She opened her eyes and looked at Kincaid, the late afternoon light shifting her irises from hazel to green, a green almost as clear as Patrick Rennie’s. “Obsession… a selfish preoccupation,” she said dreamily, then continued more forcefully. “What right had I to find Patrick and spy on him, passing judgement on his qualifications as a son? I could have gone to his office and told him the truth straight off, given him a chance to start on equal footing. Instead…” A desolate little shrug summarized the outcome.
“It seems to me,” Kincaid said gently, “that you’ve castigated yourself pretty thoroughly for mistakes anyone could have made. We don’t any of us have all the answers before-hand. Why is it too late for you and Patrick? Why can’t you tell him what you told me? What have you to lose?”
“I… He doesn’t want-”
“How do you know what Patrick wants or doesn’t want? He didn’t give me the impression just now of a man determined to sever all connection.” Unless, of course, thought Kincaid, Patrick Rennie had seen an advantage in adopting a new role, that of the contrite son lovingly reunited with his mother.
“It’s odd.” Hannah interrupted his unpleasant speculation. “After everything that’s happened today I feel terribly detached. It’s like seeing things through the wrong end of a telescope. Clear and distant. I doubt it will last. I do see, though, that I can’t go chasing after Patrick expecting him to plug the gaps in my life.”
Hannah’s voice had grown drowsier. Kincaid cleared up the tea things and came back to her, finding that he could not let her rest quite yet. The unasked question hung on him like a weight. “Hannah, could it have been Patrick who pushed you down the stairs?”
She did not bridle, as she had before at any suggestion of Patrick’s guilt, but answered him with sleepy thought-fulness. “Of course I’ve wondered. I’d be an idiot not to, I suppose-but I don’t think so.” She paused, searching for the right words. “There was such… malice in that shove. I felt it.” Her brow furrowed in concentration. “Today I saw a bit of the real Patrick, not my idealized version of him. There is some anger running under the surface, some bitterness, but also the ability to laugh at himself, to put his feelings in perspective. I just can’t see him hating that viciously.” She began to shiver again. “Why would anyone hate me that much?”
“What did he-”
A knock at the door interrupted his question, but Hannah put a hand out to stop him as he rose. “I won’t tell you what he told me about Cassie and Penny. You’ll have to ask him yourself. You do understand?” Kincaid hesitated, then nodded. There was no use bullying her-he’d begun to gauge her stubbornness. And besides, he did understand.
Anne Percy stood patiently at the door, doctor’s bag in hand. Kincaid’s heart gave an inexplicable leap and he cursed himself for a fool.
Kincaid met Chief Inspector Nash on the stairs. “I’m just on my way to take your Miss Alcock’s statement.” Nash spoke without preamble, in that sneering tone that made Kincaid bite back a childish retort.
“Dr. Percy’s with her now. She doesn’t seem too badly hurt.”
“Is that so?” said Nash, dripping sarcasm. “Well, well. Now, isn’t that surprising?”
“Just what are you insinuating?” Kincaid struggled to control the exasperation in his voice.
“Well now, laddie, has it not occurred to you that a “fall is a very convenient thing? All alone, no witnesses, a little tumble down the stairs?”
“I found her myself. She was unconscious!”
“Very convenient, as I said, to be discovered by a sympathetic policeman.” Nash clucked and said with great condescension, “And laddie, anyone can fake a faint.” Nash fluttered his eyelids and moaned.
Kincaid closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Have you any idea, Chief Inspector, why Miss Alcock would risk breaking her neck?”
“It seems to me that if you’re bumping off people right and left it doesn’t hurt to appear to be a victim yourself. It’s an old ploy.”
“What possible motive could she have for killing Sebastian or Penny?”
“What possible motive could any of them have? You tell me, laddie. You’re the one’s so chummy with her.” Nash smiled at him impishly, and Kincaid felt the exchange slipping into utter farce.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you, Inspector. You’ll have to ask her yourself.”
Kincaid plunged out the front door and shook his head as if the cold air would clear it. Even a small dose of Chief Inspector Nash made him feel like he’d wandered into a pea-soup fog. He had some questions to ask Patrick Rennie and he wasn’t inclined to invite Nash along and allow him to make hash of the interview.
He paced around the darkening garden, wishing he had Gemma or Peter Raskin to use as a sounding board. The first floor of Followdale House was broken into sections by fire doors-one divided the area containing his suite and the balcony door from the area containing Hannah’s suite and the main staircase. That area in turn was separated from the suites on the other side of the house by another door. As he had come through the door between his suite and the staircase he could have sworn he heard the far door closing.
He hadn’t thought anything about it at the time, not until Patrick Rennie had come in the front door, flushed and breathing hard, minutes after he’d found Hannah. Kincaid had no way of knowing how long Hannah had lain there, but it might have been only minutes. Rennie could have run down the back staircase and around the building to the front, anxious to judge the results of his attempt on Hannah’s life.
Kincaid returned to the house, hesitating for a moment in the front hall. Where was Peter Raskin? Had anyone tracked down the other guests and taken their statements?
He stood quite still, listening for some sound, some intimation of life or movement in the house. It amazed him that a house this size, with nearly a dozen people in it, could seem so utterly deserted. The noisy cocktail hour chatter of the first evening seemed almost unimaginable now-the guests had certainly lost their taste for one another’s company.
He walked through the darkened reception area toward the sitting room, where a dim lamp cast a solitary pool of light. A slight sound from the bar drew Kincaid to the door.
Patrick Rennie sat alone at a table, morosely sliding a glass in its condensate puddle. “Just the man I wanted to see,” Kincaid said, and Rennie’s head shot up.
“How is she?”
“Dr. Percy’s with her. I don’t think she’s badly hurt.” Kincaid retrieved a beer from under the counter and sat down opposite Rennie. “Where is everyone?”
“Holed up in their rooms expecting fallout, I imagine. Chief Inspector Nash sent that constable around to take statements. I don’t know if he’s rounded everyone up yet. Listen,” Rennie changed tack, not to be distracted from what was on his mind, “I behaved abominably toward Hannah today. And now this.” Rennie waved his hand vaguely toward the stairs, then met Kincaid’s eyes. “Did she tell you about me?”
“Yes.”
“And did she tell you what an ass I made of myself this morning?”
“She said you resented her barging into your life,” Kincaid answered drily.
Rennie rubbed long fingers across his forehead. “What she must have put herself through… and then I stomped all over her with all the sensitivity of an elephant.” His eyebrows lifted in the self-mocking little smile Hannah must have seen. “It was the shock, I think. All those years of wondering who she was, what she was like, why she let me go-it all came back to me. Is it too late, do you think, to start again?”
Kincaid didn’t relish the role of Miss Lonelyhearts under the best of circumstances, and particularly not when one party might have tried to hasten the other’s demise. “I couldn’t say.” He sipped his beer, then added easily, “A great deal would depend on where were you today just before you came in.”