‘Necessary?’ He sat down on the chair on the other side of the fireplace.
‘Ethan, you’re not very bright, are you? You’ve decided to stay on at the lodge because you’re a policeman and can be trusted to look after the crime scene and see off any intruders. Haven’t you given any thought to yourself?’
‘Myself? I’m on leave till—’
‘That is such a male response. “I’m on leave.” I didn’t ask about your working arrangements, I asked about you.’
He reached over for the poker, stirred it among the flames, and added several fresh logs. They spat fiercely, sending bright sparks up into the wide chimney.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I can look after this place on my own till Mrs Salgueiro comes back.’
‘You’re still avoiding my question.’ She closed her book and let it fall to the floor. ‘Without Mrs Salgueiro, you are alone in this lodge. Your bedroom here is just a stone’s throw from the room in which your grandfather and his friend were brutally murdered. Even though you have probably seen dozens of murder scenes in your time, and are probably inured to such things, you were badly shaken when you came out of the study this morning. Do you expect me to believe that staying here on your own will be a breeze, that you won’t sit and brood about this from morning to night?’
‘Sarah, I—’
‘Whether or not you’re willing to strain your emotions like that, I’m not going to let you. You have a companion for the duration. I will be your housekeeper. I will cook for you and eat with you, I will talk to you any time you feel like talking, I will go for long walks with you in the freezing cold, and I will read to you, play Scrabble with you, watch old movies on TV, or sit and listen to music. The only things I will not do are to wash your socks and underwear, put chocolates on your pillow last thing at night, or sleep with you. We might even get to know one another after all these years. Now, is this a deal or not?’
He sat for half a minute, totally bewildered. When he got his wits back, he ventured a smile.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’m not a bad cook. Really.’
She grinned.
‘Really?’
The scepticism in her voice wakened memories of burnt toast and stringy scrambled eggs. He shook his head.
‘If I take care, I can do a mean baked beans on toast.’
She winced at the thought.
‘In that case, you should offer up a prayer of thanks, because I am a good cook. Cordon bleu is nothing to me. You were no doubt facing the prospect of beans on toast for breakfast, lunch, supper, and a late-night snack. The fact that you can’t cook is reassuring. I don’t like men who are cleverer than me. I may take pity on you and marry you after all. How come you never learnt—?’
She cut herself off, realising what she’d just said.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was stupid of me. I should have thought before opening my big mouth.’
‘That’s OK. It’s been eight years. You were only a teenager.’
‘But I remember Aunt Abi well. She was lovely. We were devastated when…’
‘We all were. It was devastating for everyone. The family. All her friends.’
‘You found her, is that right?’
‘Not exactly. But more or less. I identified her.’
Abi had been raped and murdered on a summer evening while jogging in a local park. Ethan had been the first detective on the scene, summoned by the patrol car that had gone to the secluded spot where she’d been found. He had gone there expecting to find a stranger, and looked down on the face of his dead wife, whom he’d last seen only two hours earlier, before he went on duty. Finding his grandfather hanging in his study had brought the whole thing back again. Despite his first reaction to her suggestion, he was glad Sarah had decided to stay. The murder investigation was already under way, ruining Christmas for scores of policemen and policewomen throughout the county. He desperately wished he could be one of them, but getting involved in a family case was out of the question. For all he knew, he was the prime suspect.
‘When do you want to eat?’ she asked.
‘How about now? I’m starving. I’ve only snatched a few handfuls of food all day. There were three families staying in the lodge, all with children, so the kitchen’s still stuffed with food.’
‘I’d forgotten about that.’ She frowned. ‘I hate to think of it all going to waste, especially today. Do you think some charity could make use of it? And what about the main kitchen in the hall?’
The armchair was too low and soft to leap out of, but Ethan struggled to his feet.
‘The hall could be more difficult, but I could speak to someone on the force. This one’s easier. I bet more than one charity could put all this to good use. As long as they can get here through the snow.’
A couple of phone calls later and a shelter for the homeless in Cheltenham had promised to get a van over that evening. A police van would take what they could from the hall kitchen and pass it on to the Salvation Army. Ethan and Sarah headed for the kitchen, where they sorted out the food they would need to keep for themselves, and put as much of the rest into boxes as they could.
Sarah raided the cupboards and the large fridge. She found a box of carnaroli rice, large prawns, cheese, and a bottle of Pino Grigio.
‘Fancy a risotto?’ she asked. ‘I’ll have to use stock cubes, but otherwise there’s enough here to make something halfway decent.’
He nodded and offered to help.
‘Ethan,’ she said, ‘there is a simple rule in every good home kitchen: one chef is enough. Go and sit down over there and talk to me.’
She grabbed an onion and began to peel it. He sat down at the kitchen table and looked at her. It was beyond him that someone so lovely should have emerged from his family, a tribe not well noted for the personal beauty of its members.
‘Tell me more about yourself,’ he said. ‘I’m not even sure what you do exactly. You’re a lecturer, I know that, and since you live in Oxford, I presume you teach there.’
‘Mostly I do research,’ she answered, her eyes watering in the fume from the onions. ‘And I do some teaching from time to time.’
‘Poor you. What’s your subject?’
‘Ethan, could you find a risotto pan? Something cast iron if there is one.’
He got to his feet again and started hunting through cupboards. Through wet eyes, she watched him. His movements relaxed her. He seemed at ease in his body, slow, capable, intent on what he was doing, yet clearly interested in what she had to say.
‘Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic,’ she said. ‘I’m based in the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, out in Yarnton. Actually, my main field is documentary and epigraphic evidence for archaeology in the Holy Land. I go out on digs, and when anything turns up that needs to be deciphered, they whistle and I come running. I specialise in the Roman period. My thesis was about the destruction of the Temple. You’d be bored to tears. I’m really very dull, you know.’
With a flourish, he pulled out a heavy Le Creuset pan of exactly the right proportions.
‘I find that hard to believe,’ he said. ‘But your studies do surprise me. How on earth did you get into something like that?’
‘Can you find a match or something to light the gas?’
He remembered where he’d seen the matches earlier. A box was sitting on a biscuit box on the side opposite the cooker. He took out a match and lit a gas ring. He slipped the box into his pocket, and went off to look for candles.
Sarah took the pan, then filled a kettle with water. Ethan returned to his seat with two table candles and small glass holders to put them in. While the water heated, Sarah chopped the onion, her hand moving economically as the knife jumped up and down. The water boiled. She poured it into a large glass jug, and crumbled chicken stock cubes into it, then set it aside. Wiping her eyes, she sliced through a fennel bulb and several cloves of garlic. He noticed how her hands moved, how her fingers clasped the knife, how the sharp blade slid effortlessly through the flesh of the vegetables.