Chapter 3: Proceeding With Caution

Some time passed between decision and action, between certainty and movement. That she would ring him was without question, yet a quarter of an hour went by as she sat on her bed beside her phone, just thinking. More than once, she picked up her mobile—unfolding it in her palm—before she snapped it closed again, and nothing had yet changed, leaving her with more time to rehearse her lines, as it were. She was confident once she found his name in her list of saved phone numbers, the nervousness would fade, but to get to it...Well, that was the trouble, wasn't it?

Cully had passed the day driving the mobile unit, awash in the interest of children in one book or another, an elderly woman here selecting a mystery she had already read a dozen times, a middle-aged man there choosing a spy thriller from amongst the small collection on the van's far wall. The constant murmur of voices pushed away all the other thoughts that might have intruded, the meeting and conversation that had veered hither and yonder in her skull, that night and yesterday.

"Oh, really," she muttered, slamming the top half of her mobile down again. This is ridiculous. A second later, she opened it again, scrolling through the names of friends and family with a savage ferocity, gripping the silly thing rather more firmly than needed. The ringing was not nearly so bad, just as she had anticipated, but wasn't that the way it always was?

The answer was quick and practiced, very precise. "Troy."

She found a deep, quiet breath before she spoke. "Hello, Gavin?"

The background noise crept in for a moment, a cluster of innumerable indistinct voices, bits of rustling plastic, muffled footsteps. "Uh, yes, hello," he said after a moment, quieter than before. It was the same, nearly anxious voice that had disappeared for a time when she had last spoken with him.

"Is everything all right?" she asked, not really noticing as she pulled her legs up onto the edge of her bed.

"Uh, yes, fine, it's just—not the best time." Wherever Midsomer's crime had called him, he surely had enough to hold his attention without an interruption from her.

"I can hear that," Cully said, wondering not for the first time what her father was doing in the course of his day (questioning a suspect, reading a report, walking around bloodstains again and again?). "I—I'm sorry—"

"No, no," he answered quickly. "Can I call you back in a bit?"

"Oh, don't worry about it." She did not speak for a moment, twisting her nose and curling her body tighter, further back in the chair. "Do—you think you will be free to talk sometime, maybe this evening?"

Again, it was just the noise around him for a moment, like he had seized silence to think instead. "Um, yes," he said, the words clear but cautious.

"Troy!" The shouted demand was clear, the voice her father's, though still far from loud in her ear. Cully nearly saw Gavin turning to the voice, maybe waving a hand as if to say One minute.

"Sorry," he said, "he just arrived, here at the crime scene."

"How is seven?" Cully said quickly. Everything else could wait until then. "Same place, for tea?"

"Whatever you say." His words were rushed, and she wondered if he was nodding. "I'll see you then."

"Right."

"Sorry, I have to go," he muttered.

"I understand."

"Bye." He ended the call so swiftly, Cully might have felt hurt as she as she closed her mobile, tossing it atop her alarm clock in the bright sunlight of July's first afternoon except for the fact that she knew all too well how a police officer's work demanded attention here and now, not there and soon. All her life, she had watched it happen.

Unwinding her body, she slid to the edge of the chair, letting go of another breath. It had to be done, surely, should have been done weeks ago. Would have been, if she had not been off as soon as an opportunity had appeared. Sometimes, Cully still did not believe she had; she wasn't one to run away from anything in life, and yet...

A few more hours would make no difference, now, to herself or Gavin. They would have been meaningless then as well. And to talk it out over a cup of tea rather than a glass of wine as might have happened that night—after all, who knew what other futures had existed before she had scrambled up that rope netting and her heart had fairly stopped as she saw the poor man, drowned and hanged for a crime that existed only in the minds of three adolescents.

No. Cully shook her head as she stood, stretching her arms behind her neck. Just a friend and a cup of tea. That's all it should be.

She had paced up and down the sidewalk just outside the tea shop several times, one hand tucked in the back pocket of her jeans. More than once, she had gritted her teeth at the urge to look at her watch. Surely it was just gone seven, and Gavin still had a few minutes, thanks to the varying range of minute hands. Perhaps something new had arisen in whatever it was they were investigating; her father had said nothing about it the night before—

No, she finally saw him at the end of the street, his working day clearly concluded. Again, no one passing him would ever believe him a detective: he had traded his suit coat and tie for another polo and a light jacket, trousers for jeans. Cully waved as he neared and at that distance, she still saw him smile, though it quickly faded. She had always found him to have an expressive face.

"Hello," she said as he reached her.

"Hi—Cully." Even through those two words, she heard a bit of strain: less than those couple of days earlier, but more than when she had first met him, when she noticed none. She only offered her own smile in return, this time. Was it too much to hope for that he was not examining it? Every further second she wore it, the more forced it felt. "Well," he said after a moment, stepping away from the door for her, "shall we?"

It was a few minutes to collect her thoughts, her breath, the learned calm she found before every show, as they ordered their tea. This time of the day, rather like before, the shop was half full: too late for escapees from the world of offices and too early for theater-goers dropping in after a show.

"You'll break your teeth on that," she said as Gavin poured a generous helping of sugar into his cup.

"My get up and go every morning," he said, stirring it briefly.

"But it's not morning."

"Why fuss with it, if it works. Um, well"—he looked out into the mess of tables—"where would you like?"

"How about that one?" She pointed to one beside the window onto the street, the sunlight still overwhelming the interior electric lights. He nodded, following her.

Cully was silent as they sat, twisting her cup on its saucer, not yet ready to speak her mind as the tea rippled. "Sorry to have caught you in the middle of the day. I thought you might be almost through by then," she said finally.

"Not at all. It was almost done." A dark look flickered on his face, gone nearly as soon as it appeared. "It could have been worse, I could have answered when your—" He stopped, glancing away. She knew the rest of the sentence, or at least a version. I could have answered when your father was in the room. "We worked separately, part of the afternoon. Not that it did much good for me, he had me looking for papers that weren't there, in the end. He at least managed something, came back with a bunch of those plastic letters kids have to play with. If you call that something."

"If you don't know what you're looking for, exactly, you can't really help it." He still didn't say anything, and Cully felt the annoyance beneath the silence. "But," she said after a moment, "how is the case going? Really going, aside from your afternoon." A safe topic in safe territory, away from thoughts about her father.

He laughed quickly, but without humor. "Well, forget yesterday's simple car problem."

"Stolen?" She took a first mouthful of tea, the hot liquid settling a bit unhappily at first in her empty stomach, but quieting in a moment.

"No," he said, shaking his head as he tasted his tea as well, "set on fire. But that would have been a bit too easy, wouldn't it? Or a bit too nice."

"What is it now?" Cully leaned forward a bit, both curious and willing to delay the inevitable.

"An old lady beaten to death with her own walking stick, and not even the owner of the car." He sat back heavily against the chair, like he was reviewing the day's events, what was worth discussing and what was best left unsaid. "Sometime late last night, few minutes after eleven if her watch is anything to believe—smashed in the attack. One of those people that can really get your back up, evidently."

"Not a nice woman, was she?" Gavin's manner was different today, that much Cully saw easily. Or rather, it had changed quicker. The nerves she had noticed in his voice when they had spoken over the phone had vanished almost immediately, and now one might never know that they were anything but old friends— The thoughts crept in again, and Cully shoved them aside as she tucked a lock of hair behind her right ear. They could wait, she knew.

He took another sip of tea, finally appearing to have decided on what was safe to be risked as common knowledge. "Well...More that—she was blunt, sometimes, or at least that's what her friends would have us believe. And good at secrets." Shifting forward, forearms on the table's edge, he smiled again. "Have a guess: what would a reading club be doing when they meet for tea?"

Narrowing her eyes for a moment, Cully said, "Discussing a book. What else?"

Again, he shook his head. "See, too easy. She headed the Midsomer Market Reading Club, and turns out that was just a front. The ladies of the Reading Club were actually investing in the stock market."

"So is that why Dad was reading Investment Daily?" It had been a laugh, her father hidden behind that reddish paper, grumbling. "He spent a while complaining it was incomprehensible."

"Don't know, really, he took it off me yesterday."

Cully pursed her lips, certain her disbelief was already too obvious to bother hiding it behind her cup. "You? I wouldn't have thought you'd be interested in the stock market, either."

"Bit of a story." His cheeks flushed, just visible in the evening light, and he distracted himself with a large swig of tea. "Managed to put my foot in it today."

"You don't have to explain if you don't want to, Gavin," Cully laughed. She straightened her face, too serious to be believed as she leaned further over the table, feeling almost humorously conspiratorial. "But what other misstep did you have today, then?"

"Well," he began, "you'd hardly expect the actual lord of the manor to be up on a ladder, trying to do some good for ancient wallpaper. Or his wife to be wandering around on a roof that's seen its day, like there's nothing to it." He was paler now, pressing his fingers to the table like he was trying to clutch it. "Lord and Lady Chetwood, and that house is in a right state, Cully. At least he took it good humor I guess."

"You can't ask for more than that, can you?"

"A warning about the roof would have been nice. Not my favorite place to visit today...or any day." The color had not returned to his cheeks, and he suddenly drained the last of his tea. "If we were meant to walk on roofs, they'd all have railings around the edges."

"Not a fan of heights, are you?"

"Not really," he said, nearly shuddering. "Never have been."

"Are they suspects?" Cully asked, her curiosity genuine. Though she knew the more gristly details had been omitted, particularly when she was young, she had heard the tales of her father's cases—discussions of culprits included—her entire life.

"Who?"

"Lord and Lady Chetwood."

"I suppose." He was quiet, once more considering what to say. "Lady Chetwood was a member of the Reading Club—her plan to find money to fix the roof, she said. The number of pots and pans they have to collect the leaks, Cully, it's a hazard. And he's a bit barmy," he added with a bit of a grin. "Harmless, probably, but barmy."

Neither spoke, now, the topic all but exhausted. There was no way around it, Cully knew, and it was probably best to treat it like a plaster: just do it, get it over with, refuse to drag it out..."Do you fancy another cup of tea, Gavin?" she said. So much for that.

He looked at the empty cup, like he had forgotten it was empty. "Oh, no." And now, he set his elbows on the table's edge, crossing his arms as he looked down to examine an imaginary knot in the wood. "Cully, what did you want to talk about?" He caught her gaze, now. "I mean—really talk about?"

"What?" It was all she could think to say—feigned surprise, but he was hardly a novice at dissecting misleading words and half-truths.

"You could have had all this—and more—from your father, if you were just curious."

"Spot on," she said, the practiced calm of the theater failing to unknot a sudden tightness in her chest. The cup clinked as she ran her finger around the saucer's edge, fiddling mindlessly.

"So what is it, then?" he asked, quieter, more cautious.

"I want—" That wasn't right, Cully knew. "No, Gavin, I need to talk to you about—that evening. After the party."

She saw him tense, his posture tighter. "What about it?" he said after a moment, that same unpleasant voice. Not anxious, but...well, she couldn't quite decide what to call it.

Be careful, she thought. "I—I should have told you before." She had to pause, to think again; these were not the words to be said carelessly. "Because I'm sorry, Gavin, I really am."