“We’ll certainly need more evidence before we can treat this as an official murder inquiry, Dame Caroline.”
“But I thought…” she began, then looked rather helplessly at Kincaid.
“Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Was your son-in-law well liked?” Kincaid looked at them both, including Sir Gerald in the question, but it was Caroline who answered.
“Of course. Everyone liked Con. You couldn’t not.”
“Had he been behaving any differently lately? Upset or unhappy for any reason?”
Shaking her head, she said, “Con was always… just Con. You would have to have known…” Her eyes filled. She balled one hand into a fist and held it to her mouth. “I feel such a bloody fool. I’m not usually given to hysterics, Mr. Kincaid. Or incoherence. It’s the shock, I suppose.”
Kincaid thought her definition of hysteria rather exaggerated, but said soothingly, “It’s perfectly all right, Dame Caroline. When did you see Connor last?”
She sniffed and ran a knuckle under one eye. It came away smudged with black. “Lunch. He came for lunch yesterday. He often did.”
“Were you here as well, Sir Gerald?” Kincaid asked, deciding that only a direct question was likely to elicit a response.
Sir Gerald sat with his head back, eyes half closed, his untidy tuft of gray beard thrusting forward. Without moving, he said, “Yes, I was here as well.”
“And your daughter?”
Sir Gerald’s head came up at that, but it was his wife who answered. “Julia was here, but didn’t join us. She usually prefers to lunch in her studio.”
Curiouser and curiouser, thought Kincaid. The son-in-law comes to lunch but his wife refuses to eat with him. “So you don’t know when your daughter saw him last?”
Again the quick, almost conspiratorial glance between husband and wife, then Sir Gerald said, “This has all been very difficult for Julia.” He smiled at Kincaid, but the fingers of his free hand picked at what looked suspiciously like moth holes in his brown woolen sweater. “I’m sure you’ll understand if she’s a bit… prickly.”
“Is your daughter here? I’d like to see her, if I may. And I will want to talk to you both at more length, when I’ve had a chance to review the statements you’ve given Thames Valley.”
“Of course. I’ll take you.” Caroline stood, and Sir Gerald followed suit. Their hesitant expressions amused Kincaid. They’d been expecting a battering, and now didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. They needn’t worry-they’d be glad to see the back of him soon enough.
“Sir Gerald.” Kincaid stood and shook hands.
The watercolors caught his eye again as he turned toward the door. Although most of the women were fair, with delicate rose-flushed skin and lips parted to show small glistening white teeth, he realized that something about them reminded him of the woman he followed.
“This was the children’s nursery,” Caroline said, her breathing steady and even after the three-flight climb. “We made it into a studio for her before she left home. I suppose you might say it’s been useful,” she added, giving him a sideways look he couldn’t interpret.
They’d reached the top of the house and the hall was unornamented, the carpeting threadbare in spots. Caroline turned to the left and stopped before a closed door. “She’ll be expecting you.” She smiled at Kincaid and left him.
He tapped on the door, waited, tapped again and listened, holding his breath to catch any faint sound. The echo of Caroline’s footsteps had died away. From somewhere below he heard a faint cough. Hesitating, he brushed his knuckles against the door once more, then turned the knob and went in.
The woman sat on a high stool with her back to him, her head bent over something he couldn’t see. When Kincaid said, “Uh, hello,” she whipped around toward him and he saw that she held a paintbrush in her hand.
Julia Swann was not beautiful. Even as he formed the thought, quite deliberately and matter-of-factly, he found he couldn’t stop looking at her. Taller, thinner, sharper than her mother, dressed in a white shirt with the tail out and narrow black jeans, she displayed no softly rounded curves in figure or manner. Her chin-length dark hair swung abruptly when she moved her head, punctuating her gestures.
He read his intrusion in her startled posture, felt it in the room’s instantly recognizable air of privacy. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Duncan Kincaid, from Scotland Yard. I did knock.”
“I didn’t hear you. I mean, I suppose I did, but I wasn’t paying attention. I often don’t when I’m working.” Even her voice lacked the velvety resonance of Caroline’s. She slid off the stool, wiping her hands on a bit of rag. “I’m Julia Swann. But then you know all that, don’t you?”
The hand she held out to him was slightly damp from contact with the cloth, but her grasp was quick and hard. He looked around for someplace to sit, saw nothing but a rather tatty and overstuffed armchair which would place him a couple of feet below the level of her stool. Instead he chose to lean against a cluttered workbench.
Although the room was fairly large-probably, he thought, the result of knocking two of the house’s original bedrooms into one-the disorder extended everywhere he looked. The windows, covered with simple white rice-paper shades, provided islands of calm in the jumble, as did the high table Julia Swann had been facing when he entered the room. Its surface was bare except for a piece of white plastic splashed with bright daubs of paint, and a Masonite board propped up at a slight angle. Before she slid onto the stool again and blocked his view, he glimpsed a small sheet of white paper masking-taped to the board.
Glancing at the paintbrush still in her hand, she set it on the table behind her and pulled a packet of cigarettes from her shirt pocket. She held it toward him, and when he shook his head and said, “No, thanks,” she lit one and studied him as she exhaled.
“So, Superintendent Kincaid-it is Superintendent, isn’t it? Mummy seemed to be quite impressed by the title, but then that’s not unusual. What can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry about your husband, Mrs. Swann.” He tossed out an expected opening gambit, even though he suspected already that her response would not be conventional.
She shrugged, and he could see the movement of her shoulders under the loose fabric of her shirt. Crisply starched, buttons on the left-Kincaid wondered if it might have been her husband’s.
“Call me Julia. I never got used to ‘Mrs. Swann.’ Always sounded to me like Con’s mum.” She leaned toward him and picked up a cheap porcelain ashtray bearing the words Visit the Cheddar Gorge. “She died last year, so that’s one bit of drama we don’t have to deal with.”
“Did you not like your husband’s mother?” Kincaid asked.
“Amateur Irish. All B’gosh and B’gorra.” Then she added more affectionately, “I used to say that her accent increased proportionately to her distance from County Cork.” Julia smiled for the first time. It was her father’s smile, as unmistakable as a brand, and it transformed her face. “Maggie adored Con. She would have been devastated. Con’s dad did a bunk when Con was a baby… if he ever had a dad, that is,” she added, only the corners of her lips quirking up this time at some private humor.
“I had the impression from your parents that you and your husband no longer lived together.”
“Not for…” She spread the fingers of her right hand and touched the tips with her left forefinger as her lips moved. Her fingers were long and slender, and she wore no rings. “Well, more than a year now.”