Hemlock and Roses

d not

the matchbook laid side by side on the wood in front of her. She didn't touch them again. She just looked at th

back. She pinched the soft skin on the inside of her wrist until it bruised. In the end she set an alarm on her phone for every fiftee

00:30

envelope. Twenty-fo

ate, she looked at that envelope and let herself believe one thing: To

made hers

e pocket of a coat that smelled of smoke. A coat that had belonged to her mother, who had been dead for three years. A co

d have to tell him. And the investigation would turn, slowly and ine

was concealing evidence in a c

she would be the kind of perso

h that for

o an envelope and the envelope into her pocket, and drove across the river in the grey dawn to th

she knocked. She was too t

e was a coffee cup on the workbench behind him with a dried brown ring at the bottom, and the

nvelope. He took i

es the weight of a sentence. When he saw the key, nothing happened. When he saw the singed tag, his jaw tightened. When he opened the matchbook a

he aske

one." She swallowed. "The o

his eyes f

t, because-" She stopped. Because I don't know who'll be standing in my kitchen at half past two. "I can't keep them

t her for a

king," he said. "If anyone fin

kno

I put them

I'm askin

inside, past the hammers and the dampers, to a narrow gap behind the action that she would never have known was there, and slid the envelope

ck to her, his fa

t at all. "Whatever you find. Whatever any of this tu

t you know. You know somet

" he

it. He never

it b

r so long that she

tly, "is the worst thing I have ever kno

L

with his hand on the lid of

t he saw the singed tag, exactly whose coat it had come out of, and exactly whose hands had put it there seven years

I put them i

o said it to himself, the way you say something out lo

is hand o

ened by that than by anything else that week, except Daniel. Not because of the pain. Because his hands were how he heard the world. A tuner's hands have to f

tuned her piano every Tuesday for seven years with a hand that

ome for the piano, th

carrying felt like something he could put down somewhere usefu

eatly, corners tucked under, and went to the window to wat

rang

in intens

She'd been about to go in. She put her fre

happ

wake up." Morrow's voice was rough. "He had an officer on his door all night. The officer swears Ashby never came out. But the room's got a connecti

CT

y fixed it." A hard breath. "Whoever did this knew that. T

osed he

d been three hours fr

way to Vane's

s did

ment, because of the Chopin. Shaw had eyes on the only door from eleven last night until you turned up at half six. The light was on all night. Nobody came out. Nobody we

d down on the steeri

You t

m h

ng to talk this morning. Somebody knew the time, the hotel, the room. Bell kn

bod

t V

me of the hotel. I didn't k

our fa

ng in the car l

father about Ashby," Iri

ertain it was true. Sh

s long, that she had no memory of making. You asked me about Linden. Abou

lked to my father about A

al

," she said,

her grandmother's. He had cooked her favourite, coq au vin, the dish her mother had made on every birthday until the year she died. The w

r. He took her coat and smoothed

k pale,

g we

ough. His cane tapped once on each black tile and once on each whi

N

chair for her. "He was never a st

and she laughed in the right places. She watched his hands as he talked: long, elegant, sure, moving in the candlelight the way they moved at a lectern. Sh

es of brandy instead, set one in front of her, sat down across from her,

sed myself I'd never tell you. And I want you to know, before I b

didn'

" he said, "w

old

in those days called episodes. Stretches of time she couldn't account for. Hours. Sometimes a whole day. She'd go out and come back and not know where she had be

The nocturnes. All day, sometimes. I'd come

ere cold on th

ecame convinced the finances were being stolen. That someone on the board was robbing it. She was quite paranoid. She'

own at his

ke at one and she was coming in through the kitchen door." His voice dropped very low. "Her coat smelled of smoke, Iris

hall, the grandfather clock stru

alking by the river and someone had a bonfire. And then the inquiry said faulty wiring, and I let it be faulty wiring, becau

ouldn'

ertain of it. He must have seen her that night. I couldn't let you hear it from h

the table and laid

ilies." His thumb moved gently across her knuckles. "And when you were small, you had a little friend. An imaginary friend. You called her Rosie. You'd say Rosie had done things. Rosie

d at his h

ey and a matchbook in the pockets. An illness that ran in families, which explained the gaps and the teacup and the phone call at two in the morning. An imaginary friend called Rosie, which explaine

tly that she wanted

that never stopped asking, the part that distrusted any answer that arrived precisely wh

the cam

er mother, in her camel coat, coming in through the

zes too big for you. You said it was your mother

through a stage door at Linden, Tuesday after

university. To lectures. In the rain. Priya had teased her about it, called it the tent. She'd worn

r. The year sh

r of th

t that year. Her mother couldn'

t her father ac

y quiet and very steady. "Who was

darling. I've

id Iris.

ames stood pe

ar. But she felt it. She felt the change in it, the way you feel the floor of a lift begin to drop.

a long time. His fa

ale said softly. "You