All Shall Be Well dk&gj-2

by Deborah Crombie

  Carol White stared at him, then said slowly, "No. Mr. Rawlinson would have still been away at school. But I do. I remember Jasmine."

  Unasked, Kincaid picked up a visitor's chair and swung it around next to the desk, never taking his eyes from Carol White's face. "You do?"

  Still hesitant, she continued. "I know it's a bit silly of me, but I hate to admit I've been here as long as I have. I came here straight from leaving school, same as Jasmine, but she was a couple of years older."

  "Mr. Rawlinson needed two secretaries?"

  "You could say that." She smiled, showing even, white teeth. "Mr. Rawlinson liked pretty young girls, and we were both that, if I do say so myself." Holding up a hand to forestall Kincaid interrupting, she added, "Oh, I don't mean he was a real dirty old man—never tried anything on, as far as I know—he just fancied himself a bit of a rogue. And since he paid us the bare minimum in those days, I guess he could afford us."

  Having moved around to the side of Carol's desk, Kincaid discovered that what he had thought to be a dress was actually a thigh-length tunic, beneath which she wore skintight, black, stretch trousers, and high-heeled sandals. Following his appreciative gaze, she laughed. "Dressed courtesy of my teenage daughter, who can't stand for her old mum to go out looking like a frump." Then sobering, she said, "Truthfully, I think Mr. Rawlinson intended from the beginning to groom me as Jasmine's successor. She must have made it as clear to him as she did everyone else that she didn't intend to stay in this poky town any longer than she had to. Jasmine was ferociously ambitious, Mr. Kincaid. What became of her? Is she a great success? I could never see her as housewife and kids material."

  "No, she never married. And she did quite well for herself. She was supervisor in a borough planning office."

  "Was?" Carol White asked quietly. "Then she's—"

  "She had cancer."

  "Oh. I'm sorry." Her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head. "God, how silly of me. It's not even as though we were great friends, haven't thought of her in years—it's just that whenever I hear of someone I knew growing up dying, it gets me right here." She thumped her chest with a fist, then reached in her desk drawer for a box of tissues and blew her nose. "A reminder of my own mortality, I guess. If it can happen to them, it can happen to you."

  "I know exactly what you mean," Kincaid said, thinking of his own reaction, not only to the deaths of those he knew, but to the deaths of strangers—that aching sense of loss he never quite managed to control.

  "But I don't understand." Giving her eyes one last wipe, Carol threw the tissues in the wastebin beneath her desk and collected herself. "Why are you asking about Jasmine?"

  Kincaid gave her an answer even more brief than the one he'd given Alice Finney, but she nodded, apparently satisfied. Years of working in a solicitor's office would have taught her to be discreet.

  "You said you weren't particularly close friends?"

  "Oh, we talked, the way girls will in an office, about what was going on, and who's bum Mr. Rawlinson had patted most often that week. Just chatter, really. But if you ventured into anything too personal she'd snap shut like a clam." Carol paused, screwing up her face in earnest concentration. "Sometimes… sometimes I had the feeling Jasmine had never had a friend, didn't know what to do with one."

  "Then what gave you the impression she was so ambitious?"

  "London. That's all she talked about. And she pinched every penny, brought her dinner from home every day, even did child-minding in the evenings to make a bit extra. I remember that she didn't get on well with her old-maid aunt."

  Kincaid smiled. "I think that's a safe assumption," he said, then returned to her earlier point. "Did Jasmine not go out, then, if she was so careful with her money? A pretty girl that age, you'd think there'd be plenty to do in a town this size."

  Carol shook her head. "I even tried to fix her up a few times with a double-date, but she wasn't having any."

  "Did she talk about men? I don't mean to sound like a chauvinist, but it does seem the natural thing."

  "I'm sure that's all I talked about, night and day," Carol said, laughter in her voice. "Must have been bloody boring, now that I think about it. But Jasmine… no, not that I remember." She stared into space for a moment, eyes unfocused, and Kincaid waited. "There was something, though. Those last couple of months before she left, she seemed different—had that 'cat-that-ate-the-canary' look about her. Sometimes I almost expected her to wash her whiskers."

  "But she never confided in you?"

  This time the shake of her head was wistful. "No. Sorry."

  "What about when she left? Did she tell you anything beforehand?"

  "I was just as shocked as anyone. She just came in that day, gave her notice, cleaned out her drawer and left. Mr. Rawlinson was dead chuffed, I can tell you."

  "Did you hear from her after that?"

  "Not a word. But she did take me aside and tell me good-bye that day. She wished me luck."

  This time it was Kincaid who sat silently, thinking that this office had probably not changed much… imagining Jasmine sitting where Carol sat… Jasmine bent over the typewriter… Jasmine's dark head silhouetted against the faded cream wallpaper. What had made her take flight, abandoning her carefully made plans, and her brother?

  "Did you ever meet her brother, Theo?" he asked, following his thought.

  "Not until the old aunt died, and we handled her affairs." She shrugged, the movement flexing the fabric across her full breasts. "He wasn't up to much, was he? 'Course, he was just a kid, not more than seventeen or eighteen at the time. That probably explains it."

  "Explains what?"

  Carol White looked down at her intertwined fingers, the pink-varnished nails paired like lovers. "Oh, I've probably said more than I ought. It's been such a long time, and I'm not sure what I really remember. I think Mr. Rawlinson had to handle everything, the funeral arrangements, the sale of the cottage… Theo was so shattered. Almost hysterical. Only natural, I suppose, but at the time I thought his behavior rather odd—most young men who come into enough money to make them independent have to work at appearing grief-stricken."

  "I didn't realize that May Dent had provided so well for Theo."

  "Well enough, but I believe Jasmine held the money in trust until he came of age." She straightened and took a breath, the sudden sharpness of her movements signaling to Kincaid the end of the interview. "Mr. Rawlinson should be back soon. Do you want to wait?"

  "No. I think you've been more help than he possibly could." Kincaid stood and replaced his chair, lining the legs up precisely with the worn spots in the aging carpet. When he held out his hand, Carol White took it and said, "I'm sorry about Jasmine. Really."

  "Thank you," he said gravely, and she smiled, some of the discomfort leaving her face.

  "Mr. Kincaid," she called as he reached the door, and he turned back. "It's not true, what I said about not thinking of Jasmine all these years. I've envied her, thought about how glamorous her life must have been, while I stayed here and did all the expected things. I always felt a bit of a coward." Her shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly. "Maybe it wasn't such a bad choice, after all."

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gemma left the car garaged at the Yard and took the tube to Tottenham Court Road. Driving in London was difficult enough, driving such a short distance in the rain was foolhardy.

  The address Felicity Howarth had given for her employer was a street level door tucked between an Indian take-away and a dry cleaners. Gemma wrinkled her nose against the pungent smells coming from the take-away—her stomach already felt empty and it would be at least an hour before she could even consider it lunchtime. Turning her raincoat collar up against the drizzle, she squinted at the names next to the bell-pushes. A tattered business card taped next to the 2B buzzer read "Home-Care, Inc."

  Having tried the front door and finding it unlocked, Gemma pushed it open and climbed the concrete stairs without pushing the buzzer. She knocked at
2B, and after a moment the door swung open.

  "I told you I didn't—" Her mouth open, the woman stared at Gemma in surprise. Recovering enough to smile apologetically, she added, "Sorry. Thought you were my boyfriend come to finish a row. Can I help you?"

  Through the open front door Gemma could see directly into the sitting room of the flat. One side of the room contained ordinary furnishings—sofa, chair, television—the other held a desk, filing cabinets and a computer terminal. "This is Home-Care?" What began as a statement ended as a tentative question.

  "Oh." The woman sounded taken aback. "Yes, it is, but most of our business is done by phone, so I wasn't expecting… as you can see." She gestured at herself—jeans, faded pink T-shirt with the tail out, bare feet sporting scarlet toenail polish. Gemma judged her to be in her forties, a sturdy woman with a pleasant face and a shock of thick brown hair liberally sprinkled with gray.

  "My name's Gemma James." Gemma took her warrant card from her bag and held it up for inspection. "We're making routine inquiries into the death of one of your patients. A Miss Jasmine Dent."

  Color drained from the woman's face, and her fingers tightened where she held the edge of the door. "Oh, Christ." She looked behind her, as if for support, then turned back to Gemma. "Felicity told me about the p.m. I suppose you'd better come in." She closed the door and waved Gemma toward the sofa, then added, "My name's Martha Trevellyan, by the way." While Gemma sat down on the sofa and pulled her notebook from her bag, Martha Trevellyan fished a packet of Player's from under the papers on her desk. She lit one, then said through the smoke as she shook out the match, "I know what you're thinking. Health-care professionals shouldn't smoke. Sets a bad example, right? Well, by my last count I've quit fifteen times, but it never seems to stick."

  "Is Home-Care your business, Miss Trevellyan?"

  "Yes." Martha Trevellyan sat down on the edge of the chair opposite Gemma. "Two years ago I decided to get out of nursing, try something that might not kill me before I reached fifty." She smiled a little ruefully at Gemma and tapped her cigarette on the coffee table ashtray. "Look, Sergeant—it is Sergeant, isn't it?" Gemma nodded. "What's this all about? I'm still operating on a shoestring, here. Any allegations of negligence could ruin me."

  "Perhaps you could start by explaining how you operate." Gemma waved a finger toward the room's work area.

  "Most of our business comes through referrals, even from the beginning. I'd done critical nursing and the doctors I'd worked with recommended me to their patients who needed in-home care." She settled back in her chair, looking more comfortable as she began to talk about a familiar subject. "I keep a list of nurses who can work for me full or part time. When we acquire a new patient, I match them with an available nurse, keep things coordinated as necessary. I bill the patients, then pay my nursing staff. Simple enough?"

  "Beautifully," said Gemma.

  "Except that good nurses demand high wages, and my profit margin is very, very slim." Martha leaned forward and crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray. "It's not exactly the Ritz around here. You might have noticed. I'll need a few more years of good luck and hard work if I want to provide comfortably for my old age." She smiled as she spoke, but it didn't conceal the worry in her eyes.

  The flat, although small and cluttered, looked scrupulously clean, and the furnishings were of good quality if rather conventional taste. "It could be worse, as far as temporary situations go," said Gemma with an answering smile, and she felt Martha relax a little further. "Tell me, Miss Trevellyan—"

  "Actually, it's Mrs.—I've been divorced for donkey's years. Raised two kids by myself, but now they're both out and educated I could afford to take a risk." She nodded toward her work area. "Call me Martha, why don't you. I'll feel less like I'm in the dock."

  Gemma didn't mind conceding to her small request. It was common enough, and seemed to help close the gap people felt between themselves and the police. "How did you acquire Jasmine Dent as a patient, Martha?"

  "Doctor's referral, if I remember correctly. I can check my files." Lighting another cigarette, she stood and went to one of the metal cabinets beside her desk. She pulled open a drawer and ran her fingers along the colored tabs before extracting a medical chart. "Dr. Gwilym, all right. Cancer specialist. He's sent quite a few my way."

  "Was there anything unusual about Jasmine's case?"

  Martha thought for a moment, then shook her head. "No, not really. By the time we get them, there's not usually much chance of remission. She was in good hands with Felicity." At Gemma's inquiring look, she continued. "Felicity Howarth's my best nurse. I pretty much let her pick and choose which cases she wants, according to her schedule and what's geographically convenient for her." Thoughtfully, she added, "And it's also a matter of personal preference. All nurses have them. Felicity does particularly well with cancer patients."

  "Did Felicity Howarth choose Jasmine's case?"

  "As far as I can remember. Felicity's been carrying an especially heavy caseload lately. I thought it might be a bit much for her, but she insisted. Said she needed the money."

  "Do you know why?"

  Hesitating, Martha stubbed out her cigarette before she answered. "I don't feel comfortable giving out personal details about my employees." Gemma waited in silence, and after a moment Martha sighed and said, "Well, I don't really see what harm it can do. I know Felicity has a son in a private nursing home, some sort of childhood injury. Maybe the fees have gone up. It must cost her a bundle anyway." Then she added a little combatively, "But I don't know that that's what she wanted the money for. She could be saving for a cruise, for all I know. I' in sure she deserves it."

  Don't we all, thought Gemma, trying to ignore the growing hunger signals from her stomach. "One more thing, Martha. About the morphine. How easily could Jasmine have saved enough morphine to kill herself?"

  Martha Trevellyan lit another cigarette, and Gemma saw the return of tension in the sharpness of her movements. "Look. You have to understand. When the doctor orders unlimited self-administered morphine for a terminal patient, we have no real way of monitoring how they use it. Miss Dent could have requested more morphine while actually keeping her dosage the same. It happens. More often, honestly, than any of us like to admit. What are you going to do, slap their hands? Most of them do it as insurance, in case the pain becomes more than they can bear. And in Jasmine's case, because of the position of the tumor, the pain probably would have been very bad indeed."

  Martha Trevellyan's account of Jasmine's treatment and condition tallied with Felicity Howarth's, but Gemma still felt curious about Home-Care's system. "Who's responsible for acquiring drugs for the patients?"

  "I am. I keep a log, and the staff sign it when they make a withdrawal. Then I do a regular cross-check between the patients' charts and the medication log."

  "No discrepancies?" Gemma asked.

  "None," Martha Trevellyan said flatly. She drew on her cigarette, then tapped it several times against the lip of the ashtray. "Just how far is this inquiry going to go, Sergeant? Are we accused of anything?"

  "Felicity Howarth will have to appear at the inquest tomorrow and make a statement as to Jasmine Dent's treatment and state of mind. After that," Gemma shrugged, "it will depend on the coroner's ruling."

  "She didn't tell me," Martha said, disconcerted. "But then that's Felicity for you—she wouldn't have wanted to worry me." She studied Gemma for a moment, squinting against the rising smoke as she ground her cigarette out in the ashtray. "There's one thing I don't understand. Why are you lot spending your time on a simple suicide? Surely you have more important things to do?"

  "Felicity didn't tell you?"

  "Tell me what?"

  "There's a possibility the suicide may have been assisted, and that's a felony offense." Gemma made a silent wager on Kincaid's intuition. "Or it may not have been suicide at all, but murder."

  There was no word from Kincaid when Gemma got back to the Yard. She shook her head as she th
ought about his morning call from the car. Dorset? He'd accused her of chasing after wild hares often enough, but she couldn't remember ever driving across three counties on a moment's whim.

  It worried her, this obsession he seemed to be developing about Jasmine Dent's past. He'd not spoken to her about Jasmine's journals since she'd helped him carry them up to his flat. Had he found some clue in Jasmine's early life, or was it just morbid curiosity, an attempt to resurrect a girl he hadn't known? Remembering the photo she'd found facedown in Jasmine's bureau drawer, Gemma still couldn't say what had kept her from showing it to him. Had it been for his sake, or her own?

  She'd taken refuge in Kincaid's empty office, and the silence gave her no answer.

  Gemma sat up smartly in Kincaid's chair and shrugged off her uncharacteristic mood. It was probably just the curry she'd eaten on a too-empty stomach. She had problems enough without taking on his. She'd write up a report of the morning's interview, and if Kincaid hadn't called by the time she'd finished, she just might get away early.

  After she picked up Toby at the sitter's in Hackney, Gemma headed east toward Leyton. Anxious as she had been to leave the Yard, the thought of the long evening at home suddenly palled.

  Leyton High Street hadn't changed much since her childhood. The red-brick shop-fronts had sprouted a few more wire safety-grills, the Chinese take-away had been replaced by a Greek gyros, a shop that Gemma remembered as selling knitted goods now displayed neon-sprayed T-shirts in its windows—but the basic character had remained the same. Once a village in its own right, Leyton had been absorbed by London long ago, and only the High Street served as a reminder of its former identity.

  Her mum and dad had owned the bakery on the High since before Gemma was born, and she'd grown up in the rooms above the shop, smelling sausage rolls, and pork pies, and fresh bread even in her sleep. She'd worked in the shop after school, and even now she felt her father's disappointment that neither of his daughters had cared to stay in the business.