CHAPTER 21
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? And Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
RUPERT BROOKE,
from “The Old Vicarage,
Grantchester”
Kincaid swung left at the High Street junction and pulled the Escort up behind Adam Lamb’s Mini. Light spilled out from the open door of Nathan’s cottage.
“I don’t like the look of this,” he muttered as he pulled up the hand brake and vaulted out of the car. He heard Gemma close behind him as he started up the walk.
Adam hurried out to meet them before they reached the door, scarecrow tall and thin in full clerical black. He shook his head at the sight of their questioning faces. “No joy, I’m afraid. No one’s seen him. Father Denny and some of the church wardens are searching along the riverbank with torches.” His face was creased with worry and exhaustion. “I said I’d wait here for you.”
Kincaid took Adam’s arm and pulled him into the hall. “Adam, tell us about Darcy and Verity Whitecliff.”
“Oh, dear God.” Adam sagged against the wall as his face drained of color. “What… what has that to do with this?”
“Did he kill her?” Kincaid pressed him, a hand on his shoulder. “Did he kill Verity?”
Adam rubbed a trembling hand across his face, then seemed to gather strength. Straightening up, he said, “It’s more complicated than that. We all felt responsible. We should never have allowed it to happen.”
“Did he kill her? Yes or no?” Kincaid squeezed his shoulder, urgency driving him.
Adam winced as Kincaid’s fingers bit into the nerve, but he held Kincaid’s gaze. “Yes,” he said on a sigh. “Yes, he did.”
Kincaid released Adam’s shoulder and, glancing at Gemma, read the brief flare of triumph in her eyes. They had been right, after all. “Adam, we think Lydia meant to tell what happened. She wrote a poem about Verity’s death which we believe Darcy removed from the manuscript of her last book. Vic found a copy in a book Nathan had given her, but Nathan didn’t know it was there. He may have read it for the first time this afternoon.”
Looking from Kincaid to Gemma, Adam said slowly, “You’re saying that Darcy killed Lydia and Victoria McClellan, aren’t you? And that Nathan has just discovered it?”
“Yes.” Gemma laid a gentle hand on his arm. “What would he do, Adam?”
Adam shook his head. “I should have seen this. Perhaps not when Lydia died, but at the very least when Dr. McClellan began to question the manner of her death. I’ve been willfully and sinfully blind.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them they were luminous with tears. “We all thought we could make reparation for what we’d done, each in our own way. But it wasn’t enough. Nathan will know that now. I fear the worst.”
Kincaid felt the sharp jab of foreboding. “Where would he go? To Darcy’s college?”
“I don’t-”
“Shhh.” Kincaid held up his hand, listening. He could have sworn he’d heard a faint crack of sound in the still air. “Did you hear it?”
“A gunshot,” said Gemma. “Could it have been a gunshot?”
“It came from that direction,” said Kincaid, pointing towards the bottom of the village. “I’d say a good half mile away.”
“The Pool,” said Adam. “Byron’s Pool. Past the Mill about a quarter mile. That’s where he’ll have gone.”
Kincaid thought strategy for a moment. “Can we find it?”
“There’s a signpost. And the path is clearly marked,” said Adam. “But I can show you-”
“No, you stay here and wait for Chief Inspector Byrne,” said Kincaid, already half out the door. “Show him the way,” he called over his shoulder as he sprinted for the car, Gemma on his heels.
“Would Darcy agree to meet him?” said Gemma as they slammed their doors and the engine coughed to life.
“I don’t think Nathan will have had the advantage,” Kincaid answered grimly. The lights of the houses flashed by as they sped through the village, then they were dipping down to cross the old stone bridge by the Mill. Kincaid slowed as they began the curving ascent on the other side. “There!” He pointed at a signpost, faintly legible in the beam of the headlamps. “Byron’s Pool. And there’s a car park.” The small graveled area was empty.
“Nathan walked,” said Gemma as Kincaid stopped the car. “But Darcy must have left his car somewhere else. He won’t have meant to be seen. Torch under the seat,” she added as they scrambled out of the car. “Look, there’s the path.”
Kincaid reemerged from the car with the torch. “We’ll not use it just yet,” he said quietly. “Our eyes will adjust in a minute or two, and there’s no sense making targets of ourselves.” Putting his hand on Gemma’s shoulder, he felt her vibrating with tension. For an instant, he thought of ordering her to wait for him there, but he didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone, unarmed, and possibly blocking Darcy’s exit from the car park. He squeezed her shoulder. “Stay behind me, love, and at the first sign of trouble, go for backup.”
The path was uneven, but lighter in color than the surrounding leaves and bracken, and as his eyes learned to differentiate he began to pick up speed. The car park soon disappeared, swallowed by the trees, and the night sounds rose round them.
“Wait!” Gemma’s hand clamped his elbow. “I heard something,” she breathed in his ear.
He listened, straining into the darkness. A rustle… then a sound that might have been a faint human grunt of pain. Nodding at Gemma, he turned and went on, placing each foot more carefully than before. Cowboys and Indians, he thought, conscious of every snapping twig. As a child, he’d always wanted to be the Indian, and he had a sudden intense memory of the smooth, rolling motion of his feet as he crept through the woods. Then he came round a twist in the path and stopped short.
They stood at the edge of a small clearing faintly illuminated with moonlight. On the far side, two bodies grappled on the ground, and a few feet away he saw a gleam in the grass. The gun.
Then the body on top heaved itself up, turning towards them with the heavy menace of a cornered beast. Darcy.
Kincaid dived without thought, a soaring lunge that brought him skidding across the grass onto the gun. He rolled with it in his hands and scrambled to his knees.
Darcy stood before him, swaying slightly. Half his face and neck looked black in the dappled light-a shadow? No, blood, Kincaid realized. He got one foot underneath him and rose slowly without shifting the stock of the gun from the hollow of his shoulder, or its aim from the center of Darcy’s chest.
He could shoot Darcy. Now. The thought came with cold clarity. Self-defense. Justifiable homicide. Who would question it? He had broken so many rules already, why not one more?
Darcy shifted on his feet, balancing his weight on flexed knees.
He meant to run. Let him make his break, then shoot him. No one could say it wasn’t right.
The whites of Darcy’s eyes flashed as he looked from side to side. His hands clenched into fists.
“Lie down on the ground,” said Kincaid slowly. “Put your hands behind your back. If you don’t do as I say, now, I will shoot you.”
For a moment, Darcy stood, and Kincaid tensed, preparing for the recoil of the gun.