expecting to hear from you until later today. Don’t tell me, you’re off early.” Her tone was half teasing, half hopeful, and he hated having to puncture her mood.
“No, sorry, love. Something’s come up. A special request from the guv’nor. It’s a fire in Southwark, with a possible homicide. I’ll fill you in on the details later.”
There was a moment’s hesitation before she said, “You’ll be tied up for the weekend, at least. Kit will be disappointed about tomorrow.”
“Go to the market without me. It’s better than postponing.”
“And tonight?”
It was only then that he remembered they’d had plans to take Gemma’s friend Erika out for a meal. “Oh, bugger. You’d better cancel, at least on my part.” Erika Rosenthal was an older woman of whom Gemma had become quite fond, and Kincaid had been promising to meet her for months. “Maybe we can reschedule for next weekend.”
“Right. Look, I’ve got to dash,” Gemma said a bit abruptly. “Ring me when you can.”
Winnie pushed the bell at the Ufford Street house, then let herself in when she heard Fanny’s voice, knowing it was hard for her to negotiate the front door from the confines of her wheelchair.
She stepped directly into the sitting room, marveling, as she always did when she came here, that a woman of Chinese descent would choose to create a room that was more English than the English. Shelves on the pale green walls held pottery jugs filled with dried flowers, 1930s green glassware, clocks, and hand-painted china; the open spaces between shelves were filled with cottage watercolors, crewelwork still lifes, and, in the place of honor above the mantel, a large print of a contemplative black-and-white cat among pots of flowers.
The furniture was pine, the squashy settee chintz, and in the back of the room, strategically placed for the view into the tiny garden, was a green velvet chaise longue.
Beside the chaise, Fanny sat in her wheelchair, and if her cotton print dress and beaded cardigan seemed accessories to the room, the metal frame of the chair provided a harsh contrast. Her delicate hands were twisted in the cashmere shawl on her lap, the smooth oval of her face etched with worry.
“Thanks for coming,” Fanny said, her voice quavering as Winnie came across and clasped her cold hands. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Let’s start with some tea, shall we?” said Winnie. “You can tell me everything, then we’ll see what’s to be done.” She went into the kitchen at the rear of the house. Toaster and kettle, along with the necessities for both, were arranged on a low table in front of the window. Although Fanny had had a small bathroom with roll-in shower built off the scullery, she’d told Winnie she refused to have the cabinets and worktops refitted to wheelchair height. Nor had she put in a wheelchair lift for the stairs. To her, both those things had seemed like admissions of defeat.
Fanny was determined to walk again, and while Winnie had learned that people often did make at least a partial recovery from Guillain-Barre syndrome, she knew it could be a slow and laborious process.
“Is there anything you need doing?” she called out as she put the kettle on to boil.
“No. I can manage the basics pretty well on my own,” Fanny answered from the sitting room, her voice steadier. “It’s just the getting out that’s difficult.”
As she gathered the tea things, Winnie looked round for anything odd or out of place in the small kitchen, but everything seemed the same as on her previous visits. Carrying the steaming mugs back into the sitting room, she pulled a worn wooden chair up to Fanny’s and sat down.
“Let’s go back a bit,” she said. “Was Elaine at home last night?”
“Yes. Although she was a bit late getting in from work, but she’s been late several times a week the past few months, and I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Was there anything else unusual? Did she seem upset or worried?”
Fanny wrapped her hands round the mug and frowned into its depths. “No, no, not really. She made us scrambled eggs on toast for supper, then we watched a bit of telly. She didn’t stay down to watch the ten o’clock news with me, but she made my milky drink before she went up.”
“Could she have been feeling unwell?” Winnie asked, remembering her earlier fears.
“Not that she said.” Fanny looked up, fear in her dark eyes. “You don’t think… Surely I’d know…”
“Why don’t I start by having a look upstairs.” Forcing a reassuring smile, Winnie found a spot on the mantel for her mug and crossed the room to the stairs, which rose from near the front door. She climbed quickly, trying to ignore the dread tingling at the base of her neck.
There were three doors in the upstairs corridor. She opened the first door on the right with trepidation, then gave a small sigh of relief. The room, obviously Fanny’s, with its inlaid mahogany bed covered by a lilac quilt, was tidy and had the slightly musty odor of disuse.
Winnie closed the door softly and tried the next. It was the bathroom, tidy as well. Both the towels on the rack and the soap in the dish on the sink were dry, and cold air poured in through the partially opened window. An escape route? Winnie wondered, but as she pulled the window closed she saw that it was a straight drop down to the small paved patio outside the scullery. Not unless Elaine had grown wings.
That left the third door, the room that faced the front of the house. Winnie knocked softly, then, realizing she was holding her breath, exhaled deliberately and pulled open the door.
The room might have been a monk’s cell. The starkness came as an almost physical shock after the cocooning clutter of Fanny’s house. A single bed stood against the wall, its worn white matelasse bedcover reminding Winnie of the one on her parents’ bed when she was a child. An unfinished pine nightstand held a clock and a small lamp – nothing else. The surface of a matching chest of drawers held nothing other than a faint layer of dust. Beside the chest, a straight-backed chair stood awkwardly, like an uninvited guest. No prints or pictures graced the magnolia walls, and there was no mirror.
The bed looked as if it had been made hastily, a lack of care that seemed oddly in contrast to the rest of the room. Winnie opened the wardrobe doors. A few hangers hung empty among the neat ranks of skirts, coats, and dresses, but she had no way of knowing whether the bare spaces indicated clothing removed for flight or the ordinary breeding of hangers in cupboards. There were no other signs of packing or of hasty departure.
Winnie left the room and descended the stairs more slowly than she’d gone up, wondering what could possibly have happened to Elaine.
“She’s not here,” she said when she reached the sitting room and saw Fanny’s anxious face. “And I can’t tell whether or not she’s taken anything away. Are you sure you didn’t hear anything in the night?”
“No.” Frowning, Fanny picked at the fringe of the shawl in her lap. “I only remembered sensing something wrong as soon as I woke this morning. It’s odd – I don’t usually sleep quite so soundly. Oh.” She looked up, her eyes widening. “I dreamed I heard a door close.”
“It must have been Elaine, as it doesn’t look as though she went out a window, and she can’t have vanished into thin air. Have you any idea what time this was?”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m not usually so groggy.”
“And you said you rang Elaine’s work and she hadn’t come in? Did they tell you if she’d called?”
“No. Only that she wasn’t there. They’re not allowed to give out more information than that over the phone.”
“Well, that’s the first thing, then,” Winnie said with relief, glad to have a goal. “I’ll go have a word with them. She works at Guy’s?”
“Yes, in medical records.”
“What about family? Does Elaine have anyone you could ring?”
Fanny shook her head and a strand of her fine dark hair came loose from its clip. “No. There’s no one. Her parents are dead and she hasn’t any siblings. That was one of the things that-” She stopped, her eyes filling with tears. “We were both alone.”
Winnie knelt by Fanny’s chair and gave her hand a squeeze. “You’re not alone. I’ll help any way I can.”
Returning the pressure, Fanny forced a smile. “Thanks. Sorry for being so wet.”
“You’re just fine,” Winnie reassured her, then added hesitantly. “Fanny, if we find that Elaine hasn’t been in touch with the hospital, I think we should call the police.”
“No!” Fanny jerked her hand free.
“Why ever not?” Winnie asked, startled.
