Kissed a Sad Goodbye

ringing her now? But as he turned away, he saw again Lewis’s face as he had sped off in the car, and an urgency that made his stomach feel hollow drove him back to the phone.
    When Gemma answered, he said without preamble, “Lewis didn’t kill Annabelle.”
    “Gordon?”
    “All the time I thought he’d killed her, he was thinking the same about me. And when he realized it wasn’t me, he said—it didn’t make sense....”
    “Go on,” said Gemma, her voice tense.
    “He said...” Gordon paused, struggling to remember the exact words. “He said he should have known... and then something about not letting him get away with it again. Then he drove off.... He looked... I’m afraid he’ll do something crazy....”
    “Gordon?”
    He didn’t answer. Without warning, the pieces had come together in a way he hadn’t thought possible, and he felt a surge of anger so intense it left him shaking.
    “Gordon?”
    Realizing he was still holding the receiver to his ear, he said, “I have to go,” and aimed the phone at the cradle as he turned away.
    He reached his flat in minutes and took the stairs three at a time, startling Sam into a volley of barking when he burst through the door. “It’s all right, boy,” he said automatically. But he knew nothing was all right unless he could make it so.
    Dropping to his knees, he dug under the bed until his fingers touched the smooth wood of the box stored there, a gift from his father on his twenty-first birthday, one of the few possessions he had carted from place to place over the years. He slid it free and clicked up the latches.
    “It’s a goddamned antique,” he muttered to Sam. A sentimental memento—he’d never dreamed of shooting anyone with it. But his father’s Webley Mark IV lay snug in its red felt cradle, clean and oiled, and beside it was an unopened box of .38 cartridges.
     
    KINCAID HAD DRIVEN BACK FROM SURREY slowly, thinking about Irene Burne-Jones and the things she had told him. He doubted Irene had ever loved anyone the way she’d loved Lewis Finch, and he’d found he hadn’t the heart to suggest to her that Lewis might have murdered Annabelle Hammond.
    Knowing something now of Lewis Finch’s history, he tried to imagine that Annabelle’s rejection of Lewis that night had been the loss that had tipped him into despair, driving him to murder. But for the first time he had doubts, and he still didn’t understand what had made Lewis so determined to take William Hammond’s property from him.
    He was still mulling it over when he pulled into the car park at Limehouse Station and saw Gemma coming out the door. She wore a black, sleeveless dress that just brushed the tops of her knees, but his pleasure at the sight of her faded when he saw her distracted frown. When he called out to her, she looked his way and came to intercept him. “What’s going on?” he asked.
    “Gordon Finch just rang me. He said he was sure his father didn’t kill Annabelle—and then he hung up.”
    “Was he ringing from his flat?”
    “Probably a call box. He doesn’t have a phone.”
    “We’ll try the flat first. Get in.”
    She came round the car, and as she buckled herself in, he asked, “Is that all he said?”
    “No. Duncan, they were protecting each other— Gordon and Lewis—but neither of them knew it. When Lewis realized Gordon hadn’t killed her, he said he should have known, and that he wasn’t going to ‘let him get away with it again.’ ”
    “Let who?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t think Gordon knew.”
    Kincaid’s phone rang as he pulled out into West India Dock Road. He answered, then said to Gemma as he rang off, “That was Janice. Forensics just called. They’ve found a trace amount of hair and blood in a sample taken from one of the tea chests in Annabelle Hammond’s office.”
    “So it looks like she was killed at Hammond’s,” Gemma said. “Who would she have met there in the middle of the night?”
    “If we assume it was neither of the Finches?” He switched on his wipers as rain spattered the windscreen. “Martin Lowell? If he wouldn’t let her come to his flat, and she wanted to have it out with him?”
    “We’ve had Brandy Bannister in again this morning. She hasn’t budged an inch on her statement. It looks as though Lowell’s alibi is good.” Gemma sounded unhappy about it.
    Kincaid frowned. “Maybe we should look at this from another angle. Who, besides Annabelle, had access to the