Deborah Crombie: A Share In Death

The first book in the Duncan Kincaid / Gemma James series, 1993

I’d like to say an enormous thanks to Diane Sullivan, Dale Denton, Viqui Litman, Aaron Goldblatt, John Hardie and Jim Evans. They stuck with the manuscript from beginning to end, and their help was invaluable.

Thanks are also due to Susanne Kirk, my editor, and to Nancy Yost, my agent, for their support and encouragement.

Duncan Kincaid’s holiday began well. As he turned the car into the lane, a shaft of sun broke through the clouds and lit a patch of rolling Yorkshire moor as if someone had thrown the switch on a celestial spotlight.

Drystone walls ran like pale runes across the brilliant green of pasture, where luminous sheep nibbled, unconcerned with their importance in the composition. The scene seemed set off in time as well as space, and gave him the sensation of viewing a living tapestry, a world remote and utterly unattainable. The clouds shifted again, the vision fading as swiftly as it had come, and he felt an odd shiver of loss at its passing.

The last few weeks’ grind must be catching up with him, he thought, shrugging away the faint sense of foreboding. New Scotland Yard didn’t officially require newly promoted Detective Superintendents to work themselves into early coronaries, but August Bank Holiday had slipped easily into September, and he’d gone right on accumulating his time off. Something always came up, and the last case had been particularly beastly.

A string of bodies in rural Sussex, all women, all similarly mutilated-a policeman’s worst nightmare. They’d found him in the end, a real nutter, but there was no guarantee that the evidence they’d so painstakingly gathered would convince a bleeding-heart jury, and the senselessness of it took most of the satisfaction from finishing up the mountain of paperwork.

“Lovely way to spend your Saturday night,” Gemma James, Kincaid’s sergeant, had said the evening before as they waded through the last of the case files.

“Tell the recruiters that. I doubt it occurred to them.” Kincaid grinned at her across his littered desk. Gemma wouldn’t grace a poster at the moment, her face white with fatigue, carbon smudge like a bruise along her cheekbone.

She puffed out her cheeks and blew at the wisps of red hair that straggled into her eyes. “You’re just as well out of it for a week. Too bad some of us don’t have cousins with posh holiday flats, or whatever it is.”

“Do I detect a trace of envy?”

“You’re off to Yorkshire tomorrow, and I’m off home to do a week’s worth of washing and go round the shops? Can’t imagine why.” Gemma smiled at him with her usual good humor, but when she spoke next her voice held a trace of motherly concern. “You look knackered. It’s about time you had a break. It’ll do you a world of good, I’m sure.”

Such solicitousness from his sergeant, ten years his junior, amused Kincaid, but it was a new experience and he found he didn’t really object. He’d pushed for his promotion because it meant getting away from the desk and out into the field again, but he’d begun to think that the best thing about it might be the acquisition of Sergeant Gemma James. In her late twenties, divorced, raising a small son on her own-Gemma’s good-natured demeanor, Kincaid was discovering, concealed a quick mind and a fierce ambition.

“I don’t think it’s exactly my cup of tea,” he said, shuffling the last loose sheets of paper into a file folder. “A timeshare.”

“Your cousin, is it, who arranged this for you?”

Kincaid nodded. “His wife’s expecting and their doctor’s decided at the last moment that she shouldn’t leave London, so they thought of me, rather than let their week go to waste.”

“Fortune,” Gemma had countered, teasing him a bit, “has a way of picking on the less deserving.”

Too tired even for their customary after work stop at the pub, Gemma had gone off to Leyton, and Kincaid had stumbled home to his Hampstead flat and slept the dreamless sleep of the truly exhausted. And now, deserving or not, he intended to make the most of this unexpected gift.

As he hesitated at the top of the lane, still unsure of his direction, the sun came through fully and beat down upon the roof of the car. Suddenly it was a perfect late September day, warm and golden, full of promise. “A propitious omen for a holiday,” he said aloud, and felt some of his weariness drop away. Now, if only he could find Followdale House. The arrow for Woolsey-under-Bank pointed directly across a sheep pasture. Time to consult the map again.

He drove slowly, elbow out the Midget’s open window, breathing in the spicy scent of the hedgerows and watching for some indication that he was on the right track. The lane wound past occasional farms, squarely and sturdily built in gray, Yorkshire slate, and above them the moor stretched fingers of woodland enticingly down into the pastures. Crisp nights must have preceded this blaze of Indian summer, as the trees were already turning, the copper and gold interspersed with an occasional splash of green. In the distance, above the patchwork of field and pasture and low moorland, the ground rose steeply away to a high bank.

Rounding a curve, Kincaid found himself at the head of a picture-book village. Stone cottages hugged the lane, and pots and planters filled with geraniums and petunias trailed cascades of color into the road. On his right, a massive stone half-circle bore the legend “Woolsey-under-Bank”. The high rise of land, now seeming to hang over the village, must be Sutton Bank.

A few yards further on his left, a gap in the high hedge revealed a stone gate-post inset with a brass plaque. The inscription read “Followdale”, and beneath it was engraved a curving, full-blown rose. Kincaid whistled under his breath. Very posh indeed, he thought as he turned the car into the narrow gateway and stopped on the gravel forecourt. He surveyed the house and grounds spread before him with surprise and pleasure. He didn’t quite know what he had expected of an English time-share. Transplanted Costa del Sol, perhaps, or tacky Victorian. Not this Georgian house, certainly-elegant and imposing in its simplicity, honey-gilded in the late-afternoon light. A tangle of ivy softened portions of the ground-floor walls, and bright Virginia creeper splashed the upper part of the house like a scarlet stain.

Closer inspection revealed his initial impression of the house to be deceptive-it was not truly symmetrical. Although a wing extended either side of the pediment-crowned entry, the left side of the house was larger and jutted out into the forecourt. He found the illusion of balance more pleasing, not as severe and demanding as the real thing.

Kincaid stretched and unfolded himself from his battered MG Midget. Only the fact that the springs in the driver’s seat had collapsed years ago kept his head from brushing the soft top when he drove. He stood for a moment, looking about him. To the west, a low row of cottages, built of the same golden stone as the house-to the east, the manicured grounds stretched away toward the bulk of Sutton Bank.

Ease seemed to seep into the very pores of his skin, and not until he felt himself taking slow, deep breaths did he realize just how tense he’d been. Pushing the last, niggling thoughts of work to the edge of his mind, he took his grip from the boot and walked toward the house.