“Yes,” said Theo. He had stopped the nervous fiddling with his braces as he listened to Meg, and now he slid into a chair at the other end of the table and leaned forward on his elbows. “It was just the same for me. I should have known, when she said she was better but she wouldn’t see me. I should have insisted, come to London and camped on the doorstep until she let me in, done what I could for her.” He lifted his hands in a helpless shrug. “I’m sure she knew I’d take the easy way—I always have. Jasmine was always there—annoyed with me, more often than not,” he smiled, “but there, and I didn’t want to believe things would ever change.” Theo paused and studied Meg. “I’m glad my sister knew you, Margaret. You didn’t fail her.”
“Didn’t I?” asked Meg, meeting Theo’s eyes.
Roger rolled his eyes in disgust. “This is all just too sweet for words. I think I’m going to be sick.”
The spell shattered. Meg looked away from Theo, then down at herself, and Kincaid could see her self-consciousness flooding back as she became aware of her awkward position. As she tried to rise, her heel caught in the hem of her skirt with a ripping sound. She fell back to her knees, grimacing.
Felicity said, “Here, let me help you.” She seemed to have regained some of her composure as she listened to Meg and Theo, and now she moved briskly back into her familiar role. Kneeling on the floor, she gently extricated Meg’s heel from the torn hem. “All right, now? I’m afraid it will take a needle and thread to put you completely to rights.”
Roger folded his arms and said with exaggerated patience, “If you’re quite finished, Margaret?” but he made no move to help her up.
Felicity stood, held out a hand to Meg, then gathered her handbag off the chair. She turned to Kincaid and spoke slowly and deliberately, as if she’d been rehearsing her words. “Mr. Kincaid. I’m sorry about all the fuss. It was unfair of me to lash out at you. I do realize it’s not your responsibility, and I’ll take whatever steps necessary to sort this out.”
“You’ll see Antony Thomas? Or perhaps your own solicitor?”
“Yes. Just as soon—”
“How long will it take?” Roger broke in. “Probate, I mean.”
Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “Is Margaret in some particular hurry?”
“Will you all stop talking about me as if I weren’t here?” Meg glared at them all. “No, I’m not in any hurry for Jasmine’s money. I never wanted it in the first place and I don’t care if I ever see a penny of it.” She stopped, took a gulp of air, then delivered one last salvo. “And as far as I’m concerned, you can all just go to hell!” She stalked from the flat, her fury lending her a dignity even her trailing skirt hem couldn’t spoil.
Roger gave a ‘what can you do?’ shrug and followed, scooping Meg’s copy of the will off the table as he went.
To Kincaid’s surprise, Theo recovered his tongue first. “She deserves better than that. What does she see in that miserable sod?” As soon as the words left his mouth he turned as red as his braces and muttered, “Sorry. Rude of me,” to Gemma and Felicity, then “I’d better be going as well.” He did not, however, forget the will.
Felicity turned to Gemma and Kincaid. “You’ve been very kind,” she said, the corners of her mouth lifting in a small smile, “although I’m not sure kindness figured in your motive. Mr. Kincaid, this investigation of yours is going to be very hard on Margaret and Theo—they have enough grief and guilt to deal with as it is—I don’t suppose you’re willing to drop it?”
Kincaid shook his head. “No. I’m sorry.”
“I thought as much.” Felicity sighed and glanced at her watch. “Well, I’ll be off then. I’ve got patients waiting.” She gathered her bag and coat and let herself out of the flat.
“And then there were none,” Kincaid muttered under his breath. He sat on the edge of Jasmine’s hospital bed. “Exit players. You faded admirably into the woodwork,” he added as he looked at Gemma, who still stood with her back against the kitchen counter.
She stretched and moved to one of the dining room chairs. Sid, who had vanished like smoke with the first knock on the door, suddenly reappeared and jumped into her lap. Gemma stroked his head absently as she spoke. “I didn’t expect darling Roger to be able to contain his glee, but Theo didn’t kick up much protest either.”
Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “And the others? Did they protest too much?”
Gemma’s smile held a hint of mischief. “Your meek little Meg seems to be making an unexpected transformation into a tigress. Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall when she and Roger have a more private conversation?”
“Did it occur to you,” said Kincaid, “that Meg seemed awfully well informed about Jasmine’s intentions?”
Meg sat huddled on the edge of the bed, shivering. Even the remnants of last night’s warmth had long since seeped away, and the room’s single radiator felt icy to the touch. Mrs. Wilson’s generosity did not extend to keeping her tenants’ rooms warm during the day. She’d no patience with slug-a-beds, and she reiterated it often enough from the warm confines of her kitchen.
Of course, Meg wasn’t ordinarily home in the middle of a working day. She’d taken a day of unpaid leave for personal business, and Mrs. Washburn’s quick and silent acquiescence to her request left Meg little doubt that her days in the planning office were numbered. The prospect came almost as a relief.
On weekends when the room began to chill she left—to shop, to walk aimlessly in the streets, and in the last few months, to spend the days with Jasmine.
A crackle of paper drew her attention to Roger. He sat at the table, thoughtfully chewing the last of a meat-and-potato pasty—her pasty, in fact—he’d bought two at the bakery around the corner from the bed-sit. Meg had taken one bite of the cold, greasy, onion-flavored meat and forced back the impulse to gag.
Roger finished crumpling the grease-proof paper into a wad and tossed it in the direction of the waste bin across the room. It missed. He shrugged and left it lying where it fell.
“Roger, couldn’t you—” Meg began, then stopped, unable to find any words that might encourage him to go without incurring his temper.
“Want me to go, do you, sweetheart?” Roger said softly, crossing the room and sitting down beside her on the bed. Her stomach spasmed and her hands began to tremble. “Leave you all by yourself? I’d never do that, would I, Meg darling?” He ran his fingers lightly down her spine. “You know what this means, don’t you, Meg? It won’t take long for Jasmine’s will to clear probate, and then we’ll be set. A decent flat, maybe a holiday somewhere. Would you like to lie on the beach in Spain, Meg? Soak up the sun and drink pina coladas?” He’d been unbuttoning her blouse as he spoke, and now he traced a fingertip just under the edge of her bra.
Meg felt her nipples draw up, felt her stomach tighten in unwilling response. “Roger, we can’t. Mrs. Wilson’ll—”
“She’ll be having her after-lunch kip in front of the telly. She won’t hear a thing. Not if you’re a good girl. And I want you to be a good girl. Not like this morning when you made such a scene. What was the Superintendent to think, darling, with you ranting and raving like a fishwife?” He pushed her back against the pillow and lifted her legs up on the bed. “It won’t do, Meg. Do you hear me?” he asked, his voice even more gentle than before.
Meg nodded. In the cold, gray light from the window she could see the faint dusting of freckles on his skin and the flush beginning where the vee of his shirt exposed his chest. She clung to the memory of her defiance of him that morning, wrapping it about her like a second skin.
Roger pulled down his jeans and lifted her skirt, not bothering to finish undressing her. The rumpled bedspread made a lump beneath her shoulder blades and Meg focused on the discomfort, thinking that if she concentrated hard enough on that pinpoint she might block her body’s traitorous rush of desire. Roger lowered himself onto her, his breath escaping in a soft grunt.
Meg turned her face to the wall.
C
HAPTER
15
As soon as she felt Roger’s breathing slow to the deep rhythm of sleep, Meg slid carefully from beneath him and stood up. She refastened her clothes and ran a hand through her tangled hair. Slipping into her shoes and lifting coat and handbag from the back of the armchair, she tiptoed toward the door. A loose board under the floor matting creaked and she stopped, her breath held, her heart thumping. Roger snorted and turned over, his bare buttocks exposed.
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 hair. 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?”
All Shall Be Well Page 17
