“How difficult for her,” said Janet Lyle, and they nodded sympathetically. All except Hannah, who, Kincaid noticed, had gone very pale, and looked, for the first time since they had met, her age.
“I’d better be off, myself.” Hannah gave a brittle smile and left the room without so much as a glance at Patrick.
“Dear god, it’s catching,” Cassie spoke for the first time. “Poor Patrick. Let’s hope you haven’t the same effect on the voters.” Until then she had stood at the back of the group and left them, for once, to their own devices. Her tone was caustic.
Before Rennie could respond, his wife appeared in the doorway of the bar. She walked as if she were treading on egg shells, with the exquisite care of the very drunk. The yellow scarf trailed over her shoulder like a banner. “What’s the matter,” she said with great deliberation, “has someone got their feelings hurt?”
The croquet mallet hit the ball with a satisfying smack. Brian Hunsinger whooped with delight as his ball slammed his sister’s well away from the wicket. “I got you. I got you,” he shrieked and swung his mallet again in pantomime.
“Baby!” yelled Bethany. “I won’t play with you. You cheat. It was my turn.”
“Was not.”
“It’ll be too dark to play soon.” Angela broke into the squabble. “Come on, Beth. It’s your turn now. I’ll bet you can knock Brian’s ball halfway to the drive.”
Angela as peacemaker. Quite a change, Kincaid thought, from the sullen child who sat in corners and spoke to no one. He stood on the steps and watched the three children. At the other end of the garden Emma MacKenzie and John Hunsinger sat together companion-ably on the stone bench. Certainly they seemed in better accord than the group that had just broken up inside.
Patrick Rennie had hustled his wife out of the room, his face flushed with embarrassment. “Too bad. Poor Patrick,” Marta Rennie said over her shoulder as her husband maneuvered her through the doorway. The last thing they heard was an echo of her spiteful giggle from the entrance hall.
Cassie turned on her heel and left the room without a word. Graham, who had been as silent as Cassie all evening, said, “Shit. Maybe she’s got the right idea,” and disappeared into the bar.
Maureen looked around as if surprised to find her husband and children not attached to her. “Oh dear, the kiddies haven’t had their tea,” she said and hurried from the room.
“Well, it was a nice party. I mean, until…” Janet ducked her head, her eyes straying in her husband’s direction.
“Appalling. Absolutely appalling. How the man has the nerve to stand for public office with a wife like that, I can’t imagine.” Eddie stalked from the room, and Janet followed with a last apologetic glance at Kincaid.
Cassie pulled her sweater over her head in irritation. The angora fiber woven into the sweater’s wool had rubbed her skin until it felt as if it had been scrubbed with a wire brush. But the color, a dull olive, flattered her, and she had dressed with special care. Not that it had mattered. She could have worn a flour sack for all the difference it had made.
Nothing had gone right for her since the minute she walked into the sitting room for cocktails.
Nothing had gone right for her, in fact, since that dreadful row with Sebastian on Sunday afternoon. Cassie dropped her sweater where she stood, kicked off her linen slacks in the direction of the bedroom and shrugged herself into an old satin dressing gown left lying across the armchair the night before. She’d made little effort to imprint her personality on the bland chintz-and-oak atmosphere of the cottage. She even preferred to make love in the big house, when she could manage it.
The brief flicker of pleasure on her face at the thought vanished as she remembered the last time she had met a lover there. She’d known exactly what she must say, must do, and it had slipped out of her control, somehow, all her intentions retaining no more force than a trickle of water. All the carefully gathered strands of her life seemed to be falling from her hands, one by one.
The gentle tapping on the cottage door jerked Cassie out of her reverie. Anger rushed through her. She yanked open the door. “I told you never to-”
Duncan Kincaid stood there, with his infuriating cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. “Expecting someone else? I’ll go away again.”
After a moment Cassie pulled the door wide and stepped back, not speaking until she had closed it behind him. “What are you doing here?” She drew the dressing gown more tightly around her body.
Kincaid gazed around the room, hands in his pockets, and Cassie suddenly remembered the clothes discarded on the floor. She bent and picked them up, threw them into the bedroom and shut the door.
“Nice.” Kincaid indicated the cottage. “Do much entertaining here?”
Cassie held herself in check, refusing to be baited. Just what in hell did he know? “Just you.” She smiled at him with a trace of her former poise. “Like a drink?”
Kincaid shook his head. “No, thanks. We’ve just had an object lesson in the evils of alcohol, don’t you think?” His smile invited her to share his amusement at the debacle of the cocktail party, but Cassie wasn’t to be drawn.
“Cassie.” He perched himself on the arm of one of the overstuffed chintz armchairs and regarded her with an open, friendly look that she found even more alarming than the smile. “If you and Graham Frazer were together the night Sebastian died, why didn’t you say so? It’d be so much easier on both of you.”
Turning away from him, she walked around the counter into the kitchen. “Coffee, then?” She filled the coffee pot, the ritual movements buying her time to think. How much did he know? What could she gain by denial?
“Look, Duncan. Don’t give me that sympathetic tone, as if my welfare were tops on your list of priorities. I’m not stupid. And just what makes you think I was with Graham that night?” She kept her voice level, bantering.
“You’ve been having an affair with him for quite some time. It seemed likely.” Kincaid rose from the chair and pulled up a stool across the counter from her, making her feel trapped in the tiny kitchen. The electric kettle sang and she poured the boiling water into the drip pot. Mugs hung on a rack next to the pot. She plunked two on the counter and stared at them, biting her lip. Pansies and roses intertwined gaily around their surfaces. They were cottage property, not her own.
“What makes you think I’ve been having an affair with Graham?” Some coffee missed the mug and splashed onto the counter as Cassie poured.
Kincaid accepted the mug. Cassie pulled her hand back quickly, hoping he hadn’t noticed its slight trembling. “What puzzles me,” he said, ignoring her question, “is why you’ve made such a point to keep it secret. You’re both single, consenting adults. And I don’t think for a minute that Angela would be shocked.”
Cassie wrapped her long fingers around the mug until it grew too hot to bear, as if pain might sharpen her wits. Honest entreaty, she decided, was the way to play it. “It’s Graham. It’s this custody thing. Right now he only has extended visitation. The hearing’s coming up soon and he’s petitioning for complete custody. He feels he won’t be considered a responsible parent. The whole thing’s stupid, really, if you ask me. He’s only doing it to spite Marjorie.” She took a sip of the hot coffee and winced as it scalded her tongue. “I’ll have to own up to your Chief Inspector Nash, of course. I didn’t realize it was going to be so important.” Kincaid sat silently, watching her across the rim of his cup as he sipped, and Cassie heard herself sounding as fatuous as she felt.
“Of course,” Cassie continued, digging herself in deeper by the minute, “I’d rather it not become general knowledge about Graham and me. To tell you the truth, it’s just about finished between us, and it wouldn’t do my professional standing much good if it were to get about. So I thought…”
“So you thought,” Kincaid finished for her when she trailed off, “you’d just conveniently not mention it. I can’t say I blame you. I’m sure it all seemed a great fuss about nothing. What did it matter where anyone was when Sebastian decided to plug himself into the swimming pool? There’s only one little problem. I think Chief Inspector Nash is very shortly going to come to the conclusion that Sebastian had a little unsolicited help getting himself killed. And then it matters very much what everyone was up to on Sunday night.”
Kincaid gave her a brief, encouraging smile, as if he had uttered nothing out of the ordinary, and he spoke as quietly and casually as he had begun. A tremor of fear ran through Cassie’s body. A moment passed before she trusted herself to speak. “I thought… I wasn’t here. We weren’t here. Graham and I.”
Kincaid’s eyes widened. “Surely not with Angela-”
“No. In the empty suite. We always met in the empty
“And you didn’t think, didn’t wonder why Sebastian’s bike was still parked outside?”
