“Philippa?”
“We need to speak with her,” Lynley said.
“She’s sorting her gear. Should be finished up in—”
Lynley showed him his warrant card. “We need a word now,” he clarified.
The young man’s eyes widened. He held the gate open for them. “Hope no one’s in trouble,” he said as the gate swung shut behind them.
When they found her, Dr. Weatherall was replacing the scull she’d been using. She was wearing black: a neoprene one-piece with reflective stripes following the seams. She whirled round when Lynley said her name. “Good Lord, you startled me,” was her greeting. And then to Havers, “Another meeting? I’ve nothing else to offer, I’m afraid.”
“It’s not for me,” Barbara told her. “This is my guv, DCS Lynley.”
Dr. Weatherall looked from Barbara to Lynley and back again to Barbara. “Why at this time of day?” she asked.
“Early birds and worms . . . ?” Barbara said with a shrug. “You’re something of an early bird yourself.”
“I am. But I don’t show up to speak with people at ungodly hours, as it happens.”
Lynley said, “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“And we reckoned you’d be more comfortable answering them at home than at the clinic,” Barbara told her.
Dr. Weatherall shoved the scull’s oars onto a metal bar with a line of others. They clipped nicely into a vacant holder. “I can only spare a few minutes,” she said. Her tone was brusque. She glanced at her watch. “I’ve a patient at half past eight.”
“A few minutes is all we need,” Barbara said affably. “Are you finished up here or can we help you?”
“I’m finished. I do need to shower before I head to work, though. So if you intend to take more than five or ten minutes, we’ll need to schedule this for another time.”
“Ten minutes should be adequate,” Lynley told her. He extended his hand to indicate the way they had entered, adding, “If you will.”
The surgeon seemed to Barbara more like someone to whom if you won’t applied, but she cooperated. They walked in silence back along the path to her cottage, where a cat was crouched in anticipation of breakfast, near one empty bowl and another filled with water.
“Looks like you’re expected,” Barbara said in note of him.
“Oh, yes,” Dr. Weatherall said. “He knows a soft touch when he encounters one, that cat.” She let them inside the cottage, where she flipped on overhead lights. She handed a bag of dried cat food to Barbara, saying, “If you’ll give him some, we can get going on the purpose of your visit here. I’m having a coffee. Either of you . . . ?”
Lynley demurred. Barbara said coffee sounded like the very thing. The surgeon set about the job with an electric kettle and a coffee press. Barbara poured food into the cat’s bowl on the front step and returned inside. Lynley was looking at a group of framed pictures that sat on a shelving unit along with a flat-screen television. They were older photos, Barbara saw when she joined him, and most of them looked as if they’d come from Dr. Weatherall’s childhood. They generally depicted a family in various happy locations at different seasons of the year. Although there were half a score of childhood pictures, the adolescent Philippa Weatherall was in only one of them, skeletally thin with cadaverous cheekbones and eyes so sunken they might have been marks made by a felt-tip pen. Anorexia, Barbara thought. Considering how she looked in the photo, she was lucky she was still alive.
“It took ten years of my life.” The surgeon was still in the kitchen, but the cottage was quite small and she could easily see what they were studying. “It’s why my mum died young.”
Barbara said, “How’s that?” as Lynley replaced the picture.
“Ovarian cancer. She ignored the signs because she was taking care of me. I was in and out of hospital for a decade, and I think she blamed herself. No reason, but she couldn’t see that.” She was quiet a moment before she cleared her throat and went on with, “I’ve found mothers take on blame whether there’s cause or not.”
“That’s certainly been my experience,” Lynley said. The surgeon glanced in his direction as if to gauge his sincerity.
The kettle clicked off. She saw to the coffee, asked Barbara if she wanted milk and sugar, and then joined them. She handed a mug to Barbara, and with her own, she indicated a photo of two men in formal dress—perhaps ten years her junior—with their arms slung round each other. She said, “My brother and his partner. Well, his husband now. And this”—she gestured with her mug to a shot of a beret-wearing soldier—“is their older son Elek.”