“You!” Furiously, Maureen Wills turned on her husband. “Why don’t you admit all the hours you’ve spent driving round, looking for her? Or all the nights you’ve sat up in the kitchen until dawn? I’ve seen you—you can’t deny it!”
Gary Wills gaped at her.
Maureen looked back at them, her face tear streaked but resolute. “I’d do anything to have Faith back. I don’t care who the baby’s father is, as long as our Faith is safe and well. You will tell us, won’t you, where she is?”
“Mrs. Wills,” Kincaid said gently, “Faith didn’t give us permission to do that. She—”
“But the child must be due any day! You say the woman who was looking after her is dead—someone’s got to take care of her. Please—”
Gary Wills broke in again. “I suppose Maureen’s right. Faith needs to come home. Let bygones be bygones.”
“We’ll talk to Faith,” Gemma promised. “If she knows that you’ll accept her without question, perhaps she’ll agree.”
“You’ll let us know about the baby, at least?” pleaded Maureen, and Kincaid assured them he would.
At the door, Gemma turned back to the couple. “I know it must be hard to let your child go—they always seem to grow up before you’re ready—but Faith has proved she has courage and determination. You should be very proud of her.”
When they reached the car, Gemma said, “Do you think her father’s capitulation will last if she comes home?”
Kincaid shrugged. “Human nature being what it is, I rather doubt it. But I also doubt he’d have insisted on knowing the baby’s parentage if he were responsible. I just hope I make a better job of it in the father department.”
Gemma glanced at him and said not a word.
“Have we time for another stop before your train?” Kincaid asked as they returned to Glastonbury. “I’d like to see the scene of Winnie’s accident.”
Gemma glanced at her watch. “We should be all right. Let’s leave the car at the café, shall we? I’d like to take the same route Winnie must have used that evening.”
They walked up Wellhouse Lane, its incline steep and slick, not suitable for any but the most expensive of mountain bikes, and Jack had told them that Winnie’s was an old clunker. “Faith said Winnie was pushing her bike—I can see why,” Kincaid grunted as they reach the turning into Lypatt Lane.
The smaller track was claustrophobic even at midday—how much more so had it seemed at dusk? But Winnie could have squeezed the bike against the hedge if she’d heard a car approaching. Soon they reached the jog where the lane connected with the footpath.
“If someone struck Winnie deliberately, they waited here,” Gemma mused. “But how could anyone have known she would be in this place at that time—unless she had had an appointment!”
“But that brings us back to square one,” Kincaid objected. “If Winnie agreed to meet someone here, she has no memory of it. And unfortunately, an assignation in a dark lane isn’t something she’s likely to have put in her appointment book—”
“Hullo!” A woman had appeared in the lane and was gazing at them curiously. “I’m sorry, but you looked a bit lost,” she added. A slight woman with untidy brown hair and brown eyes, she frowned as she studied Kincaid. “You remind me a bit of someone I know.”
“Jack Montfort, by any chance? I’m his cousin, Duncan Kincaid. And this is Gemma James.”
“Fiona Allen.” Her smile faded as she realized just what they must have been doing. “You’re looking at the scene of Winnie’s accident, aren’t you?”
“You found her, I understand? And you live just up the lane?”
“The far end. Why don’t you two come along for a coffee?”
As they followed her, Kincaid looked down into Bushy Coombe. “I remember this from when I was boy. Jack and I used to climb in the Coombe, pretending to be monks—or cowboys.”
“An interesting juxtaposition,” Fiona commented with a chuckle.
“Both unwashed, and familiar with livestock?” Gemma murmured.
He gave her a quelling glance. “We made believe we were fetching water from the spring, although I suppose the logical route from the Abbey would have been by Chilkwell Street.”
“Jack must have been interested in the Abbey as a child, then,” Fiona said as they reached an unremarkable stone house with a superbly tended garden. The interior of the house was clean and spare, and Kincaid imagined it must make a restful contrast to the garden’s summer profusion. A small fire glowed in the sitting-room grate.
“I love this time of year,” Fiona explained. “Any excuse for a fire.”
She seated them on the sofa and returned shortly with mugs of coffee on a tray. “How is Winnie today, have you heard?”
Gemma accepted a cup. “Jack went to fetch her home this morning—”
“She’s not going back to the Vicarage, alone?”
“No, she’s agreed to stay with Jack for a few days. You sound as if you’re worried about her.”
“I am, a bit,” Fiona admitted. “Although I’m not sure I can tell you why.”
“Something you saw or heard that night, perhaps?” Kincaid asked.
Fiona frowned. “No, nothing that concrete. But I do know Winnie feels more uneasy about her brother than she may admit.”
“Do you know of any connection between Andrew Catesby and Garnet Todd?”
“No. It’s odd, though … that two people so dedicated to preserving the past should be at such opposite ends of the pole. I don’t think they could have liked one another.”
“Gemma found Catesby poking about Todd’s house the day after she died.”
“Winnie mentioned that. It wouldn’t have been difficult for Andrew to have learned of the connection between Garnet and Winnie, although Winnie didn’t share much with him about her involvement with Jack’s …”
“Experiment?” Kincaid supplied helpfully. “But even if that were the case, what could Andrew have thought he’d find at Ms. Todd’s? It might help us if Winnie could remember what she did the day of her accident, or why she was coming to see you.”
“Oh!” Fiona brightened. “When I visited Winnie yesterday, she remembered that she went to the Abbey that morning. But that’s as far as we got, I’m afraid.”
“Jack said you painted the Abbey, the night Winnie was struck,” said Gemma. “Was that unusual? I’d think you’d use Glastonbury scenes as a matter of course.”
“But I don’t choose the things I paint. I suppose I could say they choose me. I just see them, and paint them, and that was the first time I’ve ever painted the Abbey.”
“We saw one of your works in town, last night, beautifully displayed. Allen Galleries—is that your husband’s gallery?”
Nodding, Fiona explained, “Bram’s there today, hanging some new pieces. It’s difficult to change the displays when the gallery’s open.”
“What are they—the creatures you paint?”
“I really don’t know. It’s like the settings—I just paint them. I suppose it’s quite similar to what happens to Jack, with his messages from Edmund.”
“Might we see what you painted the night of Winnie’s accident?” asked Kincaid.
“Of course.”
They followed her down a corridor and into her glasswalled studio. She lifted a canvas from a stack against the wall and set it on an easel. In this painting, the creatures thronged round a human child cupped in a luminous bowl, within the great arch of the Abbey’s ruined transepts. Unlike the work they’d seen in the gallery window, here the child seemed to be the focus of the creatures’ attention, perhaps even their compassion.
“Edmund and Alys’s child?” Kincaid murmured.