On Harrow Hill

“I don’t think he had any friends. As for institutions, one possibility would be his sister’s church. Hilda Russell is the Episcopal pastor of St. Giles—the church on the square with the white spire. And there’s Russell College, endowed by Angus’s grandfather. It overlooks the lake.”

“Is that where you were head of security?”

“Yes.”

“Angus hired you for that job?”

“Yes.”

“Then hired you again as village police chief?”

“Yes.”

“He was empowered to do that?”

“Officially, I was appointed by the village board.”

“But Angus unofficially controlled the board?”

“Angus unofficially controlled a lot of things. Some key people owed him a lot—money, favors, his willingness to keep secret the embarrassing facts he’d discovered about them, et cetera. He had enormous power, and he enjoyed using it.”

“How do you think his death will affect your position?”

Morgan’s jaw muscles tightened visibly, as did his hands on the steering wheel. He started to speak, stopped, then began again. “A lot will depend on how this case turns out . . . how smoothly it’s managed . . . how clear the outcome is.”

“How do you see Aspern in that process?”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Do you see him as a friend or an enemy?”

“Definitely not as a friend. That’s not how he relates to people. He sees everything in terms of transactional allies and enemies—what people can do for him or to him.”

Gurney nodded, trying to organize everything Morgan had told him. But he realized it was way too soon to start pigeonholing information, with so much more to be learned, and he turned his attention to the area they were driving through.

Waterview Drive followed the outline of the lake, which Gurney estimated to be about two miles long and half a mile wide. The homes along it were set on large verdant lots that ran from the shoulder of the road down to the edge of the lake. The properties were separated from each other by lush plantings of laurel and rhododendrons. The homes were mostly big traditional colonials—painted in a muted palette of olives, grays, tans, and deep reddish-browns that reminded him of dried blood.

The cars were as conspicuously upmarket as the real estate. He turned to Morgan, who was chewing obsessively on his lip.

“What sort of people live in Larchfield?”

“Their common denominators are wealth, entitlement, and the willingness to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a house in order to live next to someone else who was willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a house. As usual, the ones who consider themselves the cream of the crop tend to be the scum of the earth.”

Gurney was surprised by the bitterness. “Sounds like you hate living here.”

“Carol and I don’t live here. There’s no way we could afford it, even when she was working. We’re out in the wilderness between here and Bastenburg. Land is cheaper in the middle of nowhere.”

The poor-me attitude was familiar to Gurney from their days in the NYPD. It was getting on his nerves all over again. A mile or so later, with the shimmering blue lake on their left and a dense forested rise on their right, Morgan slowed and turned up into the woods on a dirt-and-gravel lane marked PRIVATE ROAD.

“This is the foot of Harrow Hill—the Russell side of it.”

Gurney peered ahead to where the lane began to climb more steeply through the dark woods. The gloomy greens of ragged hemlocks and ledges of flinty black rock set the hillside far apart from the nearby picture-book world of Waterview Drive.

“Seems a rather cheerless approach for a grand estate,” said Gurney.

Morgan flashed a humorless smile. “Cheerfulness has never been a Russell virtue.”

After ascending through a sequence of sunless switchbacks, they arrived at a gateway in a high stone wall. The ornamental iron gate was open, but a length of yellow police tape was taking its place. Beyond the tape there was a long allée of tall beech trees arching over a beige gravel driveway. Gurney could see, centered at the end of the driveway, the portico of a massive, rectangular stone building. He couldn’t help feeling there was something cold, almost inhuman, in the perfect geometry of it all.

A young officer with a Larchfield PD badge on his sleeve appeared from nowhere with a clipboard, eyeing Gurney through the windshield. Morgan lowered his side window.

“Morning, Scotty.”

“Morning, sir. If you don’t mind, sir, for the crime-scene log, I’ll need the name of your passenger.”

Morgan spelled it out. The officer entered it on his clipboard, lowered the yellow tape, and waved them through.

The arrow-straight driveway split at the end into two matching arcs that met under the portico. A smaller driveway led from the far side of the portico to a six-bay carriage house with a slate roof. Morgan parked in front of the main house behind six other police vehicles: four black-and-white cruisers, an unmarked Dodge Charger, and a gray tech van. Wide cream-colored stone steps led to an entrance door of polished mahogany.