“I saw no one at all, Superintendent, unusual or otherwise. I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’ve been a complete bust for you.” She looked genuinely distressed, and Kincaid hastened to reassure her as he rose.
“Not at all. And it gave me a chance to see the church. It’s quite a gem, isn’t it?”
“It was built by G. E. Street, the man who designed the London law courts,” Rebecca said as she led them into the corridor. “It’s a lovely example of Victorian church architecture but rather a sad story. It seems he meant it as a gift for his wife, but she died shortly after it was finished.” They had reached the porch, and as they stepped outside she stopped and looked up at the honey-colored stone rising above them. Slowly, she said, “I’ve felt very lucky to have come here, and I’d hate to see anything disrupt my village. One becomes proprietorial very quickly, I’m afraid,” she added with a smile.
Looking down the hill towards the vicarage, Kincaid said, “You’re the gardener, I take it?”
“Oh, yes.” Rebecca’s smile was radiant. “It’s my temptation and my salvation, I’m afraid. The place was a wilderness when I came here two years ago, and I’ve spent every spare minute there since.”
“It shows.” Infected by her enthusiasm, Kincaid found he couldn’t help grinning back.
“I can’t take all the credit,” she hastened to reassure him. “Geoff Genovase helps me on weekends. I’d never have managed the heavy work without him.”
Kincaid thanked her again and they turned away, but before they’d gone more than a few steps down the lane she called out to him. “Mr. Kincaid, the dynamics that make a village a functioning organism are really quite fragile. You will be careful, won’t you?”
* * *
“That explains why she’d missed out on the gossip,” said Kincaid as they walked down the lane. While they’d been inside the sun had dropped in its swift afternoon progress, the light had faded from gold to a soft gray-green, and the shadows stood long on the ground.
“What does?” Deveney looked up from the notebook page he’d been scanning as they walked.
“The aunt’s funeral.” Kincaid put his hands in his pockets and kicked at a stone with his toe.
“What the hell difference does it make?” Deveney asked, sounding a bit frayed. “Do you always go round the mulberry bush like that in interviews? Talk about circumlocution.”
“I don’t know what difference it makes. Yet. And no, I don’t always waffle on, but sometimes it’s the only way I know to get under the skin of things.” He stopped as they reached the bottom of the lane and turned to Deveney. “I don’t think this is going to be a straightforward case, Nick, and I want to know what these people thought of Alastair Gilbert, how he fit into the fabric of the community.”
“Well, we’re certainly not making much progress on the vagrant theory,” Deveney said disgustedly. “We’ve one name left, a Mr. Percy Bainbridge, at Rose Cottage. It’s just kitty-corner to the pub, so we might as well leave the car.” As they crossed the road and walked along the edge of the green, he added, “This is our most recent report, by the way, just last month.”
Rose Cottage might once have been as charming as its name implied, but the canes arching over the front door were bare and sere, and only a few dying chrysanthemums graced the path. Deveney pushed the bell, and after a few moments the door swung open.
“Yes?” inquired Mr. Percy Bainbridge, wrinkling his nose and pursing his thin lips as if he smelled something distasteful. As Deveney made introductions and explained their mission, the lips relaxed into a simper, and Bainbridge said with fruity affectation, “Oh, do come in. I knew you’d be wanting a word with me.”
They followed him down a dark, narrow hallway into a sitting room that was overwarm and overdecorated—and smelled, Kincaid thought, faintly of illness.
Bainbridge was tall, thin, and stooped, with a chest so concave it looked as though it might have been hollowed out with an ice-cream scoop. Skin yellow as parchment stretched over the bones of his face and his balding skull. A death’s head with dandruff, thought Kincaid, for what was left of the man’s hair had liberally sprinkled the shoulders of his rusty black coat.
“You’ll have some sherry, won’t you?” said their host. “I always do this time of day. Keeps the evening at bay, don’t you think?” He poured from a decanter as he spoke, filling three rather dusty cut-crystal glasses, so that they could hardly refuse the proffered drinks.
Kincaid thanked him and took a tentative sip, then breathed an inward sigh of relief as the fine amontillado rolled over his tongue. At least he’d be spared having to tip his glass into a convenient aspidistra. “Mr. Bainbridge, we’d like to ask you a few—”
“I must say you took your time. I told your constable yesterday to send someone in charge. But do sit down.” Bainbridge gestured towards an ancient brocaded sofa and took the armchair himself. “I quite understand that you are at the mercy of the bureaucracy.”
At a loss, Kincaid glanced at Deveney, who merely gave him a blank look and a slight shake of the head. Kincaid sat down gingerly on the slippery fabric, taking time to adjust his trouser creases and finding a spot on the cluttered side table for his sherry glass. “Mr. Bainbridge,” he said carefully, “why don’t you begin by telling us exactly what you told the constable.”
Bainbridge sat back in his chair, his gratified smile pulling at his already too-tight skin until it looked as though it must melt, like wax under a flame. He sipped at his sherry, cleared his throat, then brushed at a speck on his sleeve. It was clear, thought Kincaid, that Percy Bainbridge intended making the most of his moment in the limelight. “I’d had my tea and finished with the washing up,” he began rather anticlimactically. “I was looking forward to settling in for the evening with my beloved Shelley”—pausing, he gave Kincaid a ghastly little wink —“that’s the poet, you understand, Superintendent. I don’t hold with the television, never have. I am a firm believer in improving the mind, and it is a proven fact that one’s intellect declines in direct proportion to the number of hours spent in front of the little black box. But I digress.” He gave an airy wave of his fingers. “It is my habit to take some air in the evening, and that night was no exception.”
Kincaid took advantage of the man’s pause for breath. “Excuse me, Mr. Bainbridge, but are you referring to Wednesday, the evening of Commander Gilbert’s death?”
“Well, of course I am, Superintendent,” Bainbridge answered, his humor obviously ruffled. “Whatever else would I be referring to?” He took a restorative sip of his sherry. “Now, as I was telling you, although the night was quite foggy and close, I stepped outside as usual. I had gone as far as the pub when I saw a shadowy figure slipping up the lane.” His eyes darted from Kincaid to Deveney, anticipating their reaction.
