Deborah Crombie - A Share In Death

Kincaid left him and walked down the path until he could see the activity in the court. A uniformed constable stood sentinel at the gate and an area around Penny’s body had been marked off with white tape. Anne Percy knelt at Penny’s side, and Nash stood silently nearby, surveying the scene like a malevolent idol.

Dr. Percy closed her bag, rose, and went to speak to Chief Inspector Nash. She looked up, saw Kincaid on the path and flashed him a brief smile. Kincaid thought she looked more professional today and even more attractive than before dressed in heather-colored sweater and trousers.

She came up the path toward him, swinging her black bag. “I may get used to standing in for the police surgeon,” she said by way of greeting. “I’ve certified death, that’s about all I can do here.”

“Will you wait for the pathologist?” Kincaid asked.

“Yes. I understand Miss MacKenzie has a sister. Do you think I should see her?”

“Would you?” Kincaid asked. “Although I’m not sure she’ll welcome it.”

Anne Percy smiled. “That’s all right. I’m used to these situations.”

The undertaker’s van stood with its rear doors open, waiting, and Kincaid stood waiting as well. He found it odd not to be directing the swirl of activity around him, or even performing an assigned task, as he had done often enough.

The front door opened softly behind him and he turned to see Emma MacKenzie hesitating in its sheltered arch. She seemed to have shrunk, her take-charge briskness evaporated. The lines between nose and mouth cut sharply into her face.

“Are you all right?” Kincaid asked.

“Your Dr. Percy’s been to see me. Kind, but unnecessary.”

It relieved Kincaid to find her voice as scratchy and acerbic as ever, although he thought she, in her gruff way, was acknowledging his concern. She looked past him at the waiting van, started to speak, then lifted her hand in a supplicating gesture. “Not long now,” he said gently. “I believe they’re almost finished.”

Emma fixed her eyes on Kincaid’s face. “She seemed so resolute this morning. Purposeful. You know how Penny always flits… flitted from one thing to the next.

Quiet, too. When I questioned her she just smiled. Silly goose, I thought, keeping secrets…” her voice faltered.

“Miss MacKenzie, don’t. We’re both guilty of not taking her seriously.”

A shuffling sound came from the garden. The undertaker’s attendants maneuvered the stretcher over the crest of the path and started across the lawn, followed closely by Inspector Raskin. Penny lay wrapped and taped in black polythene, as neat as a Christmas package.

Kincaid took Emma’s arm. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Emma’s head jerked once in assent, but she didn’t brush away Kincaid’s hand as they started down the steps. The polythene’s final closure had been left undone, and Raskin carefully turned back the fold to reveal Penny’s face. Emma stared for a long moment, then nodded once again. Raskin refolded the polythene and sealed it with a roll of tape he carried in his hand. The attendants slid the stretcher into the van and closed the doors with the swift, fluid movements of long experience, and as the driver climbed into his seat Kincaid heard him say, “C’mon mate. We’ll miss our dinner if we’re not careful.” The van’s brake lights flashed as it turned into the road, and Kincaid realized that the day had grown overcast.

“She did say something this morning,” Emma broke into his thoughts. “While she was collecting her things. It was almost… you’ll think I’m foolish.”

“No, I won’t. Go on.”

“It seemed almost like a litany she was repeating to herself. ‘One or t’other, one or t’other…’ It was something our father used to say to us when we were children. Whenever we had to make a difficult choice. One or the other.”

Gemma stuck her head out the Escort’s window and called to the petrol station attendant. “Can you tell me how to find Grove House?” “Next left, miss, just round the corner. It’s the old manor house. You can’t miss it.” He was young, and nice looking, and his amiable response cheered her, even though she must have missed the damned house. Three times she’d driven around the village, and she couldn’t tell by this time where she’d been and where she hadn’t.

Villages gave her the pip, anyway, and this one made no exception. Deep in Wiltshire, surrounded on all sides by old gravel quarries, it was almost an island. No storybook high street here, with rows of neat shops-this one looked all higgledy-piggledy, with clusters of new houses that seemed to turn in on one another, and an occasional old place tucked in between.

None of them the right one, though. Number Two, Grove House. No street name or number. How was anyone expected to find it?

Gemma turned left at the pub, and before she knew it she found herself dead-ended in a cul-de-sac of newish homes. Working herself into a temper of frustration wouldn’t do a bit of good, she thought. She took a deep breath, carefully reversed the car, and crawled back along the curb.

Ten feet from the corner pub, she found a gap in the hedge. A small metal plaque had been set into the open wrought iron gate. Grove House, Gemma read. The Escort’s tires crunched on the gravel as she pulled the car into the drive and stopped. The clatter from the road came only faintly through the high hedges, and the smell of newly turned earth drifted in through the car’s open window. A wheelbarrow and spade stood near a heap of compost on the lawn. At least, she thought, it must be compost-her expertise in gardening consisted of cutting the six-foot-square patch of grass the advertisement for her house had called ‘a spacious back garden.’

The house itself gave a swift impression of gray stucco and slate and trailing green creeper, with a tangled hedge jutting out at a right angle from its center-the division between Number One and Number Two. She wondered how the house had looked new, and for a moment she imagined that the house had walled itself in, unchanging, as the village grew up around it. “A bit fanciful for you, love,” she said aloud, then shook herself and got out of the car.

Number Two turned out to be the lefthand side, half hidden behind the central hedge. Gemma smoothed her hair with her hands and adjusted her shoulder bag before she rang the bell. Quick footsteps sounded on tile and a woman opened the door. She was slender, with a fair, faded prettiness and a tentative smile. “Mrs. Rennie?” asked Gemma. “My name’s Gemma James.” She handed the woman her warrant card. “With London C.I.D. I’d like to speak with you for a few moments if I could.”

“Yes, of course.” Mrs. Rennie looked puzzled. “What can I do for you?” Her expression became slightly apprehensive. “It’s not about that awful business up in Yorkshire, is it? Patrick telephoned and told us-” Gemma saw apprehension spring to alarm in the woman’s eyes. “It’s not Patrick? Something’s happened to Patrick?”

“No, no.” Gemma hastened to reassure her. “Your son’s fine, Mrs. Rennie. We’re just making some routine inquiries of all the guests at Followdale House.” She smiled her best encouraging smile.

“Silly of me. Just for a moment-” Mrs. Rennie collected herself and her manners, ushering Gemma into the foyer. “Do come in. I shouldn’t have kept you standing on the step.” An enormous bowl of meticulously arranged flowers stood on a narrow table-that, and the softly lit oil portraits running along the hall and up the stair, were all she glimpsed before Mrs. Rennie led her into the drawing room.

“Sit down, please. Would you like some tea?”

“That would be lovely. I had quite a drive getting here,” Gemma answered, thinking that in this house she would not invite herself into the kitchen to help. Left alone, she examined the room. Like the rest of the house, it had an air of worn elegance-expensive things well used; the oriental rug under her feet had threadbare spots, the chintz-covered chairs and sofa sagged where most sat upon. There were books, and maps, and objects that she thought might have come from the Far East. And the room, with its shabby gentility redolent of good wools and sensible shoes, raised in Gemma a deep discomfort.