All Shall Be Well

by Deborah Crombie

  Theo nodded, still watching Kincaid. “That’s right. Across from the clock and the bell ringer.”

  “Must be lovely,” Meg said rather wistfully, “all on your own like that.”

  Kincaid carried his cup to the table and sat down, then unbuttoned his collar and loosened the knot in his tie. “Which one of you,” he said, smiling at them companionably, “has the key to this flat?”

  Meg looked down at the table, twisting her cup in her hands. “I do. Jasmine had me make a copy, in case she couldn’t get to the door when I came round.”

  “Why didn’t you mention it before?”

  “I didn’t think of it.” Meg met his eyes, her brow furrowed in entreaty. “Honestly. I was so upset it just never crossed my mind. Does it matter?”

  “Tell me again what happened after you left Jasmine last Thursday afternoon.”

  She thought for a moment, her face relaxing as she remembered. “I walked home. I couldn’t stand still, hadn’t the patience to wait for the bus. I felt I might burst with the relief of not having to help Jasmine die. It was such a lovely day, do you remember?”

  Kincaid nodded but didn’t speak, not wanting to risk halting the flow of words.

  “Everything seemed so clear and sharp; the lights coming on in the dusk, the crowds hurrying home from work. I felt a part of it all but lifted above it at the same time. I felt I could cope with anything.” She looked from Kincaid to Theo, twin spots of color staining her cheeks. “It sounds absurd, doesn’t it?”

  “Not at all,” said Theo quickly. “I know exactly—”

  Kincaid interrupted him. “Then what happened, Meg?”

  She shoved her hair behind her ear and looked down at her hands. “He was there, at the bedsit, waiting for me.”

  “Roger?” asked Kincaid. Meg nodded but didn’t speak, and after a moment Kincaid prompted her. “And you told him what had happened, didn’t you?”

  She nodded again, her hair falling across her face, and this time she didn’t push it back.

  “What did Roger do?” The silence stretched. Theo opened his mouth to speak and Kincaid gave him a quick warning head-shake.

  “I thought he’d shout. That’s what he does, usually.” She rubbed the ball of one thumb against the nail of the other with great concentration.

  Kincaid realized the daylight was fading, cut off by the buildings to the west, and the three of them sat illuminated in the pool of light cast by the single lamp.

  Meg took a breath and laced her fingers together, as if to stop the compulsive rubbing. She glanced at Theo, then looked at Kincaid as she spoke. “He went silent. I’ve seen him that way once or twice before, when he was really angry. It doesn’t sound much, but it’s worse than words. It’s almost like—” she frowned as she searched for the right description, “a physical force. A blow.”

  “He didn’t say anything?” Kincaid asked, letting a hint of disbelief creep into his voice.

  “Oh, he called me things at first,” the corners of her mouth turned down in a grimace, “but it was like his mind wasn’t really on it, if you know what I mean.”

  “Did he leave straight away?”

  Meg shook her head. “No. I wanted him to go. All that elation I’d felt on the way home just vanished—like I’d been pricked with a pin. But I knew it was no use asking. It would just make him that much more difficult.”

  Kincaid remembered the emphatic quality of his wife’s silences, and the discomfort of being confined in a small space with someone who used non-communication as a weapon. “You tried to talk to him, didn’t you?” he said, pity making him more gentle than he intended. “To please him, to get some response?” She didn’t answer, the shamed expression on her face more eloquent than words. After a moment she said, “I just curled up on the bed, finally, closed my eyes and pretended he wasn’t there until he went away.”

  “Where were your keys, Meg?”

  Her startled eyes met his. She reached for her handbag and patted it. “Here. Where they always are.”

  “Did you leave the room any time while Roger was there?”

  “No, of course I—” she stopped, frowning. “Well, I did go to the loo.”

  “Did you go out again that night, or use your keys for any reason?”

  “No.” The word was a whisper.

  “And when did he—”

  “Look, Mr. Kincaid,” Theo interrupted, “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I think you’re bullying Miss Bellamy unnecessarily. Don’t you think—”

  Kincaid held up a hand. “One more question, Theo, that’s all.” He found himself tempted to treat her as Roger did and take advantage of her conditioned response, but he also knew that crossing that line would damage his own integrity beyond repair. “Meg, when did Roger come back?”

  “Late. After midnight. He made a copy of the front door key, even though I told him that Mrs. Wilson would throw me out if she caught him sneaking in late at night that way.”

  “Were you asleep?”

  She nodded. “It was only when he got in bed that I—” She glanced at Theo and stopped, her quick color rising. “I mean …”

  Kincaid thought it was time he let her off the hook. “Theo,” he said conversationally, “are you sure you had no idea how Jasmine intended to leave her money? You could use it, couldn’t you? Something gives me the impression that the antique business isn’t going all that well.” A look passed between Theo and Meg that Kincaid could have sworn was conspiratorial. If so, they’d made a quick alliance.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Kincaid.” Theo leaned forward, forearms on the table. “I’ve told Margaret that things were pretty desperate. I needed the money, all right. But I didn’t intend to tell Jasmine, even after she called last Thursday and said she wanted to see me.”

  “Very noble of you, I’m sure,” Kincaid said, and Theo pressed his lips together at the sarcasm.

  “You can believe what you like, Mr. Kincaid. I’ve no proof of anything. But I loved my sister and I thought she’d suffered over me enough.” He looked at his watch, then stood and carried his cup to the sink. “And if I don’t go I’ll miss my train. You know where to reach me if you want anything further from me, although I can’t imagine how I could help you.” Leaning across the table, Theo held out a hand to Meg. “Margaret. Thanks.”

  The smile stayed on Meg’s face until the door closed behind him.

  “The party’s over, I guess, Meg.” Kincaid rose and took her cup and his own to the sink. She stayed at the table, hands locked tightly in her lap, while he did the washing up and spooned tinned food into Sid’s bowl.

  He finished his chores and stood studying her downcast face, sensing her reluctance. ‘You know, I don’t see any reason you shouldn’t stay here for a bit if you want.”

  She looked up at him, her expression more tentative than hopeful, as if letting herself want something too badly automatically meant it would be snatched away. “Honestly? Do you think it would be all right? I could look after things—” Her smile vanished as quickly as it had come. “No. He’d find me, and I don’t want him here again, in these rooms.”

  “You wouldn’t have to let him in, or let him stay.”

  She was already shaking her head before he’d finished the sentence. “You don’t understand. Until today I’d managed to keep him away from here. Nothing would have been the same.” She gestured around the room and Kincaid saw it through her eyes, familiar and secure in the lamplight. “You don’t know Roger. He spoils everything he touches.”

  Having insisted on walking Meg to her bus, Kincaid stood, hands in pockets against the chill, at the top of Hampstead High Street. This growing sense of responsibility toward Margaret Bellamy might be disastrous if she proved to have been involved in Jasmine’s death, yet every time he encountered her, the temptation to act in loco parentis became stronger. He thought suddenly of Gemma and smiled. Although the two women must be near the same age, Gemma never inspired the least bit of parenta
l feeling.

  A sliver of moon hung above the fading pink in the western sky. People pushed past, hurrying home to their suppers in the gathering dusk. Kincaid looked east and west along Heath Street at the array of restaurants—Italian, Mexican, Indian, Greek, Thai, Japanese, even Cajun. If one wanted traditional British fare, Hampstead was not the place to be.

  Although hungry, he felt too restless to settle down to a restaurant dinner, whatever its persuasion, on his own. He walked the short half-block west on Heath Street to the top of Fitzjohn Avenue and pushed open the door of the Italian deli. The smells of garlic and olive oil poured out into the street, tempting other passers-by. Inside, the counter beneath the window held pottery bowls filled with dark purple olives and multi-colored pastas, seafood marinating in olive oil, peppers and aubergine mixed with sliced garlic. Overwhelmed by the profusion, Kincaid bought his usual, a ready-to-cook pizza made with roasted sweet peppers and fresh mozzarella.

  He stopped in the off-license across the street for a bottle of red wine, then started down the hill toward home, thinking that he might almost be going to some long-awaited assignation.

  In a sense, he supposed he was, although the faded blue copy-books kept no account of time.

  The wind scoured the streets today, shredding scraps of paper and hurling grit into the air, stinging skin and eyes like nettles. Punishment.

  Waiting in the bus queue, huddled behind the Plexiglas partition, suddenly I thought of long-ago evenings spent sitting on the veranda in Mohur Street. There was a stillness to things then, an almost melancholy anticipation. Something exciting seemed always waiting just round the corner, if I could only see it.

  Did I ever imagine that days could be lived with such numbing repetition?

  Seems odd leaving Bayswater after so many years. At least I knew the shopkeepers, even the neighbors’ cats. Carlingford Road radiates quiet and respectability in comparison, all the things I used to find least appealing. Have I grown old without noticing?

  I feel more at home in this flat than anywhere I’ve lived since childhood. I don’t know why. It fits me somehow, or I fit it. The furniture looks as though it’s been here for years; my things seemed naturally to find their appointed spots. When I wake at night I know exactly where I am and I can find my way around the flat in the dark.

  Met my downstairs neighbor, Major Keith. What a funny old bird, so formal and polite, yet something about him seems familiar. He lifts his cap to me, calls me Miss Dent. It’s the Major who keeps the garden looking so lovely. Now that the air’s warming a bit he’s out every day, tidying this and that, but really I think he’s watching for the first buds, the first green shoots to push through the earth. Even though he doesn’t speak to me much, I don’t think he minds my sitting on my steps while he works.

  This cough is worrying me. I thought it was a spring cold, but it’s lingered now for months. Suppose I’ll have to see someone about it if it doesn’t clear up soon.

  My poor Theo. What am I to do if this doesn’t work out? Surely he can manage this little shop with some semblance of competence? But then he’s never done so—why should things suddenly change? Wishful thinking on my part, I’m afraid.

  It’s funny how much we depend on our bodies without ever really thinking about it. Cells and organs chug away, blood runs, heart pumps. We worry endlessly about accidents and falls and catching things. Betrayal from within is the last thing we expect.

  And cancer is the most insidious enemy, the body turning on itself like some secret cannibal. How could this happen and I not know it? Not feel it? Not sense a spot of decay stretching fingers outward?

  Radiation and chemotherapy, the consultant says. Will I poison my body’s hideous child?

  Dear god, I feel so bloody helpless.

  Sometimes I go hours without thinking of it. I manage to pretend I’m like the others, whole and healthy, manage to pretend that the decision to grant planning permission on some project is of earth-shaking importance, pretend I care whether the new cafe has better chips than the old, pretend anything other than my own body matters.

  It comes out in tufts, in handfuls, like plucking a bird. Decorates the bottom of the tub with long, dark swirls, fills combs and brushes with thick mats. I’ve thought of putting it out in the garden for the birds to use in their nests. How absurd.

  May would laugh, tell me Yd got my comeuppance. She berated me often enough for my vanity. I’ve taken to wearing caps, a beret mostly, like a travesty of a French peasant. Can’t bear to see Theo.

  New clerk at the office while I was away for the last course of treatment. Such a lame duck, with her missing buttons and terribly fair skin that flushes whenever anyone speaks to her. She watches me when she thinks I’m not looking, her expression one of … what? Not pity, I’ve seen that often enough. Concern? It’s very odd.

  They’ve washed their hands of me, abandoned me to Morpheus. So sorry, can’t do any more for you, let us get on to someone who will feel properly grateful.

  Too weak now to work, left without much fanfare. What did I expect?

  Meg Bellamy’s come, first bringing cards and flowers from the office, then on her own when the rest of staff’s communal guilt began to fade.

  Reading Eliot again. These long, golden autumn afternoons do seem to have an almost physical presence, an existence separate from my experience.

  I’ve been rereading all my favorites, folding the stories around me like the comfort of old friends.

  The Major and I have developed a routine. We don’t speak of it, of course, that would be somehow stepping beyond the bounds of propriety, but we observe it faithfully nonetheless. On fine afternoons I sit on the steps and watch him work in the garden, then when he begins to clean his tools I make tea. Sometimes we talk, sometimes not, comfortable either way. On one of his most loquacious days he volunteered a little history: he served in India, in Calcutta, during and after the war. Must have been the colonial manner that struck a chord when I first met him. He would have been a young officer when I was a child, might even have known my parents, considering the incestuous nature of the compound.

  Since they stopped the treatments my hair’s come in again, thick and short, like a child’s, and as I’ve lost weight my breasts have shrunk to almost nothing. I’ve become androgynous, a fragile shell of skin and muscle wrapped around memories.

  I shall need a nurse soon.

  CHAPTER

  16

  “You didn’t know he served in India?” Gemma swiveled in Kincaid’s chair, having usurped it when she arrived before him at the Yard.

  “Until Jasmine died I’d hardly passed the time of day with him,” Kincaid said rather defensively from the visitor’s chair on the other side of his desk. “Why would I have thought to ask him that? And if you’re going to take over my office,” he added, “make yourself useful and put out a request for his service records.”

  The phone rang as Gemma reached for it, the distinctive double-burr stilling her hand for a moment in mid-air. Lifting the receiver, she said, “Superintendent Kincaid’s office” in her most efficient manner, then pulling pad and pen toward her began to write. “I’ll pass it along. Ta.” She reread her scribbled notes, then looked at Kincaid. “A Mrs. Alice Finney left a message for you with the switchboard. Said there was no need for you to call her back, she just wanted to tell you she remembered his name. It was Timothy Franklin.”

  “That’s it?”

  Gemma raised an eyebrow. “What’s that all about?”

  “A boy that Jasmine seems to have been involved with just before she cleared out of Dorset like the hounds of hell were after her. Give Dorset Constabulary a ring and see if they can trace him. And while you’re at it,” he continued before she could protest, “get on to the Constable at Abinger Hammer. Theo Dent doesn’t have a driver’s license—I checked—but I’d like to know if he bought a ticket at the local station last Thursday night, or if he called a taxi, or if anyone else might have driven him to a di
fferent station or loaned him a car.” He stopped, waiting for Gemma’s pen to catch up. “And find out if he owns a bicycle.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I know you don’t, but I’d like to check it out anyway. Theo Dent may be as innocent as Mother Teresa, but Jasmine’s death bailed him out too bloody conveniently for my liking. Don’t worry,” he added with a grin, “we’ll get on to our Roger. This morning, in fact. We’ve an appointment with the head at his old school before lunch. It was the best I could do. No college or university, and he never seems to have held a steady job.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Gemma said acidly.

  “Did you drive this morning?”

  “No. You?”

  He shook his head. “We’ll sign a car out, the sooner the better. There’s one stop I’d like to make along the way.”

  Kincaid watched Gemma’s obvious enjoyment as she eased the Rover through traffic. “Makes a nice change, doesn’t it?”

  “A covered wagon would be an improvement over my Escort,” she said as she slipped into a parking space along Tottenham Court Road. “Not bad for a Thursday morning. I expected to have to queue for it. And thank heavens the rain’s stopped.” The thin haze covering the morning sun showed promise of burning off in the course of the day.

  Martha Trevellyan answered the door almost before the sound of the buzzer had died away, showing not the least surprise at finding coppers on her doorstep. Kincaid wondered if she’d seen them crossing the road from the flat’s front window.

  “Sergeant James.” She smiled at Gemma and motioned them in. “I hope I look a bit more business-like than the last time you dropped by,” she said, gesturing to her sweater and skirt. “I’ve even managed make-up. What can I do for you?”