Now, though, she felt as if she were doing a giant logic puzzle for which there weren’t enough clues. The few there were told her what hadn’t happened and who hadn’t done it but didn’t give her anywhere near enough information to deduce what or who had. So Turk stole the sketches but he hadn’t broken in. Had there ever been a break-in? Possibly not, if the police hadn’t found any evidence. But if the man in the garden wasn’t casing the house, what was he doing? And was he the same man who watched from the window in Benson Place? Drawing her bedroom curtains after midnight on Saturday, she’d seen him standing there again, an unmoving silhouette against the light, and she’d had a disturbing thought: had he seen her with Adam? Watched? She couldn’t remember drawing the curtains but she knew the light had been on.
Adam. She’d woken up yesterday, the paranoid fog of the hangover almost lifted, and she’d been ashamed of herself. How had she managed to get into such a stew about him not calling? He’d only left precipitately because Turk had been there and he probably thought ringing the same day would make him look a bit keen. He’d call today, most likely, after a decent interval. The thought had cheered her up as she’d walked to North Parade to buy milk and a Sunday paper but as the day had gone on and the phone stayed silent, the negative feelings had started to creep back. Why wasn’t he ringing? Had Turk called him? Or was there something else entirely going on here?
She’d barely opened the door before Cory pushed past her into the hallway. He was vibrating with impatience so Rowan took her time, closing the door gently, bending to pick up a wet leaf he’d brought in on his boots. She straightened again and gave him a calm smile.
If he sensed she was doing it on purpose, he chose to ignore it. ‘I think I’ve found something.’
Her heart gave an exaggerated beat. ‘What?’
‘I’ve been in the library for hours, on Saturday and again this morning – God, I hate microfiche. It was just long enough ago that not everything was on the Net.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose and pressed his eyes shut. ‘The nationals were, obviously, but the archives of the local papers don’t go back that far online so I had to talk to the librarian, tell her what I wanted, get her to show me how to use the machine . . . It was like the seventies in there.’
‘Where were you?’
‘The big public library in the centre of town. Hideous, over that shopping mall – what’s it called, the Watergate Centre?’
‘Westgate. Please,’ she said, ‘tell me you didn’t mention Marianne or Seb.’
He gave her a withering look. ‘It was real needle-in-a-haystack stuff, to start. I was trying to find a woman with a connection to Seb who died just before him, within a period of time that meant he would still have been grieving when he got loaded and crashed the car.’
Rowan shook her head to convey incredulity that he was still gnawing away at this crazy theory.
‘I took it week by week, working backwards, nationals first, just in case, then the microfiche – news and obituaries. I didn’t know if she would be here or in London. He travelled a lot, didn’t he, lecturing, book tours, so there was also the possibility that . . .’
‘Like I said on Saturday – again – you’re barking up the wrong tree. There’s no way Marianne killed anyone, accidentally or otherwise, full stop, and that includes any woman her dad may or may not have been seeing. She just . . .’
‘She was a grad student.’
‘Who was?’
‘The woman I found.’
Rowan stared.
‘Lorna Morris. She died six weeks before him, almost to the day. The Oxford Times had a picture of her and as soon as I saw it, I got a feeling. She was twenty-six, beautiful. I focused on her, cross-referenced, and I found out that a) she was an experimental psychologist, and b) she’d been working at the labs where Seb did most of his research.’
Stay calm, Rowan ordered herself. ‘There are a lot of psychologists at Oxford and I don’t know how many of them worked at those labs. Everyone who was doing experimental work, I should think – definitely the vast majority. I’m not sure how many other labs there even were for that.’
‘She died in a fire,’ Cory said as if Rowan hadn’t spoken. ‘Actually, an explosion. She lived on a houseboat on the river and there was a gas leak and . . .’
‘I know.’ She cut him off. ‘I remember. It was a big story here – in Oxford. Horrific. But it was an accident. There was a police investigation, obviously. An inquest.’
‘I read the reports. It said that it looked like she’d left the gas stove on, unlit. She went out, came back after dark, hit the light . . .’
‘It was horrendous. A terrible way to die.’
‘What if it wasn’t an accident, Rowan?’ He eyeballed her, demanding that she take him seriously. ‘What if Marianne did it? Messed with the stove, made it look like an accident.’
She shook her head and moved towards the top of the kitchen stairs. ‘I can’t listen to any more of this.’
Whip-fast, Cory reached out and grabbed her forearm. ‘She jumped for a reason.’
‘If she jumped at all,’ Rowan shot back, yanking her arm away. ‘Seb had lots of affairs, okay? Lots. He was a tart, a butterfly collector: he couldn’t help himself. It’s possible he slept with Lorna, I suppose, not that there were ever any rumours about it – and there usually were, I have to tell you, because he wasn’t the best keeper of secrets on that front. But if he did, if, she would have been one of three or four that year.’
‘Who would know?’
‘How the hell could I tell you that? I hadn’t seen the Glasses for years – I never knew Lorna.’