The cabin door swung open before Althea could knock, and Gabriel Wain pulled her inside, roughly. The salon curtains were tightly closed, and a single lamp cast a circle of yellow light on the drop-down table. The room was as cold as it had been the previous day, and the fire in the stove burned low.
Althea’s eyes were still adjusting to the dimness as she heard Gabriel’s hoarse voice in her ear. “Is it true? Is it true what they’re saying?
That she’s dead?” His fingers dug into the flesh of her upper arm.
“If you mean Annie Constantine, yes, she’s dead.”
For an instant, she thought she would cry out from the pain in her arm. Then he released her, turning away, and it seemed to Althea that he shrank before her eyes.
Cradling the oxygen tank against her chest, she rubbed at her arm with her free hand. Now she could see that the children were huddled on the bench by the table, their eyes enormous in frightened faces. There was no sign of Rowan.
Gabriel spoke to his son without turning back. “Joseph, go up top and tidy up. We’ll need to pump out and fill the water tank. And take your sister with you.”
The children stood obediently, and as they edged past Althea, she had to resist an unexpected urge to touch the boy’s curling hair.
When they had gone, Gabriel Wain faced her once more, his expression unreadable.
“I’m sorry for the trouble you’ve taken,” he said. “But we won’t be needing what you’ve brought.” He nodded at the oxygen tank.
Althea’s heart thumped. “Your wife. Is she—”
“Much the same. She’ll be all right.”
She stared at him. “But she won’t. I thought I explained—” Then
she realized what he had meant when he spoke to the children, and to her. “You can’t think of leaving,” she said, shocked.
“It’s best,” he answered shortly. “Now if you’ll—”
“Mr. Wain, I don’t think you realize how . . . difficult . . . things are going to be for your wife. I can help her. Why would you refuse her that?”
“We can’t be doing with interference. The police—”
“Why would the police need to speak to you? What happened to Mrs. Constantine was dreadful, but surely no one would think it had any connection with you.”
He rubbed a hand across his unshaven chin. “You can’t know that.
I— When she came to the boat, on Christmas Day. We had words.”
“Words?”
“A row. It was Rowan who insisted she come aboard. I’d told her we wanted nothing to do with her, to leave us be. Why should she come poking into our lives, after all this time?”
“She only wanted to help you.”
“And where does that leave us now?” he hissed at her, and she heard the despair.
“With me.” Althea said this with more assurance than she felt.
But even as she wondered if this man could have done such a terrible thing to Annie Constantine, she rejected it. She would swear the news had been a blow.
Then doubt niggled at her. Could he have argued with Annie again, struck her in a fit of temper, then left her, not realizing how badly she was injured?
“Gabriel. Did you see Annie Constantine last night?”
“No. I never laid eyes on the woman after the two of you left the boat yesterday.” He met her eyes, and she thought she heard a note of pleading under the roughness of his tone.
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” she said.
He turned away, suppressing a bitter laugh. “Would that were true.” The boat rocked gently as the children moved about above s
decks. “I tell you we have to go. The children—we can’t risk staying.”
Althea considered, running over the possibilities in her mind. He could move the boat, and she could meet them at some prearranged mooring to change out the oxygen—but no. She shook her head at her own stupidity.
“Did anyone hear you arguing with Annie that day?” she asked.
“Likely the whole of Barbridge.”
“Then you can’t leave. Don’t you see? The police will be interviewing everyone in the area. Someone is bound to tell them they heard the two of you in a slanging match, and they’ll take your flight as an indication of guilt. It wouldn’t take them long to track you down—the waterways are finite. You’ll have to bluff it out.”
“But—what would I say?”
If Althea had needed reassurance, it was the ingrained honesty of a man who couldn’t manufacture a lie. “Tell them it was a boater’s row. Say she moored badly, and scraped your boat. It wouldn’t be the first time tempers were lost over a bit of bad steering.”
Gabriel was nodding, agreeing with her.
“Was anyone close enough to hear differently?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then maybe they won’t take it further. And you mustn’t volunteer that you knew her.” Even as she spoke, Althea wondered what had possessed her. She, who had spent most of her working life helping the police.
“I’ll get Sam’s things if you’ll gather up Lally’s,” Juliet told Gemma as they climbed the stairs to the first floor.
The house seemed unsettlingly quiet, unwelcoming, and Gemma thought she must have absorbed some of Juliet’s nervousness. They had checked to make sure there was no sign of Caspar’s car at either house or office before going in, and even then they had stood in the
entrance hall, listening, before doing a quick recce of the downstairs rooms.
Chiding herself for being overimaginative, Gemma asked as briskly as she could, “What sort of things should I get?”
What did it matter if Caspar Newcombe did come home, she told herself. Juliet certainly had every right to be there, and to take whatever personal things she needed.
Unfortunately, Gemma had seen the results of too many domestic disputes to be entirely comforted by her own commonsense advice.
“Oh, just undies, a change of jeans and jumpers.” Juliet pointed to the first door on the left of the upstairs hall. “God knows, whatever I chose would be wrong; I thought you might do better.” The strain between mother and daughter had been evident that morning, and Gemma had sensed Juliet’s relief when her parents had taken the children.
Although she felt much better qualified to pick out boys’ things than girls’, Gemma followed Juliet’s direction without protest. Lally’s door was closed, and on it she had tacked a sheet of paper with a carefully hand-drawn skull and crossbones. Beneath the graphic, she had printed KEEP OUT, then below that, in parentheses, (THAT MEANS
YOU, SAM!).
“Sorry, love,” Gemma whispered, and turned the knob. The door swung open and she stood on the threshold, expelling a breath of surprise. She had been expecting openly expressed rebellion—what she found was a room that seemed to bear little imprint of its teenage occupant.
The walls were rose, the duvet a floral mint- and- rose print, the upholstered armchair by the window a coordinating mint-and-rose stripe. A few stuffed animals sat grouped at the head of the hastily made bed; the framed prints on the walls were variations on horses grazing in dreamily impressionistic meadows. These were a child’s things—had Lally held on to them by choice? And if so, why?
The room was too tidy as well, except for a few items of clothing tossed haphazardly on a bench at the foot of the bed and the snaggle-toothed appearance of dressing- table drawers not quite shut.
Sniffing, Gemma caught the faint drift of cheap perfume, the sort that teenage girls bought at Woolworths or the Body Shop with their pocket money, and the normality of it eased her disquiet. She was letting her imagination run away with her again. She certainly didn’t know Lally well enough to make judgments based on something as superficial as her lack of boy-band posters and black drapes.