“The point is that’s how Rosie and Noel ended up together,” Peter summarized.
“But you didn’t recognize her?” Izzy said.
“I remember the Canadian,” Julian said, “but I didn’t recognize her photo.”
“Julian had a lot of encounters,” Sooz said.
“Sooz, can you . . .”
“She hung out with me the next night,” Yash said. “She was fun. She was funny. She was really into music. She said she liked being in England because so many of the bands she liked were here. Unlike Julian, I didn’t shag everything that moved, so this stood out for me. I really liked her. She was going to be in England for another day or two, so I lent her some CDs in my bag. I gave her our address so she could visit and bring them back, but she never came. I just thought she took my CDs and went back to Canada.”
“But she didn’t,” Sooz said. “She died. I don’t know how Angela put that together or why, but we knew her.”
“She died punt running?” Stevie said. “That’s a thing?”
“Oh yes,” Sebastian said. “Cambridge is on a river—the Cam. The punts are the boats used on the river, mostly by tourists. At night, they’re tied up in rows, and people run across them while they’re drunk.”
“How easy is it to fall in?”
“Very,” Theo said. “It’s generally harmless, except the rumor was that you’d get Weil’s disease from the water—leptospirosis. It’s not as common as people thought, or else everyone would have had it. You’d be in more danger of snagging yourself on a shopping trolley someone had dumped in the water. But it sounds like she hit her head on the way down, which is also easily done.”
“It looks like she was found near Grantchester Meadows,” Peter said. “That’s between town and where our house was. Yash, she could have been on the way to our place. Maybe with your CDs.”
Yash leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead.
“That’s so sad,” he said. “Oh God.”
“So a girl you all met,” Stevie said, “caused a breakup, disappeared, and drowned a few days before Rosie and Noel died, and could have been on the way to your house when it happened. And on the day you left for Merryweather, an article appears in the paper saying her body has been found. That night, Rosie and Noel were killed. Angela put this part together, and now Angela is gone.”
“Where is my aunt?” Izzy said.
But there was no answer.
24
THERE HAD BEEN, TO PUT IT MILDLY, A VIBE SHIFT.
The whole house was awake. Not just the people—Stevie felt like Merryweather itself had been roused from slumber. She was acutely aware of the faces from the portraits on the wall, the groan and creak of the wood, the autumn wind striking the windows. Her head was thrumming with information as she made her way back upstairs.
They’d made a mess of the grand bed. The duvet was piled and almost knotted around a sheet. There were creases where they had sweat and twisted. Stevie smoothed them out and climbed in. David got in beside her and leaned in to kiss her, then sat back.
“It’s been a weird night,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe we can just lay here?”
He raised his arm, making space for her to tuck herself next to him. He played with her hair as her thoughts drifted over this new information. She wasn’t sure how much time passed before she noticed his hand was not moving and he was fast asleep. She propped herself up on her elbow to look at the outline of his face in the darkness for a moment, then slipped out of the bed as silently as she could, grabbing her tablet in the dark, and went into the bathroom. She sat on the sofa under the window. （How could she not? Who has a bathroom sofa?） The moon was full and white, gleaming the gardens.
When Stevie had tried to get into the spirit of a cold case, sometimes she had to immerse herself in sound, something to help her brain slide along. Nineties. Britpop. They kept mentioning the band Blur, so she looked it up. She didn’t know any of the songs, but there was one called “Country House.” It started with a bold series of descending chords that sounded like the lead to a party. A very English voice said, “So the story begins . . .”
Stevie set it on repeat and let Blur sing into her ears as she looked at every document again. She tried to walk through it in her mind. Samantha Gravis was an American visiting England, just like her. Samantha’s time there was limited, like Stevie’s. She met the Nine, like Stevie had. She kisses two of them. She borrows CDs from one and gets their home address. It seems like Samantha Gravis, a bit drunk, starts to walk to their house to return the CDs and visit them. It’s 1995, so she has no phone to guide her. Maybe she has a map, or just some idea of which way to go. It’s late. It’s dark.
Who would have a motive to hurt Samantha?
Samantha had kissed Julian and Yash. Julian and Rosie had been dating, and Samantha was the reason they broke up.
Did Rosie kill Samantha Gravis? Was that what this was all about? Was that what Angela was referring to? When she said she thought one of her friends was a murderer, did she mean Rosie? And then what? Someone kills Rosie and Noel in retribution? Yash?
As they told it, all these people were involved with each other. There was a lot of hooking up and jealousy and breaking up and making up. Anyone could have been mad about what happened.
Stevie must have dozed off for a little while. She came to with a start when her tablet fell from her lap and hit the bathroom floor. She snorted away, looked around in confusion at the bathroom and the big tub, and checked the time. It was five in the morning.
She turned off the music and rubbed her face with both hands. She had no answers. Coffee. She needed coffee.
David was fast asleep in the bed as she passed, the massive fluffs of white duvet pulled up to his nose, one arm hanging off the edge of the bed. It was the arm he wore his watch on—the old watch his father had given him. It was a large watch, but David had heavy, strong wrists. Something about seeing his arm outstretched like that—she considered getting back into the bed, waking him with kisses, finishing what they had started. She stood there for a moment, pulled in two directions, then resignedly moved toward the door.
There was just so little time and so many questions.
Stevie moved along the upstairs hall of Merryweather, past the porcelain bowl and the vases and the grim portraiture. She made her way down the grand staircase, where the ticking grandfather clock stood sentry below. She crossed the wooden floor, smelling the leftover smoke from last night’s fire. She made her way back to the massive kitchen and found the lights. The chairs were still pushed out from the table from the conference of a few hours before. She went over to the kettle. She filled it at the sink and put it back on its base, then switched it on to boil. It wasn’t a complicated move, but it made her feel like she belonged there.
She could fit in there. She could live there. She could go to school there, with David. Maybe this could be her life, going to places like this. . . .
The kitchen window faced a brick wall. She leaned over the sink a bit to look up at the dark early morning sky. There was a figure reflected in the window behind her. She gasped, even as she realized it was just Nate, shuffling in, wearing a large brown hoodie and blue plaid pajama pants, and holding his laptop.