All Shall Be Well

by Deborah Crombie

  As he turned away a flash of color in one of the secretary’s slots caught his attention. It was a weekly engagement calendar of the type sold by museum shops—each week’s page accompanied by a Constable painting. He flipped through the last few months, finding visits to the clinic, birthdays, and his own name entered with increasing regularity. In the weeks of March he began to see botanical notations; the blooming of the japonica and forsythia, the daffodils, and as he turned to April, the flowering of the pears and plums, and the first tulip in the garden. All were things visible from the windows of the flat, and Kincaid felt that this had not been Jasmine’s yearly ritual, but rather a cataloguing of a last spring. In yesterday’s space, opposite Constable’s “View from Hampstead Heath”, she had written ‘Theo—Sunday?’, and then, in very careful script ‘my fiftieth birthday’.

  He hadn’t known.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Kincaid woke slowly on Saturday morning, feeling drowsy and content until memory returned. The sense of loss descended heavily, weighing on his chest. He pulled himself up, shaking his head like a swimmer emerging from deep water.

  If he had dreamed he had no recollection of it, but his mind was clear and he found he had come to a decision in his sleep. If the pathologist reported that Jasmine had indeed died of natural causes, then he would gladly lay aside his suspicions. But if not, he felt a need to be better prepared. Suicide was the obvious assumption—he had no concrete reason for feeling uncomfortable with it, yet he did. Perhaps he was guilty of bringing his job home, of attributing violence to the natural and peaceful death of a friend. Or perhaps he was resisting the idea of suicide because it made him feel culpable, as if he had failed her. But whatever the source of his unease, Kincaid had learned from experience to trust his instincts, and something about Jasmine’s death didn’t feel right.

  The weekend would give him a grace period. He was off duty, and Jasmine’s flat would be the logical place to start. He found, however, that the idea of going through Jasmine’s personal effects alone depressed him. Even though Theo had pretty well given him carte blanche, he felt an uncomfortable sense of invading her privacy.

  His sergeant’s open, freckled face sprang easily to his mind. She was also off duty this weekend. He’d give her a ring and ask for her help. His snooping would seem less personal, and Gemma’s brisk good sense would keep him from thinking too much. He rolled over in bed and reached for the phone.

  Gemma sounded uncharacteristically cross until she recognized his voice. Even then she hesitated after he explained what he wanted, but he put it down to concern about her small son and assured her she could bring him along.

  Satisfied with the arrangement, he got up and headed toward the kitchen and coffee. The sight of his sitting room jolted him to a stop, arousing something akin to panic. Although Gemma had dropped him off or picked him up on occasion, she had never been up to his flat. She’d think him an absolute slob if she saw this shambles. A major tidying up was definitely in the offing.

  Gemma James pulled her Ford Escort into a space before Kincaid’s building by midmorning. She killed the engine and sat for a moment, listening. The silence in Carlingford Road always surprised her. At her own house in Leyton, the traffic noise from Lea Bridge Road never dropped below a muted roar. It must be the Victorians’ solid construction, she thought, looking up at the still shadowed faces of the flats. They were all red brick, rescued from severity by white trim on the windows and from conformity by the brightly colored ground-floor doors.

  Toby began squirming in his car seat and she moved a little reluctantly, unbuckling him and wincing as he climbed across her and began bouncing on her lap. “Oof!” she said, and he giggled with delight. “You’ll soon be too heavy to get in Mummy’s lap at all. I’ll have to stop feeding you.” She tickled him until he squealed, then slipped her arms around his chubby body and nuzzled his straight, fair hair. At two, he was already looking more like a little boy than a baby and she begrudged any infringement on her time with him.

  Her earlier annoyance flooded back. Did Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid think she had nothing better to do with her Saturday than help him with some vague personal problem? Then she frowned, admitting to herself that her reluctance had more to do with her own discomfort at crossing the carefully drawn line between her personal and professional lives than with his presumption. She had come because she was flattered that he had thought of her, and because she was curious.

  Kincaid opened his door and stared at her, appreciation lighting his face.

  “You said personal,” she reminded him sharply, looking down at her burnt-orange T-shirt which she had fancied made her hair look more copper than ginger, then at the printed-cotton skirt and sandals.

  “I’m glad I did. Gemma unstarched.” He grinned at her, then swung Toby up in the air.

  “You’re not exactly a picture of sartorial elegance yourself,” she added, looking pointedly at his faded jeans and Phantom T-shirt.

  “Granted. Been tidying in your honor.” He stepped back and waved her into the flat with a mock flourish.

  “It’s lovely,” Gemma said, and heard the echo of surprise in her voice. Walls painted white to make the most of the southern light, blond Danish furniture with colorful cotton covers, one wall lined with books and another holding stereo equipment and framed London Transport posters—the overall effect was bright and comfortable and spoke of a man confident in his own taste.

  “What were you expecting, squalid bachelor digs furnished with jumble-sale castoffs?” Kincaid sounded pleased.

  “I suppose so. My ex-husband’s idea of designer decorating was leaving the labels on the orange crates,” Gemma said a little absently, her attention on the room’s real draw—the view of North London’s rooftops from the balcony doors. She crossed the room as if pulled by an invisible string, and Kincaid quickly opened the door for her. They stepped out together, Gemma unconsciously hooking a hand through Toby’s braces.

  Her delight and envy must have shown on her face because Kincaid said contritely, “I should have invited you up before now.”

  Gemma judged the balcony Toby-proof and let him go, then leaned against the rail with her eyes closed and her face turned up to the sun. She felt a sense of peace here, of retreat, that she never found at home. She didn’t wonder that he guarded it jealously. Sighing, she turned to face him and found him watching her. “You didn’t ring me just so that I could admire the scenery. What’s up?”

  Kincaid explained the circumstances of Jasmine’s death, and more hesitantly, his doubts. As he spoke he watched Toby digging happily with a stick in his sole pot of pansies. “Stupid of me, I suppose, but I feel somehow responsible, as if I let her down without knowing it.”

  In the clear light Gemma saw the shadows under his eyes and new lines framing his mouth. She looked out across the rooftops again, thinking. “You were close friends?”

  “Yes. At least I thought so.”

  “Well,” Gemma turned reluctantly from the view, “let’s go have a look then, shall we?”

  “Afterwards, I’ll take you and Toby for lunch at the pub, and then maybe a walk on the Heath?” His tone was light but Gemma sensed entreaty, and it occurred to her that her usually self-contained superior dreaded spending the day alone.

  “A bribe?”

  He smiled. “If you like.”

  The first thing Gemma noticed about Jasmine Dent’s flat was the smell—faintly elusive, sweet and spicy at once. She wrinkled her nose, trying to place it, then her face cleared. “It’s incense. I haven’t smelled incense since I left school.”

  Kincaid looked blank. “What?”

  “You don’t smell it?”

  He sniffed, shook his head. “Must be used to it, I suppose.”

  Gemma squelched an illogical flare of jealousy that he had spent so many hours in this flat, with this woman she’d known nothing about. It was none of her business how he spent his time.

  She l
ooked around, while keeping a wary eye on Toby. A lifetime’s accumulation, she thought, of a woman who had cared about things—things loved for their color and texture and their associations rather than their material value.

  One wall held prints and Gemma went closer to study them. The center of the grouping was a sepia-tinted photograph of Edward VIII as a young man in Scouting uniform, smiling and handsome, long before the cares of Mrs. Simpson and abdication. A memento of Jasmine’s parents, perhaps? Beside it a delicate, gold-washed print portrayed two turbaned Indian princes on elephants charging one another, their armies ranged behind them. The artist apparently had no knowledge of perspective and the elephants appeared to be floating in mid-air, giving the whole composition a stylized and whimsical air.

  Gemma moved to the sitting room window and ran her fingers lightly over the carved wooden elephants parading across the sill. “Aren’t elephants supposed to be lucky? Here, Toby, come and look. Aren’t they lovely?” She turned to Kincaid and asked, “Do you think he might play with them? They seem sturdy enough.”

  “I don’t see why not.” He came across to her and lifted the window sash, and they leaned out and looked down into the garden together.

  “Ohhh.” Gemma exhaled the word as she took in the square of lawn, emerald green, smooth as a bowling green, bordered by ranks of multi-colored tulips, crowned with springing forsythia and the opening buds of the plum trees. “It is lovely.” She thought of her shriveled patch of garden, usually more mud than grass, and looked at Toby intently lining the elephants up nose to tail. “Could he—”

  “Better not.” Kincaid shook his head. “Not until we can go down with him. If he trampled the tulips the Major might eat him.” He grinned and ruffled Toby’s fair hair. “Do you think we should divide up the—”

  They both heard the mewing, faint even in the quiet flat. They turned and watched as the black cat crept from under Jasmine’s bed and crouched, ready to retreat. “A cat! You didn’t tell me she had a cat.”

  “I keep forgetting,” Kincaid said, a little shamefaced.

  Gemma knelt and called to him. After a moment’s hesitation he padded toward her and she scooped him up, holding him under her chin. “What’s he called?”

  “Sid. He wouldn’t come for me.” Kincaid sounded aggrieved.

  “Maybe my voice reminded him of her,” Gemma suggested.

  Kincaid knelt and checked the food he’d left under the bed. “He’s still not eating, though.”

  “No wonder.” Gemma wrinkled her nose in disgust at the crusted food. “You’ll have to do better than that.” She put the cat down and rummaged through the kitchen cupboards until she found a tin of tuna. “This might do the trick.” She opened the tin and spooned a little tuna into a clean dish, then set it before the cat. Sidhi sniffed and looked at her, then settled over the dish and took a tentative bite.

  Kincaid had wandered back into the sitting room, touching objects absently before moving on to something else. “This won’t do at all,” Gemma said under her breath, remembering his normal assertiveness. “He couldn’t find a haystack in the middle of the sitting room in this state, could he, Sid?” The cat ignored her, intent now on his food.

  Kincaid stopped in front of the solid, oak bookcase and contemplated the spines as if they might reveal something if he stared long enough. Books were jammed in every which way, taking up every inch of available space. Gemma joined him and scanned the titles. Scott, Forster, Delderfield, Galsworthy, a much worn, leather set of Jane Austen. “There aren’t any new ones,” said Gemma, realizing what struck her as odd. “No paperbacks, no best sellers, no mysteries or romances.”

  “She reread these. Like old friends.”

  Gemma studied him as intently as he studied the books, deciding to take matters in hand. “Look. You start with the desk, all right? And I’ll tackle the bedroom.”

  Kincaid nodded and crossed to the secretary. He sat in the chair, which looked much too delicate to bear his six-foot frame, and gingerly opened the top drawer.

  Jasmine’s small bedroom faced north, toward the street, and Gemma turned on the shaded dressing table lamp. The room held a narrow single bed with an old chenille spread stretched tightly over it, the dresser, a nightstand, and a heavy wardrobe—and unlike the sitting room, it reflected none of its owner’s personality. Gemma sensed that the room had been used for sleeping and storage only, not inhabited in the same sense as the rest of the flat.

  She started with the dressing table, working her way gently through layers of underclothes and bottles of half-empty cosmetics. Under slips and stockings in a bottom drawer lay a picture frame, face down. Gemma lifted it out and turned it over. A dark-eyed young woman stared back at her from a black-and-white studio photograph. Slipping the backing from the frame, she examined the back of the photograph itself. Neatly penciled letters read “Jasmine, 1962”. Gemma turned the photo over again. The dark hair was long and straight, parted in the center, the face small and oval, the mouth held a hint of a smile at some secret not shared with the observer. In spite of the date on the back, the girl had an old-fashioned look—she might have modeled for a Renaissance Madonna.

  Gemma opened her mouth to call Kincaid, hesitated, then carefully placed the photo back in the top of its drawer, face down.

  She moved to the wardrobe and swung open the heavy doors. It held mostly good business suits, dresses and a few silk caftans. Gemma ran her hands appreciatively over the fabrics, then lifted the trousers and sweaters in the drawers.

  The wardrobe’s top shelf held rows of neatly stacked shoe-boxes. Gemma slipped off her shoes, stepped up on the bottom shelf and lifted the top off a box, peering inside. Quickly she pulled the boxes off the shelves and laid them on the bed, removing the tops.

  “Guv. You’d better come and look at these.”

  He came to the doorway, dusting off his hands. “What’s up?”

  “Composition books. Lots of them, all alike.” Gemma opened one and showed him the pages covered with the same neat, italic script she’d seen on the back of the photo. She was suddenly very aware of his nearness in the small room, his quick breathing, the smell of aftershave and warm skin. She stepped back and said more loudly than she intended, “It looks like Jasmine kept a journal.”

  They sorted the boxes, checking the first page of each book for the date. “1952 is the earliest date I’ve found,” Gemma said, rubbing her nose that itched from the dust. Her fingertips felt dry and papery.

  Kincaid calculated a moment. “She would have been ten years old.” They kept on in silence until Kincaid looked up and frowned. “The last entry seems to have been made a week ago.”

  “Did you find anything in the sitting room?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Do you suppose she stopped writing because she knew she was dying?” Gemma ventured.

  “Someone with a lifetime’s habit of recording their thoughts? Doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Or,” Gemma continued slowly, “did it somehow go missing?”

  They sat in the garden at the Freemason’s Arms, eating brown bread with cheese and pickle, and drinking lager. They’d had to wait for one of the white plastic tables, but judged it worth it; for the sun and the view across Willow Road to the Heath.

  Toby, having mangled a soft cheese roll and most of the chips in his basket, sat in the grass at their feet. He was pulling things from Gemma’s bag, muttering a running catalogue to himself—“keys, stick, Toby’s horsey”—here he held a tattered stuffed horse up for their inspection. Kincaid thought blackly of the listing of a victim’s effects, then pushed the thought away. He pulled a chip from Toby’s basket and held it out to him. “Here, Toby. Feed the birds.”

  Toby looked from Kincaid to the house sparrows pecking in the grass. “Birdies?” he said, interested, then launched himself toward the sparrows, chip extended before him like a rapier. The birds took flight.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” said Gemma, laughing. �
��He’ll be frustrated.”

  “Good for his emotional development,” Kincaid intoned with mock seriousness, then grinned at her. “Sorry.” He liked seeing Gemma this way, relaxed and thoughtful. At work she was often too quick off the mark with assumptions, and he had more than once accused her of talking faster than she thought.

  Good with Toby, too, he thought, attentive without fussing. He watched Gemma reel the toddler back in and plop him in the grass at her feet. She put a piece of her bread in the grass a few feet from Toby. “Here, lovey. Be very, very still and maybe they’ll come to you.” The sun had reddened the bridge of her nose and darkened the dusting of freckles on her pale skin. She became aware of Kincaid’s scrutiny, looked up and flushed.

  “You should wear a sun hat, you know, like a good Victorian girl.”

  “Ow. You sound just like my mum. ‘You’ll blister in that sun, Gem. You mark my words, you’ll look like a navvy by the time you’re thirty’,” Gemma mimicked. “It can’t last, anyway, this weather.” She tilted her head and looked at the flat blue sky.

  “No.” No, but he could sure as hell sit here in the sun as long as it did, not thinking, listening to the sparrows and the hum of traffic from East Heath Road, watching the sun send golden flares from Gemma’s hair.

  “Duncan.” Gemma’s tone was unusually tentative. Kincaid sat up and squinted at her as he sipped from his pint. “Duncan, tell me why you don’t think Jasmine committed suicide.”

  He looked away from her, then picked up a scrap of bread from his plate and began to shred it. “You think I’m manufacturing this to salve my wounded vanity. Maybe I am.” He leaned forward and met her eyes again. “But I just can’t believe she wouldn’t have left something—some indication, some message.”

  “For you?”

  “For me. Or for her friend Margaret. Or her brother.” The doubt he saw in Gemma’s hazel eyes made him defensive. “I knew her, damn it.”