Leave The Grave Green

by Deborah Crombie

  Straightening up in his chair, Kincaid said, “So you’re telling me that Con paid you off, and yet I happen to know that Con was so hard up he couldn’t make the mortgage on the flat. I think you’re lying. I think you said something to Connor over that little social pint at the Fox that sent him over the edge. What was it, Kenneth? Did you threaten to have your boss call out his muscle?” He stood up and leaned forward with his hands on the table.

  “I never threatened him. It wasn’t like that,” Hicks squeaked, shrinking away from Kincaid.

  “But he did still owe you money?”

  Hicks looked at them, sweat beading on his upper lip, and Gemma could see him calculating which way to turn next. Rat in a trap, she thought, and pressed her lips together to conceal her satisfaction. They waited in silence, until finally Hicks said, “Maybe he did. So what? I never threatened him like you said.”

  Moving restlessly back and forth in the small space before the table, Kincaid said, “I don’t believe you. Your boss was going to take it out of your skin if you didn’t come up with the ready-I don’t believe you didn’t use a little persuasion.” He smiled at Hicks as he came near him again. “And the trouble with persuasion is that sometimes it gets out of hand. Isn’t that so, Kenneth?”

  “No. I don’t know. I mean-”

  “Are you saying that it wasn’t an accident? That you intended to kill him?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Hicks swallowed and wiped his hands on his thighs. “I only made him a suggestion, a proposition, like.”

  Kincaid stopped pacing and stood very still with his hands in his pockets, watching Hicks. “That sounds very interesting, Kenneth. What sort of proposition?”

  Gemma held her breath as Hicks teetered on the edge of confession, afraid any move might nudge him in the wrong direction. Listening to the ragged cadence of his breathing, she offered up a silent little incantation to the god of interviews.

  Hicks spoke finally, with the rush of release, and his words were venomous. “I knew about him from the first, him and his hoity-toity Ashertons. You would’ve thought they were the bleedin’ Royals, the way he talked, but I knew better. That Dame Caroline’s just a jumped-up tart, no better than she should be. And all the fuss they made over that kid what drowned, well, he wasn’t even Sir Gerald’s kid, was he, just a bleedin’ little bastard.” Matty. He was talking about Matty, Gemma thought, trying to make sense of it.

  Kincaid sat down again, pulling his chair up until he could rest his elbows on the table. “Let’s start over from the beginning, shall we, Kenneth?” he said very quietly, very evenly, and Gemma shivered. “You told Connor that Matthew Asherton was illegitimate, have I got that right?”

  Hicks’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his skinny throat as he swallowed and nodded, then looked in appeal at Gemma. He’d got more than he bargained for, she thought, wondering suddenly what Kincaid might have done if she hadn’t been in the room and the tape recorder running.

  “How could you possibly know that?” Kincaid asked, still soft as velvet.

  “’Cause my uncle Tommy was his bleedin’ dad, that’s how.”

  * * *

  In the silence that followed, Kenneth Hicks’s ragged, adenoidal breathing sounded loud in Gemma’s ears. She opened her mouth, but found she couldn’t quite formulate any words.

  “Your uncle Tommy? Do you mean Tommy Godwin?” Kincaid said finally, not quite managing to control his surprise.

  Gemma felt as if a giant hand were squeezing her diaphragm. She saw again the silver-framed photograph of Matthew Asherton-the blond hair and the impish grin on his friendly face. She remembered Tommy’s voice as he spoke of Caroline, and she wondered why she had not seen it before.

  “I heard him telling me mum about it when the kid drowned,” said Hicks. He must have interpreted the shock in their faces as disbelief, because he added on a rising note of panic, “I swear. I never said nothin’, but after I met Con and he went on about them, I remembered the names.”

  Gemma felt a wave of nausea sweep over her as the corollary sank in. “I don’t believe you. You can’t be Tommy Godwin’s nephew, it’s just not possible,” she said hotly, thinking of Tommy’s elegance, and of his courteous patience as she’d taken him through his statement at the Yard, but even as she resisted the idea, she felt again that odd sense of familiarity. Could it be something in the line of the nose, or the set of the jaw?

  “You go to Clapham and ask me mum, then. She’ll tell you soon enough-”

  “You said you made Connor a proposition,” Kincaid dropped the words into Hicks’s protest like stones in a pool. “Just what was it, exactly?”

  Hicks rubbed his nose and sniffed, shifting away from eye contact with them.

  “Come on, sunshine, you can tell us all about it,” Kincaid urged him. “Spit it out.”

  “Well, the Ashertons have got to be pretty stinking with it, haven’t they, what with their titles and all. Always in the newspapers, in the gossip sections. So I figured they’d not like it put about that their kid was wrong side of the blanket, like.”

  The intensity of Kincaid’s anger seemed to have abated. “Do I take it that you suggested to Connor that he should blackmail his own in-laws?” he asked, regarding Hicks with cool amusement. “What about your own family? Did it occur to you that this might damage your uncle and your mother?”

  “He wasn’t to say I was the one told him,” Hicks said, as if that absolved him of any culpability.

  “In other words, you didn’t care how it might affect your uncle as long as it couldn’t be traced back to you.” Kincaid smiled. “Very noble of you, Kenneth. And how did Connor react to your little proposition?”

  “He didn’t believe me,” said Hicks, sounding aggrieved. “Not right away. Then he thought about it a bit and he started to get all strung up. He said how much money was I thinking about, and when I told him ‘start with fifty-thousand quid and we’d split it, we could always ask for more later,’ he bloody laughed at me. Told me to shut my friggin’ face and if I ever said another word about it, he’d kill me.” Hicks blinked his pale lashes and added, as if he still couldn’t quite believe it, “After everything I did for him!”

  “He really didn’t understand why Connor was angry with him,” Kincaid said to Gemma as they stood at the zebra crossing separating High Wycombe Station from the carpark where they had left Gemma’s Escort. “He’s more than a few bricks short of a load in the morals department, is our Kenneth. I imagine it’s only the fact that he’s such a ‘timorous wee beastie’ that’s kept him to petty villainy-although I think the comparison does an injustice to the poor mouse,” he added, brushing at the sleeve of his sport jacket.

  It was one of his favorites, Gemma noticed with the detachment that had overtaken her, a fine blue-and-gray wool that brought out the color of his eyes. Why was he waffling on as if he’d never come across a small-time crook before?

  The oncoming traffic came to a halt and they crossed on the stripes. Kincaid glanced at his watch as they reached the opposite pavement. “I think we can manage a word with Tommy Godwin before lunch if we drive like the hounds of hell are after us. In fact,” he said as they reached the car and Gemma dug the Escort’s keys out of her bag, “since it looks as though we may not need to come back here, we’d better pick up our things and get my car back to London as well.”

  Without a word, Gemma started the engine as he slid in beside her. She felt as though a kaleidoscope inside her head had shifted, jumbling the pieces so that they no longer made a recognizable pattern.

  Kincaid touched her arm. “Gemma, what is it? You’ve been like this since breakfast. If you really don’t feel well-”

  She turned toward him, tasting salt where she had bitten the inside of her lip. “Did you believe him?”

  “Who, Kenneth?” asked Kincaid, sounding a bit puzzled. “Well, you have to admit, it does make sense of things that-”

  “You haven’t met Tommy. Oh, I can believe that Tommy wa
s Matthew’s dad,” she conceded, “but not the rest of it. It’s a cock-and-bull story if I ever-

  “Just improbable enough to be true, I’m afraid,” said Kincaid. “And how else could he have found out about Tommy and Matthew? It gives us the missing piece, Gemma-motive. Connor confronted Tommy over dinner that night with what he’d found out, and Tommy killed him to keep him quiet.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Gemma said stubbornly, but even as she spoke little slivers of doubt crept into her mind. Tommy loved Caro, and Julia. You could see that. And Gerald he spoke of with respect and affection. Had protecting them been enough reason for murder? But even if she could swallow that premise, the rest still didn’t make sense to her. “Why would Connor have agreed to meet him at the lock?”

  “Tommy promised to bring him money.”

  Gemma stared blindly at the drizzle that had begun to coat the windscreen. “Somehow I don’t think that Connor wanted money,” she said with quiet certainty. “And that doesn’t explain why Tommy went to London to see Gerald. It can’t have been to establish an alibi, not if Connor was still alive.”

  “I think you’re letting your liking for Tommy Godwin affect your judgment, Gemma. No one else has a shred of motive. Surely you can see-”

  The anger that had been building in her all morning broke like a flash flood. “You’re the one that’s blind,” she shouted at him. “You’re so besotted with Julia Swann that you won’t consider that she might be implicated in Connor’s death, when you know as well as I do that the husband or wife is most likely to be involved in a spouse’s murder. How can you be sure Trevor Simons isn’t lying to protect her? How do you know she didn’t meet Connor before his dinner with Tommy, before the gallery opening, and arrange to meet him later that night? Maybe she thought a scandal involving her family would damage her career. Maybe she wanted to protect her parents. Maybe…” She ran down, her fury quickly spent, and sat waiting desolately for the inevitable backlash. This time she had really crossed over the line.

  But instead of giving her the dressing-down she expected, Kincaid looked away. In the silence that followed she could hear the swishing of tires on the damp pavement, and a faint ticking that seemed to be inside her own head. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said finally. “Perhaps my judgment can’t be trusted. But unless we come up with some concrete physical evidence, it’s all I have to go on with.”

  They made the journey back to London in separate cars, meeting again at Kincaid’s flat as they had arranged. The drizzle had followed them, and Kincaid drew the tarp over the Midget before locking it. As he climbed into Gemma’s car he said, “You really must do something about your tires, Gemma. The right rear is as bald as my granddad’s head.” It was an often-repeated nag, and when she didn’t rise to the bait, he sighed and continued, “I rang LB House on the mobile phone. Tommy Godwin didn’t come in today, said he was unwell. Didn’t you say his flat was in Highgate?”

  Gemma nodded. “I have the address in my notebook. It’s quite near here, I think.” A formless anxiety settled over her as she drove, and it was with relief that she spotted the block of flats. She left the car in the circular drive and hopped out, jiggling her foot in impatience as she waited for Kincaid to lock his side of the car and catch her up at the building entrance.

  “Christ, Gemma, is there a fire no one bothered to tell me about?” he said, but she ignored the barb and pushed through the frosted-glass doors. When they presented their identification to the doorman, he scowled and grudgingly directed them to take the lift to the fourth floor.

  “Nice building,” Kincaid said as they rose creakingly in the lift. “It’s been well maintained, but not overly modernized.” The fourth-floor foyer, tiled in a highly polished black-and-white geometric design, bore him out. “Deco, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Gemma, searching for the flat number, had only been listening with half an ear. “What?” she asked, knocking at 4C.

  “Art Deco. The building must date from between-”

  The door swung open and Tommy Godwin regarded them quizzically. “Mike rang me and said the Bill were paying another call. Very disapproving he was, too. I think he must have had unfortunate dealings with the law in a previous existence.” Godwin wore a paisley silk dressing gown and slippers, and his usually immaculate blond hair stood on end. “You must be Superintendent Kincaid,” he said as he ushered them into the flat.

  Having assured herself that Tommy hadn’t gone and put his head in the oven or something equally silly, Gemma felt irrationally angry with him for having worried her. She followed slowly behind the men, looking about her. A small, sleek kitchen lay to her left, done in the same black and white as the foyer. To her right, the sitting room carried on the theme, and through its bank of windows she could see a gray London spread before her. All the lines of the furniture were curved, but without fussiness, and the monochromatic color scheme was accented by a collection of pink frosted glass. Gemma found the room restful, and saw that its gentle order fit Tommy like a second suit of clothes.

  A Siamese cat posed on a chair beneath the window. Paws tucked under her chest, she regarded them with unblinking sapphire eyes.

  “You’re quite right, Superintendent,” Tommy said as she joined them, “these flats were built in the early thirties, and they were the ultimate in advanced design for their day. They’ve held up remarkably well, unlike most of the postwar monstrosities. Sit down, please,” he added as he seated himself in a fan-shaped chair that complemented the swirling design on his dressing gown. “Although I must say, I think it must have been a bit nerve-racking during the war, as high above the city as we are. You’d have felt like a sitting duck when the German bombers came over. A chink in the blackout and-”

  “Tommy,” Gemma interrupted severely, “they said at LB House that you weren’t well. What is it?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, and in the clear gray light Gemma saw the skin beginning to pouch a little under his eyes. “Just a bit under the weather, Sergeant. I must admit that yesterday rather took its toll.” He stood and went to the drinks cabinet against the wall. “Will you have a little sherry? It’s appropriately near lunchtime, and I’m sure Rory Allyn always accepted a sherry when he was interrogating suspects.”

  “Tommy, this isn’t a detective novel, for heaven’s sake,” said Gemma, unable to contain her exasperation.

  He turned to look at her, sherry decanter poised in one hand. “I know, my dear. But it’s my way of whistling in the dark.” The gentleness of his tone told her that he acknowledged her concern and was touched by it.

  “I won’t refuse a small one,” said Kincaid, and Tommy placed three glasses and the decanter on a small cocktail tray. The glasses were sensuously scalloped in the same delicate frosted pink as the fluted lampshades and vases Gemma had already noticed, and when she tasted the sherry it seemed to dissolve on her tongue like butter.

  “After all,” said Tommy as he filled his own glass and returned to his chair, “if I’m to take the blame for a crime I didn’t commit, I might as well do it with good grace.”

  “Yesterday you told me you’d been to Clapham to visit your sister.” Gemma paused to lick a trace of sherry from her lip, then went on more slowly. “You didn’t tell me about Kenneth.”

  “Ah.” Tommy leaned against the chair back and closed his eyes. The light etched lines of exhaustion around his mouth and nose, delineated the pulse ticking in his throat. Gemma wondered why she hadn’t seen the gray mixed in with the gold at his temples. “Would you admit to Kenneth, given a choice?” Tommy said, without moving. “No, don’t answer that.” He opened his eyes and gave Gemma a valiant attempt at a smile. “I take it you’ve met him?”

  Gemma nodded.

  “Then I can also assume that the whole sordid cat is out of the bag.”

  “I think so, yes. You lied to me about your dinner with Connor. There wasn’t any question of him going back to his old job. He confronted you with what Kenneth had told him.�
�� This seemed to be her day for making accusations, she thought, finding that she took Tommy’s deception personally, as if she’d been betrayed by a friend.

  “A mere taradiddle, my dear-” Catching Gemma’s expression he stopped and sighed. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. You’re quite right. What do you want to know?”

  “Start from the beginning. Tell us about Caroline.”

  “Ah, you mean from the very beginning.” Tommy swirled the sherry in his glass, watching it reflectively. “I loved Caro, you see, with all the blind, single-minded recklessness of youth. Or perhaps age has nothing to do with it… I don’t know. Our affair ended with Matthew’s conception. I wanted her to leave Gerald and marry me. I would have loved Julia as my own child.” Pausing, he finished his sherry and returned the glass to the tray with deliberate care. “It was a fantasy, of course. Caro was beginning a promising career, she was comfortably ensconced at Badger’s End with the backing of the Asherton name and money. What had I to offer her? And there was Gerald, who has never behaved less than honorably in all the years I’ve known him.

  “One makes what adjustments one must,” he said, smiling at Gemma. “I’ve come to the conclusion that great tragedies are created by those who don’t make it through the adjustment stage. We went on. As ‘Uncle Tommy’ I was allowed to watch Matty grow up, and no one knew the truth except Caro and me.

  “Then Matty died.”

  Kincaid set his empty glass on the cocktail tray, and the click of glass against wood sounded loud as a shot in the silent room. Gemma gave him a startled glance-so focused had she been on Tommy that for a moment she had forgotten his presence. Neither of them spoke, and after a moment, Tommy continued.

  “They shut me out. Closed ranks. In their grief Caro and Gerald had no room for anyone else’s. As much as I loved Matty, I also saw that he was an ordinary little boy, with an ordinary little boy’s faults and graces. The fact that he was also extraordinarily gifted meant no more to him than if he’d had an extra finger or been able to do lightning calculus in his head. Not so, Gerald and Caro. Do you understand that? Matty was the embodiment of their dreams, a gift God had sent them to mold in their own image.”