Dreaming of the Bones

she?”

    ”Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” said Chief Superintendent Denis Childs. ”Or that I won’t yank you back here faster than you can blink if I get the least complaint of interference from the Cambridge force.” His chair creaked as he sat back and sighed. ”Don’t be a bloody fool, man. I know Alec Byrne. He’s a good man, even if his predecessor may have been a bit of a slacker. Let him do his job.”
    ”I have no intention of keeping him from it,” Kincaid had said and, thanking his chief, had let himself out of Childs’s office. And it was true, he thought, as he picked up the M11 towards Cambridge . But it was also true that he had prior knowledge that Alec Byrne was not inclined to take seriously, and that he was bound by both duty and need to make use of it.
    The bag containing Vic’s papers and manuscript sat beside him, wedged into the Midget’s passenger seat. He was happy enough now to turn them over to Byrne, for before he’d left the Yard last night he’d photocopied every single scrap of paper. Then he’d stayed up reading until he had some sense of what Vic had been doing.
    The biography, though incomplete, was as seamless and as compelling as a novel. He’d followed Lydia , the solitary child, as she grew into an ambitious young woman, seen her give up scholarship, and, before his body had forced him to sleep, seen her marry. Vic’s intense and compassionate account of Lydia’s devotion to Morgan Ashby had made him wonder if Vic had once felt that way, too.
    He intended to find out why Morgan Ashby had refused to see Vic. And he intended to see Vic’s friend and neighbor, Nathan Winter, but first he had better tackle Alec Byrne.

    ”I’d like to see the pathologist’s report, Alec,” he said, sitting once more in Byrne’s office. ”I’ve been a good boy— surely you can have no objection.”
    ”And surely you’ve pushed the bounds of friendship and obligation far enough. You’ve interfered with my crime scene, for which I could have made official complaint, and on top of that you’ve been bloody rude and overbearing.”
    This time Kincaid controlled his impulse to anger. Calling Byrne’s bluff would not get him what he wanted, but groveling very well might. ”You’re right, Alec,” he said. ”I’m sorry, but I’d think you’d have done the same in my position. Vic is dead, and I don’t have the luxury of good taste. What possible harm can it do to let me see the pathologist’s report? I might even be able to offer some helpful suggestions.”
    Byrne hesitated, his long fingers steepled together under his chin. Finally, he said, ”I’ll tell you what she said, and you’ll have to be satisfied with that. Dr. McClellan’s heart failed due to an overdose of some form of digitalis, as you know. The pathologist couldn’t hazard a guess as to when the poison was administered, because the different forms of digitalis have varied reaction times. Digitoxin is very quick acting, while digoxin, on the other hand, takes several hours. Most cases of digitalis poisoning result from therapeutic overdose rather than homicidal intent, but we’ve tracked down Dr. McClellan’s physician, and he confirms that she had no history of heart disease and was not currently taking any medication.”
    ”What medication did Lydia take?” Kincaid asked, wishing he could remember more of the detail from the file he’d read.
    Byrne pulled another folder from his desk drawer, and Kincaid was glad to see that he had at least kept Lydia’s file at hand. ”Let’s see,” Byrne muttered as he opened the folder and skimmed the pages, using his finger to mark his place. ” Lydia took digoxin for a minor heart arrhythmia, although there’s a note here from the pathologist that digoxin is not usually the first choice for that condition, because the therapeutic dose is so near the toxic dose. If Lydia had not had a previous history of attempted suicide, he would have been inclined to rule it an accidental death.”
    ”But they can’t tell if Vic was given the same thing?” Byrne steepled his fingers again. ”No. Nor can we even be certain that Lydia Brooke actually died from an overdose of her own medication, even though digoxin was present in her body, because—as I understand it, and I’m no chemist—digoxin is one of the metabolic by-products of digitoxin.” He glanced at the report. ”The twelve-hydroxy analog, to be exact, if that’s any