Deborah Crombie - Mourn Not Your Dead

“Well?” said Gemma when they reached the lane again. “I think we can be fairly sure that it was Malcolm Reid that Gilbert called.”

“I should’ve twigged sooner,” Kincaid said, his face set in an irritated frown.

Gemma shrugged. “That’s a bit pointless. Like saying you should remember what you’ve forgotten. What’s next?”

“I’ve got the Reids’ home address, but first, let’s give Brian a try.”

Leaving the car in the lane, they walked to the pub, but found it shut up tight. Kincaid’s knock on the door brought no response. “First thing Sunday morning’s not the best time to beard a publican in his den, I suppose. I remember Brian saying he wasn’t a morning person.” Turning away, he added, “We’ll have to come back, but just now let’s pay a call on Malcolm and the missis.”

“I think that must have been it.” Gemma looked back at the gap in the hedge they’d just shot past. “Hazel Patch Farm. I saw a little hand-lettered sign on the gatepost.”

“Bloody hell.” Kincaid swore under his breath. “There’s no place to reverse.” He shifted down another gear and crept around the hairpin bends, searching for an accessible drive or farm track. They were high in the tree-crowned hills between Holmbury and Shere, and Gemma supposed they’d done well to find the place at all with only the blithe directions of the Holmbury St. Mary garage attendant to guide them.

A passing place presented itself, and with a little judicious maneuvering, Kincaid managed to turn the car about. Soon they were nosing in through the farm gate, and he pulled the car up in a graveled area just inside the hedge.

“Not exactly a working farm, I’d say,” he commented as they got out of the car and looked about. The house stood back beneath the trees, and what little remained visible beneath the cover of the creeping vines seemed unassuming enough.

Malcolm Reid came to the door in frayed jeans and an old sweater, looking considerably less like a Country Living fashion plate than he had in the shop, but perhaps, thought Gemma, even more handsome. If he were surprised to have his Sunday morning at home interrupted by uninvited coppers, he managed to conceal it, and the two sleek springer spaniels at his heels sniffed at them with equal politeness. “Come through to the back,” he said pleasantly and led them down a dim passageway.

Entering before them, he said, “Val, it’s Superintendent Kincaid and Sergeant James.”

Anything else he might have attributed to them, Gemma lost, as she was too busy gaping with delight to take in the conversation. They stood in a terra-cotta-tiled kitchen, and it was much less intimidating than she would have imagined from the high-tech displays in the shop. Dusty-blue cabinets, a sunflower-yellow Aga as well as a gas cooktop, copper pans hanging from a rack in the ceiling, and all open to a solarium whose windows looked down the steep hillside to the Downs rolling away in the distance.

Kincaid gave her a gentle nudge and she focused on the woman rising from amid the pile of newspapers that covered most of a comfortable-looking settee. “You’ve caught us at our Sunday morning vice,” she said, laughing as she came towards them with her hand outstretched. “We read them all-the high, the low, the insufferably middle-brow. I’m Valerie Reid.”

Even barefoot, dressed in leggings and what looked to be one of her husband’s cast-off rugby shirts, the woman radiated sex appeal. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, and a flash of brilliant white smile made her seem as Mediterranean as her kitchen, but her accent held an incongruous trace of Scots burr. “Do you like it?” she said to Gemma, gesturing at the kitchen. She hadn’t missed Gemma’s rapt stare. “Do you cook-”

“Darling,” said her husband, “they are not here to talk about cooking, as difficult as that may be for you to imagine.” He gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

“Nevertheless, they cannot talk without something to eat and drink. There are wholemeal scones still warm in the oven, and I will make some latte.”

Kincaid opened his mouth to protest. “No, really, that’s quite-”

“Sit,” ordered Valerie, and Kincaid obediently sat in a clear spot on the settee. Gemma lingered in the kitchen, sniffing as Valerie opened the Aga’s warming oven.

“You’re wondering how I manage not to waddle,” said Malcolm as he joined Kincaid. He pointed at the dogs, who had stretched out on the tile floor in a patch of sunlight. “If it weren’t for running those two up and down the bloody hills twice a day, I probably wouldn’t be able to get through the door, much less into my clothes. Val’s cooking is quite irresistible.”

The hiss of the espresso machine filled the room, and when Valerie had filled cups Gemma helped her carry coffee and scones into the solarium. Once settled in a comfortable slipcovered chair, Gemma tasted her scone as Valerie watched expectantly.

“Wonderful,” said Gemma sincerely. “Better than anything from a bakery.”

“It takes ten minutes to mix these from scratch, yet people buy mixes from the supermarket.” Wrinkling her nose disdainfully, Valerie sounded as if she were talking about black-market racketeering. “Sometimes I think the English are hopeless.”

“But you’re English, aren’t you, Mrs. Reid?” asked Gemma through a mouthful of crumbs.

“Valerie, please,” she said, helping herself to a scone. “My parents are Anglicized Italians. They settled in Scotland and opened the most British of cafés, on the anything-you-can-do-we-can-do-better principle. This they even extended to the naming of their children.” She tapped her chest. “You’d think Valerie was bad enough, but they called my brother Ian. Can you imagine anything less Italian than Ian? And they learned to fry everything in rancid grease, in the best British fashion.

“But I forgave them, because every summer they sent me to Italy to stay with my grandmama, and so I learned to cook.”

“Val.” Malcolm’s voice held amusement. “Give the superintendent a chance, would you?”

“I’m so sorry,” said Valerie, sounding not the least bit abashed. “Do get on with whatever it is you need to get on with.” She settled back into her nest of papers, cup of latte in one hand, scone plate balanced on her knee.

Kincaid smiled and sipped his coffee before replying. “Mr. Reid, I believe you told us that you’d had no contact with Alastair Gilbert before his death?” Before Reid could affirm or deny this rather open-ended question, Kincaid continued, “But I think that in fact you misled us. You had an appointment with Gilbert at six o’clock the evening before he died, which he confirmed by telephone. Just what was Gilbert’s urgent business with you, Mr. Reid?”

A smooth bluff, thought Gemma, but would it work?

Malcolm Reid glanced openly at his wife, then rubbed his palms against the knees of his jeans. “Val said at the time that it wasn’t a good idea, but I simply didn’t want to complicate things any more than necessary for Claire. She’s had a difficult enough time as it is.”

When Reid didn’t continue, Kincaid said, “You have to let us do the interpreting. We’ll make every effort to cause Claire as little distress as possible, but the only way she can get on with her life is to have this business resolved. Surely you can see that?”

Reid nodded, glanced at his wife again, started to speak, stopped, then finally said, “I find this all very awkward and embarrassing.”

“What my husband is trying to tell you,” said Valerie, matter-of-factly, “is that Alastair had developed some wild idea that Malcolm was having a passionate liaison with his wife.”

Reid gave her a grateful look as he nodded in agreement. “That’s right. I don’t know what put it into his head, but he was behaving quite oddly. I had no idea how to deal with him.”