Deborah Crombie - All Shall Be Well

"Can you remember exactly where Felicity took this training?" Kincaid asked, content to let Gemma diffuse the tension he'd generated. It had served its purpose. Martha's initial reaction to his question had been unguarded enough to convince him of its sincerity.

"I don't need to remember. I've got it right here in my file." Pulling open a drawer, she flipped through the brightly colored files with practiced ease. "Here it is. Not Winchester. Dorchester. I always get those two confused." She handed a piece of paper to Gemma. "Copy the address if you need it, but as far as I know it's a very reputable course. Do you need the references from physicians as well?"

"Please."

"I'd stake my reputation on Felicity Howarth's competence," Martha said slowly. "I feel that strongly about it. In fact," she added a bit ruefully, "I suppose I already have."

"I don't think you've any cause to worry, Ms. Trevellyan." Kincaid smiled at her, paving the way for a graceful exit. "We're just tidying up loose ends."

By the time they reached Richmond the haze had dissipated and pale sunlight filtered through the fringe of leaves overhanging the road. Kincaid checked the map. "Petersham's just a bit further on, and according to the directions they gave me over the phone, the school's just off the main road."

"I've heard that one before. Your navigational skills leave something to be desired."

He looked up at her profile. Although her gaze was fixed intently on the road, the corner of her mouth turned up in a hint of a smile. "You can't drive and navigate both, so you'll just have to live with my deficiencies, won't you?"

Shortly after they entered Petersham, a high, red-brick wall began to run alongside the road on their right. "Slow down, Gemma. The entrance should be along here." A sharp right turn through an open gate revealed an expanse of green lawns, symmetrically laid out red-brick buildings, and beyond the school, shining in the sun, the Thames.

"Oh my," said Gemma as she parked the car, "our Roger did have a difficult time of things, didn't he?"

A secretary showed them to a book-lined study with long French windows overlooking the river. They waited in silence. Gemma stood watching the swans moving languidly on the water, and Kincaid noticed that the black jersey she wore made the contrast more evident between her bright hair and pale skin.

The door swung open and the head charged into the room, black gown flapping like crow's wings. About Kincaid's age, with thinning hair, glasses and an incipient paunch, he radiated gale-force energy. "I'm Martin Farrow." He shook their hands in turn with a quick, firm grip. "What can I do for you?"

Kincaid decided this man wouldn't appreciate wasted words. "One of your former students, Roger Leveson-Gower-do you remember him? I'm afraid it's been a good ten years."

Martin Farrow didn't ask them to sit. Kincaid thought the omission was probably not due to a lack of courtesy, but that it simply didn't occur to Farrow that anyone would not prefer to stand.

Farrow limited himself to rocking on the balls of his feet while he thought about the question. "Oh, I remember him, all right. I was assistant head then, so most of the discipline problems came to me. What's Roger gone in for? A career in forgery? Insurance fraud? Conning little old ladies out of their life savings?"

"Nothing so glamorous. I take it Roger showed criminal promise early. Why didn't you chuck him?"

"Would have if it'd been up to me." Farrow began to move around the room as he talked, straightening sofa cushions, adjusting chairs by a millimeter, so that Kincaid and Gemma had to turn like tops to follow him. "We run a good school here, progressive, none of that medieval boy-bashing and gruel for supper nonsense, and turning out students like Roger Leveson-Gower does nothing for one's reputation."

Kincaid, accustomed to their usual give-and-take in an interview, looked expectantly at Gemma. Her face was expressionless, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the back of Martin Farrow's head. "Uh," he said, before the gap in the conversation lengthened, "so what was his ace in the hole?"

Farrow came to rest with his hands on the back of a wingback chair, and Kincaid suddenly saw him behind a lectern, his perpetual motion stilled by a physical anchor. "His father contributed generously to our building fund." He shrugged. "The usual thing. And as thorough a rotter as Leveson-Gower was, he was too sly to get caught at anything really serious. But I was certainly glad to see the back of him."

"Either his father's funds or his generosity have dried up, because these days Roger seems to be scrounging a living off a woman who probably doesn't make much more than minimum wage."

Farrow smiled. "Sounds right up his alley. He bullied the junior boys-they were terrified of him, and he always managed things so that they took the fall for his schemes."

"Did you ever see any indication that he might be violent?"

"No." Farrow shook his head. "Too bloody calculating by half, too concerned with his own skin." He thought for a moment. "If Roger Leveson-Gower ever took to violence, I'd say he'd make very sure he couldn't be found out."

"Satisfied?" Kincaid asked, when Farrow had swept them out the door and seen them into their car with a cheerful wave.

"He was a bright boy," had been Farrow's last comment. "Always hate to see a good mind go to waste."

"You were expecting him to have been Best Boy?" Gemma said as she put the Rover in gear and pulled out into the road.

"Would Jasmine's death have been foolproof enough to tempt him, do you suppose? Would he have felt safe?"

Gemma shrugged, her eyes on the road. "He wouldn't have counted on you. You were the unforeseen ingredient, the spanner in the works. Without you Jasmine's death would have gone unremarked."

He waited for her to push home her point, take advantage of every tempting possibility to make her case against Roger, but she remained silent. As they entered Richmond again, he spoke. "Gemma, what's wrong? I thought you'd got lockjaw during that interview, and now you're shutting me out. Come to think of it, you haven't been quite right all day."

She glanced at him, then back at the traffic. "Bloody hell." The second's distraction had left her no room to maneuver into the right-hand lane, and the left shunted them off the main road and into a narrow one-way side street. "Now what?"

Kincaid smiled. "Not much choice is there? Follow it and see where it goes."

The street twisted and turned, narrowing into a cobbled alleyway that snaked between rows of warehouses. Suddenly, they shot out into the sun. The Thames lay before them, beyond a wide expanse of brick paving and a post-and-chain railing. "Pull up there." Kincaid pointed to a spot near the railing. "Let's get out for a bit." Up to their right traffic sped busily across the hump-backed bridge they had crossed just before they'd derailed.

The sun felt warm on their faces, and the air moved just enough to ruffle their hair. Across the water, budding willows trailed lazy fronds in the water. A moored houseboat bobbed against its gaudy reflection in the current, and a pelican stood dreaming one-legged on a post. Even the sound of the traffic seemed muted by the river's peaceful sway.

"That was a fortuitous wrong-turning. Come on." Kincaid turned and began walking along the railing. "Too bad fate doesn't prepare you for these little gifts. We should have brought a picnic." He paused as Gemma stopped and turned her face up to the sun, her eyes half closed. "So what's up?"

Sighing, she answered without looking at him. "Privilege. The place reeked of privilege. Generations of it, progressive or not. I don't expect you to understand." She faced him, arms folded across her chest, and in the light he could see gold flecks in the hazel irises of her eyes. "Money by itself doesn't faze me. The Leveson-Gowers, for instance-they may be rolling in the stuff but they're trash. They've no taste, and I can beat them at their own game. It's the in-bred assurance that makes my skin crawl-that instinctive knowledge of the right thing to say, the right thing to do. And it's as natural to you as breathing."