want to mislead you. I’m not really here on police business. The local C.I.D. is officially investigating your son’s death. I had met Sebastian at Followdale, where I’m staying as a guest, and I wanted to offer my condolences.”
“She said, that nice policewoman who came yesterday, that a policeman staying in the house had found him. Was that you?”
“Yes, more or less,” Kincaid said, afraid the knowledge that the children had actually discovered her son’s body would only add to her distress.
“Did you… how…” She abandoned whatever she had been going to ask, finding, Kincaid felt, that hearing a physical description of the circumstances of her son’s death was beyond her present level of endurance. Instead she looked at him again, and asked, “Did you like him?”
“Yes, I did. He was kind to me, and very amusing.”
She nodded, and some tension in her relaxed. “I’m glad it was you. No one’s come. Not even that Cassie.” She turned from him abruptly and led the way into the sitting room. “Would you like some tea? I’ll just put the kettle on.
The room in which she left him was cold, clean, well-kept and utterly devoid of charm or comfort. The air had the stale odor of an old steamer trunk. The wallpaper had once been rose. The furniture might have belonged to Mrs. Wade’s parents, new and dubiously respectable fifty years ago. There were no books, no television or radio. She must live in the kitchen, Kincaid thought, or a back parlour. This room had surely not been used since the last death in the family.
The tea things were carefully arranged on an old tin tray, with mismatched, faded china cups and saucers. “Mrs. Wade,” Kincaid, began, when she had settled herself in one of the horsehair chairs and was occupied pouring the tea, “how did you know, yesterday, that your son was dead? Did someone tell you?”
“He did.” She answered flatly, glancing quickly at him and then back at her tea. She held the cup close to her chest, both hands wrapped around it as if its warmth could revive her. “I woke in the night, early morning really, and I felt him there, in my room. He didn’t speak to me, not out loud like, but somehow I knew that he wanted me to know that he was all right, not to worry about him. And I knew he was dead. That’s all. But I knew.”
And so she had risen, and dressed, and waited all those hours for someone to come and tell her, to make death official. Ten years ago Kincaid would have scoffed at her story, put it down to overwrought imagination charged by grief, convenient hindsight. But he had heard too many similar accounts not to have some respect for the lingering power of the spirit.
Kincaid set his cup down gingerly in its saucer, the violets on the cup meeting the saucer’s roses in delicate profusion. Mrs. Wade’s attention had wandered from him again. She sat with her eyes fixed on the opposite wall, the forgotten teacup still clasped in her hands. “Mrs. Wade,” he said quietly, “who were Sebastian’s particular friends?”
Her eyes came back to him, startled. “I can’t say as he had any, not really. He was at work all day and into the evening, most days. He liked to use the…” she faltered for a moment, “pool, after work. One of the perks of having a cushy job, he called it. I know he didn’t get on with that Cassie. Said she lorded it over everybody, and her no better than she should be. A construction foreman’s daughter from Clapham. Liked them to think she came from landed gentry, or some such. He used to tell me about the folk who came to stay, what they wore, how they talked. Sometimes he could make it seem like they were right there in the room with you.” She smiled, remembering, and Kincaid could hear Sebastian’s light voice, wickedly mimicking the pompous utterances of his unsuspecting victims. “But no one ever came back here with him. Mostly when he wasn’t working he stayed in his room.”
“Would you mind if I had a look at Sebastian’s room, Mrs. Wade?”
He didn’t know what he’d expected. But whatever preconceptions had hovered on the fringe of his imagination-posters of rock stars, perhaps, remnants of adolescence-they had been nothing like this.
This, it seemed, was where Sebastian had spent his money, apart from the payments on his motorbike, and what he spent on his clothes. The room was fitted with a pale gray Berber wool carpet, a flat commercial weave, very expensive looking. Lustrous green plants filled strategic corners. The dresser and side chairs looked like antiques, or good reproductions. The bed had high, matching curved ends. Kincaid believed it was called a
Sebastian’s reading matter was equally eclectic, housed in a simple pine bookcase which was the only visible holdover from his boyhood years. Childhood classics propped up stacks of magazines detailing the art of motorcycle maintenance. Stephen King mingled with espionage and the latest techno-thrillers-Sebastian’s taste had apparently run to the complicated and the devious. On the top shelf Kincaid discovered an old edition of the Complete Sherlock Holmes, and a worn set of Jane Austen.
Clothes hung neatly in the wardrobe, organized by type as well as color. The sight of those garments, waiting for their owner to pick and choose, match and discard them, struck Kincaid as almost unbearably sad.
He found the files in the back of the wardrobe, stowed carefully in a cardboard box marked “Insurance.”
CHAPTER 7
Kincaid thanked Mrs. Wade as kindly as he could, taking her small hand in his for a moment. She had drifted away again while he was upstairs, and her eyes focused on him with difficulty. She smelled faintly, he noticed, of chewing gum and fresh-cut tobacco, the aromas of the tobacconist’s shop.
“What about the shop, Mrs. Wade? Have you got someone to take over for you?”
“I’ve shut it just now. Didn’t seem right. I meant to leave it to Sebastian, you know. Not for him to serve behind the counter, not with his advantages, but he could have hired someone and still had a nice little income. I put all the insurance money from his dad into it. It should have been his.”
Kincaid patted the limp hand, searching for some words of comfort. “I’m sure he would have appreciated it, Mrs. Wade. I’m sorry.”
The brass knocker winked brightly at him as he closed the door. The morning had turned fair and blowy while he’d been inside. A piece of yellow paper fluttered under the Midget’s wiper like a butterfly trapped in the sun. He’d collected a parking ticket for his trouble-the local traffic constable, at least, was vigilant.
Kincaid retrieved the ticket and stuck it into his wallet. He folded the Midget’s top down, lowered himself into the driver’s seat and sat in the silent street, thinking. What to do, now, with this unexpected information? He couldn’t ignore it. Why, in the name of all that was competent, hadn’t Nash’s men searched the room already? It had been nearly thirty-six hours since Sebastian’s body had been discovered, and Nash had only sent a W.P.C. to break the news-he hadn’t even interviewed the mother, for Christ’s sake. Actually, he amended, ‘thank god’ might be a better qualification, as he couldn’t imagine that Nash would have done anything to ease her distress.
Nash would have to be told, there was no help for it. And help, decided Kincaid, was just what he needed. He turned the key in the ignition and lifted the car phone from its cradle.
Kincaid counted himself extremely fortunate in his immediate superior. Chief Superintendent Denis Childs was an intelligent man whom Kincaid liked personally and respected professionally-and Kincaid knew that the luck of the draw could have just as easily given him a chief like Nash, although he liked to think that a copper of Nash’s caliber would never make it past Detective Constable at the Yard.
Denis Childs was a massive man, dwarfing Kincaid’s rangy six feet, and with his olive skin and bland inscrutability of feature, he sometimes made Kincaid think of an Eastern potentate-one finger on the political pulse and the other on his harem.
“Sir,” Kincaid said, when they were finished with the standard greetings, “I’ve run into a little problem.”
“Oh, you have, have you?” Childs said equably, with his usual disinclination to be ruffled. “And just how little is it?”
“Um,” Kincaid hesitated, “the situation’s a bit tricky. Yesterday morning I found the house’s assistant manager electrocuted in the swimming pool. The local D.C.I, is of the opinion that it was suicide, but I think he’ll find it’s not when the lab reports come back. At any rate, I’m not too happy about the whole thing. I just… um… happened
