Mourn not your Dead

if her question had been more than rote. Beneath the short sleeves of her knitted top her arms looked thin and unprotected. She seemed about the same age as Lucy Penmaric and made Kincaid think of his ex-wife.
    The shop smelled faintly of coffee and chocolate. For its size it was very well stocked, even to a small freezer case filled with good quality frozen dinners. While Deveney handed his apple over for weighing and dug in his pocket for change, Kincaid flipped through his notebook, and when they’d completed their transaction, he took De-veney’s place at the counter. “We’re looking for Madeleine Wade, the owner. Is she here?”
    “Oh, aye,” said the girl, favoring them with a shy smile. “Madeleine’s upstairs in her studio, but I don’t think she has a client just now.”
    “Client?” repeated Kincaid, wondering bemusedly if the shopkeeper led a double life as the village prostitute. He’d known stranger combinations than that.
    The girl tapped on a card Cello-taped to the countertop. REFLEXOLOGY, AROMATHERAPY & MASSAGE, it read in neat calligraphy, and beneath that, BY APPOINTMENT ONLY, and a phone number.
    Enlightened, he said, “Oh, I see. She’s quite the entrepreneur, isn’t she?”
    The girl looked at him blankly for a moment, as if he’d exceeded her vocabulary, then directed, “Just go round the side and ring the bell.”
    Kincaid leaned a little more determinedly on the counter and ventured, “You’d be about school-leaving age, I should think?”
    She blushed to the roots of her fair hair and whispered, “I did my GCSE’s last year, sir.”
    “Do you know Lucy Penmaric at all, then?”
    Seeming to find this question less intimidating, she answered a bit louder. “I know her to speak to, of course, but we don’t hang about together, if that’s what you mean. She’s never had much to do with the village kids.”
    “Stuck-up, is she?” Kincaid asked, inviting a confidence. Deveney, flipping idly through the postcards while munching his apple, gave every appearance of ignoring their conversation.
    Frowning, the girl pushed her hair from her face. “No, I wouldn’t say that. Lucy’s always nice enough, she just doesn’t seem to mix with anyone.”
    “That’s too bad, considering what’s happened,” said Kincaid. “I imagine she could use a friend just now.”
    “Oh, aye,” she said. With the first hint of curiosity she’d shown, she added, “You’ll be from the police, then?”
    “That we are, love.” Deveney joined them, holding aloft his apple core. “And you’ll be doing us a great service if you’ll toss this in the bin.” He winked at her, and she blushed again but took the apple core willingly enough.
    Cocky bastard, thought Kincaid. He thanked the girl and she smiled at him gratefully. As he reached the door, he turned back to her. “What’s your name, by the way?”
    She offered it to him on a whispered breath. “Sarah.”
     
    “THAT ONE’S NOT LIKELY TO MAKE A ROCKET SCIENTIST,” quipped Deveney as they left the shop.
    “I’d say she’s shy, not stupid.” Kincaid avoided a puddle as they rounded the corner of the shop. “And I find it dangerous to underestimate people, though I dare say I’ve done it more than once.” He thought again of Vic, of the times she’d come home in a temper, threatening to darken her hair to brunette so that she wouldn’t have to prove her intelligence to everyone she met. It occurred to him now that even though he’d sympathized with her, he’d been just as guilty as the clods he’d criticized—he hadn’t taken her seriously until it had been much too late.
    “Touché.” Deveney winced at the mild reproof. “I’ll try to keep a more open mind.”
    The side door proved to be at the top of an exterior staircase. It looked to Kincaid as though the stair had been added fairly recently, perhaps in the process of converting the lower floor of the house into a shop. Both railing and door were painted a glossy white. As he pushed the bell, he murmured, “She must be a good witch—she’s got her colors right.”
    The door opened as the last words left his lips. Looking at them inquiringly, Madeleine Wade said, “Yes?” and Kincaid, tongue-tied, flushed as painfully as Sarah. While Deveney stumbled through the introductions, Kincaid examined the woman’s clothes, a moss green and rose silk blouse with matching green silk trousers. Her hair was a stylish chin-length bob of a platinum shade he