It couldn’t be. And yet— Once more she read the descriptions of the Wains’ children, so carefully noted by Annie Constantine, and she knew that she was not mistaken.
The little girl she had met was not Marie Wain.
Chapter Twenty- four
As soon as Gemma said they had to pick up the children, he knew that it was an excuse. He stared at her, questioning, but she just gave a slight shake of her head.
Frustration gripped him. He didn’t want to leave until he’d talked to Babcock himself, found out what he’d managed to get out of Piers Dutton. At least so far it didn’t sound as if Dutton had implicated Caspar in the fraud scheme, but if Caspar
And if Dutton was cleared of Annie Lebow’s murder, had he brought it about needlessly? Not that Dutton didn’t deserve a good prison term for the scams he’d pulled on his clients, but was it worth the damage to Juliet? Perhaps his sister had been right all along—he was a self-righteous bastard, concerned only with being seen to do the right thing. The fact that Caspar Newcombe was a fool didn’t make it any better.
Gemma had slipped into her coat and was glancing at him anxiously while making chitchat with Sheila Larkin. What had she found that she couldn’t say in front of—
The thought that struck him sent the blood from his head. Why s
had Caspar volunteered an alibi for Dutton? What if it wasn’t Dutton who needed an alibi, but Caspar himself?
What if Caspar had discovered that Annie Lebow meant to shop Dutton for cheating her, and had decided to make sure she didn’t have that chance? There was not only the business at stake, but Kincaid had begun to think that Caspar would do anything for Piers Dutton. Dutton, obviously, had not been so willing to do the same for him.
Suddenly as eager to be away as Gemma, he got his own coat and interrupted Gemma’s conversation with Larkin. “Tell your boss to ring us if there’s any news,” he told the DC, and although she looked surprised at his abruptness, she nodded.
“Will do.”
Taking Gemma’s arm, he hurried her up the stairs and out into an early dusk. The swollen clouds seemed to hang just above the rooftops, pressing down with a momentous weight, and fine snowflakes stung their cheeks like microscopic shards of glass.
“Is it Caspar?” he asked. “What have you found?”
“Caspar?” Gemma looked up at him, shielding her eyes against the snow. “What are you talking about?”
Relief flooded through him. He’d been paranoid, that’s all, and he was suddenly reluctant to share his suspicions. “What is it, then?”
he asked, but she’d broken away, dashing for the car and plunging into the driver’s seat.
She had the car started before he’d closed his own door, in gear before he’d buckled his seat belt. “Gemma, where’s the damned fi re?”
Gemma eased into the congestion of Crewe’s late-afternoon traffi c without looking at him and said, “Marie Wain.” When he stared blankly at her, she added, “It was there all along. Annie Lebow spent time with the children, when she was arranging care for Rowan. She should have seen it.”
“Gemma.” He reached out, covered her hand on the steering
wheel with his own. “Will you please tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”
This time she glanced at him as she downshifted for a traffi c light. “Marie Wain—the little girl I met—isn’t Marie Wain. It’s right there in Annie’s notes on the original case. Gabriel and Rowan Wain’s baby girl had brown eyes, like her brother, like her parents.
The girl they call Marie has eyes as blue as delphiniums.”
He took this in. “But . . . the girl was just a baby the last time Annie saw her, when she closed the case. She might have been mistaken—”
“No. Babies’ eyes are sometimes a cloudy, indeterminate color for the first few weeks. But after that you can tell— And with blue-eyed children it’s easier— You could see that Toby’s eyes were unmistakably blue within a day or two.”
“Are you suggesting the Wains switched their child with someone else’s? And no one noticed?” The full import hit him. “If that was the case, then the baby in the barn could be—”
“I don’t know.” She accelerated a bit too fast, and the Escort’s back tires slid a little on the glazed pavement. “But we’re going to find out.”
“Gemma, if you’re right, we should have told Babcock.”
“Not until we talk to Gabriel Wain.”
Squeaky clean and dressed in jeans and a nubby jumper, Juliet came downstairs to find her mother home from the bookshop and rushing round the kitchen like a whirlwind.
“I’ve put some things out for the children’s tea,” said Rosemary.
“There’s a cauliflower bake I had in the freezer, and some things for salad. If you can just—”
“Mummy, please. I can manage,” Juliet interrupted, but without heat. Her parents had a long- planned dinner engagement with friends in Barbridge, and she knew Rosemary was overcompensating. “Go.
Have a good time. We won’t starve.” Giving her mother an impulsive hug, she caught the familiar scent of Crabtree & Evelyn’s Lily of the Valley, and was oddly comforted.
What scents would her own children associate with her, she wondered, when they were grown? Sweat, brick, and sawdust?
“Are you certain?” asked Rosemary, touching her cheek. “Duncan and Gemma should be back soon.”
“Yes. And if you don’t get Daddy out of the house, he’ll get sucked back into the perpetual Monopoly game. I’m glad you’re not going far, though. It’s shaping up to be a foul night.”
She had bundled her mother into her coat and waved both parents off at the door, like a mother sending kids off to school, when the phone rang. Her first instinct was to reach for her mobile, then she realized she’d left it with her work clothes upstairs, and it was the house phone ringing.
The children were all in the sitting room, and when neither Lally nor Sam—who usually responded to a ringing phone with Pavlovian promptness—appeared, she padded into the kitchen herself. Lifting the handset, she gave her parents’ number.
“Juliet? Is that you?”
Surprised, she recognized her friend Gill, who had a fine-arts shop near the square in Nantwich.
“Gill?”
“I’ve been ringing and ringing your house, and your mobile,”
Gill went on. “And then I thought to try your parents.”
Juliet felt a little lurch of unease. Gill would never go to such trouble for social reasons, and it was past time for her to have closed up shop and set off for her cottage near Whitchurch. “What is it?
Has something happened?”
“It’s Newcombe and Dutton. The building’s on fire. The fi re bri-gade’s there but they haven’t got things under control yet. I don’t think anyone is inside, but when I couldn’t reach you or Caspar—”
“Caspar? You rang his mobile, too?”
“Yes. You mean he’s not with you?”
“No. Gill, look, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. I’ll ring you later.” Juliet hung up before her friend could respond. She couldn’t answer questions, not now. Her knees felt weak with panic. Having heard the alarm in her voice, Jack got up from his bed by the stove and came over to her, wagging his bushy tail and watching her with his alert sheepdog eyes.
“It’s all right, boy,” she said, trying to reassure herself as well as the dog, but she had to grasp the kitchen table for a moment. What if Caspar had done something stupid? What if Caspar was in that building?
