Dreaming of the Bones

automatic grimace of distaste. ”What’s he like, anyway, the remarkable Ian McClellan?”
    ”Academically sound, as far as I know,” Nathan answered neutrally.
    ”But?” Kincaid prompted. ”Don’t bother being tactful.” Nathan smiled. ”All right. Ian McClellan is one of those tiresome chaps who think they know everything and everyone. And smooth with it. ‘Let me put you in touch with just the person...’ You know the drill.”
    ”An ambitious man, then? Why would someone like that be willing to throw it all up to run off with a girl?”
    ”Ambitious only in a small sphere, I think,” said Nathan. He thought for a moment before adding, ”I didn’t know the man well. But my guess would be that he’d reached the age where he was finding his own line of goods hard to believe, and he had to either find a less critical audience or reevaluate himself. The former would certainly be easiest.” Perceptive, thought Kincaid, and, from the little bit that Vic had told him, likely to be true. He sipped at his tea and looked up to find Nathan watching him.
    ”Why are you here?” asked Nathan. ”If you don’t mind my asking. Did Vic talk to you about me?”
    ”Vic merely said that you were friends. But she also told me a good bit about her biography of Lydia Brooke, and I’ve seen the police report on Lydia’s death, so I know it was you who found Lydia’s body.”
    ”Ah,” said Nathan. ”I wondered how Vic had managed access to the details of the police report, but she didn’t tell me.”
    ”Did she tell you she had doubts that Lydia’s death was suicide?” Kincaid asked.
    ”No... no, but I’d begun to guess,” Nathan said slowly, frowning.
    ”And do you think she had cause to be dissatisfied with the verdict? You were the one who found Lydia’s body, after all.”
    ”I... I don’t know,” said Nathan, and Kincaid read the uncertainty in his dark eyes. ”At the time I simply took for granted that the police had investigated all the possibilities.”
    ”But what if they didn’t?” Kincaid asked, almost to himself. Then he said abruptly, ”Why did Lydia leave everything to her former husband?”
    Adam had listened to their conversation with his full attention, but without the body language that indicated he was just waiting a chance to get his oar in. A rare good listener, then, but by nature or training? ”What do you think, Adam?” Kincaid said, turning to him. ”You were closer to Lydia than anyone.”
    ”I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mr. Kincaid,” said Adam with a small smile. ”Although I wish I could say otherwise, those days were long past by the time of Lydia’s death.”
    ”And it never occurred to you that there was anything suspect about Lydia’s death?”
    Adam seemed to consider this before answering. ”No,” he said finally. ”I can’t honestly say that it did.”
    ”Did you know Vic as well?” Kincaid asked. Vic had written so convincingly about Adam that he felt he knew the man, at least as he had been in those early days with Lydia , and he found it difficult to believe that he would tell a deliberate lie. But would he hedge the truth?
    ”I only met her once,” said Adam, with what sounded like genuine regret. ”When she came to see me about her book.”
    ”And were you able to help her?”
    Adam shrugged. ”How can I tell you that? She wanted to know what Lydia was really like, and I did my best. But that is surely a matter of perception as well—-perception squared, as it were. Not only might Lydia have behaved differently towards every person with whom she came in contact, but I would then have the option of interpreting her behavior in a multitude of ways.”
    ”Nicely put,” said Kincaid, grinning. ”Were you a student of philosophy by any chance?”
    ”Philosophy and comparative religion,” admitted Adam. ”Ah, so I was right,” Kincaid said with satisfaction. ”I thought I recognized that particular brand of logic.” He returned to the thread of the conversation. ”But isn’t that a biographer’s job, to take all those different perceptions of a person and make a cohesive whole of them?”
    ”But surely that’s an impossible task,” argued Adam. ”Because the biographer brings his or her perceptions to it as well, so that it’s never possible to create a true representation of the subject.”
    ”Vic knew that,” said Nathan. ”But the truth is relative, and even a portrait colored by the biographer has its uses. It