A Share In Death

by Deborah Crombie

  But those were the little things. Penny didn’t like to think about the day she went down to the shops in the village, did her errands, and found she couldn’t remember how to get home. Instead of the memory of the well-worn path through Dedham village and up the hill to Ivy Cottage, there was only an emptiness in her mind.

  She stumbled, terrified, into the familiar warmth of her friend Mary’s tea shop. She sat there perspiring, chatting and drinking hot, sweet tea, trying to pretend a gaping hole hadn’t opened in her universe, until she saw a neighbor pass. She caught up to him, and asked breathlessly. “Are you going home? I’ll walk with you, shall I, George?” As she walked, familiarity with her surroundings returned, filling the vacant space, but the fear settled itself comfortably inside her. She told no one, most particularly not Emma.

  Perhaps a holiday was all she needed, a fortnight with no responsibilities. It had taken her long enough to convince Emma that they deserved something after their years with Father. After all, they had his money now and could do what they pleased. She’d seen the timeshare brochure herself, at the travel agent’s in the village. And Followdale was lovely, every bit as lovely as she’d imagined.

  “Daydreaming as usual, Pen?” Her sister’s voice startled her. “Stir yourself, then. We’d best be getting to the shops if we’re to return in time to dress for the party.” Emma pulled her waterproof jacket out of the wardrobe and began buckling herself into it with her usual no-nonsense briskness.

  “Yes, Emma, coming,” Penny answered. There was no need to make Emma cross, or even worse, to try her until she spoke with that unaccustomed air of gentle patience. Penny rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, as if the physical smoothing of lines would return the accustomed veneer of placid cheerfulness to her face, and smiled brightly when Emma turned to her.

  Twenty-eight… twenty-nine… thirty… Hannah Alcock sat in front of the mirror and counted the smooth, circular motions of the hairbrush. Odd, she thought, how childhood habits stayed with you. She knew of no logical reason why hair should be brushed a hundred strokes a day, but if she closed her eyes for a moment she could see herself sitting at her old dresser in her nightgown, watching the arc of the brush descend through her long, brown hair, and hearing her mother’s voice from the hall, “Hannah, darling, remember to brush your hair.”

  All that was a long time ago-almost thirty years, in fact, since the night she had taken the scissors to her waist-length hair. It had lain like a pall across her back, a rich, shining chestnut brown with glints of auburn, her mother’s pride, and she had brutally hacked it off just at the nape of her neck.

  Although she’d kept her hair cut short in the years since, she had continued the nightly brushing. A silly ritual, one that should have been discarded with that remote adolescence, but when she was nervous, as she was tonight, she found it oddly comforting. Her stomach muscles relaxed as she breathed with the rhythm of the strokes, and by the time she laid the silver-backed brush neatly beside its matching mirror, she felt a little more capable of getting through the evening.

  The cocktail party had already been in progress for a quarter of an hour. If she didn’t hurry she would be more than fashionably late. Still, she continued to examine herself in the glass. A good face, she had come to think, once she had outgrown a girl’s desire for conventional prettiness. Those round, blond fluffy girls she had so envied were faded now, their skin puffy, hair streaked and tipped to cover the encroaching gray. Her own hair, now carefully and expensively cut, held only a few silvery threads at the temples, and the strong, underlying bone structure she had despised now gave her face an arresting individuality.

  It had been years since she had worried about others’ opinions. Successful, confident, serene-she thought nothing could disturb her carefully built balance. Nothing, that is, until the strange, slow stirrings of the last year had grown within her, warping the shape of her life, leading her finally to take action that might prove irrevocable folly.

  She had planned this face-to-face meeting with all the attention she would have given the most demanding experiment, hiring a private detective to ferret out the details of his life, buying into the timeshare for the exact same week-yet here she was, dithering at the last minute, suffering from stage-fright like the gawky schoolgirl she had once been.

  What had she to lose, after all? They might spend a week passing in the halls, a greeting, a casual physical contact, and then he would leave without remembering her name or face. Surely, there could be no harm in that?

  Or they might become friends. She wouldn’t think beyond that-what she might say to him, how he would react. Tonight, with an easy introduction and polite exchange of trifles sure to follow, was beginning enough.

  She rose, picked up her bag from the sitting room, and shut the front door firmly behind her.

  * * *

  Duncan Kincaid leaned on his balcony rail, reluctant to move, reluctant to knot a tie around his throat, to go through the civilized motions required if he were to meet his social obligations. His earlier burst of energy had given way to a creeping lethargy.

  It would be easy enough to fix himself some supper, then stretch out on the sofa with the battered paperback copy of Jane Eyre he’d found in the drawer of the bedside table. The eggs, bacon, and loaf of fresh-baked whole-meal bread he’d bought at the village shop would be sufficient provision for a quiet evening.

  He had been browsing in the shop’s biscuit aisle when a girlish voice behind him chirped, “You must be the new guest. We’ve been so eager to meet you.” He turned, and found himself facing a slight woman wrapped in a voluminous, tartan cape. She was, he judged, sixtyish, with a fluffy bird’s nest of gray hair surrounding a thin face and a pair of extraordinarily blue eyes. Peeping from the folds of the cape’s bottom were a pair of old-fashioned, lace-up ladies’ boots.

  “Cassie told us your name was Kincaid and we were so thrilled-a Scot, like us, you see-we’re MacKenzies. Our granddad had quite a place in Perthshire in his day.” The sentences tumbled from her mouth in a breathless flood. “It must have seemed just like this in the old days, I mean how it is at Followdale. I can just imagine-”

  Kincaid, amused, interrupted. “You don’t live in Scotland now?”

  “Oh no. Our father… well, you see, there were so many sons that he was forced to find an occupation. He took a position in Essex when he was quite a young man. He was Rector, in Dedham, for forty years before he retired. But all that seems a long time ago, now.” She smiled up at him, a little wistfully. “We live there still, Emma and I, though of course somebody else has the old rectory now. We raise goats. Wonderful animals, don’t you think? So sanitary, and there’s quite a good market for goat’s milk and cheese these days. Although Father could never really bring himself to approve. And what about you, Mr. Kincaid? Where did your family come from?”

  “I’m a second generation immigrant, like yourself. My father moved from Edinburgh to Cheshire before I was born, and he married an English girl, so I guess my ancestral stock is pretty diluted. And call-”

  “I’m Emma MacKenzie,” broke in the woman Kincaid had noticed paying at the counter. “My sister Penelope.” She took his hand in a firm, dry clasp. “How do you do?”

  With her straight, gray, pudding-bowl hair, her mannish, waterproof jacket and her uncompromising expression, she reminded Kincaid of his sixth-form master. Her only ornament was the pair of binoculars slung from her heavy neck. The sisters Prim and Grim, he dubbed them, then felt rather shamefaced.

  “I’m sure Mr. Kincaid doesn’t want to hear all our family history, Penny. And we must go if we’re to change for the party.” Emma nodded at him and herded her sister away with all the delicacy of a school chaperon.

  “Miss MacKenzie,” he called out, as they were almost through the door, “it was nice to meet you. Perhaps I’ll see you at the party.” He was rewarded by a radiant smile.

  A loud knocking on the sitting-room door roused Kincaid and he realized that
the air on the balcony had grown chilly. He slipped inside and opened the front door to find Sebastian Wade raising his fist to knock again.

  “Sorry,” Wade said, “sometimes my enthusiasm gets the better of me. I came to offer myself as escort to the little get-together, and to show you around the house, if Cassie hasn’t already done the honors.”

  “She did promise me a tour, but it never materialized. I’d like to see the house.”

  “Ah, what a treat you have in store. Manufactured gentility, with all the mod cons. Are you going as is, the weekend gentleman’s casual look?” He eyed Kincaid’s open-necked shirt and cords.

  “No, let me get my jacket,” Kincaid answered, and he saw that for all his deliberation his decision had been made for him. He was carried along as easily as a shell in a wave.

  “Your suite,” said Sebastian in his most facetious tour guide manner, “is called the Sutton Suite, because you have a view of Sutton Bank from your balcony. Clever, yes? They all have the most wonderfully inventive names. So much more personal, the homey touch, like naming one’s suburban semi-detached ‘Wayside Cottage.’ Directly below you is the Thirsk Suite, currently possessed by our rising young M.P., Patrick Rennie, and his wife, Marta, of the perpetual ponytail and black velvet bow. Very county. They own several weeks, spaced out over the year.”

  Kincaid finished tying his tie in the sitting-room mirror, slipped into his jacket and patted his pockets for wallet and keys.

  “Now,” continued Sebastian, as they closed the front door and descended the three steps to the main hall, “the suite next to yours on this floor, the Richmond, was taken this morning by Hannah Alcock, a scientist of some sort who looks very professional and efficient. Attractive, too, in a sleek, bony way, if one cares for women who look intelligent.” He darted a bright, malicious glance toward Kincaid.

  “And you don’t?”

  “Oh yes, I find a lot of women aesthetically pleasing,” answered Sebastian, with the sly ambiguity Kincaid was coming to expect. “Now, the door on your immediate right leads to the pool balcony.” He opened it, gesturing Kincaid through first.

  Moisture and the odor of chlorine assaulted Kincaid’s senses, and his first impression of the small balcony was that he had fallen into a budget Mediterranean fantasy. The floor was covered with glazed red brick, green plants filled every available space, and a black wrought-iron railing overlooked the water below.

  “Most ingenious, don’t you think? A vantage point from which we can view our guests cavorting merrily in the pool, that most upmarket of all our assets. Works well in the sales tours, I can tell you. Unless, of course, the guest weighs two hundred pounds and is wearing a string bikini.”

  Kincaid laughed. “You seem not to consider me a very viable prospect.”

  Sebastian considered him, his voice for once without its biting edge. “No. I’d say you’re not easily seduced by respectability. You have other weaknesses, perhaps? But you wouldn’t choose this, would you, if the holiday weren’t given to you as a gift?”

  Kincaid thought about it. “No, you’re right, as pleasant as it is, I probably wouldn’t. Too structured. Too cozy. I feel a bit like a child sent to day camp.”

  “Pudding after supper if you’re a good boy. Come on, then. You’d better make the most of the experience if you’re not likely to repeat it.” Sebastian returned to his professional patter. “There are stairs at the back of this first-floor hall,” he noted, gesturing to the side opposite Kincaid’s, “that lead down to the rear pool entrance. There is also a spa section of the pool, just beneath us. It’s kept heated and you can turn on the jets when you want to use it. I do like it myself; one of the perks of the job.”

  Kincaid imagined that Sebastian Wade, engaged in a continuous game of one-up-manship with the management, took advantage of any and every perk the job offered as a matter of principle.

  They moved across the balcony and through the door into the cooler air of the opposite hall. “The layout’s not symmetrical.” Sebastian pointed toward the back of the house. “That suite is occupied by the Lyles, from Hertfordshire or somewhere equally dreary. Fussy little man, ex-army, though you wouldn’t think it-he looks a perfect twit. He bent my ear this afternoon for what seemed like hours, all about his experiences in Ireland. You’d think he conquered the IRA singlehandedly. For my part, I doubt he tackled anything more dangerous than the Corps of Engineers.”

  Kincaid grinned at the idea of Sebastian, with his minute and indiscreet attention to detail, describing someone else as fussy.

  “This one in the middle is an up-and-down studio affair. That’s the Hunsingers, Maureen and John. Retrograde hippies who own a natural foods store in Manchester, arrived last week with their eminently healthy kids.” Sebastian looked inquiringly at Kincaid. “You understand that not all the guests arrive and leave at the same time?”

  They moved down the hall toward the front landing. “The Frazers, for instance, in the front suite, have been here a week as well. Father and daughter.” Kincaid waited for the quip, but none came. Sebastian pushed open the door to the front landing, his face averted.

  “What are they like?” asked Kincaid, his curiosity aroused.

  “I’ll let you form your own opinion,” said Sebastian a little shortly. After a moment’s awkward silence, he relented. “Nasty divorce. Angela’s just fifteen and she’s the prize of war. Neither of them really want her and she knows it.” The camouflage manner had dropped away, and the light voice was bitter.

  Kincaid had the feeling that for the second time that evening he had glimpsed beneath the brittle shell. A glimpse, however, seemed to be all he was going to get, for Sebastian started down the wide stairs to the entry hall and continued his monologue over his shoulder.

  “That leaves the ground floor. The front suite is empty this week. It’s called the Herriot, by the way. Just luck we didn’t get the Siegfried and Tristan as well. We do like to capitalize on our local celebrities whenever we can. The Rennies we mentioned, and the rear suite on the other side holds the week’s treasures, the MacKenzie sisters from Dedham Vale. The dear ladies have enjoyed the first week of their visit immensely-it warms my heart.” Seeing Kincaid’s smile of recognition, he continued, “I see you’ve encountered them. But don’t let appearances fool you. Emma might be more likely to have been painted by Munnings than Constable, but I don’t believe she’s quite the battle-ax she’d like you to think, nor the fair Penny quite so dim.”

  They had reached the entry, and paused. “And the cottages?” asked Kincaid.

  “Empty. Except Cassie’s.” Another closed subject, Kincaid presumed from the abruptness of Sebastian’s answer. “The reception room you’ve seen. Beyond that is the sitting room, which leads into the White Rose Bar. Encourages convivial meetings among the owners. It’s supposed to work on an honor system, but you can always tell the ones who don’t pay. It’s that furtive survey of the room after they’ve poured a drink, to see if anyone will notice whether they’ve put money in the bowl.”

  Sebastian studied himself in the hall mirror, flicked a pale strand of hair into place with his fingertips, then adjusted the fit of his pleated, linen trousers around his narrow waist. “Well, fun and games time. Shall I lead you to the slaughter?” His glance, as conspiratorial as a wink, left Kincaid the uncomfortable impression that he was as transparent to Sebastian Wade as the rest of the world’s poor mugs.

  The air of the sitting room was pungent with smoke, the throat-catching stuffiness exacerbated by the electric bars glowing red in the fireplace. The guests stood huddled in self-protective groups on the red-and-green patterned carpet, their voices rising in an indistinguishable chorus.

  Sebastian led him to the bar and poured him a lager. While he waited, Kincaid noticed a room behind the bar that Sebastian hadn’t mentioned. Unlike the polished and uncluttered reception room where Cassie had received him, this was a working office. A gray metal desk and filing cabinet, a sturdy secretarial chair, and a scarre
d wooden coatrack replaced Queen Anne elegance. Papers partially covered the adding machine and spilled from the desk on to the typewriter. This must be Cassie’s domain, the nerve center of the house. No wonder Sebastian had seen fit to ignore it.

  Carrying their drinks, they threaded their way back across the sitting room to a vantage point near the door. Sebastian leaned back against the wall with one foot propped behind him and surveyed the room with lively interest. “Now,” he said, “Guessing game time. Let’s see if you can place the rest of the group.” Four people stood bunched in front of the mantel, drinks in hand, attention half on the conversation and half on the room, in the manner of those accustomed to cocktail gatherings. “Scoping things out, aren’t they? Making sure they’re not missing something more interesting.” Sebastian took a sip of his drink, and waited for Kincaid to pin the face to the description.

  “Um,” said Kincaid, rising to the challenge, “the tall, fair man with the Savile Row tailoring. The M.P.?” Slender, with sleek hair cut to perfection, he had prominent cheekbones that lent distinction to the planes of his face. Even the nails on the hand holding the glass gleamed with careful buffing. When Sebastian nodded, Kincaid continued. “It’s not just the looks. He has that air of being on public display, of expecting to be watched. Now, the woman with the frizzy hair and the drooping denim dress. Not his wife, surely? The health store owner. Maureen, wasn’t it.” Sebastian grinned in approval.

  A weedy-looking middle-aged man with thinning hair and spectacles seemed to be monopolizing the conversation. The others’ faces expressed varying degrees of disinterest and outright boredom. “Mr. Lyle, from Hertfordshire. Right? And the dark-haired woman with the long-suffering expression must be his wife.”

  “Bravo. Right so far. Can you polish them off?”

  “You make them sound like hors d’oeuvres.” Kincaid scanned the room obediently, enjoying the test of his memory for names and descriptions.