“Don’t you start,” said Ian, but without much aggression. “I’ve been over all that with Chief Inspector Byrne. I was in the south of France, where I live with my lover. It was through her parents that the college reached me. I came as soon as I heard.”
The graduate student, thought Kincaid. Ian had found unquestioning adoration from a woman too young to know better, and he was not going to give that up in order to take responsibility for an eleven-year-old boy he didn’t consider his own. “You weren’t even going to see him, were you?” he said in disgust.
“It’s not what you think,” Ian protested. “I didn’t want to upset him-”
“Bollocks! How do you think he’s going to feel when he finds out you couldn’t be bothered-”
“Shut up!” Ian rose half out of his chair. “Just bloody shut up. It’s too close. I can’t bear it. I can’t see Kit without seeing her in him, and I don’t think I can stand that. Don’t you see? I loved her-” He broke off and covered his face with his hands.
After a moment, Kincaid said, “Listen, Ian. Kit’s not with his grandparents. He ran away.” He caught a glimpse of Nathan’s startled expression and raised a restraining hand. “I found him here. He’s staying with some friends in London until we can get things sorted out.”
Ian raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot, the lids swollen. “But why would he do such a thing? He was always a good kid, in spite of-”
“All this-Vic’s death… I don’t know how bad things were with his grandmother before, but she’s impossible now. She means to keep him, and she’s not fit to do it. And I don’t know how much power her husband has over her.”
“Oh, Christ.” Ian rubbed his forehead. “Eugenia was always a bloody bitch. But I thought with Kit-”
Kincaid shook his head. “Kit won’t stay, and we can’t take a chance on what might happen to him if he runs away again.”
“I can’t have him with me, do you understand? And I can’t come back.” There was a hint of apology in Ian’s words.
“Let me tell you what I have in mind.” By the time Gemma came in with the tea, Kincaid had outlined a plan.
When they’d filled their mismatched mugs from the teapot, Kincaid said, “Ian, as far as Kit’s concerned, you’re his dad. He needs to see you. Tell him these arrangements are your idea of what’s best for him. Tell him you’ll have him for a visit at the end of term. Surely you can give him a half hour, after what he’s been through.”
Ian looked away, and Kincaid thought he would refuse even that. But after a moment, he rubbed at his face again and sighed. “All right. I’ll come this evening. And I’ll make the necessary arrangements with his grandparents. They’ve no right to dispute my decision.” He wrote Gemma’s address on a page torn from Kincaid’s notebook.
Kincaid met Ian’s eyes as he returned the pad. “Don’t tell him about me. He doesn’t need that right now.”
Ian held his gaze, then gave a barely perceptible nod of agreement. “I’ll get the rest of my things,” he said. “Now-if you don’t mind…” He gave them a slightly sardonic smile as he stood.
“Ian,” Kincaid said before he could leave the room. “You haven’t found one of Vic’s books in with your things, by any chance?” He described the Marsh memoir. “And there were some poems-”
“Lydia’s poems?” said Nathan. “The ones Vic found in the Marsh book?” He frowned at Kincaid. “Why didn’t you ask me before? Vic gave them to me.”
Cambridge, Addenbrooks Hospital
15 December
1975 Dear Mummy,
No, I can’t come home. As much as my heart cries out to see your dear face, and to receive the comfort only you can give, I must get well on my own. Oh, physically, I’m all right-a few lacerations, bumps and bruises, nothing that won’t heal. They shall keep me in hospital, “under observation,” for another day or so, and after that Daphne will come and look after me as it’s her Christmas break.
I honestly don’t think I meant to harm myself, though I’d toyed with the idea of the grand gesture. I saw myself noble and tragic as Virginia Woolf walking into the river, stilling the clamoring voices of madness, but it was only my own voice I wanted to silence, the one that kept telling me what I’d become.
What have I done to deserve Daphne’s forgiveness, or yours? Why do you insist on loving me in spite of myself? I’ve spent years trying to run away from my life, my past, my self. I’ve written shallow and sensational poems which traded on others’ misery. I’ve sold my voice for a few pretentious reviews in the Times. I’ve shunned my friends for the company of sycophants. I’ve tried to lose the last bit of myself that mattered, but your love held me accountable. I see now that I must try to live up to it-I can’t bear it otherwise.
Lydia
They’d spent most of the afternoon at Parkside police station going over things with Alec Byrne, and had achieved little more than confirming that Ian McClellan’s documents did indeed show him to have been out of the country at the time of Vic’s death.
Byrne had received their account of Miss Pope’s evidence that Vic had already been ill by half past three with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “We’ll go over the statements again, but I really don’t see that this puts us much further forwards,” he said. “We’ve no apparent motive for Dr. McClellan’s death-or for Lydia Brooke’s in the event she did not commit suicide-and now it seems that these poems you thought the murderer had stolen were simply misplaced.” Byrne steepled his long fingers together. “Quite frankly, Duncan, we’ve not had a single good lead on this case, and my manpower resources are dwindling. You know how it is. I’ve a missing child to deal with, and the mugging of an eighty-year-old woman in her bed.” He shrugged.
“You’re telling me you’re turning Vic’s case over to a file clerk. Alec-”
“If anything turns up I’ll put every available officer on it. But in the meantime…” Byrne cast a look of appeal at Gemma, then turned back to Kincaid. “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”
Kincaid had reluctantly conceded Byrne’s point, his sense of frustration mounting. Would he keep on, he wondered, if he weren’t personally involved?
By the time they’d driven back to London and pulled the car up on the double-yellows in front of Gemma’s flat he had arrived at an answer. Like Alec, he had learned to accept a percentage of failure in his job. But he had spent all his adult life learning the art of catching killers-and with knowledge came responsibility. Someone had deliberately set out to murder Vic, not only taking her life, but changing her son’s life forever. He would not give up until he knew the truth, no matter how long it took or what it cost him. He would see justice done, for Vic… and for Lydia as well.
The morning’s wind had given way to an unexpectedly warm and hazy afternoon, and they found Kit playing in the garden with the children. He was humming tunelessly as he built something with old bits of brick, and he gave an uncomplicated smile of pleasure when he looked up and saw them watching. It seemed that at least for a few moments he’d found some solace.
Kincaid had taken him aside then, telling him that Ian had come back, but only temporarily, and would take him and Tess to the Miller family that evening. Kit stared at him a moment, his face unreadable, then turned on his heel and disappeared into the house without a word.
Now, looking out the kitchen window in the growing dusk, Kincaid wondered what he had expected Relief? Anger? Disappointment? Anything at all, he thought, would have been better than the silence in which Kit had collected his things, then gone out into the garden with Tess.
He could barely make out the outline of boy and dog huddled together on the flagstone steps. “What’s he thinking?” he said as Hazel came to stand beside him. “Why do I feel as though I’ve failed him?”
“You’ve done the best you could under the circumstances,” said Hazel softly. “Sometimes there just aren’t any right answers. And he may not really be thinking at all. Emotional overload-too much to take in at once. Give him a while t
o find his balance.”
“Did I make a mistake in not telling him the truth now?” Kincaid asked. “Is it better for him to think that the man he’s seen as his father doesn’t love him, or for him to learn that he’s not who he always thought he was?”
Hazel didn’t answer, and in the moment’s silence they heard a thump and faint laughter from upstairs, where Gemma was giving Holly and Toby their baths before tea. “Professionally, I’d say you’re doing the right thing,” Hazel said slowly. “Personally, I know how difficult it must be. For the time being, give him all the reassurance you can that you mean to stay in his life. Let him get used to the idea.” She touched his arm and looked up into his face. “But Duncan, you must be absolutely sure of your commitment to him, or it’s better not to do anything at all.”
“I realize that.” He looked out into the garden. For the first time, he understood the magnitude of Gemma’s responsibility to Toby. Was he capable of making the same commitment, capable of giving Kit the stability he needed? And how would he know until he tried?
The doorbell chimed. “I’ll go,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you have Kit run up and tell Gemma and the little ones good-bye? I’ll show Ian into the sitting room.” She gave his elbow a squeeze and smiled. “Trust your instincts. That’s a good bit of what parenting is about.”
Gemma chewed on a pencil as she stared at the papers she’d spread out on Hazel’s kitchen table. As literary executor, Nathan had asked to keep the original poems found in the Marsh memoirs, but he’d made them copies before they left Grantchester, and Gemma had begun going over them as soon as they’d returned to London.
She looked up as the corridor door swung open and Kincaid came in. “Are they gone?” she asked as he sat down across from her. His tie hung loosely, and his hair stood on end where he’d absently run his hand through it.
He nodded. “Yes. I’ve just rung Laura Miller to say they’re on their way.”
“I thought it better not to add to the audience, so I had another go at this stuff,” she said, gesturing at the nest of books and papers she’d accumulated. “How was Kit with Ian?”
“He barely spoke. Ian tried, I’ll give him that.”
The children had thrown their soft, damp arms round Kit’s neck when he’d come up to say good-bye, and as she watched him cling to them, she’d sensed the precariousness of his emotional control. “It was hard for Kit to leave. And you didn’t want to let him go,” she added softly as she saw the weariness in Kincaid’s face. He’d been through so much in the past week… but how could he begin to sort out his feelings for Kit until he found some resolution over Vic’s death? And how could she help him?
Looking back at the poems spread before her, Gemma said hesitantly, “You know I’m not a poet, and I haven’t been to university. But I’ve been reading Vic’s manuscript, and as many of Lydia’s poems as I could find, and I think Vic was right. These poems are different. There’s a feeling of urgency, and a directness to them that the earlier poems don’t have.” She frowned as she touched the sheets on the table, then separated one poem from the rest. “They seem to begin with a more general feeling, a theme. Listen to this one.” Settling back in her chair, she began to read with careful diction.
“They have taken my voice
severed tongue at the roots
sucked anger away like breath
stolen from the mouths of babes
“In the beginning was the word
but it was not ours
they left us only the
whispers of our mingled blood.
“And yet we participate willingly
in the conspiracy of our loss
passing this mute legacy
our gift to our daughters.”
Gemma looked up at him as she finished. Searching his face, she shook her head. “It doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? But I feel it-here.” She pressed her fist to the center of her chest. “It’s about women not speaking up, not having voices, and yet we teach our daughters the same behavior. Do you see?”
“I think so. But what has that to do-”
“Wait. As the poems go on the theme seems to become more specific, until you get to this one, the last. Listen. It’s called ‘Awaiting Electra.’
Ancient laughter stirs in the deep
heart of the dimly remembered green
wood by the close and
sacrificial Pool.
The poets wait in uneasy slumber
for her coming
their feet whisper on the leaf-thick
path and the old pulse
quickens in the dappled light.
Silver slides over the
bell of her hair over
the innocent landscape of
her skin and she smiles as
they ease her down into
the dark water waiting.
She feels the wild springing freedom
then the old fear, the truth of it
sudden and piercing as a child’s rape.
Lost to years, she lies forgotten
betrayed in the mallow-tangles
of the still black summer.
Who will speak for her now? Truth
unmourned, untold in the ice heart
of our memory?”
Gemma’s reading had grown more halting as she progressed through the poem, and now she stared at the page until the print blurred and the words began to shift and scramble. It was odd, she thought as she noticed the hair standing up on her forearms, that the words made her feel things which went beyond words. But there was something more here even than that, she was sure of it, if she could just sort it out… She looked up at Kincaid. “She’s telling a story, isn’t she?”
“I suppose you could say all poems tell stories; they’re a way of assimilating our experiences.” He tapped the page. “This one is probably a metaphor for coming of age, the loss of virginity-”
“No, no”-Gemma shook her head-“I mean, she’s telling a story about something that really happened. The beginning reminds me of the things I’ve been reading about Rupert Brooke and his friends swimming naked in Byron’s Pool-the poets’ pool, do you see? There’s this feeling of tingling anticipation about it-but then something happens, something dark and unexpected-”
“Gemma, don’t you think that’s a bit far-fetched?”
“Is it? Lydia is dead. Vic is dead. And someone wanted these poems. Just because Nathan had them doesn’t mean that Vic’s killer wasn’t searching for them.” She stared at him, and after a moment he nodded.
“Go on, then.”
Slowly, speaking aloud as she thought, Gemma said, “Strip away the images. What does she tell us happens? Think like a policeman-find the bare bones.”
Kincaid frowned and ran a hand through his hair. “There’s a rape. A child’s rape.” He slid the page across the table, turning it his way up. “But she doesn’t actually say-”
“She only suggests it. But she tells us that a girl goes to a pool in the woods where the poets are waiting for her.” Gemma retrieved the page. “She’s naked-”
“Virginal-”
“They take her into the pool-”
“Rape her-”
“She’s lost, betrayed. What does Lydia mean?” Gemma asked as she skimmed the poem once more. “’Lost… in the mallow-tangles of the still black summer’?”
“Mallow grows round ponds,” said Kincaid. “Might she have drowned?”
Nodding, Gemma said, “But what has it to do with Lydia? Why is the girl waiting for Electra?”
“Who’s waiting for Electra?” asked Hazel, coming into the kitchen. She’d been settling the children in the sitting room with a video so the adults could have their dinner in peace. “It sounds like a play.”
“It’s the title of a poem,” said Gemma. “Who exactly was she, anyway? What we learned at school has gone a bit fuzzy.”
Hazel lifted the lid from a pot of chicken soup and gave it a stir. “Electra was the daughter
of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who urged her brother Orestes to kill their mother in revenge for the murder of their father.” Tasting the soup, she said, “Just about ready,” then added, “I guess you could say that Electra was the voice of vengeance, although she herself was powerless to act.”
“The voice of vengeance,” Gemma repeated, rotating the page once more. “You see? It’s about women’s silence again, about the need to speak up… Does Lydia see herself as Electra here, telling the truth?” She closed her eyes for a moment and pinched her forehead. “What if the poets in the poem aren’t Rupert Brooke and his friends but Lydia’s poets? Adam, Nathan, Darcy, and Daphne? Do you remember what Daphne said this morning, about Lydia and Morgan? ‘Something happened that summer and she was never the same afterwards.’ It’s all here, the references to the long-ago summer. And if Lydia is Electra, who is the girl?”
“How can you be sure Lydia’s not talking about herself?” asked Kincaid, still sounding skeptical as he spun the page back towards him. “What if it was Lydia who was raped? Surely that’s trauma enough to make one change one’s patterns.”
But Gemma felt like a terrier with a rat in its teeth-she knew she’d caught hold of the truth, and she meant to shake it until it gave itself up to her. “No. If the poets are Lydia’s poets, it couldn’t have been that-she’d slept with them all already. But what else didn’t they want anyone to know? Something Alec Byrne said today made me think…” Frowning, she searched her memory. “A missing child… he was looking for a missing child. But there was a girl who disappeared a long time ago…” She blinked as the scrap of conversation in Ralph Peregrine’s office came back to her. “The daughter of Margery Lester’s friend. What was her name? Hope? Charity?”
“Verity,” said Kincaid, and she heard the sudden spike of excitement in his voice. “Verity Whitecliff. The daughter of Henry Whitecliff, the former head of the English Faculty.”
Spoon still in hand, Hazel had come to sit with them, and now she reached out and rotated the page with the tip of her finger. “The poem talks about ‘Truth unmourned, untold…’ What if Truth is a person here, as well as an abstract quality? Verity is an old word for truth.”
Dreaming of the bones Page 33
