Dreaming of the Bones

have told you anything you wanted to know.”
    ”I didn’t know to ask. And even now I feel uncomfortable, because I’m afraid talking about it might distress you.”
    ”Ah.” Nathan sat across from her and took a sip of a drink he’d apparently made while waiting. ”It was very distressing, actually, at the time,” he said slowly. ”And I didn’t speak about it to anyone except the police, but I’d always assumed it had got about somehow, as everyone seemed to avoid the subject so assiduously.
    ”But it’s been a long time, and I don’t mind talking about it now, if you like.”
    A simple explanation after all, thought Vic, and she had worked herself into a lather over it. Was she becoming paranoid, imagining conspiracies, and suspecting Nathan, of all people? Collecting herself, she said, ”The police seemed to think that Lydia asked you to come that evening because she wanted you to find her.”
    Nathan shrugged. ”I suppose that’s the logical explanation. Or perhaps at some level she was hoping to be rescued.”
    ”As Adam rescued her the first time?”
    ”Poor Adam. At least I didn’t find her floating in her own blood. Sorry, love,” he added with a grimace. ”Not a nice picture.”
    ”She wrote about it —Life blood/Salt and iron/cradle gentle as a/mother’s kiss... ” Vic recited softly. She stood up and went to the old gramophone cabinet Nathan used to store drinks in the sitting room. Pouring herself a generous sherry, she said, ”What did she say when she called you that day, Nathan? How did she sound?”
    He thought for a long moment. ”Tense... excited... almost combative. I suppose all of those would be natural if she were working herself up to suicide.”
    ”But what exactly did she say? Can you remember the particular words or phrases?” Vic came back to her chair and curled up with her feet beneath her.
    Nathan closed his eyes, then said slowly, ”She said, ‘Nathan, I simply must see you. Can you come round this evening?’ And then she said, ‘We need to talk.’ Or was it, There’s something I need to talk to you about’?” He shook his head. ”I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”
    ”And then what did she say? When she rang off?”
    ”Oh, Lord.” Nathan rubbed his chin. ”Let me think. She said, ‘Come for drinks round sevenish?’ A question, rather than a statement, but she didn’t wait for me to answer. And then, ‘See you then. Cheerio,’ and she hung up.”
    ”And you thought that sounded like someone intending suicide?” Vic’s voice rose to an incredulous squeak.
    ”Well, I have to admit it sounds a bit absurd now,” said Nathan, exasperated. ”But I had indisputable evidence, damnit. She was dead.”
    ”What did you think about the poem in the typewriter?” asked Vic, plowing on.
    ”The Rupert Brooke? I supposed she had never quite got over Morgan, and that was her way of saying goodbye to him. It did seem a bit sentimental for Lydia , but when I heard she’d left him everything it seemed a fair assumption.”
    ”The police thought Lydia wrote it.”
    ”Did they?” Nathan’s brows lifted in surprise. ”Well, they never asked me. I’d have set them straight. But what difference does it make?”
    Not yet, she thought. She wasn’t ready to lay her cards out quite yet. And there was still the matter of the poems. ”Nathan, did you know about the poems in the book you gave me?”
    ”The Rupert Brooke? Of course it had poems in it,” he said, looking at her as if not quite sure of her sanity. ”It was the first collection of his poems, along with Marsh’s rather sexually biased memoirs, if I remem—”
    ”No, no, I don’t mean those poems,” Vic protested, laughing. ”I meant Lydia’s poems.”
    Nathan just looked at her blankly. ”What are you talking about, Vic?”
    ”Did you look in the book before you gave it to me?”
    ”Just the copyright page, and that marvelous photo on the flyleaf. No wonder Marsh—”
    ”That’s all right, then,” Vic said on a breath of relief. ”No wonder you didn’t see them.” She proceeded to explain about finding the manuscript drafts of Lydia’s poems in the book, and that she thought them among the last of Lydia’s work.
    When she’d finished, Nathan said thoughtfully, ”Well, no one would know better than you. But how odd. I suppose the logical step would be to ask Ralph if he knows anything about them.”
    ”Ralph Peregrine? Her publisher?” she asked, while silently