“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 when he’d had a proper meal, and since he hadn’t a generic wife to prepare it, he imagined he’d have to fend for himself. He grinned in the darkness. Eddie Lyle didn’t know his own luck.
CHAPTER 18
She couldn’t be gone.
Kincaid tried the door to Hannah’s suite, the knob slipping in his suddenly sweaty palm. Locked. He stepped back and looked out the landing window at the car park. The phone-box red paintwork on his Midget gleamed cheerily back at him, but the space beside it where Hannah’s green Citroën had stood was empty.
His stomach knotted as he told himself not to be an ass. No need to panic-she’d probably just gone down to the shops for some coffee or a newspaper. But no reasonable, rational explanation eased the dread that squeezed his chest.
He’d spent half the morning pacing the confines of his sitting room, waiting for word from Gemma, assuming Hannah was tucked up safely and obediently in her suite.
He should have known better. Hannah Alcock had lived by her own rules too long to do anyone else’s bidding. Kincaid stared down at the car park, wondering what had sent her out this morning.
The door from the opposite wing swished open. Kincaid turned to see Angela Frazer slide through it and stop, watching him. Cassie had been right. All vestiges of a normal fifteen-year-old had disappeared, camouflaged by punk-vampire. Her face and lips were artfully chalky, her eyes dark-ringed as Cleopatra’s, her hair mace-spiked.
As a defense mechanism he supposed it worked fairly well-she certainly looked unapproachable. What, Kincaid wondered, had driven Angela Frazer back undercover? He pushed his worry about Hannah aside for a moment and concentrated on Angela. The girl’s stare made him feel like a fly under a microscope. Hitching his hip on the window sill and folding his arms, he fumbled for the thread of their earlier rapport. “Where’ve you been hiding yourself?”
No answer. That didn’t surprise him. His opening sortie had sounded patronizingly cheerful even to his own ears. He tried a more combative tack. “What’d I do to deserve the silent treatment?”
The dark eyes disengaged as Angela ducked her head and moved around the wall toward him, running her finger along the molding top as if checking for dust. She halted just out of reach and her eyes flicked up at him again. “Nothing.”
“Nothing? Come on, Angela, what’s eating you? Nobody sees you for a couple of days and then you reappear looking like the Bride of Frankenstein. What’s happened?”
Angela’s eyes strayed toward her studded, black denim jacket and leather mini. Beneath the black skirt’s hem her knees looked absurdly pale and chubby-a child’s knees, even to the dimples.
Hug her or turn her over his knee and spank her-either option probably effective, neither available to him. Kincaid waited.
“You called me Angie before.”
“So I did. I thought we were friends.”
Her head jerked up at that and she said fiercely, “You didn’t do anything. You promised you would. Now no one cares what happened to Sebastian. I don’t mean,” she added, suddenly tangled in her middle-class upbringing, “that I don’t care about poor Miss MacKenzie and Miss Alcock. But Sebastian was…”
“I know. It’s right that you should feel that way.” Sebastian, whatever his faults, had deserved Angela’s loyalty. Kincaid reached out, taking advantage of the thaw, and gripped her shoulder. “I’ve been trying, Angie. I’m still trying.”
Angela’s face crumpled and suddenly she was sobbing against his chest, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist. Kincaid made soothing noises and stroked the back of her head, where her untreated hair felt as soft as duck’s down. He wished he could soak up her grief like a sponge.