Mourn not your Dead

even as he spoke. These were things he hadn’t really articulated to himself, much less shared with anyone else.
    “Sometimes grief takes us by surprise.” Madeleine lifted her glass and held it in both hands, tilting it gently. Tonight she wore tunic and trousers in olive-green silk, and the wine looked blood dark against the earthy green. Kincaid heard the experience in her voice, but he didn’t ask what loss she’d suffered.
    When he’d sampled the Stilton, he said, “Do you suppose Claire Gilbert will grieve for her husband?”
    Madeleine thought for a moment. “I think that Claire did her grieving for Alastair Gilbert a long time ago, when she discovered that he was not what she’d thought.” Behind her, the farmyard animals seemed to cavort across the curtains in the flickering light. “And I don’t think she ever stopped grieving for Stephen. She hadn’t time to do it properly when she married Alastair, but we often make choices out of necessity that we later regret.”
    “And have you?”
    “More times than I can count.” Madeleine smiled. “But never because the wolf was at my door, like Claire. I’ve been financially fortunate. My family was comfortably off, then I went straight from college into a well-paid job.” With a delicate twist of the stem, she picked a grape from its cluster. “What about you, Mr. Kincaid? Have you made decisions you’ve regretted?”
    “Out of the necessity of the moment,” he said softly, echoing her earlier words. Had she sensed what was on his mind and led him to this, all unsuspecting? “I’d say this was odd, except I’m beginning to think that nothing concerning you is quite... ordinary. Yes, I made that sort of decision once, and it concerned Alastair Gilbert.”
    “Gilbert?” Madeleine spluttered, choking on her wine.
    “It was years ago—probably quite near the time that Gilbert met Claire. I was taking a development course, just after I’d been promoted to inspector, and he was the instructor.” Kincaid stopped and drank some wine, wondering why he had got himself into this tale and why he felt compelled to continue. “We had the weekend at home in the middle of a two-week course. That Sunday evening, just as I was about to leave for Hampshire again, my wife told me that she desperately needed to talk.” Pausing, he rubbed his cheek. “You have to understand that this was very out of the ordinary for Vic—she wasn’t a tempest-in-the-teapot type at all. I rang Gilbert, told him I had a family emergency, asked for a little leeway in returning. He told me he’d see me thrown out of the course.” He drank again, swallowing the bitterness that rose in his throat.
    “I think he’d already taken a dislike to me because I hadn’t sucked up to him, and I wasn’t experienced enough then to know that the threat was mostly hot air.”
    “So you went?” Madeleine prompted when he paused again.
    Kincaid nodded. “And when I came home she was gone. Of course, I’ve enough perspective now to realize that it wouldn’t have made any difference in the long term. She wanted me to choose her over the job, and if I’d stayed with her on that Sunday, she’d have picked another occasion for the same test—when I had an important case, perhaps.
    “But for a long time I needed someone to blame, and Alastair Gilbert provided a very convenient scapegoat.” He smiled crookedly and began spreading cheese on a biscuit.
    Madeleine refilled his glass. “It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that others besides you and the Geno-vases will have had scores to settle with Gilbert. How do you know where to start?”
    “We don’t. The man was like a bloody virus—he infected everything he touched. How could we possibly trace every contact he ever made?”
    “I can sense your frustration rising,” Madeleine said, smiling. “And that wasn’t my intent.”
    “Sorry.” Studying her as she concentrated on arranging slivers of salmon on a biscuit, he found himself intensely curious about this woman, but he hesitated to test her boundaries. After a moment, he said carefully, “Madeleine, are you ever really comfortable with anyone?”
    “There have been a very few exceptions.” She sighed. “The needy are the worst, I think, those that cry out constantly for attention, for affirmation of their right to exist. They are even more disturbing than the angry.”
    “Is that what Geoff is like?”
    Shaking her head, she said, “No. Geoff isn’t a