All Shall Be Well dk&gj-2

by Deborah Crombie

  "Bribed her solicitor?"

  Kincaid shook his head, thinking of Anthony Thomas's gentle outrage. "Not likely. But what if you're right about the first part and Roger did go to Jasmine's flat that night? He's never met her, he makes some excuse for coming, and then what? Does he say 'Excuse me, let me give you an overdose of morphine'?" He jabbed a finger at Gemma. "I'd swear there was no struggle."

  "Maybe he told her Margaret had just been using her, and then Jasmine decided to kill herself after all."

  "All he had to do was wait. Why would he risk the final outcome?"

  "Perhaps he thought he was losing his hold over Margaret, and made one last-ditch attempt," said Gemma, settling back into the chair and crossing her legs.

  They looked at each other a moment, speculating, then Kincaid straightened up in his chair and kicked his desk drawer shut. "No evidence, Gemma. Not a shred. I'll admit Roger looks a likely suspect, but we'll have to keep digging. And I'm not at all happy about Theo." He looked at his watch and stretched, then pulled down the knot on his tie and unbuttoned his collar. "Let's call it a day. I'm knackered. Fancy a drink before you go home?"

  Gemma hesitated, then made a face. "Better not. I've played truant enough lately. See you tomorrow." She went out with a wave, then stuck her head round the door again. "Don't forget to look after the cat, now."

  The weather change had driven the weekend hordes from Hampstead Heath. Spring had flaunted her true colors and driven them scurrying back into pubs and parlors, except for a few solitary dog-walkers and resolute joggers. Litter left behind from the warm-weather festivities blew fitfully across the grass. Stopping at the flat only long enough to change into jeans and anorak, Kincaid crossed East Heath Road at the bottom of Worsley and plunged onto the Heath itself near the Mixed Bathing Pond. He felt a need to work the kinks out of mind and body. Running required too much focus, or at least that's what he told himself, so he turned north and walked, letting his thoughts wander where they would.

  Gemma's theories worried him more than he'd admitted. He trusted her instincts, and if she said Margaret Bellamy was dead scared, he believed her. But he couldn't make a logical construction out of the rest of it—there were just too many holes.

  He smiled, thinking of Gemma's arguments. Sometimes her enthusiasm amused him, sometimes it irritated him, but that was one reason they worked well together—she charged into ideas headlong while he tended to worry at them, and often together they came to a satisfactory conclusion.

  The path crossed the viaduct pond and he stopped a moment, hands in pockets, admiring the view. New-leafed branches formed mirror images of themselves in the water, and to the west the spire of Hampstead's Christ Church rose above the still-bare fingers of the taller trees. Gemma had been different at the weekend, some of the fiery energy banked down to a lazy contentment. Bright cotton clothes against skin faintly flushed from the sun, an elusive scent of peaches when he'd stood next to her in Theo's dusty shop—Kincaid blinked and shook himself like a dog coming out of water.

  He started walking again, head down into the wind, beginning the long climb to the Heath-top. Somehow, in the course of the weekend, the atmosphere between them had shifted. Today they'd worked together in their usual way, and he'd begun to think he was imagining things, but then he sensed her uncharacteristic hesitation when he suggested they stop for an after-work drink. They often did that, talking over the day's progress and planning the next, and only now did he realize how much he looked forward to it. Maybe he demanded too much of her time, and she resented it. He'd be more careful in the future.

  Twigs of gorse, heavy with yellow blossom, scratched and snagged at his sleeve as he absentmindedly passed too near. Beautiful and irritatingly prickly, like Gemma—and like Gemma, it needed to be handled with caution. He smiled.

  His path dead-ended at the top of Heath Street, just across from Jack Straw's Castle. The parking lot of the old pub was already full, and when the door swung open the wind carried a faint drift of music to Kincaid's ears. The boisterous crowd didn't appeal to him and he turned left down Heath Street, feeling the pull in his calf muscles as he made the steep descent. When he reached the tube station, an impulse sent him straight ahead rather than left into Hampstead High Street. Church Row came up shortly on his right, and he turned into the narrow lane, the spire of St. John's leading him on like a compass needle.

  Kincaid entered the churchyard through the massive wrought-iron gates. A drunk snored on a bench by the church door, disturbing the silence. Kincaid turned left, into the dim greenness of the tomb-covered hillside, which even in early spring was tangled and overgrown with vegetation. The path wound under the heavy boughs of evergreens, passing damp, gray stone slabs, splotched with lichens. He stopped at his favorite spot, just before the lower boundary wall.

  "John Constable, Esq., R.A., 1837," read the carved inscription on the side of the tomb. Constable lay with his wife, Mary Elizabeth, and the marker also bore witness to the death of their son, John Charles, age twenty-three. Constable's name was associated with the history of almost every part of Hampstead, as he rented one house after another from 1819 until his death, and was said to have asked to "take his everlasting rest" in the village he immortalized in his paintings.

  Why Kincaid found the Victorian monument comforting he couldn't have said, but since he'd lived in Hampstead he had developed a habit of coming here to think when he couldn't quite sort something out. He sat on a rock and rubbed a twig between his fingers, crumbling the dry bark to dust. Frowning, he tried to clear his mind, concentrate. His gut-instinct told him that Meg really had loved Jasmine, would not have harmed her against her wishes. Roger, however, was a different kettle of fish, and a smelly one at that. Sex was a powerful and often twisted force, and he wasn't sure how blind an eye Meg might have persuaded herself to turn in order to preserve her relationship with Roger.

  And Theo? Had Theo resented his sister more than he loved her? He certainly had reason to be grateful to her, but the contrariness of human nature could make gratitude a difficult burden to bear.

  He began to see Jasmine sitting in the center of a radiating web of relationships, inviolate. What had she felt for anyone? Had she moved through her life untouched and untouching? She'd faced her illness with such equanimity. He couldn't reconcile the passionate girl in the journals with the woman he'd known—charming, witty, intelligent, and more guarded than he ever had imagined.

  Kincaid sighed and stood up. The light was fast fading, the graves had no secrets to impart, and if he weren't careful he'd be blundering his way back up the hill. He realized that the wind had died, and beyond the boundary hedge the lights of the city glowed in the gathering dusk.

  The drunk was gone when Kincaid reached the church again. From within the building, muffled by the heavy doors, voices sang in familiar cadence. "Evensong," Kincaid said aloud. When had he last heard an Evensong service? The sound took him back to the sturdy red-brick church of his Cheshire childhood. His parents had deemed the Evensong service the only compromise between their Anglican upbringing and their liberal philosophies, and while the family often attended Evensong, Kincaid could not remember being inside the church on a Sunday.

  Inching open the scuffed, blue-leather-padded door and slipping through, Kincaid made his way to the last pew and eased into it. Only a few scattered forms filled the seats in front of him. He wondered that the service, so lightly attended, was held at all.

  Voices rose, the sound filling the hollow space inside the church, and the notes of the massive organ vibrated through the pew into his bones. Kincaid relaxed, idly watching the choir director. The man used his hands like blunt instruments, chopping and jabbing his signals to the choir. He looked, in fact, more like a rugby forward than a choir director—well over six-feet tall, with massive shoulders under his surplice and a square, heavy-jawed head.

  The director moved a step to the right and Kincaid caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the choir's back row. A fr
inge of gray hair around a balding head and a ruddy face, a clipped gray mustache—so accustomed was Kincaid to the Major's usual tweedy attire that the full, white fabric of the surplice had disoriented him for a moment. How could he have forgotten the Major telling him he sang with the St. John's choir? Kincaid watched, fascinated by the sight of his taciturn neighbor raising his voice in a joyous, open-mouthed bass.

  The service drew to a close. The final "amen" hung trembling, then the choir filed out. The other congregants passed Kincaid on their way to the door, smiling and glancing curiously at him. Regulars, he thought, wondering just who the hell he was. When the porch door closed on the last straggler, Kincaid stood and walked toward the altar.

  "Excuse me."

  The director had his hand on a door which Kincaid thought must lead to the vestry. He swung around, startled, his movements surprisingly graceful for such a large man. "Yes?"

  "Could I speak to you for a minute? My name's Duncan Kincaid." Kincaid thought fast. He didn't want to make a professional inquiry of a friend and neighbor just yet, only set his own mind at ease. Perhaps his jeans, anorak, and wind-blown hair weren't a disadvantage after all.

  Hand outstretched, the choir director came toward Kincaid. "I'm Paul Grisham. What can I do for you?"

  Kincaid heard in his voice a familiar lilt. "You're Welsh," he said, making it a statement. Paul Grisham's face broke into a grin, showing large, crooked teeth. His nose, Kincaid saw, had been broken, and probably more than once.

  "That I am. From Llangynog." Grisham cocked his head, studying Kincaid. "And you?"

  "A near neighbor, across the border. I grew up in Nantwich."

  "Thought you didn't sound London born and bred."

  "You play rugby?" Kincaid touched a finger to his own nose.

  "I did, yes, when my bones knitted quicker. Wrexham Union."

  Kincaid shifted a bit and leaned against the altar rail. He sensed Grisham waiting for him to get to the point, and said casually, "I just happened by, quite by accident. I'd no idea you had Evensong service." He nodded his head toward the choir stall behind Grisham. "Was that Major Keith I saw?"

  Grisham smiled. "You know the Major? One of our mainstays, he is, though you wouldn't think it to look at him, the crusty old devil. Regular as clockwork, never misses a practice."

  "Twice a week?" Kincaid hazarded.

  "Sunday and Thursday evenings."

  "He's my downstairs neighbor. I'd no idea he sang, but I had wondered where he disappeared to so regularly. Figured he was off for a pint." Kincaid straightened up as Grisham hiked up his robe and fished a set of keys out of his trouser pocket. "I was just startled to see him, that's all."

  "If you don't mind, I'll let you out the front before I lock up. Vandals, you know," he added apologetically.

  "Not at all." Kincaid turned and together they walked up the aisle. "Didn't mean to take so much of your time."

  When they reached the vestibule Grisham stopped and turned to face Kincaid, seeming to hesitate. In the dim light, Kincaid had to look up to read his expression. The man overreached him by a head—he must be nearly as big as the Super.

  "You said you were his neighbor—the Major?"

  Kincaid nodded. "Since I bought my flat, three years ago."

  "Know him well?"

  Shrugging, Kincaid answered, "Not really. I'm not sure anyone does." Jasmine came suddenly to mind, with her tales of afternoon tea with the Major, and he thought of the rosebushes planted in her memory. "I don't know. There was someone, perhaps. Our neighbor, but she died just last week."

  Grisham reached for the heavy porch door, swinging it open as if it were cardboard. "That explains it, then. Last Thursday night he left practice early, said he felt ill. First time I've ever known him to do that, and I was a bit worried about him, living alone and all. But he's not the sort of person you could ask."

  "No," Kincaid agreed, stepping out into the darkness. "I don't suppose you could. Thanks for your time. I'll come back," he said, meaning it, and as the door closed he saw a flash of Paul Grisham's white teeth.

  What he didn't add was that Jasmine could not have accounted for the Major's sudden indisposition. He hadn't learned of her death until Kincaid told him, mid-day on Friday.

  He stopped for a pie and a pint at the King George, halfway down the High. When he came out into the street again the still air felt damp against his skin. Rain tomorrow, or he'd be buggered. Turning up his collar and shoving his hands in his pockets against the chill, he walked home slowly, looking in the lighted windows of the empty shops.

  His footsteps led him naturally to Jasmine's door, and he let himself in with the key he'd attached to his keyring. When Kincaid turned on the lamp Sid blinked at him from the center of the bed, then seemed to levitate himself into a stretch.

  "Hullo, Sid. Glad to see me this time? Or just hungry?" The cat followed him into the kitchen and sat watching expectantly as Kincaid rooted in the drawer for the tin opener. "Not going to wind about my ankles, are you, mate?" Kincaid said, thinking of how he'd seen the cat wrap himself around Jasmine's slender ankles at feeding time. As she grew more fragile he'd been afraid the cat would make her fall, but he hadn't said anything.

  "Let's not get too familiar, okay?" He set the dish on the floor, then ran his fingers down Sid's smooth back as the cat came to the food. Remembering Gemma's instructions, he found the litter box tucked away under the bathroom sink, emptied it into the rubbish bin and refilled it from a sack he found in the cupboard. He lifted the rubbish bag free of the bin and tied it up for collection.

  Feeling virtuous, he refilled Sid's water bowl and stood watching the cat eat. "What's going to become of you, eh, mate?" As Sid polished the empty dish with his tongue, Kincaid added, "Looks like you've done the worst of your grieving." Human or animal, in most cases the body reasserted itself soon enough. You drank cups of tea, or whiskey. You ate what was put in front of you, and life went on. "See you tomorrow, mate."

  He left a lamp lit for the cat and went upstairs to Jasmine's journals.

  June 5th, 1963

  All I can think about is how I feel when he touches me. My skin burns. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I feel a little sick with it all the time but I don't want it to stop, and there's this hard knot in my belly that aches and won't go away no matter what I do. I know what people say about him, but it's not true. He's different with me, gentle. They just don't understand him. He doesn't belong here, any more than I do. We're throwbacks, both of us, to something darker, less English. Aunt May says some of my mother's family were French and that's why I look the way I do, but you can tell from the way she says it that she despised my mum.

  "Rose Hollis," she says, "didn't have the sense God gave a child. I don't know what your father was thinking of when he married her and took her to India." Poor mummy. He killed her, as surely as if he'd stuck a knife in her heart, and I'm afraid. I don't want the same thing to happen to me, but it's out of control already and I don't see any way to turn it back.

  We'll go away, soon as I've saved enough working for old Mr. Rawlinson. London, where nobody will know us, where we can be together all the time. Get a flat somewhere. I know I promised I'd not go without Theo, but he can leave school after this year and maybe by that time I'll be able to look after him, too.

  I dream about him when I can sleep. When I close my eyes I see his face against my eyelids. His dark hair lies like silk against my hand when I run my fingers through it. Last night we met behind the social club as soon as it was dark. It was bingo night, and I could hear them calling inside, numbers and letters. "Jasmine?" he says, in that questioning way, as if he can't quite believe in me, and then his mouth turns up at the corners when he smiles. But the light lasts longer every evening, and there's nowhere we can go to be alone, where he can kiss me, put his hands where I want him to touch me. Aunt May would kill me if she found out, and his old mum's even worse. Dry and shriveled as old prunes, both of them, and sick with envy.

 
; I have an idea, though, and if I can carry it through, there won't be anything that can come between us.

  Chapter Twelve

  The previous evening's promise of rain fulfilled itself. Kincaid peered through the Midget's windscreen in the gray light, straining to see the road, while the wipers clicked monotonously back and forth, scrubbing at the drizzle. He'd left the M3 at Basingstoke, heading west on the two-lane A roads, toward Dorset.

  The decision, made somewhere between finishing his coffee and leaving his flat for the Yard, had taken him by surprise. He'd dreamed of Jasmine—the fierce girl of the journals, not the Jasmine of unbreachable reserve, fragile from her illness—and awakened with an imprinted image of her scribbling in her tiny attic room.

  There'd been a gap after the entry about the boy, and when she wrote again it was of living in London, finding a flat, adjusting to a new job. Compared to the earlier entries these were strangely emotionless, as if the journals had been relegated to trivial record keeping.

  Kincaid had given up, exhausted, but found himself worrying at it again this morning. He'd done some quick arithmetic—Jasmine had been twenty-one at the time of that last entry, and to him she seemed oddly immature. If he hadn't grown accustomed to her taking charge of Theo and coping with whatever life threw her way, perhaps the fact that she'd survived her teens still sexually inexperienced wouldn't have struck him so forcibly. But the more he thought about it, the less surprising it seemed. Mature beyond her years in some ways, Jasmine had still been very much the outcast. She wouldn't have fit in comfortably with teenage flirtations and rough camaraderie, and life in a small English village didn't leave much room for exploration.

  Behind his unexpected pilgrimage lay the hope that he might find some answers in the hamlet of Briantspuddle— that some trace of Jasmine Dent's passage from childhood to adulthood remained.