Of course, they couldn’t overlook the possibility that Annabelle had been killed by a stranger, perhaps an attempted rape gone wrong; she might simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But his instincts told him that there was more to it than that. He guessed Annabelle Hammond had been the sort of woman who aroused strong emotions, and that it was this quality in her that had led to her death.
The drive from Limehouse to Hampstead took him half as long as during the day, and when he reached Carlingford Road he found a parking space near his flat, a miraculous feat at this time of night. The windows of the Major’s basement rooms were dark, so he entered the building and climbed the stairs to his own flat.
Carefully, he slid his key into the lock and eased open the door. His sitting room was in semidarkness, lit only by the small lamp on the kitchen island and the soundless, flickering images on the telly. Kit lay on the sofa in jeans and tee shirt, sound asleep, one arm outstretched, Sid curled up on his chest. The cat opened green eyes and blinked at Kincaid; the boy didn’t stir.
As Kincaid stood watching, he had the same odd sensation in his chest that he’d experienced the last time he’d seen Kit sleeping—the day he’d found the boy hiding in the Grantchester cottage after his mother’s death.
Turning away, he discovered on the kitchen island a covered plate of sandwiches, a glass of milk, and a note in Kit’s small, neat hand.Dear Duncan,We saved you some sandwiches from the picnic. But we (meaning me!!) polished off the cake. The Major wants to take me to Kew Gardens tomorrow, that is if you have to work.PS I fed Sid. He really likes ham sandwiches.PSS The tennis was brilliant! But I wished you were there.
This missive was signed with a large calligraphic K and embellished with birdlike squiggles.
Kincaid found a light blanket in the linen cupboard and covered Kit as far as the cat. Then he put the sandwiches and milk in the fridge, quietly poured himself a finger of twelve-year-old Macallan, and carried the note and his drink across the room to the armchair. There he sat for a long time, motionless except for the occasional lifting of his glass, watching the gentle rise and fall of Kit’s breathing.
AFTER SHE HAD PUT THE CHILDREN to bed, Jo slipped next door and let herself into her father’s house with her key. He had taken Sir Peter and Helena to dinner at the Savoy, but he would be home soon and she had steeled herself to break the news to him then.
She hadn’t been able to bring herself to speak to the children, not yet, although she knew she’d have to face it in the morning. They’d gone to bed without a fuss, a signal that they sensed something was wrong, but they hadn’t asked. Nor had they questioned her unexplained absence when the police had driven her to the morgue, though Harry had made a token complaint about being sent to the neighbors’ for a while.
Standing in the hallway, she listened to the sounds of the empty house. The grandfather clock ticked; the floor creaked; from the kitchen came the low hum of the fridge and the intermittent drip of the tap. She had grown up in this house, and to her it seemed a living, breathing entity, as familiar as her own body. It had its own unique smell, and she closed her eyes as she tried to pick out the individual components. Was there the faintest hint of tea rose still, four years after her mother’s death? It had been her mother’s scent, and the house had been filled with the garden’s roses from spring to frost. Did odors linger like ghosts, invisible, yet there for those able to perceive them?
She gazed up at the portrait of her mother on the landing. The beaded lace veil and headdress Isabel Hammond wore in the portrait hid most of her red-gold hair, but the eyes that looked down at her were Annabelle’s.
The only blessing Jo could see in her sister’s death was that her mother had not had to endure it. Although her mother had seen Annabelle more clearly than most, she had loved her fiercely nonetheless. As Jo loved her own children, despite their faults—and she found her mind could not fasten on the thought of their deaths, at any age.
Moving into the dining room, she encountered her father’s essence; the muskiness of his shaving soap, overlaid with the sharpness of glue and the slight spiciness of balsa. He had always been good with his hands, and when her mother’s ill health, and then his own, had compelled him to turn the day-to-day running of the business over to Annabelle, he’d begun building scale models of tea clippers. Since childhood he’d been fascinated by the intricacy and precision of the ships that had first brought tea to Britain.
The dining room table served as his workbench, and he’d not only given up any pretense of using the room for its original function, he’d built special illuminated shelves to hold his creations.
Jo picked up the half-completed model in her hands, running her fingers over the curve of the hull, searching for imperfections. Would his bits and pieces of wood be enough to compensate for the loss of a daughter he had valued above all else?
He still lived on income from his interest in the firm—as did she, to some extent. The money from her shares supplemented her own business, allowing her to work from home, and to be there for the children. Would Hammond’s provide security for any of them, with Annabelle gone?
Jo shook her head and went to the drinks cabinet. No point thinking that far ahead, yet. There was this evening to get through first; tomorrow she would think about the next thing. She’d learned that when her mother died. And that there was no harm in the occasional numbing drink. Pouring some of her father’s treasured Courvoisier into a snifter, she carried it to the sitting room and sank into the armchair by the empty fireplace. The windows stood open and the edges of the drapes moved fitfully in the night air.
Green velvet; her mother’s choice. If Jo stood near them she thought she could smell the pipe tobacco her father had smoked when they were children. It had been Annabelle who had bullied him into giving it up. She’d claimed it made her feel sick, that she couldn’t bear to be in the room with him when he smoked; then she’d administered the coup de grâce by refusing for weeks to kiss him good night. As a power play it had been brilliant, a harbinger of things to come.
Jo’s hand jerked at the sound of a car coming up the lane and the brandy sloshed over the lip of the glass. She held her breath. How could she possibly do this? What preparation had she in her thirty-four years that would allow her to tell her father this terrible thing? For a brief moment she hoped that Reg Mortimer had phoned his parents, and that Peter and Helena had told him; then she cursed herself for a coward. Gravel crunched as the car turned into the drive. She heard the gears shift as it began to climb.
Carefully, she set the glass on the end table and rose. Her limbs felt awkward, uncoordinated as a toddler’s, and once she had managed to unfold herself from the depths of the chair, she stood rooted to the spot. The car door slammed and a moment later she heard her father’s key in the door she had left unlocked.
The door swung open. “Jo?”
She found her voice. “In here, Dad.”
“Good. I could have sworn I’d locked the door, and I’d hate to think I was becoming an absentminded old dodderer.” Coming into the sitting room, he offered his cheek for a kiss. He wore the light gray summer suit that set off his silver hair. In his late sixties, William Hammond was still a handsome man, and since Isabel’s death he’d had a time of it fighting off what Annabelle called “the widows’ club.”