Deborah Crombie - A Share In Death

It would be easy enough to fix himself some supper, then stretch out on the sofa with the battered paperback copy of Jane Eyre he’d found in the drawer of the bedside table. The eggs, bacon, and loaf of fresh-baked whole-meal bread he’d bought at the village shop would be sufficient provision for a quiet evening.

He had been browsing in the shop’s biscuit aisle when a girlish voice behind him chirped, “You must be the new guest. We’ve been so eager to meet you.” He turned, and found himself facing a slight woman wrapped in a voluminous, tartan cape. She was, he judged, sixtyish, with a fluffy bird’s nest of gray hair surrounding a thin face and a pair of extraordinarily blue eyes. Peeping from the folds of the cape’s bottom were a pair of old-fashioned, lace-up ladies’ boots.

“Cassie told us your name was Kincaid and we were so thrilled-a Scot, like us, you see-we’re MacKenzies. Our granddad had quite a place in Perthshire in his day.” The sentences tumbled from her mouth in a breathless flood. “It must have seemed just like this in the old days, I mean how it is at Followdale. I can just imagine-”

Kincaid, amused, interrupted. “You don’t live in Scotland now?”

“Oh no. Our father… well, you see, there were so many sons that he was forced to find an occupation. He took a position in Essex when he was quite a young man. He was Rector, in Dedham, for forty years before he retired. But all that seems a long time ago, now.” She smiled up at him, a little wistfully. “We live there still, Emma and I, though of course somebody else has the old rectory now. We raise goats. Wonderful animals, don’t you think? So sanitary, and there’s quite a good market for goat’s milk and cheese these days. Although Father could never really bring himself to approve. And what about you, Mr. Kincaid? Where did your family come from?”

“I’m a second generation immigrant, like yourself. My father moved from Edinburgh to Cheshire before I was born, and he married an English girl, so I guess my ancestral stock is pretty diluted. And call-”

“I’m Emma MacKenzie,” broke in the woman Kincaid had noticed paying at the counter. “My sister Penelope.” She took his hand in a firm, dry clasp. “How do you do?”

With her straight, gray, pudding-bowl hair, her mannish, waterproof jacket and her uncompromising expression, she reminded Kincaid of his sixth-form master. Her only ornament was the pair of binoculars slung from her heavy neck. The sisters Prim and Grim, he dubbed them, then felt rather shamefaced.

“I’m sure Mr. Kincaid doesn’t want to hear all our family history, Penny. And we must go if we’re to change for the party.” Emma nodded at him and herded her sister away with all the delicacy of a school chaperon.

“Miss MacKenzie,” he called out, as they were almost through the door, “it was nice to meet you. Perhaps I’ll see you at the party.” He was rewarded by a radiant smile.

A loud knocking on the sitting-room door roused Kincaid and he realized that the air on the balcony had grown chilly. He slipped inside and opened the front door to find Sebastian Wade raising his fist to knock again.

“Sorry,” Wade said, “sometimes my enthusiasm gets the better of me. I came to offer myself as escort to the little get-together, and to show you around the house, if Cassie hasn’t already done the honors.”

“She did promise me a tour, but it never materialized. I’d like to see the house.”

“Ah, what a treat you have in store. Manufactured gentility, with all the mod cons. Are you going as is, the weekend gentleman’s casual look?” He eyed Kincaid’s open-necked shirt and cords.

“No, let me get my jacket,” Kincaid answered, and he saw that for all his deliberation his decision had been made for him. He was carried along as easily as a shell in a wave.

“Your suite,” said Sebastian in his most facetious tour guide manner, “is called the Sutton Suite, because you have a view of Sutton Bank from your balcony. Clever, yes? They all have the most wonderfully inventive names. So much more personal, the homey touch, like naming one’s suburban semi-detached ‘Wayside Cottage.’ Directly below you is the Thirsk Suite, currently possessed by our rising young M.P., Patrick Rennie, and his wife, Marta, of the perpetual ponytail and black velvet bow. Very county. They own several weeks, spaced out over the year.”

Kincaid finished tying his tie in the sitting-room mirror, slipped into his jacket and patted his pockets for wallet and keys.

“Now,” continued Sebastian, as they closed the front door and descended the three steps to the main hall, “the suite next to yours on this floor, the Richmond, was taken this morning by Hannah Alcock, a scientist of some sort who looks very professional and efficient. Attractive, too, in a sleek, bony way, if one cares for women who look intelligent.” He darted a bright, malicious glance toward Kincaid.

“And you don’t?”

“Oh yes, I find a lot of women aesthetically pleasing,” answered Sebastian, with the sly ambiguity Kincaid was coming to expect. “Now, the door on your immediate right leads to the pool balcony.” He opened it, gesturing Kincaid through first.

Moisture and the odor of chlorine assaulted Kincaid’s senses, and his first impression of the small balcony was that he had fallen into a budget Mediterranean fantasy. The floor was covered with glazed red brick, green plants filled every available space, and a black wrought-iron railing overlooked the water below.

“Most ingenious, don’t you think? A vantage point from which we can view our guests cavorting merrily in the pool, that most upmarket of all our assets. Works well in the sales tours, I can tell you. Unless, of course, the guest weighs two hundred pounds and is wearing a string bikini.”

Kincaid laughed. “You seem not to consider me a very viable prospect.”

Sebastian considered him, his voice for once without its biting edge. “No. I’d say you’re not easily seduced by respectability. You have other weaknesses, perhaps? But you wouldn’t choose this, would you, if the holiday weren’t given to you as a gift?”

Kincaid thought about it. “No, you’re right, as pleasant as it is, I probably wouldn’t. Too structured. Too cozy. I feel a bit like a child sent to day camp.”

“Pudding after supper if you’re a good boy. Come on, then. You’d better make the most of the experience if you’re not likely to repeat it.” Sebastian returned to his professional patter. “There are stairs at the back of this first-floor hall,” he noted, gesturing to the side opposite Kincaid’s, “that lead down to the rear pool entrance. There is also a spa section of the pool, just beneath us. It’s kept heated and you can turn on the jets when you want to use it. I do like it myself; one of the perks of the job.”

Kincaid imagined that Sebastian Wade, engaged in a continuous game of one-up-manship with the management, took advantage of any and every perk the job offered as a matter of principle.

They moved across the balcony and through the door into the cooler air of the opposite hall. “The layout’s not symmetrical.” Sebastian pointed toward the back of the house. “That suite is occupied by the Lyles, from Hertfordshire or somewhere equally dreary. Fussy little man, ex-army, though you wouldn’t think it-he looks a perfect twit. He bent my ear this afternoon for what seemed like hours, all about his experiences in Ireland. You’d think he conquered the IRA singlehandedly. For my part, I doubt he tackled anything more dangerous than the Corps of Engineers.”

Kincaid grinned at the idea of Sebastian, with his minute and indiscreet attention to detail, describing someone else as fussy.