clouds. 'Won't hold off long.' Her voice was cultured, with only a faint trace of Dorset burr.
Kincaid stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled his most charming smile. 'Nice border.' On closer inspection she looked quite frail, in her eighties, perhaps, and wore a tweed skirt and twin-set under an old, oiled jacket. Her thin gray hair was twisted into a neat knot on top of her head, and on her feet she sported, not the expected heavy leather brogues, but a pair of neon nylon trainers.
Frowning at him, she gave the comment serious consideration, and finally shook her head. 'You've missed the rhododendrons, you see. Another month, that's when it's glorious. These,' she gestured with her trowel toward the pansies and daffodils in the bed, 'are just the opening act.'
This time Kincaid grinned from pleasure, liking her grave humor. 'A little soft shoe?'
'Exactly.' She smiled back at him, resting her gloved hands on her knees, and Kincaid decided she had once been very beautiful. Her glance held curiosity now as she searched his face. 'Are you passing through?' she asked, then added, 'What a silly question. Briantspuddle isn't on the way to anywhere.'
'No, not exactly. Have you lived here long?'
'Depends on what you call long. Since before the War. That was Briantspuddle's heyday, you know. Ernest Debenham, the department store magnate, decided to make it a model farming village. These cottages he either built or restored.' She raised a coquettish eyebrow. 'You do know which war I mean, young man?'
'You wouldn't have been around for the first one, much less remember it.'
'Now you're flattering me.' She brushed her gloved hands together and pushed herself up with a grimace. Kincaid stretched out a hand to her and she nodded her thanks.
'Would you remember a woman called May Dent, by any chance?'
Her face went blank with surprise. 'May? Of course. We were neighbors for years. She lived just across the road, there.' Kincaid turned and looked where she pointed. The cottage sat back from the road at the end of a shrub-bordered walk. No flowers brightened its black and white severity, and high windows peeking from beneath the thatched eaves gave it a secretive air.
Extracting his warrant card from his jacket pocket, he opened it to the woman's puzzled glance. 'My name's Duncan Kincaid.'
She looked from the card to his face, her brow furrowing. 'You don't look like such a big cheese.'
Kincaid laughed. 'Thank you. I think.'
Coloring, she said, 'I'm making an idiot of myself. I never meant to be one of these tiresome old women who thinks anyone younger than sixty ought to be in nappies. I'm Alice Finney, by the way.' She held out her hand to Kincaid and he took it, feeling the lightness of her bones between his fingers.
'Mrs. Finney, do you remember May Dent's niece and nephew, who came from India to live with her?'
She stared at him in consternation. 'Of course I remember Jasmine and Theo, as well as I do my own name. But that's been thirty years if it's been a day. Why on earth would you want to know about them?'
Taking a breath, he tried to organize his approach. 'It's about-'
Alice Finney shook her head. 'No, no.' She nodded toward the blank faces of the cottages. 'I can tell this isn't going to be a 'middle-of-the-village' matter. You'd better come in. I'll make us some tea, and you can tell me properly, from the beginning.'
'Yes, Mrs. Finney,' Kincaid answered, meek as a schoolboy, and followed her up the walk.
Saucer balanced on his knee, Kincaid lifted a china cup so delicate he was afraid his breath might crack it. Outside the sitting room windows, mist had settled in again, fading the plum blossom to a pale wash of color. Alice Finney knelt at her grate, lighting a small, coal fire. When Kincaid moved to help her, she waved him back. 'I've done it myself for nearly fifty years. No use being coddled now.'
She sat down opposite him in a brocade armchair, its seat-cover a bit shiny with wear. At Kincaid's inquisitive glance, she picked up her cup and continued. 'My Jack and I would have been married fifty-five years this spring. He was a pilot, so he died a little more gloriously than some-in the air rather than the trenches. Not that it was much comfort to him, I imagine.' She smiled at him, suddenly, impishly. 'Don't look so properly funereal, Mr. Kincaid. To tell you the truth there are days I can't remember what he looked like, it's been so long ago. And at my age remembering is just a sentimental indulgence. Tell me about Jasmine and Theo Dent.'
In the warmth and comfort of Alice Finney's faded sitting room, all of Kincaid's rehearsed introduction dissolved. 'Jasmine Dent was my neighbor. And my friend. She was terminally ill with lung cancer, so when she died at first we assumed that the disease had progressed faster than expected.'
Alice Finney listened intently, not taking her eyes from Kincaid's face even to sip her tea. At the mention of Jas-mine's death she pinched her lips together in a small grimace.
'Then we discovered that Jasmine had asked a young friend to help her commit suicide, but had backed out at the last minute. I ordered an autopsy.' Kincaid paused, but Alice didn't interrupt. 'She died from a morphine overdose, and I don't believe it was self-administered.'
'Why?'
He shrugged. 'I could give you lots of logical reasons, but it's more gut-reaction than anything else, to tell you the truth. I just don't believe it.'
'And it's brought you here.' Alice leaned forward and lifted the teapot from the small, oval table, then refilled both their cups. 'I'll tell you what I can.' She sat quietly for a moment, her eyes unfocused as she gathered her thoughts, then she sighed. 'It was a bad business from the very beginning. May Dent was never meant to have children. She hadn't the capacity to love them, though to give her credit, perhaps she tried with Theo. She was a bitter woman, one of those people who always feel life has short-changed them. Perhaps she loved her brother more than she should, though in those days,' the corners of Alice's mouth turned up in amusement, 'one didn't speculate about such things. Whatever the cause, she despised her sister-in-law, never had a good word to say about her.'
'And Jasmine?' Kincaid got up, went to the grate and banked the settling fire.
'Jasmine must have reminded May of her mother. Whatever the cause, those two rubbed each other the wrong way from the moment they set eyes on one another. And Jasmine… Jasmine was difficult. I'd retired from teaching when they closed the village school-the children went to the nearest comprehensive-but I still had connections, privy to gossip, you might say.'
'You were the village schoolmistress?' Kincaid was enchanted with a vision of a younger Alice, guiding her charges with the same gentle humor.
'I had two young children to raise by myself, and neither the luxury nor the inclination to be idle,' she answered crisply. 'Jasmine,' she continued as if he hadn't interrupted, 'was not liked. Not actively disliked, perhaps, but she didn't fit in, she made the other children uncomfortable.' Alice paused, frowning. 'Jasmine was a beautiful girl, but in a haunting sort of way. Different. They didn't know what to make of her. I tried to befriend her myself- I thought she might need someone to confide in, and it certainly wouldn't have been May-but she wasn't having any. There was a reserve about her, a secretiveness, that one couldn't penetrate.'
Kincaid nodded. 'What about Theo? Did he fit in any better?'
Alice leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs toward the fire. Kincaid noted that her ankles, above the padded tongues of the trainers, were still trim.
'I suppose you could say Theo adjusted more easily. He looked more English, for a start. He lost his colonial accent as quickly as he could. I don't imagine Jasmine ever did, completely?' Alice inquired of Kincaid. 'She had that very precise enunciation, and a trace of the sing-song that comes from speaking the Hindustani dialects.'
'No, she never lost it. And it grew more pronounced with her illness.' Kincaid realized that Jasmine's voice had been one of the things that had attracted him to her-that, and her intelligence, and her sharp, dry humor.
'Theo did make friends with the local children, or was at least allowed to tag along. And May coddled him a bit in the beginning. He was only ten when they came, after all. Still practically an infant. But he always had this lost- puppy air about him, as if he might be kicked any minute.'
'And as they got older?'
'What always surprised me,' said Alice, 'was that Jasmine stayed as long as she did. I imagine it was her sense of duty to Theo that kept her here. She was very protective of him, and very jealous of May. Especially when Theo began to get into trouble.'
'Trouble? Theo?' Kincaid straightened up, his interest quickening.
Alice moderated her comment. 'Well, I don't think Theo ever did anything wrong in a malicious sense. He was
