All Shall Be Well (21 page)

“Meg. Except for a couple of small bequests, Jasmine left you the bulk of her estate, which includes the equity in this flat and her stock and bond investments.” Roger pressed his lips together and blinked, but he didn’t quite manage to hide the flash of pleasure on his face. Meg simply looked more miserable than ever.

“Mrs. Howarth and Major Keith,” Kincaid continued, “Jasmine left each of you a thousand pounds, in ‘appreciation of your friendship’, and she also made a donation to the RSPCA. That’s it, I’m afraid. I have copies for each of you,” he gestured at the neat stack he’d placed on the dining table. “If you’d just—”

“It’s not right.” Felicity’s face had gone almost as pale as the white blouse she wore under her charcoal jacket, and she shook her head vehemently from side to side. “I can’t accept that. It was my job to look after her, I never expected—”

“Nor I.” The Major stood, crumpling his tweed cap between his blunt fingers. “Not fitting. Bad enough for her to be taken so soon, but to benefit by her death—” He stopped, looked round the room as if someone might give him the words to continue, then said, “Excuse me,” turned abruptly and let himself out the door.

In the moment of silence that followed, Kincaid heard the vibration from the slam fade away.

Meg took a step toward the door. “Oh, can’t someone do something? Talk to him? I’m sure Jasmine never meant for him to take it so … she only wanted to thank him for his kindness.”

“Don’t be daft.” Roger’s contempt was evident. “I’m sure he’ll come to his senses soon enough.”

Kincaid spoke to Felicity. “I don’t know if you can legally refuse a bequest. You’ll have to discuss it with Jasmine’s solicitor. You would certainly have the prerogative of using the money as you pleased—donate it to a charity, perhaps, if that made you feel more comfortable.”

“Nothing is going to make me feel comfortable about this. I simply will not accept it.” Felicity’s rising voice was the first crack Kincaid had seen in her professional demeanor.

Meg knelt before her chair and looked earnestly up into her
face. “Jasmine talked so much about how good you were to her, how much she appreciated your honesty. ‘No nonsense’ was the way she put it.” Smiling at the memory, Meg continued. “She liked that. You were the one person she could trust to play it straight with her. Most of us failed her. It’s much easier to pretend it will just go away.” Meg leaned back on her heels and looked away, picking at the fabric of her skirt. “Even when she talked about killing herself, I never quite believed in it—couldn’t make it seem real. It was like something in a movie or a play.” She looked around at all of them except Roger. “Do you see?”

“Yes,” said Theo. He had stopped the nervous fiddling with his braces as he listened to Meg, and now he slid into a chair at the other end of the table and leaned forward on his elbows. “It was just the same for me. I should have known, when she said she was better but she wouldn’t see me. I should have insisted, come to London and camped on the doorstep until she let me in, done what I could for her.” He lifted his hands in a helpless shrug. “I’m sure she knew I’d take the easy way—I always have. Jasmine was always there—annoyed with me, more often than not,” he smiled, “but there, and I didn’t want to believe things would ever change.” Theo paused and studied Meg. “I’m glad my sister knew you, Margaret. You didn’t fail her.”

“Didn’t I?” asked Meg, meeting Theo’s eyes.

Roger rolled his eyes in disgust. “This is all just too sweet for words. I think I’m going to be sick.”

The spell shattered. Meg looked away from Theo, then down at herself, and Kincaid could see her self-consciousness flooding back as she became aware of her awkward position. As she tried to rise, her heel caught in the hem of her skirt with a ripping sound. She fell back to her knees, grimacing.

Felicity said, “Here, let me help you.” She seemed to have regained some of her composure as she listened to Meg and
Theo, and now she moved briskly back into her familiar role. Kneeling on the floor, she gently extricated Meg’s heel from the torn hem. “All right, now? I’m afraid it will take a needle and thread to put you completely to rights.”

Roger folded his arms and said with exaggerated patience, “If you’re quite finished, Margaret?” but he made no move to help her up.

Felicity stood, held out a hand to Meg, then gathered her handbag off the chair. She turned to Kincaid and spoke slowly and deliberately, as if she’d been rehearsing her words. “Mr. Kincaid. I’m sorry about all the fuss. It was unfair of me to lash out at you. I do realize it’s not your responsibility, and I’ll take whatever steps necessary to sort this out.”

“You’ll see Antony Thomas? Or perhaps your own solicitor?”

“Yes. Just as soon—”

“How long will it take?” Roger broke in. “Probate, I mean.”

Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “Is Margaret in some particular hurry?”

“Will you all stop talking about me as if I weren’t here?” Meg glared at them all. “No, I’m not in any hurry for Jasmine’s money. I never wanted it in the first place and I don’t care if I ever see a penny of it.” She stopped, took a gulp of air, then delivered one last salvo. “And as far as I’m concerned, you can all just go to hell!” She stalked from the flat, her fury lending her a dignity even her trailing skirt hem couldn’t spoil.

Roger gave a ‘what can you do?’ shrug and followed, scooping Meg’s copy of the will off the table as he went.

To Kincaid’s surprise, Theo recovered his tongue first. “She deserves better than that. What does she see in that miserable sod?” As soon as the words left his mouth he turned as red as his braces and muttered, “Sorry. Rude of me,” to Gemma and Felicity, then “I’d better be going as well.” He did not, however, forget the will.

Felicity turned to Gemma and Kincaid. “You’ve been very kind,” she said, the corners of her mouth lifting in a small smile, “although I’m not sure kindness figured in your motive. Mr. Kincaid, this investigation of yours is going to be very hard on Margaret and Theo—they have enough grief and guilt to deal with as it is—I don’t suppose you’re willing to drop it?”

Kincaid shook his head. “No. I’m sorry.”

“I thought as much.” Felicity sighed and glanced at her watch. “Well, I’ll be off then. I’ve got patients waiting.” She gathered her bag and coat and let herself out of the flat.

“And then there were none,” Kincaid muttered under his breath. He sat on the edge of Jasmine’s hospital bed. “Exit players. You faded admirably into the woodwork,” he added as he looked at Gemma, who still stood with her back against the kitchen counter.

She stretched and moved to one of the dining room chairs. Sid, who had vanished like smoke with the first knock on the door, suddenly reappeared and jumped into her lap. Gemma stroked his head absently as she spoke. “I didn’t expect darling Roger to be able to contain his glee, but Theo didn’t kick up much protest either.”

Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “And the others? Did they protest too much?”

Gemma’s smile held a hint of mischief. “Your meek little Meg seems to be making an unexpected transformation into a tigress. Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall when she and Roger have a more private conversation?”

“Did it occur to you,” said Kincaid, “that Meg seemed awfully well informed about Jasmine’s intentions?”

Meg sat huddled on the edge of the bed, shivering. Even the remnants of last night’s warmth had long since seeped away, and the room’s single radiator felt icy to the touch. Mrs.
Wilson’s generosity did not extend to keeping her tenants’ rooms warm during the day. She’d no patience with slug-a-beds, and she reiterated it often enough from the warm confines of her kitchen.

Of course, Meg wasn’t ordinarily home in the middle of a working day. She’d taken a day of unpaid leave for personal business, and Mrs. Washburn’s quick and silent acquiescence to her request left Meg little doubt that her days in the planning office were numbered. The prospect came almost as a relief.

On weekends when the room began to chill she left—to shop, to walk aimlessly in the streets, and in the last few months, to spend the days with Jasmine.

A crackle of paper drew her attention to Roger. He sat at the table, thoughtfully chewing the last of a meat-and-potato pasty—her pasty, in fact—he’d bought two at the bakery around the corner from the bed-sit. Meg had taken one bite of the cold, greasy, onion-flavored meat and forced back the impulse to gag.

Roger finished crumpling the grease-proof paper into a wad and tossed it in the direction of the waste bin across the room. It missed. He shrugged and left it lying where it fell.

“Roger, couldn’t you—” Meg began, then stopped, unable to find any words that might encourage him to go without incurring his temper.

“Want me to go, do you, sweetheart?” Roger said softly, crossing the room and sitting down beside her on the bed. Her stomach spasmed and her hands began to tremble. “Leave you all by yourself? I’d never do that, would I, Meg darling?” He ran his fingers lightly down her spine. “You know what this means, don’t you, Meg? It won’t take long for Jasmine’s will to clear probate, and then we’ll be set. A decent flat, maybe a holiday somewhere. Would you like to lie on the beach in Spain,
Meg? Soak up the sun and drink pina coladas?” He’d been unbuttoning her blouse as he spoke, and now he traced a fingertip just under the edge of her bra.

Meg felt her nipples draw up, felt her stomach tighten in unwilling response. “Roger, we can’t. Mrs. Wilson’ll—”

“She’ll be having her after-lunch kip in front of the telly. She won’t hear a thing. Not if you’re a good girl. And I want you to be a good girl. Not like this morning when you made such a scene. What was the Superintendent to think, darling, with you ranting and raving like a fishwife?” He pushed her back against the pillow and lifted her legs up on the bed. “It won’t do, Meg. Do you hear me?” he asked, his voice even more gentle than before.

Meg nodded. In the cold, gray light from the window she could see the faint dusting of freckles on his skin and the flush beginning where the vee of his shirt exposed his chest. She clung to the memory of her defiance of him that morning, wrapping it about her like a second skin.

Roger pulled down his jeans and lifted her skirt, not bothering to finish undressing her. The rumpled bedspread made a lump beneath her shoulder blades and Meg focused on the discomfort, thinking that if she concentrated hard enough on that pinpoint she might block her body’s traitorous rush of desire. Roger lowered himself onto her, his breath escaping in a soft grunt.

Meg turned her face to the wall.

CHAPTER
15

As soon as she felt Roger’s breathing slow to the deep rhythm of sleep, Meg slid carefully from beneath him and stood up. She refastened her clothes and ran a hand through her tangled hair. Slipping into her shoes and lifting coat and handbag from the back of the armchair, she tiptoed toward the door. A loose board under the floor matting creaked and she stopped, her breath held, her heart thumping. Roger snorted and turned over, his bare buttocks exposed.

He can bloody well freeze
, Meg thought spitefully as she turned the knob and let herself out of the room.

She walked, mindlessly, aimlessly, stopping to stare in shop windows at items she didn’t see. The smell of hot grease and frying fish drifted from the open door of a chip shop and she hurried on, her stomach churning with nausea.

It was only when she found herself standing at an intersection on Finchley Road that she realized where her wandering feet had taken her. She shook herself, hesitated, then crossed with the light and began the long climb up Arkwright Road into Hampstead.

In spite of the cars lining both curbsides, Carlingford Road felt deserted, held in mid-afternoon repose before its occupants
returned home from work. Meg climbed the stairs to Jasmine’s flat and fished the key from the inside pocket of her handbag. She listened a moment, then unlocked the door and stepped inside. Sid regarded her from the bed, then curled himself back into a tight, black ball. “Wish I could do that,” she said aloud. “Shut it out. Shut it all out.”

Closing her eyes, she rested her back against the door and breathed—breathed in the stillness, the faint spicy scent that clung to Jasmine’s things, the beginnings of the chill mustiness that signals an unused room.

Over the months the flat had become her safe haven, an inviolate space, and soon it would be lost to her forever. Meg pushed herself away from the door and walked slowly around the room, touching familiar things. She moved to the window, where Jasmine had often stood and caressed the carved wooden elephants as she watched the Major working in the garden. Today even the colors in the garden were subdued, the blaze of the tulips and forsythia muted by the moisture in the air. Her fingers traced the familiar pattern on the smallest elephant’s back, the wood silky from much stroking. It brought no comfort. A sound from the hall caused her to start guiltily and drop the elephant back on the sill with shaking fingers. The doorknob turned, then someone tapped softly.

Panic closed Meg’s throat, cramped her stomach. She forced it back, forced herself to think reasonably. It couldn’t be Roger. The rapping knuckles had been much too tenuous. But whoever it was would have heard the elephant knocking against the windowsill.

She crossed the room, pulled back the latch and slowly opened the door. Theo Dent stood in the hall, looking as awkward as Meg felt.

“I’m sorry … I didn’t realize,” he said, the rest of his face coloring to match the end of his nose, which Meg assumed was
pink from exposure to the chill wind. Damp beaded his curly hair. “I just came on the off chance … I didn’t expect … I don’t know why I came, really,” he finished lamely. “I missed my train. There won’t be another until the commuter rush.”

Meg pulled the door open wider and stepped back. “I didn’t intend to come here, either,” she said as Theo entered. She smiled at him, struck by a feeling of kinship. “I’ve no right to be here. It just seemed …”

“You do, you know.” Theo wiped his hand under his nose and sniffed. “She left it to you.”