“She defended him at first, but after Jasmine left, the escapades became more serious than setting pastures alight and joyriding in other people’s autos.” Leaning forward, Alice took a biscuit from the plate and nibbled at its edge. “Chocolate digestives. My one vice,” she added apologetically. “May stopped talking about sending him to university. It was a pipe dream, anyway, he’d never done well enough at school to merit it.”
“Do you know why Jasmine left?” Kincaid asked, treading delicately now.
“No. But I always wondered. She just quit her job and disappeared. Literally here one day and gone the next. May was absolutely furious. Called her an ungrateful bitch, which was strong language for May. Of course, from the time Jasmine left school May had done nothing but complain about her, what a burden she was and how anxious she was to be rid of her—though I think Jasmine began paying her share of the housekeeping as soon as she found her first job. And it wasn’t as if May couldn’t afford to keep her.”
“So you’d have thought May would have been thrilled.”
“Exactly. But that was May for you. Never satisfied, especially when she got what she wanted.” Alice stared into the fire, and Kincaid waited, not interrupting. “There was something, though … I would have put it down to malicious gossip and forgotten all about it, if Jasmine hadn’t disappeared so soon afterwards.”
“A rumor?”
“Yes—that Jasmine was going around with that boy from over in Bladen Valley, the one who wasn’t quite right. Did you come through Bladen Valley?” She gestured to the west. “Another experiment, that. Built during the first War, though, to house the estate workers. A fitting place, I suppose, for a war memorial.”
“Is that what that is? The stone cross?”
Alice nodded. “Done by the sculptor Eric Gill. It’s supposed to be one St. Juliana, a fifteenth-century mystic. What she had to do with war I never discovered.”
“Mrs. Finney,” Kincaid led her gently back, “what was wrong with the boy?”
“I’m not sure. Not retarded. More unbalanced, mentally ill, perhaps. Given to sudden fits of violence, if the stories were true, but it’s been a very long time ago.” She sighed.
“I’ve tired you,” Kincaid said, instantly contrite. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s not that.” Alice Finney straightened up, some of her crisp demeanor returning. “I’m aggravated with myself, if you must know, because I can’t remember the boy’s name. I don’t like not being able to remember things—makes me feel old.” She smiled. “Which I’m not, of course.”
“Of course,” Kincaid agreed.
“All his people are gone now, too, I think. The boy’s mother had him institutionalized, not long after Jasmine left, I believe. And she’s been dead for a good fifteen or twenty years now. There was no other family that I know of.”
“What happened to Theo, after Jasmine left?”
“He did finish school, if I remember rightly, but couldn’t seem to find his feet afterwards. Couldn’t find work, got into a bit more trouble all the time. And then May died. Took pneumonia and was gone, just like that. Jasmine never came back, not even for the funeral, and after May’s affairs were settled and the cottage sold, Theo disappeared, too. And I never heard another word of either of them, until this day.”
“Did May leave them anything, do you know?”
“She must have had quite a tidy nest egg. Tight as an old trout, May was. Managed her inheritance a sight better than her brother managed his, apparently, but I’ve no idea how she divided it between the children—there was no other family. She could have left everything to a home for wayward cats, for all I know.” She paused, her brows drawing together in concentration. “You might try the solicitor’s office in Blandford Forum.”
“The one where Jasmine worked? It’s still there?”
“It was the only one at the time, so naturally they handled May’s affairs. Old Mr. Rawlinson’s dead, and the son may not remember Jasmine, but it might be worth a try.”
Kincaid rose. “You’ve been a great help. I never meant to take so much of your time.”
“Nonsense.” She stood, shaking off Kincaid’s proffered help. “Do you think I have better things to do than take tea with an attractive young man who’s interested in everything I have to say? It’s an old woman’s dream, my dear.”
Kincaid had the sudden urge to do something very improper, very un-English. Placing his fingertips on her shoulders, he said, “You’re delightful. Your Jack was a very lucky man, and if I were a few years older, Alice Finney, I’d marry you myself.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek, and her skin felt as soft as a young girl’s lips.
Blandford Forum, Alice had informed him, had burned nearly to the ground in the summer of 1731. The fire had started in the tallow-chandler’s house and spread quickly from one thatched roof to another. Tragic as the destruction must have seemed at the time, Blandford Forum had risen from its ashes as a Georgian gem. The offices of Rawlinson and Sons, Solicitors, had been housed in a Georgian building in the rebuilt Market Place as long as anyone could remember.
Peering through the frosted glass of the inside door, Kincaid could make out only fuzzy shapes. He pulled open the door and the lumps resolved themselves into ordinary waiting room furniture, a desk, and behind it, a receptionist.
She swiveled away from her typewriter and smiled at him. “Can I help you?”
“Uh, I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. Is Mr. Rawlinson in?”
“He’s in court this afternoon.” Glancing at her watch, she added, “I’m afraid he may be a while yet. Would you like to make an appointment?”
She diplomatically didn’t add, thought Kincaid, that any self-respecting idiot would have made one in the first place. The nameplate on her desk read ‘Carol White’, a good, solid English name. It suited her. Middle-aged and well-built, with an open, friendly face and a glorious head of wavy, shoulder-length chestnut hair—in a few years she would begin the slide toward matronly, but she was still very attractive indeed.
“Would that be young Mr. Rawlinson?”
She stared at him, perplexed, but still polite. “Old Mr. Rawlinson passed away ten years ago. You’re not from around here, then?”
“London, actually.” Kincaid again fished his warrant card from his pocket, and extended it to her.
“Oh.” Her eyes widened and she glanced up at his face, then back at the folder. “Fancy that. What would Scotland Yard want with us?”
Kincaid heard the sharp, little intake of breath—the ordinary citizen’s response to the copper’s unexpected appearance—and he hastened to reassure her. “Just some very dusty information. Is there any chance Mr. Rawlinson might remember a girl who worked here almost thirty years ago? Her name was Jasmine Dent.”
Carol White stared at him, then said slowly, “No. Mr. Rawlinson would have still been away at school. But I do. I remember Jasmine.”
Unasked, Kincaid picked up a visitor’s chair and swung it around next to the desk, never taking his eyes from Carol White’s face. “You do?”
Still hesitant, she continued. “I know it’s a bit silly of me, but I hate to admit I’ve been here as long as I have. I came here straight from leaving school, same as Jasmine, but she was a couple of years older.”
“Mr. Rawlinson needed two secretaries?”
“You could say that.” She smiled, showing even, white teeth. “Mr. Rawlinson liked pretty young girls, and we were both that, if I do say it myself.” Holding up a hand to forestall Kincaid interrupting, she added, “Oh, I don’t mean he was a real dirty old man—never tried anything on, as far as I know—he just fancied himself a bit of a rogue. And since he paid us the bare minimum in those days, I guess he could afford us.”
Having moved around to the side of Carol’s desk, Kincaid discovered that what he had thought to be a dress was actually a thigh-length tunic, beneath which she wore skin-tight, black, stretch trousers and high-heeled sandals. Following his appr
eciative gaze, she laughed. “Dressed courtesy of my teenage daughter, who can’t stand for her old mum to go out looking like a frump.” Then sobering, she said, “Truthfully, I think Mr. Rawlinson intended from the beginning to groom me as Jasmine’s successor. She must have made it as clear to him as she did everyone else that she didn’t intend to stay in this poky town any longer than she had to. Jasmine was ferociously ambitious, Mr. Kincaid. What became of her? Is she a great success? I could never see her as housewife and kids material.”
“No, she never married. And she did quite well for herself. She was supervisor in a borough planning office.”
“Was?” Carol White asked quietly. “Then she’s—”
“She had cancer.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head. “God, how silly of me. It’s not even as though we were great friends, haven’t thought of her in years—it’s just that whenever I hear of someone I knew growing up dying, it gets me right here.” She thumped her chest with a fist, then reached in her desk drawer for a box of tissues and blew her nose. “A reminder of my own mortality, I guess. If it can happen to them, it can happen to you.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Kincaid said, thinking of his own reaction, not only to the deaths of those he knew, but to the deaths of strangers—that aching sense of loss he never quite managed to control.
“But I don’t understand.” Giving her eyes one last wipe, Carol threw the tissues in the wastebin beneath her desk and collected herself. “Why are you asking about Jasmine?”
Kincaid gave her an answer even more brief than the one he’d given Alice Finney, but she nodded, apparently satisfied. Years of working in a solicitor’s office would have taught her to be discreet.
“You said you weren’t particularly close friends?”
“Oh, we talked, the way girls will in an office, about what was going on, and who’s bum Mr. Rawlinson had patted most often that week. Just chatter, really. But if you ventured into anything too personal she’d snap shut like a clam.” Carol paused, screwing up her face in earnest concentration. “Sometimes … sometimes I had the feeling Jasmine had never had a friend, didn’t know what to do with one.”
“Then what gave you the impression she was so ambitious?”
“London. That’s all she talked about. And she pinched every penny, brought her dinner from home every day, even did child-minding in the evenings to make a bit extra. I remember that she didn’t get on well with her old-maid aunt.”
Kincaid smiled. “I think that’s a safe assumption,” he said, then returned to her earlier point. “Did Jasmine not go out, then, if she was so careful with her money? A pretty girl that age, you’d think there’d be plenty to do in a town this size.”
Carol shook her head. “I even tried to fix her up a few times with a double-date, but she wasn’t having any.”
“Did she talk about men? I don’t mean to sound like a chauvinist, but it does seem the natural thing.”
“I’m sure that’s all I talked about, night and day,” Carol said, laughter in her voice. “Must have been bloody boring, now that I think about it. But Jasmine … no, not that I remember.” She stared into space for a moment, eyes unfocused, and Kincaid waited. “There was something, though. Those last couple of months before she left, she seemed different—had that ‘cat-that-ate-the-canary’ look about her. Sometimes I almost expected her to wash her whiskers.”
“But she never confided in you?”
This time the shake of her head was wistful. “No. Sorry.”
“What about when she left? Did she tell you anything beforehand?”
“I was just as shocked as anyone. She just came in that day, gave her notice, cleaned out her drawer and left. Mr. Rawlinson was dead chuffed, I can tell you.”
“Did you hear from her after that?”
“Not a word. But she did take me aside and tell me goodbye that day. She wished me luck.”
This time it was Kincaid who sat silently, thinking that this office had probably not changed much … imagining Jasmine sitting where Carol sat … Jasmine bent over the typewriter … Jasmine’s dark head silhouetted against the faded cream wallpaper. What had made her take flight, abandoning her carefully made plans, and her brother?
“Did you ever meet her brother, Theo?” he asked, following his thought.
“Not until the old aunt died, and we handled her affairs.” She shrugged, the movement flexing the fabric across her full breasts. “He wasn’t up to much, was he? ‘Course, he was just a kid, not more than seventeen or eighteen at the time. That probably explains it.”
“Explains what?”
Carol White looked down at her intertwined fingers, the pink-varnished nails paired like lovers. “Oh, I’ve probably said more than I ought. It’s been such a long time, and I’m not sure what I really remember. I think Mr. Rawlinson had to handle everything, the funeral arrangements, the sale of the cottage … Theo was so shattered. Almost hysterical. Only natural, I suppose, but at the time I thought his behavior rather odd—most young men who come into enough money to make them independent have to work at appearing grief-stricken.”
“I didn’t realize that May Dent had provided so well for Theo.”
“Well enough, but I believe Jasmine held the money in trust until he came of age.” She straightened and took a breath, the sudden sharpness of her movements signalling to Kincaid the end of the interview. “Mr. Rawlinson should be back soon. Do you want to wait?”
“No. I think you’ve been more help than he possibly could.” Kincaid stood and replaced his chair, lining the legs up precisely with the worn spots in the aging carpet. When he held out his hand, Carol White took it and said, “I’m sorry about Jasmine. Really.”
“Thank you,” he said gravely, and she smiled, some of the discomfort leaving her face.
“Mr. Kincaid,” she called as he reached the door, and he turned back. “It’s not true, what I said about not thinking of Jasmine all these years. I’ve envied her, thought about how glamorous her life must have been, while I stayed here and did all the expected things. I always felt a bit of a coward.” Her shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly. “Maybe it wasn’t such a bad choice, after all.”
CHAPTER
13
Gemma left the car garaged at the Yard and took the tube to Tottenham Court Road. Driving in London was difficult enough, driving such a short distance in the rain was foolhardy.
The address Felicity Howarth had given for her employer was a street level door tucked between an Indian take-away and a dry cleaners. Gemma wrinkled her nose against the pungent smells coming from the take-away—her stomach already felt empty and it would be at least an hour before she could even consider it lunchtime. Turning her raincoat collar up against the drizzle, she squinted at the names next to the bell-pushes. A tattered business card taped next to the 2B buzzer read ‘Home-Care, Inc.’
Having tried the front door and finding it unlocked, Gemma pushed it open and climbed the concrete stairs without pushing the buzzer. She knocked at 2B, and after a moment the door swung open.
“I told you I didn’t—” Her mouth open, the woman stared at Gemma in surprise. Recovering enough to smile apologetically, she added, “Sorry. Thought you were my boyfriend come to finish a row. Can I help you?”
Through the open front door Gemma could see directly into the sitting room of the flat. One side of the room contained ordinary furnishings—sofa, chair, television—the other held a desk, filing cabinets and a computer terminal. “This is Home-Care?” What began as a statement ended as a tentative question.
“Oh.” The woman sounded taken aback. “Yes, it is, but most of our business is done by phone, so I wasn’t expecting … as you can see.” She gestured at herself—jeans, faded pink T-shirt with the tail out, bare feet sporting scarlet toenail polish. Gemma judged her to be in her forties, a sturdy woman with a pleasant face and a shock of thick brown hair liberally sprinkled with gray.
<
br /> “My name’s Gemma James.” Gemma took her warrant card from her bag and held it up for inspection. “We’re making routine inquiries into the death of one of your patients. A Miss Jasmine Dent.”
Color drained from the woman’s face, and her fingers tightened where she held the edge of the door. “Oh, Christ.” She looked behind her, as if for support, then turned back to Gemma. “Felicity told me about the p.m. I suppose you’d better come in.” She closed the door and waved Gemma toward the sofa, then added, “My name’s Martha Trevellyan, by the way.” While Gemma sat down on the sofa and pulled her notebook from her bag, Martha Trevellyan fished a packet of Player’s from under the papers on her desk. She lit one, then said through the smoke as she shook out the match, “I know what you’re thinking. Health-care professionals shouldn’t smoke. Sets a bad example, right? Well, by my last count I’ve quit fifteen times, but it never seems to stick.”
“Is Home-Care your business, Miss Trevellyan?”
“Yes.” Martha Trevellyan sat down on the edge of the chair opposite Gemma. “Two years ago I decided to get out of nursing, try something that might not kill me before I reached fifty.” She smiled a little ruefully at Gemma and tapped her cigarette on the coffee table ashtray. “Look, Sergeant—it is Sergeant, isn’t it?” Gemma nodded. “What’s this all about? I’m still operating on a shoestring, here. Any allegations of negligence could ruin me.”
“Perhaps you could start by explaining how you operate.” Gemma waved a finger toward the room’s work area.
“Most of our business comes through referrals, even from the beginning. I’d done critical nursing and the doctors I’d worked with recommended me to their patients who needed in-home care.” She settled back in her chair, looking more comfortable as she began to talk about a familiar subject. “I keep a list of nurses who can work for me full or part time. When we acquire a new patient, I match them with an available nurse, keep things coordinated as necessary. I bill the patients, then pay my nursing staff. Simple enough?”
All Shall Be Well Page 14