‘Down near Iffley.’ The slightest lift in Theo’s eyebrow told her he’d found that an interesting question, was making a mental note.
The floor banked like the deck of a ship in high seas. ‘What happened?’ she said, from a distance.
‘We can’t say at the moment.’
Can’t or won’t? Were they holding back information, laying a trap?
‘He has a serious head wound,’ said Grange. ‘Whether it was an accident or not, we don’t know yet. We’ll have to wait for the post mortem to be clear about the actual cause of death. Whether he was alive when he went into the water or . . .’
‘As Mr Cory’s agent in the UK,’ said Theo, ‘James Greenwood is going to identify the body for us.’
‘Gallerist,’ Adam said.
‘Gallerist, sorry, yes.’ Theo nodded. ‘He was the only British contact we could find online.’
‘James said they should talk to us.’ Adam reached out and took Rowan’s hand. ‘He told them that Marianne and Michael were friends and he was going to paint her.’
‘Actually,’ said Theo, ‘it was you that Mr Greenwood mentioned specifically, Rowan. Both he and Mr Glass tell me you’ve been spending time with Mr Cory lately.’ Forgive me if I’d forgotten how morally upstanding you are.
Putting her hand over her mouth, she looked at Adam. His eyes were wide and serious but he seemed not to have picked up on Theo’s subtext.
‘We met three or four times,’ she said. ‘Four. We were supposed to have coffee yesterday . . .’ She looked at Adam again as if to say, This is why we couldn’t get hold of him. We were trying to call him and all the time . . . ‘He was asking me about Marianne,’ she told Theo. ‘About what she was like as a teenager and in her early twenties.’
‘You were talking?’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking him in the eye, ‘we were.’
DS Grange turned sharply to Adam. ‘But you hadn’t talked to him yet, Mr Glass? As Marianne’s brother.’
‘Not yet.’ Again, Adam seemed not to hear the real question. ‘Perhaps he was being sensitive, giving me some time. He called me on Wednesday, late afternoon. I’ve still got the message on my phone, I think, if you need it.’
‘Thanks. Yes.’
‘Do you happen to know by any chance, Rowan,’ said Theo, ‘where Mr Cory was staying?’
She hoped her look conveyed the full weight of her disdain. ‘He had a room at the Old Parsonage.’
Grange made a note in his book.
‘The thing is,’ said Theo, looking first at her, then at Adam, ‘I’m sorry but I’m sure it will have occurred to you already – the fact that Mr Cory has died so soon after your sister, Mr Glass,’ a small nod of respect, ‘raises obvious questions. Two artists of their stature – and friends. That Mr Cory appears to have died here in Oxford, too – though that has yet to be confirmed, of course. He was living in London, Mr Greenwood told us, so . . .’
‘They’re going to look into Marianne’s death again,’ Adam said, squeezing her fingers. Rowan watched Theo watch him.
‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘There are coincidences, even big ones, but this . . .’ He shook his head. ‘We have to proceed on the basis that there’s a connection.’
‘Do you have any idea what that might be?’ Adam asked.
‘No, not yet. It’s too early. The body was found at seven this morning so we’re still right at the beginning of things.’
Glancing at the mantelpiece, Rowan saw it was eleven. From first becoming aware of Cory’s death, it had taken the police less than four hours to make it to her door.
‘Do you – either of you – have any thoughts? Observations,’ he said. ‘Rowan, if you’d been talking to him . . . ?’
She shook her head, vague. ‘No.’
‘Anything strike you as off, anything bothering him, that you could tell, the last time you saw him?’
A mental image of the bare back of his head bisected with blood, the look in his eyes as he’d turned. You.
‘No. No, I don’t think so.’
‘When was that?’
‘Um . . .’ She tried to think. The day they’d driven to the river was the day before yesterday; when had it been before that? Think, Rowan, for Christ’s sake. Quick. ‘Tuesday,’ she said, and her voice sounded firm, she thought, reliable. They’d gone round to the Johnsons’, hadn’t they? Met Martin. She remembered Sarah Johnson telling them that the police had gone to the flats after Marianne died and realised she had to mention it now if it wasn’t going to look suspicious later on. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘he did something for me that day. A favour.’
‘Really?’
She glanced at Adam. ‘I’d been a bit worried,’ she said. ‘I’d noticed a guy looking over here at night from the flats in Benson Place.’
‘You didn’t tell me that.’ Adam frowned.
‘I know. I didn’t want to worry you. I thought you had enough on your plate. Michael came round that afternoon and I asked him to come with me to find out who he was, what was going on.’
‘And?’