Last time: "Sasha isn't Sasha. I think she must be Helen."

"Why?" the Inspector asked, almost desperately.

Obviously Poole hadn't explained it properly. Abandoning the book, he leaned forward, fingers knit, thumbs braced together, to match Goodman. "That's what I didn't understand, either. Under UK law, in the event of Sasha's death, James would have gotten everything and there'd be no need to replace her, much less with Helen. Unless, well . . ."

"And who is Helen?"

That was Sergeant Bordey again, pushing her way in, with a perfect right to ask questions, of course, as it was a policeman – woman's job, but this would be so much easier if she wasn't so – well, distracting.

"Helen Reed, Sasha's younger sister, a year behind us at Cambridge. I don't even remember what it was she was reading, but we only saw her when she was in trouble, or if she wanted to make it. She looked quite like, even then, of course . . ."

"I'm sorry." That was Goodman, straightening up abruptly so the chair under him rocked a bit, allowing him to jolt. "This isn't . . . I mean, I could be missing something, but . . ."

He waved his hands, accentuating the scarecrow effect. Poole sighed. This wasn't working. His days were spent either at his desk, pouring over figures, or hiding under a hard hat, prowling a construction site, being shunted out of the way by those who had "real" work to do. He wasn't used to being listened to like this. It would be the ultimate irony, he supposed, if his lack of interactive skills were to finally get him killed.

"I think we shouldn't dismiss this, sir," the sergeant put in, letting go of her hair and keeping those warm eyes fixed encouragingly on the poor naff at their evidence table. "Perhaps some coffee, Mr –?"

It took a moment, but Poole snapped back to reality. "Poole, Sergeant; Faithful and Gould. Thank you, I'd prefer tea if you – no, no, never mind, coffee's – fine."

She rose to go to the galley, and Poole kept his eyes rather forlornly on the Inspector, who was staring relentlessly back. "All this does make sense," he promised the man in a low voice. "Suppose I give it one more try . . . my father is former Chief Superintendent Graham Poole, Leicestershire Police. If I manage to get myself murdered, he'll – never let me hear the end of it, if you see what I mean."

That seemed to have some weight; Inspector Goodman's blue gaze seemed to go even more bleak, and he nodded. Poole pushed himself back from the table, blew out more over-heated air, rubbed himself down with the handkerchief he always had ready in his jacket pocket, thanked the Sergeant for the mug of coffee and sipped, managing not to grimace, much. Police station coffee – the same the world over, he supposed.

"I see you read French," Sergeant Bordey said, handing her superior a second mug and nodding at the book on the table. Poole bolted the sip, panted the heat out, and shook his head at the paperback. Goodman reached over and picked it up, frowning at the title, then dropped the book as his sergeant helped herself to coffee and returned to sit, doing the best impression of a siren Poole thought he'd ever see. "Le Rouge et le Noir," she went on. "A difficult read for a vacation, Mr Poole."

"I don't," Poole told her. "The book's – part of it. Sasha and I – well . . . she knew me, you see. Our families came from the same part of the country, so when I ran into her at uni, it was natural, I suppose, we'd club together. We sort of – complemented each other, intellectually. Where she was into languages I did music, and if she had chem or physics questions I'd answer them, and ask her about IT. There was never any standoff about us until –"

Poole edged the coffee cup away, avoiding anyone's eyes. He was not going into his blighted love life, no matter how difficult it may be to keep out of it. "So, when she chose to do her dissertation on Stendahl's book and had trouble understanding the characterizations of some of Julien Sorel's antagonists vis-à-vis the socio-economic structure of France during the Bourbon Restoration, she asked me to clarify some of the terms she was finding, and that meant we had to spend time in the UL, and, apparently, that got people talking. And James . . ."

"Cut you out, did he?" That was Inspector Goodman, helping the story on, heedless of whatever delicacies he might be trampling on. But he wasn't intentionally callous. He didn't even need the dart of a reproving look his sergeant was sending him to burst out in apologies. "Oh, sorry! I –"

"No." It was out. Poole tightened his jaw a bit and forged on. "You're right. She chose James and . . . that was that. It was Helen who 'moved me on', so to speak, which is interesting, in light of what's happening now.

"Sasha and James married, bought and sold SciTech, and retired to live off the interest, or that was what James put out in their newsletter. Then, within the year, they post this." He pulled the folded sheets out of the book and spread them out in a row: the past-issue printouts of the Moores' blog and the news article he'd taken off the net. "There was an accident while Sasha and Helen were on a driving tour in Cumbria. A lorry went off the road and took out their car on the way." He flattened the sheet and tapped it. "The article's only a stub, but look at the picture: you can see it would be pretty bad for the passenger, but the driver side's almost untouched."

With Goodman and Sergeant Bordey bent over the table, it was left to Poole to see how Myers had apparently found something very off about the coffeemaker and was fiddling with it, while Best was scrabbling as quietly as he could in the filing cabinet just behind, both obviously angling for a look at the papers he'd produced.

"Helen was killed," Goodman was saying. "Or rather, she was pronounced dead in hospital."

"James says the same thing in his post," Camille Bordey reported, scanning the second printout. "He gives her quite a glowing obituary, in fact. She must have been very dear to both him and his wife."

"And that's odd," Poole finished, "because at Cambridge, he never gave her more than the time of day, when he had to, and Sasha told me why, once."

...

Note:

The UL is the abbreviation for the University Library of Cambridge.