Gemma had found herself wanting to offer a touch or a word of comfort, but had no idea how she might approach this woman she barely knew—or whether her sympathy would be welcome.
When the meal was ready, Rosemary had called the children, while Hugh had tactfully volunteered to fetch Caspar. Caspar had not appeared until everyone else was seated, then had taken his place at the head of the table with all the grace of a petulant child. He toyed with his food and downed liberal glasses of punch, the combined actions being unlikely, in Gemma’s opinion, to improve the situation.
The dinner—cold ham, a stuffed, sliced breast of turkey, and beautifully composed salads—had been delicious, but might have been sawdust for all the enthusiasm displayed by those gathered round the table. Even the children had seemed subdued, and Gemma wondered if Lally had shared what she’d overheard.
Duncan and his parents had made a valiant attempt to carry the conversation, but when every effort to include Caspar and Juliet had fallen flat, Hugh resorted to telling them in great and excruciating detail about his acquisition of the rare Dickens Christmas story.
As soon as the meal could decently be declared over, Caspar had retreated to his lair again, and Lally had asked if she and Kit could go early to church to save seats for the rest of the party. Juliet had agreed, and Sam, rather to Gemma’s surprise, had seemed quite happy to stay behind with Toby. Duncan had offered to help his mother and sister with the washing up and had rolled up his sleeves with aplomb.
Now Hugh hooked his gloved hand through Gemma’s arm and steered her, not towards the car, but towards the dark path that led away from the gate.
Gemma yielded reluctantly to the pressure. “Is this—um, are you sure it’s safe?” she asked.
“Safe?” Hugh glanced down at her in surprise. “Well, we might get a bit of the white stuff down our necks, but I doubt we’ll be mugged, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He smiled. “This is Nantwich, not London, and North Crofts is a very respectable avenue.”
“Avenue?” Gemma repeated curiously, now that she had a chance to look about her. What she saw resembled nothing she would call an avenue. The little lane, accessible only to pedestrians, was fenced on the right, and on the left had houses set back behind long, narrow walled gardens. A light showed here and there in a window; otherwise the lane seemed as deserted as the moon. “Difficult to get the shopping in, I should think,” she said, and even her voice seemed muffled by the snow and silence.
Hugh chuckled. “Spoken like a true Londoner. But there’s an alleyway behind the houses that serves both North and South Crofts. The houses on South Crofts have some lovely Victorian decorations—stained glass, mosaic tiles.”
Soon the lane curved to the left—the bottom of the horseshoe formed by the two streets, Hugh explained—and they passed the alleyway he had mentioned. Hugh steered her gently again, this time towards the dark mouth of a tunnel formed by overarching greenery. The snow was lighter, but footprints were still visible in the dusting of powder.
“Public footpath,” he explained. “It connects the Crofts with the center of town. The children will have come this way before us.”
Gemma ducked and pulled up her collar as a clump of snow fell from one of the overhanging branches. “I thought public footpaths crossed farmers’ fields.”
“This one probably did, at one time. Now, however,” he added as they emerged from the tunnel, “it brings us to Monk’s Lane. There are very fine Georgian buildings here.” Gemma looked where Hugh pointed, but again her view was blocked by a wall. Walls, tunnels, secrets, and enveloping deathly quiet—Gemma wasn’t sure she liked this place at all.
“Caspar’s office is just there,” Hugh said as they reached the end of the row, his tone indicating that Caspar didn’t deserve to have an office in a hovel, much less a fine Georgian building. “And off to the left is the Bowling Green pub, where Caspar stopped off on his way home.”
“Does he make a habit of it?” asked Gemma.
“I don’t know. I’m not usually privy to Caspar’s habits. Although we work such a short distance apart, I seldom see him except for family occasions.” He paused, then said more slowly, “I hadn’t realized how bad things had got. Juliet doesn’t talk to us about it—or at least not to me.”
Gemma recalled that she’d said nothing to her parents about the problems she and Rob were having until she’d filed for divorce—she’d been too humiliated to admit to her parents that her marriage was a failure. She considered sharing this with Hugh, but doubted he would find it comforting.
Hugh stopped, hands in his pockets, staring up at the dark mass of the church now rising like a fortress above them. Even in the dim light Gemma could see that his face looked drawn. “I should have stopped it tonight. She’s my daughter, for God’s sake. He practically called her a whore.”
“You couldn’t have known what he was going to say.”
“No. But I could have waded in afterwards, not left it to Rosemary,” argued Hugh. “Rosemary doesn’t have to think out what to do, she just goes ahead and does it.”
Gemma knew from personal experience that acting before you thought could have regrettable consequences, and, emulating Duncan, had tried to learn to rein in her more impulsive tendencies. Odd that his father disliked in himself one of the qualities she’d admired in his son.
“Duncan and I stood by, too,” she said. “Sometimes domestic situations blow out of control more quickly than anyone expects.”
“Of course, you’re right,” said Hugh, but Gemma sensed he was merely agreeing out of politeness. “Poor Gemma,” he added, touching her elbow again to draw her on. “Here I said I meant to make up for our bad impression, and I’ve gone and aired the family’s dirty laundry. Must be Rosemary’s famous punch. Either that or you have a talent for eliciting confidences.”
“A bit of both, I expect,” Gemma said with a smile. He might have had too much punch, but his footsteps were steadier than hers, and he was very perceptive.
They passed the church, then a snow-covered expanse Gemma assumed must be the green. Their street intersected another at the green’s end, and there Gemma stopped, her mouth open in an “O” of surprise and delight. This was what Duncan had described, what she had imagined. The buildings ran together higgledy-piggledy, black-and-white timbering against Cheshire redbrick, gingerbread gables, and leaded windows winking like friendly eyes.
This was the High, she saw from a signpost, but she would have known instinctively that she stood in the very heart of the town. The shops were ordinary—a WH Smith, a Holland & Barrett, a newsagent’s—but they had been tucked into the lower floors of the original Tudor houses, and so were transformed into something quite magical.
The movement of the buildings over the centuries had caused the black-and-white timbering to shift a little, giving the patterns a tilted, slightly rakish air. Snow iced the rooftops, Christmas lights twinkled, bundled pedestrians hurried through the streets, and from somewhere came the faint strains of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” Gemma laughed aloud. “It’s perfect. Absolutely. The best sort of Christmas-card perfect.”
“It is rather lovely,” agreed Hugh, the pride in his voice reflecting her delight. “That’s the Crown Hotel.” He pointed to a particularly fine example of half-timbering. “Built in 1585, after the Great Fire. It’s famous for its continuous upper-story windows. And down this way is Pillory Street, and the bookshop.” He urged her on, and a few moments later she peered into the window of a less remarkable shop front. The windows, however, were dimly lit, and Gemma caught a glimpse of aisles of books, invitingly arranged.
“You do like books?” Hugh asked suddenly.
“I do,” answered Gemma, laughing. “But I didn’t grow up with them, so I haven’t read all that much. Not like Duncan. And with my job, and the children…”
“I was afraid I might have bored you, at dinner.”
“Not at all. Will you keep it? The Dickens?”
“It’s
tempting,” Hugh admitted with a sigh. “But it’s valuable, and it’s finds like this that pay the bills. Besides, it’s the discovery as much as anything—the thrill of it.”
Gemma thought of the moment of illumination when the parts of a case came together, and imagined that the instant when you realized the book you held in your hands was something special must be the same. “I can understand that.”
Hugh gave her a searching glance. “Yes, I think you can. Duncan and Juliet take books for granted, you know. They’ve lived with them all their lives.
“But my family were shopkeepers in a small Scottish town—they had the newsagent’s—and other than the papers, the most challenging things I saw in print were comics and a few pulp novels. I was good at my schoolwork, however, and won a place at a grammar school. My English teacher encouraged me, and I’ve never forgotten how I felt when I discovered there were more worlds at my fingertips than I had ever imagined, more worlds than I could ever explore…” He stopped, looking abashed. “Oh, dear. I’m pontificating. A very bad habit, when I’ve so willing a listener. And I’m going to make us late,” he added, glancing at his watch. “It’s almost eleven. We’d better go back. I’ll show you the shop tomorrow, if time permits, or the next day.”
They were quiet as they walked back down to the High, but now Gemma felt comfortable with the silence. She’d found unexpected common ground with Hugh Kincaid.
There were more people in the square now, gathering, she guessed, for the midnight service at St. Mary’s. Hugh had started to lead her across the High when Gemma saw a flare of light from the corner of her eye. It had come from the direction of the Crown Hotel, a match or a lighter, perhaps, she thought as she looked back. Two figures—no, three—were silhouetted briefly in an archway beside the hotel’s front door. Teenagers, Gemma felt sure, from their slenderness, and a certain slouchy cockiness in their postures. There had been a hint of furtiveness as well, she thought as they disappeared into the darkness of what she now realized must be the old carriage entrance. Or was that just her, bringing the job with her?
She shrugged and turned away—it was none of her business what kids got up to here—then stopped and looked back once more. The girl—yes, she was sure one of the three had been a girl—had been dark haired, and the boy she’d seen most clearly, blond. Lally and Kit? But they were in church, she reminded herself, and the boy had been too tall, too thin. Nor would Kit have been smoking—he hated it with a passion. She was letting her imagination run away with her.
“Gemma?” Hugh’s voice came warmly beside her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She took the arm he offered and smiled up at him. “I’m fine.”
The smell of old incense, woodworm, and damp stone hit Kincaid like a sensory bomb as he followed his family into the porch of St. Mary’s. It happened when he entered any church, the scent-triggered barrage of memories, but it was most intense at St. Mary’s.
He had grown up in this place—the cathedral of South Cheshire, it was often called. Although in truth it was only a town church, it was one of the finest in England, built on the scale of a cathedral by masons who had worked on York Minster, then later completed by men who had built the cathedrals at Gloucester and Lichfield.
It was a cavernous church, but to him it seemed intimate, comforting even. If he closed his eyes, his feet could find the worn places in the stones unaided, his fingertips the nicks and gouges made by bored children in the backs of the pews. Here he had been baptized and confirmed.
His father, who had rebelled early against his Scots Presbyterian upbringing and declared himself an “intellectual agnostic”—or had it been “agnostic intellectual”?—had protested, but his mother insisted that the human animal had a need for structure, for ritual and discipline, for the ties with the community that the church provided, and for a sense of something larger than itself. His mother had won, as she usually did, but it was the sort of argument that had often echoed through house and bookshop in his childhood.
The porch, crowded with congregants jostling to break through the bottleneck into the nave, smelled of sweat and wet wool. Before him, Kincaid could see his parents, then the top of Juliet’s dark head. He knew that Sam, although momentarily invisible, was clinging to his mother’s hand. Rather to Kincaid’s surprise, Caspar had joined them on their walk to church, but he seemed to have disappeared in the shuffle through the porch doors.
Kincaid’s fingertips rested on Gemma’s shoulder as insurance against separation, and Toby, his view limited to waistbands and coattails, butted against his leg like a frustrated calf.
“Where’s Kit?” Toby asked, picking at Kincaid’s trousers, his voice rising perilously close to a whine. “I want to see Kit.”
It was long past the five-year-old’s bedtime, and Kincaid suspected they’d be lucky to get through the service without a meltdown. Bending over, he hefted the boy to his hip, a harder task than it been only a few months ago. “We’ll look together,” he suggested, “and if you find him first, I’ll give you a pound to put in the collection box. Deal?”
“Deal,” agreed Toby, looking much happier now.
At that moment, the organist launched into a Bach prelude and the sound rolled over them like a thunderclap, vibrating teeth and bones. Kincaid felt an unexpected lurch of joy, and tightened his grip on Gemma’s shoulder. She looked back at him in surprise, and he saw his delight mirrored in her face.
“The organist was always good,” he said, with proprietary pride, but she was gazing upwards, transfixed.
“The windows are wonderful. But look at that one”—she pointed—“it’s modern, isn’t it?”
Kincaid’s gaze followed her finger. “Ah. That’s the Bourne window. It’s my favorite, although it was installed just about the time I left home for London. It’s a memorial to a local farmer named Albert Bourne. It depicts God’s creations.” He pointed in turn. “See, at the very top of the arch, God’s hand? And below that, the swirl of the cosmos, then the birds of the heavens and the creatures of the sea, then the world’s wildlife.” His hand had traveled two-thirds of the way down the window. “But here’s the surprise. Here the designer moves from the general to the particular. Those are the rolling hills of Cheshire. And the house, there in the center, that’s Cheshire brick. Then the animals of farm and field and thicket, and there, on the right, the very best bit.”
Gemma searched for a moment, then gave a laugh of pleasure as she saw what he meant. “It’s a man, walking his spaniel through the field.”
“Bourne himself. No man could ask for a more fitting memorial—or woman, either,” he corrected quickly, as she turned on him a look of reproach. “Although I suspect the dog is a springer, not a cocker like Geordie.”
“There’s Kit!” called Toby, who from his elevated height had been peering through the crowd shuffling in front of them. “And Lally.”
The teenagers were not near the front, as Kincaid had expected, but halfway down the nave on the outer aisle. There was a gap of several feet between, and when Kincaid neared the spot, he saw that they had filled it with coats, hats, and gloves.
“It’s the best we could do,” Lally said to her mother as their group reached the pew. “The church filled early. And people are giving us dirty looks.”
“Never mind,” Juliet told her. “We’re here now. We’ll squeeze in as best we can.”
“Where’s Dad?” Lally asked, as Kit stood aside to make room for them.
“Oh. He’s here somewhere,” Juliet said, as casually as if she had mislaid a handbag, but Kincaid thought no one was fooled, particularly Lally.
“I want to sit with him.”
“Well, you’ll have to make do with me for the moment,” snapped Juliet, her attempt at calm normality slipping. “You’re not to wander off looking for him. The service is about to start.”
Any further argument was quelled as the organ stopped and a hush fell on the congregation. As the family jammed into a space meant for
half as many people, Kincaid with an arm round Gemma’s shoulders and Toby half in his lap, the processional began.
Kincaid slipped easily into the familiar rhythm of lessons and carols. He was home, and nothing had changed—or at least the things that had changed were for the better. He had his own family here now, Gemma and the boys, and he felt that at last all the pieces of his life had come together.
As if to punctuate his thoughts, the choir launched into “O Holy Night,” one of his favorite carols, and the congregation followed suit. Behind him, a clear alto voice rose. The voice was untrained, but powerful and true, with a bell-like quality that sent a shiver down his spine.
His curiosity overcoming his good manners, he turned round until he could see the woman singing. She was tall, with short blond hair going gray. Lines of care were etched into a strong, thin face he suspected was not much older than his own, and she seemed unconnected to the family groups around her.
As she became aware of his gaze, the woman’s voice faltered, then faded altogether as she stared back at him.
Embarrassed by the alarm in her eyes, Kincaid nodded and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, then turned round and joined in the carol. After a moment, she began to sing again, hesitantly at first, then more strongly, as if caught up in the music. Through the remainder of the service, he listened for her, but dared not risk another glance. He felt as if he’d stumbled across a shy animal that mustn’t be spooked.
Only one thing marred his pleasure in the mass. The last of the carols was “Away in a Manger,” a piece he had always disliked. He thought the lyrics saccharine, the tune impossible, and tonight it conjured up an image he’d tried to suppress. He glanced at Juliet and saw her standing tight-lipped, her face strained, her hands gripping the top of the forward pew. So she had thought of the child in the manger as well, this one no cause for celebration.
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