Deborah Crombie - All Shall Be Well

Peering through the frosted glass of the inside door, Kincaid could make out only fuzzy shapes. He pulled open the door and the lumps resolved themselves into ordinary waiting room furniture, a desk, and behind it, a receptionist.

She swiveled away from her typewriter and smiled at him. "Can I help you?"

"Uh, I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. Is Mr. Rawlinson in?"

"He's in court this afternoon." Glancing at her watch, she added, "I'm afraid he may be a while yet. Would you like to make an appointment?"

She diplomatically didn't add, thought Kincaid, that any self-respecting idiot would have made one in the first place. The nameplate on her desk read "Carol White," a good, solid English name. It suited her. Middle-aged and well-built, with an open, friendly face and a glorious head of wavy, shoulder-length chestnut hair-in a few years she would begin the slide toward matronly, but she was still very attractive indeed.

"Would that be young Mr. Rawlinson?"

She stared at him, perplexed, but still polite. "Old Mr. Rawlinson passed away ten years ago. You're not from around here, then?"

"London, actually." Kincaid again fished his warrant card from his pocket, and extended it to her.

"Oh." Her eyes widened and she glanced up at his face, then back at the folder. "Fancy that. What would Scotland Yard want with us?"

Kincaid heard the sharp, little intake of breath-the ordinary citizen's response to the copper's unexpected appearance-and he hastened to reassure her. "Just some very dusty information. Is there any chance Mr. Rawlinson might remember a girl who worked here almost thirty years ago? Her name was Jasmine Dent."

Carol White stared at him, then said slowly, "No. Mr. Rawlinson would have still been away at school. But I do. I remember Jasmine."

Unasked, Kincaid picked up a visitor's chair and swung it around next to the desk, never taking his eyes from Carol White's face. " You do?"

Still hesitant, she continued. "I know it's a bit silly of me, but I hate to admit I've been here as long as I have. I came here straight from leaving school, same as Jasmine, but she was a couple of years older."

"Mr. Rawlinson needed two secretaries?"

"You could say that." She smiled, showing even, white teeth. "Mr. Rawlinson liked pretty young girls, and we were both that, if I do say so myself." Holding up a hand to forestall Kincaid interrupting, she added, "Oh, I don't mean he was a real dirty old man-never tried anything on, as far as I know-he just fancied himself a bit of a rogue. And since he paid us the bare minimum in those days, I guess he could afford us."

Having moved around to the side of Carol's desk, Kincaid discovered that what he had thought to be a dress was actually a thigh-length tunic, beneath which she wore skintight, black, stretch trousers, and high-heeled sandals. Following his appreciative gaze, she laughed. "Dressed courtesy of my teenage daughter, who can't stand for her old mum to go out looking like a frump." Then sobering, she said, "Truthfully, I think Mr. Rawlinson intended from the beginning to groom me as Jasmine's successor. She must have made it as clear to him as she did everyone else that she didn't intend to stay in this poky town any longer than she had to. Jasmine was ferociously ambitious, Mr. Kincaid. What became of her? Is she a great success? I could never see her as housewife and kids material."

"No, she never married. And she did quite well for herself. She was supervisor in a borough planning office."

"Was?" Carol White asked quietly. "Then she's-"

"She had cancer."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head. "God, how silly of me. It's not even as though we were great friends, haven't thought of her in years-it's just that whenever I hear of someone I knew growing up dying, it gets me right here." She thumped her chest with a fist, then reached in her desk drawer for a box of tissues and blew her nose. "A reminder of my own mortality, I guess. If it can happen to them, it can happen to you."

"I know exactly what you mean," Kincaid said, thinking of his own reaction, not only to the deaths of those he knew, but to the deaths of strangers-that aching sense of loss he never quite managed to control.

"But I don't understand." Giving her eyes one last wipe, Carol threw the tissues in the wastebin beneath her desk and collected herself. "Why are you asking about Jasmine?"

Kincaid gave her an answer even more brief than the one he'd given Alice Finney, but she nodded, apparently satisfied. Years of working in a solicitor's office would have taught her to be discreet.

"You said you weren't particularly close friends?"

"Oh, we talked, the way girls will in an office, about what was going on, and who's bum Mr. Rawlinson had patted most often that week. Just chatter, really. But if you ventured into anything too personal she'd snap shut like a clam." Carol paused, screwing up her face in earnest concentration. "Sometimes… sometimes I had the feeling Jasmine had never had a friend, didn't know what to do with one."

"Then what gave you the impression she was so ambitious?"

"London. That's all she talked about. And she pinched every penny, brought her dinner from home every day, even did child-minding in the evenings to make a bit extra. I remember that she didn't get on well with her old-maid aunt."

Kincaid smiled. "I think that's a safe assumption," he said, then returned to her earlier point. "Did Jasmine not go out, then, if she was so careful with her money? A pretty girl that age, you'd think there'd be plenty to do in a town this size."

Carol shook her head. "I even tried to fix her up a few times with a double-date, but she wasn't having any."

"Did she talk about men? I don't mean to sound like a chauvinist, but it does seem the natural thing."

"I'm sure that's all I talked about, night and day," Carol said, laughter in her voice. "Must have been bloody boring, now that I think about it. But Jasmine… no, not that I remember." She stared into space for a moment, eyes unfocused, and Kincaid waited. "There was something, though. Those last couple of months before she left, she seemed different-had that 'cat-that-ate-the-canary' look about her. Sometimes I almost expected her to wash her whiskers."

"But she never confided in you?"

This time the shake of her head was wistful. "No. Sorry."

"What about when she left? Did she tell you anything beforehand?"

"I was just as shocked as anyone. She just came in that day, gave her notice, cleaned out her drawer and left. Mr. Rawlinson was dead chuffed, I can tell you."

"Did you hear from her after that?"

"Not a word. But she did take me aside and tell me good-bye that day. She wished me luck."

This time it was Kincaid who sat silently, thinking that this office had probably not changed much… imagining Jasmine sitting where Carol sat… Jasmine bent over the typewriter… Jasmine's dark head silhouetted against the faded cream wallpaper. What had made her take flight, abandoning her carefully made plans, and her brother?

"Did you ever meet her brother, Theo?" he asked, following his thought.

"Not until the old aunt died, and we handled her affairs." She shrugged, the movement flexing the fabric across her full breasts. "He wasn't up to much, was he? 'Course, he was just a kid, not more than seventeen or eighteen at the time. That probably explains it."

"Explains what?"

Carol White looked down at her intertwined fingers, the pink-varnished nails paired like lovers. "Oh, I've probably said more than I ought. It's been such a long time, and I'm not sure what I really remember. I think Mr. Rawlinson had to handle everything, the funeral arrangements, the sale of the cottage… Theo was so shattered. Almost hysterical. Only natural, I suppose, but at the time I thought his behavior rather odd-most young men who come into enough money to make them independent have to work at appearing grief-stricken."