All Shall Be Well

"Do you think she'll be back soon? I'll wait."

The girls exchanged glances, then the first one spoke again. "She'd better be. The old ba—Mrs. Washburn'll have her knickers as it is."

"Late, is she?" Gemma crossed to the first girl and held out her hand. "I'm Gemma James."

"I'm Carla. She's Jennifer." A nod toward the other girl, who had not yet spoken.

Carla had a mop of frizzed brown hair pulled up with a band, and a square-jawed, pleasant face. Her legs, very visible under a spandex mini-skirt, looked like tree trunks. The other girl, Jennifer, Gemma pegged as carrying what she called the perfection gene. Some women were born with it—if not, there was no point in trying to achieve it: flawless skin, perfect features, fashion-model's body, hair that always did just what it was supposed to, clothes the latest trend. It would be nice if she could talk as well, thought Gemma, then chided herself for being catty.

"Have any idea where she might be?" Gemma propped a hip on a low filing cabinet and looked at her watch— nearly half-past one.

The girls looked at each other again, and this time an unspoken signal must have passed between them because Jennifer spoke. "Out with her boyfriend, maybe." Her soft voice held a trace of an accent Gemma thought might be West Country, and her blue eyes showed surprising intelligence. "She was awfully upset this morning. About Miss Dent. You're here about Miss Dent, aren't you?"

The grapevine not only worked, it worked wonders. "In a way," Gemma answered noncommittally. "Do you know Margaret's boyfriend?"

The girls smiled with shared amusement. "Roger?" said Jennifer. "We should be so lucky." She glanced at Carla, who pulled a face. "No, really," she continued, "I was with her when she met him."

Gemma folded her arms and tilted her head, looking as if she had all day. "Really? When was that?"

Jennifer thought about it, creasing her smooth brow and pulling her Cupid's-bow lips into a little moue. "About October, I think. I took her round the clubs with me one night. I felt a bit sorry for her, see." She flicked another look at Carla from under her lashes and Carla nodded agreement. "She never did anything but go home by herself to that dreadful bedsit. So I thought… well, you know."

"That was very kind of you, I'm sure." Gemma's voice was warm with approval. "So then what happened?"

Jennifer smiled at her, showing teeth as small and even as a child's. "Nothing. We sat at the bar in this place and nobody even talked to us. You'd have thought we had the plague or something. And then this gorgeous guy comes up. I mean really gorgeous, like a…" Jennifer ran her tongue around her lips while she struggled for a descriptive phrase. "Like an American telly star or something. I thought wow, get ready for this one," her shoulders gave a little wiggle, "and then he chats up Margaret." Remembered consternation puckered her face and she shook her head in disbelief.

Jennifer's remarks seemed bare of conceit in the usual sense; it was more as if her universe had simply stopped behaving in its expected way. Men looked at Jennifer— men did not look at Margaret, and you didn't mess about with the laws of physics.

"Just as well, as it turned out," said Carla. "Our Roger didn't turn out to be such a great prize."

"Why ever not?" asked Gemma.

This time Carla looked at her friend for encouragement, and Jennifer gave a tiny nod. Carla looked down at her lap, still hesitant, and stretched her skirt down a bit over her thighs. "Oh… he never takes her anywhere, never spends any money on her. He just goes to her bedsitter and… you know." Color flooded up to the roots of Carla's frizzy hair and she didn't meet Gemma's eyes.

"How do you know?" Gemma asked softly. She shifted her behind a little where it had gone numb against the filing cabinet. "Does Margaret confide in you?"

"No," Carla answered, the blush not receding. "Some days you can just… tell. Look, I shouldn't have said—"

"Never mind." Gemma cut her off, not wanting to let her dwell on what would feel to her like disloyalty. "About Miss Dent. Were she and Margaret special friends at work?"

Carla answered after a moment, when Jennifer didn't speak. "Not really. Miss Dent was always fair—not like some I could name," she shot a black look in the direction of Mrs. Washburn's office, "and friendly in a distant sort of way, but she didn't take her tea breaks with us or anything like that. It was only after she left," Carla said slowly, thinking about it, "that Margaret started to visit her. "I saw Jasmine yesterday," she'd say, all puffed up about it, like calling Miss Dent 'Jasmine' made her better than us."

"Was this before she met Roger, or after?"

The girls looked at each other, concentrating. "Before," said Jennifer, and Carla nodded.

"Yeah. That's right, 'cause Miss Dent left just before August Bank Holiday, and it wasn't long—"

The door opened and Carla stopped dead, flushing again. Jennifer merely assumed a blank expression and went back to her typing.

A woman stumbled breathlessly into the room, her fair skin pink with exertion, her fine, brown hair awry and the tail of her blouse slipping out of her skirt. "Sorry I'm late. I didn't mean—" The sheaf of papers she clutched in her hand slipped to the floor as she became aware of Gemma. Squatting, she shuffled the papers awkwardly into a stack, and kept her eyes cast down.

"You're Margaret," Gemma said, making it a statement. A flash of pale blue eyes through pale lashes, then Margaret bent her head again to her papers. The skin on the back of Gemma's neck tightened as she realized that Margaret Bellamy was very frightened indeed. "I'm a friend of Duncan Kincaid's. Is there somewhere we could go and have a cup of tea?"

"Mrs. Washburn'll kill me. I'll lose my job." Margaret twisted nervously in the red plastic booth.

"It'll be all right. I'll square it with her, I promise." Gemma leaned across the table and touched Margaret's hand. A sturdy hand, Gemma saw, with short fingers, and nails bitten to the quick. It was also ice-cold and damp, and Gemma felt a faint trembling under her fingers.

A harried waitress slammed cups of industrial-strength tea on the Formica table, sloshing it into the saucers. Gemma had remembered passing the busy cafe around the corner from the planning office. The atmosphere was not exactly soothing, but Margaret seemed unaware of the noise and the sharp smell of hot grease drifting from the kitchen.

"Margaret—"

"I'm really in trouble, aren't I?" Margaret said, the words so near a whisper that Gemma had to lean forward again to catch them. "Roger says I could go to prison. And it's all my fault. I should never have said anything to your friend…"

"I think," Gemma paused, stirring generous helpings of milk and sugar into her tea in an effort to make it taste less like cleaning fluid, "that if you told the truth, you did exactly the right thing. Duncan just wants to be sure that it really was Jasmine's choice."

Margaret shook her head slowly from side to side, tracing her finger through the puddle of tea on the table. "I still can't believe she lied to me. I thought I'd accepted it, but I hadn't. That day… I was so relieved when she said she'd changed her mind—" She looked up at Gemma. "Do you think I fooled myself into thinking she really meant it, just because that's what I wanted to hear?"

Out of the corner of her eye Gemma saw the waitress approaching with a couple of tattered plastic menus. Gemma raised her hand and waved the woman away without ever taking her eyes from Margaret's face. "If you were so frightened, why did you ever agree to help her?"

"Oh, it was different at first. I felt so special." Margaret sat up a bit straighter in the booth and smiled for the first time. "For someone to want to spend their last minutes on this earth with you, to trust you that much—especially Jasmine. She didn't get close to people very easily. Nobody had ever felt that way about me, you know?"

Gemma nodded but didn't speak.

"And it was exciting. Planning, organizing. Having a secret that nobody knew. Life and death." Margaret smiled again, remembering. "Sometimes I imagined telling everyone at work, but I knew I couldn't. It was too personal, just between Jasmine and me." She took a sip of the tea, then made a face as the tannic acid bit into her tongue and she looked into the cup for the first time.

"Then what happened?"

Margaret shrugged. "It got closer. And I got scared." She gave Gemma a look of entreaty. "She looked so good at first. Her hair had grown again from the treatments. I knew she tired easily, but she didn't really seem ill. Then her flesh just started to melt away from her bones. And every day she grew a little weaker, every day she'd ask me to do some little thing she'd been able to do for herself the day before. The chest catheter went in. She started liquid morphine, even though she never talked about the pain."

This time Gemma caught the waitress's eye and mouthed "hot water." The cafe was beginning to empty and the noise level had dropped enough that she could hear Margaret's soft voice without straining. When the steaming, tin pot arrived, Gemma poured hot water into Margaret's half-empty cup without asking, then settled back to wait.

"She never set a time," Margaret continued as if there'd been no interruption, eyes focused on the circle her hands made around the hot cup. "I started to dread it—every day when I'd visit her I'd think 'Is this the day?" Is she going to say 'I'm ready, Meg, let's do it now'? My stomach knotted up. I felt sick all the time. I started to think about having to put the plastic bag over her head if the morphine didn't work.

"One day she seemed very calm, less restless than usual. I wondered if she'd increased the morphine. Then "I'll not see fifty, Meg," she says. "There's no point." And I knew she'd made up her mind."

Gemma sipped her watered-down tea and waited. When Margaret didn't speak again, she asked gently, "Did she give you an exact date?"

"The day before her birthday. I'd lie awake nights and think about watching her die. How would she look? How would I know when it was over? I couldn't bear it. And I couldn't tell her."

When Margaret looked up, Gemma saw that her eyes looked bruised and swollen, as if she'd been weeping for days. "Did you tell her?"

"I thought that was the most terrible day I'd ever spent. I didn't know it could get worse." Margaret rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth. "Most of the day at work I spent throwing up in the loo. I worked myself up to tell her as soon as I walked in." Her lips twisted in a smile at the irony of it. "She didn't even let me finish. "Don't worry, Meg," she said. "I don't know if I've found my courage or if I've lost it, but I'm going to stick it out." "

"What made you believe her?" asked Gemma. "Why didn't you think she was just trying to let you off the hook?"

Margaret's wide brow creased as she thought about it. "I don't know if I can explain, exactly. There wasn't any… tension in her. No screwing herself up for something, no excitement. Do you see?"

Gemma considered. "Yes, I think I do. She didn't ask you to stay?"

"Just for a bit. I did all the things I usually did for her— fed the cat, tidied up. Then I walked down to the Indian take-away and got a curry for her supper. She couldn't eat much, really, but she still made the effort."

"Margaret," Gemma said, treading carefully now, "didn't Jasmine ever talk to you about the legal implications of assisted suicide?"

Margaret nodded eagerly. "She said as long as I didn't actually touch her or give her anything, I'd be all right. And we didn't think anyone would ever know. Jasmine said we'd make sure it looked natural—she didn't want complications."

Had Jasmine simply made things easy for Margaret? Had her calm that day come from resolution rather than acceptance? Was she such a skilled actress that she had lied easily to the people who knew her best? And if so, why? Gemma thought of the girl in the photograph, with her delicate beauty and her closed, almost secretive, expression. A clever woman, an organizer, a planner—had her request to see Theo on Sunday been just an unnecessary bit of stage management? Gemma shook her head. She couldn't see Jasmine elaborating just for the sake of it.

And there was one question she hadn't asked Margaret. "Jasmine left a will, Meg." Gemma used the diminutive Jasmine had chosen. "Did she tell you about it?"

Margaret stared into her empty teacup as if the answer might lie in the tea leaves' random design.

Gemma waited, not offering any encouragement, not breaking the tension that grew in the silence.

"We argued." The tips of Margaret's fingers turned white as she pressed them against the cup. "I told her it was terribly unfair, but she wouldn't listen—she said she'd done all she could for Theo. I didn't want to benefit from her death. It made me feel awful, like I'd loved her for a price." She looked up at Gemma, her eyes reddening and glazing with tears. "You do understand, don't you?"

Reaching across the table and laying her fingers on the back of Margaret's hand, Gemma said, "Did you tell anybody else about the will, Meg, anyone at all?"

Margaret jerked her hand away from Gemma's and the empty cup rocked in its saucer. "No! Of course not. I didn't tell anybody."

Gathering up her handbag and cardigan, Margaret pushed her cup away, and after a moment Gemma caught the sharp, acrid odor of fear.

Chapter Eleven

"Cut and dried."

"All right. Justify it." Kincaid pushed his chair away from his desk and propped his feet up on the open bottom drawer. He'd gone bleary-eyed from an afternoon's paperwork when Gemma, smelling of cold air and crackling with excitement, had charged back into the office.

"She's bloody terrified, poor little rabbit." Gemma stopped pacing and sat on the arm of the visitor's chair, hands beneath her bottom. "I don't mean I think she knew beforehand, but she let that boyfriend in on the will, and now she's sweating it." She leaned forward for emphasis, reaching up with quick fingers to tuck back hair that the wind had teased from the clip at the nape of her neck. "Let's say Roger was waiting for Margaret that afternoon when she left Jasmine's, and she told him Jasmine had changed her mind. They have a row, and Roger goes off to do his set-up. Later on he makes some excuse to push off early, then pops round to Jasmine's flat." "I thought he said he'd never been there." Shoulders lifting in a tiny shrug, Gemma said, "So maybe he lied. Who's going to contradict him? Margaret?" She paused for a moment, then continued more thoughtfully. "Or maybe he told the truth. That wouldn't have stopped him showing up at her door, making some kind of excuse. He could be very… plausible, I think."

Kincaid leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, and grinned. "Not immune to our Roger, then?"

Gemma shivered. "Like being locked up with a snake. Gave me the creeps, he did. I'd not put anything past him. What if," she stood and began pacing the small confines of the office again, "somehow he found out about Jasmine's will before he ever met Margaret? Why else would he chat up Margaret in the first place? He must have women queuing up to go out with him. And don't tell me," she added, coloring as she saw Kincaid smile, "that he sees the purity of her soul or something, because I don't believe it."

"I don't either, but it may not be that simple, all the same." Kincaid remembered the scene he'd witnessed in Margaret's room—Roger enjoyed displaying his sexual hold over her, and that was probably only the tip of the iceberg. "Just suppose you're right, Gemma, far-fetched as it is, how could Roger have known about Jasmine?"

"Bribed her solicitor?"

Kincaid shook his head, thinking of Anthony Thomas's gentle outrage. "Not likely. But what if you're right about the first part and Roger did go to Jasmine's flat that night? He's never met her, he makes some excuse for coming, and then what? Does he say 'Excuse me, let me give you an overdose of morphine'?" He jabbed a finger at Gemma. "I'd swear there was no struggle."

"Maybe he told her Margaret had just been using her, and then Jasmine decided to kill herself after all."

"All he had to do was wait. Why would he risk the final outcome?"

"Perhaps he thought he was losing his hold over Margaret, and made one last-ditch attempt," said Gemma, settling back into the chair and crossing her legs.

They looked at each other a moment, speculating, then Kincaid straightened up in his chair and kicked his desk drawer shut. "No evidence, Gemma. Not a shred. I'll admit Roger looks a likely suspect, but we'll have to keep digging. And I'm not at all happy about Theo." He looked at his watch and stretched, then pulled down the knot on his tie and unbuttoned his collar. "Let's call it a day. I'm knackered. Fancy a drink before you go home?"

Gemma hesitated, then made a face. "Better not. I've played truant enough lately. See you tomorrow." She went out with a wave, then stuck her head round the door again. "Don't forget to look after the cat, now."

The weather change had driven the weekend hordes from Hampstead Heath. Spring had flaunted her true colors and driven them scurrying back into pubs and parlors, except for a few solitary dog-walkers and resolute joggers. Litter left behind from the warm-weather festivities blew fitfully across the grass. Stopping at the flat only long enough to change into jeans and anorak, Kincaid crossed East Heath Road at the bottom of Worsley and plunged onto the Heath itself near the Mixed Bathing Pond. He felt a need to work the kinks out of mind and body. Running required too much focus, or at least that's what he told himself, so he turned north and walked, letting his thoughts wander where they would.

Gemma's theories worried him more than he'd admitted. He trusted her instincts, and if she said Margaret Bellamy was dead scared, he believed her. But he couldn't make a logical construction out of the rest of it—there were just too many holes.

He smiled, thinking of Gemma's arguments. Sometimes her enthusiasm amused him, sometimes it irritated him, but that was one reason they worked well together—she charged into ideas headlong while he tended to worry at them, and often together they came to a satisfactory conclusion.

The path crossed the viaduct pond and he stopped a moment, hands in pockets, admiring the view. New-leafed branches formed mirror images of themselves in the water, and to the west the spire of Hampstead's Christ Church rose above the still-bare fingers of the taller trees. Gemma had been different at the weekend, some of the fiery energy banked down to a lazy contentment. Bright cotton clothes against skin faintly flushed from the sun, an elusive scent of peaches when he'd stood next to her in Theo's dusty shop—Kincaid blinked and shook himself like a dog coming out of water.

He started walking again, head down into the wind, beginning the long climb to the Heath-top. Somehow, in the course of the weekend, the atmosphere between them had shifted. Today they'd worked together in their usual way, and he'd begun to think he was imagining things, but then he sensed her uncharacteristic hesitation when he suggested they stop for an after-work drink. They often did that, talking over the day's progress and planning the next, and only now did he realize how much he looked forward to it. Maybe he demanded too much of her time, and she resented it. He'd be more careful in the future.

Twigs of gorse, heavy with yellow blossom, scratched and snagged at his sleeve as he absentmindedly passed too near. Beautiful and irritatingly prickly, like Gemma—and like Gemma, it needed to be handled with caution. He smiled.

His path dead-ended at the top of Heath Street, just across from Jack Straw's Castle. The parking lot of the old pub was already full, and when the door swung open the wind carried a faint drift of music to Kincaid's ears. The boisterous crowd didn't appeal to him and he turned left down Heath Street, feeling the pull in his calf muscles as he made the steep descent. When he reached the tube station, an impulse sent him straight ahead rather than left into Hampstead High Street. Church Row came up shortly on his right, and he turned into the narrow lane, the spire of St. John's leading him on like a compass needle.

Kincaid entered the churchyard through the massive wrought-iron gates. A drunk snored on a bench by the church door, disturbing the silence. Kincaid turned left, into the dim greenness of the tomb-covered hillside, which even in early spring was tangled and overgrown with vegetation. The path wound under the heavy boughs of evergreens, passing damp, gray stone slabs, splotched with lichens. He stopped at his favorite spot, just before the lower boundary wall.

"John Constable, Esq., R.A., 1837," read the carved inscription on the side of the tomb. Constable lay with his wife, Mary Elizabeth, and the marker also bore witness to the death of their son, John Charles, age twenty-three. Constable's name was associated with the history of almost every part of Hampstead, as he rented one house after another from 1819 until his death, and was said to have asked to "take his everlasting rest" in the village he immortalized in his paintings.

Why Kincaid found the Victorian monument comforting he couldn't have said, but since he'd lived in Hampstead he had developed a habit of coming here to think when he couldn't quite sort something out. He sat on a rock and rubbed a twig between his fingers, crumbling the dry bark to dust. Frowning, he tried to clear his mind, concentrate. His gut-instinct told him that Meg really had loved Jasmine, would not have harmed her against her wishes. Roger, however, was a different kettle of fish, and a smelly one at that. Sex was a powerful and often twisted force, and he wasn't sure how blind an eye Meg might have persuaded herself to turn in order to preserve her relationship with Roger.

And Theo? Had Theo resented his sister more than he loved her? He certainly had reason to be grateful to her, but the contrariness of human nature could make gratitude a difficult burden to bear.

He began to see Jasmine sitting in the center of a radiating web of relationships, inviolate. What had she felt for anyone? Had she moved through her life untouched and untouching? She'd faced her illness with such equanimity. He couldn't reconcile the passionate girl in the journals with the woman he'd known—charming, witty, intelligent, and more guarded than he ever had imagined.

Kincaid sighed and stood up. The light was fast fading, the graves had no secrets to impart, and if he weren't careful he'd be blundering his way back up the hill. He realized that the wind had died, and beyond the boundary hedge the lights of the city glowed in the gathering dusk.

The drunk was gone when Kincaid reached the church again. From within the building, muffled by the heavy doors, voices sang in familiar cadence. "Evensong," Kincaid said aloud. When had he last heard an Evensong service? The sound took him back to the sturdy red-brick church of his Cheshire childhood. His parents had deemed the Evensong service the only compromise between their Anglican upbringing and their liberal philosophies, and while the family often attended Evensong, Kincaid could not remember being inside the church on a Sunday.

Inching open the scuffed, blue-leather-padded door and slipping through, Kincaid made his way to the last pew and eased into it. Only a few scattered forms filled the seats in front of him. He wondered that the service, so lightly attended, was held at all.

Voices rose, the sound filling the hollow space inside the church, and the notes of the massive organ vibrated through the pew into his bones. Kincaid relaxed, idly watching the choir director. The man used his hands like blunt instruments, chopping and jabbing his signals to the choir. He looked, in fact, more like a rugby forward than a choir director—well over six-feet tall, with massive shoulders under his surplice and a square, heavy-jawed head.

The director moved a step to the right and Kincaid caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the choir's back row. A fringe of gray hair around a balding head and a ruddy face, a clipped gray mustache—so accustomed was Kincaid to the Major's usual tweedy attire that the full, white fabric of the surplice had disoriented him for a moment. How could he have forgotten the Major telling him he sang with the St. John's choir? Kincaid watched, fascinated by the sight of his taciturn neighbor raising his voice in a joyous, open-mouthed bass.

The service drew to a close. The final "amen" hung trembling, then the choir filed out. The other congregants passed Kincaid on their way to the door, smiling and glancing curiously at him. Regulars, he thought, wondering just who the hell he was. When the porch door closed on the last straggler, Kincaid stood and walked toward the altar.

"Excuse me."

The director had his hand on a door which Kincaid thought must lead to the vestry. He swung around, startled, his movements surprisingly graceful for such a large man. "Yes?"

"Could I speak to you for a minute? My name's Duncan Kincaid." Kincaid thought fast. He didn't want to make a professional inquiry of a friend and neighbor just yet, only set his own mind at ease. Perhaps his jeans, anorak, and wind-blown hair weren't a disadvantage after all.

Hand outstretched, the choir director came toward Kincaid. "I'm Paul Grisham. What can I do for you?"

Kincaid heard in his voice a familiar lilt. "You're Welsh," he said, making it a statement. Paul Grisham's face broke into a grin, showing large, crooked teeth. His nose, Kincaid saw, had been broken, and probably more than once.

"That I am. From Llangynog." Grisham cocked his head, studying Kincaid. "And you?"

"A near neighbor, across the border. I grew up in Nantwich."

"Thought you didn't sound London born and bred."

"You play rugby?" Kincaid touched a finger to his own nose.

"I did, yes, when my bones knitted quicker. Wrexham Union."

Kincaid shifted a bit and leaned against the altar rail. He sensed Grisham waiting for him to get to the point, and said casually, "I just happened by, quite by accident. I'd no idea you had Evensong service." He nodded his head toward the choir stall behind Grisham. "Was that Major Keith I saw?"

Grisham smiled. "You know the Major? One of our mainstays, he is, though you wouldn't think it to look at him, the crusty old devil. Regular as clockwork, never misses a practice."

"Twice a week?" Kincaid hazarded.

"Sunday and Thursday evenings."

"He's my downstairs neighbor. I'd no idea he sang, but I had wondered where he disappeared to so regularly. Figured he was off for a pint." Kincaid straightened up as Grisham hiked up his robe and fished a set of keys out of his trouser pocket. "I was just startled to see him, that's all."

"If you don't mind, I'll let you out the front before I lock up. Vandals, you know," he added apologetically.

"Not at all." Kincaid turned and together they walked up the aisle. "Didn't mean to take so much of your time."

When they reached the vestibule Grisham stopped and turned to face Kincaid, seeming to hesitate. In the dim light, Kincaid had to look up to read his expression. The man overreached him by a head—he must be nearly as big as the Super.

"You said you were his neighbor—the Major?"

Kincaid nodded. "Since I bought my flat, three years ago."

"Know him well?"

Shrugging, Kincaid answered, "Not really. I'm not sure anyone does." Jasmine came suddenly to mind, with her tales of afternoon tea with the Major, and he thought of the rosebushes planted in her memory. "I don't know. There was someone, perhaps. Our neighbor, but she died just last week."

Grisham reached for the heavy porch door, swinging it open as if it were cardboard. "That explains it, then. Last Thursday night he left practice early, said he felt ill. First time I've ever known him to do that, and I was a bit worried about him, living alone and all. But he's not the sort of person you could ask."

"No," Kincaid agreed, stepping out into the darkness. "I don't suppose you could. Thanks for your time. I'll come back," he said, meaning it, and as the door closed he saw a flash of Paul Grisham's white teeth.

What he didn't add was that Jasmine could not have accounted for the Major's sudden indisposition. He hadn't learned of her death until Kincaid told him, mid-day on Friday.

He stopped for a pie and a pint at the King George, halfway down the High. When he came out into the street again the still air felt damp against his skin. Rain tomorrow, or he'd be buggered. Turning up his collar and shoving his hands in his pockets against the chill, he walked home slowly, looking in the lighted windows of the empty shops.

His footsteps led him naturally to Jasmine's door, and he let himself in with the key he'd attached to his keyring. When Kincaid turned on the lamp Sid blinked at him from the center of the bed, then seemed to levitate himself into a stretch.

"Hullo, Sid. Glad to see me this time? Or just hungry?" The cat followed him into the kitchen and sat watching expectantly as Kincaid rooted in the drawer for the tin opener. "Not going to wind about my ankles, are you, mate?" Kincaid said, thinking of how he'd seen the cat wrap himself around Jasmine's slender ankles at feeding time. As she grew more fragile he'd been afraid the cat would make her fall, but he hadn't said anything.

"Let's not get too familiar, okay?" He set the dish on the floor, then ran his fingers down Sid's smooth back as the cat came to the food. Remembering Gemma's instructions, he found the litter box tucked away under the bathroom sink, emptied it into the rubbish bin and refilled it from a sack he found in the cupboard. He lifted the rubbish bag free of the bin and tied it up for collection.

Feeling virtuous, he refilled Sid's water bowl and stood watching the cat eat. "What's going to become of you, eh, mate?" As Sid polished the empty dish with his tongue, Kincaid added, "Looks like you've done the worst of your grieving." Human or animal, in most cases the body reasserted itself soon enough. You drank cups of tea, or whiskey. You ate what was put in front of you, and life went on. "See you tomorrow, mate."

He left a lamp lit for the cat and went upstairs to Jasmine's journals.

June 5th, 1963

All I can think about is how I feel when he touches me. My skin burns. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I feel a little sick with it all the time but I don't want it to stop, and there's this hard knot in my belly that aches and won't go away no matter what I do. I know what people say about him, but it's not true. He's different with me, gentle. They just don't understand him. He doesn't belong here, any more than I do. We're throwbacks, both of us, to something darker, less English. Aunt May says some of my mother's family were French and that's why I look the way I do, but you can tell from the way she says it that she despised my mum.

"Rose Hollis," she says, "didn't have the sense God gave a child. I don't know what your father was thinking of when he married her and took her to India." Poor mummy. He killed her, as surely as if he'd stuck a knife in her heart, and I'm afraid. I don't want the same thing to happen to me, but it's out of control already and I don't see any way to turn it back.

We'll go away, soon as I've saved enough working for old Mr. Rawlinson. London, where nobody will know us, where we can be together all the time. Get a flat somewhere. I know I promised I'd not go without Theo, but he can leave school after this year and maybe by that time I'll be able to look after him, too.

I dream about him when I can sleep. When I close my eyes I see his face against my eyelids. His dark hair lies like silk against my hand when I run my fingers through it. Last night we met behind the social club as soon as it was dark. It was bingo night, and I could hear them calling inside, numbers and letters. "Jasmine?" he says, in that questioning way, as if he can't quite believe in me, and then his mouth turns up at the corners when he smiles. But the light lasts longer every evening, and there's nowhere we can go to be alone, where he can kiss me, put his hands where I want him to touch me. Aunt May would kill me if she found out, and his old mum's even worse. Dry and shriveled as old prunes, both of them, and sick with envy.

I have an idea, though, and if I can carry it through, there won't be anything that can come between us.

Chapter Twelve

The previous evening's promise of rain fulfilled itself. Kincaid peered through the Midget's windscreen in the gray light, straining to see the road, while the wipers clicked monotonously back and forth, scrubbing at the drizzle. He'd left the M3 at Basingstoke, heading west on the two-lane A roads, toward Dorset.

The decision, made somewhere between finishing his coffee and leaving his flat for the Yard, had taken him by surprise. He'd dreamed of Jasmine—the fierce girl of the journals, not the Jasmine of unbreachable reserve, fragile from her illness—and awakened with an imprinted image of her scribbling in her tiny attic room.

There'd been a gap after the entry about the boy, and when she wrote again it was of living in London, finding a flat, adjusting to a new job. Compared to the earlier entries these were strangely emotionless, as if the journals had been relegated to trivial record keeping.

Kincaid had given up, exhausted, but found himself worrying at it again this morning. He'd done some quick arithmetic—Jasmine had been twenty-one at the time of that last entry, and to him she seemed oddly immature. If he hadn't grown accustomed to her taking charge of Theo and coping with whatever life threw her way, perhaps the fact that she'd survived her teens still sexually inexperienced wouldn't have struck him so forcibly. But the more he thought about it, the less surprising it seemed. Mature beyond her years in some ways, Jasmine had still been very much the outcast. She wouldn't have fit in comfortably with teenage flirtations and rough camaraderie, and life in a small English village didn't leave much room for exploration.

Behind his unexpected pilgrimage lay the hope that he might find some answers in the hamlet of Briantspuddle— that some trace of Jasmine Dent's passage from childhood to adulthood remained.

The lane ran tunnel-like between the high hedges, dipping and twisting like a rabbit's burrow. Occasional gaps in the green walls revealed only muddy farmyards. Kincaid had rechecked his map when he'd stopped for a quick lunch in Blandford Forum, but he'd begun to wonder if he'd read the last signpost right when the lane crossed a stream, took a sudden right-angle turn and ejected him into a clearing. A string of white-washed cottages straddled the road and a signpost at the central fork proclaimed "Briantspuddle."

Kincaid stopped at the intersection. No church… no pub—not having either repository of village information would make his task more difficult. He took the west fork of the lane, hoping to find a likely source of gossip.

A few hundred yards farther on he came upon another smattering of cottages, even smaller than Briantspuddle. These cottages were washed in pale colors, rather than white, but except for wisps of smoke escaping from a few of the chimneys, the smaller hamlet appeared just as deserted. A stone cross, a carved madonna-like figure imprisoned within its stem, seemed to draw the surrounding cottages to it like congregants facing a preacher.

Kincaid stopped the car and got out. The rain had earlier diminished to a mist just fine enough to make his wipers squeak, and now he realized it had stopped. He walked around the cross, examining its unusual construction. The design reminded him of a traditional market cross, but it was somehow very modern in feel. In the front, the Madonna crouched under a peaked roof at the bottom of the spire, while in the back a larger, unidentifiable figure seemed to float midway up the column. An inscription ran around the cross's square base, and Kincaid read as he circled the cross once again: It is sooth that in is cause of all this pain, But all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

Kincaid returned to the car and headed back the way he'd come. When he reached Briantspuddle again he pulled the Midget onto the verge and killed the engine. Stretching, he levered himself up out of the car and felt the cool air settle on his skin like a cloak. He took a deep breath, invigorated by the clean, damp silence.

A faint rhythmic sound broke the quiet and Kincaid turned, searching for its source. Something moved behind the shrubby border of the best-kept cottage, beneath a row of flowering plums and brilliant yellow sprays of forsythia. He took a few steps closer and the movement resolved into the top of a gray head; nearer still, an elderly woman kneeling, weeding her flower bed.

She looked up, unsurprised, and smiled at him. "Have to take advantage," she said, nodding at the low, gray clouds. "Won't hold off long." Her voice was cultured, with only a faint trace of Dorset burr.

Kincaid stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled his most charming smile. "Nice border." On closer inspection she looked quite frail, in her eighties, perhaps, and wore a tweed skirt and twin-set under an old, oiled jacket. Her thin gray hair was twisted into a neat knot on top of her head, and on her feet she sported, not the expected heavy leather brogues, but a pair of neon nylon trainers.

Frowning at him, she gave the comment serious consideration, and finally shook her head. "You've missed the rhododendrons, you see. Another month, that's when it's glorious. These," she gestured with her trowel toward the pansies and daffodils in the bed, "are just the opening act."

This time Kincaid grinned from pleasure, liking her grave humor. "A little soft shoe?"

"Exactly." She smiled back at him, resting her gloved hands on her knees, and Kincaid decided she had once been very beautiful. Her glance held curiosity now as she searched his face. "Are you passing through?" she asked, then added, "What a silly question. Briantspuddle isn't on the way to anywhere."

"No, not exactly. Have you lived here long?"

"Depends on what you call long. Since before the War. That was Briantspuddle's heyday, you know. Ernest Debenham, the department store magnate, decided to make it a model farming village. These cottages he either built or restored." She raised a coquettish eyebrow. "You do know which war I mean, young man?"

"You wouldn't have been around for the first one, much less remember it."

"Now you're flattering me." She brushed her gloved hands together and pushed herself up with a grimace. Kincaid stretched out a hand to her and she nodded her thanks.

"Would you remember a woman called May Dent, by any chance?"

Her face went blank with surprise. "May? Of course. We were neighbors for years. She lived just across the road, there." Kincaid turned and looked where she pointed. The cottage sat back from the road at the end of a shrub-bordered walk. No flowers brightened its black and white severity, and high windows peeking from beneath the thatched eaves gave it a secretive air.

Extracting his warrant card from his jacket pocket, he opened it to the woman's puzzled glance. "My name's Duncan Kincaid."

She looked from the card to his face, her brow furrowing. "You don't look like such a big cheese."

Kincaid laughed. "Thank you. I think."

Coloring, she said, "I'm making an idiot of myself. I never meant to be one of these tiresome old women who thinks anyone younger than sixty ought to be in nappies. I'm Alice Finney, by the way." She held out her hand to Kincaid and he took it, feeling the lightness of her bones between his fingers.

"Mrs. Finney, do you remember May Dent's niece and nephew, who came from India to live with her?"

She stared at him in consternation. "Of course I remember Jasmine and Theo, as well as I do my own name. But that's been thirty years if it's been a day. Why on earth would you want to know about them?"

Taking a breath, he tried to organize his approach. "It's about—"

Alice Finney shook her head. "No, no." She nodded toward the blank faces of the cottages. "I can tell this isn't going to be a 'middle-of-the-village' matter. You'd better come in. I'll make us some tea, and you can tell me properly, from the beginning."

"Yes, Mrs. Finney," Kincaid answered, meek as a schoolboy, and followed her up the walk.

Saucer balanced on his knee, Kincaid lifted a china cup so delicate he was afraid his breath might crack it. Outside the sitting room windows, mist had settled in again, fading the plum blossom to a pale wash of color. Alice Finney knelt at her grate, lighting a small, coal fire. When Kincaid moved to help her, she waved him back. "I've done it myself for nearly fifty years. No use being coddled now."

She sat down opposite him in a brocade armchair, its seat-cover a bit shiny with wear. At Kincaid's inquisitive glance, she picked up her cup and continued. "My Jack and I would have been married fifty-five years this spring. He was a pilot, so he died a little more gloriously than some—in the air rather than the trenches. Not that it was much comfort to him, I imagine." She smiled at him, suddenly, impishly. "Don't look so properly funereal, Mr. Kincaid. To tell you the truth there are days I can't remember what he looked like, it's been so long ago. And at my age remembering is just a sentimental indulgence. Tell me about Jasmine and Theo Dent."

In the warmth and comfort of Alice Finney's faded sitting room, all of Kincaid's rehearsed introduction dissolved. "Jasmine Dent was my neighbor. And my friend. She was terminally ill with lung cancer, so when she died at first we assumed that the disease had progressed faster than expected."

Alice Finney listened intently, not taking her eyes from Kincaid's face even to sip her tea. At the mention of Jas-mine's death she pinched her lips together in a small grimace.

"Then we discovered that Jasmine had asked a young friend to help her commit suicide, but had backed out at the last minute. I ordered an autopsy." Kincaid paused, but Alice didn't interrupt. "She died from a morphine overdose, and I don't believe it was self-administered."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I could give you lots of logical reasons, but it's more gut-reaction than anything else, to tell you the truth. I just don't believe it."

"And it's brought you here." Alice leaned forward and lifted the teapot from the small, oval table, then refilled both their cups. "I'll tell you what I can." She sat quietly for a moment, her eyes unfocused as she gathered her thoughts, then she sighed. "It was a bad business from the very beginning. May Dent was never meant to have children. She hadn't the capacity to love them, though to give her credit, perhaps she tried with Theo. She was a bitter woman, one of those people who always feel life has short-changed them. Perhaps she loved her brother more than she should, though in those days," the corners of Alice's mouth turned up in amusement, "one didn't speculate about such things. Whatever the cause, she despised her sister-in-law, never had a good word to say about her."

"And Jasmine?" Kincaid got up, went to the grate and banked the settling fire.

"Jasmine must have reminded May of her mother. Whatever the cause, those two rubbed each other the wrong way from the moment they set eyes on one another. And Jasmine… Jasmine was difficult. I'd retired from teaching when they closed the village school—the children went to the nearest comprehensive—but I still had connections, privy to gossip, you might say."

"You were the village schoolmistress?" Kincaid was enchanted with a vision of a younger Alice, guiding her charges with the same gentle humor.

"I had two young children to raise by myself, and neither the luxury nor the inclination to be idle," she answered crisply. "Jasmine," she continued as if he hadn't interrupted, "was not liked. Not actively disliked, perhaps, but she didn't fit in, she made the other children uncomfortable." Alice paused, frowning. "Jasmine was a beautiful girl, but in a haunting sort of way. Different. They didn't know what to make of her. I tried to befriend her myself— I thought she might need someone to confide in, and it certainly wouldn't have been May—but she wasn't having any. There was a reserve about her, a secretiveness, that one couldn't penetrate."

Kincaid nodded. "What about Theo? Did he fit in any better?"

Alice leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs toward the fire. Kincaid noted that her ankles, above the padded tongues of the trainers, were still trim.

"I suppose you could say Theo adjusted more easily. He looked more English, for a start. He lost his colonial accent as quickly as he could. I don't imagine Jasmine ever did, completely?" Alice inquired of Kincaid. "She had that very precise enunciation, and a trace of the sing-song that comes from speaking the Hindustani dialects."

"No, she never lost it. And it grew more pronounced with her illness." Kincaid realized that Jasmine's voice had been one of the things that had attracted him to her—that, and her intelligence, and her sharp, dry humor.

"Theo did make friends with the local children, or was at least allowed to tag along. And May coddled him a bit in the beginning. He was only ten when they came, after all. Still practically an infant. But he always had this lost-puppy air about him, as if he might be kicked any minute."

"And as they got older?"

"What always surprised me," said Alice, "was that Jasmine stayed as long as she did. I imagine it was her sense of duty to Theo that kept her here. She was very protective of him, and very jealous of May. Especially when Theo began to get into trouble."

"Trouble? Theo?" Kincaid straightened up, his interest quickening.

Alice moderated her comment. "Well, I don't think Theo ever did anything wrong in a malicious sense. He was just one of those boys that attract bad luck, and unsavory friends, and it began to tell. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time, if you know what I mean."

Kincaid smiled. "I've heard that once or twice before. And how did May react to Theo's little escapades?"

"She defended him at first, but after Jasmine left, the escapades became more serious than setting pastures alight and joyriding in other people's autos." Leaning forward, Alice took a biscuit from the plate and nibbled at its edge. "Chocolate digestives. My one vice," she added apologetically. "May stopped talking about sending him to university. It was a pipe dream, anyway, he'd never done well enough at school to merit it."

"Do you know why Jasmine left?" Kincaid asked, treading delicately now.

"No. But I always wondered. She just quit her job and disappeared. Literally here one day and gone the next. May was absolutely furious. Called her an ungrateful bitch, which was strong language for May. Of course, from the time Jasmine left school May had done nothing but complain about her, what a burden she was and how anxious she was to be rid of her—though I think Jasmine began paying her share of the housekeeping as soon as she found her first job. And it wasn't as if May couldn't afford to keep her."

"So you'd have thought May would have been thrilled."

"Exactly. But that was May for you. Never satisfied, especially when she got what she wanted." Alice stared into the fire, and Kincaid waited, not interrupting. "There was something, though… I would have put it down to malicious gossip and forgotten all about it, if Jasmine hadn't disappeared so soon afterwards."

"A rumor?"

"Yes—that Jasmine was going around with that boy from over in Bladen Valley, the one who wasn't quite right. Did you come through Bladen Valley?" She gestured to the west. "Another experiment, that. Built during the first War, though, to house the estate workers. A fitting place, I suppose, for a war memorial."

"Is that what that is? The stone cross?"

Alice nodded. "Done by the sculptor Eric Gill. It's supposed to be one St. Juliana, a fifteenth-century mystic. What she had to do with war I never discovered."

"Mrs. Finney," Kincaid led her gently back, "what was wrong with the boy?"

"I'm not sure. Not retarded. More unbalanced, mentally ill, perhaps. Given to sudden fits of violence, if the stories were true, but it's been a very long time ago." She sighed.

"I've tired you," Kincaid said, instantly contrite. "I'm sorry."

"No, no, it's not that." Alice Finney straightened up, some of her crisp demeanor returning. "I'm aggravated with myself, if you must know, because I can't remember the boy's name. I don't like not being able to remember things—makes me feel old." She smiled. "Which I'm not, of course."

"Of course," Kincaid agreed.

"All his people are gone now, too, I think. The boy's mother had him institutionalized, not long after Jasmine left, I believe. And she's been dead for a good fifteen or twenty years now. There was no other family that I know of."

"What happened to Theo, after Jasmine left?" "He did finish school, if I remember rightly, but couldn't seem to find his feet afterwards. Couldn't find work, got into a bit more trouble all the time. And then May died. Took pneumonia and was gone, just like that. Jasmine never came back, not even for the funeral, and after May's affairs were settled and the cottage sold, Theo disappeared, too. And I never heard another word of either of them, until this day."

"Did May leave them anything, do you know?" "She must have had quite a tidy nest egg. Tight as an old trout, May was. Managed her inheritance a sight better than her brother managed his, apparently, but I've no idea how she divided it between the children—there was no other family. She could have left everything to a home for wayward cats, for all I know." She paused, her brows drawing together in concentration. "You might try the solicitor's office in Blandford Forum."

"The one where Jasmine worked? It's still there?" "It was the only one at the time, so naturally they handled May's affairs. Old Mr. Rawlinson's dead, and the son may not remember Jasmine, but it might be worth a try."

Kincaid rose. "You've been a great help. I never meant to take so much of your time."

"Nonsense." She stood, shaking off Kincaid's proffered help. "Do you think I have better things to do than take tea with an attractive young man who's interested in everything I have to say? It's an old woman's dream, my dear."

Kincaid had the sudden urge to do something very improper, very un-English. Placing his fingertips on her shoulders, he said, "You're delightful. Your Jack was a very lucky man, and if I were a few years older, Alice Finney, I'd marry you myself." He leaned over and kissed her cheek, and her skin felt as soft as a young girl's lips.

Blandford Forum, Alice had informed him, had burned nearly to the ground in the summer of 1731. The fire had started in the tallow-chandler's house and spread quickly from one thatched roof to another. Tragic as the destruction must have seemed at the time, Blandford Forum had risen from its ashes as a Georgian gem. The offices of Rawlinson and Sons, Solicitors, had been housed in a Georgian building in the rebuilt Market Place as long as anyone could remember.

Peering through the frosted glass of the inside door, Kincaid could make out only fuzzy shapes. He pulled open the door and the lumps resolved themselves into ordinary waiting room furniture, a desk, and behind it, a receptionist.

She swiveled away from her typewriter and smiled at him. "Can I help you?"

"Uh, I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. Is Mr. Rawlinson in?"

"He's in court this afternoon." Glancing at her watch, she added, "I'm afraid he may be a while yet. Would you like to make an appointment?"

She diplomatically didn't add, thought Kincaid, that any self-respecting idiot would have made one in the first place. The nameplate on her desk read "Carol White," a good, solid English name. It suited her. Middle-aged and well-built, with an open, friendly face and a glorious head of wavy, shoulder-length chestnut hair—in a few years she would begin the slide toward matronly, but she was still very attractive indeed.

"Would that be young Mr. Rawlinson?"

She stared at him, perplexed, but still polite. "Old Mr. Rawlinson passed away ten years ago. You're not from around here, then?"

"London, actually." Kincaid again fished his warrant card from his pocket, and extended it to her.

"Oh." Her eyes widened and she glanced up at his face, then back at the folder. "Fancy that. What would Scotland Yard want with us?"

Kincaid heard the sharp, little intake of breath—the ordinary citizen's response to the copper's unexpected appearance—and he hastened to reassure her. "Just some very dusty information. Is there any chance Mr. Rawlinson might remember a girl who worked here almost thirty years ago? Her name was Jasmine Dent."

Carol White stared at him, then said slowly, "No. Mr. Rawlinson would have still been away at school. But I do. I remember Jasmine."

Unasked, Kincaid picked up a visitor's chair and swung it around next to the desk, never taking his eyes from Carol White's face. "You do?"

Still hesitant, she continued. "I know it's a bit silly of me, but I hate to admit I've been here as long as I have. I came here straight from leaving school, same as Jasmine, but she was a couple of years older."

"Mr. Rawlinson needed two secretaries?"

"You could say that." She smiled, showing even, white teeth. "Mr. Rawlinson liked pretty young girls, and we were both that, if I do say so myself." Holding up a hand to forestall Kincaid interrupting, she added, "Oh, I don't mean he was a real dirty old man—never tried anything on, as far as I know—he just fancied himself a bit of a rogue. And since he paid us the bare minimum in those days, I guess he could afford us."

Having moved around to the side of Carol's desk, Kincaid discovered that what he had thought to be a dress was actually a thigh-length tunic, beneath which she wore skintight, black, stretch trousers, and high-heeled sandals. Following his appreciative gaze, she laughed. "Dressed courtesy of my teenage daughter, who can't stand for her old mum to go out looking like a frump." Then sobering, she said, "Truthfully, I think Mr. Rawlinson intended from the beginning to groom me as Jasmine's successor. She must have made it as clear to him as she did everyone else that she didn't intend to stay in this poky town any longer than she had to. Jasmine was ferociously ambitious, Mr. Kincaid. What became of her? Is she a great success? I could never see her as housewife and kids material."

"No, she never married. And she did quite well for herself. She was supervisor in a borough planning office."

"Was?" Carol White asked quietly. "Then she's—"

"She had cancer."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head. "God, how silly of me. It's not even as though we were great friends, haven't thought of her in years—it's just that whenever I hear of someone I knew growing up dying, it gets me right here." She thumped her chest with a fist, then reached in her desk drawer for a box of tissues and blew her nose. "A reminder of my own mortality, I guess. If it can happen to them, it can happen to you."

"I know exactly what you mean," Kincaid said, thinking of his own reaction, not only to the deaths of those he knew, but to the deaths of strangers—that aching sense of loss he never quite managed to control.

"But I don't understand." Giving her eyes one last wipe, Carol threw the tissues in the wastebin beneath her desk and collected herself. "Why are you asking about Jasmine?"

Kincaid gave her an answer even more brief than the one he'd given Alice Finney, but she nodded, apparently satisfied. Years of working in a solicitor's office would have taught her to be discreet.

"You said you weren't particularly close friends?"

"Oh, we talked, the way girls will in an office, about what was going on, and who's bum Mr. Rawlinson had patted most often that week. Just chatter, really. But if you ventured into anything too personal she'd snap shut like a clam." Carol paused, screwing up her face in earnest concentration. "Sometimes… sometimes I had the feeling Jasmine had never had a friend, didn't know what to do with one."

"Then what gave you the impression she was so ambitious?"

"London. That's all she talked about. And she pinched every penny, brought her dinner from home every day, even did child-minding in the evenings to make a bit extra. I remember that she didn't get on well with her old-maid aunt."

Kincaid smiled. "I think that's a safe assumption," he said, then returned to her earlier point. "Did Jasmine not go out, then, if she was so careful with her money? A pretty girl that age, you'd think there'd be plenty to do in a town this size."

Carol shook her head. "I even tried to fix her up a few times with a double-date, but she wasn't having any."

"Did she talk about men? I don't mean to sound like a chauvinist, but it does seem the natural thing."

"I'm sure that's all I talked about, night and day," Carol said, laughter in her voice. "Must have been bloody boring, now that I think about it. But Jasmine… no, not that I remember." She stared into space for a moment, eyes unfocused, and Kincaid waited. "There was something, though. Those last couple of months before she left, she seemed different—had that 'cat-that-ate-the-canary' look about her. Sometimes I almost expected her to wash her whiskers."

"But she never confided in you?"

This time the shake of her head was wistful. "No. Sorry."

"What about when she left? Did she tell you anything beforehand?"

"I was just as shocked as anyone. She just came in that day, gave her notice, cleaned out her drawer and left. Mr. Rawlinson was dead chuffed, I can tell you."

"Did you hear from her after that?"

"Not a word. But she did take me aside and tell me good-bye that day. She wished me luck."

This time it was Kincaid who sat silently, thinking that this office had probably not changed much… imagining Jasmine sitting where Carol sat… Jasmine bent over the typewriter… Jasmine's dark head silhouetted against the faded cream wallpaper. What had made her take flight, abandoning her carefully made plans, and her brother?

"Did you ever meet her brother, Theo?" he asked, following his thought.

"Not until the old aunt died, and we handled her affairs." She shrugged, the movement flexing the fabric across her full breasts. "He wasn't up to much, was he? 'Course, he was just a kid, not more than seventeen or eighteen at the time. That probably explains it."

"Explains what?"

Carol White looked down at her intertwined fingers, the pink-varnished nails paired like lovers. "Oh, I've probably said more than I ought. It's been such a long time, and I'm not sure what I really remember. I think Mr. Rawlinson had to handle everything, the funeral arrangements, the sale of the cottage… Theo was so shattered. Almost hysterical. Only natural, I suppose, but at the time I thought his behavior rather odd—most young men who come into enough money to make them independent have to work at appearing grief-stricken."

"I didn't realize that May Dent had provided so well for Theo."

"Well enough, but I believe Jasmine held the money in trust until he came of age." She straightened and took a breath, the sudden sharpness of her movements signaling to Kincaid the end of the interview. "Mr. Rawlinson should be back soon. Do you want to wait?"

"No. I think you've been more help than he possibly could." Kincaid stood and replaced his chair, lining the legs up precisely with the worn spots in the aging carpet. When he held out his hand, Carol White took it and said, "I'm sorry about Jasmine. Really."

"Thank you," he said gravely, and she smiled, some of the discomfort leaving her face.

"Mr. Kincaid," she called as he reached the door, and he turned back. "It's not true, what I said about not thinking of Jasmine all these years. I've envied her, thought about how glamorous her life must have been, while I stayed here and did all the expected things. I always felt a bit of a coward." Her shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly. "Maybe it wasn't such a bad choice, after all."

Chapter Thirteen

Gemma left the car garaged at the Yard and took the tube to Tottenham Court Road. Driving in London was difficult enough, driving such a short distance in the rain was foolhardy.

The address Felicity Howarth had given for her employer was a street level door tucked between an Indian take-away and a dry cleaners. Gemma wrinkled her nose against the pungent smells coming from the take-away—her stomach already felt empty and it would be at least an hour before she could even consider it lunchtime. Turning her raincoat collar up against the drizzle, she squinted at the names next to the bell-pushes. A tattered business card taped next to the 2B buzzer read "Home-Care, Inc."

Having tried the front door and finding it unlocked, Gemma pushed it open and climbed the concrete stairs without pushing the buzzer. She knocked at 2B, and after a moment the door swung open.

"I told you I didn't—" Her mouth open, the woman stared at Gemma in surprise. Recovering enough to smile apologetically, she added, "Sorry. Thought you were my boyfriend come to finish a row. Can I help you?"

Through the open front door Gemma could see directly into the sitting room of the flat. One side of the room contained ordinary furnishings—sofa, chair, television—the other held a desk, filing cabinets and a computer terminal. "This is Home-Care?" What began as a statement ended as a tentative question.

"Oh." The woman sounded taken aback. "Yes, it is, but most of our business is done by phone, so I wasn't expecting… as you can see." She gestured at herself—jeans, faded pink T-shirt with the tail out, bare feet sporting scarlet toenail polish. Gemma judged her to be in her forties, a sturdy woman with a pleasant face and a shock of thick brown hair liberally sprinkled with gray.

"My name's Gemma James." Gemma took her warrant card from her bag and held it up for inspection. "We're making routine inquiries into the death of one of your patients. A Miss Jasmine Dent."

Color drained from the woman's face, and her fingers tightened where she held the edge of the door. "Oh, Christ." She looked behind her, as if for support, then turned back to Gemma. "Felicity told me about the p.m. I suppose you'd better come in." She closed the door and waved Gemma toward the sofa, then added, "My name's Martha Trevellyan, by the way." While Gemma sat down on the sofa and pulled her notebook from her bag, Martha Trevellyan fished a packet of Player's from under the papers on her desk. She lit one, then said through the smoke as she shook out the match, "I know what you're thinking. Health-care professionals shouldn't smoke. Sets a bad example, right? Well, by my last count I've quit fifteen times, but it never seems to stick."

"Is Home-Care your business, Miss Trevellyan?"

"Yes." Martha Trevellyan sat down on the edge of the chair opposite Gemma. "Two years ago I decided to get out of nursing, try something that might not kill me before I reached fifty." She smiled a little ruefully at Gemma and tapped her cigarette on the coffee table ashtray. "Look, Sergeant—it is Sergeant, isn't it?" Gemma nodded. "What's this all about? I'm still operating on a shoestring, here. Any allegations of negligence could ruin me."

"Perhaps you could start by explaining how you operate." Gemma waved a finger toward the room's work area.

"Most of our business comes through referrals, even from the beginning. I'd done critical nursing and the doctors I'd worked with recommended me to their patients who needed in-home care." She settled back in her chair, looking more comfortable as she began to talk about a familiar subject. "I keep a list of nurses who can work for me full or part time. When we acquire a new patient, I match them with an available nurse, keep things coordinated as necessary. I bill the patients, then pay my nursing staff. Simple enough?"

"Beautifully," said Gemma.

"Except that good nurses demand high wages, and my profit margin is very, very slim." Martha leaned forward and crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray. "It's not exactly the Ritz around here. You might have noticed. I'll need a few more years of good luck and hard work if I want to provide comfortably for my old age." She smiled as she spoke, but it didn't conceal the worry in her eyes.

The flat, although small and cluttered, looked scrupulously clean, and the furnishings were of good quality if rather conventional taste. "It could be worse, as far as temporary situations go," said Gemma with an answering smile, and she felt Martha relax a little further. "Tell me, Miss Trevellyan—"

"Actually, it's Mrs.—I've been divorced for donkey's years. Raised two kids by myself, but now they're both out and educated I could afford to take a risk." She nodded toward her work area. "Call me Martha, why don't you. I'll feel less like I'm in the dock."

Gemma didn't mind conceding to her small request. It was common enough, and seemed to help close the gap people felt between themselves and the police. "How did you acquire Jasmine Dent as a patient, Martha?"

"Doctor's referral, if I remember correctly. I can check my files." Lighting another cigarette, she stood and went to one of the metal cabinets beside her desk. She pulled open a drawer and ran her fingers along the colored tabs before extracting a medical chart. "Dr. Gwilym, all right. Cancer specialist. He's sent quite a few my way."

"Was there anything unusual about Jasmine's case?"

Martha thought for a moment, then shook her head. "No, not really. By the time we get them, there's not usually much chance of remission. She was in good hands with Felicity." At Gemma's inquiring look, she continued. "Felicity Howarth's my best nurse. I pretty much let her pick and choose which cases she wants, according to her schedule and what's geographically convenient for her." Thoughtfully, she added, "And it's also a matter of personal preference. All nurses have them. Felicity does particularly well with cancer patients."

"Did Felicity Howarth choose Jasmine's case?"

"As far as I can remember. Felicity's been carrying an especially heavy caseload lately. I thought it might be a bit much for her, but she insisted. Said she needed the money."

"Do you know why?"

Hesitating, Martha stubbed out her cigarette before she answered. "I don't feel comfortable giving out personal details about my employees." Gemma waited in silence, and after a moment Martha sighed and said, "Well, I don't really see what harm it can do. I know Felicity has a son in a private nursing home, some sort of childhood injury. Maybe the fees have gone up. It must cost her a bundle anyway." Then she added a little combatively, "But I don't know that that's what she wanted the money for. She could be saving for a cruise, for all I know. I' in sure she deserves it."

Don't we all, thought Gemma, trying to ignore the growing hunger signals from her stomach. "One more thing, Martha. About the morphine. How easily could Jasmine have saved enough morphine to kill herself?"

Martha Trevellyan lit another cigarette, and Gemma saw the return of tension in the sharpness of her movements. "Look. You have to understand. When the doctor orders unlimited self-administered morphine for a terminal patient, we have no real way of monitoring how they use it. Miss Dent could have requested more morphine while actually keeping her dosage the same. It happens. More often, honestly, than any of us like to admit. What are you going to do, slap their hands? Most of them do it as insurance, in case the pain becomes more than they can bear. And in Jasmine's case, because of the position of the tumor, the pain probably would have been very bad indeed."

Martha Trevellyan's account of Jasmine's treatment and condition tallied with Felicity Howarth's, but Gemma still felt curious about Home-Care's system. "Who's responsible for acquiring drugs for the patients?"

"I am. I keep a log, and the staff sign it when they make a withdrawal. Then I do a regular cross-check between the patients' charts and the medication log."

"No discrepancies?" Gemma asked.

"None," Martha Trevellyan said flatly. She drew on her cigarette, then tapped it several times against the lip of the ashtray. "Just how far is this inquiry going to go, Sergeant? Are we accused of anything?"

"Felicity Howarth will have to appear at the inquest tomorrow and make a statement as to Jasmine Dent's treatment and state of mind. After that," Gemma shrugged, "it will depend on the coroner's ruling."

"She didn't tell me," Martha said, disconcerted. "But then that's Felicity for you—she wouldn't have wanted to worry me." She studied Gemma for a moment, squinting against the rising smoke as she ground her cigarette out in the ashtray. "There's one thing I don't understand. Why are you lot spending your time on a simple suicide? Surely you have more important things to do?"

"Felicity didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"There's a possibility the suicide may have been assisted, and that's a felony offense." Gemma made a silent wager on Kincaid's intuition. "Or it may not have been suicide at all, but murder."

There was no word from Kincaid when Gemma got back to the Yard. She shook her head as she thought about his morning call from the car. Dorset? He'd accused her of chasing after wild hares often enough, but she couldn't remember ever driving across three counties on a moment's whim.

It worried her, this obsession he seemed to be developing about Jasmine Dent's past. He'd not spoken to her about Jasmine's journals since she'd helped him carry them up to his flat. Had he found some clue in Jasmine's early life, or was it just morbid curiosity, an attempt to resurrect a girl he hadn't known? Remembering the photo she'd found facedown in Jasmine's bureau drawer, Gemma still couldn't say what had kept her from showing it to him. Had it been for his sake, or her own?

She'd taken refuge in Kincaid's empty office, and the silence gave her no answer.

Gemma sat up smartly in Kincaid's chair and shrugged off her uncharacteristic mood. It was probably just the curry she'd eaten on a too-empty stomach. She had problems enough without taking on his. She'd write up a report of the morning's interview, and if Kincaid hadn't called by the time she'd finished, she just might get away early.

After she picked up Toby at the sitter's in Hackney, Gemma headed east toward Leyton. Anxious as she had been to leave the Yard, the thought of the long evening at home suddenly palled.

Leyton High Street hadn't changed much since her childhood. The red-brick shop-fronts had sprouted a few more wire safety-grills, the Chinese take-away had been replaced by a Greek gyros, a shop that Gemma remembered as selling knitted goods now displayed neon-sprayed T-shirts in its windows—but the basic character had remained the same. Once a village in its own right, Leyton had been absorbed by London long ago, and only the High Street served as a reminder of its former identity.

Her mum and dad had owned the bakery on the High since before Gemma was born, and she'd grown up in the rooms above the shop, smelling sausage rolls, and pork pies, and fresh bread even in her sleep. She'd worked in the shop after school, and even now she felt her father's disappointment that neither of his daughters had cared to stay in the business.

Gemma left the car in the public carpark and walked to the shop, Toby holding her hand and pretending to hop like a kangaroo every few feet. The day's persistent drizzle had stopped, and by the time Gemma reached the shop some of her earlier unease had lifted. It was a few minutes before closing time and her mum was still behind the counter, busy with last minute customers.

"Gemma! What a nice surprise. Toby, love, give Granny a kiss, there's a good boy." Vi Walters wiped a hand across her perspiring brow and said to Gemma, "Could you give us a hand, love? It's a bit of a panic just now."

"Sure, Mum." Gemma always had to repress a smile at the thought of her grandparents' stubbornness in naming their carrot-haired daughter so inappropriately. Violet had become Vi as soon as she was old enough to express an opinion and had stayed so ever since, although the ginger curls were fading slowly into gray.

"Where's Dad?" Gemma asked as she came round the counter and tied on a white apron. Toby headed straight for the toy basket kept for the purpose of entertaining him and his two small cousins.

"In the back. Slicing bread for Mrs. Tibbit. You can stay for tea, can't you, love?"

Nodding yes, Gemma took the last customer's order. Her parents' routine never varied—close the shop, have tea as soon as her mum could get it on the table, then settle down for the evening in front of the telly. Gemma found it both irritating and comforting.

This evening was no exception, and half an hour after closing they sat at the red Formica table in the flat's kitchen, eating buttered toast, boiled eggs and jam-filled cake. Gemma had eaten her childhood meals at the same table, spilled her milk on the same lino floor. All her mother's time and energy went into the shop, not into what she referred to as "tailing the place up." The bakery's reputation reflected her mother's care, and Gemma supposed she and her sister hadn't really suffered as a result. Her sister—

Gemma's thought came to a guilty halt. "How is Cyn?" she asked as she helped her mum with the washing up.

Her mother gave her that sideways look of disapproval that could still make her cringe. "You could pick up the phone and ring her yourself. I hadn't noticed your fingers were broken."

"I know, Mum." Gemma sighed. "Just tell me."

"You just missed her, you know. She was here last night with the little ones. That new salon seems to be working out a treat for her. She's already had a raise, and the manager says…"

Out of long habit, Gemma made interested noises in the proper places, her mind somewhere else altogether.

"Gemma, you've not listened to a word I've said." Her mother looked more carefully at her, concern replacing the exasperation in her expression. "You've been quiet as the tomb all evening, come to think of it. Are you all right, love?"

Gemma hesitated, torn between her need to confide and reluctance to give her mother ammunition. The fact that her marriage had failed while her sister's remained intact was a constant sore spot with her mum, although Gemma didn't see that her brother-in-law was such a prize—he was a lazy lout who spent more time on the dole than he did on the job.

Need won out. "I think Rob's skipped out on me, Mum. It's been months since he's sent any money for Toby, and I don't know how much longer I can manage things the way they are."

Instead of answering, Vi ran some water in the electric kettle and pulled two mugs off the shelf. "Sit down. We'll have another cup."

Gemma almost laughed. Tea, the universal problem solver. Her mother never dealt with anything unless fortified by strong, sweet tea. From the sitting room she heard her father's voice and Toby's giggle, then the opening music from Coronation Street. Her mum was making a real sacrifice.

"Have you looked for him?" asked Vi as she sat opposite Gemma and pushed her cup across to her.

"Of course I have. I tell you he's done a skip, Mum. Left his job, no forwarding address, no phone number. I've talked to everyone I can think of who knows him—nothing."

"His mum?"

"If she knows anything she's not telling me, and it's her grandchild that's going to suffer, for god's sake. How could he do this to us? The bastard." Gemma felt her throat tighten, heard the threat of tears in her voice. She gulped down tea so hot it scalded her mouth.

"Just how bad is it, Gem?"

Gemma shrugged. "The mortgage is high, even if the place is a hole. One of Rob's great investment ideas—I'd lose everything if I had to sell it. But it's Toby's care that eats me up, not just regular days but nights and weekends when I have to work."

Vi took a sip of her tea. "Could you find something less expensive?"

Shaking her head vehemently, Gemma said, "No. It's not as good as it should be, even with what I'm paying."

"Gemma," Vi said slowly, "you know we'd look after him. You only have to ask."

She met her mother's eyes, then looked away. "I couldn't do that, Mum. I'd feel… I just couldn't."

"Think about it, anyway, love. Even as a temporary measure."

Temptation rose before Gemma. It would be an easy out, but it would mean a loss of independence that she didn't want to consider. She took a breath and smiled at her mother. "I'll keep it in mind, Mum. Thanks."

Twilight was falling as Kincaid joined the North Circular Road. The journey back from Dorset had seemed interminable, and after miles of listening to his own thoughts make the same repetitive loop, jockeying for position in London traffic came as a welcome antidote.

He escaped the main artery and crossed the relative quiet of Golders Green into North Hampstead. When he reached the junction of North End Way and Heath Street, he made an impulsive left turn. Spaniard's Road ran like a bridge across the top of the darkening Heath, isolated, empty of traffic. A white face flashed in his headlights—a solitary figure waiting at a bus stop—then the jut of the Bishop's tollgate into the road and he was negotiating the bustle of the Spaniards Inn carpark. As Kincaid pulled up the car, the door of the old pub opened, spilling a wave of light, warmth, and savory smells into the night.

A few minutes later, balancing a plate of sausage, chips, and salad, and a pint, Kincaid squeezed his way into a seat at a single table. Back to the wall, he could watch the room as he ate. He was always more comfortable as observer rather than observed, and the mill of activity allowed his mind to wander.

Had today brought him any closer to finding the real Jasmine? Tantalizing disconnected images ran through his mind—Jasmine's face framed in the window of the Briantspuddle cottage; Jasmine's dark hair swinging to cover her face as she bent over the typewriter in Rawlinson's office; Jasmine propped up in bed in the Hampstead flat, laughing as he told her some exaggerated story from work. If he dug long enough and deep enough, would all the little pieces finally fit together to make a whole? Was there any such thing as a definitive person—could one ever say that this was Jasmine, and not that?

He realized that some of the melancholy restlessness that had been riding him since he left Dorset had to do with a growing reluctance to continue reading Jasmine's journals. Everything he learned increased his perception of her as an intensely private, even secretive person, and his sense of trespass became ever more pronounced.

He found himself staring absently at two girls ordering food at the counter. One had orange hair cropped almost to her skull, the other a straight fall of fair hair halfway down her back. Spandex minis left their legs bare from the buttocks down, in spite of the chill, damp evening. He supposed vanity provided them sufficient internal warmth— what bothered him was not the likelihood of their catching a chill, but that he'd no idea how long they'd stood there before he noticed them. He must be getting old.

The sight of the girl's long blond hair triggered the usual response—a deja vu of pain shut off almost before it became conscious. Vic. How odd to have this insight into Jasmine's innermost thoughts, when he had never known what his own wife was thinking. His relationship with Jasmine had in some perverse way become more intimate than marriage.

Kincaid mopped up the last bit of chip and sausage with his fork. Reluctant or not, he would go home and pick up the journals where he had left off. It was impossible now to leave the job unfinished, the life not followed to its conclusion. A feeling of urgency, almost of necessity, compelled him.

For months after Jasmine's settling in London, the journal entries reminded Kincaid of the daybooks kept by Victorian wives. Bought curtains for flat. Spent ten pounds to furnish kitchen with necessaries. Enough left to pay rates? Gaps appeared, then finally the entries began again, undated, sporadic and disconnected. Kincaid skimmed the pages, stopping occasionally to read an entry more carefully.

May's dead, just like Father now. Should feel something, I suppose, but I don't. Just blank. Did she know she was dying? Was she frightened, or did she stay starched as a preacher's drawers even at the end? Did she think of me? Was she sorry?

Could I have loved her, if I had tried harder?

Won't go back, not even for Theo.

This city seems to breed solitude in its slick, wet streets, in the cold that inhabits the stones. You could pass your whole life here, faceless, unrecognized, unacknowledged. I walk the same way to work every day, stop in the same shops, but I'm still a stranger, just "Miss."

The flat welcomes me home with its stink of old grease and I feed just enough coins into the electric fire to keep from freezing. Sometimes when I fall asleep I dream of India, dream I'm in my bed in the Mohur Street house, and I hear the early morning peddlers singing below my window.

I never dreamed May had so much money. Or that she would divide it equally between us. She did try to be fair, even though she didn't feel it. I have to give her that.

Why did she squirrel it away all those years? She lived like she couldn't buy the next day's milk, bitched about how she couldn't afford to keep me even when I was paying my share of the housekeeping, and all the time she had thousands of pounds sitting in the bank. The old cow.

A new flat, a groundfloor in Bayswater. Small, but clean, with sunlight through the windows, and the tiny patch of back garden has a plum tree just beginning to bloom. Look forward to coming home to a simple meal I've made myself, a glass of wine, everything just the way I want it. Safe. For the first time I feel a sliver of hope that life here might not always be so dreary, then there's the nagging reminder that May's money made it possible. I used it for the down-payment, but I won't spend more. Determined to live off my wages, not use the principal. Theo's already asking for loans against his balance, can't say no to him. He seems so lost.

The dreams started again. Woke up sweating and sick, didn't sleep the rest of the night. Wrote his mum again last week. No answer. There's no one else I can ask.

I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't. Shouldn't think, shouldn't remember, shouldn't write.

Sometimes it seems it all happened to someone else, it's so distant and distilled, then the dreams come.

A red-letter day today. My first day as junior assistant in the borough planning office. Pay's not much, but it's the first position with a chance for advancement.

This morning I got off the bus a stop early and walked through Holland Park. Gusts of wind scooped the leaves along the walks, people gripped their coats tighter and scurried with their heads down, but I felt exhilarated, as if I owned the park, owned the city, owned time even, and could stretch it as much as I wished.

Glorious as it was, at the same time I stood outside myself, aware of the experience, wondering if I could hold on to it, imprint it in my memory. Things fade so quickly. Already it's less intense, the edges are blurring, the joy bittersweet.

Everything he touches turns to disaster. A club this time, the latest everything, a sure success. Only it wasn't quite the right neighborhood, or there wasn't enough cash to keep it afloat through the critical period, or his partner raked the profit off the top. There's always something.

Am I to blame? If I hadn't left when I did… he wasn't strong enough to care for May when she got ill. She died in his arms. I didn't know. Theo said she looked so frightened. I couldn't have done anything for May, but I might have been some comfort to Theo.

Think Theo might be using drugs. What to say? Better or worse that I meddle? All his money's spent, trickled away like dust. Minimum wage work in the packing room of a Chelsea gallery—some friend took pity. He asks me for painting lessons. What can I do?

This is all there is. Told John to bugger off. Politely. Wasn't his fault. Nothing works. It's never the same.

Chapter Fourteen

Dr. James Gordon opened his inquest into the death of Jasmine Dent at nine o'clock on Wednesday morning. The courtroom trapped the previous night's chill, and smelled faintly of stale cigarettes. Kincaid felt thankful that in London coroners were usually doctors with law qualifications and most of them could be counted on to conduct an inquest with dispatch. County coroners, often small-town solicitors with more knowledge of local politics than medical jurisprudence, were sometimes tempted to grandstand. Kincaid had dealt with Dr. Gordon before and knew him to be fair, conscientious, and more to the point, intelligent. Gordon's blue eyes, as faded in color as his thinning, sandy hair, were sharp with interest. He presided at a scarred oak table in the small room, facing Kincaid, Gemma, Margaret Bellamy, and Felicity Howarth. All except Gemma had been called to give evidence, and no one else was in attendance.

They waited in silence as Gordon studied the papers spread in front of him. Kincaid glanced at the three women, thinking how clearly their postures reflected their personalities. Gemma looked both relaxed and alert, hands clasped loosely in her lap. In the gray light filtering through the courtroom's single window, her hair shone copper-bright against the dull olive of her jacket, and when she felt Kincaid's gaze, she looked up and smiled.

Margaret, although reasonably well-combed and groomed, twisted a quickly disintegrating tissue between her fingers. When she'd first walked into the room, Kincaid had noticed that her skirt hem dropped in places as if small boys had swung on it as it hung out to dry.

Felicity Howarth wore charcoal instead of navy, but was otherwise as neatly dressed as he'd first seen her the day of Jasmine's death. She sat finishing-school straight in the hard wooden chair, hands folded over her briefcase-like handbag. Her red-gold hair lacked some of its previous luster, however, and the lines around her eyes were more evident. Kincaid remembered Gemma telling him, when they had compared notes that morning, that Felicity was carrying a particularly heavy case-load just now.

"Mr. Kincaid."

Gordon's voice jerked Kincaid's attention back to the table. "Sir?"

"Mr. Kincaid, I understand it was you who requested the Coroner's Office to arrange an autopsy?"

"Yes, sir."

"Rather unusual circumstances, I should think, a senior officer with CID personally requesting an autopsy." Gordon's blue eyes searched Kincaid's face, but he continued before Kincaid could answer. "I assume you've sent the file to the Director of Public Prosecutions?"

Kincaid nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Grounds for bringing proceedings against anyone?"

"Not as yet, no."

Gordon sighed. "Well, there's not much I can do other than issue a burial order." He scanned their faces. "Next of kin here?" At Kincaid's negative shake of the head, Gordon raised his eyebrows, but said only, "I'll put the certificate of death in the post, then."

Kincaid sensed a sudden easing of the atmosphere in the room. He hadn't been aware of any previous tension, and even now couldn't pinpoint the source. Meg or Felicity? Because of the nature of her work, Felicity might very well have been called to give evidence before. Meg was the least likely to have been aware of the brevity of an opening inquest, or to have known that the coroner had no legal power to accuse anyone.

"But," Gordon said loudly, bringing all eyes back to his face, "I would like to clarify a few points to my own satisfaction."

Crafty old devil's playing it for all it's worth, thought Kincaid, and smiled.

"Mrs. Howarth," said Gordon, "you visited Miss Dent last Thursday, is that correct?"

Felicity nodded. "In the morning. I helped her with her bath, checked her catheter, just the usual things." She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. "There's not always a lot you can do for terminal patients while they're still ambulatory. It's more a matter of monitoring their progress, making sure they're comfortable."

"Did her state of mind seem out of the ordinary to you? Was there any evidence of depression? Nervousness?"

Felicity's smile held no humor. "Terminally ill patients are quite often depressed, Doctor. But no, I noticed nothing out of the ordinary that day. No indication that Jasmine might be contemplating taking her own life."

Unperturbed by Felicity's barb, Gordon continued his questioning. "And this was your normal routine? One daily visit?"

"Yes…" Felicity paused, her brow furrowing. "Although sometimes I would stop by on my way home in the evenings, if I'd had a case nearby. I told Jasmine I might be back that day. I'd forgotten."

"And did you stop by again?"

"No." She said it softly, regretfully. "It was too late by the time I'd finished my rounds."

"Miss Bellamy." Gordon transferred his sharp gaze to Meg, and Kincaid saw her hands jerk convulsively in her lap. "I understand Miss Dent discussed suicide with you."

"Yes, sir."

Gordon had to lean forward to hear her. "Did you understand the seriousness of what she asked you to do?"

Meg looked up at him, her face flushing blotchy red, her hands still. "She didn't actually ask me to do anything. She only wanted me to be with her. She didn't want to die alone. Can any of you understand that?" Meg looked at them all defiantly. No one held her gaze. After a moment she looked down, and said with her eyes fixed once again on her lap, "It doesn't matter. She was alone in the end, after all."

"You saw her last Thursday as well?" asked Gordon, a hint of sympathy in his voice.

"After work. I'd brought her a curry for her supper. I knew she wouldn't eat much, but she usually made an effort if she thought I'd gone to any trouble." Meg looked up at the coroner and spoke as if they were the only ones in the room. "I'd never have left her if I'd thought… never. She seemed… You would have to have known Jasmine. Even when she talked about suicide, she did it so matter-of-factly. She never said, "Meg, I'm scared," or "Meg, I don't want to be alone." Even facing death, she never let you breach that reserve. But that day, last Thursday, she was different. I don't know how to explain it." Face scrunched up in concentration, hands poised as if she might pull the words out of the air, Meg stopped and took a deep breath. "Open. The walls were down. I could feel her affection for me so clearly. And she was happy. I could feel that, too."

"Miss Bellamy." Now Gordon's voice was actually gentle. Kincaid raised an eyebrow. He would have thought James Gordon impervious to appeals to his sympathy, but Margaret Bellamy seemed to inspire a protective response even in the most crusty of souls. "Miss Bellamy," Gordon began again, "such behavior can be consistent with suicide. A decision made, the person feels relief, even euphoria."

Meg's chin came up. "So I've been told. But I don't believe it. Not Jasmine."

"Mr. Kincaid. You found no direct evidence indicating suicide?"

"No, sir. We found two vials of morphine in the refrigerator, but there was not enough missing from either to correlate with the amount found in Jasmine Dent's body, and no empty containers in the flat." Kincaid stopped and looked at Gordon while he organized his words. "She was quite weak. Stairs were difficult for her. I suppose it is within the realm of possibility that Jasmine could have given herself a lethal dose of morphine, disposed of the container outside the flat—perhaps by burying it in the garden—and put herself carefully back to bed to die. But I think it highly unlikely. And she was an organized and methodical person. I don't believe she would have killed herself without leaving some record, in case there were questions."

"Life insurance?" asked Gordon. "She might have gone to great lengths to make her death appear natural if it affected the validity of her policy."

"Suicide exclusion clause had expired. It didn't matter."

Gordon, his lips pursed, tapped the papers in front of him into a neat stack. "Well, Mr. Kincaid, in good conscience, I don't believe I can rule death by suicide. This inquest is therefore adjourned under section 20 of the Coroners Act, so that the police may investigate further."

Kincaid nodded. "Thank you, Dr. Gordon."

As they all stood and moved toward the door, Gordon stopped Kincaid. He smiled for the first time, his formality dropping away like a shed cloak. "Might have made things easier for you if I had given a suicide verdict. I'd take a sociopath over one of these quiet domestic affairs any day—good forensic detail, blood spatters, DNA typing, psychological profiling. It's a bit of a hobby of mine," he added rather diffidently as he finished shuffling the papers into his briefcase. "Historic cases, too. Jack the Ripper. Crippen. Suppose I missed my calling. Should have gone into forensic pathology." Gordon buckled up his briefcase and sketched them a quick salute as he turned toward the door. "Well, ta. Best of British luck to you sorting this one out." The courtroom door creaked shut behind him.

Kincaid and Gemma looked at each other until they both started to laugh. "Who would have thought?" said Gemma.

"Bit like seeing Maggie Thatcher with her knickers down," Kincaid added, still grinning as they followed Gordon from the courtroom.

The corridor was empty, the only sound the squeak of their own shoes on the lino. Both Margaret Bellamy and Felicity Howarth had disappeared. "They weren't inclined to hang around and chat, were they? Considering you've arranged to meet with them at—" Gemma glanced at her watch, "eleven o'clock."

"Not exactly a social occasion," he said, opening the door for Gemma as they stepped out into the gray London morning. Kincaid absently took her arm as a taxi roared past and sent up a spray of greasy water. "I feel like I'm stage-managing a bad farce with an unwilling cast. "The Reading of the Will"," he intoned sepulchrally. "I think this may have been an absurd idea, but—" he paused as they reached the Midget and unlocked Gemma's door, "I do have power as Jasmine's executor to inform the beneficiaries any way I see fit. And if I'm going to go through with it, I'd like you to be there. You can watch them while I direct the action."

Sid made a beeline for Gemma, purring and twining his sleek black body around her ankles until she had to stand still to keep from falling over him. "Slut," Kincaid addressed him bitterly. "When I'm the one who's fed you."

"You have looked after him properly." Gemma knelt to stroke the cat. "He's certainly made a dramatic recovery."

Kincaid switched on Jasmine's lamps and had just opened the blinds when the first knock sounded at the door. Theo Dent, the Major, and Felicity Howarth stood huddled together in the awkward silence common to strangers in a lift. Kincaid greeted them and had closed the door and taken their coats when a second knock announced more arrivals. He admitted Margaret Bellamy, who was out of breath and considerably more disheveled than she'd appeared at the inquest, and behind her, to Kincaid's delight, Roger Leveson-Gower. Kincaid met Gemma's eyes across the room and knew they shared the same thought—for five people to exhibit such promptness was decidedly unnatural. They must be very anxious indeed.

"Something wrong with Her Majesty's post," said Roger, immediately taking center-stage, "that you felt it necessary to cause everyone such inconvenience? Or do you just like to play petty dictator?"

Kincaid smiled. "I don't remember inviting you."

Roger draped a proprietary arm across Meg's shoulders, and she seemed to shrink into herself as he touched her. "Someone had to make sure Margaret wasn't bullied."

"And you were the obvious choice?"

"Well, of course," Roger said, the dig going over his head. Or rather past his ego, Kincaid thought nastily.

Ignoring Roger, he turned to the rest of the group. Felicity had pulled out one of the dining chairs and sat in her usual erect posture, but something about the set of her head telegraphed weariness. The Major took a cue from her and sat as well, turning his cap in his hands, his blue eyes fixed on Kincaid's face. Theo stood alone, nervously popping his braces with his thumbs.

Kincaid spoke to them all. "This shouldn't take long. I'm sorry if I've inconvenienced you. I know you think this is a bit dramatic but it seemed the most practical way to go about things." He paused, making sure he had their full attention. "And it seemed right to me that Jasmine's intent should be conveyed to you in a more personal way. A letter comes in the post—" he shrugged, "you might as well have won the pools. These are not anonymous gifts. Jasmine thought very carefully about what she wanted to do for each of you. In a way, this is her last communication."

Kincaid swallowed against a tightening in his throat. He hadn't rehearsed what he would say and his own words took him by surprise, as did the sense of finality they carried.

Meg's eyes filled with tears and she moved out of Roger's encircling arm. Kincaid started to speak to her, hesitated and turned to Theo instead. "Jasmine didn't make you a cash bequest, Theo, but she did arrange to pay off the mortgage on the shop. She also made you the beneficiary of a tidy life insurance policy." Emotions flitted across Theo's round face—disappointment, dawning relief, and finally consternation, as if he weren't sure whether he'd been patted or punished.

"Meg. Except for a couple of small bequests, Jasmine left you the bulk of her estate, which includes the equity in this flat and her stock and bond investments." Roger pressed his lips together and blinked, but he didn't quite manage to hide the flash of pleasure on his face. Meg simply looked more miserable than ever.

"Mrs. Howarth and Major Keith," Kincaid continued, "Jasmine left each of you a thousand pounds, in "appreciation of your friendship," and she also made a donation to the RSPCA. That's it, I'm afraid. I have copies for each of you." He gestured at the neat stack he'd placed on the dining table. "If you'd just—"

"It's not right." Felicity's face had gone almost as pale as the white blouse she wore under her charcoal jacket, and she shook her head vehemently from side to side. "I can't accept that. It was my job to look after her, I never expected—"

"Nor I." The Major stood, crumpling his tweed cap between his blunt fingers. "Not fitting. Bad enough for her to be taken so soon, but to benefit by her death—" He stopped, looked round the room as if someone might give him the words to continue, then said, "Excuse me," turned abruptly and let himself out the door.

In the moment of silence that followed, Kincaid heard the vibration from the slam fade away.

Meg took a step toward the door. "Oh, can't someone do something? Talk to him? I'm sure Jasmine never meant for him to take it so… she only wanted to thank him for his kindness."

"Don't be daft." Roger's contempt was evident. "I'm sure he'll come to his senses soon enough."

Kincaid spoke to Felicity. "I don't know if you can legally refuse a bequest. You'll have to discuss it with Jasmine's solicitor. You would certainly have the prerogative of using the money as you pleased—donate it to a charity, perhaps, if that made you feel more comfortable."

"Nothing is going to make me feel comfortable about this. I simply will not accept it." Felicity's rising voice was the first crack Kincaid had seen in her professional demeanor.

Meg knelt before her chair and looked earnestly up into her face. "Jasmine talked so much about how good you were to her, how much she appreciated your honesty. "No nonsense" was the way she put it." Smiling at the memory, Meg continued. "She liked that. You were the one person she could trust to play it straight with her. Most of us failed her. It's much easier to pretend it will just go away." Meg leaned back on her heels and looked away, picking at the fabric of her skirt. "Even when she talked about killing herself, I never quite believed in it—couldn't make it seem real. It was like something in a movie or a play." She looked around at all of them except Roger. "Do you see?"

"Yes," said Theo. He had stopped the nervous fiddling with his braces as he listened to Meg, and now he slid into a chair at the other end of the table and leaned forward on his elbows. "It was just the same for me. I should have known, when she said she was better but she wouldn't see me. I should have insisted, come to London and camped on the doorstep until she let me in, done what I could for her." He lifted his hands in a helpless shrug. "I'm sure she knew I'd take the easy way—I always have. Jasmine was always there—annoyed with me, more often than not," he smiled, "but there, and I didn't want to believe things would ever change." Theo paused and studied Meg. "I'm glad my sister knew you, Margaret. You didn't fail her."

"Didn't I?" asked Meg, meeting Theo's eyes.

Roger rolled his eyes in disgust. "This is all just too sweet for words. I think I'm going to be sick."

The spell shattered. Meg looked away from Theo, then down at herself, and Kincaid could see her self-consciousness flooding back as she became aware of her awkward position. As she tried to rise, her heel caught in the hem of her skirt with a ripping sound. She fell back to her knees, grimacing.

Felicity said, "Here, let me help you." She seemed to have regained some of her composure as she listened to Meg and Theo, and now she moved briskly back into her familiar role. Kneeling on the floor, she gently extricated Meg's heel from the torn hem. "All right, now? I'm afraid it will take a needle and thread to put you completely to rights."

Roger folded his arms and said with exaggerated patience, "If you're quite finished, Margaret?" but he made no move to help her up.

Felicity stood, held out a hand to Meg, then gathered her handbag off the chair. She turned to Kincaid and spoke slowly and deliberately, as if she'd been rehearsing her words. "Mr. Kincaid. I'm sorry about all the fuss. It was unfair of me to lash out at you. I do realize it's not your responsibility, and I'll take whatever steps necessary to sort this out."

"You'll see Antony Thomas? Or perhaps your own solicitor?"

"Yes. Just as soon—"

"How long will it take?" Roger broke in. "Probate, I mean."

Kincaid raised an eyebrow. "Is Margaret in some particular hurry?"

"Will you all stop talking about me as if I weren't here?" Meg glared at them all. "No, I'm not in any hurry for Jasmine's money. I never wanted it in the first place and I don't care if I ever see a penny of it." She stopped, took a gulp of air, then delivered one last salvo. "And as far as I'm concerned, you can all just go to hell!" She stalked from the flat, her fury lending her a dignity even her trailing skirt hem couldn't spoil.

Roger gave a "what can you do?" shrug and followed, scooping Meg's copy of the will off the table as he went.

To Kincaid's surprise, Theo recovered his tongue first. "She deserves better than that. What does she see in that miserable sod?" As soon as the words left his mouth he turned as red as his braces and muttered, "Sorry. Rude of me," to Gemma and Felicity, then "I'd better be going as well." He did not, however, forget the will.

Felicity turned to Gemma and Kincaid. "You've been very kind," she said, the corners of her mouth lifting in a small smile, "although I'm not sure kindness figured in your motive. Mr. Kincaid, this investigation of yours is going to be very hard on Margaret and Theo—they have enough grief and guilt to deal with as it is—I don't suppose you're willing to drop it?"

Kincaid shook his head. "No. I'm sorry."

"I thought as much." Felicity sighed and glanced at her watch. "Well, I'll be off then. I've got patients waiting." She gathered her bag and coat and let herself out of the flat.

"And then there were none," Kincaid muttered under his breath. He sat on the edge of Jasmine's hospital bed. "Exit players. You faded admirably into the woodwork," he added as he looked at Gemma, who still stood with her back against the kitchen counter.

She stretched and moved to one of the dining room chairs. Sid, who had vanished like smoke with the first knock on the door, suddenly reappeared and jumped into her lap. Gemma stroked his head absently as she spoke. "I didn't expect darling Roger to be able to contain his glee, but Theo didn't kick up much protest either."

Kincaid raised an eyebrow. "And the others? Did they protest too much?"

Gemma's smile held a hint of mischief. "Your meek little Meg seems to be making an unexpected transformation into a tigress. Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall when she and Roger have a more private conversation?"

"Did it occur to you," said Kincaid, "that Meg seemed awfully well informed about Jasmine's intentions?"

Meg sat huddled on the edge of the bed, shivering. Even the remnants of last night's warmth had long since seeped away, and the room's single radiator felt icy to the touch. Mrs. Wilson's generosity did not extend to keeping her tenants' rooms warm during the day. She'd no patience with slug-a-beds, and she reiterated it often enough from the warm confines of her kitchen.

Of course, Meg wasn't ordinarily home in the middle of a working day. She'd taken a day of unpaid leave for personal business, and Mrs. Washburn's quick and silent acquiescence to her request left Meg little doubt that her days in the planning office were numbered. The prospect came almost as a relief.

On weekends when the room began to chill she left—to shop, to walk aimlessly in the streets, and in the last few months, to spend the days with Jasmine.

A crackle of paper drew her attention to Roger. He sat at the table, thoughtfully chewing the last of a meat-and-potato pasty—her pasty, in fact—he'd bought two at the bakery around the corner from the bed-sit. Meg had taken one bite of the cold, greasy, onion-flavored meat and forced back the impulse to gag.

Roger finished crumpling the grease-proof paper into a wad and tossed it in the direction of the waste bin across the room. It missed. He shrugged and left it lying where it fell.

"Roger, couldn't you—" Meg began, then stopped, unable to find any words that might encourage him to go without incurring his temper.

"Want me to go, do you, sweetheart?" Roger said softly, crossing the room and sitting down beside her on the bed. Her stomach spasmed and her hands began to tremble. "Leave you all by yourself? I'd never do that, would I, Meg darling?" He ran his fingers lightly down her spine. "You know what this means, don't you, Meg? It won't take long for Jasmine's will to clear probate, and then we'll be set. A decent flat, maybe a holiday somewhere. Would you like to lie on the beach in Spain, Meg? Soak up the sun and drink pina coladas?" He'd been unbuttoning her blouse as he spoke, and now he traced a fingertip just under the edge of her bra.

Meg felt her nipples draw up, felt her stomach tighten in unwilling response. "Roger, we can't. Mrs. Wilson'll—"

"She'll be having her after-lunch kip in front of the telly. She won't hear a thing. Not if you're a good girl. And I want you to be a good girl. Not like this morning when you made such a scene. What was the Superintendent to think, darling, with you ranting and raving like a fishwife?" He pushed her back against the pillow and lifted her legs up on the bed. "It won't do, Meg. Do you hear me?" he asked, his voice even more gentle than before.

Meg nodded. In the cold, gray light from the window she could see the faint dusting of freckles on his skin and the flush beginning where the vee of his shirt exposed his chest. She clung to the memory of her defiance of him that morning, wrapping it about her like a second skin.

Roger pulled down his jeans and lifted her skirt, not bothering to finish undressing her. The rumpled bedspread made a lump beneath her shoulder blades and Meg focused on the discomfort, thinking that if she concentrated hard enough on that pinpoint she might block her body's traitorous rush of desire. Roger lowered himself onto her, his breath escaping in a soft grunt.

Meg turned her face to the wall.

Chapter Fifteen

As soon as she felt Roger's breathing slow to the deep rhythm of sleep, Meg slid carefully from beneath him and stood up. She refastened her clothes and ran a hand through her tangled hair. Slipping into her shoes and lifting coat and handbag from the back of the armchair, she tiptoed toward the door. A loose board under the floor matting creaked and she stopped, her breath held, her heart thumping. Roger snorted and turned over, his bare buttocks exposed.

He can bloody well freeze, Meg thought spitefully as she turned the knob and let herself out of the room.

She walked, mindlessly, aimlessly, stopping to stare in shop windows at items she didn't see. The smell of hot grease and frying fish drifted from the open door of a chip shop and she hurried on, her stomach churning with nausea.

It was only when she found herself standing at an intersection on Finchley Road that she realized where her wandering feet had taken her. She shook herself, hesitated, then crossed with the light and began the long climb up Arkwright Road into Hampstead.

In spite of the cars lining both curbsides, Carlingford Road felt deserted, held in mid-afternoon repose before its occupants returned home from work. Meg climbed the stairs to Jasmine's flat and fished the key from the inside pocket of her handbag. She listened a moment, then unlocked the door and stepped inside. Sid regarded her from the bed, then curled himself back into a tight, black ball. "Wish I could do that," she said aloud. "Shut it out. Shut it all out."

Closing her eyes, she rested her back against the door and breathed—breathed in the stillness, the faint spicy scent that clung to Jasmine's things, the beginnings of the chill mustiness that signals an unused room.

Over the months the flat had become her safe haven, an inviolate space, and soon it would be lost to her forever. Meg pushed herself away from the door and walked slowly around the room, touching familiar things. She moved to the window, where Jasmine had often stood and caressed the carved wooden elephants as she watched the Major working in the garden. Today even the colors in the garden were subdued, the blaze of the tulips and forsythia muted by the moisture in the air. Her fingers traced the familiar pattern on the smallest elephant's back, the wood silky from much stroking. It brought no comfort. A sound from the hall caused her to start guiltily and drop the elephant back on the sill with shaking fingers. The doorknob turned, then someone tapped softly.

Panic closed Meg's throat, cramped her stomach. She forced it back, forced herself to think reasonably. It couldn't be Roger. The rapping knuckles had been much too tenuous. But whoever it was would have heard the elephant knocking against the windowsill.

She crossed the room, pulled back the latch and slowly opened the door. Theo Dent stood in the hall, looking as awkward as Meg felt.

"I'm sorry… I didn't realize," he said, the rest of his face coloring to match the end of his nose, which Meg assumed was pink from exposure to the chill wind. Damp beaded his curly hair. "I just came on the off chance… I didn't expect… I don't know why I came, really," he finished lamely. "I missed my train. There won't be another until the commuter rush."

Meg pulled the door open wider and stepped back. "I didn't intend to come here, either," she said as Theo entered. She smiled at him, struck by a feeling of kinship. "I've no right to be here. It just seemed…"

"You do, you know." Theo wiped his hand under his nose and sniffed. "She left it to you."

Meg stared at him. Roger had talked of the flat in cash-in-hand terms so often—sell it and use the money for something else—that somehow the idea of ownership hadn't penetrated. She looked around the room, seeing it in a new perspective. She would actually possess this flat, be able to do with it as she pleased—sell it, lease it, even live here if she chose.

For a heady moment she imagined herself inhabiting these comfortable rooms, putting her own stamp on them, but the vision faded. She sensed that Jasmine's imprint was too strong for her own less assertive personality to take root. And Roger… she'd never escape from Roger here.

But the reminder of ownership gave her a new confidence. She knelt and turned on the radiator, then switched on a lamp and shed her coat. "I'll make us some tea."

Theo followed her into the kitchen area and watched her quietly for a while. "You must have spent a lot of time here with her. I envy you that. I suppose I thought that if I came here I could… I don't know… place her here more firmly."

"It's not fair, her leaving the flat to me instead of you." Meg turned from the kettle to regard him earnestly. "I argued with her about it, but she wouldn't—"

Theo held up a hand. "You mustn't say that. She did enough. All these years she did enough. More than she should." He took off his spectacles, looking blindly around for something to wipe them on. Meg handed him the tea towel. "You see, I've been a rotten failure all my life, and Jasmine always picked up the pieces." He hooked the spectacles back over his ears and pushed them up the bridge of his nose with a forefinger. "Everything always sounded so glorious at the start, and then somehow—" He shrugged and let the sentence hang.

Meg poured boiling water into two mugs, sloshed the teabags around for a bit, then plopped them in the sink. "There's no milk. Sugar?" Theo nodded and she stirred in a spoonful before handing him the mug. They moved to the table and Meg sat in her usual chair. She rubbed at a smudge in the wood's dark gloss, marveling at this sudden surge of proprietary feeling. She'd never really possessed anything—a few bits and pieces bought for the furnished bedsit, her sister's castoffs—never anything that inspired a sense of pride, of expanding the boundaries of her self past her own body.

"The table belonged to our Aunt May," Theo said, watching her. "I'm surprised Jasmine kept it."

"She never talked much about it. The years you lived in Dorset, I mean. I know you came to England to live with your aunt when your father died, but that's about all." Meg sipped her tea and studied Theo, searching for some resemblance to her friend. There was something, perhaps, in the set of his eyes, the oval shape of his face. He looked younger than his forty-five years, almost boyish—his face seemed curiously unmarked by experience.

Suddenly aware of how she must look, she ran her fingers through her hair. She'd left the bedsit without so much as a wash and a brush. "Jasmine talked about you, though," she continued a little hurriedly, covering her discomfort, "things you did as children. And she was pleased about your shop. She thought you'd finally found something that suited you."

Theo took his glasses off again and covered his face with his hands. "I couldn't tell her," he said, his voice muffled by his palms.

Meg waited a moment. When he didn't continue she said, "Tell her what?"

He raised his head. "It's just like the rest. A cock-up. I can't hang on much longer."

"But—"

"I thought that's why she wouldn't see me—that she just didn't want to hear it again. She'd told me this was the last time. "No more free rides, Theo." What was I to say?" He swallowed. "Then when she called and wanted to see me—"

"Would you have told her?"

Theo shrugged guilelessly. "I was never much good at lying."

"You must have been in a panic."

Theo nodded. "Didn't sleep that night, trying to work out what to say."

"She wouldn't have been angry with you."

"That would almost have been better." Theo's mug sat untouched on the table before him. He picked it up and drank thirstily, then licked his lips. "You don't understand what it's like to let someone down again and again. If she'd shouted at me, that I could have managed. Other people have done it often enough." He smiled. "But I'd wait for the flash of disappointment on her face—she could never quite conceal it—then she'd smile and make excuses for me. As if it were somehow her fault. I couldn't bear it."

Meg hesitated over the words forming on her lips, unsure of her right to ask them. "Will you be all right now? With the mortgage taken care of?"

Theo put his glasses on, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with the gesture Meg already found familiar. The light from the table lamp bounced off the lenses, shielding his eyes from her. "If probate doesn't drag on too long, if trade isn't too abysmal, I might scrape by. I know this is a terrible thing to say, but this happened just in the nick of time."

Kincaid stepped through the street door, then paused in the stairwell of his building, rotating his head to ease his aching neck and shoulder muscles and running a hand through his already rumpled hair. He'd spent the afternoon doing the kind of thing he most disliked, following up the vague and tenuous connections in Jasmine Dent's life. Former co-workers, employers, her doctor, her dentist, her insurance agent—anyone who might remember a name, an incident, provide a thread attaching past and present.

He came up blank, as he had suspected he would.

The murmur of voices came to him as he reached Jasmine's landing. Pausing, he cocked his head and listened, assuring himself that the sound issued from Jasmine's flat.

He fitted his key in the lock and quietly opened the door. Margaret Bellamy and Theo Dent sat at the dining table. They turned at the sound of the door, their faces frozen in that startled, guilty expression of children caught out at something forbidden.

"Mr. Kincaid?" Meg recovered first. She flushed and half rose from her chair.

"A tea party?" Kincaid said, and smiled at them. "Is anyone invited?"

Meg pushed her chair back. "Here. Let me—"

"No," Kincaid said as he turned toward the kitchen, "I'll get my own. I know my way around well enough."

They sat in awkward silence, their eyes fixed on Kincaid as he filled the electric kettle and put a tea bag in the pottery mug he'd begun to regard as his own. After a few moments, Meg turned to Theo and spoke with determined cheerfulness. "I know your village. I'm from Dorking, and I must have passed through it a hundred times on the way to my granny's in Guildford. Is your shop the one just at the crook in the road?"

Theo nodded, still watching Kincaid. "That's right. Across from the clock and the bell-ringer."

"Must be lovely," Meg said rather wistfully, "all on your own like that."

Kincaid carried his cup to the table and sat down, then unbuttoned his collar and loosened the knot in his tie. "Which one of you," he said, smiling at them companion-ably, "has the key to this flat?"

Meg looked down at the table, twisting her cup in her hands. "I do. Jasmine had me make a copy, in case she couldn't get to the door when I came round."

"Why didn't you mention it before?"

"I didn't think of it." Meg met his eyes, her brow furrowed in entreaty. "Honestly. I was so upset it just never crossed my mind. Does it matter?"

"Tell me again what happened after you left Jasmine last Thursday afternoon."

She thought for a moment, her face relaxing as she remembered. "I walked home. I couldn't stand still, hadn't the patience to wait for the bus. I felt I might burst with the relief of not having to help Jasmine die. It was such a lovely day, do you remember?"

Kincaid nodded but didn't speak, not wanting to risk halting the flow of words.

"Everything seemed so clear and sharp; the lights coming on in the dusk, the crowds hurrying home from work. I felt a part of it all but lifted above it at the same time. I felt I could cope with anything." She looked from Kincaid to Theo, twin spots of color staining her cheeks. "It sounds absurd, doesn't it?"

"Not at all," said Theo quickly. "I know exactly—"

Kincaid interrupted him. "Then what happened, Meg?"

She shoved her hair behind her ear and looked down at her hands. "He was there, at the bedsit, waiting for me."

"Roger?" asked Kincaid. Meg nodded but didn't speak, and after a moment Kincaid prompted her. "And you told him what had happened, didn't you?"

She nodded again, her hair falling across her face, and this time she didn't push it back.

"What did Roger do?" The silence stretched. Theo opened his mouth to speak and Kincaid gave him a quick warning head-shake.

"I thought he'd shout. That's what he does, usually." She rubbed the ball of one thumb against the nail of the other with great concentration.

Kincaid realized the daylight was fading, cut off by the buildings to the west, and the three of them sat illuminated in the pool of light cast by the single lamp.

Meg took a breath and laced her fingers together, as if to stop the compulsive rubbing. She glanced at Theo, then looked at Kincaid as she spoke. "He went silent. I've seen him that way once or twice before, when he was really angry. It doesn't sound much, but it's worse than words. It's almost like—" she frowned as she searched for the right description, "a physical force. A blow."

"He didn't say anything?" Kincaid asked, letting a hint of disbelief creep into his voice.

"Oh, he called me things at first," the corners of her mouth turned down in a grimace, "but it was like his mind wasn't really on it, if you know what I mean."

"Did he leave straight away?"

Meg shook her head. "No. I wanted him to go. All that elation I'd felt on the way home just vanished—like I'd been pricked with a pin. But I knew it was no use asking. It would just make him that much more difficult."

Kincaid remembered the emphatic quality of his wife's silences, and the discomfort of being confined in a small space with someone who used non-communication as a weapon. "You tried to talk to him, didn't you?" he said, pity making him more gentle than he intended. "To please him, to get some response?" She didn't answer, the shamed expression on her face more eloquent than words. After a moment she said, "I just curled up on the bed, finally, closed my eyes and pretended he wasn't there until he went away."

"Where were your keys, Meg?"

Her startled eyes met his. She reached for her handbag and patted it. "Here. Where they always are."

"Did you leave the room any time while Roger was there?"

"No, of course I—" She stopped, frowning. "Well, I did go to the loo."

"Did you go out again that night, or use your keys for any reason?"

"No." The word was a whisper.

"And when did he—"

"Look, Mr. Kincaid," Theo interrupted, "I don't know what you're getting at, but I think you're bullying Miss Bellamy unnecessarily. Don't you think—"

Kincaid held up a hand. "One more question, Theo, that's all." He found himself tempted to treat her as Roger did and take advantage of her conditioned response, but he also knew mat crossing that line would damage his own integrity beyond repair. "Meg, when did Roger come back?"

"Late. After midnight. He made a copy of the front door key, even though I told him that Mrs. Wilson would throw me out if she caught him sneaking in late at night that way."

"Were you asleep?"

She nodded. "It was only when he got in bed that I—" She glanced at Theo and stopped, her quick color rising. "I mean…"

Kincaid thought it was time he let her off the hook. "Theo," he said conversationally, "are you sure you had no idea how Jasmine intended to leave her money? You could use it, couldn't you? Something gives me the impression that the antique business isn't going all that well." A look passed between Theo and Meg that Kincaid could have sworn was conspiratorial. If so, they'd made a quick alliance.

"I'll be honest with you, Mr. Kincaid." Theo leaned forward, forearms on the table. "I've told Margaret that things were pretty desperate. I needed the money, all right. But I didn't intend to tell Jasmine, even after she called last Thursday and said she wanted to see me."

"Very noble of you, I'm sure," Kincaid said, and Theo pressed his lips together at the sarcasm.

"You can believe what you like, Mr. Kincaid. I've no proof of anything. But I loved my sister and I thought she'd suffered over me enough." He looked at his watch, then stood and carried his cup to the sink. "And if I don't go I'll miss my train. You know where to reach me if you want anything further from me, although I can't imagine how I could help you." Leaning across the table, Theo held out a hand to Meg. "Margaret Thanks."

The smile stayed on Meg's face until the door closed behind him.

"The party's over, I guess, Meg." Kincaid rose and took her cup and his own to the sink. She stayed at the table, hands locked tightly in her lap, while he did the washing up and spooned tinned food into Sid's bowl.

He finished his chores and stood studying her downcast face, sensing her reluctance. "You know, I don't see any reason you shouldn't stay here for a bit if you want."

She looked up at him, her expression more tentative than hopeful, as if letting herself want something too badly automatically meant it would be snatched away. "Honestly? Do you think it would be all right? I could look after things—" Her smile vanished as quickly as it had come. "No. He'd find me, and I don't want him here again, in these rooms."

"You wouldn't have to let him in, or let him stay."

She was already snaking her head before he'd finished the sentence. "You don't understand. Until today I'd man-aged to keep him away from here. Nothing would have been the same." She gestured around the room and Kincaid saw it through her eyes, familiar and secure in the lamplight "You don't know Roger. He spoils everything he touches."

Having insisted on walking Meg to her bus, Kincaid stood, hands in pockets against the chill, at the top of Hampstead High Street. This growing sense of responsibility toward Margaret Bellamy might be disastrous if she proved to have been involved in Jasmine's death, yet every time he encountered her, the temptation to act in loco parentis became stronger. He thought suddenly of Gemma and smiled. Although the two women must be near the same age, Gemma never inspired the least bit of parental feeling.

A sliver of moon hung above the fading pink in the western sky. People pushed past, hurrying home to their suppers in the gathering dusk. Kincaid looked east and west along Heath Street at the array of restaurants—Italian, Mexican, Indian, Greek, Thai, Japanese, even Cajun. If one wanted traditional British fare, Hampstead was not the place to be.

Although hungry, he felt too restless to settle down to a restaurant dinner, whatever its persuasion, on his own. He walked the short half-block west on Heath Street to the top of Fitzjohn Avenue and pushed open the door of the Italian deli. The smells of garlic and olive oil poured out into the street, tempting other passers-by. Inside, the counter beneath the window held pottery bowls filled with dark purple olives and multi-colored pastas, seafood marinating in olive oil, peppers and aubergine mixed with sliced garlic. Overwhelmed by the profusion, Kincaid bought his usual, a ready-to-cook pizza made with roasted sweet peppers and fresh mozzarella.

He stopped in the off-license across the street for a bottle of red wine, then started down the hill toward home, thinking that he might almost be going to some long-awaited assignation.

In a sense, he supposed he was, although the faded blue copy-books kept no account of time.

The wind scoured the streets today, shredding scraps of paper and hurling grit into the air, stinging skin and eyes like nettles. Punishment.

Waiting in the bus queue, huddled behind the Plexiglas partition, suddenly I thought of long-ago evenings spent sitting on the veranda in Mohur Street. There was a stillness to things then, an almost melancholy anticipation. Something exciting seemed always waiting just round the corner, if I could only see it.

Did I ever imagine that days could be lived with such numbing repetition?

Seems odd leaving Bayswater after so many years. At least I knew the shopkeepers, even the neighbors' cats. Carlingford Road radiates quiet and respectability in comparison, all the things I used to find least appealing. Have I grown old without noticing?

I feel more at home in this flat than anywhere I've lived since childhood. I don't know why. It fits me somehow, or I fit it. The furniture looks as though it's been here for years; my things seemed naturally to find their appointed spots. When I wake at night I know exactly where I am and I can find my way around the flat in the dark.

Met my downstairs neighbor. Major Keith. What a funny old bird, so formal and polite, yet something about him seems familiar. He lifts his cap to me, calls me Miss Dent. It's the Major who keeps the garden looking so lovely. Now that the air's warming a bit he's out every day, tidying this and that, but really I think he's watching for the first buds, the first green shoots to push through the earth. Even though he doesn't speak to me much, I don't think he minds my sitting on my steps while he works.

This cough is worrying me. I thought it was a spring cold, but it's lingered now for months. Suppose I'll have to see someone about it if it doesn't clear up soon.

My poor Theo. What am I to do if this doesn't work out? Surely he can manage this little shop with some semblance of competence? But then he's never done so—why should things suddenly change? Wishful thinking on my part, I'm afraid.

It's funny how much we depend on our bodies without ever really thinking about it. Cells and organs chug away, blood runs, heart pumps. We worry endlessly about accidents and falls and catching things. Betrayal from within is the last thing we expect.

And cancer is the most insidious enemy, the body turning on itself like some secret cannibal. How could this happen and I not know it? Not feel it? Not sense a spot of decay stretching fingers outward?

Radiation and chemotherapy, the consultant says.

Will I poison my body's hideous child? Dear god, I feel so bloody helpless.

Sometimes I go hours without thinking of it. I manage to pretend I'm like the others, whole and healthy, manage to pretend that the decision to grant planning permission on some project is of earth-shaking importance, pretend I care whether the new cafe has better chips than the old, pretend anything other than my own body matters.

It comes out in tufts, in handfuls, like plucking a bird. Decorates the bottom of the tub with long, dark swirls, fills combs and brushes with thick mats. I've thought of putting it out in the garden for the birds to use in their nests. How absurd.

May would laugh, tell me I'd got my comeuppance. She berated me often enough for my vanity. I've taken to wearing caps, a beret mostly, like a travesty of a French peasant. Can't bear to see Theo.

New clerk at the office while I was away for the last course of treatment. Such a lame duck, with her missing buttons and terribly fair skin that flushes whenever anyone speaks to her. She watches me when she thinks I'm not looking, her expression one of… what? Not pity, I've seen that often enough. Concern? It's very odd.

They've washed their hands of me, abandoned me to Morpheus. So sorry, can't do any more for you, let us get on to someone who will feel properly grateful.

Too weak now to work, left without much fanfare. What did I expect?

Meg Bellamy's come, first bringing cards and flowers from the office, then on her own when the rest of the staff's communal guilt began to fade.

Reading Eliot again. These long, golden autumn afternoons do seem to have an almost physical presence, an existence separate from my experience.

I've been rereading all my favorites, folding the stories around me like the comfort of old friends.

The Major and I have developed a routine. We don't speak of it, of course, that would be somehow stepping beyond the bounds of propriety, but we observe it faithfully nonetheless. On fine afternoons I sit on the steps and watch him work in the garden, then when he begins to clean his tools I make tea. Sometimes we talk, sometimes not, comfortable either way. On one of his most loquacious days he volunteered a little history: he served in India, in Calcutta, during and after the war. Must have been the colonial manner that struck a chord when I first met him. He would have been a young officer when I was a child, might even have known my parents, considering the incestuous nature of the compound.

Since they stopped the treatments my hair's come in again, thick and short, like a child's, and as I've lost weight my breasts have shrunk to almost nothing. I've become androgynous, a fragile shell of skin and muscle wrapped around memories.

I shall need a nurse soon.

Chapter Sixteen

"You didn't know he served in India?" Gemma swiveled in Kincaid's chair, having usurped it when she arrived before him at the Yard.

"Until Jasmine died I'd hardly passed the time of day with him," Kincaid said rather defensively from the visitor's chair on the other side of his desk. "Why would I have thought to ask him that? And if you're going to take over my office," he added, "make yourself useful and put out a request for his service records."

The phone rang as Gemma reached for it, the distinctive double-burr stilling her hand for a moment in mid-air. Lifting the receiver, she said, "Superintendent Kincaid's office" in her most efficient manner, then pulling pad and pen toward her began to write. "I'll pass it along. Ta." She reread her scribbled notes, then looked at Kincaid. "A Mrs. Alice Finney left a message for you with the switchboard. Said there was no need for you to call her back, she just wanted to tell you she remembered his name. It was Timothy Franklin."

"That's it?"

Gemma raised an eyebrow. "What's that all about?"

"A boy that Jasmine seems to have been involved with just before she cleared out of Dorset like the hounds of hell were after her. Give Dorset Constabulary a ring and see if they can trace him. And while you're at it," he continued before she could protest, "get on to the Constable at Abinger Hammer. Theo Dent doesn't have a driver's license— I checked—but I'd like to know if he bought a ticket at the local station last Thursday night, or if he called a taxi, or if anyone else might have driven him to a different station or loaned him a car." He stopped, waiting for Gemma's pen to catch up. "And find out if he owns a bicycle."

"I don't think—"

"I know you don't, but I'd like to check it out anyway. Theo Dent may be as innocent as Mother Teresa, but Jasmine's death bailed him out too bloody conveniently for my liking. Don't worry," he added with a grin, "we'll get on to our Roger. This morning, in fact. We've an appointment with the head at his old school before lunch. It was the best I could do. No college or university, and he never seems to have held a steady job."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me," Gemma said acidly.

"Did you drive this morning?"

"No. You?"

He shook his head. "We'll sign a car out, the sooner the better. There's one stop I'd like to make along the way."

Kincaid watched Gemma's obvious enjoyment as she eased the Rover through traffic. "Makes a nice change, doesn't it?"

"A covered wagon would be an improvement over my Escort," she said as she slipped into a parking space along Tottenham Court Road. "Not bad for a Thursday morning. I expected to have to queue for it. And thank heavens the rain's stopped." The thin haze covering the morning sun showed promise of burning off in the course of the day.

Martha Trevellyan answered the door almost before the sound of the buzzer had died away, showing not the least surprise at finding coppers on her doorstep. Kincaid wondered if she'd seen them crossing the road from the flat's front window.

"Sergeant James." She smiled at Gemma and motioned them in. "I hope I look a bit more business-like than the last time you dropped by," she said, gesturing to her sweater and skirt. "I've even managed make-up. What can I do for you?"

Kincaid introduced himself, then said, "Just a quick question—won't take up more than a moment of your time." He looked around at the neat living/office area, thinking that the lack of personal clutter matched Martha Trevellyan's brisk manner. He sensed, though, that some of the briskness might be manufactured, and that Martha Trevellyan was a bit more wary of them than she'd like to admit. "I assume you had references for Felicity Howarth. You hadn't any indication of problems with terminal patients? No carelessness in administering drugs, anything of that nature?"

She stared at Kincaid, mouth open in shock. "Of course not! I'd never take on someone without a clean record. My business depends on the quality of the care. And Felicity wasn't only experienced—she had special training."

"What sort of special training?" Gemma asked, pulling out her notebook and pen. "I didn't know there was such a thing."

"There's a training course just for the care of the terminally ill. Felicity was a graduate. It's in Winchester or Exeter, something like that." She moved toward her desk, then pulled her hand back and folded her arms tightly across her chest. "I'd like for more of my nurses to be as well qualified, but it's difficult. The demand becomes greater all the time."

"You've quit smoking again, haven't you?" Gemma said, nodding toward the clean and polished ashtray on the desk.

"I'm still reaching for them. Hand's faster than the brain." Martha smiled apologetically. "My resolution won't last long, though, if my morning keeps on tike this."

"Can you remember exactly where Felicity took this training?" Kincaid asked, content to let Gemma diffuse the tension he'd generated. It had served its purpose. Martha's initial reaction to his question had been unguarded enough to convince him of its sincerity.

"I don't need to remember. I've got it right here in my file." Pulling open a drawer, she flipped through the brightly colored files with practiced ease. "Here it is. Not Winchester. Dorchester. I always get those two confused." She handed a piece of paper to Gemma. "Copy the address if you need it, but as far as I know it's a very reputable course. Do you need the references from physicians as well?"

"Please."

"I'd stake my reputation on Felicity Howarth's competence," Martha said slowly. "I feel that strongly about it. In fact," she added a bit ruefully, "I suppose I already have."

"I don't think you've any cause to worry, Ms. Trevellyan." Kincaid smiled at her, paving the way for a graceful exit. "We're just tidying up loose ends."

By the time they reached Richmond the haze had dissipated and pale sunlight filtered through the fringe of leaves overhanging the road. Kincaid checked the map. "Petersham's just a bit further on, and according to the directions they gave me over the phone, the school's just off the main road."

"I've heard that one before. Your navigational skills leave something to be desired."

He looked up at her profile. Although her gaze was fixed intently on the road, the corner of her mouth turned up in a hint of a smile. "You can't drive and navigate both, so you'll just have to live with my deficiencies, won't you?"

Shortly after they entered Petersham, a high, red-brick wall began to run alongside the road on their right. "Slow down, Gemma. The entrance should be along here." A sharp right turn through an open gate revealed an expanse of green lawns, symmetrically laid out red-brick buildings, and beyond the school, shining in the sun, the Thames.

"Oh my," said Gemma as she parked the car, "our Roger did have a difficult time of things, didn't he?"

A secretary showed them to a book-lined study with long French windows overlooking the river. They waited in silence. Gemma stood watching the swans moving languidly on the water, and Kincaid noticed that the black jersey she wore made the contrast more evident between her bright hair and pale skin.

The door swung open and the head charged into the room, black gown flapping like crow's wings. About Kincaid's age, with thinning hair, glasses and an incipient paunch, he radiated gale-force energy. "I'm Martin Farrow." He shook their hands in turn with a quick, firm grip. "What can I do for you?"

Kincaid decided this man wouldn't appreciate wasted words. "One of your former students, Roger Leveson-Gower—do you remember him? I'm afraid it's been a good ten years."

Martin Farrow didn't ask them to sit. Kincaid thought the omission was probably not due to a lack of courtesy, but that it simply didn't occur to Farrow that anyone would not prefer to stand.

Farrow limited himself to rocking on the balls of his feet while he thought about the question. "Oh, I remember him, all right. I was assistant head then, so most of the discipline problems came to me. What's Roger gone in for? A career in forgery? Insurance fraud? Conning little old ladies out of their life savings?"

"Nothing so glamorous. I take it Roger showed criminal promise early. Why didn't you chuck him?"

"Would have if it'd been up to me." Farrow began to move around the room as he talked, straightening sofa cushions, adjusting chairs by a millimeter, so that Kincaid and Gemma had to turn like tops to follow him. "We run a good school here, progressive, none of that medieval boy-bashing and gruel for supper nonsense, and turning out students like Roger Leveson-Gower does nothing for one's reputation."

Kincaid, accustomed to their usual give-and-take in an interview, looked expectantly at Gemma. Her face was expressionless, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the back of Martin Farrow's head. "Uh," he said, before the gap in the conversation lengthened, "so what was his ace in the hole?"

Farrow came to rest with his hands on the back of a wingback chair, and Kincaid suddenly saw him behind a lectern, his perpetual motion stilled by a physical anchor. "His father contributed generously to our building fund." He shrugged. "The usual thing. And as thorough a rotter as Leveson-Gower was, he was too sly to get caught at anything really serious. But I was certainly glad to see the back of him."

"Either his father's funds or his generosity have dried up, because these days Roger seems to be scrounging a living off a woman who probably doesn't make much more than minimum wage."

Farrow smiled. "Sounds right up his alley. He bullied the junior boys—they were terrified of him, and he always managed things so that they took the fall for his schemes."

"Did you ever see any indication that he might be violent?"

"No." Farrow shook his head. "Too bloody calculating by half, too concerned with his own skin." He thought for a moment. "If Roger Leveson-Gower ever took to violence, I'd say he'd make very sure he couldn't be found out."

"Satisfied?" Kincaid asked, when Farrow had swept them out the door and seen them into their car with a cheerful wave.

"He was a bright boy," had been Farrow's last comment. "Always hate to see a good mind go to waste."

"You were expecting him to have been Best Boy?" Gemma said as she put the Rover in gear and pulled out into the road.

"Would Jasmine's death have been foolproof enough to tempt him, do you suppose? Would he have felt safe?"

Gemma shrugged, her eyes on the road. "He wouldn't have counted on you. You were the unforeseen ingredient, the spanner in the works. Without you Jasmine's death would have gone unremarked."

He waited for her to push home her point, take advantage of every tempting possibility to make her case against Roger, but she remained silent. As they entered Richmond again, he spoke. "Gemma, what's wrong? I thought you'd got lockjaw during that interview, and now you're shutting me out. Come to think of it, you haven't been quite right all day."

She glanced at him, then back at the traffic. "Bloody hell." The second's distraction had left her no room to maneuver into the right-hand lane, and the left shunted them off the main road and into a narrow one-way side street. "Now what?"

Kincaid smiled. "Not much choice is there? Follow it and see where it goes."

The street twisted and turned, narrowing into a cobbled alleyway that snaked between rows of warehouses. Suddenly, they shot out into the sun. The Thames lay before them, beyond a wide expanse of brick paving and a post-and-chain railing. "Pull up there." Kincaid pointed to a spot near the railing. "Let's get out for a bit." Up to their right traffic sped busily across the hump-backed bridge they had crossed just before they'd derailed.

The sun felt warm on their faces, and the air moved just enough to ruffle their hair. Across the water, budding willows trailed lazy fronds in the water. A moored houseboat bobbed against its gaudy reflection in the current, and a pelican stood dreaming one-legged on a post. Even the sound of the traffic seemed muted by the river's peaceful sway.

"That was a fortuitous wrong-turning. Come on." Kincaid turned and began walking along the railing. "Too bad fate doesn't prepare you for these little gifts. We should have brought a picnic." He paused as Gemma stopped and turned her face up to the sun, her eyes half closed. "So what's up?"

Sighing, she answered without looking at him. "Privilege. The place reeked of privilege. Generations of it, progressive or not. I don't expect you to understand." She faced him, arms folded across her chest, and in the light he could see gold flecks in the hazel irises of her eyes. "Money by itself doesn't faze me. The Leveson-Gowers, for instance—they may be rolling in the stuff but they're trash. They've no taste, and I can beat them at their own game. It's the in-bred assurance that makes my skin crawl—that instinctive knowledge of the right thing to say, the right thing to do. And it's as natural to you as breathing."

"I'm no public school product. You know that, Gemma. My parents considered themselves much too liberal to send their children to such a bastion of conservatism, even if they could have afforded it. They thought the local comprehensive was good enough for us, and I dare say it was." He put his hands in his pockets and moved on. Gemma fell in step with him again, and when she didn't respond he continued. "There's something else, isn't there? You usually take on the ranks of male privilege without turning a hair. I've seen you hold your own at the Yard, and stomp on a few toes while you're at it."

"That's different," she shot back at him. "I know the rules." Then she smiled a little sheepishly. "I suppose I am a bit on the defensive today. Sorry. Shouldn't take it out on you just because you fit the general description."

"Is it Rob?" Kincaid asked noncommittally. He had gathered from her occasional dropped comments that her ex-husband showed little interest in Toby or in maintaining a cordial relationship, and he hadn't liked to pry further.

The pavement narrowed to a single-file width on the bank's edge. Gemma stopped and looked out across the river, resting her hands on the railing's last iron post. "I think he's skipped out on me. No checks, no phone, no forwarding address. Brilliant deduction."

"Have you tried to trace him?"

"As much as I could without raising eyebrows in the department. I've called in some favors." She paused, her knuckles white where she gripped the post. "The bastard! I try not to feel angry but sometimes it seeps through the cracks. How could he do this to us?"

Kincaid waited until she blew out her breath in a gusty sigh and her hands relaxed their stranglehold on the post. "Except he didn't," she said. "I did. I chose to marry Rob James against my better judgement and now I'm reaping the consequences. Complaining about it doesn't do a bloody bit of good, and besides, we can't spend our lives second-guessing every decision. We just do the best we can at the time."

"And there's Toby," Kincaid said gently.

"Yes. I can't imagine my life without Toby. But that brings me right back to the starting point—how am I going to manage?"

"Surely—"

"Toby's care is eating me up. It's bad enough even under ordinary circumstances, but when I work long hours on a case… I just barely made ends meet as it was."

"Can you cut corners anywhere else?" He kept his tone as casual as he could, sensing that if he displayed the sympathy he felt, Gemma wouldn't feel comfortable later with having confided in him.

"Rob insisted on buying the house when interest was high, an investment for our future." Her smile was bitter. "A bloody great millstone around my neck is more like it, and a tatty one at that. Rob was full of ideas for all these do-it-yourself projects—of course they never got—" Stopping, she rubbed her face with both hands. "Oh god, just listen to me. And I said I wouldn't take it out on you. I'm sorry." She smiled, this time ruefully. "I've seen enough people pour out their life stories to you without any encouragement. I should be more wary."

"What are you going to do, Gemma?"

"I don't know. My mum's offered to help out with Toby—"

"That's great. That would—"

She was already shaking her head. "I don't want to be obligated to them. I've managed on my own since I left school and I don't intend—"

"So who suffers for your stubbornness? Toby? Don't you think refusing help in a really rough spot is a kind of false pride?"

"It's not just that. It's… They don't really approve of what I do." A cloud covered the sun and Gemma hugged her arms against her chest. The wind had risen, driving tiny ripples along the surface of the water. "I'm afraid they'll pass that along to Toby, not deliberately, but that he'll pick it up in insidious little ways. Good mums don't work nights and weekends. Good mums stay married. Good mums don't do men's jobs."

Kincaid put his hand on her elbow and turned her toward the car. "Let's go back." Through the soft flesh of her arm he felt firm, delicate bone, and a faint shiver as the wind whipped into their faces. He dropped his hand. "Give yourself credit, Gemma. He's your son, and your influence is stronger than that." He smiled a little wickedly at her doubtful expression. "And you might give them a little credit as well—after all, they raised you and you didn't turn out too badly."

Chapter Seventeen

Kincaid woke before dawn on Friday morning. He'd not drawn his curtains the night before, and he lay in bed watching the faint gray light steal into the eastern sky. The days of the past week ran through his mind, each one toppling the next like falling dominoes, and he felt no nearer to solving the riddle of Jasmine's death than he'd been a week ago. Frustration finally drove him to throw off the covers, but shower, toast, and coffee didn't take the edge off his nagging sense of failure.

It would be easy enough to nominate Roger Leveson-Gower as the most likely candidate, but he had not one smidgen of hard evidence. And no matter how well Roger might fit the emotional profile of a murderer, it didn't feel right The idea of Jasmine complacently letting someone she didn't know and wouldn't have been at all likely to trust give her a fatal dose of morphine was a logical stumbling block Kincaid couldn't get over.

He dawdled over shaving and dressing, but when he reached the street the milk float was just making its silent rounds and no sounds of slamming doors and starting cars marred Carlingford Road's early morning repose. The sky was clear, the air still, and on impulse he pulled the tarp from the Midget. He loved driving through London late at night or early in the morning, when the traffic was at its ebb. It gave him a sense of being at peace with the city, of being a part of it rather than at war with it.

A stack of slick, flimsy fax paper filled his in-tray. Kincaid took possession of his own chair, having arrived well before Gemma, and began to read.

Major Harley Keith had indeed been posted to India just after the War, in 1945, sporting a new commission and a new bride. He'd been stationed in Calcutta during the outbreak of 1946, and had lost both wife and baby daughter in the rioting. From what Kincaid could deduce from the unfamiliar military jargon, Keith's promotion had been minimal after that time, a once promising career stalled in mediocrity. Posted back to Britain in 1948, the Major seemed to have spent the remainder of his career pushing paper for senior officers.

Kincaid sighed and reached for the next sheet in the pile. A brief report from Dorset Constabulary informed him that one Timothy Franklin had been institutionalized twenty-five years previously in the Farrington Center for Mental Health, or as it had previously been known, the Farrington Asylum. Committal papers had been signed by Althea Franklin, the patient's mother. Franklin's condition had been listed upon admittance as schizophrenic, and he had never been released. Althea Franklin had died in Bladen Valley in 1977.

A handwritten note added by the officer compiling the report informed Kincaid that the Farrington Center was two miles north of Dorchester and a bit hard to find.

Gemma came in as he was finishing the report and his second cup of coffee. Disappointment flashed across her face before she smiled and said, "You're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning, Sir."

"Beat you to it, didn't I?" A silly game of one-upmanship, but he enjoyed it, and he contrived to lose more often than he won because he knew Gemma liked the sense of power conferred by a few minutes alone in his office.

"Anything interesting?" she asked as she sat down across from him.

He handed her the reports and waited silently while she read. Her brow creased as she read Major Keith's, and when she finished she looked up, shaking her head. "It looks as though he never recovered from the deaths of his wife and daughter. It's frightening, isn't it, that someone who seems as ordinary and commonplace as the Major could have suffered such a tragedy?"

Kincaid understood what she meant—in some way it made one's own life seem less immune. If it could happen to someone as unremarkable as the Major it could happen to me. "I'll have to ask him about it." Without quite intending it, he found himself confiding his discomfort to Gemma. "It's awkward—I can't leave it alone, yet I have to go on being neighbors with him after I've pried into the most painful part of his life. And it's more difficult because he seems such an intensely private person." He thought for a moment. "Jasmine gave the same impression. You wouldn't have dreamed of asking her anything about her life she hadn't volunteered. She and the Major must have formed an odd sort of bond."

"Will you see him today?"

Kincaid hesitated, then made another spur-of-the-moment decision even though he knew it was partly fueled by reluctance to confront the Major. "I'm going to Dorset."

"Again?" Gemma's tone was distinctly critical. "I think you're wasting your time. There's enough here in London to concentrate on without chasing wild hares in some little godforsaken west-country village. What about Roger?"

He grinned. "I'm glad to see you're back in fine argumentative fettle. Since you're so keen on the lovely Roger, you can handle things yourself. See if you can find anyone other than his mum and Jimmy Dawson who'll vouch for his whereabouts on Thursday evening. We'll see if Roger's managed to inspire any loyalty other than Meg's."

The motorway took him as far as the New Forest. Although according to his map the motorway designation ended where the forest began, a divided highway still cut a straight swath across the irregular patch of mottled green on the page. He crossed the theoretical line demarcating the forest on the map, and any anticipation he might have had of primeval trunks and leafy, green tunnels was quickly put to rest. A wide expanse of moorland stretched away on either side of the road, broken only by gorse and distant shaggy shapes he thought might be New Forest wild ponies. He decided he'd just as soon they stayed in the distance— he'd hate to suffer a further disappointment by discovering that they were only small, hairy cows.

Halfway between Wimbourne Minster and Dorchester he passed the turning for Briantspuddle. The village lay tucked away behind the folds of the hills, invisible from the main road, and the lane leading to it dived down between the high hedges like a secret shaft. In a moment's idle fancy he entered the village and found time turned back, saw himself meeting a twenty-year-old Jasmine as she walked out the door of her cottage. What would he say to her, and how would she answer him?

He shook his head, laughing at the absurdity of it, and thought that if he didn't sort this out soon he would go right round the bend.

"A bit hard to find" turned out to be an accurate description of Farrington Center. He'd stopped for a sandwich in Dorchester, at a tatty teashop at the top of the High Street, then blithely taken the road north.

A half-dozen wrong turnings and three stops for directions later, he drove slowly down a farm lane. The last helpful pedestrian, an old woman in an oiled jacket and heavy brogues, out walking her terrier, had assured him "this wurrit be," so he kept on in good faith. A high chain-link fence appeared at the top of the bank on his right, and rounding a curve he caught a brief glimpse of red brick before it was again hidden by trees.

The fence continued until it angled back upon itself at an unmarked junction. An asphalt drive led up the hill in the direction from which he'd come, and a faded sign informed him he'd reached the visitor's entrance of the Farrington Mental Health Center. He followed the drive through the trees and parked the Midget in the small, empty carpark at its top. Before him spread a vast, Victorian pile of red masonry. The place had an almost tactile air of neglect and decay. Chipboard-covered windows gave the buildings a blank, abandoned look, and the grounds were overgrown with a thicket of rank vegetation. Apart from the main complex of buildings stood a chapel built of the same orange-red brick, but its windows were broken out and the door hung from its hinges.

Kincaid locked the car and walked toward the only visible sign of habitation, a small wood and plaster annex attached to the front of the nearest building. He pushed through the double glass-doors and found himself in a lino-floored hallway. Doors stood open along the corridor and he could hear the soft clicking of electronic keyboards and an occasional voice.

A young woman hurried from the first door on his left, a sheaf of papers clutched in her hand. She stopped when she saw him, a startled expression on her face. Apparently casual visitors didn't make a habit of dropping in at Farrington Center. "Can I help you?"

He showed her his warrant card and smiled. "I'm Duncan Kincaid. I'd like to see a patient here, a Timothy Franklin."

"Tim?" She seemed even more nonplussed than before. "I can't imagine anyone wanting to see Tim," she said, then seemed to collect herself. Shaking his hand, she said, "I'm sorry. I'm Melanie Abbot. The Director's not in the facility today but I'm his personal assistant." She looked both confident and capable in her brown sweater and slacks, her glossy, brown chin-length hair framing a round cheerful face. "Why do you want to see Tim, if you don't mind me asking? It won't upset him, will it?"

"Just some routine inquiries about someone he might have known a long time ago." Kincaid gestured around him. "What's happened to this place? It looks like it's barely survived a bombing."

"Nothing so drastic. County policy's changed over the last few years. Most of the patients have been farmed out, so to speak. Halfway houses, foster homes, supervised independent living," she said earnestly, seemingly unaware of the contradiction in the last terms. "We help them become functional, self-actualizing members of the community. This facility," she repeated Kincaid's circular gesture, "is used mainly for administrative purposes now."

"But you still care for some patients?"

"Yes," said Melanie Abbot, holding her forgotten papers against her chest with one arm. Kincaid sensed a slight reluctance in her reply, as if she had somehow failed to live up to expectations. "There are a few who are simply unplaceable, for various reasons."

"Like Timothy Franklin?"

Nodding, she said, "We've made tremendous progress treating schizophrenia in the last decade, but Tim is one of the rare schizophrenics who does not respond to medication." She looked down at the papers still clutched to her chest and glanced at her watch. "Look, I've got to use the fax. Let me show you to the patients' sitting room and I'll ring a nurse to bring Tim down."

The floor in the patients' sitting room was covered in lino even more stained and yellowed than that in the annex's corridor. Straight-backed chairs, cushioned in cracked orange vinyl, sat haphazardly pushed against the walls. A fuzzy picture flickered on a television in one corner, and a rubber plant drooped dispiritedly in the other. In a wheelchair parked in front of the telly sat a woman wearing a green cotton hospital gown and felt slippers. Her head listed to one side like a sinking ship, and spittle oozed from the corner of her open mouth. Kincaid could not bring himself to sit down.

The door opened and a man came into the room, followed by a white-uniformed nurse. "Here's the gentleman to see you, Timmy." To Kincaid she added brightly, "He's having a good day today. I'll be just up the corridor if you need me."

Kincaid knew that the man who stood staring so placidly at him must be near fifty, but his physical beauty gave the impression of a much younger man. Timothy Franklin's dark hair held no gray and the skin around his dark eyes was unmarred by lines. He was about Kincaid's height and build, but the fit of the baggy cardigan and corduroys he wore made Kincaid think he might recently have lost weight.

"Hello, Tim." Kincaid held out his hand. "My name's Duncan Kincaid."

"Hullo." Tim allowed his hand to be grasped but returned no pressure, and his tone, while not unfriendly, held no interest at all.

"Can we sit down?"

Instead of answering, Tim shuffled over to the nearest orange chair and sat, resting his hands on the scarred wooden arms.

Kincaid pulled a chair around so that he could face him and tried again. "Do you mind if I call you Tim?"

A blink, and after a long pause, "Timmy."

"Okay, Timmy." Kincaid cursed himself for the false heartiness he heard in his own voice. "I want to ask you about someone you knew a long time ago." Timmy's eyes had strayed to the soundless television. "Timmy," Kincaid said again, as normally as he could. "Do you remember Jasmine?"

The dark eyes left the television and focused on Kincaid, then a smile lit Tim's face and transformed it. " 'Course I remember Jasmine."

It was a few seconds before Kincaid realized that the expected How is she? What's she doing? responses were not going to follow. "You were friends, weren't you?" he asked, wishing he had more knowledge of how Tim Franklin's mental disorder affected his thought processes. Was his memory intact?

"We're mates, Jasmine and me."

"You went around together, didn't you, in the village?"

Tim nodded, his gaze drifting back to the television.

Kincaid tried a little more aggressive tack. "But your mum and Jasmine's Aunt May didn't like your being friends. They tried to stop you from being together, didn't they?"

Tim made no response and Kincaid grimaced in frustration. "Do you remember Jasmine leaving, Tim? Did that upset you?"

Although Tim's eyes remained fixed on the telly, one of the hands which had been resting loosely on the chair arm clenched convulsively. Under his breath he muttered, "Pretty hair. Pretty hair. Pretty hair."

The woman in the wheelchair moaned. Kincaid looked around, startled. He had forgotten about her as completely as if she'd been a piece of furniture. She moaned again more loudly and Kincaid felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. The sound carried primitive pain, more animal than human.

Tim Franklin began to shake his head, although his eyes never left the television. The back-and-forth motion grew faster, more agitated, as the woman's moans increased in frequency.

Kincaid stood up. "Tim. Timmy!"

"No-no-no-no-no," Timmy said, head still moving, both fists now clenched and pounding on the chair arms.

Fearing that the situation would soon be completely out of control, Kincaid rushed to the door and called out into the corridor, "Nurse. Nurse!"

Her white-uniformed figure appeared around the corner. She smiled cheerfully at him. "Things getting a bit out of hand, are they? First thing to do is to get Mrs. Mason back to her bed." Kincaid stepped aside as she entered the room, still talking. "It's all right, dear, we'll just have a little nap now," she said soothingly as she wheeled the woman's chair to the door. "Be hours now before we get that one settled down," she added, nodding her head toward Tim. "You'll not get anything else out of him."

Kincaid looked back as he followed her from the room. Tim Franklin was still pounding and chanting, his head jerking to a rhythm Kincaid couldn't hear.

Chapter Eighteen

The hands on the Midget's dash clock read straight-up six o'clock when Kincaid pulled up to the curb in Carlingford Road. He killed the engine and sat in the silent car, unable to shake the depression that had ridden him all the way back from Dorset. If he'd listened to Gemma he wouldn't have wasted a day on a fool's errand and still be facing what he'd dreaded in the first place. Telling himself there was no point in putting it off any longer, he still stalled, taking his time locking the car and fastening the tarp over its cherry-red paint.

There was no answer to his knock on the Major's door. He waited a moment, then climbed the stairs and let himself into Jasmine's flat. A sleek, black body wrapped around his ankles as he turned on the lamps. "Hullo, Sid. You doing okay, mate?" Reaching down, he stroked Sid's head until the cat's green eyes closed to contented slits. "Be patient, you'll get your supper."

Kincaid unlocked the French doors and stepped outside. The Major knelt before the roses he'd bought in Jasmine's memory. Only the pale fabric of his trousers across his buttocks and the rhythmic motion of the hand holding the trowel made him visible in the dusk. Kincaid descended the steps and crossed the square of garden, then squatted beside him. "You're working late. The light's almost gone."

The Major gave one last dig with the trowel and sat back, hands on his knees. "Weeds. Can't keep up with 'em this time of year. They'll take over like the Day of the bloody Triffids if you give 'em an inch."

Kincaid smiled. Maybe the Major had another secret occupation even less likely than choral singing—an addiction to watching late-night B movies on the telly. "I wondered if I might have a word with you."

The Major looked at him for the first time. "Of course. Let me just wash up." He stood up, his knees popping audibly. Kincaid trailed behind him as he cleaned his trowel in the work area under the steps, then followed him into the kitchen as he washed his hands and scrubbed his nails.

The small kitchen was spotlessly clean, the countertops bare except for a marked-down bag of potatoes and an unopened carton of beer. "Like one?" the Major asked as he wiped his hands on a tea towel, and when Kincaid nodded he twisted two tops off and stowed them neatly in the bin under the sink. "Pensioner's luxury," he said after he'd taken a swallow and smacked his lips. "Pinch pennies on necessities in order to buy good beer once or twice a week." He smiled, his teeth still strong and white under the toothbrush mustache. "Worth it, though."

They went into the spartan sitting room. The Major switched on a lamp and motioned Kincaid to a seat on the sofa while he took the armchair himself. The brown, nubby fabric on the arms of the chair had patches rubbed shiny with wear and its seat cushion bore a permanent indentation. Kincaid imagined the Major sitting there evening after solitary evening with his bottle of beer and the telly for company, and he was more loath than ever to say what he knew he must. "Major, I understand you served in India after the war."

The Major regarded him quizzically. "Understand from whom, Mr. Kincaid? I don't believe I've ever mentioned it."

Kincaid, feeling as though he'd been caught out in a distasteful act of voyeurism, fought the urge to apologize. "I'm conducting a murder investigation, Major, and as unpleasant as I may personally find it, I've had to check background on everyone who had even the slightest connection with Jasmine. We called up your service records. You were stationed in Calcutta during the time that Jasmine's family lived there." He waited for the explosion, but none came.

After a moment the Major took another swallow from his beer and sighed. "Aye, well, I'd have mentioned it myself if I'd known it was of any importance to you. It was all a very long time ago."

"But you told Jasmine?"

"Aye, and wished I had not."

"Why was that, Major?" Kincaid asked quietly, setting his beer on the end table and leaning forward. For the first time he noticed the age spots patterning the Major's callused hands.

"Because I couldn't tell her the whole truth and it created a falseness between us. She might not have noticed, but I could never feel as comfortable with her after that." He paused, and when Kincaid didn't speak he went on after a moment. "I'm a god-fearing man, Mr. Kincaid, but I don't believe the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. To my mind, God wouldn't be so bloody unfair. But Jasmine now, I thought she would see it differently, would take it upon herself, and she'd had her share of suffering, poor lass." Taking a final pull on his beer, he held up the empty bottle and raised an eyebrow at Kincaid.

Kincaid shook his head. "No, thanks." He waited until the Major returned from the kitchen with a fresh bottle, then said, "What would Jasmine have taken upon herself, Major?"

The Major stared at the beer bottle as he rotated it delicately between his fingertips. "Do you have any idea what happened in Calcutta in 1946, Mr. Kincaid?" He looked up, and Kincaid saw that his pale blue eyes were bloodshot. "Muslims seeking partition attacked and killed Hindus, and the rioting that followed spread through the city like wildfire. The history books refer to it as the Calcutta Killings." He gave a snort of derision. "Makes it sound like a bank robbery, or some idiot gunning people down in a supermarket." Shaking his head in disgust, he said, "They've no idea. You see horrors enough in your job, I dare say, but I hope you never see the likes of those days. Six thousand bodies in the streets by the time it was all over. Six thousand bodies rotting, or burning in the fires that smoldered for days, You could never forget the smell. It clung to your skin, the roof of your mouth, the inside of your nose." He drank deeply, as if the beer might wash the memory of the taste from his mouth.

"Jasmine would have been only a child," Kincaid said, doing some mental arithmetic. "Why should she have felt guilty?"

"Jasmine's father was a minor civil servant, a paper pusher, with a reputation for not being particularly competent. He was in charge of evacuating a small residential area, a sort of civil defense sergeant." The Major drank again, and Kincaid fancied he heard the edges of his words beginning to slur. "He bungled it. Only a few families got out before the mob poured through the streets. I've wondered since if he put his own family first, or if he just turned tail to save his own skin."

Kincaid waited silently for what he now guessed was coming. He felt the rough, brown fabric of the sofa under his fingertips, smelled a faint spicy scent that might have been the Major's aftershave, overlaid with the odor of beer.

"It took me three days to find my wife and daughter, and then I only recognized them by their clothes. I won't tell you what had been done to them before they died—it doesn't bear thinking of, even now." The rims of the Major's eyes were as red now as if they'd been lined with a pencil, but he still spoke slowly, reflectively. "I thought nothing of it when Jasmine first moved here, Dent's a common enough name, after all. It was only when she began to tell me about her childhood that I realized who she must be." He smiled. "Thought someone up there," he raised his eyes heavenward, "was playing some kind of practical joke on me, at first. Then the more I came to know her the more I wondered if she'd been sent to me as a replacement for my own daughter. Silly old bugger," he added, the words definitely slurring now. Then he looked directly into Kincaid's eyes and said more distinctly, "You see I couldn't have told Jasmine, don't you, Mr. Kincaid? I wouldn't have hurt her for the world."

Kincaid finished his beer and stood up. "Thank you, Major. I'm sorry." Letting himself out the back way, he climbed the steps to Jasmine's flat and stood a moment at the top, looking down into the garden. The Major's roses were only visible as dark shapes in the light from the flat's windows. Roses as tribute to Jasmine, and perhaps to his long-dead wife and daughter as well. Kincaid felt sure that the Major had carried their deaths inside himself for most of a lifetime, a tightly wrapped nugget of sorrow. Perhaps his contact with Jasmine had begun a much-needed release.

Lights came on in the house behind the garden. Through the windows the illuminated rooms were as sharp and clear as stage sets, and Kincaid wondered what secret despair their inhabitants hid under their everyday personas. Someone drew the curtains, the glimpse into those unknown lives vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. Kincaid shivered and went in.

I've spent my life waiting for things that never happened, and now I find I can't wait for the one thing that will finally, inevitably come.

I'm afraid. Felicity says the tumor's growth could break my ribs, and then even the morphine may not protect me from the pain. As it is, swallowing solid food becomes more difficult every day, and I can't bear the idea of a feeding tube, or of being utterly helpless, bathed and cleaned like a baby.

Life has an odd way of coming full circle. It's rather ironic that Felicity is the one person who's been unhonest with me. Although Meg's adopted my disease like a stepchild, fascinated with its every aspect, she still tries to shield me from what's to come. Can I count on her to help me?

Don't need Meg's help, that's just weakness. It won't keep me from being alone, but at least I'll be prepared, meet death face-to-face rather than have it take me unawares.

Poor Meg. What will she do without looking after me, or without me to look after her?

Should I say good-bye to Theo? No. That's weakness on my part again. Better for him to remember me as I was. And I find I don't want to know if the business is going well—I'd know in an instant from his face if it's not, and this last reprieve is all I can give him. From now on he'll have to manage the best he can.

It's odd how my world has shrunk to the walls of the flat and the view from the garden steps, and what importance those who come through my door have assumed Their visits are the clock of my days: Felicity's morning briskness, Meg's lunchtime breathless disarray, the Major's comforting teatime silence, and Duncan—Duncan is dessert, I suppose. No matter how I've been, if he stops by in the evening I find the strength to talk, to listen, to laugh. He can't know what a difference he's made in my life, yet if I tell him I'm afraid it will spoil the ease between us.

Sidhi watches me as I write, puts a paw up occasionally to touch the moving pen. One of those ridiculous human occupations, I'm sure he thinks, as incomprehensible and fascinating as the turning pages of a book. I think how much I'll miss him before I can stop myself. How absurd. I shan't miss anything at all.

He closed the last journal slowly and returned it to the shoebox. A glass of wine stood half-drunk on the coffee table—he'd become so absorbed in reading that he'd forgotten it.

The final journal entry was dated the week before Jasmine's death and occupied the last page in the book.

Kincaid stood and stretched, finishing his wine and carrying his crepe wrappers into the kitchen. After leaving Jasmine's flat he'd changed into jeans and sweater and walked up Rosslyn Hill to the crepe stand. The young man in the open booth poured batter and wielded his spatula with the dexterity of an artist, his arms bare against the evening chill. "Ham? Cheese? Mushrooms? Bell peppers? Fancy anything else, then?" he'd asked, the questions not interrupting his concentration or the smoothness of his movements. Kincaid had watched, his back turned deliberately to the Häagen-Dazs shop, determined not to think of Jasmine and rum-raisin ice cream.

Now he washed out his glass and stood irresolutely in his kitchen, tired from the day's driving, too restless and unsettled to contemplate sleep. After a long moment he picked up his keys from the counter and went downstairs to Jasmine's flat.

He'd left a lamp on earlier for the cat, chiding himself for being a fool. Weren't cats supposed to see in the dark? And he doubted very much whether Sid found comfort in the familiar light.

Everything looked just as he had left it, looked just as it had looked a week ago when he and Gemma had searched the flat from top to bottom. Nevertheless, he started again, lifting the mattress on the hospital bed, feeling under the armchair cushion, running his hands behind the rows of the books on the shelves. He moved to the secretary, examining each nook and slot as carefully as he had the first time.

People's lives accumulated the oddest detritus, he thought, staring at the items littering the top drawer. Stubs of old theater tickets, aged and yellowed business cards, receipts for things bought and forgotten long ago, all mixed with a jumble of pens, pencil stubs and scraps of paper.

What would he leave behind in his flat if he were to walk in front of a bus tomorrow? What would some anonymous searcher make of his dusty collection of paperback science fiction, or the sixties' and seventies' records he couldn't bear to give away even though he no longer owned a turntable?

What would they make of the wedding photos stuck in the back of his bureau drawer? Of Vic, with her Alice-in-Wonderland hair and pale, innocent face—Vic, who had sabotaged much of his trust and naive faith in human nature? He should thank her, he supposed—neither quality would have proved advantageous to a rising career copper.

The school reports and drawings, term papers and rugby trophies his mother had boxed away in her Cheshire attic with other childish souvenirs. What had Jasmine done with the mementos of her childhood? He'd found no snapshots or letters, nothing from the years in India or Dorset except the journals.

He moved into the bedroom. Jasmine's silky caftans brushed against his fingers as he felt along the back of the wardrobe. To one side hung business suits and dresses, their shoulders covered with a film of dust, as were the stylish pumps neatly arranged in the wardrobe's floor.

Finding nothing there, he sat down on the small stool before the dressing table and stared at his reflection in the mirror. The light from the lamp on the table's right side cast shadows that rendered unfamiliar the planes and angles of his face and left his eyes dark. He blinked and pushed the hair off his brow with his fingers, then pulled open the middle drawer. Women's cosmetics never ceased to amaze him. Even women like Jasmine, who in all other respects were relatively orderly, seemed unable to do more than confine the mess to a specific area. And they never seemed to throw the used bits and pieces away. Jasmine's drawer proved no exception. Half-empty pots of eye shadow and rouge, lipsticks used down to the metal inner casing, brushes and sponges, all covered with a fine dusting of face powder. He sniffed. From somewhere came the scent he associated with Jasmine. Exotically floral with a hint of musk, it almost reminded him of incense.

He was lifting the slips and nightgowns in a bottom drawer when his hand struck something hard. His pulse quickened, then sank as he lifted the object out and realized it was not a journal but a framed photograph. He turned it over curiously.

She was instantly recognizable. When he'd passed Briantspuddle the day before and imagined a twenty-year-old Jasmine walking out her cottage door, he'd seen her exactly like this—the long, dark hair, the smooth, olive skin and delicate oval of her face. Her expression was relaxed, serious except for the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth and in the dark eyes that gazed directly into his.

Carefully, he set the photo on the dresser-top, Jasmine's face next to his mirrored reflection. Gemma had searched this room carefully—she must have seen the photo. He wondered briefly why she hadn't shown it to him.

He finished with the dresser and the chest of drawers, looked under the bed and in the drawer of the nightstand, but found nothing else.

Returning to the sitting room, he found Sid curled up on the hospital bed's bright cotton spread. He'd seen the cat so often in the same spot, tucked into a tight, black ball against Jasmine's hip or thigh.

Kincaid sat on the edge of the bed and pushed the button to raise its head, then leaned back against the pillows. His chest ached suddenly, fiercely. He squeezed his eyes shut and buried his fingers in Sid's thick coat.

Chapter Nineteen

Meg took the baggage claim ticket from the attendant and tucked it away inside her handbag. Eighteen months of her life were contained in one battered leather suitcase and a dufflebag, now locked securely away in the railway station baggage claim. It had surprised her how large and bare the bedsit looked, stripped of her meager belongings.

On her way to the station she had taken great satisfaction in posting a letter to the planning office giving her notice, but telling her landlady she was leaving hadn't quite lived up to her expectations. In fact, an expression Meg might almost have described as regret flashed across Mrs. Wilson's fleshy face before she said, "I'll not be sorry to see the back of that Roger, I can tell you. You mind my words, girl, you'll be better off without him."

Meg had come to the same conclusion herself some time ago, but doing something about it was a more difficult matter. She'd lain awake all night in the narrow bed, thinking, planning, daring to imagine a future in which she controlled her own destiny.

By morning she'd reached a decision, if only she had the courage to see it through. She knew she couldn't confront Roger alone, but face him she must. So she compromised, burning her other bridges first, making sure there could be no going back.

From the station she took the bus to Shepherd's Bush roundabout and walked the last few blocks to The Blue Angel. Roger's mate Jimmy worked in a nearby garage and Roger could often be found in the pub at Saturday lunch-time. She was counting on his pride in front of his mates keeping him from following her when she'd finished what she had to say.

Still, she hesitated outside the door of the pub, her stomach in knots, her breath coming fast. Two men barrelled out the door, nearly knocking her down. Meg stepped back, then ran her fingers through her hair and pulled open the door.

The air was thick with smoke, the noise level raucously high. Holding on to her position in the scrum near the door, she stood on tiptoe as she searched the crowded tables. She spotted Jimmy first, then Matt with his fluffy blond hair and drooping mustache, then Roger, with his back to her. The crowd didn't part like the Red Sea as she pushed her way across the room—she almost laughed as the biblical analogy flew through her mind, wondering at the strange sense of exhilaration she felt. Matt saw her before she reached the table, and said in his sneering way, "Hey, Rog, here's your bird come looking for you," but for once that didn't bother her. Jimmy smiled at her—he wasn't a bad sort, really—and Roger turned to face her, expressionless.

"Roger. Can I have a word?" Her voice was steadier than she expected.

"What's stopping you?"

She looked at Jimmy and Matt. "I meant alone."

Roger rolled his eyes in exasperation. There were no free tables, and every available bench and stool was jammed with bodies. He looked at his friends and jerked his head toward the bar. "Get us another one, will you, lads?"

They went, Jimmy with better grace than Matt, and Meg wedged herself past a heavy woman at the next table and sat on the bench they'd vacated.

Roger started before she could draw a breath, pushing his pint aside to lean across the table and hiss at her. "What do you mean, coming here and making a fool of me in front of my mates, you silly bi—"

"Roger, I'm leaving. I—"

"—should bloody well hope so. And don't—"

"Roger. I mean it's finished. You and me. I've given notice at work. I've left the bedsit. I've written to Superintendent Kincaid, letting him know how to reach me. I'm telling you good-bye."

For the first time she could remember she'd left him speechless—not sulking in deliberate silence, but mouth open, bereft of words.

He closed his mouth, opened it again and said, "What do you mean, you're leaving? You can't."

Meg could feel her body starting to tremble, but she hung on to the feeling of power that had flooded through her. "I can."

"What about the money," he said, leaning forward again and lowering his voice. "We agreed—"

Meg didn't bother to lower hers. "I never agreed to anything. And you'll not see a penny of it. You wanted her dead. Did you make sure, Roger? I don't know what you've done, but I'm finished covering up for you."

His eyes widened in astonishment. "You'd grass on me, wouldn't you? You bitch. You—" He stopped, took a breath and closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he was back in control. "Think about it, Meg. Think about how much you'll miss me." He raised his hand and ran a finger down her cheek.

She jerked her head back, turning her face away from him.

"So that's how it is," he said, the venom fully evident again. "Run home to Mummy and Daddy, then. You've got no place else to go. Work in your dad's garage, let every filthy old bastard that comes in pinch your bum; change your sister's brats' dirty nappies—you're welcome to it. And you can tell your precious Superintendent Kincaid whatever you bloody well like, because they'll not pin anything on me." There was nothing pleasant about Roger's smile. "You fancy the Superintendent, don't you, Meg? I've seen the way you look at him. Well, he's way out of your league, darling, and you're a bigger fool than I thought."

Meg felt the hot rush of color stain her face, but she refused to let him bait her. Standing, she squeezed her way clear of the table and stood close enough to Roger for his arm to brush her thighs when he moved. She looked down into his face, noted the way his eyelashes fanned against his cheek when he blinked, and she sensed the fear beneath his bravado. "So are you," she said, and turned away. She didn't look back.

"Ta, Charlie," Meg said to the driver as the bus groaned to a halt beneath the Abinger Hammer clock. It was the daily Dorking to Guildford run, and the driver one of her father's regular customers. She waved as the doors swished shut behind her, then watched the bus until it disappeared around the bend in the road.

The shop was across the road, unmistakable, just the way she remembered it. She brushed her hands down the front of her coat, discovering a stain where she must have spilled the pop she'd drunk on the train from London to Dorking. The stop at her parents' had been brief—she'd put her bags in her old room, refused her mother's offer of tea, and refused to answer any questions. "Not now, Mum. There's somebody I have to see."

The thought of the astonished expression on her mum's face made her smile. No one in her family ever expected little Margaret to be uncooperative, or to have plans of her own.

She crossed the street slowly, pausing again outside the shop. Lights shone through the French panes of the windows, but there was no movement inside. Her heart thumped against her chest and her fingers trembled as she touched the door handle. A bell tinkled briefly somewhere in the back of the shop as she stepped inside. Her heart sank as she looked around at the jumble of rubbish that passed for a display. Old farm implements, china, a rocking horse, moldy books, nothing arranged with a semblance of balance or order, and over everything lay an aura of neglect.

But as she moved carefully through the cluttered aisle, looking, touching, possibilities began to emerge. She had knelt to dip her hand into a basket of antique buttons when a door opened and she heard Theo's voice. "Can I help— Margaret?"

She stood, a silver-gilt button still clasped in her fingers. "Hullo, Theo. Why don't you call me Meg. Jasmine did, you know."