The lane ran tunnel-like between the high hedges, dipping and twisting like a rabbit's burrow. Occasional gaps in the green walls revealed only muddy farmyards. Kincaid had rechecked his map when he'd stopped for a quick lunch in Blandford Forum, but he'd begun to wonder if he'd read the last signpost right when the lane crossed a stream, took a sudden right-angle turn and ejected him into a clearing. A string of white-washed cottages straddled the road and a signpost at the central fork proclaimed "Briantspuddle."
Kincaid stopped at the intersection. No church… no pub—not having either repository of village information would make his task more difficult. He took the west fork of the lane, hoping to find a likely source of gossip.
A few hundred yards farther on he came upon another smattering of cottages, even smaller than Briantspuddle. These cottages were washed in pale colors, rather than white, but except for wisps of smoke escaping from a few of the chimneys, the smaller hamlet appeared just as deserted. A stone cross, a carved madonna-like figure imprisoned within its stem, seemed to draw the surrounding cottages to it like congregants facing a preacher.
Kincaid stopped the car and got out. The rain had earlier diminished to a mist just fine enough to make his wipers squeak, and now he realized it had stopped. He walked around the cross, examining its unusual construction. The design reminded him of a traditional market cross, but it was somehow very modern in feel. In the front, the Madonna crouched under a peaked roof at the bottom of the spire, while in the back a larger, unidentifiable figure seemed to float midway up the column. An inscription ran around the cross's square base, and Kincaid read as he circled the cross once again: It is sooth that in is cause of all this pain, But all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
Kincaid returned to the car and headed back the way he'd come. When he reached Briantspuddle again he pulled the Midget onto the verge and killed the engine. Stretching, he levered himself up out of the car and felt the cool air settle on his skin like a cloak. He took a deep breath, invigorated by the clean, damp silence.
A faint rhythmic sound broke the quiet and Kincaid turned, searching for its source. Something moved behind the shrubby border of the best-kept cottage, beneath a row of flowering plums and brilliant yellow sprays of forsythia. He took a few steps closer and the movement resolved into the top of a gray head; nearer still, an elderly woman kneeling, weeding her flower bed.
She looked up, unsurprised, and smiled at him. "Have to take advantage," she said, nodding at the low, gray clouds. "Won't hold off long." Her voice was cultured, with only a faint trace of Dorset burr.
Kincaid stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled his most charming smile. "Nice border." On closer inspection she looked quite frail, in her eighties, perhaps, and wore a tweed skirt and twin-set under an old, oiled jacket. Her thin gray hair was twisted into a neat knot on top of her head, and on her feet she sported, not the expected heavy leather brogues, but a pair of neon nylon trainers.
Frowning at him, she gave the comment serious consideration, and finally shook her head. "You've missed the rhododendrons, you see. Another month, that's when it's glorious. These," she gestured with her trowel toward the pansies and daffodils in the bed, "are just the opening act."
This time Kincaid grinned from pleasure, liking her grave humor. "A little soft shoe?"
"Exactly." She smiled back at him, resting her gloved hands on her knees, and Kincaid decided she had once been very beautiful. Her glance held curiosity now as she searched his face. "Are you passing through?" she asked, then added, "What a silly question. Briantspuddle isn't on the way to anywhere."
"No, not exactly. Have you lived here long?"
"Depends on what you call long. Since before the War. That was Briantspuddle's heyday, you know. Ernest Debenham, the department store magnate, decided to make it a model farming village. These cottages he either built or restored." She raised a coquettish eyebrow. "You do know which war I mean, young man?"
"You wouldn't have been around for the first one, much less remember it."
"Now you're flattering me." She brushed her gloved hands together and pushed herself up with a grimace. Kincaid stretched out a hand to her and she nodded her thanks.
"Would you remember a woman called May Dent, by any chance?"
Her face went blank with surprise. "May? Of course. We were neighbors for years. She lived just across the road, there." Kincaid turned and looked where she pointed. The cottage sat back from the road at the end of a shrub-bordered walk. No flowers brightened its black and white severity, and high windows peeking from beneath the thatched eaves gave it a secretive air.
Extracting his warrant card from his jacket pocket, he opened it to the woman's puzzled glance. "My name's Duncan Kincaid."
She looked from the card to his face, her brow furrowing. "You don't look like such a big cheese."
Kincaid laughed. "Thank you. I think."
Coloring, she said, "I'm making an idiot of myself. I never meant to be one of these tiresome old women who thinks anyone younger than sixty ought to be in nappies. I'm Alice Finney, by the way." She held out her hand to Kincaid and he took it, feeling the lightness of her bones between his fingers.
"Mrs. Finney, do you remember May Dent's niece and nephew, who came from India to live with her?"
She stared at him in consternation. "Of course I remember Jasmine and Theo, as well as I do my own name. But that's been thirty years if it's been a day. Why on earth would you want to know about them?"
Taking a breath, he tried to organize his approach. "It's about—"
Alice Finney shook her head. "No, no." She nodded toward the blank faces of the cottages. "I can tell this isn't going to be a 'middle-of-the-village' matter. You'd better come in. I'll make us some tea, and you can tell me properly, from the beginning."
"Yes, Mrs. Finney," Kincaid answered, meek as a schoolboy, and followed her up the walk.
Saucer balanced on his knee, Kincaid lifted a china cup so delicate he was afraid his breath might crack it. Outside the sitting room windows, mist had settled in again, fading the plum blossom to a pale wash of color. Alice Finney knelt at her grate, lighting a small, coal fire. When Kincaid moved to help her, she waved him back. "I've done it myself for nearly fifty years. No use being coddled now."
She sat down opposite him in a brocade armchair, its seat-cover a bit shiny with wear. At Kincaid's inquisitive glance, she picked up her cup and continued. "My Jack and I would have been married fifty-five years this spring. He was a pilot, so he died a little more gloriously than some—in the air rather than the trenches. Not that it was much comfort to him, I imagine." She smiled at him, suddenly, impishly. "Don't look so properly funereal, Mr. Kincaid. To tell you the truth there are days I can't remember what he looked like, it's been so long ago. And at my age remembering is just a sentimental indulgence. Tell me about Jasmine and Theo Dent."
In the warmth and comfort of Alice Finney's faded sitting room, all of Kincaid's rehearsed introduction dissolved. "Jasmine Dent was my neighbor. And my friend. She was terminally ill with lung cancer, so when she died at first we assumed that the disease had progressed faster than expected."
Alice Finney listened intently, not taking her eyes from Kincaid's face even to sip her tea. At the mention of Jas-mine's death she pinched her lips together in a small grimace.
"Then we discovered that Jasmine had asked a young friend to help her commit suicide, but had backed out at the last minute. I ordered an autopsy." Kincaid paused, but Alice didn't interrupt. "She died from a morphine overdose, and I don't believe it was self-administered."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "I could give you lots of logical reasons, but it's more gut-reaction than anything else, to tell you the truth. I just don't believe it."
"And it's brought you here." Alice leaned forward and lifted the teapot from the small, oval table, then refilled both their cups. "I'll tell you what I can." She sat quietly for a moment, her eyes u
nfocused as she gathered her thoughts, then she sighed. "It was a bad business from the very beginning. May Dent was never meant to have children. She hadn't the capacity to love them, though to give her credit, perhaps she tried with Theo. She was a bitter woman, one of those people who always feel life has short-changed them. Perhaps she loved her brother more than she should, though in those days," the corners of Alice's mouth turned up in amusement, "one didn't speculate about such things. Whatever the cause, she despised her sister-in-law, never had a good word to say about her."
"And Jasmine?" Kincaid got up, went to the grate and banked the settling fire.
"Jasmine must have reminded May of her mother. Whatever the cause, those two rubbed each other the wrong way from the moment they set eyes on one another. And Jasmine… Jasmine was difficult. I'd retired from teaching when they closed the village school—the children went to the nearest comprehensive—but I still had connections, privy to gossip, you might say."
"You were the village schoolmistress?" Kincaid was enchanted with a vision of a younger Alice, guiding her charges with the same gentle humor.
"I had two young children to raise by myself, and neither the luxury nor the inclination to be idle," she answered crisply. "Jasmine," she continued as if he hadn't interrupted, "was not liked. Not actively disliked, perhaps, but she didn't fit in, she made the other children uncomfortable." Alice paused, frowning. "Jasmine was a beautiful girl, but in a haunting sort of way. Different. They didn't know what to make of her. I tried to befriend her myself— I thought she might need someone to confide in, and it certainly wouldn't have been May—but she wasn't having any. There was a reserve about her, a secretiveness, that one couldn't penetrate."
Kincaid nodded. "What about Theo? Did he fit in any better?"
Alice leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs toward the fire. Kincaid noted that her ankles, above the padded tongues of the trainers, were still trim.
"I suppose you could say Theo adjusted more easily. He looked more English, for a start. He lost his colonial accent as quickly as he could. I don't imagine Jasmine ever did, completely?" Alice inquired of Kincaid. "She had that very precise enunciation, and a trace of the sing-song that comes from speaking the Hindustani dialects."
"No, she never lost it. And it grew more pronounced with her illness." Kincaid realized that Jasmine's voice had been one of the things that had attracted him to her—that, and her intelligence, and her sharp, dry humor.
"Theo did make friends with the local children, or was at least allowed to tag along. And May coddled him a bit in the beginning. He was only ten when they came, after all. Still practically an infant. But he always had this lost-puppy air about him, as if he might be kicked any minute."
"And as they got older?"
"What always surprised me," said Alice, "was that Jasmine stayed as long as she did. I imagine it was her sense of duty to Theo that kept her here. She was very protective of him, and very jealous of May. Especially when Theo began to get into trouble."
"Trouble? Theo?" Kincaid straightened up, his interest quickening.
Alice moderated her comment. "Well, I don't think Theo ever did anything wrong in a malicious sense. He was just one of those boys that attract bad luck, and unsavory friends, and it began to tell. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time, if you know what I mean."
Kincaid smiled. "I've heard that once or twice before. And how did May react to Theo's little escapades?"
"She defended him at first, but after Jasmine left, the escapades became more serious than setting pastures alight and joyriding in other people's autos." Leaning forward, Alice took a biscuit from the plate and nibbled at its edge. "Chocolate digestives. My one vice," she added apologetically. "May stopped talking about sending him to university. It was a pipe dream, anyway, he'd never done well enough at school to merit it."
"Do you know why Jasmine left?" Kincaid asked, treading delicately now.
"No. But I always wondered. She just quit her job and disappeared. Literally here one day and gone the next. May was absolutely furious. Called her an ungrateful bitch, which was strong language for May. Of course, from the time Jasmine left school May had done nothing but complain about her, what a burden she was and how anxious she was to be rid of her—though I think Jasmine began paying her share of the housekeeping as soon as she found her first job. And it wasn't as if May couldn't afford to keep her."
"So you'd have thought May would have been thrilled."
"Exactly. But that was May for you. Never satisfied, especially when she got what she wanted." Alice stared into the fire, and Kincaid waited, not interrupting. "There was something, though… I would have put it down to malicious gossip and forgotten all about it, if Jasmine hadn't disappeared so soon afterwards."
"A rumor?"
"Yes—that Jasmine was going around with that boy from over in Bladen Valley, the one who wasn't quite right. Did you come through Bladen Valley?" She gestured to the west. "Another experiment, that. Built during the first War, though, to house the estate workers. A fitting place, I suppose, for a war memorial."
"Is that what that is? The stone cross?"
Alice nodded. "Done by the sculptor Eric Gill. It's supposed to be one St. Juliana, a fifteenth-century mystic. What she had to do with war I never discovered."
"Mrs. Finney," Kincaid led her gently back, "what was wrong with the boy?"
"I'm not sure. Not retarded. More unbalanced, mentally ill, perhaps. Given to sudden fits of violence, if the stories were true, but it's been a very long time ago." She sighed.
"I've tired you," Kincaid said, instantly contrite. "I'm sorry."
"No, no, it's not that." Alice Finney straightened up, some of her crisp demeanor returning. "I'm aggravated with myself, if you must know, because I can't remember the boy's name. I don't like not being able to remember things—makes me feel old." She smiled. "Which I'm not, of course."
"Of course," Kincaid agreed.
"All his people are gone now, too, I think. The boy's mother had him institutionalized, not long after Jasmine left, I believe. And she's been dead for a good fifteen or twenty years now. There was no other family that I know of."
"What happened to Theo, after Jasmine left?" "He did finish school, if I remember rightly, but couldn't seem to find his feet afterwards. Couldn't find work, got into a bit more trouble all the time. And then May died. Took pneumonia and was gone, just like that. Jasmine never came back, not even for the funeral, and after May's affairs were settled and the cottage sold, Theo disappeared, too. And I never heard another word of either of them, until this day."
"Did May leave them anything, do you know?" "She must have had quite a tidy nest egg. Tight as an old trout, May was. Managed her inheritance a sight better than her brother managed his, apparently, but I've no idea how she divided it between the children—there was no other family. She could have left everything to a home for wayward cats, for all I know." She paused, her brows drawing together in concentration. "You might try the solicitor's office in Blandford Forum."
"The one where Jasmine worked? It's still there?" "It was the only one at the time, so naturally they handled May's affairs. Old Mr. Rawlinson's dead, and the son may not remember Jasmine, but it might be worth a try."
Kincaid rose. "You've been a great help. I never meant to take so much of your time."
"Nonsense." She stood, shaking off Kincaid's proffered help. "Do you think I have better things to do than take tea with an attractive young man who's interested in everything I have to say? It's an old woman's dream, my dear."
Kincaid had the sudden urge to do something very improper, very un-English. Placing his fingertips on her shoulders, he said, "You're delightful. Your Jack was a very lucky man, and if I were a few years older, Alice Finney, I'd marry you myself." He leaned over and kissed her cheek, and her skin felt as soft as a young girl's lips.
Blandford Forum, Alice had informed him, had burned nearly to the ground in the summer of 1731
. The fire had started in the tallow-chandler's house and spread quickly from one thatched roof to another. Tragic as the destruction must have seemed at the time, Blandford Forum had risen from its ashes as a Georgian gem. The offices of Rawlinson and Sons, Solicitors, had been housed in a Georgian building in the rebuilt Market Place as long as anyone could remember.
Peering through the frosted glass of the inside door, Kincaid could make out only fuzzy shapes. He pulled open the door and the lumps resolved themselves into ordinary waiting room furniture, a desk, and behind it, a receptionist.
She swiveled away from her typewriter and smiled at him. "Can I help you?"
"Uh, I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. Is Mr. Rawlinson in?"
"He's in court this afternoon." Glancing at her watch, she added, "I'm afraid he may be a while yet. Would you like to make an appointment?"
She diplomatically didn't add, thought Kincaid, that any self-respecting idiot would have made one in the first place. The nameplate on her desk read "Carol White," a good, solid English name. It suited her. Middle-aged and well-built, with an open, friendly face and a glorious head of wavy, shoulder-length chestnut hair—in a few years she would begin the slide toward matronly, but she was still very attractive indeed.
"Would that be young Mr. Rawlinson?"
She stared at him, perplexed, but still polite. "Old Mr. Rawlinson passed away ten years ago. You're not from around here, then?"
"London, actually." Kincaid again fished his warrant card from his pocket, and extended it to her.
"Oh." Her eyes widened and she glanced up at his face, then back at the folder. "Fancy that. What would Scotland Yard want with us?"
Kincaid heard the sharp, little intake of breath—the ordinary citizen's response to the copper's unexpected appearance—and he hastened to reassure her. "Just some very dusty information. Is there any chance Mr. Rawlinson might remember a girl who worked here almost thirty years ago? Her name was Jasmine Dent."
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