“What do you think, Major? You knew her, maybe better than I did.”
The Major speared a bite of egg with his fork and swabbed it through the pool of brown sauce on his plate. “Canna say I knew her well, not really. We only talked about,” he forked egg and chips into his mouth and continued, “everyday things. The garden, the telly. Now Margaret I never met, but I’d see her coming and going, and sometimes she’d come out to the steps and wave at me when I was in the garden. A friendly lass. Not like Jasmine. I don’t mean,” he corrected himself, “to say that Jasmine was unfriendly, just that she kept herself to herself, if you know what I mean.” As if surprised by his own garrulity, the Major looked away from Kincaid and concentrated on his dinner.
The espresso machine hissed and gurgled like some subterranean monster as Kincaid took a bite of his own omelet. “Did you ever see anyone come with Margaret? A boyfriend?”
The Major frowned and shook his head. “Canna say as I did.”
Kincaid felt sure he would have remembered Roger. “Did you ever meet Theo, her brother?”
“Not that I recall. She didn’t have much in the way of visitors, except that nurse the last few months. Now that,” he leaned forward confidentially as he scooped up the last of his egg and chips, “is one fine-looking woman.”
Kincaid noted with amusement that the Major’s passion for things vegetable didn’t extend to the edible—most of his watercress and cucumber garnish lay limply abandoned on the side of his plate. “What about Thursday night? Did you see anyone visit then?”
“Not in. Never in on a Thursday. Choir.”
“You sing?” Kincaid asked. He pushed his empty plate away and leaned forward, elbows on the table.
“Since I was a boy. Won prizes as a tenor, before my voice changed.”
Kincaid thought the Major’s complexion looked even more florid than usual. So that was the other sustaining passion. “I wouldn’t have guessed. Where do you sing?”
The Major finished his beer and patted his mustache with his napkin. “St. John’s. Sunday services. Wednesday Evensong. Practice on Thursdays.”
“Were you back late on Thursday?”
“No. Tenish, if I remember.”
“And you didn’t see or hear anything unusual?”
Kincaid didn’t hold his breath in expectation. It was the kind of question he had to ask, but fate was not usually generous in replying. If people saw something really unusual they spoke up right away, minor discrepancies would come back to them only when something jogged their memories.
The Major shook his head. “Fraid not.”
The waitress whisked away Kincaid’s empty plate and returned a moment later with their checks. The noise level in the cafe had risen steadily. Kincaid looked around and saw every table full and prospective customers standing in the doorway—fine weather combining with Saturday night to bring out the crowds. He drained the last of his pint reluctantly. “I guess we’d better make way for the mob.”
As they reached the turning into Pilgrims Lane, the shadow of Hampstead Police Station loomed over them. Kincaid found it rather ironic that he had chosen to live a few short blocks from that most evocative of buildings, designed by J. Dixon Butler, the architect who collaborated with Norman Shaw on New Scotland Yard. In Kincaid’s imagination fog always swirled around its Queen Anne gables, and Victorian bobbies marched briskly to the rescue.
When they reached Carlingford Road the Major spoke, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. “And what about the wee moggie? Have you made provision for it?”
“Moggie?” Kincaid said blankly. “Oh, the cat. No. No, I haven’t. I don’t suppose you’d—”
The Major was already shaking his head. “Canna abide the beasts in the house. Make me sneeze. And wouldn’t have it digging in my flower beds.” His mustache bristled in distaste. “But somethin’ should be done.”
Kincaid sighed. “I know. I’ll see to it. Goodnight, Major.”
“Mr. Kincaid.” The words stopped Kincaid as he mounted the steps to the front door. “I think you’ll do more harm than good digging into this business. Some things are best left alone.”
Kincaid paced restlessly around the sitting room of his flat. It was still early, not yet nine o’clock, and he felt tired but edgy, unable to settle to anything. He flipped through the channels on the telly, then switched it off in disgust. None of his usual tapes or CD’s appealed to him, nor any of the books he hadn’t found time to read.
When he found himself studying the photographs on his walls, he turned and faced the brown cardboard box on his coffee table squarely. Classic avoidance, refusal to face a disagreeable task. Or to be more honest, he thought, he was afraid that Jasmine would jump out of the pages of her journals, fresh and painfully real.
Kincaid allowed himself one more small delay—time enough to make a cup of coffee. Carrying the mug back to the sitting room, he settled himself on the sofa in the pool of light cast by the reading lamp. He pulled the cardboard box a little nearer and ran his fingers across the neat blue spines of the composition books. They came away streaked with a fine, dry dust.
If he must do it, then he would start chronologically—in the earlier books the Jasmine he knew would be less immediate, and he’d already glanced briefly through the last book and found nothing immediately useful. He pulled the most faded book from the back of the box and opened it. The pages were yellow and crackly and smelled a bit musty. Kincaid stifled a sneeze.
The entries began in 1951. Jasmine’s ten-year-old handwriting was small and carefully looped, the entries trite and equally self-conscious: Theo’s accomplishments (the proprietary interest already evident), prizes won at school, a tennis lesson, a ride on a neighbor’s horse.
Kincaid flipped easily through the pages of one book, a second, a third. As the years flowed by the writing changed, developing into Jasmine’s recognizable idiosyncratic script. Sometimes entries skipped weeks, sometimes months, and although they became more natural, they remained emotionally unrevealing. He’d started the fourth book when an entry dated in March, 1956, brought him up short. He went back to the beginning and began to read more carefully.
March 9
Theo’s tenth birthday. The usual celebration. Same as last year and all the years before. The three of us round the dining table in our best clothes, stifling with the shutters closed, no one speaking at all. Cook made his idea of an English birthday cake. Awful (it’s always awful), but father just sat there looking like doom and Theo didn’t even snicker. I could’ve screamed.
Father gave Theo a model airplane kit which, of course, Theo doesn’t care about at all. I’ll end up helping him put it together, can’t hurt Father’s feelings. Exercised Mrs. bloody Savarkar’s horse for a month to earn enough to buy Theo a new tennis racket. Not that I minded the horse, but Mrs. S. is a bitch, always lording it over us just because we’re “poor English”.
Do I really remember the night Theo was born, or have I just heard the ayah’s stories so many times I can’t tell where her stories leave off and my memories begin. I remember shouting and smoke and the smell of burning, but I think that this all happened later and is somehow confused in my mind with the doctor pounding on the door and my mother’s screams.
May 22
Mr. Patel pinched my arm again in class. He walks up and down the rows, making a dry-leaf rustly noise, looking over our shoulders while we’re working. I can feel him coming up behind me, the back of my neck gets hot.
Today he grabbed my arm just below the shoulder and dug his fingers in, squeezing until I bit my lip to keep from crying out. He said I hadn’t done my assignment properly, but it’s just an excuse to keep me after and everyone knows it. I could hear the other girls sniggering behind my back.
“Jasssmine,” he said when he’d let everyone else go, hissing the ‘s’ in my name until my skin crawls. “Do you remember your English mother, Jasmine? You need someone to teach you things, Jasmine.” He moved around h
is desk and I backed up against the doorframe, holding my books against my chest so he couldn’t look there. “You know you shouldn’t go out in the sun, don’t you? It makes you look like a native girl.” He smiled at me then. He looked like a bald tortoise, with his stringy neck quivering and his eyes blinking. I ran before he could touch me again, ran all the way home and threw up. I wish I could kill him.
The finger marks on my arm turned purple by the time I got home. I changed into a long-sleeved blouse before Theo or Father could see. No point in telling Father. I tried once before. He just got that vague look of his like he wishes he were somewhere else, and said my imagination was running away with me.
I know why Mr. Patel asked me about Mummy. They think I’m half-caste, because of my coloring, and that Mummy wasn’t English at all.
I remember my mother. I remember the slippery feel of her dresses and the way she smelled of roses. I remember the dolls she had sent to me from England and the stories we made up about them. “Grow up to be a proper English girl, Jasmine,” she’d say, “so you’ll know how things are done when we go home.” That was all she talked about, going home. She must have hated it here. Is it possible for someone to die of homesickness?
June 5
Theo, the little toad, told father I stayed out of school while he was away. Father put on his miserable face and said I was just trying to make life difficult for him, and now he’ll have to speak to the head.
June 30
Father died yesterday. The doctor said it was his heart, something to do with the fevers he had when he first came out.
He was just reading the newspaper at dinner. Said he didn’t feel well, in a surprised sort of way, then slumped over the table.
I can’t believe it. What will become of Theo and me?
CHAPTER
7
Gemma sat at the kitchen table, huddled in Rob’s old terry-cloth dressing gown. It was his color, not hers—the deep wine shade turned her hair ginger. She knew she should throw it out, or give it to Oxfam, along with all the other odds and ends of her married life that cluttered the house. But sometimes, if she pressed the dressing gown’s nubby fabric to her face, she imagined it still smelled of Rob.
“Silly cow,” she said aloud. What had Rob left her that she should want any reminders of him? It surprised her that she still missed his physical presence. Not just sex (although that had been scarce enough since that day two years ago when she’d come home to find Rob’s things gone and a note on the kitchen table), but the quick touch, the hand on her hair, having something other than a hot-water bottle to warm her feet against at night. Work and looking after Toby left not much time for becoming reacquainted with dating.
The thought of Toby brought her attention back to the untidy pile of bills before her on the kitchen table. Gemma got up and poured herself more coffee, wrapping her hands around the chipped Thistle mug (a souvenir of her honeymoon in Inverness.) Nearly nine o’clock on Sunday morning and Toby not up yet—last night’s visit to her mum and dad’s had exhausted him. Her sister’s three wild ones had wound him to a fever pitch and Gemma had carried him kicking and screaming to the car, only to have him fall asleep in mid-shriek a few minutes later.
She contemplated the bills again, then carried her mug to the back door and stood looking out into the garden. Toby’s plastic tricycle lay overturned in a muddy patch. Rob hadn’t sent his support check for three months now, and the fees for Toby’s day care were becoming more than she could manage. The mortgage on the house was steep, and she paid a sitter for Toby when she worked overtime as well. Rob’s last phone had been disconnected, and when Gemma checked his flat she found he’d moved and left no forwarding address. The car dealership where he’d worked as a salesman gave her the same story, he’d given notice and disappeared.
Gemma felt panic hovering at the edge of her thoughts, waiting to pounce when she let her guard down. She’d taken such pride in her self-sufficiency, ignoring the importance of Rob’s help because it didn’t fit with the super-mum image she’d built for herself. Now she was reaping the consequences. Be practical, she told herself, look at your options. Selling the house and finding less expensive care for Toby didn’t mean the end of the world, yet she still felt the weight of failure like a stone on her chest.
The loud burring of the kitchen phone jerked her out of the doldrums. She set her coffee on the countertop and grabbed the receiver off the extension, hoping not to wake Toby.
“Gemma? I’m sure ringing you two mornings in a row is a right nuisance, but I wondered if you’d like to make a couple of visits with me today.”
She found that another early morning call from Kincaid didn’t surprise her, nor did his off-duty voice. It held a trace of hesitancy she never heard at work. “Still unofficial?” she asked.
“Um, until tomorrow, at least. But I’ve had the p.m. result. Morphine overdose.”
Gemma retrieved her cup and took a sip of tepid coffee. So he had been right about that, at least, and she’d been wrong in thinking his closeness to the situation might have clouded his judgement.
“I know you still think I’m making mountains out of molehills,” he said into her silence, and Gemma heard the trace of amusement in his voice.
“Who did you have in mind?”
“Felicity Howarth, Jasmine’s nurse, in Kew. And brother Theo, down in Surrey. It’s a lovely day for a run,” he added, cajoling.
“Mummy.” Toby had padded into the kitchen on bare feet and stood sleep-flushed and tousled, holding his blanket.
“Come here, love.” Gemma knelt and hugged him.
“Sorry?” Kincaid said, sounding startled.
Gemma laughed. “It’s Toby. He’s just got up.” This wouldn’t be an expedition for Toby—she’d have to ask her mum to keep him, and then her overworked conscience would give her hell for neglecting him.
“Gemma?”
“I’d have to make arrangements for Toby.”
“I’ll pick you up. What time?”
“No.” She’d never had Kincaid to her house, and after seeing his flat yesterday she felt even more reluctant. “I mean,” she said, realizing how abrupt she’d sounded, “I’ll have to run Toby to my mum’s and then I might as well come to the flat.”
They rang off, and Gemma lauded Kincaid’s tact in not reminding her that running Toby up to Leyton High Street hardly made it necessary for her to drive to Hampstead.
* * *
It seemed that Kew had tempted a good portion of London’s populace to initiate rites of spring. Gemma, sitting in the passenger seat of Kincaid’s MG with her face turned up to the sun, included herself in the observation. She had to keep reminding herself that she hadn’t come along for her own indulgence, and made an effort to keep her eyes on the road rather than Kincaid’s profile. Normally she preferred to drive him, but when she’d reached the Hampstead flat he’d insisted she leave her car and had loaded her briskly into the Midget, saying, “Relax, Gemma. It’s your day off, after all.” She had given in without too much difficulty.
They circled Kew Green, jockeying for position in the traffic. The roads leading off to Kew Gardens and the river were chock-a-block with cars, but once they cleared the Green’s south end they left some of the congestion behind. They wound their way south and east through the side streets toward Felicity Howarth’s address, moving past large detached houses with gardens, then less elegant semi-detached, arriving finally in a cul-de-sac of terraced houses. Uncollected litter cluttered the sidewalks, and the houses had an air of mean shabbiness, as if their owners had given up making an effort.
Gemma looked at Kincaid in surprise. “She’s a private nurse? Have you got the right address?”
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Let’s give it a try.”
Felicity Howarth’s basement flat, unlike most of its neighbors, showed signs of some attention. The steps were swept, the door painted a glossy, dark green and the brass knocker polished. Kincaid rang the bell and
after a few moments Felicity opened the door.
She stared at Kincaid as if she couldn’t quite place him, then her face cleared. “Mr. Kincaid?”
Gemma, who from Kincaid’s description had been expecting an elegant and uniformed model of starched efficiency, had her perceptions abruptly altered. Although Felicity Howarth’s height and coloring might be striking under other circumstances, today found her not at her best. She wore faded sweats, no make-up, had a smudge of dirt across her forehead, and Gemma thought she looked tired and not overly pleased to see them.
“Doing a bit in the garden,” she said apologetically, wiping more dirt across her forehead in an effort to rub off the smudge.
Kincaid introduced Gemma simply by her name, then said, “I’d like to talk to you about Jasmine.”
“I guess you’d better come in.” Felicity led them into her sitting room, said, “Let me wash up,” then hesitated as she was turning away and added, “Like some coffee? I was just about to make some for myself.”
Gemma and Kincaid took advantage of the opportunity to look around the room. It was neat and scrupulously clean, as Gemma could testify after she surreptitiously ran a finger along the edge of a bookshelf—it came away without a smudge of dust. The furniture was of good quality but not new, and the ornaments more likely to be family hand-me-downs, it seemed to Gemma, than chosen with a particular decorating scheme in mind. A Sunday Observer lay scattered across the sofa, the only evidence of untidy occupation.
Kincaid moved to the windows at the rear of the room and stood looking into the brambly garden that lay at eye level. “She lives alone?” Gemma asked softly as she joined him.
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
Felicity returned, carrying coffee pot and china cups on a tray. Setting the tray down on the coffee table, she scooped the offending newspaper from the sofa and tucked it out of sight beneath an end table. She seemed to have regained authority along with clean face and hands, directing Gemma and Kincaid to sit on the sofa while she poured for them, then pulling up a straight-backed chair for herself. The sofa was squashy in the center and Gemma found herself sinking, trying to keep her thigh from brushing against Kincaid’s, and looking up at Felicity perched commandingly on her hard chair. She saw the corner of Kincaid’s mouth twitch with amusement at her predicament. Felicity had performed a clever and practiced maneuver, thought Gemma, and was not a bit surprised when she took charge of the interview.
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