Mourn Not Your Dead (34 page)

Claire put her face in her hands and sobbed.

Lucy went to her mother and put her arms around her, but she looked at Kincaid as she spoke. “I tried not to think about it, to pretend it hadn’t happened. But that’s what I’d done for years. I knew about Alastair, and Mummy knew I knew, but we didn’t talk about it. Maybe none of this would have happened if we had.”

“Sir.” Gemma’s whisper was urgently formal. “I’d like a word with you.” She nodded towards the door, and they left mother and daughter together as they rose and went into the hall.

“How can we let her do this?” she hissed at him when they’d closed the sitting room door behind them. “Gilbert was a beast. She only did what anyone might have done in the circumstances, but this will ruin her life. She’s paying for Claire’s mistakes.”

Kincaid took her by the shoulders. He loved her then, for her prickly defense of the underdog, for her generous spirit, for her readiness to question the status quo, but he couldn’t tell her.

Instead, he said, “I thought the same thing, when I realized what had happened. But Lucy’s right, and she’s taken it out of our hands. We have to let her make her reparation. It’s the only way she’ll be able to live with herself.”

He let her go and leaned against the wall, tiredly. “And we can’t compromise ourselves, not even for Lucy. We swore to uphold the law, not to pass sentence, and we dare not cross that line, no matter how good our intentions. I don’t want Lucy to suffer any more than you do, but we have no choice. We must charge her.”

Leaving Gemma with Claire, Kincaid had taken Lucy into the station himself Having changed into jeans and sweater and said a brief good-bye to Lewis, she sat quietly resolute beside him.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said as they came into the outskirts of Guildford, “that maybe now I can finish the game.” She’d looked at him and seemed to hesitate. “You know,” she said slowly, “if you’d been more like
him
, it would have been much easier to go on pretending, not facing up to things. But you remind me a bit of my dad.” And having given him the highest compliment in her vocabulary, she administered the coup de grace. “Will you come and visit me, wherever I am?”

Now, having taken on, not unwillingly, an obligation of honor to Lucy, he had given her into the capable hands of Nick Deveney and her family solicitor. He doubted a jury would do more than slap her wrist—abused women had been known to get probation for shooting their sleeping husbands—or the Crown Prosecution Service might throw it out altogether. Her toughest battle would be with herself, but she would have the support of those who cared for her, he felt sure.

As he drove the winding road to Holmbury St. Mary to pick up Gemma, he couldn’t shake the aching, persistent sadness lodged under his breastbone. It was all mixed up together—his regret for Lucy, for Claire, even for David Ogilvie.

And Gemma. The thought of working with her every day, of being so close and yet not close enough, was like rubbing salt in a wound. But the alternative, not seeing her at all … He thought of David Ogilvie’s admonition against bitterness, and knew that for a path he would not allow himself to follow.

A recklessness possessed him as he thought of the way he’d lived for so long, isolated behind walls of his own making. He wouldn’t give up on Gemma, nor would he go back to what he had been before he took her into his bed.

As he reached the green, he had a sudden desire to see Madeleine Wade one last time. He passed the Gilberts’ lane and drove through the village, turning into the street that led up the hill to Madeleine’s shop, and past that, the Hurtwood.

He saw from the window that Madeleine presided over the shop counter herself, and he felt a pang of disappointment that he would not see her flat again. She looked up as the bell jangled, said, “I’m so sorry.”

“The news has traveled already, I take it?”

“Like the proverbial wildfire.”

“I came to say good-bye.”

She came around the counter and held out her hand to him. “I wouldn’t worry too much about Lucy. She’s strong, and she’ll manage to be what she wants to be.”

“I know.” Her fingers felt warm in his grasp. “You could give her a lesson or two.”

Madeleine smiled. “I might just do that.”

He drove with such precision, thought Gemma, watching his absorbed face in the flickering light of the street lamps. It seemed to her that they were always coming and going together in cars, while their lives remained stuck in a sort of limbo between journeys.

She’d spent the quiet hours of the afternoon with Claire, sitting at the kitchen table drinking endless cups of weak tea, talking mostly of inconsequential things. Once, though,
Claire had looked up from the dregs in her cup and said, “I’ll be charged, too, won’t I, as an accessory after the fact?”

Gemma nodded. “I’m afraid so. They’ll be sending someone for you from Guildford Station.”

“I’m glad, really,” Claire had said. “It’s a relief to have it over. Now the truth is out, we can get on with learning to be ourselves.”

Gemma thought of Will, to whom the truth seemed to come so easily, and of the chaste good-bye she’d bid the disappointed Nick Deveney. She looked at Kincaid again and wondered if she had the courage to face her own truth.

“Come in for a bit,” she said when he had pulled the car up in front of the flat and killed the engine. Through the screen of leaves in the dark garden she could see a light shining in the nursery window of the big house. Toby was still awake, then, but she was content to postpone seeing him.

“It’s been a rough day, Gemma, and I know you’re tired,” Kincaid answered, sounding exhausted himself. “Some other—”

“Please. I’d like you to.” She rummaged in her handbag for the heavy key, and when she got out of the car he followed her obediently.

Once inside, she dumped her bag and coat on the chest by the door and bustled around the flat, closing blinds and lighting lamps. “There, that’s better,” she said as she glanced around with satisfaction. Hazel must have been in the flat, for it looked swept and brushed, and a vase of deep yellow roses stood on the low table. Hadn’t she read somewhere that yellow was the color of mourning?

“I’ll get us some wine.” She uncorked a nice bottle of Burgundy she’d been saving, then stood on her tiptoes as she retrieved her best glasses from the kitchen cupboard’s top shelf

Kincaid, having positioned himself against the long window counter, safely avoiding her whirlwind of activity, watched without saying a word. Accepting his glass, he said, “Gemma—”

“I wanted to talk to you.” Her words came out in a rush. “But I don’t know how to begin. What’s happened the last few days … has made me think about a lot of things.” Unable to meet his level gaze, she turned away, reached out, and touched the yellow petal of an opening rosebud. “I want you to understand that my job is very important to me and that I have other obligations, commitments. There’s Toby, and I’ve promised to see Will whenever I can—”

“Gemma, stop it. You don’t have to apologize to me or make excuses for what you feel or don’t feel. You have every—”

“No. Let me finish.” She turned back to him, brushing the hair back from her face impatiently. “You don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you. I saw everything as black or white. You or the job. I was afraid that I would let what I felt for you consume me. I was afraid of losing myself, losing everything I’ve worked to become.

“Except …” She paused, staring at her dark and wavering reflection in the smooth surface of her wine. “I saw Claire Gilbert find her strength, begin taking back her life, even after all she’s been through. I realized that we always have a choice, and that
I
can choose not to let go what I’ve made of myself.”

Gemma looked up him, swallowed, took a breath. She could hear the pulse in her ears. “I’m not doing this very well. What I’m trying to say is that I think I have to take that risk. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking in other people’s windows, wondering what it would be like to be loved.

“What happened to Will … and Jackie … it could have been you. The chance we have is so fragile … I don’t want to pass it up.”

She had run out of words and could only wait now for his answer. Seconds passed as he looked at her without speaking, his face expressionless. Panic made her blood run cold. Had she left it too late?

Then he smiled, the familiar mischievous grin, and lifted a questioning eyebrow. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained?”

Gemma nodded, unable to speak.

Raising his glass to her, he said softly, “Cheers, my love.” He drank, then set his wine carefully on the half-moon table. “How long before we have to collect Toby?”

An Agatha and Macavity nominee, Deborah Crombie received international acclaim for her first three mysteries,
A Share in Death, All Shall Be Well
, and
Leave the Grave Green
, which are being published in Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan. She grew up in Dallas, Texas, and later lived in Edinburgh and in Chester, England. She travels to Great Britain to research her books and recently lectured at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. She now lives in a small North Texas town with her husband, daughter, cockerspaniel, and four cats, and is at work on the fifth book in the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series.