He had a pleasant face, my husband, with laughter lines raying out around his eyes and mouth, and I thought how well he wore his years and how little he had changed in the quarter of a century I'd known him. He had the kind of temperament that people felt comfortable with because he was slow to anger and quick to pacification, and his face was the mirror of his geniality. Most of the time, anyway.
Now, he eyed me thoughtfully. "How was your day? Did the Reverend Stanhope tell you anything useful?"
I shook my head. "I hardly spoke to him."
"Then why so late back?"
"I talked to his wife," I explained. "She kept a photographic record of their time at St. Mark's and she's lent me pictures of some of the people who were living on Graham Road in '78."
He studied me for a moment. "That was lucky."
Perhaps I should have seized the opportunity to be honest, but as usual I couldn't decide if then was the right time. Instead I just nodded.
"I suppose she knew all their names?"
"Most of them," I agreed.
"And could tell you every last thing about them?"
"Bits and pieces."
He pushed a strand of hair off my forehead with the tips of his fingers. "There can't be many vicar's wives who photograph their husband's parishioners."
I shrugged. "She was semiprofessional, used to cover the weddings of the poorer couples. It grew out of that. She's rather good actually. If she was forty years younger, she'd have made a career out of it."
"Even so"-he let his hand drop to the counterpane-"you could have driven all the way to Exeter to find some dumpy little homebody who'd never done anything more interesting than bake cakes for the Mothers' Union. Instead you come up with David Bailey. That's pretty amazing, don't you think?"
I wondered what was bugging him. "Not really. At the very least I knew she must have some photographs of Annie's funeral. Don't you remember her taking a picture of us with Libby Williams? She's a very striking woman, tall and gaunt ... like a vulture ... rather difficult to miss."
He shook his head. "How did you know she was the vicar's wife and not a press photographer?"
"Julia Charles told me. Apparently, Wendy-Mrs. Stanhope-took pictures of Jennifer's christening so Julia knew her quite well." I paused as he shook his head in unhappy denial. "What's the matter?" I asked.
He swung his legs off the bed and stood up, disbelief crackling out of him like small electric charges. "Larry came to see me this afternoon. He says you're stirring up a hornets' nest by asking questions about Annie. He wants you to stop."
"I hope you told him it was none of his business."
"Quite the reverse. I sympathized with him. Apparently Sheila nearly had a breakdown the last time she got involved. She was hauled before the BMA after your precious vicar accused her of neglect. It was all rubbish, of course-she was cleared immediately-but Larry doesn't want a repeat."
He walked to the window where sounds of laughter drifted up from the terrace. I kept my fingers crossed that Tom wouldn't choose that moment to power up his sound system to full volume, which was the one thing guaranteed to drive his father 'round the bend.
"What else did Larry say?" I asked.
"He wanted to know what brought us to Dorchester. Claims he's not much of a believer in coincidences." He frowned at me in hurt recrimination. "I told him he was wrong ... that it was a coincidence ... that there was no way we could have known in advance where Sheila was working. So he accused me of being naive. Your wife knew, he said. She went into the surgery the day after you moved here to register specifically with Dr. Arnold, then asked for a copy of Sheila's work roster so that she could be sure of getting her."
I frowned back. "Where would he get a story like that?"
"He asked Sheila's receptionist if Mrs. Ranelagh had known in advance which doctor would respond to her request for a home visit."
I sat up and crossed my legs. "I thought that kind of information was confidential," I murmured.
He waited for me to go on and when I didn't he stabbed a finger at me. "Is that it?" he demanded. "You make me look a complete idiot, then talk about confidentiality."
I gave an indifferent shrug. "What do you want me to say? Yes, I knew this house was in Sheila's practice, and that's why we're renting it."
"Why didn't you ask me?"
"Ask you what?"
"If I was happy about it."
"I did. You said Dorchester was as good a place as any."
"You didn't tell me there was a hidden agenda, though, did you?" He was managing to keep his voice under control, but I could feel the tremors of a major tantrum building inside him. And that, of course, is the trouble with people with equable temperaments-once they lose it, they lose it big time. "I might have felt differently if you'd told me you were planning to resurrect Annie Butts. Jesus! Don't you think we went through enough bloody misery at the time?"
I suppose everyone has a pet subject that triggers their anger-with me it was my mother's wicked talent for stirring, with Sam it was his fear of Mad Annie and everything her death represented: the mask of respectability that overlaid the hatreds and the lies. He always hoped, I think, in a rather free interpretation of the karma principle, that if he refused to look beneath a surface then the surface was the reality. But he could never rid himself of the fear that he was wrong.
I took a moment to reply. "It wouldn't have passed the 'so what' test, Sam. I'd have come anyway."
A look of incomprehension crossed his face. "Without me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
It was such a little word but its interpretations were endless. Why would I think of deserting him? Why was I being so devious? Why didn't I trust him enough to tell him the truth? If he cared to, of course, he could answer those questions rather better than I could as he'd had a great deal longer to think about them. Admittedly, I'd never challenged him with them directly, but there must have been occasions in the small hours when he prepared his explanations in case I did.
I answered straightforwardly. "I chose Dorchester because I guessed Sheila had more information than anyone else," I explained, "though to be honest, it wouldn't have mattered where we went. The diaspora from Graham Road has been so widespread that we'd have had this conversation whether we'd come here or"-I gave another shrug-"Timbuktu. Paul and Julia Charles are in Canada ... Jock and assorted others are still in London ... Libby remarried and lives happily with her second husband and three children in Leicestershire ... the Stanhopes are in Devon ... the coroner retired to Kent ... John Hewlett, the RSPCA inspector, is in Lancashire ... Michael Percy, the son of Annie's immediate neighbor, is in prison on Portland ... Bridget Percy, nee Spalding-one of the girls who lived opposite Annie-works in Bournemouth..." I ran out of names and turned to plucking the dowdy candlewick bedspread which was part of the fixtures and fittings and filled me with loathing every time I looked at it.
I'd shocked him to the core. "How do you know all this?"
"The same way you know that Jock lives in Alveston Road. I kept in touch. I have a file of correspondence from my father, who's been writing letters on my behalf for years, and Julia and Libby drop me a line every six months or so to keep me informed about people's movements."
He looked horrified. "Does Jock know you've been talking to Libby?" He used the sort of tone that suggested I'd been party to a nasty piece of treachery. Which was pretty rich, all things considered...
"I doubt it," I said. "They haven't spoken since the divorce."
"But he's always believed we were on his side. Dammit, I told him we were."
"You were half-right then," I said, absorbed in teasing the bedspread with my fingernails. "You've always been on his side."