Kissed a sad goodbye - Deborah Crombie [97]
In front of her, an old woman in a zimmer frame navigated the path with tortoiselike deliberation, and beyond her a man lay beside a dog—it took Gemma’s startled mind an instant to process the fact that the man was Gordon Finch, and the dog Sam. She stopped dead, staring, feeling as if she’d conjured him from her thoughts.
Gordon lay on his back, his eyes closed. He wore a tee shirt and jeans, his feet were bare, and a pair of boots rested neatly beside his clarinet case. Beneath his head, a folded jacket did duty as a pillow. The sun came out from behind the clouds, and the dappled light filtering through the leaves of the nearest plane tree played along his face and body.
Slowly, Gemma crossed the grass and stood over him. Sam lifted his head, and at the dog’s movement, Gordon opened his eyes and looked up at her. “What fair vision is this?” he asked, straight-faced.
“What are you doing here?” Gemma said.
“Not up to sparkling repartee today, are we?” He sat, lifting his arms above his head and cracking his intertwined knuckles in a stretch. “It’s a free park, i’nt it, lady? I could ask you the same. Join me?”
Gemma looked round as if a chair might materialize, then sank to her knees. “I need to talk to you.”
Gordon nodded in the direction of the musicians. “I’m waiting a turn at this pitch, so I’m all yours as long as the band plays.”
Although still mocking, he seemed more relaxed today than Gemma had seen him before.
“What is it?” he asked, looking at her more closely. “Are you all right?”
Surprised by his tone of concern, she stammered, “I … Yes, of course I’m all right, but—”
“Then sit down properly,” he ordered. “You look like a sprinter at the blocks.” She obeyed gingerly, but before she could cross her legs, Gordon laid a hand on her outstretched ankle. “And take your shoes off. You can’t sit in the grass with your shoes on.” He grasped her sandal by the heel and slid it free as Gemma jerked her foot back, protesting.
“I can’t sit here in the park barefoot with you. It’s not—What would—”
“What are you so afraid of, Sergeant?” He glanced up at her as he lifted her other foot and slipped the shoe off. “You can charge me with assaulting an officer, if it makes you feel better.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she retorted, but she didn’t retrieve her sandals.
Gordon wrapped his arms round his knees, regarding her impassively, while Sam got up and repositioned himself against Gordon’s hip with a sigh. “You said you wanted to grill me?”
“I didn’t mean—” Gemma bit off the rest of her protest. “All right,” she said, tucking her bare feet under her in a cross-legged position. “Did you know that Annabelle had an affair with her sister’s husband?”
The expression on his face told her he was taken aback. “No. I told you—she didn’t talk about herself. And I expect that’s the last thing she’d have told me.” He seemed to hesitate, then said, “Was it … Do you know when?”
“Some time ago. It broke up her sister’s marriage, and apparently he—Martin Lowell—blamed Annabelle.”
“That’s his name?” he asked, frowning. The upward slant of his brows echoed the sharp angle of his cheekbones. “She never mentioned him. But what has this to do with anything?”
“Her fiancé found out about her affair with Lowell on Friday night, at her sister’s party.”
“But if her sister’s already divorced, it must have been before Annabelle was engaged to him—what’s his name?”
“Reg Mortimer.”
“So why get his knickers in a twist?”
“Maybe he knew, or guessed, that there was someone else. And he thought that if she could betray her own sister, why not him? Then he saw her with you, in the tunnel.…”
“Are you saying you think he waited for her? That he killed her?”
“It’s a possibility, but so far the evidence