Mourn not your Dead

belonged to the owner, said they’d report him if he didn’t join in.”
    “You’re telling me that Geoff is a kleptomaniac?” Deveney sounded surprised, but Kincaid merely nodded as Brian confirmed his suspicion. He’d come across the magpielike pattern once when he’d worked burglary—that time it had been an older woman in a posh neighborhood, who visited her neighbors regularly for tea.
    “He saw a doctor while he was serving his sentence, and he’s seemed so much better since he came home.” Brian slumped in his seat as if all the fight had gone out of him.
    “I’m sure they must have told you that the disorder is very difficult to treat,” Kincaid said. “You must have wondered when things began to go missing.”
    Brian didn’t answer, and after a moment Deveney said softly to Kincaid, “Let’s get this over with. We’ll find the room on our own.” They left Brian motionless at the table, his head sunk in his hands.
     
    “LOOKS LIKE HE’S BEEN IN THE ARMY,” SAID DEVENEY. “TOO neat.”
    “Or prison.” Kincaid ran his hand over the smoothly tucked corner of the single bed. Fantasy posters covered the walls, but rather than being stuck up with the usual pushpins, they were framed in simple unvarnished wood. “Do-it-yourself, I should think,” Kincaid said to himself.
    “Hmmm?” Deveney looked up from the computer monitor. He’d been staring, mesmerized, at the ever-changing mandala pattern of the screen saver. “He mustn’t have meant to be away long if he’s left things running. We’d better dig in.”
    “Right.” Kincaid sat down at the desk and opened the first drawer. He found snooping through the minutiae of people’s lives both distasteful and weirdly fascinating, but the enjoyment always brought with it a slight stirring of guilt.
    The top drawer held tidily organized desk paraphernalia, a few letters on flowery stationery, computer game manuals. In the bottom drawer he found a faded photograph of a young woman, dressed in the hip-hugging bell-bottoms of the late sixties. Bare midriff, long straight brown hair parted in the middle, huge bangle earrings, a serious and slightly bored expression. He wondered who she was and why Geoff Genovase had kept the photo.
    A bookcase by the window held mostly paperbacks— fantasy, sword and sorcery, a few historical novels. Kincaid thumbed through them, then stood at the window, gazing at the tile roof of St. Mary’s rising disembodied over the vicarage hedges. He tried to analyze the difference between the order of this room and that of Alastair Gilbert’s study. Gilbert’s spoke of control exerted for its own sake, while this room evoked a carefully guarded and deliberate serenity, he decided after a moment.
    “Pay dirt,” said Deveney, sounding less than jubilant. Kneeling on the carpet, he lifted a carved wooden box from the bottom drawer of a pine chest and brought it to the desk. He swore softly as he opened it. “Bloody hell. Poor Bri.”
    The bits of jewelry were neatly arranged on the velvet lining.
    They found Madeleine Wade’s silver and Percy Bain-bridge’s photos behind a shoe box on the shelf in the small closet.
    “He didn’t make much effort to hide things,” Deveney said as he pulled the list from his pocket.
    “I’m not sure hiding’s the point of this.” Kincaid fingered an intricately carved antique brooch, then a pair of delicate pearl and gold filigree earrings. “Do these pearl earrings match the description of the vicar’s?”
    Deveney ran down the list. “Looks like it.”
    “But there aren’t any others. Unless we’ve missed them, Claire Gilbert’s aren’t here.”
    “So maybe he threw them in a hedge somewhere, panicked after what he’d done,” said Deveney. Then he added, as they heard faint voices from downstairs, “Sounds like the prodigal’s returned. We’ll radio the station for the lads to come take this place apart board by board. It’s time we had a word with wee Geoff.”
     
    BRIAN GENOVASE HELD HIS SON IN A BEAR HUG, AND AT first sight Kincaid thought he intended restraint. But as they came closer and Brian stepped away, Kincaid saw that the young man trembled so violently he could barely stand unaided.
    “Geoff.” Deveney’s flat tone told all, and Geoff s knees buckled as Kincaid watched.
    “Good God, man, he’s going to pass out.” Kincaid leaped towards him, but Brian had already grasped his son around the waist and guided him to a bench.
    “Head