Dreaming Of The Bones

“I sound an awful bitch, don’t I? I’m generalizing, and I know there are men capable of more, but I’m beginning to think they’re the exception. Ian didn’t start on the graduate students until my salary equaled his.” Her mouth twisted in disgust and she shook her head. “Never mind. What do you know about Lydia Brooke?”

Frowning, he searched his memory, turning up a vague recollection of slim volumes on the shelf in his parents’ bookshop. “A Cambridge poet, a sort of symbol of the sixties … She died quite recently, I think. Wasn’t she related to Rupert Brooke?”

“She was obsessed with Rupert Brooke when she came up to Cambridge. Whether or not she was related to him is another matter entirely.” Vic shifted in her seat so that the light fell across her face again. “And you’re right, Lydia did burst upon the scene in the mid-sixties. Her poems were full of an aching disenchantment, and I suppose they touched something particular in that generation. After a disastrous marriage, she tried suicide, but recovered. She attempted suicide again in her early thirties, then finally, five years ago, she succeeded. She was forty-seven.”

“Did you know her?”

“I saw her once at a College function, not long after I came here. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anyone well enough to ask for an introduction, and I never had another chance.” Shrugging, Vic added, “I know it sounds odd, but I felt a connection with her even then… the old ‘across a crowded room’ thing.” She smiled, mocking herself, then sobered. “It’s not necessarily sexual, that sort of recognition, and it’s only happened to me a few times. And then when I heard she had died, I felt devastated, as though I’d lost someone very close.”

Kincaid raised an eyebrow and waited.

“I know that look.” Vic grimaced. “Now you’re beginning to wonder if I am completely bonkers. But I think that sense of kinship with Lydia has contributed to the uneasy feeling I have about the manner of her death.”

“But surely there was no question that it was suicide?”

“Not legally, no.” Vic gazed out the window at the sky, heavy now with darkening clouds, and seemed to gather her thoughts. After a moment, she said, “Let me see if I can explain. Lydia was thought to have killed herself in the midst of one of the periodic bouts of depression she’d suffered all her adult life, but I don’t believe her death fits that pattern.”

Kincaid couldn’t help remembering the hours he’d spent on similar theorizing when he and Vic had first been married, and how utterly disinterested she’d been in his cases. It had been understandable, he supposed, as he’d been new to homicide then, and fascinated with it to the point of boring even the most patient listener. “Why not?” he asked mildly.

Vic slid her feet to the floor and sat forwards. “Both early suicide attempts coincided with long periods where she seemed unable to work. I think Lydia was truly happy only when she was writing, and writing well. If her personal problems coincided with a dry spell, she had difficulty coping, and I believe that’s what happened after the breakup of her marriage. But as she grew older she seemed more and more content alone. If she had a serious relationship in the last ten years of her life, I’ve not been able to discover it.”

“And was she suffering writer’s block before she died?” Kincaid asked, finding himself intrigued.

“No.” Vic put her cup on the side table and rubbed her palms together as if her hands were cold. “That’s it, you see. When she died, she was in the process of editing the manuscript of a new book, the best thing she had ever done. The poems have such depth and richness—it’s as if she suddenly discovered another dimension to herself.”

“Maybe that was it,” Kincaid suggested. “There was nowhere left for her to go.”

Vic shook her head. “At first I considered that a possibility, but the better I know her, the less likely it seems. I think she’d found her stride at last. She could have done so much more, given so much—”

“Vic.” Kincaid leaned forwards and touched her hand. “You can never be sure what’s in another person’s heart. You know that. Sometimes people just wake up one day and decide they’re tired of life, and they don’t leave behind any explanation at all. Maybe that’s what happened to Lydia.”

She shook her head, more vehemently this time. “That’s not all. Lydia died from an overdose of her own heart medication. Don’t suicides usually keep to the same pattern, escalating the violence if they’re not successful?”

“Sometimes, yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always the case.”

“The first time she slit her wrists in the bath—it was only a friend coming in unexpectedly that saved her. The second time she drove her car into a tree and managed to give herself a serious concussion. Later she said her foot slipped from the accelerator just at the crucial moment. Do you see?”

“The third attempt should have been more violent still?” Kincaid shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible. So what are you suggesting?”