“Some people,” Lynley said quietly, “have no other way to react to a sudden, inexplicable loss.”

“I daresay you’re right. But in Jon’s case, I think it was a deliberate choice. In making it, he was living the way he’d always lived, which was to put Jamie first. Here. Let me show you what I mean.”

She rose from the table and, wiping her hands down the front of her apron, she went into the sitting room. Lynley could see her walk over to the crowded bookshelves where she extricated a picture from among the large group on display. She brought it to the kitchen and handed it over, saying, “Sometimes photographs say things that words can’t convey.”

Lynley saw that she’d given him a family portrait. In it, a version of herself perhaps thirty years younger posed with husband and four winsome children. The scene was wintry, deep snow with a lodge and a ski lift in the background. In the foreground, suited up for sport with skis leaning up against their shoulders, the family stood happily ready for action, Niamh with a toddler in her arms and two other laughing daughters hanging on to her and perhaps a yard from them, Jamie and his father. Jonathan Parsons had his arm affectionately slung round Jamie’s neck, and he was pulling his son close to him. They both were grinning.

“That’s how it was,” Niamh said. “It didn’t seem to matter so very much because, after all, the girls had me. I told myself it was a man-man and woman-woman thing, and I ought to be pleased that Jon and Jamie were so close and the girls and I were as thick as thieves. But, of course, when Jamie died Jon saw himself as having lost it all. Three-quarters of his life was standing right in front of him, but he couldn’t see that. That was his tragedy. I didn’t want to make it mine.”

Lynley looked up from his study of the photo. “May I keep this for a time? I’ll return it to you, of course.”

She seemed surprised by the request. “Keep it? Whatever for?”

“I’d like to show it to someone. I’ll return it within a few days. By post. Or in person if you prefer. I’ll keep it quite safe.”

“Take it by all means,” she said. “But…I haven’t asked and I ought to have. Why have you come to talk about Jon?”

“A boy died north of here. Just beyond Casvelyn.”

“In a sea cave? Like Jamie?”

“In a fall from a cliff.”

“And you think this has something to do with Jamie’s death?”

“I’m not sure.” Lynley looked at the picture again. He said, “Where are your daughters now, Mrs. Triglia?”

Chapter Twenty-four

BEA HANNAFORD DIDN’T LIKE THE FACT THAT DAIDRE TRAHAIR had managed to take control of the interrogation several times during their interview. In Bea’s opinion the veterinarian was too clever by half, which made the DI even more determined to pin something on the wily wench. What they ended up with, however, was not what Bea had expected and hoped to get from her.

Once she’d given the piece of potentially useless information about Aldara Pappas and the Cornish Gold, Dr. Trahair had politely informed them that unless they had something to charge her with, she’d be off, thank you very much. The damn woman knew her rights, and the fact that she’d decided to exercise them at that particular moment was maddening, but there was nothing for it but to bid her an extremely less-than-fond farewell.

Upon rising from her chair, however, the vet had said something that Bea had found telling. She’d directed a question to Sergeant Havers. “What was his wife like? He’s spoken to me about her, but he’s actually said very little.”

Until that moment, the Scotland Yard detective had said nothing during their interview with Dr. Trahair. The only sound she’d emitted was that which came from her steadily writing pencil. At the vet’s query, she rapidly tapped that pencil against her tattered notebook, as if considering the ramifications of the question.

Havers finally said evenly, “She was bloody brilliant.”

“It must be a terrible loss for him.”

“For a time,” Havers said, “we thought it might kill him.”

Daidre had nodded. “Yes, I can see that when I look at him.”

Bea had wanted to ask, “Do that often, Dr. Trahair?” but she hadn’t. She’d had enough of the vet, and she had larger concerns at the moment beyond what it meant-beyond the obvious-that Daidre Trahair was curious about Thomas Lynley’s murdered wife.

One of those concerns was Lynley himself. After the vet had left them and once Bea had sussed out the location of the cider farm, she placed a call to Lynley as she and Havers headed out to her car. What the hell had he dug up in Exeter? she wanted to know. And where else were his dubious wanderings taking him?

He was in Boscastle, he told her. He spun a lengthy tale about death, parenthood, divorce, and the estrangement that can occur between parents and children. He ended with, “I’ve a photo I’d like you to have a look at as well.”

“As a point of interest or a piece to the puzzle?”

“I’m not quite sure,” he said.

She would see him upon his return, she told him. In the meantime, Dr. Trahair had surfaced and, backed into a wall, had produced a new name for them as well as a new place.

“Aldara Pappas,” he repeated thoughtfully. “A Greek cider maker?”

“We’re seeing everything, aren’t we,” Bea said. “I fully expect dancing bears next.”

She rang off as she and Havers reached her car. A football, three newspapers, a rain jacket, one doggie chew toy, and a bouquet of wrappers from energy bars having been removed from the passenger seat and tossed into the back, they were on their way. Cornish Gold was near the village of Brandis Corner, a bit of a drive from Casvelyn. They reached it by means of secondary and tertiary roads that became progressively narrower in the way of all Cornish thoroughfares. They also became progressively less passable. Ultimately, the farm presented itself by means of a large sign painted with red letters on a field of brown, heavily laden apple trees serving as the sign’s decoration and an arrow indicating entrance for anyone too limited to understand what was meant by the two strips of stony ground divided by a mustache of grass and weeds, which veered off to the right. They jolted over this for some two hundred yards, finally coming to a surprisingly and decently paved car park. Optimistically, part of it was set aside for tour coaches while the rest was given to bays for cars. More than a dozen were scattered along a split-rail fence. Seven more stood in the farthest corner.

Bea pulled into a space that was near a large timber barn, which opened into the car park. Within, two tractors-hardly in use, considering their pristine condition-were serving as perches for three stately looking peacocks, their sumptuous tail feathers cascading in a colourful effluence across the tops of cabs and down the sides of engines. Beyond the barn, another structure-this one combining both granite and timber-displayed huge oaken barrels, presumably aging the farm’s product. Rising behind this building the apple orchard grew, and it climbed the slope of a hill, row after row of trees pruned to grow like inverted pyramids, a proud display of delicate blossoms. A furrowed lane bisected the orchard. In the distance, some sort of tour seemed to be bumping along it: an open wagon pulled by a plodding draft horse.

Across the lane, a gate gave entrance into the attractions of the cider farm. These comprised a gift shop and café along with yet another gate that appeared to lead to the cider-production area, the perusal of which demanded a ticket.

Or police identification, as things turned out. Bea showed hers to a young woman behind the till in the gift shop and asked to speak to Aldara Pappas on a matter of some urgency. The girl’s silver lip ring quivered as she directed Bea to the inner workings of the farm. She said, “Watching over the mill,” by which Bea took it that the woman they were looking for could be found at…perhaps a grinding mill? What did one do with apples, anyway? And was this the time of year to be doing it?