“Dora…” I said. Gwen looked at me, looked hard. This was a test of some kind. There was some right thing I could say that would make me a good husband, a good father. I didn’t know what it was. The fiddle was still in my hand.
I waited too long again. Gwen looked away, exasperated.
Mother pushed past me with the tea. Dora said, “It’s too hot.” Gwen told her it wasn’t and to just drink it. The boy was in the midst of his own family swarm. Alice, a doctor, had quickly checked him, and then came to Dora. She knelt in front of her.
There would be no breaking through this wall of women. And I still had the fiddle in my hand.
I returned it to the stage. Then I checked my phone messages.
Bloody hell. Nick Frey and a dead professor.
Richard knew. Somehow he knew.
“Duty calls,” I said lightly, snapping the phone shut.
I found where Gwen had put my coat. Richard didn’t say anything. But he knew. I could tell by the way he stuck to me.
“Please,” he said quietly.
I had no right to tell him, certainly not before telling the parents. Really, I shouldn’t tell anyone until I was certain for myself. Mistakes get made. There was no room for that here.
But he followed me outside. I asked him to tell Gwen I had to work. “And congratulations,” I said. He turned my intended handshake into a pleading grip.
“Please tell me,” he said.
I shook my head. “Can’t do that.” It took shaking my fingers to get the blood back. I repeated the message: “You know I can’t tell you.”
He didn’t fight. He only hoped.
That’s what really puts me over the edge with him. He doesn’t push for anything. He just-stands, and people join him. He’d take a beating if anyone ever bothered to hate him. He’d take it. He took what had happened to the first Alice. I couldn’t believe how he took it.
The boy who’d smashed her head had done a runner, and it took some doing to track him down. The sergeant who picked him up got cut. The boy had had a knife, a stupid small kitchen thing. A dull paring knife, probably from someone’s trash. The sergeant got cut but wrestled it off the kid and brought him in.
When I brought this news to Richard, brought it like a present, he pushed it back. This was one for our side, we’re the good guys, right? A sergeant had bled to bring the boy in, because justice matters. Because Alice mattered. A policeman had risked his life, a cop like me.
Still Richard didn’t say anything, so I repeated it: “Richard, we’ve got him. It’s done.”
He just covered his face. I couldn’t get anything out of him.
Finally, he wrote something on a piece of paper from the pad next to the phone. Alice ’s paper. Alice ’s pen. I’d never had special paper for the phone before I was married, and neither had he.
He wrote something on the paper and asked me to bring it to the kid. It said, “I forgive you.”
I wouldn’t take it. I held my hands up out of reach. “What the hell is that?” I said.
“Please.” He pushed it at me.
I shook my head. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I said. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You don’t deserve her. If anyone tried to hurt Gwen I’d fucking kill him.”
He covered his face again. When I left, he was pressing the note against his closed eyes.
That’s what I remember whenever he says “please” to me, like he was saying now.
I grabbed the front of his shirt to bring his face close. “Don’t repeat this, all right? Not even to Alice.”
He nodded.
“Nick’s all right. He’s back. All right? That’s all I can tell you. Don’t breathe a word.”
I let him go and he stumbled backward. “Thank you,” he said.
“Thank you,” he said again. His face shone. He was happy.
Alice came to find me. “Dora’s fine,” she said. I knew she was; the last I looked one of the servers was lending her a change of clothes.
“Thanks,” I said. Richard was still radiant. I wanted to kick him.
Alice wound an arm around one of his. “You look happy,” she said.
He stuttered. He looked at me with guilt. Christ, he was terrible at secrets.
“He’s happy he has you,” I said, trying to lead him with the obvious.
He caught on. He kissed her hand. But she looked suspiciously at me.
“Morris…” she said. “Is this about Nick Frey?”
“No,” I said, showing Richard how it’s done. But he looked at his shoes. Alice would know by morning.
I rubbed my forehead. I needed to tell Gwen myself that I had to leave.
I opened the door back to the tearoom, but that entrance was filled with Mother, apparently on her way out to me. “I was looking for you. Working again, Morris?” she said.
There wasn’t any point to arguing.
“Dora was in a punt with that boy,” she continued. “She said they were talking.” She twisted that last word sarcastically.
“Dora’s all right, Mother,” I said.
“Dora’s a teenager, Morris. She needs a father who pays attention to her.”
“Look how great we turned out without a father paying attention to us,” I said through a fake, bright grin. Richard was so shocked he backed up a step.
Mother pushed back. “Your father-”
It’s all the same conversation. It’s all we ever really say to each other, over and over again.
She kept talking as I walked away.
CHAPTER 7
Detective Sergeant Chloe Frohmann picked me up in front of Grantchester’s old church. I would normally be paired with a Detective Inspector on a murder case, but she’d worked with me on the missing person, so I asked to keep her on. “How was the wedding?” she wanted to know. I wasn’t in the mood to answer. It would only encourage her. She was planning her own wedding for next year.
She didn’t need encouragement. “I ask because my cousin got married last year and she wore a suit. She said that any woman over thirty can’t get away with wearing a real dress, but I think that’s crap. Alice is in her thirties, right? Did she wear a suit or a dress?”
There was no getting away from it. “A dress,” I said. Then she asked me this crazy thing: Was it a tea dress or a cocktail dress? I said, “It was a dress.”
“That’s exactly my point,” she said, punctuating “exactly” with a vigorous swerve onto the roundabout.
I leaned my head back and tried to focus. Someone was found. Someone else was dead. There would be two family visits to make.
“Shall I take the parents? Or the husband?” Frohmann does read my mind sometimes.
“We’ll do them together.”
I’d never been up Cantelupe Road. It was a strange road to be on if you didn’t live there. What were both of them doing there?
The crime scene was easy to find: Just follow the bright lights set up for the forensic team and pathologist.
Rose Cottage was a homely scene inside: soft, threadbare furniture, lit yellow by standing lamps with fussy shades. Nick, or rather his friend, had called the police from here. It wasn’t until the paramedics arrived that Nick admitted his name, to a flurry of piqued interest and scepticism. Now he sipped hot chocolate at the kitchen table, his left leg propped up on the chair opposite. Two women stood apart from him next to an Aga, one of those huge country ovens.
“Nicholas Frey?” I asked, to be official. I recognised him.
He nodded and pushed his cup away. “Yes, sir.”
I needed to caution him, in relation to the death outside, but something else bubbled up as more important first. “Richard Keene’s my brother. He’s been very worried.”
He blanched. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
This was murky. The caution had to come out. “Nick. You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence. All right?”