A Finer End (20 page)

He’d just poured boiling water over the fresh tea leaves when the doorbell rang. Jack hurried to the door and swung it wide.

As he grasped his cousin’s hand, he saw that Duncan had lost the hollow-eyed look he’d remarked on when he’d seen him last. But who was the pretty redhead with him?

She held out her hand and gave him a warm smile. “Jack, I’m Gemma James. I take it Duncan didn’t tell you I was coming?” The look she cast at his cousin was affectionately withering. “Your manners, love, leave something to be desired.”

They had got the awkwardness of their accommodation out of the way first. Jack had apologized profusely, explaining that he’d just put someone in the room fitted out for guests, but he’d move his things into his old room and give them the master bedroom. Encouraged by Gemma’s well-placed kick at his ankle under the kitchen table, Kincaid had demurred, saying they’d find a nearby B & B, and Jack had recommended an establishment near the Abbey.

Gemma had breathed an inward sigh of relief. She found the dark old house with its ugly Victorian furniture depressing, and the mass of Glastonbury Tor rising from the back garden made her feel unexpectedly claustrophobic. It was as if the hill might lean over and swallow the house at any moment.

Over cups of tea, Jack had haltingly recounted his experiences with the automatic writing, his meeting with Winnie Catesby, the gradual involvement of the others in the group, and the disappearance yesterday of Garnet Todd.

If Kincaid felt any surprise at his cousin’s story, he didn’t show it. His expression remained neutral and sympathetic,
a demonstration of his listening skills, and Gemma realized how acutely she missed working with him.

“Can you do it on demand?” Kincaid asked when Jack paused. “The automatic writing.”

“I—I don’t know. I’ve done it often enough with Nick or with Simon Fitzstephen, but—”

Kincaid leaned forward, his eyes alight with interest. “What do you have to do?”

“Just have pen and paper, and empty my mind. Talk about something inconsequential, or listen to someone reading the paper, for instance. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Let’s give it a try, then. I’ll be your assistant.” The look Kincaid gave his cousin was challenging. What sort of mischief had he beguiled Jack into in those long Cheshire summers? Gemma wondered.

She watched them as they sat opposite her at the table in Jack’s cluttered kitchen, Kincaid reading an incomprehensible financial article aloud from the
Guardian
while Jack sat in a relaxed posture, pen and paper ready. Jack Montfort was larger, fairer, and more blunt featured than his cousin, but the resemblance was there if you looked. What was more readily apparent was the easiness between them, the sense of long-established trust and camaraderie. And the man certainly seemed rational and well balanced, in spite of his worries. Could this bizarre tale he’d told them possibly be true?

Lulled by Kincaid’s voice and her own drifting thoughts, Gemma started violently when Jack’s pen suddenly began to move across the paper. He wrote without pause, and without looking at the script. His eyes, half closed, seemed fixed somewhere in the distance.

He filled several pages, then set the pen down. “Success, I see,” he said, looking at the scattered pages.

“You mean you don’t know what you’ve written?” asked Gemma.

“I suppose I’m aware of it at some level, but I don’t process it—it’s like static on a radio.”

Kincaid touched a page. “What does it say?”

“I’ll have to translate, so if you’ll bear with me …

“O Lord, forgive me, for I have sinned grievously against Thee. Though my days of the flesh are but a distant memory, still I feel her skin, soft as goose down, and the round fullness of her breasts.…”

Frowning, Jack stopped and cleared his throat, and Gemma found it endearing that he had colored slightly.

“Sixteen and yet a woman, Alys she was called, the daughter of the stonemason come to repair the damage to the church. She found me comely and would wait for me when I went to the spring. There was little speech between us … we came together in need and pleasure as the beasts do
.

“The work was finished when Alys found she was with child. She begged me for herbs.… To my shame I did her bidding … for my cowardice as well as my lust I have brought misery on us all.…

“From Brother Ambrose, who had befriended me, I stole the necessary potion. With it I gave her what was most precious to me … a bond between us stronger than death. Alys and her father left the Abbey then. Such sorrow I had never known, it tethers me to this place still.…”

Jack looked up, his eyes wide with surprise. “This woman—Alys—she meant to abort their baby. Don’t you think that’s what he means?”

Gemma, intensely moved by this recounting of the girl’s predicament, said, “I—I suppose it’s possible. They were very skilled in using herbs, and her position would have been untenable, wouldn’t it? Edmund couldn’t have married her.”

“I suspect it would have been thought she’d sinned against the Church, as well, in seducing Edmund, rather than the other way round,” Kincaid offered.

“But what if Alys changed her mind? Or the herbs didn’t work?” demanded Jack. “We’ve searched for months for a
blood connection—perhaps a niece or nephew—as we suspected there might be a genetic component to the link.”

“An illegitimate child?” Kincaid mused. “In that case there wouldn’t have been any record.”

“I must tell Simon. This gives us a new angle”—Jack grimaced—“although I don’t know that trying to trace an eleventh-century itinerant stonemason’s daughter will get us much further forward.” Glancing at his watch, he added, “And in the meantime I’ve got to get to hospital. When I rang Nick this morning, he said he’d come midday and look after Faith. I didn’t like to leave her on her own, with Garnet still—”

“You’ve not found her, have you?”

Startled, they all turned towards the doorway. How long had the girl been there, listening? Gemma wondered. Her short hair stood on end, as if she had just slipped out of bed; her cheek still bore creases from the pillow. As she entered the room, Gemma saw that her slender body was made awkward by the weight of the child she carried.

Jack was the first to collect himself. “No, I’m afraid we haven’t. Faith, this is my cousin Duncan and his friend Gemma. They’ve come to help.”

“I don’t think anyone can,” Faith said softly, and her dark eyes held the glint of tears.

“Sit down,” soothed Jack, rising and arranging a chair for her, “and let’s get you a cup of tea. I’m sure Garnet’s fine—”

The doorbell rang. “That must be Nick, now,” Jack said hastily, and disappeared towards the front of the house.

But there was an unmistakable tone of the official in the low-voiced response to Jack’s greeting, although Gemma couldn’t quite make out the words. Kincaid had caught it as well—he was up and moving swiftly out of the room. With a quick look at Faith, who had sunk into the chair Jack provided, Gemma followed Duncan.

As she reached the door, Kincaid was showing his warrant card to a burly, tweed-jacketed man with thinning red
hair. “Duncan Kincaid, Scotland Yard,” he said, shaking the man’s hand. Turning to Gemma, he added, “Inspector James.”

She saw Jack’s surprise as she in turn shook the man’s hand—earlier, she hadn’t introduced herself by rank.

“Alfred Greely, Somerset CID.” Greely’s voice was thick with a West Country burr, and his look was unabashedly appraising. “Is there somewhere we could have a chat?”

“We’ll go into the kitchen,” Jack replied. “Is this about Winnie—Miss Catesby?”

“I’m afraid not. Mr. Montfort, I understand you rang up last night and reported a Miss Garnet Todd missing.”

Once inside, Jack nodded towards Faith. “This young lady is staying with Miss Todd. She came to me last night when Garnet didn’t come home.”

When Greely switched his gaze to Faith, she seemed to wilt further into her chair. “I’m afraid we’ve found Miss Todd,” he said. “A gentleman taking his morning constitutional round the Tor thought a farmer’s gate an odd place to abandon a van and investigated.”

“Garnet’s?” Faith’s pallor was ghastly.

“I’m afraid so, miss. And her inside it.”

“Dead?”

“Yes. I am sorry.”

Faith’s eyes were enormous in her pale face. “She killed herself, then,” she said with what Gemma could have sworn was relief.

“Oh, no,” Greely replied, watching her intently. “I very much suspect Miss Todd was murdered.”

K
INCAID STOOD IN
the thick, nettle-filled grass at the edge of Basketfield Lane, watching two crime-scene technicians dust the outside of Garnet Todd’s van for fingerprints.

When he’d asked DCI Greely if he could have a look at the scene, Greely had given him a sharp glance, saying, “You don’t get enough murders in London? Funny way to spend a holiday, if you ask me.” But he had not objected, and Kincaid had followed him in Gemma’s car, down the end of Ashwell Lane and up to the right. They were only a few hundred yards from Jack’s house, but the narrow, hedge-enclosed lane seemed a different world.

Through the low-lying trees Kincaid could just make out the steep eastern side of the Tor, and the snaking queue of climbers making their way up its zigzag path. As still as it seemed in the lane, he could see the wind whipping at the climbers’ clothes. It would be cold at the summit.

A few yards away, Greely slipped his mobile phone back into his jacket pocket, then came to join Kincaid. “The doc’s on his way now,” he said, adding, “Old Doc Lamb has a busy practice, so sometimes we have to wait a bit. But he’s the best there is—been at it since before I joined the force.”

The coroner’s van had already arrived. The driver had pulled it tightly into the nearest passing spot, and he and the attendant sat inside, eating sandwiches and sharing a newspaper.

“Funny your cousin’s young friend should assume the woman killed herself.” Greely chose a dry stem of grass, and breaking it off, chewed it meditatively.

Watching him, Kincaid wondered if city boys ever learned to chew grass in quite the same way. “You from around here?” he asked.

“Born in Dorset, just across the border. But I’ve lived within twenty miles of the Tor, near enough, since I was a lad.”

“Tell me what you’ve got so far, if you don’t mind.”
Kincaid nodded at the van. “Why are you so sure she
didn’t
commit suicide?”

“Van was locked, no keys. Of course, she could have locked herself in, rolled down the window, and tossed them, but in that case she had a throwing arm like a cricket bowler. We’ve had a good look about and there’s no sign of keys. Doesn’t make sense anyway,” he mused, moving the grass stem to the other side of his mouth. “I can see locking herself in, but what good would it do to toss the keys?”

“And the cause of death?”

“Don’t know for certain yet. Nothing obvious. No slit wrists; no sign of the usual pill-induced vomiting; no exhaust hose run through the window. And she was in the back—looks as if she was dumped there. No attempt to make herself comfortable for her last few minutes on earth.”

“Mind if I have a look?” Kincaid asked, his curiosity growing.

Abandoning the grass stem, Greely gave a phlegmatic nod. “Suit yourself.”

Kincaid made his way to the van, careful to use the same path as the crime-scene technicians. The rear doors stood open. Flies buzzed in the van’s interior, and the familiar odor of death wafted out to meet him. The woman’s body lay wedged in a clear space to one side, and some smudged sections in the dust made him think she had been pushed into place among the odds and ends of tile and equipment on dusty rubber flooring. Her feet, clad in old-fashioned black boots, were towards him. She wore a wool cape that had fallen back to reveal a bright, multicolored skirt. Her thick dark hair had come loose from its plait; it covered her face like a curtain.

Kincaid borrowed a pair of gloves from one of the techs and inched inside the van for a better look at the body. Lividity was fairly pronounced, indicating she’d been dead some hours, and when he lifted her eyelid he saw the red spots in the eye indicative of asphyxiation. There was no noticeable bruising on throat or neck, however.

With a fingertip, he moved the thick hair away from her face. She had worn long, dangly earrings; the left one was missing.

Garnet Todd’s eccentricities had gone deeper than costume, according to the brief account Jack had given him, Kincaid mused as he crawled out into the welcome fresh air. But what cause had the woman given someone to murder her? If it had been she who struck Winnie Catesby, as the girl, Faith, suspected, her death made even less sense.

Greely had not managed to get much more out of Faith after his announcement that he believed Garnet Todd had been murdered. She had begun to cry—not a storm of sobs, which might have offered some possibility of consolation, but slow, despairing tears that ran down her face unchecked. Jack had protested then, and Gemma had shepherded the girl back upstairs to her room.

Gemma had offered to stay with her so that Jack could go on to the hospital, and he had accepted gratefully. Knowing Gemma’s aversion to being designated as handholder, Kincaid had given her a questioning glance, but she’d reassured him with a nod. Method? Or sympathy? he wondered—or perhaps a bit of both.

There came the sound of an automobile climbing the gradient, then the crunch of tires on gravel as an ancient Morris Minor appeared round the bend and rolled to a stop. A balding, bespectacled man climbed out, medical bag in hand. It seemed the police surgeon had arrived.

“I see you’ve made it a point to interrupt my lunch, Alf,” he said to Greely by way of greeting, but his jovial tone matched his pink, cherubic face.