A Share In Death

by Deborah Crombie

  “You don’t mean Hannah-”

  “No, no, not specifically, but the sooner we get our inquiries cleared up, the happier we’ll all be.” Gemma took a sip of her coffee. Strong and rich, it bore little relation to instant or the marked-down tins in the corner grocer. “Do you know if Miss Alcock had any connection to either Sebastian Wade or Penny MacKenzie?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t recall her mentioning either of them.”

  “What about any other previous connection with the timeshare? Did she give you any indication why she chose this particular place?”

  Miles reached for his cup, and Gemma noticed that he held it only long enough to drink, then returned it to the table. “She didn’t actually say much to me about it at all. It struck me as rather odd, because Hannah and I have been friends for more years than I like to count.” He smiled, erasing the sternness from his thin face. “Hannah came to me almost fifteen years ago-highly recommended, of course-from a university research facility. I’m not a scientist, you know, and the success of our work here,” he made an encircling gesture with his hand, “is entirely due to Hannah’s brilliance and perseverance. Sergeant-” he stopped and stared at Gemma, his brow creasing. “I think that you are much too lovely to be addressed as Sergeant’. Could I call you ‘Miss’, or ‘Mrs.’, or perhaps the unpleasant and ubiquitous ‘Ms.’?”

  Gemma, who dealt with catcalls from yobs in the street without turning an eyelash, felt herself coloring at the courtly compliment. It was also rather chauvinistic, she had to admit, but she couldn’t find it in herself to feel offended. “Well, ‘Ms.’ will do, if you like.”

  “All right, Ms. James. If you feel you need a character reference for Hannah, I know of nothing the least bit questionable in her past or present. I consider her as both friend and family, and would vouch for her behavior under any circumstances. Hannah is certainly not capable of killing anyone.” His clasped hands moved convulsively as he spoke, and Gemma saw that the trembling had increased.

  “Mr. Sterrett, I don’t think the investigating officers seriously consider that a possibility, but we must make these inquiries. You do understand?” Gemma searched for a change of subject to ease his obvious distress. “Is the clinic named for someone in your family, Mr. Sterrett?”

  “My wife. She died from Creutz-Jakob disease almost thirty years ago. At the time, very little was known about it, and as I inherited my money, I thought it might as well be put to good use.” He smiled at her again. “Don’t look so unhappy, Ms. James. I’m not still grieving over my dead wife. It was a very long time ago. We had no children-which may have been just as well, considering the family genes. Her only sister was emotionally unstable and my nephew is a pipsqueak.” Sobering, he added, “But I would not want anything to happen to Hannah. Not only for my sake, but this clinic depends on her, and what we do here is worthwhile.”

  Miles stared into the fire and finished his coffee, then said, with what seemed to Gemma an effort, “I’m surprised that Hannah hasn’t called me. I suppose she thought it would worry me. It wouldn’t have occurred to her I might be visited by the police, in however attractive a guise.” Both smile and gallantry seemed forced this time, and Gemma thought she had outstayed her welcome.

  She drank the last of her coffee, eyeing the thermos a little wistfully, and rose. “I’ve tired you, I’m afraid. Your receptionist would eat me alive.”

  Miles chuckled. “It’s her way of staying even with Mrs. Milton. They’ve had a rivalry going for years.” He stood, insisting on seeing her out. At the top of the stairs he took her hand again. “You won’t mind if I don’t come down? Mrs. Milton will unlock the door for you.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’m sorry to have troubled you.” It was a stock phrase, but Gemma found she meant it.

  She’d booked a room in a small hotel on the edge of the city, and once she’d checked in and unpacked, she spent the rest of the evening dialing Kincaid’s empty suite.

  Hannah slept curled on the sofa where Anne Percy had left her, head half buried beneath the cushion, blanket slipping haphazardly to the floor.

  In her dream she walked the suburban streets of her childhood, under blossoming cherry trees. Familiar voices she couldn’t quite place called from the gardens, and she increased her pace. Her house seemed always round the next corner-she felt sure she could find it if only the soft, insistent tapping would stop.

  The sound nibbled at the edges of her dream, finally rousing her to a sluggish wakefulness. Her first instinctive movement brought a groan-her muscles were already stiffening and her head ached. The panes in the French door reflected her image. It was now fully dark and she couldn’t tell whether she had been asleep hours or minutes. The knocking continued as she made her slow progress to the door, and she heard his imploring voice before she reached it. “Hannah, it’s Patrick. Please, let me talk to you.”

  A moment’s hesitation gripped her and then she flushed with shame. She would not doubt him, would not let fear rule her life. Humiliation had caused her withdrawal on the stairs, but since then she had thought much about prejudging. With unsteady fingers she pulled back the bolt on the door.

  Patrick looked her over carefully before he spoke. “How are you feeling?”

  “I imagine about as well as can be expected.” Absently Hannah touched her taped wrist. “Dr. Percy said I’d feel about a hundred years old by tomorrow, and it’s already begun.”

  He followed her into the sitting room and tucked her up under the blanket solicitously. After pulling up a chair so that he could sit facing her, he said with disarming frankness, “Duncan Kincaid thinks I might have pushed you down the stairs, although he very politely didn’t quite say so.” Patrick smiled. “Somehow I don’t think good manners were his motivation. Hannah”-all traces of the smile vanished-“do you think I pushed you?”

  She shook her head wearily. “No. Honestly. I would have told Duncan if I had.” She met his eyes for the first time since he had come in. Patrick might have aged ten years in the course of a day. Fine lines that she hadn’t noticed before crinkled around his eyes. It was as if he’d been stripped of a layer of veneer, thought Hannah, and he sat before her bare of his usual polish.

  He sighed. “That’s all right, then. But I’m worried about you, you know. When you don’t understand why something’s happening it’s hard to put a stop to it.”

  Hannah didn’t answer. She felt too exhausted to rehash her ignorance once again. After a moment Patrick continued. “And I was beastly to you this morning. I don’t know why. Too many childhood fantasies came crashing down at once, I suppose.” At her puzzled expression he tried to explain. “Oh, you know-the usual things. First it was my mother as Camille,” he raised his hand to his brow and grinned, “dying in childbirth, blessing me with her last frail breath. Then later I imagined she’d be warm and soft and comforting-she’d find me and welcome me into the fold of another family. An only child’s fantasy, that. Never”-he leaned forward and smiled at her again-“did I see her as successful, intelligent, stimulating, and attractive. It was quite a shock, I can tell you.”

  Hannah jabbed her fingers through her hair, suddenly aware of how she must look. “I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing whether she meant she was sorry for springing her identity on him or for not fitting his mother image.

  “You’re sorry? I should have outgrown that emotional baggage long ago. And I never even asked about my father.” Patrick’s hands moved on his knees, and Hannah sensed a sudden vulnerability beneath his casual manner.

  “I refused to tell my parents who he was, but I suppose you deserve to know something,” she said reluctantly. “His name was Matthew Carnegie. A good family.” Her mouth twisted. “As my father would have put it. I don’t know what became of him, I didn’t want to know. I never wanted to see him again.” She cast her mind back through the barriers she had erected over the years, trying to remember what had attracted a sixteen-year-old Hannah to Matthew. “He was fair-that’s wh
ere you get your coloring-and good-looking, in a lanky, unfinished way. He made me laugh.” The memory surprised her. “And he was gentle.”

  Patrick digested this, and nodded. “It must have taken a lot of courage, not to have told your parents about him.”

  “Courage? No, it was pure stubbornness. That, and the knowledge that I couldn’t bear the humiliation of his knowing, of his family knowing.”

  Patrick leaned forward, his gaze intense. “Hannah, do you think we could start again? Maybe not as either of us imagined it-we’ve both been pretty unrealistic-but just as… friends?”

  Hannah closed her eyes, stilling her face against a sudden swell of longing. “I never thought I could replace your mother. Or be one, really. I only wanted some sense of belonging… of connection.”

  Patrick reached out and touched her shoulder a little awkwardly, as if unsure what gesture to make. “I’d better let you get some rest.” He rose. “Hannah, you will be careful, won’t you? I’d hate to lose you,” his voice held a trace of irony, “now I’ve found you.”

  Kincaid discovered, as had Patrick Rennie before him, that Cassie’s door stood slightly ajar. He tapped lightly. Hearing no answer, he slowly pushed open the door.

  The only light in the cottage’s sitting room came from a dim bulb in the hall behind it, so that it took him a minute to orient himself. Cassie’s voice came from the direction of the armchair next to the fire, sullen and succinct. “Bugger off.”

  Kincaid fumbled for the switch on the table lamp, and blinked in the sudden bloom of yellow light. Cassie sat huddled in the chair, looking pale and disheveled, wrapped in a quilted dressing gown. Only her bare legs, stretched out before her, retained their elegance.

  “You should learn to lock your door,” said Kincaid, drawing his eyes, rather unwillingly, from her legs to her face.

  “Not much point now, is there?”

  Kincaid perched on the arm of the opposite chair, as he had before. “Looks like you’ve made a proper mess of things, doesn’t it?” he said lightly.

  Anger sparked in her flat, gold eyes. “Me? Jesus.” She turned her face away and he saw the red weal along her cheekbone. “The bastard hit me.”

  “Who, Graham?”

  “Of course, Graham! Patrick acted like offended bloody royalty and stalked out in a huff, but not until he’d made our situation quite clear to Graham. Who gave you the sordid details, anyway?” Cassie stared at him accusingly.

  “Patrick.”

  “Oh, god.” Tears filled her eyes and ran down the sides of her nose. She made no move to brush them away. “Everything’s finished.”

  “No more Downing Street?”

  “You-” Cassie began, then subsided, too despondent even to swear at him.

  “Surely it was bound to happen,” Kincaid said more kindly. “You were playing a risky game.”

  Cassie sat up a bit in her chair and tucked her legs beneath her, then wiped the backs of her hands across her cheeks. “I had no idea Graham would be so hard to put off.” She sniffed. “It started as such a casual thing, before I ever met Patrick. But the more I tried to cool things off with Graham, the more persistent he got. Then I began to be afraid to break it off-afraid of what he’d do.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  Cassie shrugged. “Not in so many words. But he’d make these little comments-what if someone told the management I’d been sleeping with the owners? Would I lose my job? That sort of thing. I couldn’t bear that, you see. For a while I was able to juggle them. Then Graham traded weeks-he didn’t have to wait until term break because Angela wasn’t in school, and he wanted to see me.”

  “I suppose,” interrupted Kincaid, “that he was lucky to own a week during school holidays?”

  “Lucky?” Cassie looked baffled. “He could have had pretty much anything he wanted. And he could have traded for just about any time, as well. There are always people willing to switch around. Why,” she raised her eyes beseechingly, “did he have to choose this week?” The question seemed to be rhetorical.

  It occurred to him that he liked her better this way, without that almost American sheen of perfect grooming, her oak-leaf hair rumpled, her slightly supercilious manner in abeyance. He supposed she lost that hard edge in bed as well, and it was that contrast that made her so appealing to Patrick and to Graham Frazer. Shoving his speculations aside, he asked, “So what happened today?”

  Cassie swallowed and pushed her hair behind her ear.

  “Graham was furious. I’ve never seen him quite like that. He seemed to feel I’d made a fool of him-used him, he said.” She raised her eyes to Kincaid’s. “I wasn’t exactly a willing participant today. But Patrick couldn’t have known that.”

  “No. And then, after Patrick left?”

  Cassie touched a finger to her cheek. “I was lucky to get off so easily. But it’s finally over, I think.”

  “What time did all this happen this afternoon?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Cassie flared at him. “My whole life is crumbling around me and you expect me to notice what time it is?”

  “It could be very important, you know, just what the three of you were doing when someone decided to push Hannah down the stairs. Didn’t anyone ask you?”

  “That constable came around-the one who looks like a prize cow.” Animosity sharpened her voice, and Kincaid remembered what a difficult time P.C. Trumble had with her the morning of Sebastian’s death. “I told him I didn’t remember.”

  Kincaid tried another tack. “Think back. What were you doing before Graham came?”

  Cassie chewed her thumbnail meditatively. “I’d been working. The house was quiet as a tomb and I started to feel a little… uneasy. Then Angela came snooping around-”

  “What did she want?” asked Kincaid, his curiosity piqued. He couldn’t imagine Angela voluntarily visiting Cassie.

  “I didn’t say she spoke,” snapped Cassie. “She just wandered around, fingering my things. That girl gives me the creeps, anyway, and she’d done herself up in full vampire regalia today. When I asked her what she wanted, she said ‘nothing’ and went out. Well, I’d had enough, after that. I came across to make myself a cup of coffee.” She paused, concentrating. “It must have been after three-I’d been expecting a call by three and when it didn’t come I switched on the answering machine.”

  “And Graham?” Kincaid waited, his attention sharpening. Gemma had called him about a quarter past three. He’d finished his conversation, gone downstairs, discovered Hannah, and had only thought to look at his watch after Patrick had come storming in the front door. It had been twenty minutes to four.

  “Don’t know. I’d made my coffee, gone to the loo.”

  “And how long had Graham been there when Patrick came?”

  “Long enough,” said Cassie with some asperity, “to start a slanging match and tear half my clothes off.”

  “And you wouldn’t happen to know,” Kincaid asked hopefully, “exactly what time Patrick left here?”

  Cassie pulled herself up in the chair and glared at him. “Don’t be bloody stupid.”

  As Kincaid left Cassie’s cottage he saw Eddie Lyle scurrying across the car park toward the front door. “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date,” Kincaid said under his breath, and grinned. “Lyle!”

  Eddie Lyle turned and waited until Kincaid caught up, his spectacles glinting in the light from the porch. “Did someone take a statement from you this afternoon?” Kincaid asked conversationally as they came abreast.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” answered Lyle, in his fussily aggrieved way. “I’d just come back from my walk when I heard all the commotion about poor Miss Alcock falling down the stairs.” He shook his head, and Kincaid couldn’t be sure whether he was deploring Hannah’s accident or the disturbance of his afternoon.

  “You’d been walking?” Kincaid rubbed the toe of his trainer across the gravel.

  “Oh, yes. Lovely day up on the bank.” Lyle waggled hi
s hand in the direction of Sutton Bank. “Janet was having her rest after lunch, and I wanted to give her a bit of peace and quiet. She hasn’t been feeling well, you know,” he added confidentially. “Since Mother died, she’s had these little tired spells. And now, with all these terrible things happening, she’s quite exhausted.”

  “I’m sure.” Kincaid nodded sympathetically, sure only that living with Edward would be exhausting enough for anyone.

  “But I told Janet that we would stay until our time ran out on Saturday.” Lyle jabbed his finger in the air for emphasis. “Not that Chief Inspector Nash would mind us going, of course, but I do like to get my money’s worth. And speaking of going,” he squinted at his watch, “the wife’ll have my supper ready and I’d not like it to get cold.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand toward Kincaid and trotted up the steps.

  Kincaid’s stomach growled as if the word ‘supper’ had activated internal alarm bells. He couldn’t remember when he’d had a proper meal, and since he hadn’t a generic wife to prepare it, he imagined he’d have to fend for himself. He grinned in the darkness. Eddie Lyle didn’t know his own luck.

  CHAPTER 18

  She couldn’t be gone.

  Kincaid tried the door to Hannah’s suite, the knob slipping in his suddenly sweaty palm. Locked. He stepped back and looked out the landing window at the car park. The phone-box red paintwork on his Midget gleamed cheerily back at him, but the space beside it where Hannah’s green Citroën had stood was empty.

  His stomach knotted as he told himself not to be an ass. No need to panic-she’d probably just gone down to the shops for some coffee or a newspaper. But no reasonable, rational explanation eased the dread that squeezed his chest.

  He’d spent half the morning pacing the confines of his sitting room, waiting for word from Gemma, assuming Hannah was tucked up safely and obediently in her suite.

  He should have known better. Hannah Alcock had lived by her own rules too long to do anyone else’s bidding. Kincaid stared down at the car park, wondering what had sent her out this morning.