“I’m sure your husband appreciates what you do for him.”
“Like hell.” Marta lit another cigarette. “Though I dare say,” she continued through a cloud of smoke, “he does appreciate Mummy and Daddy pouring money into his campaign fund.”
Kincaid decided subtlety would be wasted on Marta in her present condition. “I hear,” he leaned toward her and lowered his voice conspiratorially, “that Inspector Nash isn’t happy with the suicide verdict on Sebastian. It’s a good thing you and Patrick were together that night. Now there’s a thing that could really cause him image problems with those conservative constituents.”
Marta focused on him, puzzled. “What could?”
“A murder investigation.” Kincaid dropped it gently, like a pebble in a pool.
Marta gave him a sly, sideways look. “I was asleep, wasn’t I? Very convenient. He was, too. Asleep, I mean. Aspiring politicians,” she stumbled a bit over the syllables, “shouldn’t run around at night when the wife’s asleep. Very stupid. Patrick,” she enunciated his name very clearly, “is never stupid.” Marta drained her glass and set it down with a thump. “Buy me a drink?”
“Sure. What are you having?”
“G and T. No T.”
Kincaid refilled her drink and took it back to the table. Angry as she might be, Marta Rennie was sly with a drunk’s cleverness. She hadn’t lost sight of the side on which her political bread was buttered.
Kincaid wandered back into the sitting room, half-drunk beer in hand, in search of more sober prospects. Enjoyment, it seemed, was contagious. The guests had gathered around Hannah and Patrick as if hoping some of the spontaneous pleasure would rub off. Eddie and Janet Lyle, Maureen Hunsinger and Graham Frazer. And Penny. Penny sipped her sweet sherry, her face flushed with excitement. Only Emma, John Hunsinger, and the children were missing.
Kincaid joined the fringe of the group. Hannah smiled at him and he returned her smile, infected by her apparent delight in spite of himself.
“What’s the joke?” Kincaid asked Hannah. “Have I missed something?”
“Patrick’s just been telling the most amusing story about one of his constituents-”
Rennie demurred. “Oh, it’s nothing really. My most loyal campaigner, but she can’t remember my name. She’s an old dear, active on every committee in the county, raises oodles of money. I wouldn’t dare suggest she let someone else introduce me. But I’ve got a very important by-election coming up, and I imagine she’ll stand up to introduce me at the final rally, open her mouth and stop, utterly without a clue.”
Rennie told his anecdote with charm and practiced ease, and Kincaid could imagine the ladies ‘of a certain age’ cooing over him, and fighting for his attention with the ferocity of ferrets.
“I forget things, too, sometimes,” said Penny, into the pause that followed. “Just the other night I couldn’t find my bag. I looked everywhere for it, and then I came downstairs and I’d left it right here on the table!”
“Those things happen to me all the time, too,” Maureen put in good-naturedly. “Sometimes I think I’d forget my children if they didn’t remind me.”
“Eddie’s mother forgot things.” Janet Lyle spoke quietly, with a diffident glance at her husband. “We were desperately concerned about her. We didn’t think it safe for her to live alone, but she wouldn’t agree to go in a home.”
“Very proud. Very independent to the last,” Eddie agreed.
Maureen responded with ready sympathy. “Oh, dear. What happened?”
“An accident. In the car.” Eddie shook his head. “We’d spoken to her over and over again about her driving. She wouldn’t listen. Our Chloe was heartbroken.” Kincaid fancied he heard a touch of satisfaction in Lyle’s voice, an ‘I told you so’ not quite conquered.
Patrick spoke into the chorus of concerned tut-tuts. “It’s very difficult, caring for an aging parent. I hear it from my constituents all the time.”
Now, thought Kincaid, are we going to hear the stock conservative solution, or is he genuinely concerned? His eyes swept the circle of faces, expecting expressions of kindly interest.
The response seemed quite out of proportion. Penny MacKenzie’s eyes had filled and tears hung quivering on her lower lashes. “Excuse me.” The whisper was almost inaudible. She thrust her sherry glass into Maureen’s hand and fled the room.
“What on earth?” Patrick spoke into the silence that followed the banging of the reception room door. “Did I put my foot in it, somehow?”
“I don’t know,” Maureen answered. “I believe Penny and Emma cared for their ailing father for a long time. Maybe the reminder upset her.”
“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.