Gemma knew from personal experience that acting before you thought could have regrettable consequences, and, emulating Duncan, had tried to learn to rein in her more impulsive tendencies.
Odd that his father disliked in himself one of the qualities she’d admired in his son.
“Duncan and I stood by, too,” she said. “Sometimes domestic situations blow out of control more quickly than anyone expects.”
“Of course, you’re right,” said Hugh, but Gemma sensed he was merely agreeing out of politeness. “Poor Gemma,” he added, touching her elbow again to draw her on. “Here I said I meant to make up for our bad impression, and I’ve gone and aired the family’s dirty
laundry. Must be Rosemary’s famous punch. Either that or you have a talent for eliciting confi dences.”
“A bit of both, I expect,” Gemma said with a smile. He might have had too much punch, but his footsteps were steadier than hers, and he was very perceptive.
They passed the church, then a snow-covered expanse Gemma assumed must be the green. Their street intersected another at the green’s end, and there Gemma stopped, her mouth open in an “O”
of surprise and delight. This was what Duncan had described, what she had imagined. The buildings ran together higgledy- piggledy, black-and-white timbering against Cheshire redbrick, gingerbread gables, and leaded windows winking like friendly eyes.
This was the High, she saw from a signpost, but she would have known instinctively that she stood in the very heart of the town.
The shops were ordinary—a WH Smith, a Holland & Barrett, a newsagent’s—but they had been tucked into the lower floors of the original Tudor houses, and so were transformed into something quite magical.
The movement of the buildings over the centuries had caused the black-and-white timbering to shift a little, giving the patterns a tilted, slightly rakish air. Snow iced the rooftops, Christmas lights twinkled, bundled pedestrians hurried through the streets, and from somewhere came the faint strains of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentle-men.” Gemma laughed aloud. “It’s perfect. Absolutely. The best sort of Christmas-card perfect.”
“It is rather lovely,” agreed Hugh, the pride in his voice refl ecting her delight. “That’s the Crown Hotel.” He pointed to a particularly fi ne example of half- timbering. “Built in , after the Great Fire.
It’s famous for its continuous upper-story windows. And down this way is Pillory Street, and the bookshop.” He urged her on, and a few moments later she peered into the window of a less remarkable shop front. The windows, however, were dimly lit, and Gemma caught a glimpse of aisles of books, invitingly arranged.
“You do like books?” Hugh asked suddenly.
“I do,” answered Gemma, laughing. “But I didn’t grow up with them, so I haven’t read all that much. Not like Duncan. And with my job, and the children . . .”
“I was afraid I might have bored you, at dinner.”
“Not at all. Will you keep it? The Dickens?”
“It’s tempting,” Hugh admitted with a sigh. “But it’s valuable, and it’s finds like this that pay the bills. Besides, it’s the discovery as much as anything—the thrill of it.”
Gemma thought of the moment of illumination when the parts of a case came together, and imagined that the instant when you realized the book you held in your hands was something special must be the same. “I can understand that.”
Hugh gave her a searching glance. “Yes, I think you can. Duncan and Juliet take books for granted, you know. They’ve lived with them all their lives.
“But my family were shopkeepers in a small Scottish town—they had the newsagent’s—and other than the papers, the most challenging things I saw in print were comics and a few pulp novels. I was good at my schoolwork, however, and won a place at a grammar school. My English teacher encouraged me, and I’ve never forgotten how I felt when I discovered there were more worlds at my fingertips than I had ever imagined, more worlds than I could ever explore . . .”
He stopped, looking abashed. “Oh, dear. I’m pontificating. A very bad habit, when I’ve so willing a listener. And I’m going to make us late,” he added, glancing at his watch. “It’s almost eleven. We’d better go back. I’ll show you the shop tomorrow, if time permits, or the next day.”
They were quiet as they walked back down to the High, but now Gemma felt comfortable with the silence. She’d found unexpected common ground with Hugh Kincaid.
There were more people in the square now, gathering, she guessed, for the midnight service at St. Mary’s. Hugh had started to
lead her across the High when Gemma saw a flare of light from the corner of her eye. It had come from the direction of the Crown Hotel, a match or a lighter, perhaps, she thought as she looked back.
Two figures—no, three—were silhouetted briefly in an archway beside the hotel’s front door. Teenagers, Gemma felt sure, from their slenderness, and a certain slouchy cockiness in their postures. There had been a hint of furtiveness as well, she thought as they disappeared into the darkness of what she now realized must be the old carriage entrance. Or was that just her, bringing the job with her?
She shrugged and turned away—it was none of her business what kids got up to here—then stopped and looked back once more. The girl—yes, she was sure one of the three had been a girl—had been dark haired, and the boy she’d seen most clearly, blond. Lally and Kit? But they were in church, she reminded herself, and the boy had been too tall, too thin. Nor would Kit have been smoking—he hated it with a passion. She was letting her imagination run away with her.
“Gemma?” Hugh’s voice came warmly beside her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She took the arm he offered and smiled up at him. “I’m fine.”
The smell of old incense, woodworm, and damp stone hit Kincaid like a sensory bomb as he followed his family into the porch of St.
Mary’s. It happened when he entered any church, the scent-triggered barrage of memories, but it was most intense at St. Mary’s.
He had grown up in this place—the cathedral of South Cheshire, it was often called. Although in truth it was only a town church, it was one of the finest in England, built on the scale of a cathedral by masons who had worked on York Minster, then later completed by men who had built the cathedrals at Gloucester and Lichfield.
It was a cavernous church, but to him it seemed intimate, comforting even. If he closed his eyes, his feet could find the worn places
in the stones unaided, his fingertips the nicks and gouges made by bored children in the backs of the pews. Here he had been baptized and confirmed.
His father, who had rebelled early against his Scots Presbyterian upbringing and declared himself an “intellectual agnostic”—or had it been “agnostic intellectual”?—had protested, but his mother insisted that the human animal had a need for structure, for ritual and discipline, for the ties with the community that the church provided, and for a sense of something larger than itself. His mother had won, as she usually did, but it was the sort of argument that had often echoed through house and bookshop in his childhood.
The porch, crowded with congregants jostling to break through the bottleneck into the nave, smelled of sweat and wet wool. Before him, Kincaid could see his parents, then the top of Juliet’s dark head. He knew that Sam, although momentarily invisible, was clinging to his mother’s hand. Rather to Kincaid’s surprise, Caspar had joined them on their walk to church, but he seemed to have disappeared in the shuffle through the porch doors.
Kincaid’s fingertips rested on Gemma’s shoulder as insurance against separation, and Toby, his view limited to waistbands and coattails, butted against his leg like a frustrated calf.
“Where’s Kit?” Toby asked, picking at Kincaid’s trousers, his voice rising perilously close to a whine. “I want to see Kit.”
It was long past the five-year-old’s bedtime, and Kincaid suspected they’d be lucky to get through the service without a melt-down. Bending over, he hefted the boy to his hip, a harder task than it been only a few months ago. “We’ll look together,” he suggested,
“and if you find him first, I’ll give you a pound to put in the collection box. Deal?”
“Deal,” agreed Toby, looking much happier now.
At that moment, the organist launched into a Bach prelude and the sound rolled over them like a thunderclap, vibrating teeth and
bones. Kincaid felt an unexpected lurch of joy, and tightened his grip on Gemma’s shoulder. She looked back
