Deborah Crombie - A Share In Death

“Is it?” Hannah took a biscuit tentatively. “Do you know, I don’t think I had any lunch. No wonder I feel so weak.” Kincaid pulled the armchair across and sat near enough to hand her tea and biscuits. He searched her face as she accepted the cup.

When she had eaten and drunk a little, he spoke. “Hannah, tell me what happened today between you and Patrick. I think you must, you know,” he added, softening the demand a bit.

She swallowed some tea and the cup rattled as she replaced it in the saucer. “I never meant it to go like that. I never meant-” Hannah turned her head away, her eyes, already red and swollen with earlier weeping, filling. “First I accused him of all these horrible things, all those things you told me. The words just came out. I couldn’t seem to stop them. Then I told him…”

“That you were his mother?” Kincaid prompted.

She gave a little hiccuppy laugh. “What a prize I am. Suspicious. Shrewish. No wonder he wasn’t too thrilled with the prospect.” Hannah hugged her arms against her chest and began to shiver in earnest.

“You’re in shock.” Kincaid leaned over her, contrite. “I shouldn’t be pestering you-”

“No. No, I have to tell you. I want to tell you.” Her voice rose and Kincaid watched her struggle to regain control. “I did everything wrong, you see,” she continued, modulating carefully now. “From the very beginning. Successful. Independent. That’s how I saw myself. Under no one’s jurisdiction. I thought of marriage and family as a loss of autonomy.” Hannah twisted the edge of the blanket in her fingers. “It was all such a sham. The truth was I had nothing to give, nothing to share.” She raised her eyes to his. “And Patrick… I think what Patrick resented the most was my waiting-if knowing him was so important to me, why hadn’t I found him years ago? And I could have, he was right about that. With all my illusions of strength and independence, I never faced my father. My father…”

Kincaid waited while she tried to find a more comfortable position. Exhaustion tugged at her facial muscles, her eyelids drooped involuntarily. “Hannah-”

“No. I must tell you, before it all slips away…”

Kincaid subsided, powerless against her compulsion to talk. He’d seen it often enough in victims of accidents, or shock, but Hannah was more coherent than most.

“Patrick… How could I explain what happened to me the last year? Biological clock’s stupid, I know,” her lips twisted in a faint smile, “but when I knew, finally, that I’d never have another child… something changed in me. Suddenly everything seemed so empty. Everything I’d done so pointless-”

Kincaid was startled into protest. “You’re not going to trot out that old saw about women only finding fulfillment through marriage and children? I don’t believe it of you.”

She started to shake her head, then lightly touched her fingers to the back. “No…” She paused so long Kincaid began to think she’d drifted away altogether. Then she said quietly, “I don’t think sex has much to do with it. It’s the little lies, the accumulation of self-deception. Armor, all armor, hiding behind armor, like some soft-bodied sea creature. Afraid of…”

“Afraid of what, Hannah?” Kincaid didn’t trust the delicacy of his touch.

Again came the almost imperceptible shake of the head. “Losing…” Her eyes skated away from his. She picked up her forgotten cup and drank the cold tea thirstily, retreating from whatever precipice she had approached.

Hannah blinked and then closed her eyes, the dark lashes fanning out against her cheeks. The empty teacup tilted in her hand. Kincaid had reached to take it from her when she spoke again, her eyes still shut. “One day I realized that if I didn’t wake the next morning, no one would miss me. Except Miles.

“Miles and I were lovers once, in the beginning.” Hannah smiled a little at the memory. “He lost interest when his health began to fail. Or maybe I hadn’t enough to give, even then. Still, I’m all he has, except for some wretched nephew he doesn’t care for, and I’ve neglected him terribly since I became so… obsessed with Patrick.”

She opened her eyes and looked at Kincaid, the late afternoon light shifting her irises from hazel to green, a green almost as clear as Patrick Rennie’s. “Obsession… a selfish preoccupation,” she said dreamily, then continued more forcefully. “What right had I to find Patrick and spy on him, passing judgement on his qualifications as a son? I could have gone to his office and told him the truth straight off, given him a chance to start on equal footing. Instead…” A desolate little shrug summarized the outcome.

“It seems to me,” Kincaid said gently, “that you’ve castigated yourself pretty thoroughly for mistakes anyone could have made. We don’t any of us have all the answers before-hand. Why is it too late for you and Patrick? Why can’t you tell him what you told me? What have you to lose?”

“I… He doesn’t want-”

“How do you know what Patrick wants or doesn’t want? He didn’t give me the impression just now of a man determined to sever all connection.” Unless, of course, thought Kincaid, Patrick Rennie had seen an advantage in adopting a new role, that of the contrite son lovingly reunited with his mother.

“It’s odd.” Hannah interrupted his unpleasant speculation. “After everything that’s happened today I feel terribly detached. It’s like seeing things through the wrong end of a telescope. Clear and distant. I doubt it will last. I do see, though, that I can’t go chasing after Patrick expecting him to plug the gaps in my life.”

Hannah’s voice had grown drowsier. Kincaid cleared up the tea things and came back to her, finding that he could not let her rest quite yet. The unasked question hung on him like a weight. “Hannah, could it have been Patrick who pushed you down the stairs?”

She did not bridle, as she had before at any suggestion of Patrick’s guilt, but answered him with sleepy thought-fulness. “Of course I’ve wondered. I’d be an idiot not to, I suppose-but I don’t think so.” She paused, searching for the right words. “There was such… malice in that shove. I felt it.” Her brow furrowed in concentration. “Today I saw a bit of the real Patrick, not my idealized version of him. There is some anger running under the surface, some bitterness, but also the ability to laugh at himself, to put his feelings in perspective. I just can’t see him hating that viciously.” She began to shiver again. “Why would anyone hate me that much?”

“What did he-”

A knock at the door interrupted his question, but Hannah put a hand out to stop him as he rose. “I won’t tell you what he told me about Cassie and Penny. You’ll have to ask him yourself. You do understand?” Kincaid hesitated, then nodded. There was no use bullying her-he’d begun to gauge her stubbornness. And besides, he did understand.

Anne Percy stood patiently at the door, doctor’s bag in hand. Kincaid’s heart gave an inexplicable leap and he cursed himself for a fool.

Kincaid met Chief Inspector Nash on the stairs. “I’m just on my way to take your Miss Alcock’s statement.” Nash spoke without preamble, in that sneering tone that made Kincaid bite back a childish retort.

“Dr. Percy’s with her now. She doesn’t seem too badly hurt.”

“Is that so?” said Nash, dripping sarcasm. “Well, well. Now, isn’t that surprising?”

“Just what are you insinuating?” Kincaid struggled to control the exasperation in his voice.

“Well now, laddie, has it not occurred to you that a “fall is a very convenient thing? All alone, no witnesses, a little tumble down the stairs?”