Newnham 7
October 1961
Dearest Mother,
Oh, how I wish you were here. It’s everything we dreamed of, yet in some ways nothing like we imagined. Newnham isn’t the least bit cold and forbidding, its red brick and white trim are charming, and I’ve been given the loveliest set of rooms, on the corner, overlooking the gardens. You’ll have to think of me here, once I’ve hung my prints and put my bits and pieces about, curled in my chair in front of the gas fire, reading, reading, reading… I met my Director of Studies today, Dr. Barrett, and I think we’ll get on famously. The trouble is going to be in choosing which lectures to attend and which papers I’ll do this term. I feel like the proverbial child in the candy store, overwhelmed by bounty.
So far the other girls seem nice enough, if a bit standoffish. Daphne, the tall redhead across the hall, seems the best prospect for striking up a real friendship, as she’s from some village in Kent the size of your thumb. That gives us at least one thing in common.
Last night I went to Evensong at King’s for the first time. Oh, Mummy, it was incredible. The voices soared, and for a little while I soared with them, imagining myself floating above Cambridge in the clear night, held only by a silver tether of sound. I sat next to a Trinity boy, very serious, who invited me to a poetry reading on Thursday in his rooms. So you see, I already have a social engagement, and you needn’t have worried about me.
If the weather’s fine on Sunday I mean to walk to Grantchester along the river path. I’ll pretend I’m Virginia Woolf going to visit Rupert Brooke. We’ll have tea in the garden at the Old Vicarage and discuss important things: poetry and philosophy and life.
Darling Mother, I’m sure I haven’t thanked you properly. You made me work when I felt tired or cranky; you encouraged me when I couldn’t see past some trivial setback; you built me up when I lost faith in myself. If it weren’t for your vision and determination I’d probably be standing behind the chemist’s counter today, dispensing cough syrup and milk of magnesia, instead of here, in this most glorious of places. I’ll write in a day or two and give you my schedule. I want to share this with you.
Your loving… Lydia
CHAPTER 4
My restless blood now lies a-quiver,
Knowing that always, exquisitely,
This April twilight on the river
Stirs anguish in the heart of me.
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “Blue Evening”
Kincaid had kept his word to Vic, ringing his friend, Chief Inspector Alec Byrne, first thing Monday morning, but it wasn’t until midday Wednesday that he found the time to go to Cambridge. Having decided he’d put enough wear and tear on the Midget for one week, he took the train, stretching his legs out in the empty compartment and dozing between stations. A little more than an hour after leaving King’s Cross, he paid off a taxi in front of the cinder-block building on Parkside Road that housed the Cambridge police.
A blonde constable with traffic-stopping legs escorted him to Byrne’s office, ushering him in with a smile and the merest suggestion of a wink.
“Watch out for our Mandy,” Byrne said with a grin as the door closed. He stood and came round his desk. “She’s been through every man in the department once, and now she’s starting on the second round.”
“I’ll exercise proper caution,” Kincaid assured him. “It’s good to see you, Alec. They seem to be treating you well, if the accommodations are anything to go by.” He raised an eyebrow at the furniture and carpeting, a definite step up from Scotland Yard standard issue.
“I can’t complain. Executive loo and three squares a day.”
Something nagged at Kincaid, and after a moment he realized what it was. Alec Byrne had quit smoking. His desk no longer held ashtrays, and the hand he’d held out for Kincaid to shake was scrubbed pink, only the nails of his thumb and forefinger still showing faint yellow stains. When they’d been fledgling detective constables together, his friend had seldom been seen without a cigarette adhering to his lip or dangling from his fingers. Kincaid had always found it odd, as Byrne was a most fastidious man in other ways.
“I see you’ve given it up,” he said as he settled into the visitor’s chair.
“Had to, I’m afraid. Developed a bit of a spot on my lung.” Byrne shrugged a bony shoulder beneath an exquisitely tailored suit jacket. “Decided it wasn’t worth dying for.”
“You look well.” Kincaid meant it sincerely. A tall man, still as thin as he’d been when Kincaid had first known him, Byrne looked whippet fit. His reddish fair hair had receded above the temples, leaving him a pronounced and rather distinguished widow’s peak.
“I’m not too stubborn to admit that I feel better.” Byrne smiled. “I knew becoming a fanatic was the only way I Could do it, so I changed my diet and I started exercising-I’m rowing again, can you believe it? Joined a club.”
Byrne had been nonchalant concerning his Cambridge blue, but he’d also made sure it got about among his fellow rookies, and his athletic prowess had done much to alleviate their distrust of his upper-class background. The suspicion Byrne’s Cambridge degree had aroused seemed odd now, in this new era of educated policing, but it seemed to Kincaid that the man had always had an instinct for being ahead of his time.
“Thanks for seeing me, Alec. I know how busy you must be.”
“You know all too well, I’d imagine-and of course that makes me wonder what you’re doing here, but I’ll try to keep my curiosity in check. I’ve had the file you asked for brought up from the dungeon. I’d suggest you take it to the canteen and look at it while you have a cuppa.” Byrne handed a folder across his desk to Kincaid. “But you owe me, old chap.”
“I’m sure you’ll find some suitable revenge.” Kincaid accepted the fat file and realigned the errant papers.
“You can buy me a pint when you’ve finished. I’m sure they’ll never miss me.”
“Privilege of rank?” Kincaid suggested.
Byrne answered in his most sardonic drawl. “Hardly worth it, otherwise, I dare say.”
“I see you didn’t handle Lydia Brooke’s case,” Kincaid said as he set two foaming pints of bitter on the table at The Free Press. The pub was tucked away in a residential street behind the station, and was, Byrne had informed him zealously, the only nonsmoking pub in Britain, at least as far as he knew.
“No, the Brooke case was Bill Fitzgerald’s, one of his last before he took his peptic ulcer and his pension off to a bungalow in Spain. He sends us a postcard occasionally.” Byrne raised his pint to Kincaid. “Cheers. May we someday do the same.”
“I’ll drink to that.” For the first time in years, Kincaid had a brief vision of his honeymoon with Vic in Majorca. Sun and rocks and scarlet bougainvillea climbing on stuccoed walls… He shook himself back to reality. “About Lydia Brooke-did you know her when you were at Cambridge?”
Byrne shook his head. “No, she left a few years before I came up, but I heard the occasional odd thing about her. I remember the case well enough, though. Just about this time of year, wasn’t it, five years ago? She died from an overdose of the medication she took for her heart arrhythmia, leaving everything to her ex-husband. It seemed a fairly obvious suicide, and it at least got her a mention on the local news. You know-’tragic death of award-winning Cambridge poet’-that sort of thing.”
Kincaid pulled his notebook from his breast pocket and flipped it open, then drank off a bit of his pint. He’d taken the bench, putting the wall at his back, and from where he sat he could see the day’s specials carefully lettered on the chalkboard over the bar. “Mushroom stroganoff,” it read, and “Courgette flan.” It followed, he supposed, that a smoke-free pub would also be vegetarian. Glancing at the notebook, he said, “I understand that Brooke had a history of more violent suicide attempts.”