All Shall Be Well dk&gj-2

by Deborah Crombie

  He can bloody well freeze, Meg thought spitefully as she turned the knob and let herself out of the room.

  She walked, mindlessly, aimlessly, stopping to stare in shop windows at items she didn't see. The smell of hot grease and frying fish drifted from the open door of a chip shop and she hurried on, her stomach churning with nausea.

  It was only when she found herself standing at an intersection on Finchley Road that she realized where her wandering feet had taken her. She shook herself, hesitated, then crossed with the light and began the long climb up Arkwright Road into Hampstead.

  In spite of the cars lining both curbsides, Carlingford Road felt deserted, held in mid-afternoon repose before its occupants returned home from work. Meg climbed the stairs to Jasmine's flat and fished the key from the inside pocket of her handbag. She listened a moment, then unlocked the door and stepped inside. Sid regarded her from the bed, then curled himself back into a tight, black ball. "Wish I could do that," she said aloud. "Shut it out. Shut it all out."

  Closing her eyes, she rested her back against the door and breathed—breathed in the stillness, the faint spicy scent that clung to Jasmine's things, the beginnings of the chill mustiness that signals an unused room.

  Over the months the flat had become her safe haven, an inviolate space, and soon it would be lost to her forever. Meg pushed herself away from the door and walked slowly around the room, touching familiar things. She moved to the window, where Jasmine had often stood and caressed the carved wooden elephants as she watched the Major working in the garden. Today even the colors in the garden were subdued, the blaze of the tulips and forsythia muted by the moisture in the air. Her fingers traced the familiar pattern on the smallest elephant's back, the wood silky from much stroking. It brought no comfort. A sound from the hall caused her to start guiltily and drop the elephant back on the sill with shaking fingers. The doorknob turned, then someone tapped softly.

  Panic closed Meg's throat, cramped her stomach. She forced it back, forced herself to think reasonably. It couldn't be Roger. The rapping knuckles had been much too tenuous. But whoever it was would have heard the elephant knocking against the windowsill.

  She crossed the room, pulled back the latch and slowly opened the door. Theo Dent stood in the hall, looking as awkward as Meg felt.

  "I'm sorry… I didn't realize," he said, the rest of his face coloring to match the end of his nose, which Meg assumed was pink from exposure to the chill wind. Damp beaded his curly hair. "I just came on the off chance… I didn't expect… I don't know why I came, really," he finished lamely. "I missed my train. There won't be another until the commuter rush."

  Meg pulled the door open wider and stepped back. "I didn't intend to come here, either," she said as Theo entered. She smiled at him, struck by a feeling of kinship. "I've no right to be here. It just seemed…"

  "You do, you know." Theo wiped his hand under his nose and sniffed. "She left it to you."

  Meg stared at him. Roger had talked of the flat in cash-in-hand terms so often—sell it and use the money for something else—that somehow the idea of ownership hadn't penetrated. She looked around the room, seeing it in a new perspective. She would actually possess this flat, be able to do with it as she pleased—sell it, lease it, even live here if she chose.

  For a heady moment she imagined herself inhabiting these comfortable rooms, putting her own stamp on them, but the vision faded. She sensed that Jasmine's imprint was too strong for her own less assertive personality to take root. And Roger… she'd never escape from Roger here.

  But the reminder of ownership gave her a new confidence. She knelt and turned on the radiator, then switched on a lamp and shed her coat. "I'll make us some tea."

  Theo followed her into the kitchen area and watched her quietly for a while. "You must have spent a lot of time here with her. I envy you that. I suppose I thought that if I came here I could… I don't know… place her here more firmly."

  "It's not fair, her leaving the flat to me instead of you." Meg turned from the kettle to regard him earnestly. "I argued with her about it, but she wouldn't—"

  Theo held up a hand. "You mustn't say that. She did enough. All these years she did enough. More than she should." He took off his spectacles, looking blindly around for something to wipe them on. Meg handed him the tea towel. "You see, I've been a rotten failure all my life, and Jasmine always picked up the pieces." He hooked the spectacles back over his ears and pushed them up the bridge of his nose with a forefinger. "Everything always sounded so glorious at the start, and then somehow—" He shrugged and let the sentence hang.

  Meg poured boiling water into two mugs, sloshed the teabags around for a bit, then plopped them in the sink. "There's no milk. Sugar?" Theo nodded and she stirred in a spoonful before handing him the mug. They moved to the table and Meg sat in her usual chair. She rubbed at a smudge in the wood's dark gloss, marveling at this sudden surge of proprietary feeling. She'd never really possessed anything—a few bits and pieces bought for the furnished bedsit, her sister's castoffs—never anything that inspired a sense of pride, of expanding the boundaries of her self past her own body.

  "The table belonged to our Aunt May," Theo said, watching her. "I'm surprised Jasmine kept it."

  "She never talked much about it. The years you lived in Dorset, I mean. I know you came to England to live with your aunt when your father died, but that's about all." Meg sipped her tea and studied Theo, searching for some resemblance to her friend. There was something, perhaps, in the set of his eyes, the oval shape of his face. He looked younger than his forty-five years, almost boyish—his face seemed curiously unmarked by experience.

  Suddenly aware of how she must look, she ran her fingers through her hair. She'd left the bedsit without so much as a wash and a brush. "Jasmine talked about you, though," she continued a little hurriedly, covering her discomfort, "things you did as children. And she was pleased about your shop. She thought you'd finally found something that suited you."

  Theo took his glasses off again and covered his face with his hands. "I couldn't tell her," he said, his voice muffled by his palms.

  Meg waited a moment. When he didn't continue she said, "Tell her what?"

  He raised his head. "It's just like the rest. A cock-up. I can't hang on much longer."

  "But—"

  "I thought that's why she wouldn't see me—that she just didn't want to hear it again. She'd told me this was the last time. "No more free rides, Theo." What was I to say?" He swallowed. "Then when she called and wanted to see me—"

  "Would you have told her?"

  Theo shrugged guilelessly. "I was never much good at lying."

  "You must have been in a panic."

  Theo nodded. "Didn't sleep that night, trying to work out what to say."

  "She wouldn't have been angry with you."

  "That would almost have been better." Theo's mug sat untouched on the table before him. He picked it up and drank thirstily, then licked his lips. "You don't understand what it's like to let someone down again and again. If she'd shouted at me, that I could have managed. Other people have done it often enough." He smiled. "But I'd wait for the flash of disappointment on her face—she could never quite conceal it—then she'd smile and make excuses for me. As if it were somehow her fault. I couldn't bear it."

  Meg hesitated over the words forming on her lips, unsure of her right to ask them. "Will you be all right now? With the mortgage taken care of?"

  Theo put his glasses on, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with the gesture Meg already found familiar. The light from the table lamp bounced off the lenses, shielding his eyes from her. "If probate doesn't drag on too long, if trade isn't too abysmal, I might scrape by. I know this is a terrible thing to say, but this happened just in the nick of time."

  Kincaid stepped through the street door, then paused in the stairwell of his building, rotating his head to ease his aching neck and shoulder muscles and running a hand through his already rumpled ha
ir. He'd spent the afternoon doing the kind of thing he most disliked, following up the vague and tenuous connections in Jasmine Dent's life. Former co-workers, employers, her doctor, her dentist, her insurance agent—anyone who might remember a name, an incident, provide a thread attaching past and present.

  He came up blank, as he had suspected he would.

  The murmur of voices came to him as he reached Jasmine's landing. Pausing, he cocked his head and listened, assuring himself that the sound issued from Jasmine's flat.

  He fitted his key in the lock and quietly opened the door. Margaret Bellamy and Theo Dent sat at the dining table. They turned at the sound of the door, their faces frozen in that startled, guilty expression of children caught out at something forbidden.

  "Mr. Kincaid?" Meg recovered first. She flushed and half rose from her chair.

  "A tea party?" Kincaid said, and smiled at them. "Is anyone invited?"

  Meg pushed her chair back. "Here. Let me—"

  "No," Kincaid said as he turned toward the kitchen, "I'll get my own. I know my way around well enough."

  They sat in awkward silence, their eyes fixed on Kincaid as he filled the electric kettle and put a tea bag in the pottery mug he'd begun to regard as his own. After a few moments, Meg turned to Theo and spoke with determined cheerfulness. "I know your village. I'm from Dorking, and I must have passed through it a hundred times on the way to my granny's in Guildford. Is your shop the one just at the crook in the road?"

  Theo nodded, still watching Kincaid. "That's right. Across from the clock and the bell-ringer."

  "Must be lovely," Meg said rather wistfully, "all on your own like that."

  Kincaid carried his cup to the table and sat down, then unbuttoned his collar and loosened the knot in his tie. "Which one of you," he said, smiling at them companion-ably, "has the key to this flat?"

  Meg looked down at the table, twisting her cup in her hands. "I do. Jasmine had me make a copy, in case she couldn't get to the door when I came round."

  "Why didn't you mention it before?"

  "I didn't think of it." Meg met his eyes, her brow furrowed in entreaty. "Honestly. I was so upset it just never crossed my mind. Does it matter?"

  "Tell me again what happened after you left Jasmine last Thursday afternoon."

  She thought for a moment, her face relaxing as she remembered. "I walked home. I couldn't stand still, hadn't the patience to wait for the bus. I felt I might burst with the relief of not having to help Jasmine die. It was such a lovely day, do you remember?"

  Kincaid nodded but didn't speak, not wanting to risk halting the flow of words.

  "Everything seemed so clear and sharp; the lights coming on in the dusk, the crowds hurrying home from work. I felt a part of it all but lifted above it at the same time. I felt I could cope with anything." She looked from Kincaid to Theo, twin spots of color staining her cheeks. "It sounds absurd, doesn't it?"

  "Not at all," said Theo quickly. "I know exactly—"

  Kincaid interrupted him. "Then what happened, Meg?"

  She shoved her hair behind her ear and looked down at her hands. "He was there, at the bedsit, waiting for me."

  "Roger?" asked Kincaid. Meg nodded but didn't speak, and after a moment Kincaid prompted her. "And you told him what had happened, didn't you?"

  She nodded again, her hair falling across her face, and this time she didn't push it back.

  "What did Roger do?" The silence stretched. Theo opened his mouth to speak and Kincaid gave him a quick warning head-shake.

  "I thought he'd shout. That's what he does, usually." She rubbed the ball of one thumb against the nail of the other with great concentration.

  Kincaid realized the daylight was fading, cut off by the buildings to the west, and the three of them sat illuminated in the pool of light cast by the single lamp.

  Meg took a breath and laced her fingers together, as if to stop the compulsive rubbing. She glanced at Theo, then looked at Kincaid as she spoke. "He went silent. I've seen him that way once or twice before, when he was really angry. It doesn't sound much, but it's worse than words. It's almost like—" she frowned as she searched for the right description, "a physical force. A blow."

  "He didn't say anything?" Kincaid asked, letting a hint of disbelief creep into his voice.

  "Oh, he called me things at first," the corners of her mouth turned down in a grimace, "but it was like his mind wasn't really on it, if you know what I mean."

  "Did he leave straight away?"

  Meg shook her head. "No. I wanted him to go. All that elation I'd felt on the way home just vanished—like I'd been pricked with a pin. But I knew it was no use asking. It would just make him that much more difficult."

  Kincaid remembered the emphatic quality of his wife's silences, and the discomfort of being confined in a small space with someone who used non-communication as a weapon. "You tried to talk to him, didn't you?" he said, pity making him more gentle than he intended. "To please him, to get some response?" She didn't answer, the shamed expression on her face more eloquent than words. After a moment she said, "I just curled up on the bed, finally, closed my eyes and pretended he wasn't there until he went away."

  "Where were your keys, Meg?"

  Her startled eyes met his. She reached for her handbag and patted it. "Here. Where they always are."

  "Did you leave the room any time while Roger was there?"

  "No, of course I—" She stopped, frowning. "Well, I did go to the loo."

  "Did you go out again that night, or use your keys for any reason?"

  "No." The word was a whisper.

  "And when did he—"

  "Look, Mr. Kincaid," Theo interrupted, "I don't know what you're getting at, but I think you're bullying Miss Bellamy unnecessarily. Don't you think—"

  Kincaid held up a hand. "One more question, Theo, that's all." He found himself tempted to treat her as Roger did and take advantage of her conditioned response, but he also knew mat crossing that line would damage his own integrity beyond repair. "Meg, when did Roger come back?"

  "Late. After midnight. He made a copy of the front door key, even though I told him that Mrs. Wilson would throw me out if she caught him sneaking in late at night that way."

  "Were you asleep?"

  She nodded. "It was only when he got in bed that I—" She glanced at Theo and stopped, her quick color rising. "I mean…"

  Kincaid thought it was time he let her off the hook. "Theo," he said conversationally, "are you sure you had no idea how Jasmine intended to leave her money? You could use it, couldn't you? Something gives me the impression that the antique business isn't going all that well." A look passed between Theo and Meg that Kincaid could have sworn was conspiratorial. If so, they'd made a quick alliance.

  "I'll be honest with you, Mr. Kincaid." Theo leaned forward, forearms on the table. "I've told Margaret that things were pretty desperate. I needed the money, all right. But I didn't intend to tell Jasmine, even after she called last Thursday and said she wanted to see me."

  "Very noble of you, I'm sure," Kincaid said, and Theo pressed his lips together at the sarcasm.

  "You can believe what you like, Mr. Kincaid. I've no proof of anything. But I loved my sister and I thought she'd suffered over me enough." He looked at his watch, then stood and carried his cup to the sink. "And if I don't go I'll miss my train. You know where to reach me if you want anything further from me, although I can't imagine how I could help you." Leaning across the table, Theo held out a hand to Meg. "Margaret Thanks."

  The smile stayed on Meg's face until the door closed behind him.

  "The party's over, I guess, Meg." Kincaid rose and took her cup and his own to the sink. She stayed at the table, hands locked tightly in her lap, while he did the washing up and spooned tinned food into Sid's bowl.

  He finished his chores and stood studying her downcast face, sensing her reluctance. "You know, I don't see any reason you shouldn't stay here for a bit if you want."

  S
he looked up at him, her expression more tentative than hopeful, as if letting herself want something too badly automatically meant it would be snatched away. "Honestly? Do you think it would be all right? I could look after things—" Her smile vanished as quickly as it had come. "No. He'd find me, and I don't want him here again, in these rooms."

  "You wouldn't have to let him in, or let him stay."

  She was already snaking her head before he'd finished the sentence. "You don't understand. Until today I'd man-aged to keep him away from here. Nothing would have been the same." She gestured around the room and Kincaid saw it through her eyes, familiar and secure in the lamplight "You don't know Roger. He spoils everything he touches."

  Having insisted on walking Meg to her bus, Kincaid stood, hands in pockets against the chill, at the top of Hampstead High Street. This growing sense of responsibility toward Margaret Bellamy might be disastrous if she proved to have been involved in Jasmine's death, yet every time he encountered her, the temptation to act in loco parentis became stronger. He thought suddenly of Gemma and smiled. Although the two women must be near the same age, Gemma never inspired the least bit of parental feeling.

  A sliver of moon hung above the fading pink in the western sky. People pushed past, hurrying home to their suppers in the gathering dusk. Kincaid looked east and west along Heath Street at the array of restaurants—Italian, Mexican, Indian, Greek, Thai, Japanese, even Cajun. If one wanted traditional British fare, Hampstead was not the place to be.

  Although hungry, he felt too restless to settle down to a restaurant dinner, whatever its persuasion, on his own. He walked the short half-block west on Heath Street to the top of Fitzjohn Avenue and pushed open the door of the Italian deli. The smells of garlic and olive oil poured out into the street, tempting other passers-by. Inside, the counter beneath the window held pottery bowls filled with dark purple olives and multi-colored pastas, seafood marinating in olive oil, peppers and aubergine mixed with sliced garlic. Overwhelmed by the profusion, Kincaid bought his usual, a ready-to-cook pizza made with roasted sweet peppers and fresh mozzarella.