I, Richard

Exposure

When members of the history of british architecture class thought about the Abinger Manor Affair later on, each one of them would say that Sam Cleary had been the likeliest candidate for murder. Now, you might ask yourself why anyone would have wanted to kill a harmless American professor of botany who-on the surface at least-had done nothing more than come to Cambridge University with his wife to take part in a summer session at St. Stephen's College. But that's the crux of the matter, you see, the with his wife part of it. Old Sam-seventy if he was a day and a spiffy dresser with a bent for bow ties and tweeds even in the middle of the hottest summer England had seen in decades-tended to forget that his wedded Frances had come along for the experience as well. And when Sam forgot that Frances was there, his eyes started wandering in order to take a visual sampling of the other ladies. It appeared to be second nature to the fellow.

This visual sampling might have been something that Frances Cleary could have overlooked. Her husband, after all, couldn't be expected to walk around Cambridge with blinders on, and Cambridge in the summer brought out fine ladies like mayflies looking for barbecues. But when he took to spending long evenings in the college pub, entertaining their classmate Polly Simpson with tales of everything from his childhood spent on a farm in Vermont to his years in 'Nam where, according to Sam, he saved his entire platoon single-handedly… well, that was too much for Frances. Not only was Polly young enough to be Sam's granddaughter and then some, she was-if you'll pardon the expression-drop-dead gorgeous and blonde and curvy in a way that poor Frances hadn't been even in her glory years.

So when the night before the Day in Question saw Sam Cleary and Polly Simpson in the college pub laughing, talking, teasing each other as usual, giggling like kids-which at twenty-three Polly still was, as a matter of fact-and acting otherwise like individuals with Something Specific on Their Minds till two in the morning, Frances finally had words with her husband. And her husband wasn't the only one to hear them.

Noreen Tucker was the messenger delivering news of this delicate subject over breakfast the next day, having been awakened by the sound of Frances's accelerating displeasure at two twenty-three in the morning and having been kept awake by the sound of Frances's accelerating displeasure till exactly four thirty-seven. That was when a slamming door punctuated Sam's decision to listen no more to his wife's accusations of heartless insensitivity and insidious infidelity.

Under other circumstances, an unwilling eavesdropper might have kept her own counsel regarding this overheard marital contretemps. But Noreen Tucker was a woman who liked the spotlight. And since she had so far achieved precious little recognition in her thirty years as a romance writer, she took her bows where she could.

That's what she was doing on the morning of the Day in Question, as other members of the History of British Architecture class gathered to break bread together in the cavernous dining hall of St. Stephen's College. Dressed in Laura Ashley and a straw boater in the mistaken belief that projecting youthfulness equated to youthfulness, Noreen imparted the salient details of the Clearys' early-morning argument, and she leaned forward with a glance to the right and the left to underscore both the import and the confidential nature of the information she was sharing.

“I couldn't believe my ears,” she told her fellow students in breathless summation. “Who looks milder mannered than Frances Cleary, I ask you, who? And to believe she even knew such language existed…? Why, I was just slayed to hear it, truly. I was completely mortified. I didn't know whether I should knock on the wall to quiet her down or go for help. Although I can't imagine the porter would have wanted to get involved, even if I'd gone for him. And anyway, if I'd actually gotten involved in some way, there was always the chance that Ralph here might've been pushed into the middle of it, trying to defend me, you know. And I couldn't put him at risk, could I? Sam might've asked him to step outside, and Ralph here is in no condition to get into a brawl with anyone. Are you, sweetheart?”

Ralph here was more a blob in a safari jacket than an actual person, Noreen's shadow and constant companion. No one in the History of British Architecture class had managed to get more than ten words from the man in the eleven days they'd been in Cambridge, and there were those among the larger group of students taking other classes in St. Stephen's College who swore he was altogether mute.

What went for his condition was hypoglycemia, which was the topic Noreen segued into once she was done dissecting the Cleary marriage and Sam's attraction to the ladies in general and Polly Simpson in particular. Ralph here, she informed her listeners, was an absolute martyr to the ailment. Low blood sugar was the curse of Ralph here's family, she explained, and he had the worst case of any of them. He'd even passed out once at the wheel of their car while on the freeway, don't you know. It was only through Noreen's quick thinking and even quicker acting that utter disaster was avoided.

“I grabbed the wheel so fast, you'd think I'd been trained as a rescue professional of some sort,” Noreen revealed. “It's astonishing the level we can rise to when the worst happens, don't you agree?” As was her bent, she waited for no reply. Instead, she turned to her husband and said, “You've got your nuts and chews to take on the outing today, don't you, sweetie my own? We can't have you passing out cold in the middle of Abinger Manor, now can we?”

“Up 'n the room,” Ralph said into his bowl of corn flakes.

“Just make sure you don't leave them there,” his wife replied. “You know how you are.”

“How you are is henpecked,” was the description offered by Cleve Houghton as he joined their table. “Ralph needs exercise, not that junk you keep feeding him every time he turns around, Noreen.”

“Speaking of junk,” was Noreen's rejoinder with a meaningful look at the plate he carried, overloaded with eggs, sausage, grilled tomatoes, and mushrooms. “I wouldn't be so quick to cast stones, Cleve dear. Surely that can't be good for your arteries.”

“I did eight miles along the backs this morning,” he replied. “All the way to Grantchester with no heavy breathing, so my arteries are fine, thank you. The rest of you should try some running. Hell, it's the best exercise known to man.” He tossed back his hair-thick and dark, it was, something a man of fifty could be proud of-and caught sight of Polly Simpson just entering the dining room. He amended his comments with, “The second best exercise,” and smiled lazily and with hooded eyes in Polly's direction.

Noreen tittered. “Goodness, Cleve. Rein yourself in. I believe she's spoken for already. Or at least she's spoken about.” Noreen used her own comment as introduction to the topic she'd covered before Cleve's appearance on the scene. But she added a few more thoughts this time round, most of them centering on Polly Simpson as a Natural Born Troublemaker and someone certainly fingered by Noreen on Day One to cause some sort of dissension in their midst. After all, when she wasn't sucking up to their instructor-the better to massage her final grade, no doubt-with exclamations over the beauties in every slide the tiresome woman foisted daily upon her students, she was cozying up to one man or another in a way that she probably thought of as friendly but anyone else with a grain of sense would have called outright provocative. “What's she actually up to, I ask you?” Noreen demanded of anyone who was continuing to listen at this point. “There they sit with their heads together night after night, she and Sam Cleary. And doing what? You can't tell me they're discussing flowers. They're laying their plans for afterwards. Together. You mark my words.”

Whether the words were marked was something no one commented upon since Polly Simpson was fast upon her classmates, carrying a tray on which she'd placed a virtuously weight-conscious single banana and a cup of coffee. She wore her camera slung round her neck as usual, and when she set down her tray, she strode to the end of the table and focused her shutter on the group at their morning meal. On the afternoon of their first session in the History of British Architecture class, Polly had declared to them that she would be the seminar's official historian, and so far she'd been as good as her word. “Believe me, you'll want this as a souvenir,” she announced each time she caught someone in her lens. “I promise. People always like my pictures when they see them.”

“Jesus, Polly. Not now,” Cleve groused as the girl made adjustments to her lens at the far end of the breakfast table, but he sounded good-natured about his complaint and no one missed the fact that he ran one hand back through his hair to give it just the sort of GQ tousle that promised to make him look thirty again.

“The whole class isn't present, Polly dear,” Noreen said. “And surely you want everyone in the picture, don't you?”

Polly looked around, then smiled and said, “Well, here's Em and Howard showing up. We've got most of the crowd.”

“But surely not the most important people,” Noreen persisted as the other two students joined them. “Don't you want to wait for Sam and Frances?”

“Not everyone needs to be in every picture,” Polly said, quite as if Noreen's question hadn't been fraught with enough undercurrents to drown a gorilla.

“All the same…”Noreen murmured, and she asked Emily Guy and Howard Breen-two San Franciscans who'd buddy-bonded on the first day of class-if they'd run into either Sam or Frances on L staircase where they all had rooms. “They didn't get much sleep last night,” Noreen said with a meaningful glance in Polly's direction. “I wonder, could they have slept right through their alarm this morning?”

“Not with Howard singing in the shower,” Emily said. “I heard him from two floors below.”

Howard said, “No day begins right without a morning tribute to Barbra.”

Noreen, not much liking this potential shift in the topic, put an end to it by saying, “And here I thought Bette Midler was the rage with all of your sort.”

At this, there was an uncomfortable little silence at the table. Polly's lips parted as she lowered her camera. Emily Guy knotted her eyebrows and did her spinster's-innocence bit of pretending she didn't quite understand what Noreen was implying. Cleve Houghton snorted, always maintaining his manly man pose. And Ralph Tucker kept spooning up corn flakes.

Howard himself was the one to break the silence. He said, “Bette Midler? Nope. I only like Bette if I'm wearing my high heels and fishnets, Noreen. And I can't get into the shower with them on. Water ruins the patent leather.”

Polly snickered, Emily smiled, and Cleve stared at Howard a good ten seconds before bellowing an appreciative guffaw. “I'd like to see you in heels and fishnets,” he said.

“All in good time,” Howard replied. “I'll need to eat my breakfast first.”

So Noreen Tucker, you see, might also have been a good candidate for murder. She liked stirring the pot to discover what sort of burnt-on goodies were adhering to the bottom, and when she had them good and stirred up, she liked the way they bittered the brew. She didn't realize that she was doing this, however. Her intentions were simple enough, no matter what their outcome actually was. If conversations revolved around topics she had chosen, she could orchestrate the flow of discussion and thereby keep herself at the head of the class. Being at the head of the class meant having all eyes fixed upon her. And having all eyes fixed on her in Cambridge ameliorated the sting of having no eyes fixed upon her anywhere else.

The problem was Victoria Wilder-Scott, their instructor, a dizzy woman who favoured khaki skirts and madras shirts and who habitually and unconsciously sat in class during their discussions in such a way as to show her underpants to the gentleman students. Victoria was there to fill their minds with the minutiae of British architecture. She wasn't the least interested in summer session gossip and she and Noreen had been at polite but deadly loggerheads from the first, a pitched battle to see who was going to control what went for content in the classroom. Noreen always tried to sideline her with probing and generally absurd questions about the personal lives of the architects whose work they were studying: Did Christopher Wren find his name an impediment to acquiring a lasting love in his life? Did Adam's ceilings imply something deeply sensuous and ungovernable within his nature? But Victoria Wilder-Scott merely stared at Noreen like a woman waiting for a translation to be made before she said, “Yes. Well,” and brushed Noreen's questions away like the thirsty female mosquitoes they were.

She'd been preparing her History of British Architecture students for the trip to Abinger Manor from the first day of class. Abinger Manor, deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside, reflected every style of architecture known to Great Britain while simultaneously being the repository of everything from priceless rococo silver to paintings by English, Flemish, and Italian masters. Victoria had shown her students endless slides of coved ceilings, broken pediments, gilded capitals on marble pilasters, ornate stone drip spouts, and dogtoothed cornices, and when their brains were saturated with architectural details, she sopped up the overflow with additional slides of porcelain, silver, sculptures, tapestries, and furniture galore. This, she told them, was the crown jewel of English properties. The stately home had only recently been opened to view and the wait to see it among people who were not so fortunate as to be enrolled in the History of British Architecture class at Cambridge University's summer session was a minimum of twelve months. And that's only if the eager visitor spent days on end trying to get through by telephone for reservations. “None of this reservations-by-Internet nonsense,” Victoria Wilder-Scott told them. “At Abinger Manor, they do things the old-fashioned way.” Which was, of course, the proper way to do them.

They would see this monument to days gone by-not to mention to propriety-in a few hours, after a rather long drive across the countryside.

They were to meet that morning after breakfast at the Queen's

Gate, which gave way to Garrett Hostel Lane, at the end of which their mini-coach would be waiting for them. It was here, where the assembled students picked up their sack lunches and browsed through them with the usual complaints about institutional food, that they were finally joined by a subdued Sam Cleary and a miserable-looking Frances.

If clothes made a statement about the outcome of their wee-hours discord, Sam had clearly emerged the winner: dapper as always in a trim sports jacket, with his bow tie cleverly complementing the forest green highlights in his tweed trousers. Frances, on the other hand, was dowdiness incarnate in a drab, too-large tunic and a matching too-large pair of trousers. She looked like a refugee from the Cultural Revolution.

Polly seemed eager to mend whatever breach she might have caused between the professor and his wife. After all, she was nearly fifty years Sam's junior and a girl with a boyfriend back home in Chicago to boot. She might have enjoyed the attentions of an older man-a really older man, as she would have put it- in the college pub for several nights running, but that was not to say that she would ever have considered fanning the flames of Sam's interest to build to something more. True, he was extremely nice looking with all that gray hair and that blush of good health on his cheeks. But there was no way around the fact that he was also old, and he couldn't compare to Polly's own David despite David's so far unshakable and somewhat obsessive interest in developing a career studying howler monkeys.

Polly called out a cheerful good morning to the Clearys and motioned to them with her camera. She'd put on an enormous telephoto lens for their outing, which served her purposes well at the moment. She could take the picture she wanted of Sam and his wife while keeping her distance from them. She said, “Stay right there by the herbaceous border. The colours are sensational with your hair, Frances.”

Frances's hair was gray. Not that stunning white that some women are blessed with but battleship gray. She had a lot of it, which was fortunate, but the dullness of its colour made her look dour at even her best moments. And this not being one of her best moments, she looked pretty much the worse for wear.

“Amazing what lack of sleep can do to one, isn't it?” Noreen Tucker murmured with great meaning as the Clearys approached the rest of the students after posing cooperatively-at least on Sam's part-for Polly's picture. “Ralph, you haven't forgotten your nuts and chews, have you, sweetie? We don't want any crises in the hallowed halls of Abinger Manor this morning.”

Ralph's answer comprised a downward motion with his thumb in the direction of his waist. This was easily interpretable: The plastic bag in which he kept his trail mix was pluming out of his safari jacket like the tail of an infant marsupial.

“If you feel the shakes coming, you have a handful of that right away,” Noreen instructed him. “No waiting around for permission from someone, you hear me, Ralph?”

“Will do, will do.” Ralph meandered over to the lunch bags next to the Queen's Gate and huffed his way down to pick two of them out of the wicker basket.

“That guy'll be lucky to make it to sixty,” Cleve Houghton said to Howard Breen. “And what're you doing to take care of yourself?”

“Showering only with friends,” Howard replied.

They were joined then by Victoria Wilder-Scott, who steamed in their direction in her khaki and madras with her glasses perched on the top of her head and a three-ring binder clutched to her bony chest. She squinted at her students as if perplexed by the fact that they were out of focus. A moment later, she realised why.

She said, “Oops, the specs! Right, then,” and lowered them to her nose as she continued breezily. “You've all read your brochures, I trust? And the second chapter in Great Houses of the British Isles? So we're all perfectly clear on what we're going to see at Abinger Manor? That marvelous collection of Meissen that you saw in your textbook. The finest in England. The paintings by Gainsborough, Le Brun, Turner, Constable, and Reynolds. That lovely piece by Whistler. The Holbein. The rococo silver. Some remarkable furniture. The Italian sculptures. All those wonderful period clothes. The gardens are exquisite, by the way: They rival Sissinghurst. And the park… Well, we won't have time to see all of it, but we'll do our best. You have your notebooks? Your cameras?”

“Polly has hers,” Noreen pointed out. “I believe that makes any others redundant.”

Victoria blinked in the direction of their class historian. From the first, she'd made no secret of the fact that she approved of Polly's zeal, and she only wished more of her students were willing to throw themselves into the Cambridge experience in like manner. To Victoria, that was the trouble with agreeing to teach these summer sessions in the first place: They were generally flooded by well-to-do Americans whose idea of learning stopped at watching television documentaries from the comfort of their living room sofas.

“Yes, well,” Victoria said and beamed at Polly. “Have you documented our pending departure?”

“Get over by the gate, you guys,” Polly said in answer. “Let's have a group shot before we take off.”

“You pose with the others,” Victoria said. “I'll take the picture.”

“Not with this camera,” Polly said. “It's got a light meter fit only for an Einstein. No one can figure it out. It belonged to my grandpa.”

“Is your grandfather still alive, then?” Noreen asked archly. “He must be… what, Polly? Terribly old. Seventy perhaps?”

“Not a bad guess,” Polly said. “He's seventy-two.”

“A real antique.”

“Yeah. But he's a tough old geezer and completely full of-” Polly stopped herself. Her gaze went to Sam, then to Frances, then to Noreen, who said pleasantly, “Full of what?”

“Full of wit and wisdom, no doubt.” Emily Guy put this in. Like Victoria Wilder-Scott, she admired Polly Simpson's energy and enthusiasm and she envied, without being consumed by that emotion, the fact that life was unspooling before her and not closing off as it was for herself. For her own part, Emily Guy had come to Cambridge to forget an unhappy love affair with a married man that had consumed the last seven years of her life, so any indication in another woman of a propensity to involve herself hopelessly in love triangles was something that she reacted to badly. Like Noreen, she'd seen Polly in conversation with Sam Cleary in the evenings. But unlike Noreen, she'd taken it for nothing more than a young girl's kindness towards an older man who was clearly besotted with her. Frances Cleary's jealousy was not Polly Simpson's problem, Emily Guy had decided the first time she saw Frances frown over the tabletop in Polly's direction.

Further to making amends to Frances, though, Polly did her best to stay out of Sam Cleary's sight line for the trip to Abinger Manor. She walked to the mini-coach in the company of Cleve Houghton, and she spent the journey to Buckinghamshire riding across the aisle from him and involving him in earnest conversation.

These two activities, of course, were not missed by Noreen Tucker, who as we've seen, liked to start fires wherever she could. “Our Polly definitely wants more than a cracker,” she murmured to her silent husband as they rolled along the parched summer countryside. “And you can bet what she's after is made out of gold.”

Ralph gave no reply-it was always rather difficult to tell whether he was cognizant or merely somnambulating his way through a day-so Noreen cast around for a more attentive listener, finding it in Howard Breen across the aisle from her. He was leafing through the brochure they'd all been given on the glories of Abinger Manor. She said to him, “Age doesn't matter when money's involved, don't you agree, Howard?”

Howard raised his head, saying, “Money? For what?”

“Money for baubles. Money for travel. Money for living a fancier life. He's a doctor. Divorced. Got piles of cash. And she's been drooling over those slides of Victoria's since the first day of class, if you haven't noticed. So wouldn't she just love a nice antique or two to take home to Chicago as a souvenir? And isn't Cleve Houghton just the man to buy her one now Sam Cleary's been brought into line by Frances?”

Howard lowered his brochure and looked to his companion on the journey-Emily Guy-for an interpretation of Noreen's remarks. “She's talking about Polly and Cleve Houghton,” Emily said and added in a low voice, “having moved on from Polly and Sam.”

“It's all about money with a girl like that,” Noreen said. “Believe me, if you had a bucket or two, she'd be after you as well, Howard, no matter your… well, your sexual preferences if I may call them that. Consider yourself lucky to be escaping.”

Howard cast a glance in the direction of Polly, who was in the process of illustrating some point she was making by gesturing with her hands. He said, “Damn. Escaping? I don't want that. I can always go either AC or DC. If the moon's full and the wind's blowing from the east, I'm ripe for the plucking. Matter of fact, Noreen, you've started to look pretty damn good to me in the past few days.”

Noreen looked flustered. “Why I hardly think-”

“I noticed,” Howard grinned.

Noreen wasn't someone to take a put-down lightly, nor was she a woman who chose to respond with a frontal attack. She merely smiled and said, “Well, if you're bent that way today, Howard, I'm afraid I can't help you as I'm spoken for. But I'm sure our Emily will be happy to oblige. In fact, I'll bet that's just what she's been hoping for. A man's interest can make a woman feel… well, like anything's possible, can't it? Even that an AC might become a DC on a permanent basis. I expect you'd like that, Emily. Every woman needs a man, after all.”

Emily grew hot despite the fact that there was no way on earth that Noreen Tucker could have known anything about her recent past: the hopes she'd invested in a love affair that had seemed like a case of star-crossed lovers meeting at last and had turned out to be nothing more than a squalid little attempt to make something special from what was actually a series of hurried couplings in hotels that had left her feeling lonelier than before.

So she wasn't the first person that day to think that Noreen Tucker might serve a greater purpose for mankind by being rubbed off the planet.

At the front of the coach, Victoria Wilder-Scott had spent most of the trip across the countryside expatiating by microphone on the beauties of Abinger Manor. She appeared to be making the peroration of her remarks as the tour coach turned down a leafy lane. “Thus, the family remained staunchly Royalist to the end. In the north tower, you'll see a priest's hole where King Charles was hidden prior to his escape to the Continent. And in the long gallery, you'll be challenged to find a Gibb door that's completely concealed. It was through this door that the king began his escape on that fateful night. And it was because of the family's continued loyalty to him that the owner was later elevated to the rank of earl. That title has passed down through the family, of course, and while the present earl comes only at the weekends to the estate, his mother-who herself, by the way, is the daughter of the sixth earl of Asherton-lives on the grounds, and I wouldn't be surprised if we ran into her. She's known for mixing in with the guests. A bit of an eccentric… as these types frequently are.”

When the tour coach made its final turn and the History of British Architecture class got their first glimpse of Abinger Manor, an appreciative murmur went up among them despite whatever else was on their minds. Victoria Wilder-Scott turned in her seat, delighted to hear their reaction to the place. She said, “I promised you, didn't I? It does not disappoint.”

Across a moat that was studded with lily pads, two crenellated towers stood at the sides of the building's front entry. They rose five stories, and on either side of them, crowstepped gables were surmounted by impossibly tall, impossibly decorated chimneys. Bay windows, a later addition to the house, extended over the moat and gave inhabitants a view of the extensive garden. This was edged on one side by a tall yew hedge and on the other by a brick wall against which grew an herbaceous border of lavender, aster, and dianthus. The History of British Architecture class wandered towards this with a quarter hour to explore it prior to their scheduled tour.

They were not the only visitors to the manor that morning. A large tour coach pulled into the environs of the manor directly behind them, and from it debouched a crowd of German tourists who immediately joined Polly Simpson in taking photographs of the front of the manor house. Two family groups arrived simultaneously in Range Rovers and immediately struck out for the maze, in which they quickly became lost and began shouting at each other to help them find their way. And a silver Bentley joined the other vehicles moments later, gliding to a stop in near perfect silence.

From this final vehicle, a handsome couple stepped: the man tall and blond and dressed with the sort of casual flair that suggests money; the woman dark and lithe and yawning, as if she'd slept for most of the journey.

Unbeknownst to the rest of the visitors to Abinger Manor on this Day in Question, these last two arrivals were Thomas Lynley and his intended bride Lady Helen Clyde. And they had a vested interest in being there since the primary inhabitant of Abinger Manor was Lynley's own fearsome aunt Augusta, the aforementioned dowager countess, who wished her nephew to see for himself that one could open one's property to view without disaster dancing attendance. She wanted him to do the same with his own extensive property in Cornwall, but so far she'd not made much progress persuading him of the idea's efficacy.

“We're not all the Duchess of Devonshire,” Lynley would tell her gently.

“If a next-to-nothing Mitford can do it and bring it off, then so bloody well can I,” was her reply.

But they didn't go in search of Aunt Augusta, as well they might have done, considering the relationship. Instead, Thomas Lynley and Helen Clyde joined the others in the garden and admired what his aunt had done to keep it blooming despite the drought.

Of course, the others had no way of knowing that this Thomas Lynley who quietly walked round the garden with his arm lightly dropped round his future wife's shoulders was actually a member of the family who now lived in a single wing of the stately building. But more importantly-especially considering the events that were to occur within that building-the others had no way of knowing that his means of employment was as a detective with New Scotland Yard. Instead what they saw was what people generally saw when they looked upon Thomas Lynley and Helen Clyde: the careful expenditure of money on an unostentatious quality of appearance and of dress; the polite and deferential silence of years of good breeding; and a bond of love that looked like friendship because it was from friendship that that love had blossomed.

In other words, they were grossly out of place among the visitors to Abinger Manor that day.

When the bell rang for the tour to begin, the group assembled at the front door. They were greeted by a determined-looking girl in her mid-twenties with spots on her chin and too much eye makeup. She ushered them inside, locked the door behind them in case anyone had any ideas of absconding with a precious-not to mention portable-knickknack-and she began speaking in the sort of English that suggested she'd been well prepared for foreigners. Simple words, simply spoken, with plenty of pauses.

They were, she told them, in the original screens passage of the manor house. The wall to their left was the original screen. They would be able to admire its carving when they got to the other side of it. If they would please stay together and not stray behind the corded-off areas… Photographs were permitted only without a flash.

Things went well at first. The group maintained a respectful silence, and pictures were taken dutifully without flash. The only questions asked were asked by Victoria Wilder-Scott and if the guide offered apocryphal answers, no one was the wiser.

It was in this manner that they came to the Great Hall, a magnificent room that was everything Victoria Wilder-Scott had promised her students it would be. While the guide catalogued its features for them, the group dutifully took note of the towering coved ceiling, of the minstrel gallery and its intricate fretwork, of the tapestries, the portraits, the fireplaces, and the carpets. Cameras focused and clicked. Appreciative murmurs rose. Somewhere in the room, a clock delicately chimed half past ten.

As if in accompaniment to this, a ferocious growl interrupted the guide's programmed speech. Someone giggled and a few people turned to see Polly Simpson clutching her stomach. “Sorry,” she said. “Only a banana for breakfast.”

This remark lit something of a fire beneath the normally taciturn Ralph Tucker. While the tour group attended back to their guide, he sidled over to Polly and gallantly offered her the front of his safari jacket.

“Energy boost,” he said. “Good for the blood.”

She smiled her thanks at him and dipped her hand inside to scoop out some trail mix. He did the same. Of course, they had to eat surreptitiously and they did it like two naughty school kids, with attendant snickers of mischief. It was easy enough to carry off since their guide was leading them out of the Great Hall, where they went up a flight of stairs and into a narrow, corridor-like room.

“This long gallery,” the guide informed them as they assembled behind a velvet cord that ran the length of the room, “is one of the most famous in England. It contains not only the finest collection of rococo silver in the country, part of which you can see arranged to the left of the fireplace on that demi-lune table- that's a Sheraton piece, by the way-but also a Le Brun, two Gainsboroughs, a Reynolds, a Holbein, a charming Whistler, two Turners, three Van Dycks, and a number of lesser known artists. In the case at the end of the room, you'll find a hat, gloves, and stockings that belonged to Elizabeth the First. And here's one of the most remarkable features in the entire house.” She walked to the left of the Sheraton table and pushed lightly on a section of the paneling. A door swung open, previously hidden by the structure of the wall.

Several of the German tourists clapped appreciatively. The guide said, “It's a Gibb door. Clever, isn't it? Servants could come and go through it and never be seen in the public rooms of the house.”

Cameras clicked in the guide's direction. Necks craned. Voices murmured.

And that's when it happened.

The guide was saying, “I'd like you to especially take note of-” when events conspired to interrupt her.

Someone gasped, “Hon! Nor! Hon!” and someone else cried, “Oh my God!” A third voice called out, “Watch out! Ralph's going down!”

And in short order, that's exactly what happened. Ralph Tucker gave an inarticulate cry and crashed down onto one of Abinger Manor's valuable satinwood tables. He upset an enormous flower arrangement, smashed a porcelain bowl of potpourri which sent its contents flying across the Persian carpet, and toppled the table onto its side. This, in effect, ripped the velvet cord from its brass posts down the entire length of the room as Ralph landed in an unmoving heap on the floor.

Noreen Tucker shrieked, “Ralph! Sweetie pie!” and plunged through the crowd to get to her spouse. She pulled on his shoulder as chaos broke out around her. People pressed forward, others backed away. Someone began praying, someone else cursing. Three German women fell onto sofas that were available now that the line of demarcation was gone. A man shouted for water while another called for air.

There were thirty-two people in the room with absolutely no one in charge since the guide-whose training had been limited to memorizing salient details about the furnishings of Abinger Manor and not first aid-stood rooted to the floor as if she herself had had some part in whatever had just happened to Ralph Tucker.

Voices came from every direction.

“Is he…?”

“Jesus. He can't be…”

“Ralph! Ralphie!”

“Sie ist gerade ohnmdchtig geworden, nicht wahr…”

“Someone call an ambulance, for God's sake.” This last was said by Cleve Houghton, who'd managed to fight his way through the crowd and who had dropped to his knees, had taken one look at Ralph Tucker's face, and had begun administering CPR. “Now!” he shouted at the guide who finally roused herself, flew through the Gibb door, and pounded up the stairs.

“Ralphie! Ralphie!” Noreen Tucker wailed as Cleve paused, took Ralph's pulse, and went back to CPR.

“Kami er nicht etwas unternehmen?” one of the Germans cried as another said, “Schauen Sie sich die Gesichtsfarbe an.”

It was then that Thomas Lynley joined Cleve, removing his jacket and handing it over to Helen Clyde. He eased through the crowd, straddled the elephantine figure of Ralph Tucker, and took over the heart massage as Cleve Houghton moved to Ralph's mouth and continued blowing into the man's lungs.

“Save him, save him!” Noreen cried. “Help him. Please!”

Victoria Wilder-Scott reached her side. She said, “They're helping him, dear. If you'll come this way…”

“I won't leave my Ralph! He just needed to eat.”

“Is he choking?” someone asked.

“Have you tried the Heimlich?”

And the tour guide crashed back into the room. She called out, “I've just phoned…” But her words faltered, then stopped. She could see as well as everyone else that the two men working on the body on the floor were attempting to revive what was already a corpse.

Thomas Lynley took charge at this point. He brought forth his warrant card and showed it to the guide, saying quietly, “Thomas Lynley. New Scotland Yard. Have someone tell my aunt-Lady Fabringham-there's been a mishap in the gallery, but for God's sake keep her out of here, all right?” He knew Augusta's propensity for involving herself in matters not her concern, and the last thing they needed was to have her tramping round giving orders which would only complicate matters. An ambulance was on its way, after all, and there was nothing more to be done other than to get this unfortunate individual to hospital where he'd be pronounced dead by an official employed for just that purpose. Lynley suggested that the others continue on their tour if for no other reason than to clear the room for the arrival of the rescue crew.

No one much felt like going forward to see the further glories of Abinger Manor at this juncture, but leaving the weeping Noreen Tucker behind, the rest of the company filed obediently out of the room. This was not before Lynley bent to the body on the floor, however, and opened the fist that was clenched in death.

Cleve Houghton said to him, “Heart failure. I've seen them go like this before,” but while Lynley nodded, he made no reply. Instead he examined the remains of the trail mix that dribbled from Ralph's fingers onto the floor. When he looked up, it was not at Cleve but rather at the departing group. And he looked at them with serious speculation because it was more than clear to the country-born Thomas Lynley if to no one else at the moment that Ralph Tucker had been murdered.

While Noreen Tucker sank weeping into a priceless Chippendale chair and Helen Clyde went to her and put a comforting hand upon her shoulder, the door closed behind the tour group and within moments they were being asked to admire the drawing room, especially the pendant plasterwork of its remarkable ceiling. It was called the King Edward Drawing Room, their much-subdued guide told them, its name taken from the statue of Edward IV that stood over the mantelpiece. It was a three-quarter-size statue, she explained, not life-size, for unlike most men of his time, Edward IV was well over six feet tall. In fact, when he rode into London on the twenty-sixth of February in 1460…

Frankly, no one could believe that the young woman was going on. There was something indecent about being asked to admire chandeliers, flocked wallpaper, eighteenth-century furniture, Chinese vases, and a French chimneypiece in the face of Ralph Tucker's death. No matter that the man was essentially no one to any of them. He was still dead and out of respect for his passing, they might have abandoned the rest of the tour.

So everyone was restless and uneasy. The air was close. Composure seemed brittle. When Cleve Houghton finally rejoined them in the winter dining room with the news that Ralph Tucker's body had been taken away, he passed along the information that Thomas Lynley had also put out a call for the local police.

“Police?” Emily Guy whispered, horrified by the implication.

The word quickly swept through the rest of the company. The students of the History of British Architecture class began eyeing each other with grave suspicion.

Everyone knew it had to be the trail mix. The difficulty was the same for all of them, however: No one could root out the answer to the pressing question of why anyone on earth or anywhere else would want to murder Ralph Tucker. Noreen Tucker, yes. She'd stuck her nose into everyone else's business from day one, and she was certainly the least likely among them to win the Congeniality Award. Or perhaps Sam Cleary, done in by his wife for stepping outside the vows of marriage one time too many for her liking. Or even Frances herself, eliminated by Sam to give him a clear shot at Something More with Polly Simpson. But Ralph? No. It didn't make sense.

Everyone's thoughts thus went in the same general direction. It was when they ended up with Polly Simpson that several individuals remembered a terrible but significant detail: Polly too had eaten from Ralph Tucker's trail mix and not for the first time, as a matter of fact. For hadn't she also dipped into it on their very first outing when Ralph, in a moment of bonhomie that was not repeated, generously offered the mix round the tour coach in place of afternoon tea on their way back to Cambridge after a long day looking at properties in Norfolk? Yes, she had. She alone certainly had. So it was possible that she had been fingered for murder, with Ralph Tucker merely an unfortunate casualty who'd had to be done away with as well.

This made more than one person watch Polly with some concern, waiting for the least sign that she too was about to collapse from whatever it was that had taken Ralph from them. Someone even quietly suggested that she might want to retire to a lavatory and do what she could to upchuck just in case. But Polly, who didn't seem to understand the implication being made, merely grimaced at the suggestion and went on taking her pictures, albeit noticeably subdued from her usual ebullience.

Death by trail mix naturally brought up the question of poison in people's minds. And that made people ask themselves how someone was supposed to get a poison in Cambridge. You couldn't just walk into the local pharmacy and ask for something fast-acting, untraceable, and non-messy. So it stood to reason that the poison in question had been brought from home. And that led people into thinking more seriously about Noreen Tucker and whether her devotion to dear Ralph was all that it seemed.

The group was in the library when Thomas Lynley and his lady rejoined them, with Lynley running his speculative gaze over everyone in the room. His companion did much the same, having been brought into the picture while poor Ralph was being loaded into the ambulance. They separated and took up positions in different parts of the crowd. Neither of them paid the slightest attention to what the guide was saying. Instead they gave their full attention to the visitors to Abinger Manor.

From the library they went into the chapel, accompanied by the sounds of their own footsteps, the echoing voice of the guide, the occasional snapping of cameras. Lynley moved through the group, saying nothing to anyone save his companion, with whom he spoke a few words at the door. Again they separated.

From the chapel they went to the armory. From there into the billiard room. From there into the music room. From there, they traipsed down two flights of stairs and went into the kitchen. The buttery beyond it had been turned into a gift shop, and the Germans made for this as the Americans did likewise. It was at this moment that Lynley spoke.

“If I might see everyone together,” he said as they began to scatter. “If you'll just stay here in the kitchen for a moment.”

Mild protests rose from the German group. The Americans said nothing.

“We've a problem to consider, I'm afraid,” Lynley said, “with regard to Mr. Tucker's death.”

“Problem?” Sam Cleary asked the question as others chimed in with “What's going on?” and “What do you want with us?”

“It was heart failure,” Cleve Houghton asserted. “I've seen enough of that to tell you-”

“As have I,” a heavily accented voice put in. The remark came from a member of the German party, and he looked none too pleased that their tour was once again being disrupted. “I am a doctor. I, too, have seen heart failure. I know what I see.”

This begged the question, naturally, of why the man hadn't done something to help out during the crisis, but no one mentioned that fact. Instead, Thomas Lynley extended his hand. In his palm lay half a dozen seeds. “It looks like heart failure,” he explained. “That's what an alkaloid does. It paralyzes the heart in a matter of minutes. These are yew, by the way.”

“Yew?” someone asked. “What was yew-”

“Those would be from the potpourri,” Victoria Wilder-Scott pointed out. “It spilled all over the carpet when Mr. Tucker fell.”

Lynley shook his head. “They were mixed in with the nuts in his hand,” he said. “And the bag he was carrying in his jacket was peppered with them. He was murdered, I'm afraid.”

So everyone's secret fears had been harped aright. And while some of them dwelled once more on the question of why Ralph Tucker had been murdered, the rest of them looked to the only person in the kitchen who would know beyond a doubt the potential harm contained in a bit of yew.

The Germans, in the meantime, were protesting heartily. The doctor led them. “You have no business with us,” he said. “That man was a stranger. I insist that we be allowed to leave.”

“Of course,” Thomas Lynley said. “I agree. And leave you shall, just as soon as we solve the problem of the silver.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It appears that one of you took the opportunity of the chaos in the gallery to remove two pieces of rococo silver from the table by the fireplace. They're milk jugs. Rather small, extremely ornate, and definitely missing. This isn't my jurisdiction, of course, but until the local police arrive to start their inquiries into Mr. Tucker's death, I'd like to take care of this small detail of the silver myself.” He could, of course, only too easily imagine what his aunt Augusta would have to say about the matter if he didn't take care of it.

“What are you going to do?” Frances Cleary asked fearfully.

“Do you plan to keep us here until one of us admits to something?” the German doctor scoffed. “You cannot search us without some authority.”

“That's correct, of course,” Thomas Lynley said. “Unless you agree to be searched.”

Silence ensued. Into it, feet shuffled. A throat cleared. Urgent conversation was conducted in German. Someone rustled papers in a notebook.

Cleve Houghton was the first to speak. He looked over the group. “Hell, I have no objection.”

“But the women…” Victoria Wilder-Scott pointed out with some delicacy.

Lynley nodded to his companion, who was standing by a display of copper kettles at the edge of the group. “This is Lady Helen Clyde,” he told them. “She'll search the women.”

And so they searched: the men in the scullery and the women in the warming room across the corridor.

Both Thomas Lynley and Helen Clyde made a thorough job of it. Lynley was all business. Helen employed a more gentle touch.

Each of them had the individuals in their keeping undress and redress. Each of them emptied pockets, bags, rucksacks, and canvas totes. Lynley did all of this in a grim silence designed to intimidate. Helen chatted with the women in a manner designed to put them at ease.

In neither case did they find anything, however. Even Victoria Wilder-Scott and the tour guide had been searched.

Lynley told them to wait in the tearoom. He turned back to the stairway at the far end of the kitchen.

“Where's he going now?” Polly Simpson asked, hands clutching her camera to her chest.

“He'll have to look for the silver in the rest of the house,” Emily Guy pointed out.

“But that could take forever,” Frances Cleary whispered.

“It doesn't matter, does it? We're going to have to wait for the local police anyway.”

“Hell no, this was heart failure,” Cleve Houghton said. “There's no silver missing. It's probably being cleaned somewhere.”

But this, alas, was not the case, as Lynley discovered when he made the report he did not wish to make to his paternal aunt. Augusta was all suitable horror and compassion when told that a visitor to her home had died on the premises. But she was vengeance incarnate when she learned that a “sneaky little criminal” had had the sheer audacity to take possession of one of her priceless treasures. She expounded for a good five minutes on what she intended to do to the perpetrator of this crime, and it was only by assuring his aunt that the Law-in the person of himself-would work tirelessly on her behalf that Lynley was able to prevent the woman from accosting the visitors herself. He left Augusta to the ministrations of her three corgis, and retraced his steps to find the tour group.

They had left the buttery and were being held in the courtyard, and Lynley could see them from the windows in the private wing where his aunt now lived. He studied them, taking note of the fact that even in crisis people tended to adhere to cultural stereotypes. The Germans stood grimly in tiny clusters of people with whom they were already intimate. Husbands with their wives. Wives and husbands with their children. In-laws with their offspring and grandchildren. Students with their compatriots. They did not venture beyond the boundaries of these already established groups and for the most part they stood in stiff silence. The Americans, on the other hand, mingled not only with each other but also with the English family groups who'd been on the tour with them. They spoke to each other, some somberly and some with a fair degree of animation. And one among them even took a few pictures.

Lynley had noted Polly Simpson earlier, as a reflex reaction that grew from the fact that he'd once been in love with a young photographer. He wasn't so many years away from that affair that he hadn't noticed-as he would have done during the time of that involvement-the equipment which Polly was using. It was odd, he thought as he watched her, how our attachment to a person allows us to learn things that we never expect to learn. Not only about ourselves, not only about them, but about aspects of life that we might otherwise remain in ignorance of. Watching Polly below him in the courtyard, Lynley was able to imagine his former lover in the same circumstance, with the same enthusiasm for light and texture and composition, able to concentrate on the work she was doing by dismissing what had just preceded it.

This was part of the resilience of youth, he decided (somewhat pompously since he himself was not yet forty), and having spent fifteen years in pursuit of the criminal element, he allowed himself a moment wistfully watching Polly Simpson at work with her camera before retracing his steps to the group. He was crossing through the kitchen on his way to the buttery when the significance of what he'd just seen in the courtyard finally struck him. And even then it only struck him because he'd recalled more than once playing the pack mule for his former lover's photographic equipment, hearing her say more to herself than to him, “I'll need the twenty-eight millimeter to get this shot,” and then standing patiently by while she made the switch in her lenses.

More than that, he realised that all throughout the tour and before it-as he and Helen had made a circuit of the grounds among the other visitors to Abinger Manor-he'd seen a truth without actually registering what he was seeing. Which was so easy to do, he thought, when you don't consider the logic behind what's in front of your eyes.

He strode through the buttery. From there, he went out into the courtyard. So sure he was of what he was about to do that he dismissed the Germans and the two English families and waited in grim silence while they left the courtyard. When they had done so, he sought out Polly Simpson and without ceremony, he took the camera from her shoulder.

She protested with, “Hey! That's mine. What're you-”

He silenced her by opening the first of the film containers that were affixed to the strap of the camera. It was empty. As were the others. He said, “I've been noticing you taking pictures since we arrived. How many would you say you've exposed?”

She said, “I don't know. I don't keep count. I just keep taking them till I run out.”

“But you've brought no extra film, have you?”

“I didn't think I'd need it.”

“No? Curious. You began taking pictures the moment you stepped into the garden. You haven't stopped, except during the crisis in the gallery, I expect. Or did you photograph that as well?”

Emily Guy gasped. Sam Cleary said, “See here…” and would have gone further had his wife not clutched at his arm.

“What's this all about?” Victoria Wilder-Scott said. “Everyone knows Polly always takes pictures.”

“Indeed? With this lens?” Lynley asked.

“It's a macro zoom,” Polly said, and as Lynley grasped the lens forcefully, she cried, “Hey! Don't! That thing cost a mint.”

“Did it,” Lynley said. He twisted it off. He upended it smartly against the palm of his hand. Two pieces of silver tumbled out.

Several people gasped.

“A dummy,” Cleve Houghton said soberly.

And every eye in the courtyard went to Polly Simpson.

It was a sombre History of British Architecture class that returned to Cambridge late that evening. They were, of course, minus three of their members. What remained of Ralph Tucker was undergoing the postmortem knife while his widow made the most of her circumstances by accepting the hospitality of a solicitous Augusta, dowager countess of Fabringham, who was well aware of Americans' bent towards litigation at the drop of the hat and was eager to avoid a close encounter with any form of American jurisprudence. And Polly Simpson was in the custody of the local police, charged with the primary crime of murder and the secondary thwarted crime of burglary.

Polly Simpson was heavily on the minds of her fellow students, needless to say. And needless to say, they all felt rather differently about her.

Sam Cleary, for one, felt a perfect fool for having failed to recognize that Polly's fascination with him had in reality extended only as far as his knowledge of botany. She'd hung on his every word and story, it was true, but hadn't she guided him most towards his work, till she had what she needed from him: a poison she could put her hands on simply by taking a walk along the college backs in Cambridge.

Frances Cleary, for another, felt reassured. True, Ralph Tucker was dead so the cost was high, but she'd learned that her husband wasn't the object of young girls' fatal attraction that she'd thought he was, so she rested far more secure in her marriage. Secure enough, indeed, to allow Sam to ride home in the mini-coach right next to Emily Guy.

Emily Guy and Victoria Wilder-Scott felt disappointed and depressed by the day's events, but for different reasons. Victoria Wilder-Scott had just lost the first enthusiastic student she'd had in a summer session from America in years while Emily Guy had discovered that a pretty young girl, so much admired because she had no weakness for men, had a weakness for something else instead.

And the men themselves-Howard Breen and Cleve Houghton? They thought of Polly's arrest as a loss. For his part, Cleve mourned the fact that her arrest would put an end to his hopes of getting her to bed despite the twenty-seven years between their respective ages. And for his part, Howard Breen was happy to see the last of her… since her departure left Cleve Houghton available to him. After all, one could always hope, at the end of the day.

And that's what the Americans actually ended up learning in the History of British Architecture class that summer in Cambridge: Hope hadn't worked for Polly Simpson. But that's not to say it wouldn't work for the rest of them.