Deborah Crombie - A Share In Death

“I’m getting tired of this, Superintendent. Step over there.” Lyle motioned with his head toward the riverbank. The sun caught the lenses of his glasses, giving him for an instant two round, opaque eyes, gleaming and metallic.

Kincaid heard a slither from behind him, then a thud. Patrick’s voice came, rising on a note of panic. “Han-” It stopped abruptly, muffled, no doubt, by Gemma’s hand. The sound of their rough breathing came clearly to Kincaid over the murmur of the river and the hammering of his own heart.

Lyle’s head whipped back toward them and Kincaid saw the tension run through his body. “Get back. All of you.” His grip on Hannah tightened.

“Give it up, Eddie. More police are on their way. Don’t make it any worse for yourself.”

“Worse?” Lyle’s laughter edged toward hysteria. “Why shouldn’t I have the satisfaction of taking you all with me? Especially her.” He twisted the gun against Hannah’s temple. “You make me sick, all of you.”

“What about your wife?” Kincaid threw it out in last-ditch desperation. “And your daughter-what’s it going to be like for her when you’re plastered all over the papers? Oh, they’ll have a field day with you, Eddie, you’d better believe it. And your Chloe’ll never be free of it.”

For the first time Lyle seemed to waver, his head twisting blindly. Suddenly Hannah crumpled at Lyle’s feet.

Kincaid launched himself toward them. The still sunlight seemed to coalesce around him until he hung suspended in it, powerless.

Knocking his gold-rimmed glasses askew, Eddie Lyle pressed the muzzle of the gun to his temple and fired.

The humped umbrellas, black and gray, gleamed like the wet backs of whales. The Thirsk church still listed like a sinking ship, and the rain fell in a fine, soaking drizzle-appropriate, Kincaid felt, to the occasion.

The ceremony marking Sebastian Wade’s passing had been brief, as the vicar was forced to confine his personal remarks to Sebastian’s school days. The crowd had been as sparse as the vicar’s eulogy; Sebastian’s mum, supported by two women introduced to Kincaid as cousins, a smattering of faces who might have been old school chums, and the small group from Followdale House. Sebastian’s intense and often malicious interest in the personal affairs of others had apparently not earned him many friends.

Cassie, still sullen, declined to attend. “I’m sorry he’s dead,” she’d answered Kincaid, “but I despised him and I won’t be such a hypocrite as to go and pretend I didn’t.” Case closed. Kincaid supposed one had to admire her honesty, if not her lack of compassion.

Emma came alone and left as soon as the service closed. Her farewells in the vestibule were even more brusque than usual, as if the foreshadowing of Penny’s funeral had stretched her endurance to its limits.

Kincaid took her broad hand in his own for a moment. “I am sorry about Penny. If only I’d-”

“Don’t take too much guilt on yourself, young man.” Emma’s clear gray eyes met his directly. “She should have told you what she saw that night. She had opportunity enough.” Emma looked away and continued a little absently, “My sister wasn’t a stupid woman, for all her fluttering. I sometimes wonder if she… well, never mind that. What’s done is done.” She gave Kincaid’s hand a quick pump and thrust up her umbrella to meet the rain.

In silent accord, the four remaining moved out into the open. Patrick Rennie, who had left his wife behind, stood holding Hannah’s arm possessively. The still-shocked gauntness of their faces emphasized their likeness, plane by plane. Patrick, Kincaid thought, was making up for yesterday’s failures.

Yesterday it had been Kincaid who held Hannah and wiped the splattered blood from her face. “It’s all right. You’re going to be all right.” The words he’d repeated came back to him, though he’d hardly been conscious of them at the time.

He remembered Gemma crouching next to him, rubbing Hannah’s icy hands, the freckles splashed like stars against her white skin.

Patrick had stepped away and been violently sick.

Gemma had pleaded paperwork this morning and stayed behind at Followdale House, but Kincaid thought that had merely been her way of letting him lay his own ghosts.

Kincaid did not, however, attend the funeral alone. He hadn’t forgotten the promise he’d made himself regarding Angela Frazer. She rode with him in the Midget, silent, even her hair subdued without its violet spikes. It was only when he’d found a parking space near the church that she spoke, staring intently at the rivulets trickling down the windscreen. “It’s not fair.”

“No,” he answered, and went round to help her from the car.

She stood next to him now, watching Graham’s black Ford draw up to the curb. “I’ll have to be going.” Angela looked up at him gravely. “Thanks. I’m sorry about what I said… you know.” Then, standing on tiptoe, she brushed her lips against his and ran down the walk.

“Do you think she’ll be all right?” Hannah asked as they watched the car swallow her and draw away.

Kincaid grinned and brushed a finger against his lips. “I see some indications of resiliency. I’d say it’s possible. If she can survive her parents another year or so. If she can leave them and their quarrels behind and make her own life. The question is,” Kincaid turned to Hannah, “will you be all right?”

Hannah shuddered. “It still doesn’t make sense. Sebastian and Penny needn’t have died. They had no connection with me.”

“That’s what muddled things from the beginning. If we had started out looking for someone who might want you out of the way, we would have found him sooner. He wasn’t quite as clever as he thought.”

“Clever enough,” said Patrick, “to have almost succeeded.”

“He’d been planning for a long time, I think. The idea that Hannah stood between him and his uncle’s money must have become an obsession with him.”

“But Miles never intended to leave anything to me,” Hannah protested, still bewildered.

“Not outright. But in Eddie’s mind it made no difference whether the money went to you directly or to endow the clinic.” Kincaid paused, marshalling his thoughts. “From what Janet said last night, it seems Eddie had little personal contact with his uncle-Janet didn’t even remember his name, offhand-but his mother still corresponded with him occasionally. Some remark she passed on to Eddie must have given him the idea that you were essential to the clinic’s continuation.”

Hannah nodded. “That’s probably true. It’s very specialized work-it’d be difficult to find anyone else qualified to head the project. But still, Miles might have left his estate to someone else-”

“Not if he died intestate. Or Eddie might have had a plan for worming his way into his uncle’s good graces. He was very resourceful. At any rate, I don’t think Miles would have survived you by much.”

Hannah drew a breath of dismay. “Not Miles, too?” Patrick’s arm went round her shoulders.

“And why not?” Kincaid shrugged. He closed his umbrella and shook it. The drizzle had subsided to drips. “Our Eddie was a dab hand with a sedative as well as the blunt instrument. I imagine Eddie’s old mum had a little help in crashing that car-”

“You’d never have proved it,” said Patrick.

“No. Nor that he sedated Janet the night he murdered Sebastian.”

“But what about Sebastian and Penny?”

“Victims of both circumstance and their own characters. Eddie said Sebastian saw him going into your room that night. Opportunist that he was, Eddie must have been looking for a way to kill you that would look accidental. It’s my guess Sebastian couldn’t resist needling him about what he’d seen, and Eddie couldn’t take a chance on anyone connecting him with you after the fact.”