Dreaming of the bones

by Deborah Crombie

Francesca’s face clouded and she said warily, “He’s not here. Can I help you?”

  “Are you his wife?” Gemma asked, wishing for the easy authority of her warrant card.

  “That’s right.” Francesca waited, still without a hint of a smile in her gray-blue eyes.

  “I was a friend of Victoria McClellan’s, you see,” said Gemma, and was surprised to find she didn’t feel it was stretching the truth. “And I wanted to ask Mr. Ashby a few questions about his conversations with her.”

  “Morgan didn’t have any conversations with Dr. McClellan,” Francesca said flatly. “And he wouldn’t be pleased to see you. He just ran her ex-husband off with his shotgun a few minutes ago. All this business has upset him dreadfully, just when I’d hoped-”

  “Duncan was here?” asked Gemma. “Was he all right?”

  “Of course he was all right,” said Francesca, sounding surprised. “Morgan didn’t shoot at him. He hasn’t even any shells for the gun.” She studied Gemma, frowning. “I take it you know Dr. McClellan’s ex-husband well enough to be concerned for his welfare.” After looking at Gemma a moment longer, she picked up her clothes basket decisively. “I think you’d better come in and tell me what this is all about.”

  “But what if… Mr. Ashby comes back?” asked Gemma, feeling a bit wary of the shotgun in spite of Francesca’s disclaimer.

  “If I know Morgan, he’s taken the footpath up towards Madingley, and it usually takes him a couple of hours’ walking to simmer down enough to come home.” Francesca looked to the north, where clouds white as the blowing sheets were piling up against the horizon. “And I think the weather will hold that long, at the least,” she added, turning away towards the house, and Gemma followed with attempted nonchalance.

  Francesca took her through the back door, into the kitchen, where the aroma of freshly brewed coffee met them like a wave.

  “Oh, it smells lovely,” said Gemma, closing her eyes and breathing it in.

  “I’d just put the coffee on before I took the washing out.” Francesca deposited the laundry basket beside the door. “Would you like some? It’s a new blend I picked up in Cambridge the other day.”

  “Please.” Gemma looked appreciatively about as Francesca filled pottery mugs and set them on a tray It was a welcoming room, with walls the color of tomato soup and a cheerful clutter that reminded her of Hazel’s kitchen. There were even the familiar baskets of knitting wools overflowing onto the worktops and table. She’d noticed Francesca’s jumper, hand-knit chenille in shades of heather. “Did you knit your jumper?” she asked as Francesca peeled the top from a new bottle of milk.

  “I’m a weaver by trade,” answered Francesca. “The knitting I do for relaxation. It’s mindless work.” Glancing at Gemma, as if afraid she might have offended her, she added, “I don’t mean that the patterns aren’t sometimes complicated, it’s just that once you know where you’re going with it, you can put your hands on autopilot. It’s a great comfort, sometimes, and a help if you’re trying to work out a problem.” She added sugar and a milk jug to the tray, and started down a passageway towards the front of the house. “Let’s go through to the sitting room.”

  Gemma followed her, but paused on the threshold when they reached their destination. The room first struck her as a battleground, physical evidence of personalities in conflict. The walls were pale gray, the better to showcase the framed black-and-white photographs that covered them, but before she could look closer, her eyes were drawn to the threaded loom that stood in the center of the room. She walked over to it, unable to resist touching the cloud-soft fabric forming from the intersecting wools-a loosely woven piece in the autumnal hues she loved.

  “What is it?” she asked Francesca.

  “A throw rug. They’re bread-and-butter pieces, really-there’s a big market for them-but I love them nonetheless.”

  “I can tell.” There were textiles rich in color and pattern everywhere, folded on a worktable, thrown so thickly over the furniture that Francesca had to push one aside in order to sit on the sofa-like a nesting mouse, thought Gemma.

  She looked again at the photographs-stark, some of them intense as a slap across the face, some desolately severe, all beautiful and uncompromising, all made more palatable by the buffer of Francesca’s fabrics. Perhaps it was a matter of balance rather than conflict, after all. “Are the photos Morgan’s?” she asked. “They’re rather stunning.”

  “Of course they’re Morgan’s,” Francesca said, looking quizzically at Gemma as she positioned the tray on the coffee table. “Did you not know Morgan’s reputation as a photographer?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know much of anything,” said Gemma as she perched gingerly in the rocker that sat at a right angle to Francesca. She reached for her cup and added a little milk to the coffee. “Except that Morgan was married to Lydia Brooke, and Vic was writing a book about Lydia’s life.”

  “I was sorry to hear about Dr. McClellan,” Francesca said, staring at the mug in her hands. She glanced up at Gemma. “She seemed such a nice woman-it’s hard to imagine someone so young dying just like that-”

  “She didn’t die of heart failure, Mrs. Ashby. She was murdered. Poisoned.”

  Francesca stared at her. “But surely… that’s not possible… Why would anyone want to kill her?”

  “We don’t know,” said Gemma. “That’s why it’s important for us to know who she spoke with recently. She might have said something-”

  “She did come here, but Morgan was abominably rude to her, I’m afraid, and she went away empty-handed.” Francesca’s pleasant face creased in a frown. “But I don’t understand what that has to do with you-or with her ex-husband. Surely you don’t mean to continue with her book?”

  Gemma took a fortifying sip of coffee and plunged in. “We’re police officers, but we have no official standing on this case, only a special interest.” Watching Francesca’s eyes widen, she added, “Look, Mrs. Ashby, I couldn’t misrepresent myself, and I can’t force you to talk to me. But I’m convinced that Vic died because of something she found out about Lydia Brooke. I want to know about Lydia-anything you or Morgan can tell me. Why wouldn’t Morgan talk to Vic or Duncan about her? It’s been five years since she died.”

  Setting her mug on the table, Francesca stood up and went to the loom. She touched its frame for a moment, then turned to Gemma, arms folded across her chest. “You think time makes a difference?” She shook her head. “You don’t understand, do you? Have you ever seen two people turn love into an excuse for mutual destruction? Their obsession poisoned them both. Even now he can’t let her go. She eats away at him in the dark, like a cancer.”

  Appalled by the bleakness in Francesca Ashby’s voice, Gemma said, “How can you live with a man who felt-feels-that way about someone else?”

  Francesca stared at her for a moment, lips parted as if she were about to tell Gemma to mind her own bloody business. Then the corners of her mouth turned up in what might have been a smile. “It’s not that simple. It never is, is it?” She came back to the sofa and sat down facing Gemma. “And, of course, I imagined things would be different. One does in the beginning. He’d left her for me, after all, hadn’t he? I thought that meant he loved me more.” Shaking her head, she said, “What I didn’t understand was that I was simply the rock available in the tempest, and he was a man clinging desperately for survival. He saw the way things were going-he knew if he didn’t leave, something terrible would happen.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Gemma. “What sort of terrible thing? Was he afraid she’d kill herself?”

  “I don’t know.” Francesca turned her palms up. “All I can tell you is that he was frightened for them both, and for that he became the villain in everyone’s eyes. They said his selfish desertion of her caused her breakdown and her attempt at suicide.”

  “Vic might not have told it that way,” said Gemma. “If she’d had a chance to hear his side of it.”

  “I tried to tell him that, but h
e wouldn’t listen,” Francesca said, twisting her hands in her lap. “I was even tempted to go to her myself, after she came here, but I couldn’t bear for him to think I’d betrayed him.”

  “What would you have said?” Gemma asked gently.

  “That Lydia was unstable from the beginning. She had violent mood swings, she was unpredictable-she put him off for more than a year, did you know that? She’d hardly spoken to him for all that time, then within a couple of months she was all over him, wanting desperately to marry him.”

  “You knew her then?”

  “Not then,” Francesca said, and looked away.

  “But you knew Morgan, and he told you about her?” pressed Gemma.

  “Not then.” Francesca still didn’t meet Gemma’s eyes. “Not until much later. I came to work in his studio as an assistant, helping with the props and the children, scheduling the sittings, that sort of thing. Fine arts photography was Morgan’s dream, but the baby portraits paid the bills in those days.

  “He was so unhappy, and he would talk to me about it because there was no one else. We became friends.” She shrugged. “I suppose it sounds trite.”

  “You were sympathetic and he was misunderstood?” Gemma said. “Just because it’s an old story doesn’t make it any less true.” She’d even tried to cast Kincaid as the sinned-against husband, years after he and Vic had gone their respective ways. Remembering her own reaction when she’d finally met Vic, she asked, “And what did you think when you met Lydia?”

  “It’s hard to separate those first impressions from what I’d heard before and what I knew after,” said Francesca, frowning. “I’d worked there several months before she came into the studio, and by that time I’d made her into some screaming, hysterical Medusa.”

  “And was she?” asked Gemma.

  “Of course not. She was small and dark, with a husky voice and an exotic sort of prettiness, but other than that she seemed perfectly ordinary. And she was kind to me.”

  “She didn’t seem unbalanced?”

  “Just unhappy,” said Francesca with a sigh. “The more difficult things became with Morgan, the more time she spent with her old University friends, and that only made things worse. Morgan blamed them for everything, including her emotional problems. He said they encouraged her fantasy about being related to Rupert Brooke-”

  “Related to him?” Gemma said in surprise. “I knew she was a little obsessive about him, but-”

  “By some coincidence her parents had the same names as Rupert’s parents, Mary and William. Lydia’s father was an orphan, and he himself was killed in the war, just days before Lydia was born. So she grew up knowing very little about her father’s people, and she concocted this great fantasy that her father had been Brooke’s illegitimate child, and she his granddaughter.” Francesca made a face. “It all seems a bit pathetic, looking back on it, and I wish now that I’d had more compassion.”

  “Could there possibly have been any truth to it?” Gemma asked. She was aware, after even the briefest of introductions to Brooke, what allure the idea might have had to a lonely and literary teenager.

  “I don’t suppose it’s likely,” said Francesca. “Brooke’s life is fairly well documented, although it’s true that little of the material would have been available to Lydia at that time. If she’d known about his relationship with Noel Olivier, I imagine little Noel would have done quite well for the part of fantasy grandmother.”

  “It is odd,” said Gemma, thinking of the photos of Noel Olivier she’d seen in the book Hazel had given her last night, and of the snapshots of Lydia that had been among Vic’s papers. “You could find a resemblance between them, if you were looking for it.”

  “Then it’s just as well Lydia didn’t know to look. She’d carried things too far as it was. She saw herself as the chosen successor to carry on Rupert’s Neo-Pagan revival-you know, all the dancing naked in the woods at midnight stuff-the cult of perpetual youth.” Francesca smiled. “Of course, if he’d lived he’d have outgrown all that, seen it for the nonsense it was, but he hadn’t the chance.”

  “But Lydia outgrew it eventually?”

  “I don’t know.” Francesca reached for her mug, the coffee surely now grown cold, and sank back against the cushions. “Perhaps she considered forty-seven the beginning of middle age. One’s idea of it does tend to recede as one gets older.”

  Gemma remembered the strength of Vic’s certainty that Lydia had not committed suicide. “Vic-Dr. McClellan-thought it possible that Lydia may have come to happiness later in life, or at least contentment of a sort.”

  “Happy when she wasn’t mad, like Virginia Woolf?” Francesca said. “I’d like to think so. I never wished her ill.”

  “You said she was kind to you, in the beginning. What about later, when she knew about you and Morgan?”

  “He kept it from her as long as he could. For her sake, not his. But Cambridge is a small place, and a few months after they’d separated we ran into her in the market one day.” Francesca rubbed her palms against the knees of her jeans. “She was civil, but you could tell she couldn’t bear it. That was one of the worst days of my life.”

  “Worse than the day you heard she’d slit her wrists?” said Gemma, remembering what Kincaid had told her about Lydia’s first suicide attempt.

  “Yes,” Francesca said without hesitation. Then she added musingly, “It’s very odd, but that ax had been poised over our heads for so long that it was almost a relief when it fell. It seemed the worst had happened and not been as bad as we’d feared.”

  “And when she died, five years ago?”

  Francesca stared at the window overlooking the front garden and absently pinched a fold of fabric between her fingers. “I don’t know. We were shocked at first, I suppose, and after that we felt a sort of release. I thought he could heal then, let it go.” She seemed to bring her gaze back to Gemma with an effort, and in the strong north light the lines of weariness in her pleasant face were deeply etched. “Then we learned she’d left him the house.”

  “Why did she leave Morgan the house?” asked Gemma. “It seems a bit odd if she hadn’t seen him for years, and they’d parted so bitterly.”

  “I think she meant it as an act of reconciliation,” said Francesca slowly. “A closing of the books.”

  “And Morgan?”

  Francesca met her eyes reluctantly. “Morgan saw it as a deliberate attempt at torture. To reach out for him from beyond the grave. It’s got all twisted inside him over the years-his guilt and his love for her. Morgan thought he could anchor her, but he wasn’t strong enough, and he’s never forgiven himself.”

  “And now you try to anchor Morgan?” guessed Gemma.

  “Oh.” Francesca’s eyes widened with surprise. “I suppose it might seem that way. But it’s more of a balancing act, most of the time.”

  “Surely an uneven one because of Lydia?”

  “Not really,” said Francesca with a certainty Gemma hadn’t expected. “Morgan loves me, probably more than he ever imagined he would. He says the peace and security I provide make life bearable for him. And he gives me such-”

  A door slammed in the back of the house. A man’s voice called, “Fran! Whose car’s in the drive?”

  Francesca frowned at Gemma and gave a sharp shake of her head. “Let me handle this,” she mouthed as the footsteps came down the hall.

  Tensing instinctively, Gemma sat forwards and gathered her handbag a bit closer to her body.

  “Hullo, darling.” Francesca smiled at her husband as he entered the room. “This is Gemma James. She’s come about the studio.”

  Gemma stopped gaping at Morgan Ashby long enough to stammer a greeting and shake the hand he held out to her. She didn’t remember seeing a photo of him among Vic’s papers, and certainly nothing else had prepared her. Even scowling suspiciously at her, the man was a stunner, drop-dead good-looking with a presence Heathcliff might have envied. Tall and well built, he had a head of dark, wavy, unkempt hair
, a long straight nose, and dark gray eyes that made Gemma’s bones feel hollow.

  Francesca was speaking and the words suddenly clicked into focus in Gemma’s mind. “… having a look round to see if it would do for her. She’s a…” Francesca cast a quick look of appeal at Gemma.

  “Potter.” Gemma said the first thing that flew into her mind, then gulped. She could barely tell a vase from a chamber pot. At least she was wearing the long skirt and jumper she’d worn to Vic’s on Sunday, and thought she must look suitably artistic.

  “A potter,” Francesca repeated. “And she’s a bit concerned about the kiln space. She does production work, you see.”

  “Really?” asked Morgan as he sat on the arm of the sofa and rested a casual hand on his wife’s shoulder. He’d relaxed as soon as Francesca had mentioned the studio. “Of course if you’re really keen, the foundation might be persuaded to fund a new kiln for the compound.” When he smiled at Gemma, the creases round his eyes gave an indication of his age, but made him no less attractive.

  Gemma struggled to collect herself, but before she could blurt out something inane, Morgan misinterpreted her blankness. “Has Fran not explained how we operate? We have a group of benefactors who are committed to providing low-cost studio space for talented artists. This is strictly work space, though-you do understand that?” When Gemma nodded, he went on, “We don’t sell anyone’s work here at the center. The individual artists are responsible for setting up shows elsewhere.”

  “You don’t sell even your own things?” Gemma asked, her curiosity at least providing her with a sensible comment.

  “Oh, Morgan and I don’t actually use the studios,” explained Francesca. “We’re basically just caretakers for the foundation, and we have our own work spaces here in the house. Morgan’s studio and darkroom are upstairs, and I prefer it in here by the fire,” she added, smiling. “Would you like to see the available studio again?”

  “Oh, no, I’d better not,” said Gemma, taking her cue. She glanced at her watch. “I’ve an appointment, in fact, and I’m late as it is.” Placing her coffee mug carefully on the table, she stood up. “You’ve been too kind, giving me so much of your time. Is it all right if I let you know when I’ve had a chance to think it over?”