Deborah Crombie - A Share In Death

Kincaid’s eyes widened. “Surely not with Angela-”

“No. In the empty suite. We always met in the empty suites, when we could. We were together all the time. It was after midnight when I came back here.”

“And you didn’t think, didn’t wonder why Sebastian’s bike was still parked outside?”

“No.” The word hung between them, charged, and Cassie felt she had been judged and found wanting.

“You didn’t see or hear anything else, anything not as it should be?”

“No.” She couldn’t tell him about the note. Quickly scribbled, wedged into her door, it proved someone else had been abroad in the late hours of that Sunday evening. And it had driven all thought of Sebastian, or anything else, from her mind.

“Thanks, Cassie. For the coffee.” Kincaid stood up and Cassie came around the bar and followed him to the door.

As he opened it she touched his arm and he paused. “Will it… Do you think it will all have to come out? About Graham and me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not. But I wouldn’t count too much on Nash’s discretion.”

She nodded. “What made you change your mind? About Sebastian committing suicide?”

“I didn’t. I never thought for a moment that he had.” The door clicked softly shut as he left her.

Hannah stood just inside the open French door of her suite, the room unlit in the gathering dusk. The children’s voices came easily to her, but she couldn’t see them without stepping out onto the balcony and she didn’t want to be seen. Her emotions were so raw she felt she might be transparent even from a distance.

The reality of what she had done, what she still contemplated doing, seized her with cold fingers. She’d been living in some fairy-tale never-never land, where all stories had happy endings, and she was the fairy godmother, coming to right a lifetime of wrongs. Dear god, what a fool she had made of herself!

Her oft-played scenario had never included sexual attraction, so when the whirl of feelings caught her up so swiftly she hadn’t realized at first what was happening. The knowledge crept in insidiously, and some feral part of her mind toyed with the idea of riding with it, letting it take her where it would. She could just not tell him the truth, and there was no other way he would ever know.

The sudden vision of herself brought on by the cocktail party conversation had shocked her to her senses, terrified that she could have contemplated such utter folly. She had never, when she built detailed pictures in her mind of what their relationship would be, imagined herself as… old. Never imagined growing older, never imagined being pitied and dependent. Whether she told him the truth or not, she would still have to face the ultimate fact. Or simply walk away, returning to the sterility of her life as if nothing had happened. And what about Duncan? What must he think of her, flitting about from man to man like some middle-aged butterfly. She felt she owed him some explanation, but she couldn’t tell him all of it, not until she had come to some resolution. A sense of urgency clutched her. It would have to be soon.

Penny knew how the rabbit felt, trapped by hounds, spurred by cunning. If she went out the front door she’d run right smack into her sister, and Emma was the last person she wanted to face. She didn’t want to see anyone-any attempt to explain her behavior would humiliate her even further.

In the end she’d gone upstairs and down the long corridor to the rear stairs and the pool exit. From there it had been easy enough to make her way along the path to the tennis court, screened by trees and heavy shrubbery. She sat huddled on her favorite bench above the court, her small figure almost indistinguishable in the dim light.

Emma and the children must still be out in the garden, for she could hear the little boy’s high-pitched voice above her, fading in and out on the breeze. It was quite funny the way Emma got on with Brian and Bethany. They’d never really known any children-no nieces and nephews to care for, no close neighbors running in and out begging milk and biscuits-and Penny was never quite sure what to say to them. Emma, however, just bossed the small pair about in her usual gruff way. The children seemed to accept it without question and they all got on remarkably well together.

Is that, Penny wondered, the way Emma would treat her, with that same gruff kindness, but in her case stained by pity? Would people speak about her the way they had spoken about poor Mrs. Lyle, and commiserate with Emma behind her back? Would she reach the point where Emma didn’t dare leave her alone, a danger to herself and others? It was an unbearable thought. The tears came again, unbidden, and Penny sat helplessly as they ran down her face and leaked salt into the corners of her mouth. Emma would tell her to stop wallowing and buck herself up, but Penny had never been much good at maintaining what Emma called an even keel.

Penny sniffed and searched in her pocket for a handkerchief. She’d have to try to pull herself together, for Emma’s sake as well as her own. Besides, she had a moral obligation that needed her attention. She had made up her mind at the cocktail party. It would never do to cast false suspicion on someone. What she had seen must have another, logical explanation, and the only fair way to find out was to ask.

Kincaid broke two eggs into the skillet next to the bacon and congratulated himself on mastering an unfamiliar cooker. It had taken some adjusting and a grease burn on his thumb to get the temperature just right, but the bacon had come out perfectly. He turned the eggs as the toast sprang up in the toaster, and by the time he’d transferred the bacon and toast to his plate the eggs were ready as well.

The knock came as he was pouring his coffee.

Hannah Alcock leaned against the wall outside his front door, hugging herself in her long, Aran cardigan. She wore no make-up, her lips pale in contrast to the bruised hollows beneath her eyes.

“Hannah. Come in.” Kincaid led the way into the suite and pulled out a chair at the tiny table for her. “Are you all right? You don’t look at all well this morning.”

“Didn’t sleep.” She slumped down in the chair as if it had taken all her effort to stand up.

“Can I get you anything? Toast? Coffee?”

“Coffee would be nice, thanks.”

Kincaid poured another cup and sat down opposite her, pushing the milk and sugar across the table. She stirred her coffee for a moment before meeting his eyes, then tried a wan smile. “I feel an idiot coming here like this. I thought I’d say ‘we need to talk’, but I realized it’s not true, really. It’s I who needs to talk.” Hannah paused and looked away for a moment, moving her shoulders in a little self-deprecating shrug. “I feel I owe you some explanation for the way I’ve behaved. It’s not-”

“Why should you feel that?” Kincaid asked, puzzled. “I’ve no reason to pass judgment on you.”

“Oh god, Duncan, don’t protest. It only makes this more humiliating for me. Then I start to think I was only imagining that there was… I don’t know… some feeling, some rapport… between us. It’s happened to me once or twice before. You meet someone, spend an evening together, find yourselves talking as if you’d known each other for years, saying things you wouldn’t say to people you had known for years.” Her smile was rueful. “It’s a rare gift, an evening like that, and one I hadn’t planned on.”

At least, thought Kincaid, she was more honest than he. There had been some spark of affinity, of possibility, between them and he had felt hurt to find her sharing the same sudden intimacy with Patrick Rennie. Not merely sexual jealousy, although there was a bit of that as well, but more a sense of confidence betrayed. “All right, Hannah. I’ll grant you that.” He looked at her carefully, noted the unaltered porcelain complexion and fine bone structure, noted also the drawn look around the shadowed eyes. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You’re not just worrying about my sensitive feelings.”