An Inquiry Into Love and Death by Simone St. James Page A

first cigarette, then who smoked the second one?”
    “But the first one could be weeks old, could it not?”
    “It could not. It rained heavily the night before your uncle died. This cigarette was found on the same morning as the body, perfectly dry.”
    I felt that sink in with a sick numbness. “Someone was there.”
    “It’s a possibility, yes.”
    “You knew about this,” I said, angry. “I know what you’re saying. Why didn’t you just tell me my uncle was murdered?”
    “Because I don’t know it, not really. This isn’t much to go on. It isn’t proof. But when I went back to the site again this morning and found the second one . . .” He looked tired. “If someone killed him, they may have gone back to the same place. It’s a reasonably common pattern.”
    “Oh, my God,” I said. “We have to do something. You need to call your headquarters at Scotland Yard.”
    “And give them what?” he said. “I have two cigarettes and a gut feeling. They won’t think it’s enough.”
    I stood. I was mindlessly agitated. It felt as if something were physically tearing at me, and I began to pace in an attempt to stop it. “So you need to find something else,” I said, more sharply than I intended. I pointed at the second cigarette. “That one is just as dry as the first.”
    “And there was a storm last night, yes. So someone dropped it this morning.”
    I wondered whether the person had gone right by my back door on his or her way to the cliffs, taking the same path I had walked with William Moorcock. Did William smoke? I didn’t think so. I thought of Rachel Moorcock, dropping her cigarette and grinding it out.
    “You need to find out who smokes in Rothewell,” I said.
    He watched me as I paced, his look a little wary. “Perhaps. But not only Rothewell. The person could have come from another town.”
    “They would have required a motorcar. That would have been noticed.”
    “Not if they parked it a distance away. And they could have traveled by bicycle, or motorcycle. They could have walked.”
    Or traveled by donkey cart. I blew out a breath. “The cigarette has no lipstick on it. That means it was a man.”
    “Does it? You wore no lipstick yesterday.”
    He was right. Rachel had worn lipstick, as had Diana Kates, but Diana’s daughter, Julia, had not. “You said my uncle’s body was found at ten o’clock, and he had been dead three to five hours. That means he died sometime between five and seven o’clock in the morning.”
    “That’s correct.”
    “Daylight, then.” I turned to him. “Or at least dawn. The sun was coming up. Someone could have seen something.”
    “I spent much of yesterday afternoon canvassing town,” he said. “It’s why I didn’t get to the cliffs until this morning. No one I’ve talked to saw anything at all.”
    “Please,” I said in exasperation. “There must be something you can do!”
    “Jillian.” He said my name, softly, for the first time. “He could have jumped.”
    I put my hands to my eyes and pressed them. I was not weeping. My eyes were as dry and hot as they’d been the day I’d seen the body, my breath ragged in my chest. “He didn’t jump,” I managed to say from the darkness behind my hands. “You know that, and so do I. I was going to leave today, and never come back to this place again.” The implications were only fully hitting me, and I could barely stand them.
“He didn’t jump
.
”
    We were quiet for a moment, me taking deep breaths to control myself, and Inspector Merriken in his chair, waiting. He offered no comfort, and I wanted none from him. If I remained in Rothewell, I’d be staying with that thing, whatever it had been. Whatever it had wanted. But if I left . . .
    It was the cigarette that haunted me. That damned cigarette. If I left, I’d know that someone had done something, known something, and I had done nothing about it. Someone had walked the cliffs just this morning, smoking and thinking of how