saw it rise and fall as she sighed. “And you’re right, of course. I need to deal with my own child.”
Kincaid sat with his hand on the key for a moment, started the car, then turned it off and reached for his pocket phone instead. When he had Deveney on the line, he said, “Don’t start without me, Nick. I’ll be along in a bit.”
The first customer’s car pulled into the pub car park as he pulled out, but the houses clustered around the green looked dark and silent, as did the shop when he reached it. He could just make out the CLOSED sign, but yellow light filtered through the curtain chinks in the upstairs windows.
The stairs were inky, invisible but for the white rail under his hand, but he persevered to the top and knocked smartly on Madeleine Wade’s door. “You really should do something about a light,” he said when she answered.
“Sorry,” she said, frowning at the fixture. “Must have just burned out.” She motioned him inside and shut the door. “Should I assume this is a social call, Superintendent, since you are unaccompanied by minions?”
He gave a snort of laughter as he followed her into the kitchen. “Minions?”
“Such a nice word, isn’t it? I do like words with descriptive power.” As she spoke she rummaged in various cupboards. “Most people’s vocabularies are dismally bland, don’t you think? Ah, success,” she added as she fished a corkscrew triumphantly from a drawer. “Will you have some wine with me, Mr. Kincaid? Sainsbury’s is remarkably up-market these days. You can actually get something quite decent.”
Madeleine filled two slender glasses with a pale gold chardonnay, then led the way back to the sitting room. Candles burned, adding their flickering light to that of two shaded table lamps, and the music he’d admired before played softly in the background. “Expecting a client, Miss Wade?” he asked as he accepted a glass and sat down.
“This is just for me, I’m afraid.” Slipping out of her shoes, she tucked her feet up on the settee, and the marmalade cat jumped up beside her. “I try to practice what I preach,” she said with a chuckle as she rubbed the cat under its chin. “Stress reduction.”
“I could do with a bit of that.” Kincaid sipped his wine, holding it for a moment in his mouth. The flavors exploded on his tongue—buttery rich, with a touch of the oak found in good whiskey, and beneath that a hint of flowers. The sensation was so intense that he wondered if he were suffering from some sort of perceptual enhancement.
“Lovely, volatile molecules.” Madeleine closed her eyes as she sipped, then gazed at him directly. In the candlelight her eyes looked green as river moss. “How can I help you, Mr. Kincaid?”
It occurred to him that in the few minutes he’d been in the flat, he had ceased to regard her as homely. It was not that her features had altered but rather that the normal parameters of judging physical beauty seemed to have become meaningless. He felt light-headed, although he’d barely touched his wine. “Are you a witch, Miss Wade?” he asked, surprising himself, then he smiled, making a joke of it.
She returned the smile with her characteristic wry amusement. “No, but I’ve considered it quite seriously. I know several, and I incorporate some aspects of their rituals into my practice.”
“Such as?”
“Blessings, protective spells, that sort of thing. All quite harmless, I assure you.”
“People keep assuring me of a lot of things, Miss Wade, and quite frankly, I’m getting a bit fed up.” He set his glass on the table and leaned forwards. “There’s a conspiracy of silence in this village. A conspiracy of protection, even. You all must have known Geoff Genovase’s history, must have considered the possibility that he might be responsible for your thefts. Yet no one said a word. In fact, you were reluctant to talk about the thefts at all. Were there others that went unreported, once the word got out?”
He sat back and retrieved his glass, then said more slowly, “Someone murdered Alastair Gilbert. If the truth goes undiscovered, that knowledge will eat away at this village like a cancer. Each person will wonder if his friend or neighbor deserves his loyalty, then wonder if the friend or neighbor suspects him. The snake is in the garden, Miss Wade, and ignoring it won’t make it go away. Help me.”
The music tinkled in the silence that followed his words. For the first time, Madeleine didn’t meet his eyes but stared into her glass as she swirled the liquid slowly around. At last, she looked up and said, “I suppose you’re right. But none of us wanted the responsibility for harming an innocent.”
“Things are never quite that simple, and you are perceptive enough to be aware of that.”
She nodded slowly, acquiescing. “I’m still not sure what you want me to do.”
“Tell me about Geoff Genovase. Claire Gilbert described him as childlike. Is he simple, a bit slow?”.
“Just the opposite, I’d say. Highly intelligent, but there is something a bit childlike about him.”
“How so? Describe it for me.”
Madeleine sipped her wine and thought for a moment, then said, “In the positive sense I’d say that he has a very well-developed imagination and that he still has the capacity to enjoy the small things in life. On the negative side, I think that he may not always face things in an emotionally adult way … that he retreats to his fantasy life rather than face unpleasantness. But then most of us have been guilty of that at one time or another.”
Especially lately, thought Kincaid, then wondered if she could read his flicker of embarrassment. “Madeleine,” he said, deliberately dropping the formality of “Miss Wade,” “can you see the potential for violence?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been presented with a clear before and after example. I can sense chronic anger, as I told you yesterday, but I have no way of knowing when, or if, it will explode.”
He said casually, swirling his wine as Madeleine had done, watching its legs make ribbon patterns on the inside of the glass, “And is Geoff angry?”
She shook her head. “Geoff is
“But you don’t know why?”
“No. Only that’s he’s been that way as long as I’ve known him. They came to the village some years before I did. Brian gave up a job as a commercial traveler and bought the Moon.” She shifted a little in her seat, and the cat stood up, giving her an affronted look before jumping to the floor. “Look,” Madeleine said abruptly, “if I don’t tell you
