack down across his knuckles, or the cruel fingers pinch his earlobe until the blood came.
“What a good boy you are,” said Freddie behind him, and Lewis heard the rasping of his breath. The same fire that had destroyed half of Freddie Haliburton’s face had seared the delicate tissues of his lungs, and Lewis found himself wishing more and more often that the burning plane had left nothing behind but scraps of charred flesh. The thought made him shudder.
Freddie said, “Cold?” and moved a step closer. Then Lewis felt Freddie’s hand settle on his shoulder, and he steeled himself for the pain.
But the pain didn’t come, only a gentle stroking of his shoulder—and somehow this was far worse. “Don’t.” He wrenched himself free, his feet tangling in the chair legs as he tried to scramble away; then he turned and, stumbling, faced his tormentor. “Don’t touch me,” he said huskily, panting against the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him.
Kissed a Sad Goodbye Page 34
