Deborah Crombie - All Shall Be Well

Kincaid stopped at the intersection. No church… no pub-not having either repository of village information would make his task more difficult. He took the west fork of the lane, hoping to find a likely source of gossip.

A few hundred yards farther on he came upon another smattering of cottages, even smaller than Briantspuddle. These cottages were washed in pale colors, rather than white, but except for wisps of smoke escaping from a few of the chimneys, the smaller hamlet appeared just as deserted. A stone cross, a carved madonna-like figure imprisoned within its stem, seemed to draw the surrounding cottages to it like congregants facing a preacher.

Kincaid stopped the car and got out. The rain had earlier diminished to a mist just fine enough to make his wipers squeak, and now he realized it had stopped. He walked around the cross, examining its unusual construction. The design reminded him of a traditional market cross, but it was somehow very modern in feel. In the front, the Madonna crouched under a peaked roof at the bottom of the spire, while in the back a larger, unidentifiable figure seemed to float midway up the column. An inscription ran around the cross's square base, and Kincaid read as he circled the cross once again: It is sooth that in is cause of all this pain, But all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well .

Kincaid returned to the car and headed back the way he'd come. When he reached Briantspuddle again he pulled the Midget onto the verge and killed the engine. Stretching, he levered himself up out of the car and felt the cool air settle on his skin like a cloak. He took a deep breath, invigorated by the clean, damp silence.

A faint rhythmic sound broke the quiet and Kincaid turned, searching for its source. Something moved behind the shrubby border of the best-kept cottage, beneath a row of flowering plums and brilliant yellow sprays of forsythia. He took a few steps closer and the movement resolved into the top of a gray head; nearer still, an elderly woman kneeling, weeding her flower bed.

She looked up, unsurprised, and smiled at him. "Have to take advantage," she said, nodding at the low, gray clouds. "Won't hold off long." Her voice was cultured, with only a faint trace of Dorset burr.

Kincaid stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled his most charming smile. "Nice border." On closer inspection she looked quite frail, in her eighties, perhaps, and wore a tweed skirt and twin-set under an old, oiled jacket. Her thin gray hair was twisted into a neat knot on top of her head, and on her feet she sported, not the expected heavy leather brogues, but a pair of neon nylon trainers.

Frowning at him, she gave the comment serious consideration, and finally shook her head. "You've missed the rhododendrons, you see. Another month, that's when it's glorious. These," she gestured with her trowel toward the pansies and daffodils in the bed, "are just the opening act."

This time Kincaid grinned from pleasure, liking her grave humor. "A little soft shoe?"

"Exactly." She smiled back at him, resting her gloved hands on her knees, and Kincaid decided she had once been very beautiful. Her glance held curiosity now as she searched his face. "Are you passing through?" she asked, then added, "What a silly question. Briantspuddle isn't on the way to anywhere."

"No, not exactly. Have you lived here long?"

"Depends on what you call long. Since before the War. That was Briantspuddle's heyday, you know. Ernest Debenham, the department store magnate, decided to make it a model farming village. These cottages he either built or restored." She raised a coquettish eyebrow. "You do know which war I mean, young man?"

"You wouldn't have been around for the first one, much less remember it."

"Now you're flattering me." She brushed her gloved hands together and pushed herself up with a grimace. Kincaid stretched out a hand to her and she nodded her thanks.

"Would you remember a woman called May Dent, by any chance?"

Her face went blank with surprise. "May? Of course. We were neighbors for years. She lived just across the road, there." Kincaid turned and looked where she pointed. The cottage sat back from the road at the end of a shrub-bordered walk. No flowers brightened its black and white severity, and high windows peeking from beneath the thatched eaves gave it a secretive air.

Extracting his warrant card from his jacket pocket, he opened it to the woman's puzzled glance. "My name's Duncan Kincaid."

She looked from the card to his face, her brow furrowing. "You don't look like such a big cheese."

Kincaid laughed. "Thank you. I think."

Coloring, she said, "I'm making an idiot of myself. I never meant to be one of these tiresome old women who thinks anyone younger than sixty ought to be in nappies. I'm Alice Finney, by the way." She held out her hand to Kincaid and he took it, feeling the lightness of her bones between his fingers.

"Mrs. Finney, do you remember May Dent's niece and nephew, who came from India to live with her?"

She stared at him in consternation. "Of course I remember Jasmine and Theo, as well as I do my own name. But that's been thirty years if it's been a day. Why on earth would you want to know about them?"

Taking a breath, he tried to organize his approach. "It's about-"

Alice Finney shook her head. "No, no." She nodded toward the blank faces of the cottages. "I can tell this isn't going to be a 'middle-of-the-village' matter. You'd better come in. I'll make us some tea, and you can tell me properly, from the beginning."

"Yes, Mrs. Finney," Kincaid answered, meek as a schoolboy, and followed her up the walk.

Saucer balanced on his knee, Kincaid lifted a china cup so delicate he was afraid his breath might crack it. Outside the sitting room windows, mist had settled in again, fading the plum blossom to a pale wash of color. Alice Finney knelt at her grate, lighting a small, coal fire. When Kincaid moved to help her, she waved him back. "I've done it myself for nearly fifty years. No use being coddled now."

She sat down opposite him in a brocade armchair, its seat-cover a bit shiny with wear. At Kincaid's inquisitive glance, she picked up her cup and continued. "My Jack and I would have been married fifty-five years this spring. He was a pilot, so he died a little more gloriously than some-in the air rather than the trenches. Not that it was much comfort to him, I imagine." She smiled at him, suddenly, impishly. "Don't look so properly funereal, Mr. Kincaid. To tell you the truth there are days I can't remember what he looked like, it's been so long ago. And at my age remembering is just a sentimental indulgence. Tell me about Jasmine and Theo Dent."

In the warmth and comfort of Alice Finney's faded sitting room, all of Kincaid's rehearsed introduction dissolved. "Jasmine Dent was my neighbor. And my friend. She was terminally ill with lung cancer, so when she died at first we assumed that the disease had progressed faster than expected."

Alice Finney listened intently, not taking her eyes from Kincaid's face even to sip her tea. At the mention of Jas-mine's death she pinched her lips together in a small grimace.

"Then we discovered that Jasmine had asked a young friend to help her commit suicide, but had backed out at the last minute. I ordered an autopsy." Kincaid paused, but Alice didn't interrupt. "She died from a morphine overdose, and I don't believe it was self-administered."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I could give you lots of logical reasons, but it's more gut-reaction than anything else, to tell you the truth. I just don't believe it."

"And it's brought you here." Alice leaned forward and lifted the teapot from the small, oval table, then refilled both their cups. "I'll tell you what I can." She sat quietly for a moment, her eyes unfocused as she gathered her thoughts, then she sighed. "It was a bad business from the very beginning. May Dent was never meant to have children. She hadn't the capacity to love them, though to give her credit, perhaps she tried with Theo. She was a bitter woman, one of those people who always feel life has short-changed them. Perhaps she loved her brother more than she should, though in those days," the corners of Alice's mouth turned up in amusement, "one didn't speculate about such things. Whatever the cause, she despised her sister-in-law, never had a good word to say about her."