Mourn Not Your Dead

“Sure.” She looked at him expectantly.

Gemma wondered how Kincaid meant to handle this. When they’d stopped in at the station, a quick check of Gilbert’s impounded diary had confirmed Kincaid’s memory. When he asked, with exaggerated patience, why he hadn’t been informed of the connection, the constable in charge mumbled something about “just assuming the commander had rung his wife.”

“First rule of a murder investigation, mate,” Kincaid had said, an inch from his face, “which you should have learned at your guv’nor’s knee. Never assume.”

Now he tackled the other, unspoken, assumption first. “Is your mum in the habit of working late, Lucy?”

She shook her head, her hair swinging with the movement. “She likes to be here when I get home from school, and she never misses it by more than a few minutes.”

“What about the night before Alastair died? Was there anything unusual about that?”

“That would have been Tuesday.” Lucy thought a moment. “We were both home by five or so, and then later Mum watched an old movie with me.” She shrugged. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Kincaid straightened the table mat, aligning it precisely with the edge of the table. “Did Alastair ever ring your mum at the shop?”

“Alastair?” She looked baffled. “I don’t think so. Sometimes he’d have his secretary ring here and leave a message on the answerphone if he were going to be delayed. And sometimes he didn’t let her know at all. Alastair wasn’t one to put himself out for people,” she added. “Even when Mummy broke her wrist last summer, he didn’t leave work. Geoff went with me to pick her up from hospital. I only had my learner’s permit then.”

“How did it happen?” asked Gemma.

“Driving along the road that runs through the Hurtwood. She said she hit a monster pothole, and the wheel jerked so hard it snapped the bone in her wrist.”

“Ouch.” Gemma winced at the thought.

Grinning, Lucy added, “It was her right hand, too. I had to do everything for her for weeks, and she didn’t like it a bit. Poor Mum. Kept her from biting her nails, though.”

Kincaid glanced at his watch. “I guess we’d better not wait for her any longer. Do you mind if I make a quick call from Alastair’s study, Lucy?”

When he’d gone, Lucy smiled a bit shyly at Gemma. “He’s very nice, isn’t he? You’re lucky you get to work with him every day.”

Nonplussed, Gemma searched for a response. A week ago she would have agreed easily, perhaps even a touch smugly. She felt a pang of loss so sharp that it took her breath, but she managed a smile. “Of course I am. You’re quite right,” she said finally, trying for conviction, then did her best to ignore Lucy’s puzzled expression.

“Well?” said Gemma when they reached the lane again. “I think we can be fairly sure that it was Malcolm Reid that Gilbert called.”

“I should’ve twigged sooner,” Kincaid said, his face set in an irritated frown.

Gemma shrugged. “That’s a bit pointless. Like saying you should remember what you’ve forgotten. What’s next?”

“I’ve got the Reids’ home address, but first, let’s give Brian a try.”

Leaving the car in the lane, they walked to the pub, but found it shut up tight. Kincaid’s knock on the door brought no response. “First thing Sunday morning’s not the best time to beard a publican in his den, I suppose. I remember Brian saying he wasn’t a morning person.” Turning away, he added, “We’ll have to come back, but just now let’s pay a call on Malcolm and the missis.”

“I think that must have been it.” Gemma looked back at the gap in the hedge they’d just shot past. “Hazel Patch Farm. I saw a little hand-lettered sign on the gatepost.”

“Bloody hell.” Kincaid swore under his breath. “There’s no place to reverse.” He shifted down another gear and crept around the hairpin bends, searching for an accessible drive or farm track. They were high in the tree-crowned hills between Holmbury and Shere, and Gemma supposed they’d done well to find the place at all with only the blithe directions of the Holmbury St. Mary garage attendant to guide them.

A passing place presented itself, and with a little judicious maneuvering, Kincaid managed to turn the car about. Soon they were nosing in through the farm gate, and he pulled the car up in a graveled area just inside the hedge.

“Not exactly a working farm, I’d say,” he commented as they got out of the car and looked about. The house stood back beneath the trees, and what little remained visible beneath the cover of the creeping vines seemed unassuming enough.

Malcolm Reid came to the door in frayed jeans and an old sweater, looking considerably less like a Country Living fashion plate than he had in the shop, but perhaps, thought Gemma, even more handsome. If he were surprised to have his Sunday morning at home interrupted by uninvited coppers, he managed to conceal it, and the two sleek springer spaniels at his heels sniffed at them with equal politeness. “Come through to the back,” he said pleasantly and led them down a dim passageway.

Entering before them, he said, “Val, it’s Superintendent Kincaid and Sergeant James.”

Anything else he might have attributed to them, Gemma lost, as she was too busy gaping with delight to take in the conversation. They stood in a terra-cotta-tiled kitchen, and it was much less intimidating than she would have imagined from the high-tech displays in the shop. Dusty-blue cabinets, a sunflower-yellow Aga as well as a gas cooktop, copper pans hanging from a rack in the ceiling, and all open to a solarium whose windows looked down the steep hillside to the Downs rolling away in the distance.

Kincaid gave her a gentle nudge and she focused on the woman rising from amid the pile of newspapers that covered most of a comfortable-looking settee. “You’ve caught us at our Sunday morning vice,” she said, laughing as she came towards them with her hand outstretched. “We read them all—the high, the low, the insufferably middle- brow. I’m Valerie Reid.”