A Finer End (11 page)

Winnie listened, nodding encouragingly, knowing how badly Maureen Wills must have needed to say these things to someone.

“And then, when I found her gone, that was terrible enough. But I never thought she’d stay away. Every minute, every hour, I thought I would hear the door. Or she would ring and ask me to come and get her. Sometimes I’d find myself thinking I had to pick her up from soccer practice, or choir, and then I’d realize …”

“She told me she sang in the choir. It seems to have meant a lot to her.”

“She was at Somerfield. We were so proud of her.”

“Faith is very special, Mrs. Wills—Maureen. What’s happened doesn’t change that. I’ve seldom seen a girl her age with such courage and self-reliance.”

“I want to see her, please. Can’t you take me to her?”

The tearful supplication was hard to resist, but Winnie shook her head. “I can’t betray Faith’s wishes. But I’ll tell her what you’ve said, and I’ll do my best to arrange a meeting. I think that’s all we can hope for just now.”

“But where is she? How is she managing? Is she eating? Does she attend your church?”

“I came to know Faith as a friend, not in my official capacity,” Winnie explained. “She has a job, and a safe place to live, and a number of people who are concerned for her welfare.”

“But how will she manage, once the baby’s … When is it …?”

“Late October, I believe. As for what she’ll do then, I don’t know, but we’ve some time to find a solution. If you’ll just—”

There was a sound from the back of the house and Maureen Wills froze, holding up a hand to silence Winnie. “It’s Gary and the kids. I don’t want him to—It’ll be better if I talk to him. Could you—”

The woman looked so terrified that Winnie quickly handed her the card she’d taken from her handbag and rose. “Here’s my number. Ring me.”

She patted Maureen’s trembling hands, and was out the front door as a man’s furious voice called out, “Maureen, where are you? The damn chips are burned to a crisp!
Maureen
?”

Winnie drove home with hopes that she had made some progress in reconciling Faith with her family, although perhaps a goal of physical reunification was unwise if Mr. Wills was as intimidating as he seemed. It seemed obvious that he was the real stumbling block. Winnie had seen this a number of times in her years of counseling parishioners—men often took a daughter’s pregnancy as a personal affront, and even in the more well-balanced families there seemed to be an element of jealousy involved. What she did find curious was the lengths to which Faith had gone to protect a boy who apparently had shown no further interest in her.

The next challenge would be arranging a meeting between Faith and her mother on neutral ground. As she
neared home, she decided that her study at the Vicarage would provide the ideal setting.

The Vicarage was on the Butleigh Road, south of Glastonbury, in the village of Compton Grenville. Winnie had come to love her parish in this gentle countryside, with its view of the Levels to the east, and to the west the Hood Monument at the top of wooded Windmill Hill.

The house was the epitome of the drafty Victorian pile, but in five years Winnie had come to regard its eccentricities with a profound affection.

Of course, to do the place justice would have taken a small fortune, but Winnie had done the best she could with diocesan funds, and she had used a bit of the small inheritance she and Andrew had had from their parents. She had made the front parlor her office, and had outfitted the large old kitchen as a combination sitting/eating area.

She turned into her drive with the pleasure she always felt. She and Jack had no plans for that evening; for once she had no pastoral obligations, and she was rather looking forward to a quiet evening spent working on her sermon. Then, to her surprise, she saw Andrew’s car pulled round near the kitchen door.

Andrew had been dropping in unannounced rather frequently of late. While Winnie adored her brother, she was aware that his concern was much more likely to be for his welfare than for hers. Andrew had come to depend on her, perhaps too much, and she had tried to reassure him that her feelings for Jack wouldn’t change things between them—although if she were honest with herself, she’d have to admit they already had.

Stopping the car, she retrieved the shopping she’d picked up for her supper from the boot and let herself in the back door. Andrew sat at her kitchen table, the
Observer
spread out before him, a half-empty glass of red wine in his hand. He looked up with an impish smile.

“Hullo, darling. I brought you a nice bottle of Burgundy, and thought I’d stay to do the honors.”

“I can see you already have.” She gave him a fond peck on the cheek as she set her shopping on the table. The cheerful kitchen was her favorite room in the house. Roman blinds in tomato-red canvas covered the windows, so that the morning sun filled the room with its own sunrise, and she’d slipcovered the old sofa and chair in the small sitting area in a combination of prints in the same red and apple-green.

Now in the evening light the rich colors were muted, the room cool and welcoming. Andrew examined the contents of the shopping bag. “A loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese—farmhouse Cheddar, no less—apples, and a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate. Planning a romantic dinner?”

“No, a working one, actually, so I’d better go easy on the wine. But I will have a glass and put my feet up for a bit before I dig in.” Winnie fetched a glass from the cupboard and sat down beside Andrew, slipping out of her shoes with a sigh of relief.

She had often been told that they resembled one another, but she’d always thought that Andrew had got the better part of the deal. He was taller, slimmer, and on him her pleasant features and untidy brown hair were refined to quiet good looks. His tortoiseshell wire-rimmed spectacles added just the right touch of distinction.
Perfectly professorial
, she thought as she filled her glass, and smiled.

Raising an eyebrow, Andrew queried, “Had a good day, then? You look as though you’ve been impressing the bishop.”

“Tougher than that.” She hesitated. How much might she tell him about Faith’s situation without compromising the girl’s trust? Without mentioning names, she briefly outlined her efforts to negotiate a reconciliation.

Andrew swirled the wine round the rim of his glass, then took a swig and studied her over its edge. “Winnie, don’t you think you’ve gone beyond the pale here? This girl is not a member of your congregation, or even C of E as far as you know. No one has asked you to intercede—or
interfere, as the case may be—and it seems to me you’re likely to do more harm than good.”

She stared at her brother, astounded. “It’s my job to minister to people, parishioners or not. You know that. And I would never have gone to see the girl’s parents without her permission. She’s seventeen years old, for heaven’s sake, and she misses her home and her family!”

“You don’t have a clue what girls are like these days! Or teenagers, for that matter. They’re lazy and they expect the world handed to them on a platter, and this one probably deserved her predicament—”

“That’s absurd—”

“Not to mention the fact that she’s already got a strike against her if she’s involved with these batty friends of yours. And what makes you think this girl’s told you the truth about anything?” Andrew shook his head in disgust. “Since you met Jack Montfort, you seem to have lost all common sense.”

“Andrew, what on earth has got into you?” Then realization dawned. “This isn’t about my work at all! This is about Jack, isn’t it?”

For a moment she thought he would deny it, then he met her eyes. “Glastonbury is a small town, Winnie. People talk. I went to a council meeting last night, and you and Jack Montfort were a great source of speculation. Montfort may have some justification for going off the deep end, but I can’t see that you have any excuse for plunging in with him. I’m surprised that your bishop hasn’t had a discreet word with you about associating yourself with blatant spiritualism—”

“That’s enough!” She pushed back her chair and stood, her bewilderment turning to icy fury. “You’re being bloody offensive, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you’d better go home.”

Andrew stood, too, a little unsteadily, and leaned towards her. “How do you think
I
feel, being
gossiped
about?
I’ve worked for years to build my reputation in this town—you know how hard it is to get project funding—and now people snigger when they see me and make comments about my sister’s raging hormones causing her to take leave of her senses. They all want to know if you’re sleeping with him—are you sleeping with him, Winnie?”

For the first time since she was nine years old, Winnie raised her hand and slapped her brother across the face as hard as she could.

“Inspector James …”

Gemma said the words aloud as she drove, trying out the sound on her tongue. Heady things, titles. They tempted you to think you were a different person, when in reality the changes were more like the layers of accretion on a pearl. A little more irritation gained you a little more luster, another layer of knowledge, of experience.

Or perhaps she’d wanted the title to make her into a different person—one whose sense of accomplishment wasn’t tempered by her sense of loss. She’d been so busy worrying about how Kincaid would deal with her decision that she’d failed to take her own response to their separation into account. And in spite of her excitement, and the intensity of her focus on her training, she’d felt a constant ache that seemed only to grow more profound with time. She’d come to think of it as the equivalent of the phantom-limb syndrome—she found herself carrying on imaginary conversations with him throughout the day. It was as if their thought processes had become permanently intertwined. Even when they’d been apart in the course of a job, investigating different avenues on a case, she’d been constantly filing away mental references to share with him.

Kincaid had reacted the way she’d expected, his initial dismay turning quickly to angry bewilderment. “Doesn’t our partnership mean anything to you?” he had asked, and her justifications had sounded weak in her own ears. He’d
pulled himself together, of course, had even tried to be understanding and supportive—but he had withdrawn from her. During her last weeks of training in Hampshire, she’d rung him a few times and their conversations had consisted of pleasantly distant chat. Returning to London yesterday, she’d found her new duty assignment awaiting her, and she knew she must tell him about it in person.

He’d been away from the Yard on a case, so she’d gone home, fed Toby his supper, then tucked him up at Hazel’s and headed for Kincaid’s Hampstead flat. She should have rung—he might still be out, he might have other plans, he might not want to see her—and perhaps it was fear of the last that had prompted her to go unannounced.

The traffic was light as she drove through Camden Town, the September evening warm enough to allow her to drive her new car with the windows down. The Ford Escort, whose color went by the romantic and improbable name of Wild Orchid, had been a much-needed gift to herself on her promotion. The increase in her salary had made it feasible, but more than that she had needed some sort of visible symbol of her achievement. And Kincaid had not seen the car yet, which gave her an excuse for showing up on his doorstep.

When she reached Hampstead the glitterati were out in force, strolling and positioning themselves to see and be seen in the sidewalk cafés, cell phones permanently attached to their ears.

Turning into Carlingford Road, she saw Kincaid’s old MG Midget parked in front of his building, covered with its tarp, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was at home. The Major’s ground-floor flat was quiet, as was the stairwell of the building, nor was there any sound of telly or stereo from Kincaid’s flat when she reached the top floor. Her hopes sank, but she knocked, and after a moment he opened the door.

“Gemma! I didn’t know you were back.”

She absorbed the details as if it had been months rather
than weeks since she’d seen him: unruly chestnut hair, jeans and a cornflower-blue T-shirt that brought out the indigo in his eyes, bare feet, and the smile that always made her catch her breath.

“Late yesterday,” she answered as she followed him into the flat. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Not unless you count drinking a beer and sitting on the balcony.” Going to the fridge, he retrieved a lager and held it out towards her, his eyebrow raised questioningly.

Nodding, she accepted the cold bottle and looked round the flat with pleasure. He had managed that rare thing: comfortable masculinity. The small but functional kitchen was separated from the sitting room by a lamplit island that served as the flat’s depository for keys, the day’s mail, and the usual household odds and ends, but the clutter was well organized.

In the sitting room, the furniture was upholstered in rich reds, blues, and greens—stained-glass colors, he called them—the walls held his collection of vintage London Transport art, and every spare nook and cranny was filled with books. But the true focus of the room was the view, first of the balcony with its colorful pots of flowers (contributed by the Major) and, beyond that, the panorama of London rooftops limned by the evening light.

“Join me outside?” he asked, and as she stepped out through the French doors she laughed aloud.

“You’ve made Sid a platform!” Sid, the black cat Kincaid had inherited from his late friend Jasmine Dent, turned and gave her an unblinking emerald stare from a cat-sized perch attached to the balcony railing.

“I got fed up having heart failure every time he jumped up on the railing,” Kincaid explained, running his hand along the cat’s back. “He’s already used up a couple of his nine lives—and I’d hate to think what the Major would do to me if Sid plummeted three floors into one of his prize rosebushes.” He settled in one of the lawn chairs, stretching
out his long legs and resting his feet on the railing. “I can’t take credit for the platform, though. It was Kit’s idea.”

Gemma sat beside him, very much aware of his physical nearness. “How is Kit?”