A Share in Death (16 page)

Raskin sat up in the swivel chair and studied Kincaid for a moment. “What about Miss Emma MacKenzie? And Hannah Alcock?”

“Oh, I suppose it’s within the realm of possibility. Emma could have followed her sister down to the tennis court—”

“A true domestic,” Raskin interrupted. “You know that sometimes it’s those years of togetherness that blow up—”

“Over what? The goats? And you know as well as I do that most domestic violence is precipitated by alcohol and occurs on the spur of the moment.” Kincaid’s words came more sharply than he intended. “Anyway, I don’t believe it. Emma was devoted to Penny. She’ll be lost
without Penny to look after and worry over,” he raised his hand as Raskin started to speak, “and don’t give me that mercy-killing line, either. Not with a tennis racquet.”

“All right,” Raskin conceded. “I’ll admit it’s pretty unlikely. What about Miss Alcock?”

Kincaid shifted uncomfortably on the barstool. “I don’t like it, Peter. I doubt we’ll get a more exact time of death from the pathologist than the circumstances provide. According to Emma, Penny left the suite about half past eight. Miss Alcock came to see me about the same time, stayed for …” he trailed off, thinking, “maybe half an hour. My sergeant called very shortly after she’d left, and I looked at my watch then. It was five past nine. You bumped into Miss Alcock in the car park, coming to fetch us, at—”

“Nine-thirty. Half-hour news had just finished on the car radio.”

“So …

“She would have had time,” Raskin said quietly. “Just. And I saw her coming across the lawn from the tennis court path. The sensible thing for her to do would be to tell me she’d just found Penny’s body.”

“But I don’t believe it.” Kincaid stood and began to pace restlessly around the cramped office. “It’s too pat. And what possible motive could she have?”

“What motive could any of them have? None of it makes any damned sense,” Raskin said in exasperation. “And Chief Inspector Nash is not going to leave the issue, you know,” he added.

“I know.” Despite his opinion of Nash, Kincaid had a hard time defending his certainties even to himself. He just couldn’t swallow the idea that Hannah had sat confiding
in him over coffee and then had gone down and cold-bloodedly murdered Penny. Was it his pride at stake, his judgement, or simply his belief in her basic human decency? Could he be depended upon to do his job thoroughly, if it were his show to run? He didn’t fancy explaining his reservations to Chief Inspector Nash. “Where’s your Super, anyway, Peter? A Chief Inspector in charge of a murder investigation isn’t normal procedure.”

“In hospital recovering from viral pneumonia.” He pulled a face.

“Poor you. That calls for some sort of commiseration.” Kincaid stepped into the bar and returned with two glasses and two bottles of beer.

“Thanks. I guess we’ve done about all we can here tonight,” Raskin looked at his watch, “and I’d best be off home.” But he sat watching the foam subside on his beer.

“I just realized I don’t know a thing about you, Peter. Married? Kids?”

“Yes. Two. A boy and a girl. And I’m missing my son’s football practice right now.” He glanced again at his watch. “Not that he’s not used to it,” Raskin sighed. “I’m sure it’s good for him—disappointment builds character, right?” Sardonic amusement flickered in his face again. “And I know all about you. The Chief Inspector ran a thorough check, hoping he’d dig up some skeletons to rattle. What he did find gave him terrible indigestion. One of the Met’s wonder boys, darling of the A.C.”

They laughed, then sat drinking in companionable silence. It came to Kincaid that he dreaded spending the evening alone, and any contact with those in this house remained charged with doubts he couldn’t resolve.

“Peter, you don’t by any chance have Dr. Percy’s
address?”

Raskin choked a little on his beer. “She’s married, you know.”

“I’d rather assumed she was,” Kincaid said, but his heart sank a little, and he hastened to assure himself that his interest was strictly professional. “There are some questions I wanted to ask her, not being invited to attend the postmortem …” He kept his expression bland, standing on his dignity.

“Okay, I’ll buy that. And the Great Wall of China,” Raskin said, and Kincaid grinned in spite of himself.

*   *   *

“Mr. Kincaid.” The voice came softly from the darkened garden. “Or is Superintendent the correct address?” Kincaid recognized the speaker now. Edward Lyle moved from the shadow of a decorative urn, gesturing toward Kincaid’s car. “I’m sorry to disturb you if you’ve an appointment to keep, but I wondered if I might have a word.”

Lyle’s manner was more ingratiating than usual, and Kincaid sighed. He had been expecting this from some quarter. “No, no. What can I do for you?”

“I realize this is all very distressing, Superintendent, but I feel Chief Inspector Nash is overstepping his rights. This holiday was to be a special treat for my wife, to rest her nerves, and she’s been upset enough by all this without the Chief Inspector’s bullying. And any rest I might have expected has been quite shattered. I certainly didn’t come here to be—”

“Mr. Lyle,” Kincaid said patiently, “I have no jurisdiction over Chief Inspector Nash, as I’ve explained before. I’m strictly on sufferance myself. I’m sure he’s just doing
his job.” Kincaid heard himself uttering clichés and grimaced—Lyle seemed to inspire them.

“My work, Superintendent, is quite taxing, and no one seems to take into account—”

“Just what is it you do, Mr. Lyle?” Kincaid attempted to stem the flow of grievances. “I don’t believe you’ve ever said.”

“Civil engineering. Firm’s doing quite well.” Lyle puffed up a bit. “Good opportunity for investment just now, if you’re in—”

Kincaid cut him off. “Thanks, but coppers don’t usually have enough to float a fiver. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d better be off. I’m afraid I can’t help you with Inspector Nash—a word from me wouldn’t predispose him in your favor.” Pompous self-serving little bugger, he thought as he got in his car and waved at Lyle. He and Nash deserved one another.

*   *   *

The single-track road wound back toward the very base of the hills. Kincaid had left the Midget’s top down and turned the heater up full blast, hoping the crisp evening air would clear the cobwebs from his brain. The sky looked faintly luminous against the opaque shapes of the trees.

Presently he saw the lights of the bungalow through the trees on his left and pulled the car carefully into the leaf-covered drive. It was a low house of rose-colored brick, with light streaming from the large French-paned windows either side of an arched front door.

He rang the bell, and the door swung open, revealing two small girls with dark hair surrounding heart-shaped faces. They gazed at him solemnly, then before he could speak they burst into a fit of giggles and ran toward
the back of the house, shouting, “Mummy, Mummy!” Kincaid thought he’d better have a look in a mirror before long, if the mere sight of him reduced children to hysteria.

The room stretched the width of the house, with dining furniture to his left and the sitting room to his right. What he could see of a worn rug was liberally covered with doll-hospital casualties. Books flowed off the tables, a fire burned steadily in the sitting-room grate, and the temptation to sit down and go to sleep became almost unbearable.

Anne Percy appeared, wiping her hands on her white cotton apron, and saved him from embarrassment. She smiled with pleasure when she saw who it was, then looked at him more critically. “You look exhausted. What can I do for you?” The little girls were peeking out from behind her like Chinese acrobats, only slightly subdued by their mother’s presence. “Molly, Caroline, this is Mr. Kincaid.”

“Hallo,” he said, gravely. They giggled again, and swung out of sight behind her back in unison.

“Come into the kitchen, if you don’t mind my cooking while we talk.” She led him through the swinging door in the back of the sitting room into a large, cheerful room full of the aroma of roasting chicken and garlic.

Anne shooed the children out with a reminder that supper wouldn’t be ready for a half hour yet, pulled up a tall stool for Kincaid, and went back to stirring something on the cooktop, all with a graceful economy of movement. “Drink? I’m having Vermouth, since it went in the chicken, but you look as though you could use a whiskey. Off-duty and all that. Is it really true that policemen
don’t drink on duty, or is it just a myth perpetrated by the telly?”

“Thanks.” Kincaid gratefully accepted the whiskey she splashed into a glass, and after the first sip warmth began to radiate from the pit of his stomach. “And no, it’s not true. I’ve known quite a few who do. Chronic alcoholism is just as likely to turn up on a police force as anywhere else, I guess. Maybe more so, considering the stress level. But I don’t, if that’s what you’re wondering. Don’t like to feel muddled.”

“I know your rank but not your given name. I can’t go on calling you Mister or Superintendent. Doesn’t seem appropriate in the kitchen.”

“It’s Duncan.” He grinned at her surprised expression. “Scots forebears. And my parents had an inordinate fondness for Macbeth. It could have been worse. They could have saddled me with Prospero or Oberon.”

“Lucky you. My family still calls me Annie Rose. It makes me feel three years old, not a grown woman with children of my own and a fairly respectable profession. My patients call me Dr. Anne. It makes them feel more comfortable.”

“I’d settle for just plain Anne.” He sat and sipped his drink while she moved from cabinet to cooktop and back, feeling the warmth of the room and the whiskey move through him like a tide. He felt as though he had been sitting on this stool, in this kitchen, for years, and could go on sitting there for as many more. Concentration became Anne Percy, he thought, watching her tuck her hair behind one ear as she stirred. She had the same heart-shaped face as her daughters, but the soft, fine hair was lighter, the color of demerara sugar.

She checked a casserole in the oven, then dusted her
hands off and turned to face him, leaning against the counter. “Now. Everything should take care of itself for a few minutes.’’

Kincaid found himself at a loss, distracted by a floury smudge on her eyebrow. What he wanted from her was so formless, so nebulous, that he couldn’t think where to begin. “I’m finding myself in a very awkward position. I’ve no official sanction to investigate either Sebastian’s or Penny’s death—not yet, anyway. And yet I’m involved, even more so than I would be under ordinary circumstances, because I was acquainted with them both.”

Anne Percy studied him with the same serious regard she had given her casserole, and Kincaid felt suddenly uncomfortable, as if his face might reveal secrets he hadn’t intended. “I’ve been known to lose my professional detachment upon occasion, too.” Her apparent non sequitur, thought Kincaid, went right to the heart of the matter. “I checked on Emma this morning, to see if she wanted a sedative or—”

“She didn’t,” Kincaid interrupted, smiling at the thought.

“Damn right, she didn’t. She gave me hell. But she talked to me. People do, sometimes, when they’re in shock. They tell you things that ordinarily they wouldn’t dream of revealing. Emma had been worried about Penny’s behavior for months, and it seemed to be getting progressively worse. Episodes of forgetfulness, confusion. It sounds as if it might have been the onset of Alzheimer’s, or some form of premature senility. I don’t know if it’s any comfort to you, but the quality of her life probably would have deteriorated rapidly.”

“No,” Kincaid said angrily, “no, it bloody well isn’t.

Whatever the quality of her life, no one had the right to take it from her. And I’m an utter fool. It might have been prevented. She tried to talk to me and I wouldn’t take time to listen, because it wasn’t my case, because I didn’t want to take responsibility, because I judged her as foolish and ineffectual. I should have known better—it’s my job, for god’s sake. Now we’ll never be sure just what she saw. The night Sebastian died, Penny waited until Emma fell asleep and then went downstairs. She’d forgotten her handbag and didn’t want Emma to know. A silly little thing, but if she knew Emma was worried about her forgetfulness—”

“You think that Penny was killed because she saw something that would lead to Sebastian’s murderer? That just one person is responsible for both deaths?”

“I think, from something Emma overheard Penny say, that Penny saw two people that night—two people not where they were supposed to be. Did she remember where she had left her bag, and slip into the sitting room in the dark? Did she see someone coming out of Cassie’s office?”

“Did they see her?” Anne asked, caught up in his reconstruction.

“Well, we don’t know, do we?” Kincaid asked softly. “But I think not. Either the plan would have changed, or Penny would have died then and there. This … person … is a remarkable opportunist. It seems to me that neither killing was premeditated, not in the usual sense, but they were both done with great ruthlessness and a willingness to take almost insane risks. It was sheer, tremendous luck to have managed both these killings without being observed—”

“Except, perhaps, by Penny,” Anne interrupted.

“Yes. But it’s rather an odd profile. People who kill on the spur of the moment usually do it in anger and regret it afterwards. Those who premeditate like to plan it carefully and execute it from a distance, with as little risk of discovery as possible. Poisoners are the perfect example.”

“Maybe this person has an inflated idea of his own invincibility.”

“Could be, but I don’t think these are random killings by a psycho, violence for violence’s sake. There’s an objective in this, a sort of single-minded cunning.” Kincaid laughed abruptly, then shrugged. “Sounds fanciful, doesn’t it?”

“Possibly. But back up a minute, Duncan.” Anne frowned, the smooth skin between her brows crinkling with her intensity. “If the murderer didn’t see Penny, how did he know she’d seen him?”

“I think,” Kincaid measured his words carefully, “that she told him.” Seeing Anne’s incredulous expression, he shook his head before she could interrupt him. “I know it sounds crazy, but Penny …” He searched for words that would make Anne see Penny the way he had seen her, hoping the whiskey hadn’t made him maudlin. “Penny lived with scrupulous honesty—except perhaps in protecting Emma. She wouldn’t have wanted to falsely accuse someone.”