A Finer End (32 page)

Kincaid squatted and peered into the trunk. “Probably not Great-Aunt Sophie’s petticoats.”

“Did we have a Great-Aunt Sophie?”

“Undoubtedly.”

Jack grinned as he shook out the last bit of old-fashioned ladies’ underclothing. “Have you come to make yourself useful?”

“For an hour. Then I’ve promised to pick Faith up at the café.”

“Why don’t you start over there, then?” Jack directed him to the eastern end of the attic, just out of range of the pool of lamplight.

Somewhat daunted, Kincaid said, “Do we have some sort of system for separating the things that have been searched?”

“There.” Jack pointed to a section of boxes and oddments off to one side.

“Right.” Kincaid made his way gingerly along a pathway Jack had cleared across the attic floor, then whistled in dismay as he got a better look at the daunting task awaiting him. “I think a bulldozer might be more appropriate,” he muttered, but bent to it.

First he transferred the large items—a wooden child’s cradle; an ancient, rusted tricycle; a picnic hamper complete with dishes and accoutrements; a croquet set—to Jack’s segregated area. “All this stuff looks Victorian—it’s probably worth a fortune.”

“I’ll have to go on
Antiques Roadshow
,” Jack joked, without looking up from the pile he was sorting.

Kincaid moved a stack of framed pictures to one side and started on the boxes. To his delight, they held books. The volumes were dusty and musty, some with water stains or damaged covers, but nonetheless it was a treasure trove. After half an hour, he had come up with a handful of real finds.

“I’m no expert, but I think you’d do well to let my dad have a look at these.” He handed Jack copies of
The Moonstone,
The War of the Worlds, Mrs. Dalloway
, and
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
. All were in good condition and, as far as he could tell, first editions.

Jack accepted the books with a discouraged sigh. “And I’ve found three hideous lamps, a recipe collection from the twenties, some moth-eaten flower arrangements, and a box of ladies’ hats.”

The first dozen of the framed pictures were obviously junk: cardboard reproductions of famous paintings in cheap frames. But there were three small landscape oils that Kincaid suspected might be valuable, as well as a nice watercolor of the Abbey ruins, and a larger oil portrait of a hunting spaniel that he thought Gemma might like, remembering her interest in Andrew Catesby’s dog.

“Take it,” Jack said of the spaniel portrait, when Kincaid presented his latest haul. “Give it to Gemma with my compliments.” He sat back on his heels and groaned. “The light’s going. We’ll have to give it up for the day. I didn’t expect the thing to jump out and bite me, but this really is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.”

“What about Edmund?” Kincaid asked, rubbing his dusty hands against his jeans.

“No help there. I’ve tried.”

“Then I suggest sherry in the drawing room, when I’ve collected Faith. Maybe among us we’ll come up with something.”

Faith stood watching for him outside the café, hands deep in the pockets of her cardigan. She waited until they had almost reached Jack’s before she asked Kincaid, “Any luck?”

“Some interesting things, but not what we’re looking for.”

“No. I meant Nick. Did you find him?”

“I tried the caravan, and the cafés you suggested. No joy,
but the woman at the Assembly Rooms says he’d been in earlier. If he doesn’t show up this evening, I’ll run out to the—” The sight of the car in Jack’s drive instantly derailed his train of thought. A slightly battered white Vauxhall, unmarked. DCI Greely’s.

“Ah … perhaps we’d better see what’s up before we make plans. It looks as though Inspector Greely’s come to call.”

“They won’t put me in jail, will they?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Greely stood in front of the cold fireplace, hands behind his back as if warming them. Nodding, he said, “Superintendent. Miss Wills.”

Winnie was still ensconced on the sofa, with Jack standing protectively by her.

“Inspector Greely,” Kincaid replied pleasantly, but it occurred to him that he was getting a good taste of being on the receiving end of things. “What can we do for you today?”

“I just wanted to clarify a few things with Mr. Montfort here.” Greely’s smile was not reassuring.

Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

Greely turned pointedly towards Jack, making it clear that he didn’t intend to let Kincaid serve as intermediary this time. “Mr. Montfort, what time did you say you left the hospital last Thursday night?”

“I think it was about half past ten, but I really wasn’t paying attention. Why?”

“The ICU nursing staff put it closer to ten o’clock. And it seems you told me it was near midnight when you arrived home and found Miss Wills on your doorstep. Is that right?”

“As far as I can remember. Look, what is all this about?”

“Well,” Greely drawled, “it occurred to me that two hours was a very generous amount of time to make the drive from
Taunton to Glastonbury, late at night with no traffic. And it also occurred to me that it takes a very
short
amount of time to drown someone—say three or four minutes.”

Jack gaped at him. “Surely you’re not accusing
me
of murdering Garnet? Why on earth would I do such a thing?”

Winnie reached up and took Jack’s hand.

“Perhaps Miss Wills communicated her fears about Miss Catesby’s accident to you. At that time, I believe, Miss Catesby was still unconscious, her recovery quite uncertain. In such circumstances, you’d have wanted some answers very badly. Perhaps you merely meant to talk to Miss Todd, and it escalated into something much more serious—murder, in fact. And in that case, Miss Wills’s story of coming back from her ‘walk’ and finding the house empty is so much poppycock, and she either participated in the crime, or she acted as an accessory after the fact.”

Kincaid tried to catch Jack’s eye, to caution him to say nothing, but Jack’s gaze remained riveted on Greely.

“Number one,” his cousin shot back furiously, “the first time I knew anything about Faith’s suspicions was when she showed up on my doorstep around midnight. Second, the reason it took me longer than usual to drive from Taunton was that I was exhausted, and I had to stop several times in order to stay—”

“Give it up, Inspector,” Kincaid broke in. “You’re fishing. You’ve no evidence. And I’ve instructed my cousin to retain a lawyer.”

Greely rocked back and forth on his heels, placidly surveying them. “I thought you might be interested in hearing my ideas, but as it seems you’re not, I’ll let you folks get on with your evening. Oh, by the way, Miss Catesby—I’m glad to see you making such a speedy recovery.”

“Thank you, Inspector.” She gave him a forced smile.

Kincaid gestured towards the door. “I’ll see you out, shall I?”

Greely nodded his farewells, then followed Kincaid into the hall.

“Do I take it no new evidence has presented itself, Inspector? Hence the stirring-ants technique?”

For once, Greely’s smile looked genuine. “Well, you know, Superintendent, when you stir an anthill with a stick, you generally get results.”

Kincaid returned the smile as he opened the door. “Yes, Inspector, you do. But sometimes you get stung in the process.”

Andrew had rung the hospital, only to be told by a toffee-voiced receptionist that Winifred Catesby was no longer a patient there. After that he’d rung the Vicarage again and again, hanging up when the answering machine came on. He couldn’t bear to hear her voice, and yet every time he felt he must.

After a while he took out the car, but the house on the Butleigh Road was dark, lifeless.

She was at Montfort’s, then.

He knew Montfort’s house, of course, he’d looked up the address in the telephone directory months ago. Now he could find it in his sleep, so often had he driven slowly by. Well, he would wait, and watch—he was good at waiting, and at watching—until the time was right.

When his own phone rang, he sat and stared at it until the ringing stopped.

O
N THE TRAIN
from Bath to London, Gemma fell instantly into a heavy sleep, in which she dreamed jumbled, disjointed dreams, threaded throughout with the clicking and clacking of the train. When she woke, groggily, she felt there had been something she must do, but she could not remember what it was.

The memory nagged at her as she took the tube from Paddington to Islington, and as she rang her parents from the flat and asked them to run Toby home in their car.

When her parents arrived an hour later, Toby scrambled out of the car in a pair of brand-new, bright green Wellies, shouting, “Mummy, Mummy! I made sausage rolls! And we made special cakes for Halloween!”

Gemma swooped him up in a bear hug. “You’re going to take after your granddad, are you?”

“I’m a baker,” he announced proudly, wriggling until she put him down. “Can I show Holly my boots?”

“All right. But knock first, okay?” She watched until he had closed behind him the gate that led to Hazel and Tim’s garden, then ushered her parents into the flat.

“Has he been going nonstop all weekend?”

“More or less,” her mum answered, laughing. “Cyn had her two over earlier, so he hasn’t really touched down from that.”

Gemma rolled her eyes. Her sister’s children were utterly undisciplined terrors, but if she complained, her mother would surely remind her of the things she and Cyn had got up to at that age. “Stay for tea?” she asked instead.

“We’d best be getting back. I had ours just about ready when you rang. You look better. You should get away more often. How’s Duncan?”

It was a loaded question. Her parents didn’t approve of her unmarried state—or her “pigheadedness” as they called it. Once, in a fit of temper, Gemma had retaliated, accusing them of not minding if she married an ax murderer, as long as they could tell their friends she was “settled.”

“Depends on whether or not he was a good-looking chap,” her mother had rejoined promptly.

Now, Gemma smiled and answered, “Duncan’s fine. And his cousin’s very nice.” She had told them only that they were making a social visit, and didn’t intend to elaborate.

“Well, bring Duncan to see us. And let us know if you need us to mind Toby.”

When they had kissed her and gone on their way, Gemma wandered over to Hazel’s, intending to practice her piano lesson while the children played. She filled Hazel and Tim in on the details of the weekend, then accepted a cup of tea and sat down at the piano and, with a sigh, attempted to concentrate on her music. But as she picked her way through Pachelbel’s
Canon in D
, the immersion she sought refused to come.

Instead, her mind held an image of the worn stones of the Abbey rising from the emerald grass of the precinct … and the rocky flank of the Tor behind Garnet Todd’s house on Wellhouse Lane, the broken tower on its summit like a finger stabbing at the sky.

Gemma sank back into her normal Monday-morning routine like a stone slipping into a pool, and yet there was an unreality to it, as if the hustle and bustle of her London life was merely surface noise. Wading through the accumulation of reports that had materialized on her desk over the weekend, she kept in mind the background checks she’d promised Kincaid, and when she had a free moment she put them in motion.

By late afternoon, information began to trickle in.

Garnet Todd had a record, for what it was worth. She had resisted arrest during an antiwar protest in London in the sixties and been found in possession of illegal hallucinogens. No surprise there. Garnet had always chosen the unconventional path.

Nick Carlisle, as Greely had mentioned, had been arrested and fingerprinted as a result of a pub brawl in Durham four years previously—a typical adolescent escapade. What surprised her was that his mother, into whose custody he had been released, was the famous North Country novelist Elizabeth Carlisle. Why would Elizabeth Carlisle’s son choose to live in relative squalor in a Somerset backwater, working for practically nothing, when his connections would have guaranteed him a prestigious starting job? Principle? Or some sort of family trouble?

She put in a call to Durham CID and requested the number of the constable in Elizabeth Carlisle’s small village. There was no answer when she rang, but she left her name and number on the constable’s answerphone.

Kincaid had rung last night and brought her up-to-date on the negative results of their search for the manuscript, as well as Nick’s apparent disappearance and DCI Greely’s sudden interest in Jack.

“What did the Super say when you rang him?” she’d asked.

“Officially, to keep my nose clean and be prepared to levitate back to London if anything breaks on this murder in Camden Passage. Unofficially, he was at school with the Chief Constable and will have my arse if Greely complains I’m interfering in his case.”

“Ouch.”

“I know. I hope I don’t bugger this up.” Then, as he rang off—“Oh, and by the way, I miss you.”

Gemma smiled at the memory, then went back to mulling over what he’d told her. It struck her that Faith had talked about Garnet’s knowledge of Goddess worship, and now Nick Carlisle was looking up friends of the dead woman who had the same interest. Was it possible that Garnet’s murder could be connected to her involvement in some sort of cult? Could her death have nothing to do with Winnie or Jack?