Mourn not your Dead

small ears, Kincaid thought, delicate as seashells. “When I was five I was really ill with a high fever one night. Dad went out to the all-night chemist in the Portobello Road to get something for me, and a car hit him at the zebra crossing. Now it’s all mixed up in my head—the police coming to the door, Mum crying, the scent of the cherries from my open window.”
    So Claire Gilbert had not only been widowed but had faced a husband’s sudden death once before. Remembering the days when giving an occasional death notification had been part of his duties, he imagined the scene from the officers’ viewpoint—light spilling out from the flat on a soft April evening, the pretty young blond wife at the door, apprehension growing in her face as she took in the uniforms. Then out with it, baldly, “Ma’am, we're sorry to tell you that your husband is dead,” and she would stagger as if she’d been slapped. They’d been taught to do it that way in the academy, kinder to get it over with, supposedly, but that never made it any easier.
    Lucy sat with her hair twined around her finger again, staring at one of the hunting prints behind Gilbert’s desk. When Kincaid said, “I’m sorry,” she didn’t respond, but after a moment began to speak without looking at him, as if continuing a conversation.
    “It feels odd, sitting here. Alastair didn’t like us to come in this room, particularly me. His ‘sanctum,’ he called it. I think women somehow spoiled the atmosphere.
    “My dad was a writer, a journalist. His name was Stephen Penmaric, and he wrote mostly about conservation for magazines and newspapers.” She looked at Kincaid now, her face animated. “He had his office in the box room of our flat, and there must not have been enough room because I remember there were always stacks of books on the floor. Sometimes if I promised to be really quiet, he’d let me play in there while he worked, and I built things with the books—castles, cities. I liked the way they smelled, the feel of the covers.”
    “My parents had a bookshop,” said Kincaid. “Still do, in fact. I played in the stockroom, and I used books for building blocks, too.”
    “Really?” Lucy looked up at him, smiling for the first time since she’d described her dog the night before.
    “Honestly.” He smiled back, wishing he could keep that expression on her face.
    “How lovely for you,” she said a bit wistfully. Tucking her feet up on the sofa, she wrapped her arms around her calves and rested her chin on her knees. “It’s funny. I hadn’t thought about my dad so much in years.”
    “I don’t think it’s funny at all. It’s perfectly natural under the circumstances.” He paused, then said carefully, “How do you feel about what’s happened, about your stepfather’s death?”
    She looked away, her finger back in her hair again. After a bit she said slowly, “I don’t know. Numb, I suppose. I don’t really believe it, even though I saw him. They say ‘seeing is believing,’ but it’s not really true, is it?” With a quick glance at the door, she added, “I keep expecting him to walk in any minute.” She shifted restlessly, and Kincaid heard voices from the back of the house.
    “I think that’s probably Chief Inspector Deveney, looking for me. Will you be all right on your own for a bit?” With a return of some of the spirit she’d shown last night, she said, “Of course I’ll be all right. And I’ll look after Mummy when she gets up.” She jumped up from the sofa with the fluidity of the very young and had reached the door before he framed a reply.
    As she turned back to him, he said, “Lewis will be glad to see you,” and was rewarded by one more brilliant smile.
     
    “HAVE YOU NOTICED,” KINCAID SAID TO NICK DEVENEY AS they wound their way through the series of tracks that lay between villages, “that no one seems to be grieving for Alastair Gilbert? Even his wife seems to be shocked but not distraught.”
    “True enough.” Deveney flashed his lights at an oncoming car and backed into the nearest passing place. “But that doesn’t give us a motive for murder. If that were the case, my ex-mother-in-law would be dead twenty times over.” The other driver lifted a hand in a wave as he passed, and Deveney pulled out into the road again. “Hope you don’t mind the shortcut. Actually, I’m not sure it is a shortcut, but I like driving through the hills. Beautiful, isn’t it?” Storm clouds had