Sam laughed. “Give me time. I’m only after narrowing it down this afternoon. I’m aiming to have chats with all of them tomorrow morning. I wanted to ask you—would you be able to come in for that? Just to give them the once-over, see if you pick up anything?”
I could have kissed him. “God, yeah. Where? When?”
“Yeah, I thought you might want a look.” He was smiling. “I’m thinking Rathowen station. Their homes would be best, not to spook them, but I couldn’t exactly bring you along there.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Sounds great, actually.”
The smile in Sam’s voice deepened. “To me, too. Will you be able to get away from the others?”
“I’ll tell them I’ve got a hospital appointment, to get my stitches checked. I should be doing that anyway.” The thought of the others gave me a strange little pang. If Sam got anything solid on one of these guys—it wouldn’t even have to be enough for an arrest—then it was over; I was out, back to Dublin and DV.
“Will they not want to come in with you?”
“Probably, but I won’t let them. I’ll get Justin or Daniel to drop me off at Wicklow Hospital. Can you pick me up there, or will I get a taxi to Rathowen?”
He laughed. “You think I’d miss the chance? Say half past ten?”
“Perfect,” I said. “And, Sam—I don’t know how much depth you’re planning to go into with these three guys, but before you start chatting to them, I’ve got a bit more info for you. About that girl with the baby.” That sticky traitorous feeling clamped round me again, but I reminded myself that Sam wasn’t Frank, it wasn’t like he would show up at Whitethorn House with a search warrant and a bunch of deliberately obnoxious questions. “It looks like the whole thing happened sometime in 1915. No name on the girl, but her lover was William March, born 1894.”
An instant of amazed silence; then: “Ah, you gem,” Sam said, delighted. “How’d you do that?”
So he wasn’t listening in on the mike feed—not all the time, anyway. It startled me, how much of a relief that was. “Uncle Simon was writing a family history. This girl got a mention. The details don’t exactly match up, but it’s the same story, all right.”
“Hang on,” Sam said; I heard him finding a blank page in his notebook. “Now. Off you go.”
“According to Simon, William went off to the First World War in 1914, came back a year later deeply messed up. He broke off his engagement to some nice suitable girl, cut off contact with all his old friends and started hanging around the village. Reading between the lines, the Glenskehy people weren’t too pleased about that.”
“Not a lot they could do,” Sam said dryly. “One of the landlord’s family . . . He could do whatever he liked, sure.”
“Then this girl got pregnant,” I said. “She claimed William was the father—Simon sounded a little skeptical about that, but either way, Glenskehy was horrified. They treated her like dirt; the general opinion was that she belonged in a Magdalen laundry. Before anyone could send her off, she hanged herself.”
Brush of wind through the trees, small raindrops flicking leaves.
“So,” Sam said, after a moment, “Simon’s version takes the responsibility right off the Marches and puts it on those mad peasants down the village.”
The flare of anger caught me off guard; I almost bit his head off. “William March didn’t get off scot-free either,” I said, hearing the edge in my voice. “He had some kind of nervous breakdown—I don’t have specifics, but he ended up in what sounds like a mental institution. And it might not even have been his kid to start with.”
Another silence, longer this time. “Right,” Sam said. “True enough. I’m not about to argue over anything tonight, anyway. I’m too happy about seeing you again.”
I swear it took me a second to catch up. I had been so focused on the chance of seeing the mysterious N, it hadn’t even hit me that I would be seeing Sam. “Less than twelve hours,” I said. “I’ll be the one looking like Lexie Madison and wearing nothing but white lace underwear.”
“Ah, don’t be doing that to me,” Sam said. “This is business, woman,” but I could still hear the grin in his voice when we hung up.
Daniel was in one of the armchairs by the fire, reading T. S. Eliot; the other three were playing poker. “Oof,” I said, flopping down on the hearth rug. The butt of my gun jammed itself neatly under my ribs; I didn’t try to hide the wince. “What are you doing out? You never get knocked out first.”
“I kicked his arse,” Abby called across, raising her wineglass.
“Don’t gloat,” Justin said. He sounded like he was losing. “It’s so unattractive.”
“She did, actually,” Daniel said. “She’s getting very good at bluffing. Are your stitches hurting again?”
A fraction of a pause, from the table, in the sound of Rafe flipping his stack of coins through his fingers. “It’s just ’cause I’m thinking about them,” I said. “I’ve got this follow-up appointment tomorrow, so the doctors can poke me some more and tell me I’m fine, which I already knew anyway. Give me a lift?”
“Of course,” Daniel said, putting his book down on his lap. “What time?”
“Wicklow Hospital, ten o’clock. I’ll get the train into college afterwards.”
“But you can’t go in there alone,” Justin said. He was twisted around in his seat, the card game forgotten. “Let me take you. I’ve got nothing else to do tomorrow. I’ll come in with you, and then we’ll go into college together.”
He sounded really worried. If I couldn’t get him to back off, I was in serious trouble. “I don’t want anyone to come with me,” I said. “I want to go on my own.”
“But hospitals are awful. And they always make you wait for hours, like cattle, jammed into those hideous waiting rooms—”
I kept my head down and rummaged in my jacket pocket for my smokes. “So I’ll bring a book. I don’t even want to be there to begin with; the last thing I need is someone breathing down my neck the whole time. I just want to get this over with and forget the whole thing, OK? Can I do that?”
“It’s her choice,” Daniel said. “Let us know if you change your mind, Lexie.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m a grown-up, you know. I can show the doctor my stitches all by myself.”
Justin shrugged and went back to his cards. I knew I had hurt his feelings, but there was nothing I could do about that. I lit a cigarette; Daniel passed me the ashtray that had been balancing on the arm of his chair. “Are you smoking more these days?” he inquired.
My face must have been totally blank, but my mind was going like crazy. If anything, I’d been smoking less than I should have—I’d been keeping it at fifteen or sixteen a day, halfway between my normal ten and Lexie’s twenty, and hoping the drop would be put down to me still feeling weak. It had never occurred to me that Frank had only the others’ word for that twenty. Daniel hadn’t fallen for the coma story; God only knew how much more he had suspected. It would have been so easy, terrifyingly easy, for him to slip just one or two bits of disinformation into his interviews with Frank, sit back—those calm gray eyes, watching me without any trace of impatience—and wait to see if they found their way home.
“Not sure,” I said, puzzled. “I haven’t thought about it. Am I?”
“You didn’t usually take your cigarettes on your walk,” Daniel said. “Before the incident. Now you do.”