“Emma-”
“Was coming in as I was going out. Maybe she spoke to Hannah.”
“Thanks, love. I’ll see if I can find her.” Kincaid grinned at her fondly. “Good luck to you, Maureen.”
He had taken a step toward the stairs when Maureen stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Take care,” she said quietly, then stretched up on her toes and kissed him, her lips exerting a warm pressure against his jaw, her heavy breasts grazing his chest.
He felt oddly comforted.
Emma found him before he found her. Everyone, thought Kincaid, seemed to be looking for him this morning except the one he most wanted to find.
They met in the entry hall, Emma nodding at him briskly, as if he had appeared on command. The nod, however, seemed a last remnant of her gruff strength. She looked exhausted, and somehow-Kincaid searched for the right adjective-unstarched. Her spine slumped in a way he didn’t remember, and even her iron-gray hair clung limply to her head.
“Let’s go out, shall we?” Her voice, he noted gratefully, had not lost its resonance. Emma led him out onto the porch and lifted her face for a moment to the sun. “Yorkshire’s decided to give us one more day of glorious autumnal weather before we go. They’re forecasting rain for tomorrow.
“Did you know,” she turned to him, “that Sebastian’s funeral is tomorrow? And I’m having Penny’s body sent home, now that they’ve released it.” Her shoulders sagged. “I’ll be going home myself after the service tomorrow, to make what arrangements I can for Penny.”
Kincaid thought that more than grief weighed on Emma-added to it was her need to do what she felt necessary and proper for Penny, to say a final goodbye. “I didn’t know about Sebastian’s service. I’ll be there.” And he would make sure that Angela Frazer came with him.
“Emma, Maureen said you might have spoken to Hannah this morning, as she was leaving.”
“I did that.”
“What did she say? I mean,” he added impatiently, “did she say where she was going, or why?”
“I should think why would be rather obvious,” Emma said tartly. “If someone had shoved me down the stairs, I’d get farther away than that.”
“Than where?”
“She said she was going to see the falls, while the weather lasted. She was on holiday, after all, and the rest of you be damned. That’s what she said, more or less,” Emma finished with some satisfaction.
“What falls?” Kincaid kept his voice level.
“Aysgarth, I’d imagine. Up in Wensleydale. Only falls to speak of around here.” Emma reached for the door, then turned back to him, adding, “She moved pretty well this morning, I’d say, considering the tumble she took. Didn’t look a day over seventy.” She gave him a ghost of her ferocious grin and went into the house.
Kincaid had started toward his car for a map when Janet Lyle stumped around the corner of the house, head down, hands shoved in the pockets of her lightweight anorak. She was scowling, the first expression of bad temper Kincaid had seen in her. Her face cleared when she saw him and she quickened her step, changing course to intercept him. “Say, you wouldn’t be going into Thirsk, by any chance, would you?
“Hadn’t planned on it. Need a lift?”
“Oh, Eddie hared off in the car this morning.” Exasperation animated her gestures, and for the first time Kincaid could imagine her nursing with the necessary take-charge, no-nonsense manner. “Something about sending a fax to the office. The thing is, I’d ordered some boots for Chloe-there’s a marvelous bootmaker here. They were to be ready this morning, and the shop closes half-day on Friday. It’s very annoying.”
She did look put out, but without her usual mousy manner she looked quite chipper as well. “Your husband said you weren’t feeling well.”
“Oh, that.” Janet shrugged it off. “It’s just his way. When his mother died he made up his mind I was languishing and needed a regular holiday. Transference, isn’t that what it’s called?” She smiled at him, showing even white teeth against her olive skin. “If I’d been the one wanting a holiday, I’d have gone to Majorca.”
Gemma nosed her car carefully through the gates of Followdale House and let it idle while she looked about her. She knew she had the right place because the first thing to meet her eye was Kincaid’s Midget, angled jauntily on the gravel forecourt.
The next was the Super himself, standing beside it with a map spread on the bonnet. Cords and sea-green pullover, a tweedy jacket with elbow patches, toffee-colored hair artfully ruffled by the breeze-he made, Gemma thought, a pretty picture indeed. She pulled up beside him and climbed out of the car, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “My, we’re looking the country gent today, aren’t we? Planning your next hunt, or just posing for
He swung around. “Gemma!” The flash of pleasure on his face faded so quickly she thought she’d imagined it. “Where the hell have you been?”
“And greetings to you, too, ta very much. I’ve just busted my bum to get here and that’s all you can say?” Gemma answered him good-naturedly but a little prickle of alarm ran up her spine. Although Kincaid didn’t suffer fools gladly, it was unlike him to jump down her throat.
“Sorry, Gemma.” The familiar smile returned, though with less than its usual wattage.
Gemma touched a fingertip to his chest. “Been changing a tire?”
Kincaid looked down at the dark, irregular smudges across the breast of his sweater. “No. It’s mascara, I imagine.” He shaded his eyes against the sun and searched her face. “Now, tell me where you’ve been.”
She leaned back against the Escort, remembering too late that it needed a wash, and dug in her bag for her notebook. The pages fluttered as she flipped through it-they both knew she didn’t need it, but the routine prop allowed them to make a smooth transition to business. “I finally managed to see Miles Sterrett. That dragon of a secretary at his clinic guards him like the Crown Jewels, so I tried his housekeeper and easy as kiss your hand, I’m in. ‘A brief appointment after dinner,’ she says, ‘so as not to tire him’.” Gemma paused, closing the notebook over her fingers. “I did try to phone you last night. You didn’t answer.”
“Point accepted. Go on.”
“He’s had a slight stroke, but he’s still sharper than a lot I could name who’re supposed to be in full possession.” Gemma paused, considering. “Younger than I expected, too-sixty, maybe-and still very attractive, in a gaunt and sober sort of way.” Something in the angle of Kincaid’s brows hurried her on. “He didn’t know anything about what’s happened here, and he was quite concerned about Hannah. I had the impression he thought this whole timeshare scheme a bit out of character for her, and it made him uneasy. Seems she runs that clinic practically single-handed and he hasn’t got a bit of use for the rest of the staff. Without Hannah, he says, the relatives and the Inland Revenue would have to fight over the place, or maybe he’d just give it to the National Trust.” Gemma smiled. “He’s kept his sense of humor, considering his circumstances.”
“Well, I’ve lost mine,” Kincaid said. “Something
“Is she-”
“She’s all right. Or at least she was-she’s disappeared this morning.”
Gemma glanced at the map still spread on the bonnet. No wonder he’d been so uncommunicative. “You’re going to look for her,” she said, making it a statement. “Any idea where?”
Hmm?” His gaze seemed fixed on a large garden urn. “A possibility,” he answered vaguely. “Place called Aysgarth Falls.”
“I’m coming with you. Don’t argue,” she added, although he gave no sign of having heard her. “Let me get my things from the car. You can fill me in on the way.”
Gemma’s case file had slid under the passenger seat and she was stretched half across the driver’s seat digging it out when Kincaid said, “Oh, dear god.”
The flat, utterly expressionless quality of his voice pulled her out of the car so fast that she banged her head on the roof and didn’t feel it.
His mobile face was as blank and still as marble. Gemma’s stomach contracted. “What is it?”
He focused on her with an effort and she saw his chest move as he drew a breath. “Hannah.” His voice gained force. “Sebastian had nothing to do with it. He just got in the way, like Penny.”
“Wh-”
