us imagined it-we’ve both been pretty unrealistic-but just as… friends?”
Hannah closed her eyes, stilling her face against a sudden swell of longing. “I never thought I could replace your mother. Or be one, really. I only wanted some sense of belonging… of connection.”
Patrick reached out and touched her shoulder a little awkwardly, as if unsure what gesture to make. “I’d better let you get some rest.” He rose. “Hannah, you will be careful, won’t you? I’d hate to lose you,” his voice held a trace of irony, “now I’ve found you.”
Kincaid discovered, as had Patrick Rennie before him, that Cassie’s door stood slightly ajar. He tapped lightly. Hearing no answer, he slowly pushed open the door.
The only light in the cottage’s sitting room came from a dim bulb in the hall behind it, so that it took him a minute to orient himself. Cassie’s voice came from the direction of the armchair next to the fire, sullen and succinct. “Bugger off.”
Kincaid fumbled for the switch on the table lamp, and blinked in the sudden bloom of yellow light. Cassie sat huddled in the chair, looking pale and disheveled, wrapped in a quilted dressing gown. Only her bare legs, stretched out before her, retained their elegance.
“You should learn to lock your door,” said Kincaid, drawing his eyes, rather unwillingly, from her legs to her face.
“Not much point now, is there?”
Kincaid perched on the arm of the opposite chair, as he had before. “Looks like you’ve made a proper mess of things, doesn’t it?” he said lightly.
Anger sparked in her flat, gold eyes. “Me? Jesus.” She turned her face away and he saw the red weal along her cheekbone. “The bastard hit me.”
“Who, Graham?”
“Of course, Graham! Patrick acted like offended bloody royalty and stalked out in a huff, but not until he’d made our situation quite clear to Graham. Who gave you the sordid details, anyway?” Cassie stared at him accusingly.
“Patrick.”
“Oh, god.” Tears filled her eyes and ran down the sides of her nose. She made no move to brush them away. “Everything’s finished.”
“No more Downing Street?”
“You-” Cassie began, then subsided, too despondent even to swear at him.
“Surely it was bound to happen,” Kincaid said more kindly. “You were playing a risky game.”
Cassie sat up a bit in her chair and tucked her legs beneath her, then wiped the backs of her hands across her cheeks. “I had no idea Graham would be so hard to put off.” She sniffed. “It started as such a casual thing, before I ever met Patrick. But the more I tried to cool things off with Graham, the more persistent he got. Then I began to be afraid to break it off-afraid of what he’d do.”
“Did he threaten you?”
Cassie shrugged. “Not in so many words. But he’d make these little comments-what if someone told the management I’d been sleeping with the owners? Would I lose my job? That sort of thing. I couldn’t bear that, you see. For a while I was able to juggle them. Then Graham traded weeks-he didn’t have to wait until term break because Angela wasn’t in school, and he wanted to see me.”
“I suppose,” interrupted Kincaid, “that he was lucky to own a week during school holidays?”
“Lucky?” Cassie looked baffled. “He could have had pretty much anything he wanted. And he could have traded for just about any time, as well. There are always people willing to switch around. Why,” she raised her eyes beseechingly, “did he have to choose this week?” The question seemed to be rhetorical.
It occurred to him that he liked her better this way, without that almost American sheen of perfect grooming, her oak-leaf hair rumpled, her slightly supercilious manner in abeyance. He supposed she lost that hard edge in bed as well, and it was that contrast that made her so appealing to Patrick and to Graham Frazer. Shoving his speculations aside, he asked, “So what happened today?”
Cassie swallowed and pushed her hair behind her ear.
“Graham was furious. I’ve never seen him quite like that. He seemed to feel I’d made a fool of him-used him, he said.” She raised her eyes to Kincaid’s. “I wasn’t exactly a willing participant today. But Patrick couldn’t have known that.”
“No. And then, after Patrick left?”
Cassie touched a finger to her cheek. “I was lucky to get off so easily. But it’s finally over, I think.”
“What time did all this happen this afternoon?”
“How the hell should I know?” Cassie flared at him. “My whole life is crumbling around me and you expect me to notice what time it is?”
“It could be very important, you know, just what the three of you were doing when someone decided to push Hannah down the stairs. Didn’t anyone ask you?”
“That constable came around-the one who looks like a prize cow.” Animosity sharpened her voice, and Kincaid remembered what a difficult time P.C. Trumble had with her the morning of Sebastian’s death. “I told him I didn’t remember.”
Kincaid tried another tack. “Think back. What were you doing before Graham came?”
Cassie chewed her thumbnail meditatively. “I’d been working. The house was quiet as a tomb and I started to feel a little… uneasy. Then Angela came snooping around-”
“What did she want?” asked Kincaid, his curiosity piqued. He couldn’t imagine Angela voluntarily visiting Cassie.
“I didn’t say she spoke,” snapped Cassie. “She just wandered around, fingering my things. That girl gives me the creeps, anyway, and she’d done herself up in full vampire regalia today. When I asked her what she wanted, she said ‘nothing’ and went out. Well, I’d had enough, after that. I came across to make myself a cup of coffee.” She paused, concentrating. “It must have been after three-I’d been expecting a call by three and when it didn’t come I switched on the answering machine.”
“And Graham?” Kincaid waited, his attention sharpening. Gemma had called him about a quarter past three. He’d finished his conversation, gone downstairs, discovered Hannah, and had only thought to look at his watch after Patrick had come storming in the front door. It had been twenty minutes to four.
“Don’t know. I’d made my coffee, gone to the loo.”
“And how long had Graham been there when Patrick came?”
“Long enough,” said Cassie with some asperity, “to start a slanging match and tear half my clothes off.”
“And you wouldn’t happen to know,” Kincaid asked hopefully, “exactly what time Patrick left here?”
Cassie pulled herself up in the chair and glared at him. “Don’t be bloody stupid.”
As Kincaid left Cassie’s cottage he saw Eddie Lyle scurrying across the car park toward the front door. “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date,” Kincaid said under his breath, and grinned. “Lyle!”
Eddie Lyle turned and waited until Kincaid caught up, his spectacles glinting in the light from the porch. “Did someone take a statement from you this afternoon?” Kincaid asked conversationally as they came abreast.
“Yes, yes, of course,” answered Lyle, in his fussily aggrieved way. “I’d just come back from my walk when I heard all the commotion about poor Miss Alcock falling down the stairs.” He shook his head, and Kincaid couldn’t be sure whether he was deploring Hannah’s accident or the disturbance of his afternoon.
“You’d been walking?” Kincaid rubbed the toe of his trainer across the gravel.
“Oh, yes. Lovely day up on the bank.” Lyle waggled his hand in the direction of Sutton Bank. “Janet was having her rest after lunch, and I wanted to give her a bit of peace and quiet. She hasn’t been feeling well, you know,” he added confidentially. “Since Mother died, she’s had these little tired spells. And now, with all these terrible things happening, she’s quite exhausted.”
“I’m sure.” Kincaid nodded sympathetically, sure only that living with Edward would be exhausting enough for anyone.
“But I told Janet that we would stay until our time ran out on Saturday.” Lyle jabbed his finger in the air for emphasis. “Not that Chief Inspector Nash would mind us going, of course, but I do like to get my money’s worth. And speaking of going,” he squinted at his watch, “the wife’ll have my supper ready and I’d not like it to get cold.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand toward Kincaid and trotted up the steps.
Kincaid’s stomach growled as if the word ‘supper’ had activated internal alarm bells. He couldn’t remember
