A Finer End

“I’m looking forward to meeting your cousin,” she quipped back. “So he can fill me in on all your embarrassing childhood exploits. Seriously, though,” she continued, glancing at him, “it sounds as if he’s a bit paranoid, thinking someone may have run his girlfriend down deliberately. I hope you’re not getting into something awkward.”

“Jack’s the last person I’d have described as nervy. But I haven’t seen him since Emily’s death. He may have changed.”

His wife and baby, Kincaid had said. Gemma shuddered. It didn’t bear thinking of. “How long since they died?” she asked.

“A couple of years now. It was just about the time we started working together.”

How green she had been, thought Gemma. And how little she’d anticipated what had developed between them.

“Will we stay with him?” she asked.

“He didn’t say. As I remember it, the house is a great Victorian pile of brick, built right against the side of the Tor.”

“The Tor?”

“You’ll see,” he answered cryptically. “When I was a kid I found it fascinating and a bit frightening, but Jack seemed oblivious. Home ground, I suppose.”

Intrigued by this unfamiliar aspect of his childhood, Gemma said, “Did you visit them often?”

“Only a few times. Usually they came to us. I don’t think my aunt Olivia ever gave up being homesick for Cheshire.”

“Your mother inherited the family home, then?”

He laughed. “You make it sound like some sort of grand country estate. It’s just a rambling old farmhouse, a bit leaky round the edges. I’ll take you for a visit sometime. And Kit.”

“I’d like that,” Gemma said carefully, unwilling to pursue it further. Instead, she asked, “How did Kit mind our going away for the weekend?”

“He already had plans with the Millers. A dog show in Bedford.”

“Any word from Ian about the Canadian job?”

“No. He’s still hedging. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe he wants the job but feels guilty about taking it.”

“He’s got to make his mind up before the beginning of spring term.” Kincaid’s exasperation was evident. “I don’t want the transition to be any more difficult than necessary for Kit.”

“Aren’t you making rather a big leap, assuming Ian won’t insist on taking Kit to Canada with him? He does have the right.”

“Yes, but I can’t see him doing it. It would cramp his style too much. Right now he’s getting mileage with the ladies by playing the grieving widower with child, but in a new setting Kit might prove more hindrance than help.”

“Oh, that’s cold.”

“But true.”

Gemma had to agree, having heard enough snippets from Kit about Ian’s “tutorials” behind closed doors in what had been Vic’s office.

They fell silent as they reached their exit from the motorway, and soon they were heading due south, with the plains of Wiltshire on their left and the rising hills of Somerset on their right. At Trowbridge they picked up the A361 towards Shepton Mallet and Glastonbury, and the sky began to lighten in the west.

“It may clear up,” Kincaid said hopefully, and by the time they’d passed through the hillside village of Pilton, a few miles east of Glastonbury, his prediction proved correct. The heavy overcast had broken up, leaving the sky a milky blue streaked with wisps of cloud.

Concentrating on the road, Gemma caught a fleeting glimpse of a strange, cone-shaped hill before it disappeared round another bend. “What on earth was that?”

“Glastonbury Tor.”

The hill came into view again, this time staying on the horizon. It looked artificial, a man-made mound with the squat shape of a building perched on the summit like a Christmas cracker paper crown. “Did somebody make it?” Gemma asked.

“No. The hill itself is a geologic formation. The contouring of the sides could possibly be man-made, but if so, it’s so old that no one knows who did it, or why.”

“And the building on the top?”

“St. Michael’s Tower. All that’s left of a twelfth-century church, destroyed by an earthquake. The remains of the last Christian stance against the pagan, legend has it.”

“You don’t believe that?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been up there. The wind blows through the tower like a knife, and that stone is colder than death. I doubt anything Christian ever stood a chance on that hill.”

“Are you sure you won’t go in and sit with her for a few minutes?” Suzanne Sanborne asked. “I think it would help you—”

“No!” At the startled glances of the other visitors, Andrew lowered his voice to a snarl. “You don’t understand. Our parents—” He stopped, unable, even after so many years, to relate the horror of being made to stand at his unconscious mother’s bedside. She’d been in the water too long before they’d fished her body from the wreck of their sailboat off the Dorset coast. And now Winnie.…

“Then you’ve got to get some rest. You’re not doing Winnie any good by getting yourself in such a state.”

“I can’t sleep.” Andrew clasped his hands between his knees to stop their obvious trembling. They sat in the visitors’ area outside the ICU, waiting for the nurses to allow Suzanne another ten-minute stint by Winnie’s bedside.