“She was ill, dying. People don’t always behave rationally. Maybe she wanted you all to think it was natural.”
Kincaid sat up, vehement. “She’d know Margaret wouldn’t. Not after what passed between them.”
“According to Margaret.”
“Point taken.” Kincaid ran a hand through his already unruly hair. “But still—”
“Look,” Gemma interrupted him, her face beginning to flush with her enthusiasm for playing devil’s advocate, “you say you don’t think she died naturally in her sleep because in that case she would have bolted the door. But what if she felt too ill, perhaps lay down thinking she’d have a rest first—”
“No. She was too … composed. Everything was just too bloody perfect.”
“So why couldn’t she have drifted off during the evening, lost consciousness before she realized what was happening?”
Kincaid shook his head. “No lights. No telly. No book open across her chest or fallen to the floor. No reading glasses. Gemma,” he gave a sharp, uncomfortable shrug, “I think that’s what bothered me from the first, even before Margaret came and threw a spanner in the works with the suicide pact. It was almost as if she’d been laid out.” He uttered this last remark a little sheepishly, looking sideways at her to gauge her reaction. Finding no expression of ridicule, he added, “The bedclothes weren’t even rumpled a bit.”
“That’s all consistent with suicide,” Gemma said, and her gentle tone made Kincaid suspect he was being humored.
“I suppose so.” He stretched his legs out under the table and regarded her over the rim of his almost-empty pint. “I know you think I’m daft.”
Gemma merely lifted an eyebrow. She picked up Toby, who was getting restless, and jiggled him on her knee until he laughed. “So what if the p.m. findings are positive?” she said between bounces. “The coroner’s sure to rule suicide. There’s no evidence to support opening an investigation.”
“Lack of written or verbal communication of intent?”
Gemma shrugged. “Very iffy. And Margaret’s story would be used to support suicide, not vice versa.”
Kincaid watched a kite hovering over the Heath and didn’t answer. Margaret. Now there was a thing. Why should he take Margaret’s story at face value? Yesterday he had been too shocked and exhausted to question anything, but it occurred to him now that Margaret couldn’t have invented a better story if she’d wanted it thought that Jasmine committed suicide, and it also absolved her of any guilt in not intervening.
“You’ve got that look,” Gemma said accusingly. “What are you hatching?”
“Right.” Kincaid drained his pint and sat up. “I’d like to have a word with Jasmine’s solicitor, but I haven’t a hope of seeing him till Monday.”
“What else?” Gemma said, and Kincaid thought she looked inexplicably pleased with herself.
“Talk to Margaret. Maybe talk to Theo again.”
“And the books?”
For an instant asking Gemma to help him crossed Kincaid’s mind, but he rejected it as quickly as it came. That was one task he couldn’t share. “I’ll make a start on them.”
They walked slowly back to Carlingford Road, holding Toby’s hands and swinging him over the curbs. “No walk on the Heath, then?” Kincaid asked, for he’d seen Gemma glance at her watch more than once.
Gemma shook her head. “I’d better not. I promised my mum we’d visit—she says we don’t come often enough.”
Kincaid heard something in her voice, a shade of worry or aggravation, and remembered how she’d sounded on the phone that morning. Probably some bloke, he thought, and realized how little he knew about Gemma’s life. Only that she’d divorced shortly after Toby was born; she lived in a semidetached house in Leyton; she’d grown up and gone to school in North London. That was all. He’d never even been to Leyton—she always picked him up or met him at the Yard.
Suddenly the extent of his own myopia astounded him. He thought of her as reliable, attractive, intelligent, and often opinionated, with a special gift for putting people at ease in an interview—he’d looked no further than the qualities that made her valuable as an assistant. Did she date (this with a twinge of unidentified irritation)? Did she get on with her parents? What were her friends like?
He studied her as she walked beside him. She brushed a wisp of red hair from her face as she bent her head to answer Toby, but her expression was abstracted. “Gemma,” he said a little hesitantly, “is anything the matter?”
She looked up at him, startled, then smiled. “No, of course not. Everything’s fine.”
Somehow Kincaid felt unconvinced, but he let it go. Her manner didn’t invite further probing.
The blossom-laden branches of a plum tree overhung the walk, and as they passed beneath petals showered them like confetti. They laughed, the momentary awkwardness dissolved, and then they were saying good-bye before the flat.
Kincaid climbed the stairs alone, feeling the afternoon stretching before him like a desert. The red light on his answering machine flashed a greeting as he entered the flat and his spirits wilted even further. “Great,” he said under his breath, and punched playback.
The duty sergeant’s voice demanded to know just what the hell he thought he was playing at—hospital had called about a post mortem he’d requested—and if he didn’t put his paperwork through the proper channels there’d be hell to pay. The remainder of the message he added almost as an afterthought, before ringing off abruptly.
Jasmine Dent’s system had contained a lethal amount of morphine.
CHAPTER
5
Kincaid unsnapped the Midget’s tarp and folded it from front to back, then unlocked the boot and stowed it away. He accomplished the maneuver neatly and quickly, having perfected it with much practice. The car’s red paintwork gleamed cheerily at him, inviting dalliance in the midafternoon sun, but Kincaid shook his head and slid into the driver’s seat. An idle down country lanes was not what he had in mind, tourist-poster day or not. He fished his sunglasses out of the door pocket, and put the car in gear.
After he crossed Rosslyn Hill, Kincaid made his way through the back streets of South Hampstead until he came into Kilburn High Road, just north of Maida Vale. He found Margaret Bellamy’s address without difficulty, a dingy, terraced house in a block that had avoided gentrification. The front door was the dark red-brown of dried blood, but its peeling paint showed blotches of brighter colors beneath—lime-green, yellow, royal-blue—testimony to previous owners with more cheerful dispositions. He rang the bell and waited, wrinkling his nose against the odor drifting up from the rubbish bins below the basement railing.
The woman who opened the door wore polyester trousers stretched precariously over her bulky thighs, and a shiny jersey endured equal punishment across her bosom. She eyed Kincaid disapprovingly.
“Margaret Bellamy?” Kincaid tried out his best smile, wondering if she could hear him over the canned laughter bellowing from the back of the house.
The woman studied him a bit longer, then jerked her head toward the stairs. “Top of the house. On the right.”
Kincaid thanked her and started up the steps, feeling her eyes on his back until he rounded the first landing. The smell of grease and the raucous sounds of the television followed him up three more flights, where the stairs ended in a dim hallway with streakily distempered walls. The two doors were unmarked and he tapped lightly on the right-hand one.
The sound of the downstairs’ television switched off, and in the sudden silence Kincaid heard the creak of bedsprings. Margaret Bellamy opened the door with an expectant half-smile. “Oh. It’s you,” she said, disappointment evident in her swollen face. She made an effort to smile again. “You’d better come in.” Jerking her head toward the hall as she drew him in, she added, “She’s listening, the horrid old snoop. That’s why she turned the telly off.” Margaret closed the door and stood awkwardly, as if she didn’t know what to do with Kincaid now that she’d shut h
im in. She looked round the small room and grimaced.
He took in the small bed with its rumpled covers sagging to the floor, a single, stained armchair, a wardrobe, and an old deal table which seemed to serve as desk, dresser and kitchen.
Margaret made a small, circular motion with her hand and said, “I’m sorry.” Kincaid thought the apology covered both herself and the room.
He smiled at her. “I lived in a bedsit myself, when I was training at the Academy. It was pretty dreadful, though I don’t think my landlady could’ve held a candle to yours.” This brought an answering smile from Margaret, and she moved to clear the chair for him. As she bent to scoop up a pile of clothes, she staggered and had to steady herself against the chair back.
“Are you all right?” Kincaid asked, and studied her more carefully. Her soft, brown hair was matted, and her eyelids were puffy from weeping. She wore a large T-shirt which had a section of its tail bunched in the waistband of faded gray sweatpants—probably the result of pulling them on hastily when he knocked on the door.
“Have you been out today at all?” he asked.
Margaret shook her head.
“Eaten?”
“No.”
“I thought as much. Have you anything here?”
Another negative shake. “Just some tea, really.”
Kincaid thought for a moment, then said briskly, “You make us some tea. I’ll go down and ask your landlady to put together some sandwiches.”
Margaret looked horrified. “She’d never … She wouldn’t—”
“She will.” He stopped at the door. “Though if Saint George is going to conquer the dragon, he’d better know her name.”
“Oh.” A flicker of amusement lit Margaret’s face. “It’s Mrs. Wilson.”
The door from which Kincaid guessed Mrs. Wilson had emerged earlier stood slightly ajar. He tapped smartly. The television still played very faintly, and over it he heard the shuffle of slipper-clad feet. The door opened a moment later and Mrs. Wilson squinted at him through the cigarette smoke which trickled from her nostrils. A dragon indeed.
“Mrs. Wilson?”
She glared at him suspiciously. “What of it?”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Not if you’re aimin’ to sell me something.” The door began to inch closed. “I don’t hold with solicitation.”
Kincaid wondered what she thought he could be selling. “No. It’s about Margaret. Please.”
She snorted with annoyance, but stepped back enough to let Kincaid into the room. He surveyed Mrs. Wilson’s lair with interest. It apparently served as sitting room as well as kitchen—a small sofa was jammed between the fittings, and a large color television held pride of place next to the fridge.
Mrs. Wilson sat down at the Formica-topped table and picked up the cigarette which lay smoldering in the ashtray. An open tabloid and a half-drunk cup of tea were evidence of her afternoon’s activity. She didn’t invite Kincaid to sit down.
“She’s all wet, that girl,” Mrs. Wilson pronounced disgustedly. “What’s up now? More trouble with the boyfriend?”
Boyfriend? That was a complication he somehow hadn’t expected, but it explained Margaret’s dashed hopes when she’d opened the door. Kincaid thought quickly. What story would satisfy this harridan? From the looks of the headline in her paper—“Eleven-year-old mum fights authorities for baby!”—Mrs. Wilson’s sympathies were aroused by melodrama, but the truth seemed a betrayal of both Margaret and Jasmine.
He improvised. “It’s her uncle. Died suddenly yesterday, and Margaret’s not taken it well at all.”
Mrs. Wilson’s heavy face remained as unmoved as her stiffly permed hair. “Figures.” She looked at Kincaid suspiciously. “What do you have to do with it, anyway?”
“I’m a friend of the family. Duncan Kincaid.” He held out his hand and Mrs. Wilson condescended to touch her pudgy fingertips to his before retrieving her half-smoked cigarette.
“So what’s it to me?”
“She’s not eaten anything since yesterday. I thought you might make her up some sandwiches?” Kincaid made the last remark with a raised eyebrow and as much persuasion as he could muster.
Mrs. Wilson opened her mouth to refuse, then stopped and eyed Kincaid speculatively. Desire for gossip warred with her natural inclination to do as little for anyone as possible, and maliciousness triumphed over sloth. “Well, I suppose I could just put something together, but I don’t want her getting any ideas, mind you.” She levered herself out of the chair, then jerked her head toward the vacant seat. “You’d better sit down.” She continued over her shoulder as she opened the fridge, “Would this be her mother’s brother or her father’s that passed away?”
“Her mother’s youngest brother, not much older than Margaret, in fact,” Kincaid said glibly. “They were very close.”
Mrs. Wilson spoke with her back to Kincaid, slicing something he couldn’t see. “No family’s ever had anything to do with her since she came here. Might as well be an orphan.”
“Well, at least she’s had her boyfriend to look after her,” Kincaid threw out.
“Him!” Mrs. Wilson turned around and fixed Kincaid with a beady stare. “That one never looked after anything but himself, I can tell you. Sponging, more like it.” She turned back to her slicing. “Too pretty for his own good, and oily with it. What he sees in her,” she lifted her head toward the ceiling, “I don’t know.” She wiped her hands on her apron and presented Kincaid with a plate of squashy, if edible looking, ham and tomato sandwiches. “That do?”
“Admirably, thanks.”
Having finished her task, Mrs. Wilson seemed disinclined to let him go. She lit another cigarette and propped her hip up on the edge of the table. Kincaid looked away from the sight of her spreading thigh and settled his weight back into the chair.
Mrs. Wilson took up her train of thought again. “I’ve told her I don’t want him hanging around here, nor spending the night. Gives my house a bad name, don’t it?”
Kincaid assumed the question was rhetorical, but answered it placatingly anyway. “I’m sure no one would think such a thing, Mrs. Wilson.”
Mrs. Wilson preened a bit at this, and leaned toward him conspiratorially. “She thinks I don’t know what’s going on, but I do. I hear him come padding down the stairs at all hours of the night, like a thief. And I hear the rows, too,” a pause while she inhaled and sent a cloud of smoke in the direction of Kincaid’s face, “mostly him shouting and her wailing like a lamb led to slaughter. Silly cow,” Mrs. Wilson finished with a snort. “I imagine she puts up with it ’cause she thinks she won’t do any better.”
Charitable old bitch, Kincaid thought, and smiled at her. “Then I don’t suppose he’s much comfort to her, at a time like this?”
“Not been here to comfort, or for anything else. Not since …” Mrs. Wilson squinted and drew on the last of her cigarette, then ground it out in the cheap tin ashtray. “Oh, must have been Thursday tea-time. He stormed out of here in a terrible temper. Near ripped the door off its hinges. But then,” she shifted her weight as she thought and the table creaked in protest, “Thursday night is Ladies’ Night down the pub and I was out till closing. If he came back later they were quiet enough making it up.”
Kincaid decided he’d exhausted Mrs. Wilson’s information for the time being, as well as his patience. He stood up and retrieved the sandwiches. “I don’t want these to go stale, and I’d better be seeing about Margaret. I’m sure she’ll appreciate your help, Mrs. Wilson. You’ve been very kind.”
“Ta,” she said, and wiggled her fingers at him coquettishly.
* * *
“Success,” Kincaid said when Margaret let him in again. In his absence she had tidied the bed and the scattered clothing, brushed her hair, and put on some pale pink lipstick. Her smile was less tentative, and he thought the time spent alone had brought her some composure.
Margaret’s eyes widened as she saw the plate of sandwic
hes. “I can’t believe it! She’s never so much as loaned me a tea bag.”
“I appealed to her better instincts.”
“Didn’t know she had any,” Margaret snorted, taking the plate from Kincaid. Then she froze, her face crumpling with distress. “You didn’t tell her—”
“No.” Kincaid rescued the tilting plate and set it on the table. “I told a pack of lies. You’ve just lost your favorite uncle, your mother’s youngest brother, in case Mrs. W. asks.”
“But she doesn’t have—” Margaret’s face cleared. “Oh. Sorry.” She smiled at Kincaid. “I guess I’m a little dense today. Thanks.”
“Partly hunger, I imagine. Let’s get you fed.” The electric kettle whistled. Two mugs with tea bags sat ready beside it. Kincaid poured the tea and settled Margaret in the armchair, then pulled up the sash of the single window and leaned against the sill. As Margaret started on a sandwich, he said, “You’d better tell me about your family, after all the terrible things I made up.”
“Woking,” said Margaret, through a mouthful of ham and tomato. She swallowed and tried again. “Dorking. Sorry. I didn’t realize I was so hungry.” She took a smaller bite and chewed a moment before continuing. “I’m from Dorking. My dad owns a garage. I kept his books for him, looked after things.”
Kincaid could easily imagine her managing a smaller, more familiar world, where here in London she seemed so vulnerable. “What happened?”
Margaret shrugged and wiped the corner of her mouth with a finger. “Nothing ever changed. I could see myself doing the same thing in twenty years, living bits and pieces of other people’s lives. My dad’s business, my sister’s kids—”
“How did they take it?”
Margaret smiled, mocking herself. “I’m the plain one, so they never expected me to want anything different. I should have been content to have Dad’s customers pat me and pay me stupid compliments, to be Aunt Meg and look after Kath’s kids whenever she had something better to do.”
All Shall Be Well Page 5