A Finer End (29 page)

“I never thought—We were such good companions, I never felt the need. I didn’t know—I never expected Jack to come into my life. Oh, Fi! I’ve been so wrapped up in myself these past few months, with what I was feeling. And if I’ve given Andrew any real thought, it’s been in a he’ll-get-over-it way. But it goes much deeper than that, and I should have known it.”

“Winnie, you can’t blame yourself for Andrew’s shortcomings.”

“I thought I knew him, but I’m beginning to doubt even that. He went to Garnet’s house the day after she died. Why would he do such a thing?”

“She was well known for her archaeological work—”

“He said he wanted to commission tile work for his
kitchen. Andrew!” Winnie shook her head. “It makes me wonder …”

“Wonder what?” Fiona prompted when her friend didn’t continue.

“I’ve noticed things the past few months, around the Vicarage. Papers moved about, things missing. What if—what if Andrew’s been … spying on me?” Reluctantly, Winnie met Fiona’s gaze. “Oh, Fi. What certainty is there in anything, if you can’t trust those you love best?”

The rain that threatened all day had not materialized, but as night came on the air developed a soft fuzziness, hovering on the verge of fog. By the time Gemma and Kincaid arrived back at the B & B, the streetlamps and car lights were haloed with moisture.

As Gemma got out of the car, she was possessed by a sudden restlessness. “Let’s not go in just yet. It’s such a beautiful night.”

“Shall we walk, then? See the sights of Glastonbury by starlight?” Kincaid suggested. “Unless you’d rather go down the pub for a pint.”

She laughed. “You’re such a romantic. A walk would be fine, and we’ll see what strikes us.”

They let themselves out the gate, and when they reached Magdalene Street, Gemma hooked her arm through his. “I keep trying to imagine what it must have been like, eight hundred years ago. It seems such a long time, and yet people’s emotions haven’t changed that much.”

“Alys and Edmund?”

“Yes. And we don’t even know if they were real.”

“You could get into all sorts of philosophical difficulties with that statement. There’s the subjective approach: ‘Are they real if we believe in them?’ But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There are worse dangers lurking. ‘Do we have souls? Is there life after death?’ ”

“How can you be so flippant?” Gemma scolded, pinching his arm.

“A defense mechanism, love. Those are places I’m afraid to go, even with my proper Anglican upbringing.”

She glanced up at him, unsure if he was still teasing. He never talked much about such things, but when she’d asked him once, point-blank, what he believed, he’d said he couldn’t imagine a god that would let happen the things he saw every day on the job.

“What about this murder, then? Have you changed your mind about Nick since Greely seems so positive?”

Kincaid kept walking for a moment, then said, “I just can’t quite see Nick, or Nick and Faith, committing a deliberate murder. And in this case I think it would have been a bit hard to drown Garnet in a moment of fear or passion.” They had reached the Abbey car park. “Is that Nick’s bookshop?” he asked, pointing across the street. “Jack mentioned his office was upstairs on the corner.”

“It overlooks the Market Square, then. Let’s cross over. Earlier I saw a big used-book shop down the way.” Continuing the thread of their conversation, Gemma asked, “What about Andrew Catesby?”

Kincaid frowned. “No motive. What possible reason could he have for killing Todd, a woman he apparently scarcely knew—”

“Unless he somehow got the idea that she was responsible for his sister’s injuries. But he seemed genuinely shocked by the idea that someone might deliberately have hurt Winnie.”

“Maybe he’s a better actor than we think, and he’s the one who struck Winnie, out of some sort of warped jealousy. Then Garnet found out somehow, and he killed her to shut her up.”

“You’re reaching on that one,” said Gemma. Then she went on more thoughtfully, “When you were asking Winnie about Faith’s parents today, there is a possibility you neglected
to mention. Has it occurred to you that the reason Faith won’t name the baby’s father is that—”

“She was abused by her own father? That would certainly explain why she refuses to go home.”

“And it might explain why she’s so set against seeing a doctor. Maybe she’s afraid the baby may have genetic complications.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to have a talk with her parents,” Kincaid agreed. “I’ll run it by Greely, make sure he doesn’t object, and get their name and address. You can be sure he’ll have got that out of Faith today.”

“If Faith was so secretive about her family, how did Nick get her address? Remember, he said he’d even gone looking for her at her parents’ house in Street.” Then, in disappointment, Gemma added, “Oh, the bookshop’s closed.”

“A good thing. You have no room for more books in your flat. You’re right about Nick, though—makes me wonder what else he hasn’t told us.” He stopped and gave an exaggerated sniff. “Is that fish and chips I smell?”

“Don’t tell me you’re hungry again?”

“It was only soup, and that was hours ago.”

“Two, maybe three,” Gemma corrected, smiling. Faith had done her best with Jack’s meager resources, but her pot of soup had not made a particularly generous meal for five people.

They had left Jack contemplating the ramifications of Simon’s hypothesis. If there were even a possibility that a copy of the ancient manuscript might have been passed down through Jack’s family, he would be faced with the enormous task of searching through the accumulated clutter in his parents’ house.

The chippie was a bit further down, where the Market Square became a pedestrian mall. The shop’s door stood open, serving as an enticement. It was a clean, well-lit establishment, with a proper restaurant in the back.

“Do you want to sit down?” Gemma asked.

“No. Let’s keep walking. Somehow fish and chips never taste the same without the newspaper.”

Back in the street, with their steaming newspaper parcels in hand, Kincaid turned back the way they’d come. “Let’s walk up the High.”

They peered through the leaded glass windows of the ancient George & Pilgrims inn. The bar was full, the hum of conversation audible even through the glass. The building looked very old indeed, with its authentic black-and-white timbering and worn, blackened beams.

“Would Edmund have known this place?” Gemma asked.

“A century or so after his time, I think. Not that he’d have been allowed to frequent the inn. It was built to accommodate the pilgrims, and the abbot’s high-ranking overflow.”

They walked on, past the Café Galatea and New Age shops, until Gemma stopped, transfixed, before a gallery window. A single painting, lit by a soft spotlight, stood against a black velvet backdrop. Luminous, winged creatures hovered over a moonlit city in which tiny humans went about their business, unaware. The vision was stunningly beautiful, the colors glowing like living jewels, but the creatures’ faces were fierce and otherworldly. It made her a little uneasy. “Are they protecting the people?” she asked softly. “Or do they have their own agenda?”

“Fiona Finn Allen.” Kincaid was reading the artist’s signature over her shoulder. “That’s Winnie’s friend, the woman who found her after the accident.” He stepped back so that he could read the marquee above the window. “Allen Galleries.” Walking on, he remarked, “I suppose it shows our self-absorption that we even think those spirits should be concerned with us. What if there are layers of reality we can’t see that have nothing to do with human needs and desires?”

Gemma gave him a surprised glance. “Now I think Glastonbury’s getting to you too. Oh, look,” she added,
stopping again to gaze through a bakery window at the empty trays, waiting for their early-morning baked goods. She felt a pang of longing for Toby, who was spending the weekend with her parents, “helping,” as he called it, in their bakery. Turning to Kincaid, she said, “You know I’ll have to go back tomorrow.”

“And I don’t see how I can leave Jack in the lurch, at this point. I hope Doug Cullen can manage a bit longer on his own.”

“What will the Guv say?” asked Gemma, referring to Chief Superintendent Denis Childs.

“I’ll give him a ring at home tomorrow, explain the situation. Then you could drop me in Bath, and I’ll hire a car.”

“No,” Gemma said, thinking it out. “I won’t need the car the next few days. After we’ve paid a visit to Faith’s parents, you can run
me
to Bath, put me on the train, and keep the car.”

When he started to protest, she insisted. “No, really. I want to take the train. I won’t have to fight the Sunday trippers’ traffic coming back into London.” That was true, and a valid enough argument to silence Kincaid, but it was the thought of those few hours on the train when she would have absolutely no demands that had decided her.

“You could do some background checks.”

“Along with three thousand other things on Monday morning. But make me a list tonight.”

They walked the rest of the way up the High in companionable silence. The New Age shops gave way to more pedestrian businesses: a launderette, a grocer’s, a chemist, estate agents’ offices.

When they reached the top, they turned and surveyed the street sloping gently down the hill before them. “The mundane and the sublime, side by side,” Kincaid remarked.

“I’ll miss you,” Gemma said impulsively, prompted by something deeper than thought.

Kincaid put a hand on her shoulder as they started back down the hill, matching strides. “Glastonbury must have a salutary effect on you. I should bring you more often.”

Now
, thought Gemma. She had the perfect opportunity. Just a sentence or two, and she would have put it behind her.

But she still wasn’t one hundred percent sure, not until she did a test, and she absolutely would pick one up at the chemist when she got back to London.

It had been so good between them this weekend, away from their responsibilities in London, working together on a case again, however unofficial. Why should she break the spell?

Especially when they had one more night alone together, under the rose-colored canopy in the Acacia Room.

G
EMMA STUDIED THE
man sitting across from them in the tidy sitting room. Gary Wills looked to be in his early forties, trim, an executive with an electronics firm in Street. Add a wife with her own career, bright children, a well-located suburban home, and you had all the hallmarks of success. Why, then, had this family fractured so grievously?

Maureen Wills sat near her husband, without touching him. When she had reached out a hand towards him—to comfort or be comforted, Gemma couldn’t tell—Wills had shrugged it off.

“We did everything for her,” he was saying. “School fees, sports, singing lessons, piano.” The piano sat against the far wall of the sitting room, its keyboard cover closed. “How could she be such an ungrateful little tart—”

“Gary, please,” his wife entreated, with a pointed glance at the frightened faces of the two younger children, peering round the corner.

“You two.” Wills pointed at them. “Go to your rooms. Now.” The boy and girl disappeared, but Gemma suspected they’d not gone far.

“She had a chance at the best universities,” their father continued. “An abortion would have been the sensible solution, but, no, she wouldn’t hear of it. So I told her the boy and his family would have to do their part—why should
we
take on full responsibility for the little bastard? But she wouldn’t tell us who it was!”

“So you suggested that she leave?” Kincaid asked, as if it were a perfectly sensible action.

“I only meant to make her see reason. I never thought she’d actually go.…”

“You should have,” said his wife, as if their presence had given her the courage to speak up. “You should have thought. You know how stubborn Faith is—” Maureen turned to Gemma and Kincaid. “Since she was a toddler, she’s been that way. And she was a hard delivery. I used to tell her she was
stubborn even then … determined to come into the world on her own time.”

“But surely you must have had some idea who the boy was,” suggested Gemma. “A regular boyfriend, or some gossip among her friends at school.”

“She didn’t date.” Maureen said it firmly. “Faith always looked down on girls who giggled and had crushes; she was far too serious for that. And her friends—”

“They didn’t want to talk to us,” Wills interrupted bitterly. “You’d have thought we’d done something terrible to her. And why should we go begging to anyone for information our own daughter wouldn’t give us? If Faith is so determined to get on in the world without our help, she’s bloody well welcome to it.”

“You!” Furiously, Maureen Wills turned on her husband. “Why don’t you admit all the hours you’ve spent driving round, looking for her? Or all the nights you’ve sat up in the kitchen until dawn? I’ve seen you—you can’t deny it!”

Gary Wills gaped at her.

Maureen looked back at them, her face tear streaked but resolute. “I’d do anything to have Faith back. I don’t care who the baby’s father is, as long as our Faith is safe and well. You will tell us, won’t you, where she is?”

“Mrs. Wills,” Kincaid said gently, “Faith didn’t give us permission to do that. She—”

“But the child must be due any day! You say the woman who was looking after her is dead—someone’s got to take care of her. Please—”

Gary Wills broke in again. “I suppose Maureen’s right. Faith needs to come home. Let bygones be bygones.”