His view no longer blocked by her body, Kincaid straightened up and examined the paper taped to the drawing board. It was about the size of a page in a book, smooth-textured, and bore a faint pencil sketch of a spiky flower he didn’t recognize. She had begun to lay in spots of clear, vivid color, lavender and green.

“Tufted vetch,” she said, when she turned and saw him looking. “A climbing plant. Grows in hedgerows. Flowers in-”

“Julia.” He interrupted the rush of words and she stopped, startled by the imperative in his voice. “Your husband died last night. His body was discovered this morning. Wasn’t that enough to interrupt your concentration? Or your work schedule?”

She turned her head away, her dark hair swinging to hide her face, but when she turned back to him her eyes were dry. “You’d better understand, Mr. Kincaid. You’ll hear it from others soon enough. The term ‘bastard’ might have been invented to describe Connor Swann.

“And I despised him.”

CHAPTER 2

“A lager and lime, please.” Gemma James smiled at the bartender. If Kincaid were there he would raise an eyebrow at the very least, mocking her preference. So accustomed to his teasing had she become that she actually missed it.

“A raw evening, miss.” The barman set the cool glass before her, aligning it neatly in the center of a beer mat. “Have you come far?”

“Just from London. Beastly traffic getting out, though.” But the sprawl of western London had finally faded behind her, and she left the M40 at Beaconsfield and followed the Thames Valley. Even in the mist she had seen some of the fine Victorian houses fronting the river, relics of the days when Londoners used the upper Thames as a playground.