Deborah Crombie - All Shall Be Well

Kincaid sat up, vehement. "She'd know Margaret wouldn't. Not after what passed between them."

"According to Margaret."

"Point taken." Kincaid ran a hand through his already unruly hair. "But still-"

"Look," Gemma interrupted him, her face beginning to flush with her enthusiasm for playing devil's advocate. "You say you don't think she died naturally in her sleep because in that case she would have bolted the door. But what if she felt too ill, perhaps lay down thinking she'd have a rest first-"

"No. She was too… composed. Everything was just too bloody perfect."

"So why couldn't she have drifted off during the evening, lost consciousness before she realized what was happening?"

Kincaid shook his head. "No lights. No telly. No book open across her chest or fallen to the floor. No reading glasses. Gemma," he gave a sharp, uncomfortable shrug, "I think that's what bothered me from the first, even before Margaret came and threw a spanner in the works with the suicide pact. It was almost as if she'd been laid out." He uttered this last remark a little sheepishly, looking sideways at her to gauge her reaction. Finding no expression of ridicule, he added, "The bedclothes weren't even rumpled a bit."

"That's all consistent with suicide," Gemma said, and her gentle tone made Kincaid suspect he was being humored.

"I suppose so." He stretched his legs out under the table and regarded her over the rim of his almost-empty pint. "I know you think I'm daft."

Gemma merely lifted an eyebrow. She picked up Toby, who was getting restless, and jiggled him on her knee until he laughed. "So what if the p.m. findings are positive?" she said between bounces. "The coroner's sure to rule suicide. There's no evidence to support opening an investigation."

"Lack of written or verbal communication of intent?"

Gemma shrugged. "Very iffy. And Margaret's story would be used to support suicide, not vice versa."

Kincaid watched a kite hovering over the Heath and didn't answer. Margaret. Now there was a thing. Why should he take Margaret's story at face value? Yesterday he had been too shocked and exhausted to question anything, but it occurred to him now that Margaret couldn't have invented a better story if she'd wanted it thought that Jasmine committed suicide, and it also absolved her of any guilt in not intervening.

"You've got that look," Gemma said accusingly. "What are you hatching?"

"Right." Kincaid drained his pint and sat up. "I'd like to have a word with Jasmine's solicitor, but I haven't a hope of seeing him till Monday."

"What else?" Gemma said, and Kincaid thought she looked inexplicably pleased with herself.

"Talk to Margaret. Maybe talk to Theo again."

"And the books?"

For an instant asking Gemma to help him crossed Kincaid's mind, but he rejected it as quickly as it came. That was one task he couldn't share. "I'll make a start on them."

They walked slowly back to Carlingford Road, holding Toby's hands and swinging him over the curbs. "No walk on the Heath, then?" Kincaid asked, for he'd seen Gemma glance at her watch more than once.

Gemma shook her head. "I'd better not. I promised my mum we'd visit-she says we don't come often enough."

Kincaid heard something in her voice, a shade of worry or aggravation, and remembered how she'd sounded on the phone that morning. Probably some bloke, he thought, and realized how little he knew about Gemma's life. Only that she'd divorced shortly after Toby was born; she lived in a semi-detached house in Leyton; she'd grown up and gone to school in North London. That was all. He'd never even been to Leyton-she always picked him up or met him at the Yard.

Suddenly the extent of his own myopia astounded him. He thought of her as reliable, attractive, intelligent, and often opinionated, with a special gift for putting people at ease in an interview-he'd looked no further than the qualities that made her valuable as an assistant. Did she date (this with a twinge of unidentified irritation)? Did she get on with her parents? What were her friends like?

He studied her as she walked beside him. She brushed a wisp of red hair from her face as she bent her head to answer Toby, but her expression was abstracted. "Gemma," he said a little hesitantly, "is anything the matter?"

She looked up at him, startled, then smiled. "No, of course not. Everything's fine."

Somehow Kincaid felt unconvinced, but he let it go. Her manner didn't invite further probing.

The blossom-laden branches of a plum tree overhung the walk, and as they passed beneath, petals showered them like confetti. They laughed, the momentary awkwardness dissolved, and then they were saying good-bye before the flat.

Kincaid climbed the stairs alone, feeling the afternoon stretching before him like a desert. The red light on his answering machine flashed a greeting as he entered the flat and his spirits wilted even further. "Great," he said under his breath, and punched playback.

The duty sergeant's voice demanded to know just what the hell he thought he was playing at-hospital had called about a post mortem he'd requested-and if he didn't put his paperwork through the proper channels there'd be hell to pay. The remainder of the message he added almost as an afterthought, before ringing off abruptly.

Jasmine Dent's system had contained a lethal amount of morphine.

Kincaid unsnapped the Midget's tarp and folded it from front to back, then unlocked the boot and stowed it away. He accomplished the maneuver neatly and quickly, having perfected it with much practice. The car's red paintwork gleamed cheerily at him, inviting dalliance in the midafternoon sun, but Kincaid shook his head and slid into the driver's seat. An idle down country lanes was not what he had in mind, tourist-poster day or not. He fished his sunglasses out of the door pocket, and put the car in gear.

After he crossed Rosslyn Hill, Kincaid made his way through the back streets of South Hampstead until he came into Kilburn High Road, just north of Maida Vale. He found Margaret Bellamy's address without difficulty, a dingy, terraced house in a block that had avoided gentrification. The front door was the dark red-brown of dried blood, but its peeling paint showed blotches of brighter colors beneath-lime-green, yellow, royal-blue-testimony to previous owners with more cheerful dispositions. He rang the bell and waited, wrinkling his nose against the odor drifting up from the rubbish bins below the basement railing.

The woman who opened the door wore polyester trousers stretched precariously over her bulky thighs, and a shiny jersey endured equal punishment across her bosom. She eyed Kincaid disapprovingly.

"Margaret Bellamy?" Kincaid tried out his best smile, wondering if she could hear him over the canned laughter bellowing from the back of the house.

The woman studied him a bit longer, then jerked her head toward the stairs. "Top of the house. On the right."

Kincaid thanked her and started up the steps, feeling her eyes on his back until he rounded the first landing. The smell of grease and the raucous sounds of the television followed him up three more flights, where the stairs ended in a dim hallway with streakily distempered walls. The two doors were unmarked and he tapped lightly on the right-hand one.

The sound of the downstairs' television switched off, and in the sudden silence Kincaid heard the creak of bedsprings. Margaret Bellamy opened the door with an expectant half-smile. "Oh. It's you," she said, disappointment evident in her swollen face. She made an effort to smile again. "You'd better come in." Jerking her head toward the hall as she drew him in, she added, "She's listening, the horrid old snoop. That's why she turned the telly off." Margaret closed the door and stood awkwardly, as if she didn't know what to do with Kincaid now that she'd shut him in. She looked round the small room and grimaced.