Caroline’s expression softened. She gazed absently into the fire, and after a moment said, “It was glorious. But, of course, I didn’t realize quite how special it was, because I had nothing to compare it to. I thought that life could only get better, that everything I touched would turn to gold.” She met Gemma’s eyes again. “Well, that’s the way of it, isn’t it, Sergeant? You learn that the charmed times can’t last.”
The words held an echo of such sorrow that Gemma felt their weight upon her chest. The photographs on the piano pulled at her insistently, but she kept her eyes on Caroline’s face. She had no need to look at them-Matthew Asherton’s smiling image had burned itself upon her memory. Taking a breath, she said with a daring born out of her own fear, “How do you manage to go on?”
“You protect what you have.” Caroline said quietly, vehemently. Then she laughed, breaking the spell. “Tommy wasn’t quite so elegant in those days, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him now. He shed his background like a snake sloughing off its skin, but he hadn’t completed the process. There were still a few rough edges.”
Gemma said, “I can’t imagine,” and they both laughed.
“Tommy was never less than amusing, even at his least polished. We did have some lovely times… and we had such vision. Gerald and Tommy and I-we were going to change the face of opera.” Caroline smiled fondly.
How could you bear to give it up? thought Gemma. Aloud, she said, “I’ve heard you sing. I bought a tape of Traviata. It’s marvelous.”
Caroline folded her arms loosely under her breasts and stretched her dainty feet toward the fire. “It is, isn’t it? I’ve always loved singing Verdi. His heroines have a spiritual quality that you don’t find in Puccini, and they allow you more room for interpretation. Puccini you must sing exactly as it’s written or it becomes vulgar-with Verdi you must find the heroine’s heart.”
“That’s what I felt when I listened to Violetta,” Gemma said with delight. Caroline had given definition to her own vaguely formed impressions.
“Do you know the history of Traviata?” When Gemma shook her head, Caroline continued. “In Paris in the 1840s there lived a young courtesan named Marie Duplessis. She died on the second of February, 1846, just nineteen days after her twenty-second birthday. Among her numerous lovers in her last year were Franz Liszt and Alexandre Dumas, fils. Dumas wrote a play based on Marie’s life called La Dame aux Camélias, or Camille-”
“And Verdi adapted the play as Traviata.”
“You’ve been swotting,” said Caroline in mock disappointment.
“Not really, just reading the liner notes. And I didn’t know that Violetta was based on a real person.”
“Little Marie is buried in the cemetery at Montmartre, just below the church of Sacre Coeur. You can visit her grave.”
Gemma found herself unable to ask if Caroline herself had made such a pilgrimage-it came too near the forbidden territory of Matthew’s death. She shivered a little at the thought of such waste. Marie Duplessis must have held on to her life with all the passion Verdi wrote into Violetta’s music.
A bell rang, echoing in the passage outside the sitting room. The front door-Plummy had said Caroline had another student coming. “I’m sorry, Dame Caroline. I’ve kept you too long.” Gemma slid the strap of her handbag over her shoulder and stood up. “Thank you for your time. You’ve been very patient.”
Caroline rose and once again offered Gemma her hand. “Good-bye, Sergeant.”
As Gemma neared the sitting room door, Plummy opened it and said, “Cecily’s here, Caro.”
As Gemma passed the girl in the hall, she had a brief impression of dark skin and eyes and a flashing shy smile, then Plummy ushered her gently out into the dusk. The door closed and Gemma stood breathing the cool, damp air. She shook her head to clear it, but that made the dawning realization no less uncomfortable.
She had been seduced.
“A message for you, Mr. Kincaid,” Tony called out cheerfully from the bar as Kincaid entered the Chequers. “And your room’s ready for you.” Tony seemed to do everything around the place, and all with the same unflagging good nature. Now he fished a message slip from beneath the bar and handed it to Kincaid.
“Jack Makepeace called?”
“You’ve just missed him by a few minutes. Use the phone in the lounge if you like.” Tony gestured toward the small sitting area opposite the bar.
Kincaid rang High Wycombe CID and shortly Makepeace came on the line. “We’ve run down a possible lead on your Kenneth Hicks, Superintendent. Rumor from some racing sources has it that he does his drinking in a pub in Henley called the Fox and Hounds. It’s on the far side of town, off the Reading Road.”
Kincaid had just come through Henley on his way from Reading, and would now have to turn right around and backtrack. He swore under his breath but didn’t criticize Makepeace for not contacting him by bleeper or car phone-it wasn’t worth the loss of good will. “Anything known about him?”
“No record to speak of-a few juvenile offenses. He’s a petty villain from the sound of it, not a serious one. Hand in the till here and there, that sort of thing.”
“Description?”
“Five foot eight or nine, nine stone, fairish hair, blue eyes. No available address. If you want to talk to him I guess you’ll have to do a spot of drinking at the Fox and Hounds.”
Kincaid sighed with resignation at the prospect. “Thanks, Sergeant.”
Unlike the pub where he’d lunched in Reading, the Fox and Hounds turned out to be every bit as dreary as he’d imagined. The sparse late afternoon activity centered around the snooker table in the back room, but Kincaid chose the public bar, seating himself at an inadequately wiped plastic-topped table with his back against the wall. Compared to the other customers, he felt conspicuously well groomed in jeans and a fisherman’s knit jersey. He sipped the foam from his pint of Brakspear’s bitter and settled back to wait.
He’d killed half the pint as slowly as he could when a man came in who fitted Kenneth Hicks’s general description. Kincaid watched as he leaned on the bar and said a few low words to the barman, then accepted a pint of lager. He wore expensive-looking clothes badly on his slight frame, and his narrow face had a pinched look that spoke of a malnourished childhood. Kincaid watched over the rim of his pint as the man glanced nervously around the bar, then took a seat at a table near the door.
The sneaky bugger’s paranoia would have given him away even if his looks hadn’t, thought Kincaid, and he smiled in satisfaction. He drank a little more of his beer, then stood and casually carried his glass across to the other man’s table. “Mind if I join you?” he said as he pulled up a stool and sat down.
“What if I do?” the man answered, shrinking back and holding his glass before his body like a shield.
Kincaid could see specks of dandruff mixed with the styling cream that darkened the fair hair. “If you’re Kenneth Hicks, you’re out of luck, because I want a word with you.”
“What if I am? Why should I talk to you?” His eyes shifted from one side of Kincaid’s body to the other, but Kincaid had sat between him and the door. The gray light from the front windows illuminated the imperfections of Hicks’s face-a patch of pale stubble missed, the dark spot of a shaving cut on his chin.
“Because I asked you nicely,” Kincaid said as he pulled his warrant card from his hip pocket and held it open in front of Hicks’s face. “Let me see some identification, if you don’t mind.”