Mourn Not Your Dead

by Deborah Crombie

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Brian,” Deveney said. “We’d never have run a check on him if we hadn’t discovered that Geoff worked for everyone who reported things missing. He’s the only common factor. We have to follow through, if only to clear him.”

  It dawned slowly on Brian. His eyes widened with shock and his lips went bloodlessly white. “You think Geoff murdered the bugger,” he said hoarsely.

  “The sooner we get on with this, the better, Brian. We have a warrant, and we’ll have to search his room. If it turns out to be a coincidence, we can cross him off and no one need be the wiser. If you’ll just show us-”

  “You don’t understand. Geoff’s had this problem since he was a kid. He takes things, but there’s no meanness in it. He doesn’t even do it for the money, he just keeps them.” Brian leaned towards them, entreating.

  “What happened in Wimbledon, those two yobbos who clerked in the shop blackmailed him into helping them. They’d seen him take a tape that belonged to the owner, said they’d report him if he didn’t join in.”

  “You’re telling me that Geoff is a kleptomaniac?” Deveney sounded surprised, but Kincaid merely nodded as Brian confirmed his suspicion. He’d come across the magpielike pattern once when he’d worked burglary-that time it had been an older woman in a posh neighborhood, who visited her neighbors regularly for tea.

  “He saw a doctor while he was serving his sentence, and he’s seemed so much better since he came home.” Brian slumped in his seat as if all the fight had gone out of him.

  “I’m sure they must have told you that the disorder is very difficult to treat,” Kincaid said. “You must have wondered when things began to go missing.”

  Brian didn’t answer, and after a moment Deveney said softly to Kincaid, “Let’s get this over with. We’ll find the room on our own.” They left Brian motionless at the table, his head sunk in his hands.

  “Looks like he’s been in the army,” said Deveney. “Too neat.”

  “Or prison.” Kincaid ran his hand over the smoothly tucked corner of the single bed. Fantasy posters covered the walls, but rather than being stuck up with the usual pushpins, they were framed in simple unvarnished wood. “Do-it-yourself, I should think,” Kincaid said to himself.

  “Hmmm?” Deveney looked up from the computer monitor. He’d been staring, mesmerized, at the ever-changing mandala pattern of the screen saver. “He mustn’t have meant to be away long if he’s left things running. We’d better dig in.”

  “Right.” Kincaid sat down at the desk and opened the first drawer. He found snooping through the minutiae of people’s lives both distasteful and weirdly fascinating, but the enjoyment always brought with it a slight stirring of guilt.

  The top drawer held tidily organized desk paraphernalia, a few letters on flowery stationery, computer game manuals. In the bottom drawer he found a faded photograph of a young woman, dressed in the hip-hugging bell-bottoms of the late sixties. Bare midriff, long straight brown hair parted in the middle, huge bangle earrings, a serious and slightly bored expression. He wondered who she was and why Geoff Genovase had kept the photo.

  A bookcase by the window held mostly paperbacks-fantasy, sword and sorcery, a few historical novels. Kincaid thumbed through them, then stood at the window, gazing at the tile roof of St. Mary’s rising disembodied over the vicarage hedges. He tried to analyze the difference between the order of this room and that of Alastair Gilbert’s study. Gilbert’s spoke of control exerted for its own sake, while this room evoked a carefully guarded and deliberate serenity, he decided after a moment.

  “Pay dirt,” said Deveney, sounding less than jubilant. Kneeling on the carpet, he lifted a carved wooden box from the bottom drawer of a pine chest and brought it to the desk. He swore softly as he opened it. “Bloody hell. Poor Bri.”

  The bits of jewelry were neatly arranged on the velvet lining.

  They found Madeleine Wade’s silver and Percy Bainbridge’s photos behind a shoe box on the shelf in the small closet.

  “He didn’t make much effort to hide things,” Deveney said as he pulled the list from his pocket.

  “I’m not sure hiding’s the point of this.” Kincaid fingered an intricately carved antique brooch, then a pair of delicate pearl and gold filigree earrings. “Do these pearl earrings match the description of the vicar’s?”

  Deveney ran down the list. “Looks like it.”

  “But there aren’t any others. Unless we’ve missed them, Claire Gilbert’s aren’t here.”

  “So maybe he threw them in a hedge somewhere, panicked after what he’d done,” said Deveney. Then he added, as they heard faint voices from downstairs, “Sounds like the prodigal’s returned. We’ll radio the station for the lads to come take this place apart board by board. It’s time we had a word with wee Geoff.”

  Brian Genovase held his son in a bear hug, and at first sight Kincaid thought he intended restraint. But as they came closer and Brian stepped away, Kincaid saw that the young man trembled so violently he could barely stand unaided.

  “Geoff.” Deveney’s flat tone told all, and Geoff’s knees buckled as Kincaid watched.

  “Good God, man, he’s going to pass out.” Kincaid leaped towards him, but Brian had already grasped his son around the waist and guided him to a bench.

  “Head down, between your knees,” ordered Brian, and Geoff obeyed, his blond curls swinging near the floor. His breath whistled audibly.

  Deveney slipped out the door, and when he returned a few moments later, he said, “I’m sorry, Bri. We’ll have to take him along to headquarters. I’ve radioed for a squad car,” he added quietly to Kincaid.

  Brian stood with his hand on Geoff’s shoulder. “You can’t. You can’t take him away from here. You don’t understand.”

  “We’ll have to charge him, Brian,” Deveney said gently. “But I promise you he’ll come to no harm at the station.”

  Geoff lifted his head and spoke for the first time, his teeth clenched to stop them chattering. “It’s all right, Dad.” He brushed his hair from his face and took a shuddering breath. “I’ve got to tell the truth. There’s nothing else for it.”

  Brian Genovase insisted on accompanying his son to Guildford Police Station. By the time they climbed into the back of the panda and Deveney joined the driver in the front, a handful of neighbors had gathered and stood watching from a distance. Doc Wilson hurtled by the green in her little Mini, then braked hard as she peered at the police car.

  Kincaid wished now that he’d not sent Gemma to inter-view Malcolm Reid, but he’d had no way of anticipating Geoff’s quaking terror. Glancing at his watch, he hoped she’d at least be back at the station by the time they were ready to begin the interview.

  He retrieved the Rover and was reversing it from its space in the car park when he saw a blur of motion in his mirror and heard a thumping on the boot. A moment later Lucy Penmaric pounded on his window, shouting at him. When he’d killed the engine and rolled down the window, the words became comprehensible.

  Between sobs she wailed, “Why are they taking him? You mustn’t let them-please don’t let them take him away from here. He couldn’t bear it.” As he slipped out of the car to stand beside her she clung to him, pulling at his sleeve with force enough to rip it.

  “Lucy.” He clasped her hands in his, holding her balled fists tightly. “I can’t help you if you don’t calm down.” She gulped, nodding, and he felt her hands relax a bit. “Now. Take it slowly. Tell me exactly what’s wrong.”

  Still hiccuping, she managed, “Doc Wilson stopped at the house. She said they were taking Geoff away in a-” before her face contorted again.

  Kincaid squeezed her hands. “Hush now. You must help me sort this out.” She seemed a frightened child, far removed from the poised young woman he’d seen on the night of Alastair Gilbert’s murder. “We just need to ask him a few questions, that’s all. There’s nothing to-”

  “Don’t treat me like a baby. You think Geoff killed
him! Alastair. You don’t understand.” She wrenched her hands free and pressed her knuckles against her mouth, fighting for control.

  “What don’t I understand?”

  “Geoff couldn’t hurt anybody. He won’t even kill spiders. He says they have as much right to exist as he does.” Her words poured over one another in her eagerness to explain. “‘Might is not right.’ He says that all the time-it’s from his favorite book. And ‘The end never justifies the means.’ He says we can always find a peaceful solution.”

  Kincaid sighed as he recognized the quotations. It had been one of his favorite books, too, and he wondered how much of the young King Arthur’s vision he had managed to retain in the face of everyday policing.

  “Maybe Geoff wouldn’t hurt anybody,” he said, “but would he take things that didn’t belong to him?”

  Lucy’s eyes skittered away from his. “That was a long time ago. And he didn’t hate Alastair for what-”

  “Hate Alastair for what, Lucy?”

  “For being a cop,” she said, recovering quickly. She scrubbed at her face and sniffed. “Though he probably should have, after the way they treated him.”

  Kincaid regarded her quizzically for a moment, then decided to let that one pass for the moment. “I’m not talking about what happened when Geoff was sent to prison, Lucy. I’m asking about here, now, taking things from the people he works for in the village.”

  In a small, bewildered voice she said, “Geoff?”

  “Nothing terribly valuable, mostly keepsakes, really. Do you know that he may not be able to help himself?” He touched her cheek. Her eyes looked enormous and dark, even in the fading light, and the pupils were dilated with distress.

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t believe it. It’s just jumble sale stuff he collected for the game.”

  “What game?” He could read her withdrawal in the half step she took away from him and the tight set of her mouth. “Lucy, if you don’t tell me, I can’t help him. I have to know what this is all about.”

  “It’s just a computer game we were playing,” she said, shrugging. “Roles, you know, and a quest. In the game you have to find certain objects, talismans, to help you along the way, and Geoff said that if we had representations, it would help us visualize better.”

  “And these things that Geoff collected were the representations?” When Lucy nodded, he said, “Would he have taken things from your house, too?”

  “Never!” Her hair swung as she shook her head.

  Such fierce loyalty was admirable, thought Kincaid, but he wondered if it were justified.

  “It wouldn’t have worked, you see,” she said earnestly, trying to convince him. “It can’t be your own things-that would negate any help they might provide in the quest.”

  Deciding to accept Lucy’s explanation of game logic for the moment, Kincaid went back to something that had been niggling at him. “Lucy, what did you mean when you said Geoff couldn’t bear to be taken from here?”

  She hesitated for a moment, then said slowly, “He’s frightened. I don’t know why. Brian says it has something to do with being in prison, but he never leaves the village if he can help it, and sometimes on bad days he doesn’t leave the pub. And he doesn’t like serving behind the bar-says the noise makes him feel funny-and that gets right up Brian’s nose when he’s short-handed,” she added with a ghost of a smile. “I wish I could-”

  A small white van turned into the car park and jerked to a stop beside them. The windows were darkly tinted, so Kincaid didn’t recognize Claire Gilbert until she jumped out and started round the van’s bonnet towards them. In her casual clothes she looked almost as young as her daughter, but her expression was both frightened and furious.

  “Lucy! What are you doing out? I’ve told you-”

  “They’ve taken Geoff away. They think he’s stolen things and that he killed Alastair.” She stepped forwards until her nose nearly touched her mother’s. “And it’s all your fault.”

  Claire recoiled visibly, but when she spoke her voice remained level and controlled. “Lucy, that’s enough. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m sorry about Geoff, and I’ll do whatever I can to help him, but right now I want you to go home.”

  For a moment mother and daughter stood face-to-face, the air between them vibrating with tension, then abruptly Lucy turned on her heel and walked away

  Claire watched until Lucy disappeared into the lane, then she sighed and rubbed at her face as if to ease strained muscles.

  “What’s all your fault?” asked Kincaid, before she could regain her equilibrium.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.” She leaned against the van and closed her eyes. “Unless… Did she say you thought Geoff had stolen things?”

  “We discovered that Geoff had worked for everyone in the village who reported jewelry and other small items missing over the last year.”

  “Oh, dear.” Claire mulled this over for a moment. “Then it may be that she’s angry with me because I mentioned my missing jewelry. But it never occurred to me that Geoff might be responsible, and I still don’t believe it. And I won’t even consider the possibility that Geoff killed Alastair.”

  “Have he and Lucy been friends long?”

  Claire smiled. “Lucy and Geoff formed an odd alliance from the time we came to the village. Lucy must have been eight or nine, and Geoff well into his teens, but there’s always been something a bit childlike about him. Not childish,” she clarified, frowning, “but he has a sort of innocence, if you know what I mean.

  “He even looked after Lucy for me until she was old enough to stay alone in the house. Of course, when Geoff left school and took that job in Wimbledon they drifted apart a bit, but since he’s come back they’ve seemed closer than ever.”

  Kincaid wondered if they were sleeping together-Lucy was certainly over the age of consent-but his instinct told him no. There had been something almost monastic in the atmosphere of Geoff’s room. “It must have been hard for Lucy when he went to prison.”

  “They wrote to each other. It was a difficult time, but she never talked about it. Lucy’s always been a bit of a loner. She gets along with kids at school and in the village well enough; she just never forms close attachments. Geoff seems to be her anchor.” She looked towards the pub. Dusk had crept upon them, and light shone visibly from the back window. “Look, I must see if there is anything I can do for Brian. He’ll be frantic with worry.” She stepped forwards, but Kincaid touched her arm.

  “There’s nothing you can do here. Brian’s gone to headquarters with Geoff They’ll make him cool his heels in reception, but he insisted on it.”

  “He would.” In the light spilling from the pub, her shirt flared white between the lapels of her jacket. Kincaid saw it rise and fall as she sighed. “And you’re right, of course. I need to deal with my own child.”

  Kincaid sat with his hand on the key for a moment, started the car, then turned it off and reached for his pocket phone instead. When he had Deveney on the line, he said, “Don’t start without me, Nick. I’ll be along in a bit.”

  The first customer’s car pulled into the pub car park as he pulled out, but the houses clustered around the green looked dark and silent, as did the shop when he reached it. He could just make out the CLOSED sign, but yellow light filtered through the curtain chinks in the upstairs windows.

  The stairs were inky, invisible but for the white rail under his hand, but he persevered to the top and knocked smartly on Madeleine Wade’s door. “You really should do something about a light,” he said when she answered.

  “Sorry,” she said, frowning at the fixture. “Must have just burned out.” She motioned him inside and shut the door. “Should I assume this is a social call, Superintendent, since you are unaccompanied by minions?”

  He gave a snort of laughter as he followed her into the kitchen. “Minions?”

  “Such a nice word, isn’t it? I do like words with descriptive power.” As she spoke she
rummaged in various cupboards. “Most people’s vocabularies are dismally bland, don’t you think? Ah, success,” she added as she fished a corkscrew triumphantly from a drawer. “Will you have some wine with me, Mr. Kincaid? Sainsbury’s is remarkably up-market these days. You can actually get something quite decent.”

  Madeleine filled two slender glasses with a pale gold chardonnay, then led the way back to the sitting room. Candles burned, adding their flickering light to that of two shaded table lamps, and the music he’d admired before played softly in the background. “Expecting a client, Miss Wade?” he asked as he accepted a glass and sat down.

  “This is just for me, I’m afraid.” Slipping out of her shoes, she tucked her feet up on the settee, and the marmalade cat jumped up beside her. “I try to practice what I preach,” she said with a chuckle as she rubbed the cat under its chin. “Stress reduction.”

  “I could do with a bit of that.” Kincaid sipped his wine, holding it for a moment in his mouth. The flavors exploded on his tongue-buttery rich, with a touch of the oak found in good whiskey, and beneath that a hint of flowers. The sensation was so intense that he wondered if he were suffering from some sort of perceptual enhancement.

  “Lovely, volatile molecules.” Madeleine closed her eyes as she sipped, then gazed at him directly. In the candlelight her eyes looked green as river moss. “How can I help you, Mr. Kincaid?”

  It occurred to him that in the few minutes he’d been in the flat, he had ceased to regard her as homely. It was not that her features had altered but rather that the normal parameters of judging physical beauty seemed to have become meaningless. He felt light-headed, although he’d barely touched his wine. “Are you a witch, Miss Wade?” he asked, surprising himself, then he smiled, making a joke of it.

  She returned the smile with her characteristic wry amusement. “No, but I’ve considered it quite seriously. I know several, and I incorporate some aspects of their rituals into my practice.”

  “Such as?”

  “Blessings, protective spells, that sort of thing. All quite harmless, I assure you.”