Cassie performed her duties as professional hostess to perfection, as Hannah had known she would. The meeting she desired so fiercely would be accomplished as easily and effortlessly as any chance encounter. She must not, by some slip of the tongue or uncontrolled gesture, give herself away. Her abdominal muscles were clenched so tightly that she was hardly breathing. She forced herself to relax and inhale deeply, forced herself to say, with a smile as brittle as Cassie’s own, “Yes, I’d like that.”
CHAPTER 3
The tranquil air was thick with the smell of wood smoke and cooking. Kincaid sniffed appreciatively as he walked along the short path from the car park of the Carpenter’s Arms, and his stomach grumbled in response. Maureen Hunsinger’s discourse on the benefits of seaweed and tofu had left him with traitorous visions of steaming steak-and-kidney pie, crisp fried potatoes and apple crumble covered with cream. Cassie had recommended this as the favorite haunt of well-heeled locals, and as Kincaid pushed open the heavy door he could see why. Tarted up the place might be, but the wood fire blazing in the massive stone fireplace at the bar’s end beckoned invitingly. He bought a pint of the local ale at the bar and moved to warm his back at the fire, in no hurry now to eat.
Sunday was a slow night for custom and the lounge was quiet. Kincaid sipped his beer and looked around the room with interest. A few regulars chatted with the bartender about the next day’s racing at Catterick.
At the far end of the lounge, a woman was seated at a small table, reading glasses perched on her nose as she studied a menu. He recognized Hannah Alcock, although he hadn’t met her at the party. Cassie had managed to introduce him to most of the others, but Hannah slipped away early, and alone. She was intent now upon her menu, and thinking he’d not find a better time to remedy the omission, he made his way across the room toward her.
Hannah Alcock looked up in surprise as he stopped at her table and introduced himself. He thought he saw a brief flicker of disappointment cross her face before she smiled at him, but the impression was so fleeting he put it down to his imagination. She slipped her glasses off her nose and quickly folded them into her bag. “A small vanity,” she apologized. “The specs are a necessity of age, and I’ve not got used to them. Join me?”
“Thanks. They say near vision is the first to go, then before we know it we’ll be wearing bifocals. Cheerful thought, isn’t it?”
“God forbid.” She laughed. “In that case my vanity could become a serious inconvenience. I know who you are, from the party. Penny MacKenzie was quite taken with you.”
“The feeling was mutual. Penny’s a dear, but I don’t seem to have made much progress with her sister. She makes me feel as if I’ve forgotten my lessons, or my shirttail’s untucked.”
Hannah laughed. “I know what you mean. Is this your first visit?”
“Yes, and only by my cousin’s generosity. And you?”
“Yes. I drove up this morning. It seemed a good idea,” she paused and Kincaid had the feeling she had been about to say something else, “to try a different sort of holiday. I’ve always-”
“Excuse me, Miss. Your table’s ready.” The waitress glanced at Kincaid, uncertain. “Will this gent-”
Kincaid stood up, feeling foolishly inane. “Don’t let me keep you-”
Hannah reached up to touch his wrist. “No, no. It would be silly for us both to eat alone. Share my table. I’d like the company, really.”
“If you’re sure…” was about all the polite refusal he could muster, suddenly depressed by the thought of his solitary meal.
The steak-and-kidney pie lived up to his every expectation, its crust golden, its interior rich with wine and mushrooms. A surfeit of mushrooms, in fact, for they had begun with the house specialty, mushrooms stuffed with pâté, breaded and deep fried. Maureen Hunsinger, he thought with satisfaction, would be appalled.
Hannah had eaten her trout in parchment with delicate precision and now she aligned her knife and fork in the center of her plate, laying them side by side as neatly as dead soldiers. She contemplated Kincaid over the rim of her wine glass. “Are you married?”
“Divorced.”
“Children?”
Mouth still full, he shook his head.
“Are you on good terms, then?”
“Typical.” He shrugged and heard the echo of bitterness in his voice. It surprised him that it still bit so sharply. It had been long enough, after all, for time to have worked its healing magic. He’d been doing his Inspector’s course at Bramshill then, had accepted an invitation to an Oxford party, and been felled like a sapling under the ax. Victoria. Her name had suited her-fine-boned and blindingly fair (like sunlight on white marble, he’d told her once, in a fit of poetic excess which mortified him to remember), with candy-floss hair and a gravity of expression that intrigued him.
The sweetness lasted less than two years. How could he, trained to read expressions and body language, have been so blind? Lectures missed, dissertation not completed, unexplained absences, and her serious countenance transformed into an impenetrable barrier. When the magnitude of the change finally seeped into his overworked and exhausted consciousness, it had been too late.
“I’m sorry.” Hannah’s voice recalled him. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
Kincaid smiled, shaking off the momentary gloom. “It could be worse, I suppose. What about you?”
“I’m a spinster. A good British legal term, that. Very descriptive.”
“Not for you, legal or not. Spinster calls to mind little gray-haired grannies, and you certainly don’t fit that bill.” Kincaid studied her, wondering why such an attractive woman had never married.
As if anticipating him, Hannah said, “I love my work. And I like my independence. It seemed enough.” She pulled absent-mindedly at a ring on her right hand as she spoke. Kincaid wondered if the use of the past tense was unconscious.
“Sebastian said you’re a scientist.”
“A biogeneticist. I’m director of a privately endowed clinic that researches rare viral diseases. Our patron’s wife died of CJ and he’s devoted himself to finding a cure ever since.”
“What’s CJ?” asked Kincaid. “Or am I supposed to know?”
“Sorry. It stands for Cruetz-Jakob disease. It causes disorientation, muscle seizures, premature dementia. And it’s fatal. It’s thought to be caused by a viral particle called a prion.” At his questioning look, she elaborated. “Prions are sub-viruses, pure protein with no DNA of their own. They exploit the protein in host cells in order to replicate. Prion seems to be an infectious perversion of a normal human protein called PrP… oh dear, never mind. I’ve lost you. You’d think I’d know better by this time. I’ve seen that glazed look often enough.”
“Is it in London, your clinic?”
“Oxford. We’re a small establishment, really, and Miles lives on the top floor of the house.”
“Miles?”
“Miles Sterrett. It’s called the Julia Sterrett Clinic, after his wife. She was quite young when the disease struck, and he was devastated. His own health has never totally recovered, and just recently it seems to be deteriorating more rapidly. Little strokes, the doctor says.” Hannah sipped her wine and Kincaid followed her gaze as she studied a hunting print near the fire. The shadows moving on the elongated forms of the horses reminded him of a cave painting he had seen once.
She set down her glass and smiled at him, changing the subject. “So, what about you? Penny said you were some sort of civil servant.”
Temptation teased Kincaid and he bent before it. “Nondescript government job. Lots of paper work.” He felt a million miles from New Scotland Yard, and he was loath to prick the perfect bubble of the evening. The consequences be damned.
“Doesn’t suit you. Maybe you’re really a spy.”
Kincaid laughed. “God, no. That really would be boring, cloak-and-dagger bureaucracy.”
Hannah frowned, the skin between her brows forming tiny furrows, and adjusted the position of her cutlery by a millimeter. “That reminds me… I mean the cloak-and-dagger part. My flat was broken into about six months ago. Nothing much taken, just my watch, a cheap camera, some small jewelry. But everything was gone through. My desk, all my drawers. It was the most uncomfortable feeling. I was terribly angry, but at the same time it made my skin crawl, thinking about someone looking through my things. Even my underwear. It’s stupid, really,” she added, sounding slightly embarrassed.
“It’s not unusual,” Kincaid said. “Most people feel both angry and violated, and it takes a long time to fade.” The professional reassurance had been automatic, born from experience. He’d worked burglary in his early days and had calmed his share of the distraught, who almost always found the invasion of their privacy harder to bear than the loss of possessions. Hannah looked at him with interest, breath drawn for a question.
That’s queered it, he thought. What a master of deception. A prudent change of subject just might carry him through the evening, if he could keep his foot out of his mouth. “Our waitress looks like she’d like to sweep us out. Let’s go, shall we?”
They met in the forecourt of Followdale House, standing awkwardly between Hannah’s new Citroën and the Midget. The comparison made Kincaid feel as if he ought to apologize for his old friend. “I like it,” he said, in mock defense. “Age and beauty go hand in hand.”
Hannah laughed, and the slight clumsiness between them dissolved. “And in this case, beauty is entirely in the beholder’s eye.”
The night was unusually soft and misty for September, with an almost balmy feel to the air. Kincaid found himself reluctant for the evening to end. “A turn around the garden before we go in?”
“Yes, all right,” Hannah answered, and they walked in companionable silence. The light in the garden was diffuse and shadowless, and the white stone lions on the parapets gleamed eerily at them through the mist. Sutton Bank loomed in front of them, a dark hump against the sky. They stopped at the path’s end and looked back toward the house. Yellow light spilled from the first-floor windows, and a light flickered in the empty ground-floor suite, so briefly that Kincaid thought it must have been a trick of his eyes.
“We’re next to each other, did you know? We’ll have to have a competition for the best view. Cassie assured me mine’s the best in the house.”
“She told me the same thing,” said Hannah. “You’ll have to recite to me from your balcony, poetry at midnight.” She laughed, then stretched her arms above her head and twirled around on the path in an odd gesture of abandon. “It’s been a marvelous evening. I had doubts about this holiday. I thought it might have been… ill conceived. Oh, I can’t explain-it’s too complicated. But suddenly I feel as though everything will be all right. You must be a positive influence.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment,” he said with a good-natured grin, but he wondered what, or whom, lay behind her burst of exhilaration, as he didn’t think the credit was entirely his.