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

and squinted at her as he sipped from his pint. “Duncan, tell me why you don’t think Jasmine committed suicide.”
    He looked away from her, then picked up a scrap of bread from his plate and began to shred it. “You think I’m manufacturing this to salve my wounded vanity. Maybe I am.” Heleaned forward and met her eyes again. “But I just can’t believe she wouldn’t have left something—some indication, some message.”
    “For you?”
    “For me. Or for her friend Margaret. Or her brother.” The doubt he saw in Gemma’s hazel eyes made him defensive. “I knew her, damn it.”
    “She was ill, dying. People don’t always behave rationally. Maybe she wanted you all to think it was natural.”
    Kincaid sat up, vehement. “She’d know Margaret wouldn’t. Not after what passed between them.”
    “According to Margaret.”
    “Point taken.” Kincaid ran a hand through his already unruly hair. “But still—”
    “Look,” Gemma interrupted him, her face beginning to flush with her enthusiasm for playing devil’s advocate, “you say you don’t think she died naturally in her sleep because in that case she would have bolted the door. But what if she felt too ill, perhaps lay down thinking she’d have a rest first—”
    “No. She was too … composed. Everything was just too bloody perfect.”
    “So why couldn’t she have drifted off during the evening, lost consciousness before she realized what was happening?”
    Kincaid shook his head. “No lights. No telly. No book open across her chest or fallen to the floor. No reading glasses. Gemma,” he gave a sharp, uncomfortable shrug, “I think that’s what bothered me from the first, even before Margaret came and threw a spanner in the works with the suicide pact. It was almost as if she’d been laid out.” He uttered this last remark a little sheepishly, looking sideways at her to gauge her reaction. Finding no expression of ridicule, he added, “The bedclothes weren’t even rumpled a bit.”
    “That’s all consistent with suicide,” Gemma said, and hergentle tone made Kincaid suspect he was being humored.
    “I suppose so.” He stretched his legs out under the table and regarded her over the rim of his almost-empty pint. “I know you think I’m daft.”
    Gemma merely lifted an eyebrow. She picked up Toby, who was getting restless, and jiggled him on her knee until he laughed. “So what if the p.m. findings are positive?” she said between bounces. “The coroner’s sure to rule suicide. There’s no evidence to support opening an investigation.”
    “Lack of written or verbal communication of intent?”
    Gemma shrugged. “Very iffy. And Margaret’s story would be used to support suicide, not vice versa.”
    Kincaid watched a kite hovering over the Heath and didn’t answer. Margaret. Now there was a thing. Why should he take Margaret’s story at face value? Yesterday he had been too shocked and exhausted to question anything, but it occurred to him now that Margaret couldn’t have invented a better story if she’d wanted it thought that Jasmine committed suicide, and it also absolved her of any guilt in not intervening.
    “You’ve got that look,” Gemma said accusingly. “What are you hatching?”
    “Right.” Kincaid drained his pint and sat up. “I’d like to have a word with Jasmine’s solicitor, but I haven’t a hope of seeing him till Monday.”
    “What else?” Gemma said, and Kincaid thought she looked inexplicably pleased with herself.
    “Talk to Margaret. Maybe talk to Theo again.”
    “And the books?”
    For an instant asking Gemma to help him crossed Kincaid’s mind, but he rejected it as quickly as it came. That was one task he couldn’t share. “I’ll make a start on them.”
    They walked slowly back to Carlingford Road, holding Toby’s hands and swinging him over the curbs. “No walk onthe Heath, then?” Kincaid asked, for he’d seen Gemma glance at her watch more than once.
    Gemma shook her head.