A Share in Death (21 page)

When she had eaten and drunk a little, he spoke. “Hannah, tell me what happened today between you and Patrick. I think you must, you know,” he added, softening the demand a bit.

She swallowed some tea and the cup rattled as she replaced it in the saucer. “I never meant it to go like that. I never meant—” Hannah turned her head away, her eyes, already red and swollen with earlier weeping, filling. “First I accused him of all these horrible things, all those things you told me. The words just came out. I couldn’t seem to stop them. Then I told him …”

“That you were his mother?” Kincaid prompted.

She gave a little hiccuppy laugh. “What a prize I am. Suspicious. Shrewish. No wonder he wasn’t too thrilled with the prospect.” Hannah hugged her arms against her chest and began to shiver in earnest.

“You’re in shock.” Kincaid leaned over her, contrite. “I shouldn’t be pestering you—”

“No. No, I have to tell you. I want to tell you.” Her voice rose and Kincaid watched her struggle to regain control. “I did everything wrong, you see,” she continued,
modulating carefully now. “From the very beginning. Successful. Independent. That’s how I saw myself. Under no one’s jurisdiction. I thought of marriage and family as a loss of autonomy.” Hannah twisted the edge of the blanket in her fingers. “It was all such a sham. The truth was I had nothing to give, nothing to share.” She raised her eyes to his. “And Patrick … I think what Patrick resented the most was my waiting—if knowing him was so important to me, why hadn’t I found him years ago? And I could have, he was right about that. With all my illusions of strength and independence, I never faced my father. My father …”

Kincaid waited while she tried to find a more comfortable position. Exhaustion tugged at her facial muscles, her eyelids drooped involuntarily. “Hannah—”

“No. I must tell you, before it all slips away …”

Kincaid subsided, powerless against her compulsion to talk. He’d seen it often enough in victims of accidents, or shock, but Hannah was more coherent than most.

“Patrick … How could I explain what happened to me the last year? Biological clock’s stupid, I know,” her lips twisted in a faint smile, “but when I knew, finally, that I’d never have another child … something changed in me. Suddenly everything seemed so empty. Everything I’d done so pointless—”

Kincaid was startled into protest. “You’re not going to trot out that old saw about women only finding fulfillment through marriage and children? I don’t believe it of you.”

She started to shake her head, then lightly touched her fingers to the back. “No …” She paused so long Kincaid began to think she’d drifted away altogether. Then she said quietly, “I don’t think sex has much to do with
it. It’s the little lies, the accumulation of self-deception. Armor, all armor, hiding behind armor, like some soft-bodied sea creature. Afraid of…”

“Afraid of what, Hannah?” Kincaid didn’t trust the delicacy of his touch.

Again came the almost imperceptible shake of the head. “Losing …” Her eyes skated away from his. She picked up her forgotten cup and drank the cold tea thirstily, retreating from whatever precipice she had approached.

Hannah blinked and then closed her eyes, the dark lashes fanning out against her cheeks. The empty teacup tilted in her hand. Kincaid had reached to take it from her when she spoke again, her eyes still shut. “One day I realized that if I didn’t wake the next morning, no one would miss me. Except Miles.

“Miles and I were lovers once, in the beginning.” Hannah smiled a little at the memory. “He lost interest when his health began to fail. Or maybe I hadn’t enough to give, even then. Still, I’m all he has, except for some wretched nephew he doesn’t care for, and I’ve neglected him terribly since I became so … obsessed with Patrick.”

She opened her eyes and looked at Kincaid, the late afternoon light shifting her irises from hazel to green, a green almost as clear as Patrick Rennie’s. “Obsession … a selfish preoccupation,” she said dreamily, then continued more forcefully. “What right had I to find Patrick and spy on him, passing judgement on his qualifications as a son? I could have gone to his office and told him the truth straight off, given him a
chance
to start on equal footing. Instead …” A desolate little shrug summarized the outcome.

“It seems to me,” Kincaid said gently, “that you’ve castigated yourself pretty thoroughly for mistakes anyone could have made. We don’t any of us have all the answers before-hand. Why is it too late for you and Patrick? Why can’t you tell him what you told me? What have you to lose?”

“I … He doesn’t want—”

“How do you know what Patrick wants or doesn’t want? He didn’t give me the impression just now of a man determined to sever all connection.” Unless, of course, thought Kincaid, Patrick Rennie had seen an advantage in adopting a new role, that of the contrite son lovingly reunited with his mother.

“It’s odd.” Hannah interrupted his unpleasant speculation. “After everything that’s happened today I feel terribly detached. It’s like seeing things through the wrong end of a telescope. Clear and distant. I doubt it will last. I do see, though, that I can’t go chasing after Patrick expecting him to plug the gaps in my life.”

Hannah’s voice had grown drowsier. Kincaid cleared up the tea things and came back to her, finding that he could not let her rest quite yet. The unasked question hung on him like a weight. “Hannah, could it have been Patrick who pushed you down the stairs?”

She did not bridle, as she had before at any suggestion of Patrick’s guilt, but answered him with sleepy thought-fulness. “Of course I’ve wondered. I’d be an idiot not to, I suppose—but I don’t think so.” She paused, searching for the right words. “There was such …
malice
in that shove. I felt it.” Her brow furrowed in concentration. “Today I saw a bit of the real Patrick, not my idealized version of him. There is some anger running under the surface, some bitterness, but also the ability to
laugh at himself, to put his feelings in perspective. I just can’t see him hating that viciously.” She began to shiver again. “Why would anyone hate me that much?”

“What did he—”

A knock at the door interrupted his question, but Hannah put a hand out to stop him as he rose. “I won’t tell you what he told me about Cassie and Penny. You’ll have to ask him yourself. You do understand?” Kincaid hesitated, then nodded. There was no use bullying her—he’d begun to gauge her stubbornness. And besides, he did understand.

Anne Percy stood patiently at the door, doctor’s bag in hand. Kincaid’s heart gave an inexplicable leap and he cursed himself for a fool.

*   *   *

Kincaid met Chief Inspector Nash on the stairs. “I’m just on my way to take your Miss Alcock’s statement.” Nash spoke without preamble, in that sneering tone that made Kincaid bite back a childish retort.

“Dr. Percy’s with her now. She doesn’t seem too badly hurt.”

“Is that so?” said Nash, dripping sarcasm. “Well, well. Now, isn’t that surprising?”

“Just what are you insinuating?” Kincaid struggled to control the exasperation in his voice.

“Well now, laddie, has it not occurred to you that a “fall is a very convenient thing? All alone, no witnesses, a little tumble down the stairs?”

“I found her myself. She was unconscious!”

“Very convenient, as I said, to be discovered by a sympathetic policeman.” Nash clucked and said with great condescension, “And laddie, anyone can fake a faint.” Nash fluttered his eyelids and moaned.

Kincaid closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Have you any idea, Chief Inspector, why Miss Alcock would risk breaking her neck?”

“It seems to me that if you’re bumping off people right and left it doesn’t hurt to appear to be a victim yourself. It’s an old ploy.”

“What possible motive could she have for killing Sebastian or Penny?”

“What possible motive could any of them have? You tell me, laddie. You’re the one’s so chummy with her.” Nash smiled at him impishly, and Kincaid felt the exchange slipping into utter farce.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you, Inspector. You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

*   *   *

Kincaid plunged out the front door and shook his head as if the cold air would clear it. Even a small dose of Chief Inspector Nash made him feel like he’d wandered into a pea-soup fog. He had some questions to ask Patrick Rennie and he wasn’t inclined to invite Nash along and allow him to make hash of the interview.

He paced around the darkening garden, wishing he had Gemma or Peter Raskin to use as a sounding board. The first floor of Followdale House was broken into sections by fire doors—one divided the area containing his suite and the balcony door from the area containing Hannah’s suite and the main staircase. That area in turn was separated from the suites on the other side of the house by another door. As he had come through the door between his suite and the staircase he could have sworn he heard the far door closing.

He hadn’t thought anything about it at the time, not until Patrick Rennie had come in the front door, flushed
and breathing hard, minutes after he’d found Hannah. Kincaid had no way of knowing how long Hannah had lain there, but it might have been only minutes. Rennie could have run down the back staircase and around the building to the front, anxious to judge the results of his attempt on Hannah’s life.

Kincaid returned to the house, hesitating for a moment in the front hall. Where was Peter Raskin? Had anyone tracked down the other guests and taken their statements?

He stood quite still, listening for some sound, some intimation of life or movement in the house. It amazed him that a house this size, with nearly a dozen people in it, could seem so utterly deserted. The noisy cocktail hour chatter of the first evening seemed almost unimaginable now—the guests had certainly lost their taste for one another’s company.

He walked through the darkened reception area toward the sitting room, where a dim lamp cast a solitary pool of light. A slight sound from the bar drew Kincaid to the door.

Patrick Rennie sat alone at a table, morosely sliding a glass in its condensate puddle. “Just the man I wanted to see,” Kincaid said, and Rennie’s head shot up.

“How is she?”

“Dr. Percy’s with her. I don’t think she’s badly hurt.” Kincaid retrieved a beer from under the counter and sat down opposite Rennie. “Where is everyone?”

“Holed up in their rooms expecting fallout, I imagine. Chief Inspector Nash sent that constable around to take statements. I don’t know if he’s rounded everyone up yet. Listen,” Rennie changed tack, not to be distracted from what was on his mind, “I behaved abominably toward Hannah today. And now this.” Rennie waved his
hand vaguely toward the stairs, then met Kincaid’s eyes. “Did she tell you about me?”

“Yes.”

“And did she tell you what an ass I made of myself this morning?”

“She said you resented her barging into your life,” Kincaid answered drily.

Rennie rubbed long fingers across his forehead. “What she must have put herself through … and then I stomped all over her with all the sensitivity of an elephant.” His eyebrows lifted in the self-mocking little smile Hannah must have seen. “It was the shock, I think. All those years of wondering who she was, what she was like, why she let me go—it all came back to me. Is it too late, do you think, to start again?”

Kincaid didn’t relish the role of Miss Lonelyhearts under the best of circumstances, and particularly not when one party might have tried to hasten the other’s demise. “I couldn’t say.” He sipped his beer, then added easily, “A great deal would depend on where were you today just before you came in.”

Color flooded into Rennie’s face. “God, I’ve been an bloody fool. You were right about Cassie, you know. It started last year. Marta knew something was going on but I badgered her into coming here anyway. I thought Cassie cared about me, that she was even worth risking my future.” He shook his head as if bewildered by his own stupidity. “But nothing went right this visit. This afternoon I decided I had to pin her down, sort things out. I went across to the cottage and started to knock but the door wasn’t quite shut. Well, it’s the usual old story. Why should I have been so surprised?” He smiled,
but his color was still high and his eyes didn’t quite meet Kincaid’s.

“Compromising?”

“Fairly.”

“And who was the lucky chap?”

Rennie looked away. “Graham Frazer.”

Kincaid paced the dimly lit reception area, listening, a little guiltily, for Anne Percy’s light tread on the stairs. He’d left Patrick Rennie nursing a drink in the empty bar, and he felt less sure than ever whether the man was genuine or a most sincere and plausible liar.

If Cassie supported Patrick’s story, would that give him a sufficient alibi? Hannah had told Kincaid she’d tapped on his door just before she started down the stairs. But it had been a very tentative knock, she’d said, as she’d thought better of it and decided to go on her own. Had that been the sound he’d heard while on the phone to Gemma? Or had he been on the balcony and heard nothing at all?

“Timing. All a matter of timing,” he muttered. If Hannah had lain on the stairs only minutes, could Patrick prove he’d come straight from Cassie’s into the hall? And for that matter, where did that leave Cassie and Graham? Safely locked in a lovers’ alibi? Or colluding in a foolproof murder attempt? Assuming, of course, that Hannah hadn’t been lying unconscious for half-an-hour or more—in which case it could have been any one of the three. But why would one of them, or anyone else, for that matter, want to kill Hannah?

And what had the rest of the cast been up to?

Kincaid smacked his fist into his open palm, grimacing in frustration. He might as well be tied up and blindfolded, for all he’d accomplished. He, who had so often complained of paperwork’s drudgery, would have given anything for a stack of neatly detailed statements taken by his efficient sergeant. Chief Inspector Nash had gone from being deliberately obstructive to a kind of sly evasiveness, but both tactics produced the same end result—Kincaid had no facts.

Some movement in the shadowy room, a current of air perhaps, made Kincaid turn toward the sitting-room door. The light shifted and he had a brief second’s vision of Sebastian Wade as he had first seen him in this room—propped nonchalantly with his shoulder against the door-jamb, hands in pockets, face split by an impish grin.