All Shall Be Well by Deborah Crombie Read Free Book Online Page A

the fabrics, then lifted the trousers and sweaters in the drawers.
    The wardrobe’s top shelf held rows of neatly stacked shoe-boxes. Gemma slipped off her shoes, stepped up on the bottom shelf and lifted the top off a box, peering inside. Quickly she pulled the boxes off the shelves and laid them on the bed, removing the tops.
    “Guv. You’d better come and look at these.”
    He came to the doorway, dusting off his hands. “What’s up?”
    “Composition books. Lots of them, all alike.” Gemma opened one and showed him the pages covered with the same neat, italic script she’d seen on the back of the photo. She wassuddenly very aware of his nearness in the small room, his quick breathing, the smell of aftershave and warm skin. She stepped back and said more loudly than she intended, “It looks like Jasmine kept a journal.”
    They sorted the boxes, checking the first page of each book for the date. “1952 is the earliest date I’ve found,” Gemma said, rubbing her nose that itched from the dust. Her fingertips felt dry and papery.
    Kincaid calculated a moment. “She would have been ten years old.” They kept on in silence until Kincaid looked up and frowned. “The last entry seems to have been made a week ago.”
    “Did you find anything in the sitting room?”
    He shook his head. “No.”
    “Do you suppose she stopped writing because she knew she was dying?” Gemma ventured.
    “Someone with a lifetime’s habit of recording their thoughts? Doesn’t seem likely.”
    “Or,” Gemma continued slowly, “did it somehow go missing?”
    They sat in the garden at the Freemason’s Arms, eating brown bread with cheese and pickle, and drinking lager. They’d had to wait for one of the white plastic tables, but judged it worth it; for the sun and the view across Willow Road to the Heath.
    Toby, having mangled a soft cheese roll and most of the chips in his basket, sat in the grass at their feet. He was pulling things from Gemma’s bag, muttering a running catalogue to himself—“keys, stick, Toby’s horsey”—here he held a tattered stuffed horse up for their inspection. Kincaid thought blackly of the listing of a victim’s effects, then pushed the thought away. He pulled a chip from Toby’s basket and held it out to him. “Here, Toby. Feed the birds.”
    Toby looked from Kincaid to the house sparrows pecking inthe grass. “Birdies?” he said, interested, then launched himself toward the sparrows, chip extended before him like a rapier. The birds took flight.
    “Now look what you’ve done,” said Gemma, laughing. “He’ll be frustrated.”
    “Good for his emotional development,” Kincaid intoned with mock seriousness, then grinned at her. “Sorry.” He liked seeing Gemma this way, relaxed and thoughtful. At work she was often too quick off the mark with assumptions, and he had more than once accused her of talking faster than she thought.
    Good with Toby, too, he thought, attentive without fussing. He watched Gemma reel the toddler back in and plop him in the grass at her feet. She put a piece of her bread in the grass a few feet from Toby. “Here, lovey. Be very, very still and maybe they’ll come to you.” The sun had reddened the bridge of her nose and darkened the dusting of freckles on her pale skin. She became aware of Kincaid’s scrutiny, looked up and flushed.
    “You should wear a sun hat, you know, like a good Victorian girl.”
    “Ow. You sound just like my mum. ‘You’ll blister in that sun, Gem. You mark my words, you’ll look like a navvy by the time you’re thirty’,” Gemma mimicked. “It can’t last, anyway, this weather.” She tilted her head and looked at the flat blue sky.
    “No.” No, but he could sure as hell sit here in the sun as long as it did, not thinking, listening to the sparrows and the hum of traffic from East Heath Road, watching the sun send golden flares from Gemma’s hair.
    “Duncan.” Gemma’s tone was unusually tentative. Kincaid sat up