Dreaming of the Bones

Francesca said, looking quizzically at Gemma as she positioned the tray on the coffee table. ”Did you not know Morgan’s reputation as a photographer?”
    ”I’m afraid I don’t know much of anything,” said Gemma as she perched gingerly in the rocker that sat at a right angle to Francesca. She reached for her cup and added a little milk to the coffee. ”Except that Morgan was married to Lydia Brooke, and Vic was writing a book about Lydia’s life.”
    ”I was sorry to hear about Dr. McClellan,” Francesca said, staring at the mug in her hands. She glanced up at Gemma. ”She seemed such a nice woman—it’s hard to imagine someone so young dying just like that—”
    ”She didn’t die of heart failure, Mrs. Ashby. She was murdered. Poisoned.”
    Francesca stared at her. ”But surely... that’s not possible... Why would anyone want to kill her?”
    ”We don’t know,” said Gemma. ”That’s why it’s important for us to know who she spoke with recently. She might have said something—”
    ”She did come here, but Morgan was abominably rude to her, I’m afraid, and she went away empty-handed.” Francesca’s pleasant face creased in a frown. ”But I don’t understand what that has to do with you—or with her ex-husband. Surely you don’t mean to continue with her book?”
    Gemma took a fortifying sip of coffee and plunged in. ”We’re police officers, but we have no official standing on this case, only a special interest.” Watching Francesca’s eyes widen, she added, ”Look, Mrs. Ashby, I couldn’t misrepresent myself, and I can’t force you to talk to me. But I’m convinced that Vic died because of something she found out about Lydia Brooke. I want to know about Lydia —anything you or Morgan can tell me. Why wouldn’t Morgan talk to Vic or Duncan about her? It’s been five years since she died.”
    Setting her mug on the table, Francesca stood up and went to the loom. She touched its frame for a moment, then turned to Gemma, arms folded across her chest. ”You think time makes a difference?” She shook her head. ”You don’t understand, do you? Have you ever seen two people turn love into an excuse for mutual destruction? Their obsession poisoned them both. Even now he can’t let her go. She eats away at him in the dark, like a cancer.”
    Appalled by the bleakness in Francesca Ashby’s voice, Gemma said, ”How can you live with a man who felt— feels—that way about someone else?”
    Francesca stared at her for a moment, lips parted as if she were about to tell Gemma to mind her own bloody business. Then the comers of her mouth turned up in what might have been a smile. ”It’s not that simple. It never is, is it?” She came back to the sofa and sat down facing Gemma. ”And, of course, I imagined things would be different. One does in the beginning. He’d left her for me, after all, hadn’t he? I thought that meant he loved me more.” Shaking her head, she said, ”What I didn’t understand was that I was simply the rock available in the tempest, and he was a man clinging desperately for survival. He saw the way things were going—he knew if he didn’t leave, something terrible would happen.”
    ”What do you mean?” asked Gemma. ”What sort of terrible thing? Was he afraid she’d kill herself?”
    ”I don’t know.” Francesca turned her palms up. ”All I can tell you is that he was frightened for them both, and for that he became the villain in everyone’s eyes. They said his selfish desertion of her caused her breakdown and her attempt at suicide.”
    ”Vic might not have told it that way,” said Gemma. ”If she’d had a chance to hear his side of it.”
    ”I tried to tell him that, but he wouldn’t listen,” Francesca said, twisting her hands in her lap. ”I was even tempted to go to her myself, after she came here, but I couldn’t bear for him to think I’d betrayed him.”
    ”What would you have said?” Gemma asked gently. ”That Lydia was unstable from the beginning. She had violent mood swings, she was unpredictable—she put him off for more than a year, did you know that? She’d hardly spoken to him for all that time, then within a couple of months she was all over him, wanting desperately to marry him.”
    ”You knew her then?”
    ”Not then,” Francesa said, and looked away.
    ”But you knew Morgan, and he told you about her?” pressed Gemma.
    ”Not then.” Francesca still didn’t meet Gemma’s eyes. ”Not until