Dreaming of the bones

by Deborah Crombie

  Byron’s Pool… Still in the dawnlit waters cool his ghostly lordship swims… The night is warm and close, heavy with moisture, Nathan and Adam and Lydia wait for her in a bower among the pink-petaled mallow, they pass round a bottle of wine, a joint Lydia’s begged from a musician friend… sight, sound, and touch so sharp and intense, time stretches… Verity comes, so lovely and unfinished, the thick straight honey of her hair smells of roses… They undress her among the soft leaves, moonlight slides over her skin and she laughs at the lightness of their fingers as they caress her… Adam sings a snatch of “Till There Was You,” they collapse into hysterical giggles while Darcy watches in impatient arousal, his breath rasping in Nathan’s ear… “Come,” Darcy coaxes her, “I’ll be Rupert, you be Virginia, we’ll have a midnight swim,” and he eases her down into the dark water….

  Nathan takes the rose from Lydia’s hair while Adam unfastens her sandals… her body emerges from the dress like a butterfly from a chrysalis… Nathan brushes the petals of the rose over her skin… at that moment Lydia is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, the delicate curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulder, the perfect fullness of her dark-nippled breasts… She laughs up at him as Adam kisses her toes…

  A cry from the far side of the pool, faint as a night bird, a stirring of the water… Nathan lifts his head to listen, but Lydia pulls him down to meet her mouth as she begins to unbutton his shirt, he falls helplessly into the warm rushing darkness of her lips and her tongue… then with some scrap of awareness he feels Adam stand, hears him say, “Darcy?” and again, “Darcy?”

  A muffled sound again, a splash, then Darcy’s voice, a high scream of panic, “I can’t find her! I can’t bloody find her!” Adam is into the water by the time Nathan stumbles to his feet and follows. The cool water fills his clothes, his strokes are heavy, the few yards an impossible distance.

  Adam reaches Darcy first, disappears beneath the surface, rises gasping. “It’s like pitch!” He shakes Darcy by the shoulders. “Where did she go under? You bloody fool! Tell me!”

  “There!” Darcy points. “Just there. I didn’t mean-”

  Nathan dives, opening his eyes in the velvet blackness. Tendrils brush against him, then something more solid, a hand. He follows it, pulls her easily, unresisting into his arms. A push to the surface, “I’ve got her!” A kick-stroke, cradling her head above the water, then Lydia helps him pull her weight up the slippery bank. “She’s not breathing. Oh, Christ, she’s not breathing.”

  Adam kneels beside him, holding his fingers to her throat. “No pulse, I can’t find a pulse-”

  Darcy wails, “I only meant to stop her crying out! She didn’t want-I never meant to hurt her-”

  “Shut up!” Lydia screams, and Nathan hears a slap. She tugs on Nathan’s arm. “Get help, we’ve got to get help.”

  “No time.” He tries to remember a sixth form first aid course. Clear the airway. Compress. Breathe. Compress. Breathe. Her lips are cold, her skin flaccid beneath his fingers. No breath resists the invasion of his own. Breath blurs into compression, compression into breath Sweat pours from his body, drips onto her still breast, until he feels Adam pulling him away.

  “It’s no use, Nathan. You can’t help her.” Adam holds him in his arms. Lydia is crying, little frightened, hiccupping sobs.

  Darcy drops to his knees beside them. “It wasn’t my fault. I never meant to hurt her. She shouldn’t have-”

  “Shut up! You bastard!” Lydia is on him in a fury of kicks and pummeling fists. “You stupid fuck. You drowned her, you bastard. We’ve got to ring the police, tell someone-”

  Panting, Darcy managed to twist her arms behind her back. “You won’t. You won’t tell anyone. Because you’re responsible, too.”

  Nathan pulled away from Adam’s restraint. “That’s crap, Darcy. You know we didn’t-”

  “But no one else will, will they?” Darcy is cold and urgent now. “Tell them just what happened, why don’t you? You brought her here, undressed her, gave her wine and drugs, but you didn’t touch her after that, oh, no. And even if they believe you, you’ll be sent down, you know that, don’t you? Your parents will have to know, of course, and yours are ill, isn’t that right, Adam? It might even kill them, but I don’t suppose that matters as long as you’re doing the right thing.”

  “Fuck you, you son of a bitch,” said Adam, but Nathan heard the uncertainty in his voice. He thought of his own parents’ pride in him, the first child in his family to go to university, and of Lydia’s mother… A look at Lydia’s stricken face told him the shaft had hit home.

  “Whatever happens now won’t make any difference to her, you see that, don’t you?” said Darcy. “I’m sorry she’s dead”-his voice quavered and he cleared his throat-“but it was an accident, and I don’t see how ruining our careers and our parents’ lives will help her.”

  “You’re crazy.” Nathan licked his lips. “We’d never get away with it.”

  “No one would ever know. Not unless one of us tells.” Darcy looked at them each in turn. “And if one of us tells, we’ll all suffer for it.”

  In the silence, Nathan saw his hoped-for First in natural sciences turn to dust, saw his parents shamed beyond bearing by the scandal And he had tried to save her, he’d done all he could…

  “What…” began Lydia so softly that he might not have heard. She rubbed a dirty hand across her tear-streaked face. “What would we…”

  Darcy sat back on his heels and closed his eyes for a moment, then took a shuddering breath. “I know a place, in the Fens…”

  Nathan crossed the road below the mill and took the path to Byron’s Pool. It was treacherous where it ran along the river, humped and barred by twisting tree roots, and he went carefully in the dark. When he reached the edge of the clearing by the pool, he stopped. After a moment, he made out a darker darkness between the trees a few yards away, then he heard the snap of twigs beneath shifted weight.

  “Darcy.”

  “You were always punctual, Nathan. It’s one of your more endearing traits.” Darcy stepped forwards, brushing at his waistcoat. “But I didn’t know you had a penchant for the cloak and dagger. This is a bit much, insisting on a clandestine meeting in the woods.”

  The air felt warm and moist against Nathan’s skin, as it had that long-ago night. He knew now what he should have done then; he had always known, just as he’d somehow known it would come to this. He felt his rage settle into icy calm. “You’re a bastard, Darcy,” he said. “You were always a bastard, but until today I thought you had some scrap of human decency. I didn’t know until today that you’d killed them-Lydia… and Vic.”

  He heard Darcy’s quick inhalation, sensed him regrouping. “Don’t be absurd, Nathan.” Darcy’s voice held the concerned condescension one used to a child. “You’re talking absolute nonsense. You’ve been ill, and I’m afraid your policeman’s been giving you very upsetting ideas. Why don’t we go back to your place and have a drink, talk it over.”

  “Do you think I’d be fool enough to drink with you? Lydia should have known better-she knew what you are-but even she must have believed you wouldn’t sink to premeditated murder.”

  “You’ve no proof of anything,” Darcy said, still unruffled, but Nathan saw him lean forwards a bit, shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet. The moonlight washed the color from his clothes, making a monochrome of the affectation of his waistcoat.

  “I don’t need proof.” Nathan swung up the barrel of the gun and racked in a shell, the sound ominous and unmistakable in the silence. The gun rested easily in his hands now, angled slightly across his body. His father had taught him to shoot, years ago; the old pump-action shotgun had been his pride and joy… Never point a gun at someone, son, unless you intend to shoot them. “It’s long past that,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he answered Darcy or his dad.

  “Nathan, you can’t let some stranger’s suspicions destroy a lifetime of friendship,” said Darcy, changing tacks. �
�We have a history together, a past to protect. You can’t just throw that away.”

  “Oh, but I can, you see. One can’t be, friends with a hollow man, Darcy.” Nathan caught the glint of a watch chain with the rise and fall of Darcy’s chest. When had Darcy started wearing a watch chain? He hadn’t needed the silly waistcoats or watch chains, once. His charm and facile wit had been enough-enough to make Lydia see Rupert in his ruddy good looks, enough to fool them all. “You manipulated us. All these years, you counted on our loyalty to each other binding our silence, and when you saw that failing, you resorted to murder. Did it get easier each time, Darcy? Vic wasn’t as much of a threat as Lydia-she might never have put all the pieces together.”

  “Not without your help. And I couldn’t chance that collaboration, could I? If you came to doubt Lydia’s suicide, I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t succumb to the same self-righteousness that was Lydia’s undoing. Though I have to give the fair Victoria credit for dogged persistence,” Darcy added.

  Nathan felt his self-control cracking, his fury seeping through like acid. “You bastard. I loved her-did you know that? And her life meant nothing more to you than an inconvenience. But she outwitted you in the end. They both did. Lydia kept copies of the poems you took from the manuscript, hidden in a book she left to me, and Vic returned them to me after she’d read them. That’s why you didn’t find them when you searched her cottage. The police have them now.”

  Darcy laughed aloud. “And a fat lot of good that will do them. Give it up, Nathan. It’s hopeless. And even if you were foolish enough to tell them where to look for Verity’s bones, it’s only your word and Adam’s that I was even there that night.”

  Nathan saw his error in the split second it took him to bring the gun to bear on Darcy’s chest. His word and Adam’s. He had underestimated his opponent; he should have realized that when Darcy made his first admission. Darcy would kill him, if he could, then Adam. It didn’t matter what they could prove-even the suggestion of Darcy’s involvement in any of the deaths would lose him his coveted position in the Faculty; Dame Margery would see to that if no one else did.

  But even as he felt the pressure of the stock against his shoulder, the pinch of the trigger as he squeezed it, Darcy lunged for him. The gun went off as Darcy hit the barrel a hard upward blow, wrenching it from Nathan’s fingers.

  The gun jerked in recoil, then Darcy’s weight carried them to the ground and pain seared through Nathan’s shoulder as the gun flew out of his hand. Blackness… He couldn’t see and his ears rang from the sound of the gun. A warm saltiness on his lips-his blood or Darcy’s? Wetness at the back of his head… more blood? No, water, his head was half in the pool, and the pressure against his throat came from Darcy’s encircling hands.

  CHAPTER 21

  Say, is there Beauty yet to find?

  And Certainty? And Quiet kind?

  Deep meadows yet, for to forget

  The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet

  Stands the Church clock at ten to three?

  And is there honey still for tea?

  RUPERT BROOKE,

  from “The Old Vicarage,

  Grantchester”

  Kincaid swung left at the High Street junction and pulled the Escort up behind Adam Lamb’s Mini. Light spilled out from the open door of Nathan’s cottage.

  “I don’t like the look of this,” he muttered as he pulled up the hand brake and vaulted out of the car. He heard Gemma close behind him as he started up the walk.

  Adam hurried out to meet them before they reached the door, scarecrow tall and thin in full clerical black. He shook his head at the sight of their questioning faces. “No joy, I’m afraid. No one’s seen him. Father Denny and some of the church wardens are searching along the riverbank with torches.” His face was creased with worry and exhaustion. “I said I’d wait here for you.”

  Kincaid took Adam’s arm and pulled him into the hall. “Adam, tell us about Darcy and Verity Whitecliff.”

  “Oh, dear God.” Adam sagged against the wall as his face drained of color. “What… what has that to do with this?”

  “Did he kill her?” Kincaid pressed him, a hand on his shoulder. “Did he kill Verity?”

  Adam rubbed a trembling hand across his face, then seemed to gather strength. Straightening up, he said, “It’s more complicated than that. We all felt responsible. We should never have allowed it to happen.”

  “Did he kill her? Yes or no?” Kincaid squeezed his shoulder, urgency driving him.

  Adam winced as Kincaid’s fingers bit into the nerve, but he held Kincaid’s gaze. “Yes,” he said on a sigh. “Yes, he did.”

  Kincaid released Adam’s shoulder and, glancing at Gemma, read the brief flare of triumph in her eyes. They had been right, after all. “Adam, we think Lydia meant to tell what happened. She wrote a poem about Verity’s death which we believe Darcy removed from the manuscript of her last book. Vic found a copy in a book Nathan had given her, but Nathan didn’t know it was there. He may have read it for the first time this afternoon.”

  Looking from Kincaid to Gemma, Adam said slowly, “You’re saying that Darcy killed Lydia and Victoria McClellan, aren’t you? And that Nathan has just discovered it?”

  “Yes.” Gemma laid a gentle hand on his arm. “What would he do, Adam?”

  Adam shook his head. “I should have seen this. Perhaps not when Lydia died, but at the very least when Dr. McClellan began to question the manner of her death. I’ve been willfully and sinfully blind.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them they were luminous with tears. “We all thought we could make reparation for what we’d done, each in our own way. But it wasn’t enough. Nathan will know that now. I fear the worst.”

  Kincaid felt the sharp jab of foreboding. “Where would he go? To Darcy’s college?”

  “I don’t-”

  “Shhh.” Kincaid held up his hand, listening. He could have sworn he’d heard a faint crack of sound in the still air. “Did you hear it?”

  “A gunshot,” said Gemma. “Could it have been a gunshot?”

  “It came from that direction,” said Kincaid, pointing towards the bottom of the village. “I’d say a good half mile away.”

  “The Pool,” said Adam. “Byron’s Pool. Past the Mill about a quarter mile. That’s where he’ll have gone.”

  Kincaid thought strategy for a moment. “Can we find it?”

  “There’s a signpost. And the path is clearly marked,” said Adam. “But I can show you-”

  “No, you stay here and wait for Chief Inspector Byrne,” said Kincaid, already half out the door. “Show him the way,” he called over his shoulder as he sprinted for the car, Gemma on his heels.

  “Would Darcy agree to meet him?” said Gemma as they slammed their doors and the engine coughed to life.

  “I don’t think Nathan will have had the advantage,” Kincaid answered grimly. The lights of the houses flashed by as they sped through the village, then they were dipping down to cross the old stone bridge by the Mill. Kincaid slowed as they began the curving ascent on the other side. “There!” He pointed at a signpost, faintly legible in the beam of the headlamps. “Byron’s Pool. And there’s a car park.” The small graveled area was empty.

  “Nathan walked,” said Gemma as Kincaid stopped the car. “But Darcy must have left his car somewhere else. He won’t have meant to be seen. Torch under the seat,” she added as they scrambled out of the car. “Look, there’s the path.”

  Kincaid reemerged from the car with the torch. “We’ll not use it just yet,” he said quietly. “Our eyes will adjust in a minute or two, and there’s no sense making targets of ourselves.” Putting his hand on Gemma’s shoulder, he felt her vibrating with tension. For an instant, he thought of ordering her to wait for him there, but he didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone, unarmed, and possibly blocking Darcy’s exit from the car park. He squeezed her shoulder. “Stay behind me, love, and at the first sign of trouble, go for backup.�
��

  The path was uneven, but lighter in color than the surrounding leaves and bracken, and as his eyes learned to differentiate he began to pick up speed. The car park soon disappeared, swallowed by the trees, and the night sounds rose round them.

  “Wait!” Gemma’s hand clamped his elbow. “I heard something,” she breathed in his ear.

  He listened, straining into the darkness. A rustle… then a sound that might have been a faint human grunt of pain. Nodding at Gemma, he turned and went on, placing each foot more carefully than before. Cowboys and Indians, he thought, conscious of every snapping twig. As a child, he’d always wanted to be the Indian, and he had a sudden intense memory of the smooth, rolling motion of his feet as he crept through the woods. Then he came round a twist in the path and stopped short.

  They stood at the edge of a small clearing faintly illuminated with moonlight. On the far side, two bodies grappled on the ground, and a few feet away he saw a gleam in the grass. The gun.

  Then the body on top heaved itself up, turning towards them with the heavy menace of a cornered beast. Darcy.

  Kincaid dived without thought, a soaring lunge that brought him skidding across the grass onto the gun. He rolled with it in his hands and scrambled to his knees.

  Darcy stood before him, swaying slightly. Half his face and neck looked black in the dappled light-a shadow? No, blood, Kincaid realized. He got one foot underneath him and rose slowly without shifting the stock of the gun from the hollow of his shoulder, or its aim from the center of Darcy’s chest.

  He could shoot Darcy. Now. The thought came with cold clarity. Self-defense. Justifiable homicide. Who would question it? He had broken so many rules already, why not one more?

  Darcy shifted on his feet, balancing his weight on flexed knees.

  He meant to run. Let him make his break, then shoot him. No one could say it wasn’t right.