A Share In Death

by Deborah Crombie

  “It’s my right. I’m in charge here. I’m responsible for every… all right.” Cassie subsided, as she looked at the half-circle of implacable faces. “I’ll wait with the others, but it had better not be too long. I’ve phone calls to make.” She was calmer now, and Kincaid thought he detected a certain calculation returning to her manner. Trumble, with frequent mumblings and glances over his shoulder, hustled her off, and Kincaid noticed that Cassie didn’t look at Sebastian again. Well, what had he expected? A grief-stricken farewell scene over Sebastian’s prostrate body? Not bloody likely. Not from Cassie, anyway. Any tears shed for Sebastian would have to come from another quarter.

  CHAPTER 5

  Peter Raskin drew Kincaid aside, keeping his chief in line of sight and lowering his voice so that it was audible only to Kincaid. “I’ll let you know the results of the p.m. And the lab reports, if you’re interested. To tell the truth,” he looked across the room at Nash, who was telling off one of the ambulance crew in vitriolic tones, “I’m not happy with this suicide business myself. It’s too pat. The neat ones usually leave a note, and choose something gradual, pills or injection. In my book, those who opt for the violent end take off, leaving everything in a muddle, and go out and have an accident cleaning the gun. The profile here just doesn’t seem to fit.”

  “Right.” It was a shame about Raskin. He had the makings of a good copper-unobtrusive, alert, intelligent, and not so stuck on his opinions that he couldn’t see past his own nose-and he had to be saddled with a bugger like Nash. Kincaid wondered what Raskin would make of this disagreement with his chief. If Nash turned out to be wrong, as Kincaid felt sure he would, he’d take it out of somebody’s hide, and Raskin would be wise to keep his thoughts to himself until afterwards.

  * * *

  Kincaid took himself off to Thirsk, ignoring the niggling refrain “with his tail between his legs” that kept creeping unbidden into his thoughts. He thought it best to avoid any more confrontation with Nash until he had more ammunition.

  A bench on the market square beckoned, along with a warm-from-the-oven pork pie, bought over the counter at a small bakery, some fresh Wensleydale cheese and a crunchy apple from a market stall. He disposed of his impromptu lunch and set off to explore.

  By half-past three Kincaid had exhausted the sightseeing possibilities in the little market town. The day turned out to be as glorious as he’d predicted, the autumn air as rich and bright as a plum ready to fall from the tree. He strolled the town, resolute in his determination to be an uncomplicated tourist, shoving away thoughts of the morning’s events whenever they threatened his equanimity.

  The lovely perpendicular church, with its eighty-foot-high battlemented tower, had been a sight worth seeing. The ground around it rose gently from east to west, while the church itself remained level. As a result, the whole tower end of the church seemed to be sinking gradually into the ground. It made him think of a huge battleship plowing into heavy seas and he felt momentarily unsteady on his feet.

  His last stop was the local book shop on the square. He emerged with a paperback copy of James Herriot’s Yorkshire tucked under his arm, assured by the proprietor that it made a wonderful tour guide to the area, much more entertaining than those dry tomes intended for the purpose. Recent years hadn’t provided him many opportunities for browsing in small-town book shops, an indulgence that always transported him back to his childhood in rural Cheshire and his parents’ small book shop on the town square. One more childhood indulgence would put a fitting period to the afternoon-across the square he saw a tea shop advertising cream teas.

  The Blue Plate lived up to its name, with blue plates of various patterns displayed around the room on a plate rail, and cheerful yellow-and-white checked cloths on the tables. It was not until Kincaid was seated at a small table in the back of the room and had placed his order that he noticed the two women in animated conversation at a window table. Maureen Hunsinger, with her round, cheerful face and frizzy hair, wore a dusty blue garment that looked as if it might have had a previous life as a chenille bedspread.

  It took him a moment to place Maureen’s companion as Janet Lyle, the ex-army man’s wife. Last night she had hardly spoken or smiled and had kept an anxious eye on her husband, glancing at him before she spoke, whether for reassurance or approval Kincaid hadn’t been able to tell. Possibly she was shy, or uncomfortable in social gatherings. Now, she was certainly at ease, talking and laughing, leaning forward and gesturing emphatically with her hands, her dark hair swinging against her shoulders every time she moved her head.

  Curious, Kincaid thought, after the events of the morning. Was it Sebastian’s death they were discussing with such energy? Excitement would be a typical reaction, charged by the relief most people felt at remaining unscathed when death struck so near. But not the good humor they displayed, evident even from a distance.

  He listened intently, their voices coming to him in snatches. “Oh god, I remember when mine was that age, it’s awful, you don’t know how you’ll get through it. But you do… gets worse.” Janet laughed again. She must have an older child, Kincaid thought, not with them on holiday. At boarding school, perhaps? Her voice drifted toward him again. “… the best school, Eddie says, then University. I don’t see how we can…” They leaned closer together, their faces more sober, and he lost the thread of sound. He had no business eavesdropping anyway; their conversation was none of his concern. It was only his cursed cop’s habit that made him listen.

  The two women had not noticed him, and when his tea and scones arrived he opened his book and buried himself in the pleasures of Yorkshire.

  There was no more delaying it. He’d dawdled long enough over scones and strawberry jam, drunk enough weak tea to swamp a horse, and had incited the cheerful waitress to concerned looks in his direction. He paid his bill and retrieved the Midget from the public car park across the square. With the car’s soft top folded down to take advantage of the sun, he drove slowly back to Followdale House.

  The house seemed hushed and shuttered. Not until he had parked the car and started toward the front door did he notice the small figure huddled at the side of the front step.

  Angela Frazer’s dark eyes were bare of make-up, the skin around them red and puffy. Even the spiky, violet-streaked hair seemed subdued. She looked at Kincaid without speaking. When he reached the steps, he sat down a few feet away, said “Hullo,” and gazed out at the empty drive in what he hoped was a neutral silence. From the corner of his eye he saw her fingers fiddling with the threads hanging from the torn knees of her jeans, and her feet, in dirty, white canvas sneakers, seemed ridiculously small.

  After a few moments she spoke, her voice barely a whisper. “You liked him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.” He waited, careful not to look at her.

  “He said you were okay.” Her words were clearer now, gaining strength. “Really okay. Not like most of the others.”

  “Did he? I’m glad.”

  “They don’t care, not any of them. My dad’s been beastly. He said, ‘Good riddance to the little poof They’ve all been saying…” her voice wavered and he risked a glance at her face, restraining an impulse to touch her. Without meeting his eyes, she folded her arms across her stomach and hunched her shoulders a little lower-a hedgehog posture. “They’re saying he killed himself. I don’t believe it. Sebastian wouldn’t do that.” She curled up even further, resting her face against her drawn-up knees.

  Jesus, thought Kincaid, what was he to say to this child that wouldn’t make her feel even worse? Had she considered the implications of what she was saying? That if Sebastian hadn’t killed himself, someone she knew, and quite possibly loved, might have killed him? Kincaid didn’t think so. It was more likely that she hadn’t been told enough to realize that Sebastian’s death couldn’t have been an accident. “Well,” he temporized, “I’m not sure anything’s definite yet. There will have to be tests and things to find out exactly how Sebastian died.”
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br />   “Nobody I knew ever died before. Except my grandmother, and I hadn’t seen her for a long time.” Angela’s words were muffled by her knees. “They wouldn’t let me see him. My dad said not to be so stupid. But I can’t believe he’s dead. Gone, you know? Just like that. I feel like I should say good-bye.”

  “It does help, sometimes, to see someone who’s died. A letting go. I think that’s why they have open caskets at funerals, except by the time the person’s been painted and fixed up at the undertakers they don’t bear any resemblance to the person you knew. It makes it worse, in a way.”

  Angela thought about it for a moment. “Then I don’t think I’d want to see Sebastian that way, even if they’d let me. I’d rather remember him the way he was.”

  “If I were you,” said Kincaid, slowly, “I’d have a private farewell. Do something you know he liked. Go somewhere he liked to go, or do something you did together.”

  Angela lifted her head, her expression brightening. “Yeah. In memoriam. Isn’t that what it’s called? Maybe I will.”

  “Angela,” Kincaid said, treading carefully, “you saw Sebastian last night, didn’t you?”

  “At the party. That was when he talked about you. But I didn’t get to meet you, because you were so busy with them.” Her emphasis fell on the last word, and he guessed that the category included most adults. “Did Sebastian seem any different than usual?”

  “You mean depressed? No.” Angela’s forehead creased in sudden concentration. “Except he left for a few minutes. And when he came back he seemed sort of… excited. He had this look he’d get sometimes, like the cat that ate the canary. Pleased with himself. But he didn’t say anything. When I asked him, he just said ‘Never you mind, little one’-teasing me, you know, the way he did.”

  “Did you see him later, after the party?”

  “No, my dad took me to York, to some fancy restaurant. But he was so cross that it was awful. We had a terrible row on the way back.”

  “Did your dad go out again?”

  “No. Well, I don’t think so. I locked myself in the bathroom for hours, I was so mad. I went to sleep on the floor, and when I woke up, he was in bed asleep.”

  “Must have been a pretty awful row. What was it about?” Kincaid delivered the question lightly, almost jocularly, afraid he’d breach her new-found confidence in him.

  “Oh, you know. My mum. Me. He hates my clothes, my hair, my make-up. He said I looked like a slut at the stupid party last night and I embarrassed him. Well, I, hope I did. He’s embarrassed me enough times, making-” She broke off, dropping her head and twisting her fingers together, suddenly uncomfortable.

  Voices came through the closed oak door behind them, followed by a bark of laughter. “That’s my dad, now.” Angela half stood, listening, like a hare poised for flight. “I’d better-”

  “It’s all right. I’d better be off myself. Angela,” Kincaid said as she started toward the door, and she turned back to him, “Sebastian really cared about you, too. He told me so last night, before the party.”

  “I know.” She smiled at him, and he saw what Sebastian had been astute enough to discover, the kernel of sweetness hidden beneath her usual sullen pose. “Can I call you Duncan? Mr. Kincaid makes you sound ancient.” A hint of flirtation, now, in the smile, and in the dark eyes looking at him through the lowered lashes. Kincaid realized he’d have to be careful not to tease her. She was, after all, almost grown.

  “Sure. See you.”

  “Yeah.” She slipped through the door and he waited a moment before following. He had the feeling that Angela might like to keep their conversation just between the two of them, and that suited him as well.

  Graham Frazer’s hearty voice met him as he entered the sitting room. “Well, if it isn’t our resident narc.” Kincaid was beginning to share some of Sebastian’s antipathy for Frazer.

  Angela was nowhere to be seen. The circle of faces turned toward him, a parody of last night’s innocent social gathering. Hannah was missing, as were Emma and Penny MacKenzie, but the rest seemed to draw together in a hostile shield.

  “Mr. Kincaid.” Maureen Hunsinger spoke next, reproaching him with all the directness of a child whose feelings have been hurt. “You misled us.”

  Cassie, who seemed to have temporarily abandoned her managerial distinction and banded with the herd, chimed in. “Oh, he’s full of surprises, is our Detective Superintendent Kincaid. All chummy with the local police, johnny-on-the-spot to the rescue. A real hero. Unfortunately, it was too late for poor Sebastian.” Her voice was light and mocking. She had recovered her control, all traces of the morning’s outburst erased. Her hair and make-up were exquisitely done and she wore rust, a matching skirt and blouse of some dull material with a webbing of fine, brown lines running through the solid color.

  “I resent being treated like some common criminal, shut up together and then interrogated. And fingerprinted, for God’s sake. It’s disgraceful.” Eddie Lyle sounded aggrieved, as if Sebastian’s death had been designed merely to inconvenience him.

  “You have no idea what it was like-” began Maureen, then blushed, remembering that Kincaid knew exactly what it was like.

  “What have they found out? Your friends told us we were to ‘make ourselves available’ until cause of death is established. I must say it’s a hell of a way to spend one’s holiday,” said Graham Frazer. His flat, heavy face gave no hints as to what went on in the mind behind it, but his voice sounded somewhat less aggressive.

  No one had offered Kincaid a drink, although they clutched theirs like protective talismans, so he answered Frazer over his shoulder as he walked to the bar and made himself a whiskey. “Look, I don’t know any more about this than the rest of you. It was purely circumstance that I happened to be first down this morning.”

  “That’s all very well for you to say,” Eddie Lyle said querulously, “but you weren’t subjected to-”

  “I had to make a statement just as all of you did, signed and sworn,” Kincaid interrupted as he rejoined them, then took a sip of his whiskey. No single malt scotch for the honor bar, this was the rawest of blends and it scorched his throat as it went down.

  Kincaid noticed that Patrick Rennie hadn’t yet spoken, though he followed the conversation with interest. Watching which way the wind blew, thought Kincaid, with a politician’s prudence. The man looked more human than he had last night, in a pull-over and rumpled cords, his blond hair a little tousled, but how much was manufactured image and how much the real man Kincaid couldn’t tell.

  Rennie stepped in now as mediator. “I’m sure Mr. Kincaid has had just as difficult a day as any of us, and has no intention of making this a busman’s holiday. I feel we’re all being rather unfair.”

  “Thanks.” Kincaid met his eyes and was surprised to see a gleam of knowing humor. A smooth operator, no doubt, but perhaps Rennie didn’t take himself too seriously, after all. There was no answering spark in Marta Rennie’s eyes. She watched her husband, but unsmilingly, not privy to the brief connection between the two men. Kincaid sensed some tension between the Rennies, but unless his overactive imagination was playing him up again, there were strange little eddies and currents of unease running all through the group, more than he felt could be accounted for by the awkwardness following Sebastian’s death.

  “How are the children?” Kincaid turned to John Hunsinger, who was hovering on the edge of the group as he had last night.

  “More excited than upset, at least for the day. Their dreams may be a different story.” Hunsinger’s voice was deep and a little gravelly, as if unused to wear. “They said you-”

  “You were very kind to them,” Maureen broke in, “They’ve put you right up in the ranks with Doctor Who. What’s horrible is that we didn’t even realize they were gone. They could have been…”

  “Where are they now?” Kincaid asked.

  “Emma MacKenzie’s taken them on a nature walk. Birdwatching. Can you believe it? They seem to have made frien
ds this morning.”

  The group was breaking up, drifting away in desultory conversation now that their attention was no longer focused on Kincaid. Janet Lyle still stood near them, quietly nursing her drink, while Eddie buttonholed Marta Rennie. “I can’t think why provision hadn’t been made for an occurrence of this sort. If this were a properly run facility-” a sidelong glance at Cassie “-things like this wouldn’t be allowed to happen.”

  Kincaid resisted the temptation to ask him what on earth he thought might have prevented it, and turned to Jennet instead. “Janet, you have children, don’t you?”

  She flushed, and spoke with a trace of the animation he had seen earlier in the day. “We have a daughter, Chloe.” In response to his slightly questioning look-he supposed he had expected a Cindy or a Jennifer-Janet said, “Eddie named her. He wanted her to be cultured, so he thought she should start off with a name that would suit her later.”

  “Did it work?” Kincaid asked.

  Janet’s eyes strayed to Eddie, who had moved off with Marta in the direction of the bar. “Not so you’d notice.” She grinned. “She’s a typical teenager, only her father’d never believe it. Chloe’s just about the same age as Angela Frazer, only she’s away at school and Angela’s… um, between schools, as I understand it.” Janet fell silent, her momentary energy dissipated.

  Kincaid drained his glass in one swallow. The room felt stuffy and stale. The late afternoon sun beat upon the closed French windows and crumpled cigarette butts overflowed the ashtrays. Even Maureen seemed wilted by the atmosphere, not ready to charge into the gap in the conversation with her usual gusto. The tidying up, thought Kincaid, the airing and ashtray cleaning and magazine straightening, those had been Sebastian’s touches, the little bits of grease that made the whole house run smoothly.